A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

But this did not prevent Parliament on the other hand from bringing forward its claims with all possible energy. The power of granting money was the sinew of all its powers. The necessity of asking assistance from Parliament in urgent embarrassments, which the Tudors had avoided as far as possible, now appeared as pressing as ever. Was it not to be expected that demands should call forth counter-demands? And the opposition in the previous Parliament rested on a far wider basis than that of hostility to Somerset: at the present election also the candidates of the government were rejected in most of the counties and towns.[408]

The commission appointed for the investigation of abuses did not deal only with those which were acknowledged to be such. The principal question rather concerned the competence of the crown to confer such privileges as those out of which the abuses originated. Under the lead of Edward Coke, the great lawyer, Parliament adopted a principle which secured for it a firm standing ground.

Coke, who moreover did not think it necessary to ask the King's consent for liberty of speech, because this was, he thought, an independent right of Parliament, vindicated the position that no royal proclamation had validity if it contradicted an act of Parliament or an existing law. He took his stand on the times of the later Plantagenet and of the Lancastrian kings: and he considered that the form which the relation between the government and Parliament then assumed was the only legal form. But the government of James I had granted extraordinarily obnoxious privileges—for instance, the right of setting up taverns with a restriction on the entertainment of guests by private individuals, or by the old inns; and again the right of arresting acknowledged vagrants. But the most obnoxious grants were those of patents for the monopoly of some trade, which were annoying to the whole mercantile class, and brought profit only to a few favoured individuals. Coke argued that the patents were either in themselves illegal, or injurious in their enforcement, or both together. While he proved to Parliament its forgotten or disregarded rights, Coke won the full confidence of both Houses alike: the Upper and the Lower House made common cause. Thus the system of government as it had been developed under the Tudors and continued under the Stuarts was encountered face to face by another system, which rested upon other precedents and principles.

And people were not content with merely declaring the patents invalid; they called those to account who had got possession of them, and even the high officials who had contributed to issue them. A general commotion ensued: every day fresh information came in and fresh complaints were drawn up.[409]

The Lord Chancellor Bacon had been already brought into danger by this affair. He had assisted in introducing monopolies of different manufactures under the pretence that work would be found for the poor by means of them. It was well known that in matters of this sort he had for the most part followed the suggestions of the Prime Minister. While Bacon was defending the ideal mission of the monarchy, he had the weakness to identify himself too closely with the accidental form which authority just at that particular moment took. In return he found on the other hand that the attacks really aimed at the government recoiled in the first instance upon him. In reality they were directed principally against Buckingham. In order to save him from destruction, suggestions had been made to the King that he might prefer to dissolve Parliament, as it seemed plain that he had far more reason to expect harm from the attacks than advantage from the grants made by that body. Buckingham saved himself only by coming forward against the monopolies himself, in accordance with the advice of his ecclesiastical confidant, Dean Williams. Claims had been made against two of his brothers also on account of the monopolies. Far from taking them under his protection, he said on the contrary that his father had still a third son who was determined to root out abuses; and that not until the present proceedings had been taken had he recognised the advantages of parliamentary government. Upon this, the leading men with whom Williams had formed a connexion, desisted from attacking the First Minister. It even came about that a person of high rank, accused at the bar of the House of Lords, who had let fall an expression, comparing Buckingham to old favourites of hateful memory, was obliged to retract it with considerable ceremony. But a victim was required: one was found in the Lord Chancellor Bacon.

Although condemned by law and morality, an evil practice still prevailed of receiving presents of money in official transactions. The sums were known and have been registered, by means of which Gondomar retained the services of a number of statesmen in the interest of Spain. How many similar abuses in the control of the Treasury had been brought to light only a short time before! Even the great philosopher, who in his writings is so zealous against bribes, contracted during his administration the stain of receiving them. That he might stand on an equality with the great lords, he incurred inordinate expenses, which these bribes assisted him to meet. Edward Coke was wholly in the right when he exclaimed that a corrupt judge was 'the grievance of grievances.'[410] Two-and-twenty cases were proved in which the supreme judge, the Lord Chancellor of England, had taken presents from the parties concerned. Lord Bacon made no attempt to justify his conduct; he only affirmed—and this appears in fact to have been the case—that in his decisions he never was influenced by the presents that had been made him. When he was called to account for them, he acquiesced himself in the justice of the proceeding, for he allowed that a reform was necessary, and only deemed himself unfortunate in being the person with whom it began. The Lords pronounced sentence upon him that he should never again fill an official position, nor be capable of sitting in Parliament, and that he should be banished from the precincts of the court.

Apart from its importance as affecting individuals, this event is very important in the history of the constitution, which now returned to its former paths. That the Lower House again as in old times was able to procure the fall of one of the highest officials, is an evidence of its growing power. That the First Minister and favourite allowed his intimate friend to fall is a proof of the weakness of the highest authority, which moreover ought itself to have attacked abuses of this kind. Bacon justly remarked that reform would soon reach higher regions.

But while Parliament, which the government had no inclination to withstand openly, thus obtained the ascendancy in domestic matters, it was also already turning its eyes in the direction of foreign affairs. These were times in which a warm religious sympathy was awakened by the advance which the counter-reformation was making in the hereditary dominions of Austria, as well as in France, and by the persecutions which befell the Protestants in both countries. The Spaniards were again engaging in war for the subjugation of the Netherlands. In Parliament, on the other hand, it was thought necessary to combine with the Republic, and to equip a fleet to assist the Huguenots, and even to attack Spain, in order thus to make a diversion in favour of the Palatinate. At the very time of the opening of Parliament the ban of the empire was pronounced against Frederick Elector Palatine amid the sound of trumpets and drums in the Palace at Vienna. This was regarded in the whole Protestant world as an injustice, for it was thought that Ferdinand II had been injured by Frederick only as King of Bohemia, and not as Emperor: and on the same grounds the English Parliament was of opinion that the execution of the ban ought to be hindered by force of arms; and it showed itself dissatisfied that the King sought to meet the evil only by demonstrations and embassies.

We can easily understand that the attitude of Parliament aroused the anxiety of the King. He caused the debates on the war to be put a stop to, remarking that they infringed his prerogative, for which great affairs of this kind were exclusively reserved. And yet, so extraordinary was the complication of affairs that the declarations made in Parliament were not altogether displeasing to him. In June he adjourned Parliament, without formally proroguing it. What was the reason of this? Because Parliament had brought in a new bill containing the severest enactments against Jesuits and Catholic recusants. The King refused to accept it, as by this means the persecution of Protestants in Catholic countries would receive a new impulse. But he was also unwilling to express his refusal in a final shape, because he knew that the wish to hinder the adoption of harsh measures against the Catholics would exercise an influence upon the Spaniards in their negotiations with him.[411] If he had proceeded to a prorogation, he would have been obliged to reject the laws; and he preferred to keep the prospect of them still open, which he was able to do by resorting to the form of an adjournment. He made it a merit in the eyes of the Spaniards that, far from increasing the severity of the penal laws, he did not even enforce them in their existing form, when moreover, if enforced, they would bring him in a large sum. But he was glad to see that people feared that he might do at some future time what at present he had refrained from doing. When he promised the Parliament on his royal word, that he would call it together again without fail in the autumn, he was also influenced by the consideration that he intended the Spaniards to look forward with fear to the resolution which might then be taken. He was greatly pleased that Parliament before dispersing drew up an energetic remonstrance against the persecutions of the Protestants all over the world, and especially against the oppression of his children. Not that he wished to give effect to it: on the contrary he adhered to the policy of assisting his son-in-law only by means of diplomacy: but he desired that the Spaniards should fear a war with England, and he thought that anxiety on this point would induce them and their friends to show themselves conciliatory and respectful.

Sir John Digby, who was commissioned with the negotiations at the Spanish court, was referred by that power to Brussels and Vienna; and in fact he received favourable answers, not only from the Infanta Isabella in the former, but even from the Emperor himself in the latter city. The Emperor held out to him the hope that the matter would be reconsidered at a future assembly of the Estates of the Empire, which he intended to convene at Ratisbon. But meanwhile warlike operations and the execution of the ban held their course undisturbed. In Bohemia the counter-reformation was carried through with extreme severity. Four-and-twenty Protestant nobles and leaders were executed, and their heads with hoary beards were seen exposed on the Bridge at Prague. Silesia hastened to make its peace with the Emperor: the Princes of the Union laid down their arms, but they did not yet make their peace by this means. Tilly took possession of the Upper Palatinate, and then turned with his victorious army to the Lower Palatinate in order to complete the subjugation of this province, notwithstanding all the protection of England. On the Lower Rhine the forces of the Spaniards and of the States General confronted each other in arms. Under these circumstances the Princes, who were invited, refused to appear at an Assembly of the Empire,[412] for none of them thought that he could leave his home without incurring evident danger. The Infanta Isabella too in Brussels declined to conclude the truce which Sir John Digby proposed.