The king’s conduct on this speech was the beginning of his troubles, and the first of his more open attempts to crush the popular party. In the House of Lords the king defended the duke, and informed them, “I have thought fit to take order for the punishing some insolent speeches lately spoken.” I find a piece of secret history enclosed in a letter, with a solemn injunction that it might be burnt. “The king this morning complained of Sir John Eliot for comparing the duke to Sejanus, in which he said implicitly he must intend me for Tiberius!” On that day the prologue and the epilogue orators—Sir Dudley Digges, who had opened the impeachment against the duke, and Sir John Eliot, who had closed it—were called out of the house by two messengers, who showed their warrants for committing them to the Tower.[289]
On this memorable day a philosophical politician might have presciently marked the seed-plots of events, which not many years afterwards were apparent to all men. The passions of kings are often expatiated on; but, in the present anti-monarchical period, the passions of parliaments are not imaginable! The democratic party in our constitution, from the meanest of motives, from their egotism, their vanity, and their audacity, hate kings; they would have an abstract being, a chimerical sovereign on the throne—like a statue, the mere ornament of the place it fills,—and insensible, like a statue, to the invectives they would heap on its pedestal!
The commons, with a fierce spirit of reaction for the king’s “punishing some insolent speeches,” at once sent up to the lords for the commitment of the duke![290] But when they learnt the fate of the patriots, they instantaneously broke up! In the afternoon they assembled in Westminster-hall, to interchange their private sentiments on the fate of the two imprisoned members, in sadness and indignation.[291]
The following day the commons met in their own house. When the speaker reminded them of the usual business, they all cried out, “Sit down! sit down!” They would touch on no business till they were “righted in their liberties!”[292] An open committee of the whole house was formed, and no member suffered to quit the house; but either they were at a loss how to commence this solemn conference, or expressed their indignation by a sullen silence. To soothe and subdue “the bold speakers” was the unfortunate attempt of the vice-chamberlain, Sir Dudley Carleton, who had long been one of our foreign ambassadors; and who, having witnessed the despotic governments on the continent, imagined that there was no deficiency of liberty at home. “I find,” said the vice-chamberlain, “by the great silence in this house, that it is a fit time to be heard, if you will grant me the patience.” Alluding to one of the king’s messages, where it was hinted that, if there was “no correspondency between him and the parliament, he should be forced to use new counsels,” “I pray you consider what these new counsels are, and may be: I fear to declare those I conceive!” However, Sir Dudley plainly hinted at them, when he went on observing, that “when monarchs began to know their own strength, and saw the turbulent spirit of their parliaments, they had overthrown them in all Europe, except here only with us.” Our old ambassador drew an amusing picture of the effects of despotic governments, in that of France—“If you knew the subjects in foreign countries as well as myself, to see them look, not like our nation, with store of flesh on their backs, but like so many ghosts and not men, being nothing but skin and bones, with some thin cover to their nakedness, and wearing only wooden shoes on their feet, so that they cannot eat meat, or wear good clothes, but they must pay the king for it; this is a misery beyond expression, and that which we are yet free from!” A long residence abroad had deprived Sir Dudley Carleton of any sympathy with the high tone of freedom, and the proud jealousy of their privileges, which, though yet unascertained, undefined, and still often contested, was breaking forth among the commons of England. It was fated that the celestial spirit of our national freedom should not descend among us in the form of the mystical dove!
Hume observes on this speech, that “these imprudent suggestions rather gave warning than struck terror.” It was evident that the event, which implied “new counsels,” meant what subsequently was practised—the king governing without a parliament! As for “the ghosts who wore wooden shoes,” to which the house was congratulated that they had not yet been reduced, they would infer that it was the more necessary to provide against the possibility of such strange apparitions! Hume truly observes, “The king reaped no further benefit from this attempt than to exasperate the house still further.” Some words, which the duke persisted in asserting had dropped from Digges, were explained away, Digges declaring that they had not been used by him; and it seems probable that he was suffered to eat his words. Eliot was made of “sterner stuff;” he abated not a jot of whatever he had spoken of “that man,” as he affected to call Buckingham.
The commons, whatever might be their patriotism, seem at first to have been chiefly moved by a personal hatred of the favourite;[293] and their real charges against him amounted to little more than pretences and aggravations. The king, whose personal affections were always strong, considered his friend innocent; and there was a warm, romantic feature in the character of the youthful monarch, which scorned to sacrifice his faithful companion to his own interests, and to immolate the minister to the clamours of the commons. Subsequently, when the king did this in the memorable case of the guiltless Strafford, it was the only circumstance which weighed on his mind at the hour of his own sacrifice! Sir Robert Cotton told a friend, on the day on which the king went down to the house of lords, and committed the two patriots, that “he had of late been often sent for to the king and duke, and that the king’s affection towards him was very admirable, and no whit lessened. Certainly,” he added, “the king will never yield to the duke’s fall, being a young man, resolute, magnanimous, and tenderly and firmly affectionate where he takes.”[294] This authentic character of Charles the First, by that intelligent and learned man, to whom the nation owes the treasures of its antiquities, is remarkable. Sir Robert Cotton, though holding no rank at court, and in no respect of the duke’s party, was often consulted by the king, and much in his secrets. How the king valued the judgment of this acute and able adviser, acting on it in direct contradiction and to the mortification of the favourite, I shall probably have occasion to show.
The commons did not decline in the subtle spirit with which they had begun; they covertly aimed at once to subjugate the sovereign, and to expel the minister! A remonstrance was prepared against the levying of tonnage and poundage, which constituted half of the crown revenues; and a petition, “equivalent to a command,” for removing Buckingham from his majesty’s person and councils.[295] The remonstrance is wrought up with a high spirit of invective against “the unbridled ambition of the duke,” whom they class “among those vipers and pests to their king and commonwealth, as so expressly styled by your most royal father.” They request that “he would be pleased to remove this person from access to his sacred presence, and that he would not balance this one man with all these things, and with the affairs of the Christian world.”
The king hastily dissolved this second parliament; and when the lords petitioned for its continuance, he warmly and angrily exclaimed, “Not a moment longer!” It was dissolved in June, 1626.
The patriots abandoned their sovereign to his fate, and retreated home sullen, indignant, and ready to conspire among themselves for the assumption of their disputed or their defrauded liberties. They industriously dispersed their remonstrance, and the king replied by a declaration; but an attack is always more vigorous than a defence. The declaration is spiritless, and evidently composed under suppressed feelings, which, perhaps, knew not how to shape themselves. The “Remonstrance” was commanded everywhere to be burnt; and the effect which it produced on the people we shall shortly witness.
The king was left amidst the most pressing exigencies. At the dissolution of the first parliament he had been compelled to practise a humiliating economy. Hume has alluded to the numerous wants of the young monarch; but he certainly was not acquainted with the king’s extreme necessities. His coronation seemed rather a private than a public ceremony. To save the expenses of the procession from the Tower through the city to Whitehall, that customary pomp was omitted; and the reason alleged was “to save the charge for more noble undertakings!” that is, for means to carry on the Spanish war without supplies! But now the most extraordinary changes appeared at court. The king mortgaged his lands in Cornwall to the aldermen and companies of London. A rumour spread that the small pension list must be revoked; and the royal distress was carried so far, that all the tables at court were laid down, and the courtiers put on board-wages! I have seen a letter which gives an account of “the funeral supper at Whitehall, whereat twenty-three tables were buried, being from henceforth converted to board-wages;” and there I learn, that “since this dissolving of house-keeping, his majesty is but slenderly attended.” Another writer, who describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single masque, they did not rather make the king rich; and adds, “I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown poor!” This strange poverty of the court of Charles seems to have escaped the notice of our general historians. Charles was now to victual his fleet with the savings of the board-wages! for this “surplusage” was taken into account!