George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, 1592-1628: from the National Portrait Gallery.
10. Tonnage and Poundage. 1628.—Before the end of the session a fresh question was raised. For many reigns Parliament had voted to each king for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain customs duties known as Tonnage and Poundage. In addition to these James had added the impositions (see p. [484]) without a Parliamentary grant. In the first Parliament of Charles, the Commons, probably wishing to settle the question of impositions before permanently granting Tonnage and Poundage, had passed a bill granting the latter for a single year; but that Parliament had been dissolved before the bill had passed the Lords. The second Parliament was dissolved before the Commons had even discussed the subject, and the third Parliament now sitting had found no time to attend to it till after the Petition of Right had been granted. Now that the session was drawing to a close the Commons again proposed to grant Tonnage and Poundage for a year only. Charles, who had been levying the duties ever since his accession, refused to accept a grant on these terms, and the Commons then asserted that the clause of the Petition of Right forbidding him to levy taxes without a vote of Parliament made his raising of Tonnage and Poundage illegal. It was a nice legal point whether customs were properly called taxes, and Charles answered that he did not think that in demanding the petition they had meant to ask him to yield his right to Tonnage and Poundage, and that he was sure he had not meant to do so. The Commons then attacked Buckingham, and on June 26 Charles prorogued Parliament.
11. Buckingham's Murder. 1628.—In return for the Petition of Right Charles had received a grant of money large enough to enable him to send out his fleet. In August Buckingham went to Portsmouth to take the command. He was followed by John Felton, an officer to whom he had refused employment, and who had not been paid for his former services. Language used by the House of Commons in their recent attack on Buckingham persuaded Felton that he would render service to God and man by slaying the enemy of both. On August 23 he stabbed the Duke as he came out from breakfast, crying, 'God have mercy on thy soul!' Buckingham fell dead on the spot. The fleet went out under the command of the Earl of Lindsey to relieve Rochelle, but it failed utterly. There was no heart in the sailors or resolution in the commanders. Rochelle surrendered to the King of France, and Charles was left to bear the weight of the unpopularity of his late favourite.
12. The Question of Sovereignty. 1628.—Charles was anxious to come to terms with his Parliament on the question of Tonnage and Poundage, and would probably have consented to accept the compromise proposed in 1610 (see p. [486]). Neither party, indeed, could afford to surrender completely to the other. The customs duties were already more than a third of the revenue, and, if Charles could levy what he pleased, he might so increase his income as to have no further need of parliaments; whereas, if the Commons refused to make the grant, the king would soon be in a state of bankruptcy. The financial question, in short, involved the further question whether Charles or the Parliament was to have the sovereignty. Dangerous as it would be for both parties to enter upon a quarrel which led up to such issues, it was the more difficult to avoid it because the king and the Commons were already at variance on another subject of pre-eminent importance.