As his second Parliament proved no more tractable than his first had been, the King now decided to govern without a Parliament at all; and this he did from 1629 to 1640. During this time he continued to raise money by what many people considered to be illegal taxes—such as ship money, or money provided by seaport and inland towns for the fitting out of imaginary fleets; and tonnage and poundage, a levy on every tun of wine imported and every pound’s worth of merchandise bought and sold.
It was only to be expected that some people would object to pay taxes which were said to be illegal. In fact many people were to be found who said, ‘We will pay no taxes which we, through our Members of Parliament, have not sanctioned.’ The famous John Hampden was one of these; and when the King’s Judges said to Hampden, ‘You and everybody else must pay,’ there were scores of people up and down the country who proclaimed openly in the market-places, 'Well, we won’t pay, that’s all.’
Matters were thus getting into a very unpromising condition when, in 1639, the King levied an army of 22,000 men to make war upon the Scots, who had shown just as strong objections to using the King’s prayer-book as the English people had shown to paying the King’s taxes. At the head of this army Charles marched north, and took up his quarters for a time at York, from which place he paid a visit to Hull.
Let us now see what Hull was like when Charles visited it for the first time.
The plan of Kyngeston-vpon-Hvll given overleaf is reproduced from the very carefully drawn plan of a famous Dutch engraver named Hollar, and shows the appearance of the town in 1640. Surrounding the town to the north and west are the town wall and the moat, repaired and cleaned out by royal orders the previous year. North Gate and Hessle Gate span the moat and thus prevent ingress from both the Humber and the Hull. At each of the intervening three gates—Low Gate, Beverley Gate, and Myton Gate—the moat is spanned by a draw-bridge, and at the ends of Postern Gate Street and Blanket Row there are in the moat stakes for the support of bridges.
A Bird’s-Eye View of Kyngeston-vpon-Hvll
(From Hollar’s Plan. A.D. 1640.)
Within the town wall are plainly to be seen the chief streets and buildings. What was called The Ropery is our Humber Street, which then formed the actual bank of the Humber. Holy Trinity Church is far and away the largest of the buildings. St. Mary’s Church has now no tower, this having fallen in 1540—or, as tradition puts it, having been ‘pulled down to ye bare ground’ by order of the King. The sites of the Black Friary and White Friary are yet unbuilt upon.[[51]] The Suffolk Palace, begun by Michael de la Pole in 1384, confiscated to King Henry VIII., and converted by him into a ‘Sitidell and a special kepe of the hole town,’ rented of the Hildyards of Winestead by King Charles I. in 1639, and used as a magazine for military stores, forms an imposing pile of buildings. Its gardens stretch almost as far as the Beverley Gate.
On the opposite side of the river Hull, the ancient village of Dripole has disappeared, and its place is taken by a new line of fortifications consisting of a ditch and wall, the latter strengthened by the addition of two ‘Blockhouses’ and a ‘Castle.’