A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon / For the Use of Schools and Colleges

by John Lord

The House of Commons, which had acquired great strength, spirit, and popularity during the reign of James, fully perceived the difficulties and necessities of Charles, but made no adequate or generous effort to relieve him from them. Some of the more turbulent rejoiced in them. They knew that kings, like other men, were selfish, and that it was not natural for people to part with their privileges and power without a struggle, even though this power was injurious to the interests of society. In the Middle Ages, barons, bishops, and popes had fought desperately in the struggle of classes; and it was only from their necessities that either kings or people had obtained what they demanded. King Charles, no more than Pope Boniface VIII., would surrender, as a boon to man, without compulsion, his supposed omnipotence.

The king ascended his throne burdened by the debts of his father, and by an expensive war, which the Commons incited, but would not pay for. They granted him, to meet his difficulties and maintain his honor, the paltry sum of one hundred and forty thousand pounds, and the duties of tonnage and poundage, not for life, as was customary, but for a year. Quarrel between the King and the Commons. Nothing could be more provoking to a young king. Of course, the money was soon spent, and the king wanted more, and had a right to expect more. But, if the Commons granted what the king required, he would be made independent of them, and he would rule tyrannically, as the kings of England did before him. So they resolved not to grant necessary supplies to carry on the government, unless the king would part with the prerogatives of an absolute prince, and those old feudal privileges which were an abomination in the eyes of the people. Charles was not the man to make such a bargain. Few kings, in his age, would have seen its necessity. But necessity there was. Civil war was inevitable, without a compromise, provided both parties were resolved on maintaining their ground. But Charles fancied that the Commons could be browbeaten and intimidated into submission; and, moreover, in case he was brought into collision with his subjects, he fancied that he was stronger than they, and could put down the spirit of resistance. In both of these suppositions he was wrong. The Commons were firm, and were stronger than he was, because they had the sympathy of the people. They believed conscientiously, especially the Puritans, that he was wrong; that God gave him no divine right to enslave them, and that they were entitled, by the eternal principles of justice, and by the spirit of the constitution, to civil and religious liberty, in the highest sense of that term. They believed that their rights were inalienable and absolute; that, among them, they could not be taxed without their own consent; and that their constitutional guardians, the Commons, should be unrestricted in debate. These notions of the people were ideas. On ideas all governments rest. No throne could stand a day unless the people felt they owed it their allegiance. When the main support of the throne of Charles was withdrawn, the support of popular ideas, and this support given to the House of Commons, at issue with the sovereign, what could he do? What could Louis XVI. do one hundred and fifty years afterwards? What could Louis Philippe do in our times? A king, without the loyalty of the people, is a phantom, a mockery, and a delusion, unless he have physical force to sustain him; and even then armies will rebel, if they feel they are not bound to obey, and if it is not for their interest to obey.

Now Charles had neither loyalty nor force to hold him on his throne. The agitations of an age of unprecedented boldness in speculations destroyed the former; the House of Commons would not grant supplies to secure the latter. And they would not grant supplies, because they loved themselves and the cause of the people better than they loved their king. In short, it was only by his concessions that they would supply his necessities. He would not make the concessions, and the contest soon ended in an appeal to arms.

But Charles was not without friends, and some of his The Counsellors of Charles. advisers were men of sagacity and talent. It is true they did not fully appreciate the weakness of the king, or the strength of his enemies; but they saw his distress, and tried to remove it. They, very naturally in such an age, recommended violent courses—to grant new monopolies, to extort fines, to exercise all his feudal privileges, to pawn the crown jewels, even, in order to raise money; for money, at all events, he must have. They advised him to arrest turbulent and incendiary members of the Commons, to prorogue and dissolve parliaments, to raise forced loans, to impose new duties, to shut up ports, to levy fresh taxes, and to raise armies friendly to his cause. In short, they recommended unconstitutional measures—measures which both they and the king knew to be unconstitutional, but which they justified on the ground of necessity. And the king, in his perplexity, did what his ministers advised. But every person who was sent to the Tower, every new tax, every sentence of the Star Chamber, every seizure of property, every arbitrary command, every violation of the liberties of the people, raised up new enemies to the king, and inflamed the people with new discontents.

At first the Commons felt that they could obtain what they wanted—a redress of grievances, if the king's favorite adviser and minister were removed. Besides, they all hated Buckingham—peers, commons, and people,—and all sought his downfall. He had no friends among the people, as Essex had in the time of Elizabeth. His extravagance, pomp, and insolence disgusted all orders; and his reign seemed to be an insult to the nation. Even the people regarded him as an upstart, setting himself above the old nobility, and enriching himself by royal domains, worth two hundred eighty-four thousand three hundred and ninety-five pounds. So the Commons violently attacked his administration, and impeached him. But he was shielded by the king, and even appointed to command an expedition to relieve La Rochelle, then besieged by Richelieu. Death of Buckingham — Petition of Right. But he was stabbed by a religious fanatic, by the name of Felton, as he was about to embark at Portsmouth. His body was removed to London, and he was buried with great state in Westminster Abbey, much lamented by the king, who lost his early friend, one of the worst ministers, but not the worst man, which that age despised, (1628.)

Meanwhile the indignant Commons persevered with their work. They passed what is called the "Petition of Right,"—a string of resolutions which asserted that no freeman ought to be detained in prison, without being brought to trial, and that no taxes could be lawfully levied, without consent of the Commons—the two great pillars of the English constitution, yet truths involved in political difficulty, especially in cases of rebellion. The personal liberty of the subject is a great point indeed; and the act of habeas corpus, passed in later times, is a great step in popular freedom; but, if never to be suspended, no government could guard against conspiracy in revolutionary times.

The Petition of Right, however, obtained the king's assent, though unwillingly, grudgingly, and insincerely given; and the Commons, gratified for once, voted to the king supplies.

But Charles had no notion of keeping his word, and soon resorted to unconstitutional measures, as before. But he felt the need of able counsellors. His "dear Steenie" was dead, and he knew not in whom to repose confidence.

The demon of despotism raised up an agent in the person of Earl of Strafford. Thomas Wentworth, a man of wealth, talents, energy, and indomitable courage; a man who had, in the early part of his career, defended the cause of liberty; who had even suffered imprisonment sooner than contribute to an unlawful loan, and in whom the hopes of the liberal party were placed. But he was bribed. His patriotism was not equal to his ambition. Seduced by a peerage, and by the love of power, he went over to the side of the king, and defended his arbitrary rule as zealously as he had before advocated the cause of constitutional liberty. He was created Viscount Wentworth, and afterwards earl of Strafford—the most prominent man of the royalist party, and the greatest traitor to the cause of liberty which England had ever known. His picture, as painted by Vandyke, and hung up in the princely hall of his descendant, Earl Fitzwilliam, is a faithful portrait of what history represents him—a cold, dark, repulsive, unscrupulous tyrant, with an eye capable of reading the secrets of the soul, a brow lowering with care and thought, and a lip compressed with determination, and twisted into contempt of mankind. If Wentworth did not love his countrymen, he loved to rule over them: and he gained his end, and continued the prime minister of absolutism until an insulted nation rose in their might, and placed his head upon the block.

Under the rule of this minister, whom every one feared, the Puritans every where fled, preferring the deserts of America, with freedom, to the fair lands of England, with liberty trodden under foot. The reigns of both James and Charles are memorable for the resistance and despair of this intrepid and religious sect, in which were enrolled some of the finest minds and most intelligent patriots of the country. Pym, Cromwell, Hazelrig, and even Hampden, are said to have actually embarked; but Providence detained them in England, they having a mission of blood to perform there. In another chapter, the Puritans, their struggles, and principles, will be more fully presented; and we therefore, in this connection, abstain from further notice. It may, however, be remarked, that they were the most inflexible enemies of the king, and were determined to give him and his minister no rest until all their ends were gained. They hated Archbishop Laud even more intensely than they hated Wentworth; and Laud, if possible, was a greater foe to religious and civil liberty. Strafford and Laud are generally coupled together in the description of the abuses of arbitrary power. The churchman, however, was honest and sincere, only his views were narrow and his temper irritable. His vices were those of the bigot—such as disgraced St. Dominic or Torquemada, but faults which he deemed excellencies. He was an enthusiast in high churchism and toryism; and his zeal in defence of royal prerogative and the divine rights of bishops has won for him the panegyrics of his friends, as well as the curses of his enemies. For Strafford, too, there is admiration, but only for his talents, his courage, his strength—the qualities which one might see in Milton's Satan, or in Carlyle's picture gallery of heroes.