2. Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. 1637.—Laud had little hope of being able to abate the storm. One of his best qualities was that he was no respecter of persons, and he had roused animosity in the upper classes by punishing gentlemen guilty of immorality or of breaches of church discipline as freely as he punished more lowly offenders. In 1637 he characteristically attempted to defend himself from the charge of being a Papist and an innovator in religion by bringing three of his most virulent assailants—Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton—before the Star Chamber. The trial afforded him the opportunity of making a speech in his own defence, to which nobody paid the least attention. As a matter of course the accused were heavily punished, being sentenced to lose their ears in the pillory, to pay a fine of 5,000l., and to imprisonment for life. It was not now as it had been in 1634, when Prynne stood alone in the pillory, no man regarding him. The three victims had a triumphal reception on their way to the pillory. Flowers and sweet herbs were strewed in their path. The crowd applauded them whilst they suffered. On their way to their several prisons in distant parts of the country men flocked to greet them as martyrs.
The 'Sovereign of the Seas,' built for the Royal Navy in 1637: from a contemporary engraving by John Payne.
3. Financial Pressure. 1635-1637.—Revolutions are never successful without the guidance of men devoted to ideas; but on the other hand they are not caused only by grievances felt by religious or high-minded people. To stir large masses of men to resistance, their pockets must be touched as well as their souls. In 1635 Weston, who had been created Earl of Portland, died, and a body of Commissioners of the Treasury, who succeeded him, laid additional impositions on commerce and established corporations for exercising various manufactures under the protection of monopolies. This proceeding was according to the letter of the law, as corporations had been exempted from the act in restraint of monopolies which had been passed in 1624 (see p. [501]). So, too, was a claim put forward by Charles in 1637 to levy fines from those who had encroached on the old boundaries of the forests. It is true that, in the teeth of the opposition roused, Charles exacted but a small part of the fines imposed, but he incurred almost as much obloquy as if he had taken the whole of the money.
4. Ship-money. 1634-1637.—More important was Charles's effort to provide himself with a fleet. As the Dutch navy was powerful, and the French navy was rapidly growing in strength, Charles, not unnaturally, thought that England ought to be able to meet their combined forces at sea. In 1634, by the advice of Attorney-General Noy, he issued writs to the port towns, to furnish him with ships. He took care to ask for ships larger than any port—except London—had got, and then offered to supply ships of his own, on condition that the port towns should equip and man them. In 1635—Noy having died in the meantime—Charles asked for ships not merely from the ports, but from the inland as well as from the maritime counties. Again London alone provided ships; in all the rest of England money had to be found to pay for the equipment and manning of ships belonging to the king. In this way Charles got a strong navy which he manned with sailors in the habit of managing ships of war, and entirely at his own orders. The experience of the Cadiz voyage had shown him that merchant-sailors, such as those who had done good service against the Armada, were not to be trusted to fight in enterprises in which they took no interest, and it is from the ship-money fleet that the separation of the naval and mercantile marine dates. Necessarily, however, Englishmen began to complain, not that they had a navy, but that the money needed for the navy was taken from them without a Parliamentary grant. Year after year ship-money was levied, and the murmurs against it increased. In February, 1637, Charles consulted the judges, and ten out of the twelve judges declared that the king had a right to do what was necessary for the defence of the realm in time of danger, and that the king was the sole judge of the existence of danger.
5. Hampden's Case. 1637-1638.—It was admitted that, in accordance with the Petition of Right, Charles could not levy a tax without a Parliamentary grant. Charles, however, held that ship-money was not a tax, but money paid in commutation of the duty of all Englishmen to defend their country. Common sense held that, whether ship-money was a tax or not, it had been levied without consulting Parliament, simply because the king shrank from consulting Parliament; or, in other words, because he was afraid that Parliament would ask him to put an end to Laud's system of managing the Church. Charles was ready, as he said, to allow to Parliament liberty of counsel, but not of control. The sense of irritation was now so great that the nation wanted to control the Government, and knew that it would never be able to do so if Charles could, by a subterfuge, take what money he needed without summoning Parliament. Of this feeling John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, became the mouthpiece. He refused to pay 20s. levied on his estate for ship-money. His case was argued before the twelve judges sitting in the Exchequer Chamber. In 1638 two pronounced distinctly in his favour, three supported him on technical grounds, and seven pronounced for the king. Charles continued to levy ship-money, but the arguments of Hampden's lawyers were circulated in the country, and the judgment of the majority on the Bench was ascribed to cowardice or obsequiousness. Their decision ranged against the king all who cared about preserving their property, as the Metropolitical visitation had ranged against him all who cared for religion in a distinctly Protestant form. Yet, even now, the Tudor monarchy had done its work too thoroughly, and had filled the minds of men too completely with the belief that armed resistance to a king was unjustifiable, to make Englishmen ripe for rebellion. They preferred to wait till some opportunity should arrive which would enable them to express their disgust in a constitutional way.