[Sidenote: Massachusetts Chartered, 1629]
From the tyranny of the Church under Laud, a way was opened when, in 1629, Charles granted a Charter to the Colony of Massachusetts. With a quiet, stern enthusiasm the hearts of men turned toward that refuge in America. Not men of broken fortunes, adventurers, and criminals, but owners of large landed estates, professional men, some of the best in the land, who abandoned home and comfort to face intolerable hardships. One wrote, "We are weaned from the delicate milk of our Mother England and do not mind these trials." As the pressure increased under Laud, the stream toward the West increased in volume; so that in ten years 20,000 Englishmen had sought religious freedom across the sea, and had founded a Colony which, strange to say,—under the influence of an intense religious sentiment,—became itself a Theocracy and a new tyranny, although one sternly just and pure.
The dissolute, worthless Buckingham had been assassinated, and Charles had wept passionate tears over his dead body. But his place had been filled by one far better suited to the King's needs at a time when he had determined not again to recall Parliament, but to rule without it until resistance to his measures had ceased.
It was with no sinister purpose of establishing a despotism such as a stronger man might have harbored, that he made this resolve. What Charles wanted was simply the means of filling his exchequer; and if Parliament would not give him that except by a dicker for reforms, and humiliating pledges which he could not keep, why then he would find new ways of raising money without them. His father had done it before him, he had done it himself. With no Commons there to rate and insult him, it could be done without hindrance.
He was not grand enough, nor base enough, nor was he rich enough, to carry out any organized design upon the country. He simply wanted money, and had such blind confidence in Kingship, that any very serious resistance to his authority did not enter his dreams. It was the limitations of his intelligence which proved his ruin, his inability to comprehend a new condition in the spirit of his people. Elizabeth would have felt it, though she did not understand it, and would have loosened the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and by doing it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have been their policy. Charles was as wise as the engineer who would rivet down the safety-valves!
Sir Thomas Wentworth (Earl Strafford), who had taken the place of
Buckingham, was an apostate from the party of liberty. Disappointed in
becoming a leader in the Commons he had drawn gradually closer to the
King, who now leaned upon him as the vine upon the oak.
[Sidenote: Earl Strafford. The "Star Chamber.">[
This man's ideal was to build up in England just such a despotism as Richelieu was building in France. The same imperious temper, the same invincible will and administrative genius, marked him as fitted for the work. While Charles was feebly scheming for revenue, he was laying large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should yield the revenue,—and for Arsenals and Forts—and a standing Army, and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection while these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see that "absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning. He would not urge it as a dogma, but as a fact.
The "Star Chamber," a tribunal for the trying of a certain class of offences, was brought to a state of fresh efficiency. Its punishments could be anything this side of death. A clergyman accused of speaking disrespectfully of Laud, is condemned to pay 5,000 pounds to the King, 300 pounds to the aggrieved Archbishop himself, one side of his nose is to be slit, one ear cut off, and one cheek branded. The next week this to be repeated on the other side, and then followed by imprisonment subject to pleasure of the Court. Another who has written a book considered seditious, has the same sentence carried out, only varied by imprisonment for life.
These were some of the embellishments of the system called "Thorough," which was carried on by the two friends and confederates, Laud and Strafford, who were in their pleasant letters to each other all the time lamenting that the power of the "Star Chamber" was so limited, and judges so timid! Is it strange that the plantation in Massachusetts had fresh recruits?