3. James and the House of Commons.—In 1604 Parliament met. The members of the House of Commons had no more wish than James to overthrow the bishops, but they thought that able and pious ministers should be allowed to preach even if they would not wear surplices, and they were dissatisfied with the king's decision at Hampton Court. On the other hand, James was anxious to obtain their consent to a union with Scotland, which the Commons disliked, partly because the king had brought many Scotsmen with him, and had supplied them with English lands and money. Financial difficulties also arose, and the session ended in a quarrel between the king and the House of Commons. Before the year was over he had deprived of their livings many of the clergy who refused to conform.
4. Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605.—Not only the Puritans, but the Catholics as well, had appealed to James for toleration. In the first year of his reign he remitted the recusancy fines (see p. [454]). As might be expected, the number of recusants increased, probably because many who had attended church to avoid paying fines stayed away as soon as the fines ceased to be required. James took alarm, and in February 1604 banished the priests from London. On this, a Catholic named Robert Catesby proposed to a few of his friends a plot to blow up king, Lords, and Commons with gunpowder at the opening of Parliament. The king had two sons, Henry and Charles, and a little daughter, Elizabeth. Catesby, expecting that the two princes would be destroyed with their father, intended to make Elizabeth queen, and to take care that she was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Guy Fawkes, a cool soldier, was sent for from Flanders to manage the scheme. The plotters took a house next to the House of Lords, and began to dig through the wall to enable them to carry the powder into the basement. The wall, however, was nine feet thick, and they, being little used to mason's work, made but little way. In the spring of 1605 James increased the exasperation of the plotters by re-imposing the recusancy fines on the Catholic laity. Soon afterwards their task was made more easy by the discovery that a coal-cellar reaching under the floor of the House of Lords was to be let. One of their number hired the cellar, and introduced into it barrels of powder, covering them with coals and billets of wood. Parliament was to be opened for its second session on November 5, and in the preceding evening Fawkes went to the cellar with a lantern, ready to fire the train in the morning. One of the plotters, however, had betrayed the secret. Fawkes was seized, and his companions were pursued. All the conspirators who were taken alive were executed, and the persecution of the Catholics grew hotter than before.
5. The Post-nati. 1606-1608.—When another session opened in 1606 James repeated his efforts to induce the Commons to do something for the union with Scotland. He wanted them to establish free trade between the countries, and to naturalise his Scottish subjects in England. Finding that he could obtain neither of his wishes from Parliament, he obtained from the judges a decision that all his Scottish subjects born after his accession in England—the Post-nati, as they were called—were legally naturalised, and were thus capable of holding land in England. He had to give up all hope of obtaining freedom of trade.
6. Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610.—James was the first English sovereign who was the master of the whole of Ireland. He tried to win the affection of the tribes by giving them the protection of English law against the exactions of their chiefs. Naturally, the chiefs resented the change, while the tribesmen distrusted the interference of Englishmen from whom they had suffered so much. In 1607 the chiefs of the Ulster tribes of O'Neill and O'Donnell—known in England as the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell—seeing resistance hopeless, fled to Spain. James ignored the Irish doctrine that the land belonged to the tribe, and confiscated six counties as if they had been the property of the chiefs, according to the feudal principles of English law. He then poured in English and Scottish colonists, leaving to the natives only the leavings to live on.
7. Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608.—The state of James's finances was almost hopeless. Elizabeth, stingy as she was, had scarcely succeeded in making both ends meet, and James, who had the expense of providing for a family, from which Elizabeth had been free, would hardly have been able to meet his expenditure even if he had been economical. He was, however, far from economical, and had given away lands and money to his Scottish favourites. There was, therefore, a large deficit, and James wanted all the money he could get. In 1606 a merchant named Bate challenged his right to levy an imposition on currants, which had already been levied by Elizabeth. The Court of Exchequer, however, decided that the king had the right of levying impositions—that is to say, duties raised by the sole authority of the king—without a grant from Parliament—holding that the Confirmatio Cartarum (see p. 221), to which Bate's counsel appealed, only restricted that right in a very few cases. Whether the argument of the judges was right or wrong, they were the constitutional exponents of the law, and when Cecil (who had been James's chief minister from the beginning of the reign, and was created Earl of Salisbury in 1605) was made Lord Treasurer as well as Secretary in 1608, he at once levied new impositions to the amount of about 70,000l. a year, on the plea that more money was needed in consequence of the troubles in Ireland.