The catalogue of these names is also remarkable in other ways. We find on it the names of Lord Brook, and of Lord Say and Seale, who, like the Earl of Warwick himself, were among those members of the aristocracy who offered the most decided opposition to the designs of Charles I and of his ministers. They passed for opponents of Weston and of the Spaniards, and for friends of Holland and even of France. Another special bond of union was the Presbyterian interest which was, as it were, the element in which the colony lived and moved. Lord Warwick, one of the largest proprietors in England and America, was one of the principal patrons of the colony. His mother’s name is conspicuous among those of the benefactors of the new plantation.
But the nobility in general were by no means upon the side of the King. Their influence indeed had been already felt in the attacks directed by the Lower House against the rising power of Buckingham. If the King abstained from convening another Parliament, they would thus lose the principal influence upon public affairs which they possessed. The English aristocracy did not share the fiery impulses of the French; as it did not at once rise in insurrection, it did not incur those chastisements for disobedience with which the other was visited by an inaccessible power in the State. It waited for a convenient season to come forward.
Like the great nobles, and even in a higher degree than they, the landed gentry felt themselves threatened and endangered by the revival of laws which had fallen into abeyance, and claims to rights which had been forgotten. The extension of the forest-laws was effected without their participation by juries of foresters, wood-rangers, and other persons interested in the advantages which were to be expected from such an extension: their verdict was afterwards confirmed by judges discredited by the suspicion of partiality.
The displeasure of other circles was roused by the degrading penalties which the ecclesiastical courts inflicted on men of no mean position. Very few might find pleasure in A.D. 1637. Prynne’s attack upon the drama; but to crop his ears for some words which referred to the Queen appeared an affront to his University degree and to the barrister’s robe which he wore.
And how deeply was public feeling humiliated when the sentence of the judges followed affirming the royal claim to ship-money: men were seen passing one another in silence with gloomy looks. Even those who did not grudge the King a new source of revenue, and esteemed it necessary, were yet alarmed that it could be assured to him without grant of Parliament. The doubtful legality, to say the least of it, of this proceeding inspired anxiety lest the untrustworthy, morally contemptible and covetous men who contended for the claims of the crown, should become masters of the government, without any possible expectation of a Parliament to instil into them some fear and respect.
Such however was now the condition of affairs: no one had a position which enabled him to raise his voice to remonstrate; and any free expression of opinion involved the extremest danger. The authority of the Church and of the judges, supporting itself on its own interpretation of the laws, now governed England. This system was extending itself over Scotland by the agency of the friends and adherents of Laud: in Ireland a resolute will drew the reins as tight as possible. It seemed likely in fact that the union of monarchical and ecclesiastical power, which prevailed in the rest of the Teutonic and Latin world, would also take possession of England, and would thus gain a complete ascendancy.
The foreign policy of England was fairly in keeping with these tendencies in domestic affairs. The great Anglicans and champions of the prerogative showed little ardour for the cause of European Protestantism. On the other hand the adherents of Parliament, and the Nonconformists, regarded the cause of this creed as almost identical with their own:—opposite views which were found even at court, but threw the nation most of all into confusion, and were the main cause why the efforts of the King encountered a resistance which by degrees proved insuperable.
The great struggle began in Scotland.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] From a letter of the younger Winthrop in Bancroft i.