[467] I refer for the fuller explanation of these transactions to my History of the Popes and my French History. My meaning is very fully recognised in an essay in the Revue Germanique, Nov. 1859.
[468] Beaulieu to Pickering. 'It lieth in the way to intercept the salt that cometh from Biscaje and serveth almost all France, and what so ever cometh out of the river of Bourdeaux: besides it commandeth the haven of Rochelle.' (Court and Times of Charles I, i. 257).
CHAPTER VIII.
PARLIAMENT OF 1628. PETITION OF RIGHT.
In the heat of controversy about the supplies to be granted and the liberties to be confirmed by the King in return, it was once harshly said in the Lower House during this Parliament that it was better to be brought low by foreign enemies than to be obliged to suffer oppression at home. The King answered by saying no less abruptly that it was more honourable for the King to be straitened by the enemies of his country, than to be set at nought by his own subjects.
So much more importance was attached by both sides to domestic than to foreign struggles. But after the last failure both parties had come to feel how much the honour of the country and religion itself suffered from their dissensions. Among the politicians of the time there was a school of learned men, who had studied the old constitution of the country, and wished for nothing more than its restoration. They were seriously bent on establishing an equilibrium between the royal prerogative and the rights of Parliament. Among them were found Edward Coke, John Selden, and John Glanvil; but Robert Cotton may be regarded as the most distinguished of them all, a man who had studied most deeply, and who combined with his studies an insight into the present that was unclouded by passion. To Cotton we owe a report presented by him to the Privy Council, in which he explains that the government should proceed on the old royal road of collecting taxes by grant of Parliament, and indeed should adopt no other method; while at the same time he expresses the conviction that Parliament would be satisfied, if its most pressing anxieties were dissipated. He says that he himself would not advise the King to sacrifice the First Minister, for that such A.D. 1628. a step had always had ruinous consequences: he thought moreover that the old passionate hostility against the Duke need not be feared, if he came forward himself as the man who had advised the King to reassemble Parliament.[469] We learn that the King did not determine to summon it, until the most prominent men had given him an assurance that Buckingham should not be attacked. Moderation in the attitude of Parliament, and security for the First Minister formed as it were the condition under which the Parliament of 1628 was summoned.[470]
On March 22, five days after the beginning of the session, the deliberations of the Lower House were opened by the remark from the Speaker, that they must indeed grant subsidies to the King; but that at the same time they must maintain the undoubted rights of the country. Francis Seymour, who had now again been returned to Parliament, at once expressed himself to the same effect. While he acknowledged that every one must make sacrifices for king and country, he shewed at the same time that it was a sacred duty to cling to their ancestral laws. He proceeded to say that these laws had been transgressed, their liberties infringed, their own selves personally ill-treated, and their property, with which they might have supported the King, exhausted. He proposed therefore to secure the rights, laws, and liberties transmitted from their ancestors by means of a petition to the King.[471]
Whatever be the tone of opposition which this language betrays, it fell far short of that adopted in the former Parliament. Men had come to an opinion that certainly no money should be granted unless securities could be obtained for their ancient liberties; but at the same time that the King should not be induced to grasp directly at absolute power, for that this would lead at once to a rebellion of uncertain issue.[472] Men were resolved to avoid questions which could rouse old passions. This time it was not insisted that the penal laws against the Catholics should be made more severe: Parliament waived its claim to alter the constitution of the Admiralty, and to appoint treasurers to manage the money granted to the King: it showed deference for the King, and said nothing of the Duke. But a commission was appointed to take into consideration the rights which subjects ought to have over their persons and property. Already on April 3 resolutions were proposed to the House, by which it was intended that some of the most obnoxious grievances which had lately arisen should be made for ever impossible, such as the collection of taxes that had not been granted, and restraints imposed on personal liberty in consequence of refusal to pay.[473]
Charles I also now took up this question. Through Coke his Secretary of State, who was also a member of the House, he issued an invitation to them not to allow themselves to be deterred by any anxiety about liberty or property from making those grants, on which, as he said, the welfare of Christendom depended; 'upon assurance,' Coke proceeds to add, 'that we shall enjoy our rights and liberties, with as much freedom and security in his time as in any age heretofore under the best of our kings; and whether you shall think fit to secure ourselves herein, by way of bill or otherwise, so as it be provided for with due respect to his honour and the publick good whereof he doubteth not that you will be careful, he promiseth and assureth you that he will give way to it.'