4. A fourth, that as they have a congregation of cardinals at Rome, to consider of the aptest ways and means of establishing the Pope’s authority and religion in England, so they have a nuncio here, to act and dispose that party to the execution of those counsels, and, by the assistance of such cunning and Jesuitical spirits as swarm in this town, to order and manage all actions and events, to the furtherance of that main end.[14]
The second grievance of religion, was from those manifold innovations lately introduced into several parts of the kingdom, all inclining to popery, and disposing and fitting men to entertain it. The particulars were these: 1. Divers of the chiefest points of religion in difference betwixt us and the papists have been publicly defended, in licensed books, in sermons, in university acts and disputations. 2. Divers popish ceremonies have been not only practised but countenanced, yea, little less than enjoined, as altars, images, crucifixes, bowings, and other gestures and observances, which put upon our churches a shape and face of popery. He compared this to the dry bones in Ezekiel. First, they came together; then the sinews and the flesh came upon them; after this the skin covered them; and then breath and life was put into them! So (he said) after these men had moulded us into an outward form and visage of popery, they would more boldly endeavor to breathe into us the spirit of life and popery.
The third grievance was the countenancing and preferring those men who were most forward in setting up such innovations; the particulars were so well known that they needed not to be named.[15]
The fourth was, the discouragement of those who were known to be most conscionable and faithful professors of the truth. Some of the ways of effecting this he observed to be these: 1. The courses taken to enforce and enlarge those unhappy differences, for matters of small moment, which have been amongst ourselves, and to raise up new occasions of further division, whereby many have been induced to forsake the land, not seeing the end of those voluntary and human injunctions in things appertaining to God’s worship. Those who are indeed lovers of religion, and of the churches of God, would seek to make up those breaches, and to unite us more entirely against the common enemy. 2. The over rigid prosecution of those who are scrupulous in using some things enjoined, which are held by those who enjoin them, to be in themselves indifferent. It hath been ever the desire of this House, expressed in many parliaments in Queen Elizabeth’s time and since, that such might be tenderly used. It was one of our petitions delivered at Oxford to his Majesty that now is; but what little moderation it hath produced is not unknown to us all! Any other vice almost may be better endured in a minister than inconformity. 3. The unjust punishments and vexations of sundry persons for matters required without any warrant of law: as, for not reading the book concerning recreation on the Lord’s day[16]; for not removing the communion table to be set altarwise at the east end of the chancel; for not coming up to the rails to receive the sacrament; for preaching the Lord’s day in the afternoon; for catechising in any other words and manner than in the precise words of the short catechism in the common prayer-book.
The fifth and last grievance concerning religion, was the encroachment and abuse of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The particulars mentioned were these: 1. Fining and imprisoning in cases not allowed by law. 2. The challenging their jurisdiction to be appropriate to their order, which they allege to be jure divino. 3. The contriving and publishing of new articles, upon which they force the churchwardens to take oaths, and to make inquiries and presentments, as if such articles had the force of canons; and this was an effect of great presumption and boldness, not only in the bishops, but in the archdeacons, officials, and chancellors, taking upon themselves a kind of synodal authority. The injunctions of this kind might, indeed, well partake in name with that part of the common law which is called the extravagants!
Having despatched these several points, he proceeded to the third kind of grievances, being such as are against the common justice of the realm, in the liberty of our persons, and propriety of our estates, of which he had many to propound: in doing whereof, he would rather observe the order of time, wherein they were acted, than of consequence; but when he should come to the cure, he should then persuade the House to begin with those which were of most importance, as being now in execution, and very much pressing and exhausting the commonwealth.
He began with the tonnage and poundage and other impositions not warranted by law; and because these burdens had long lain upon us, and the principles which produced them are the same from whence divers others are derived, he thought it necessary to premise a short narrative and relation of the grounds and proceedings of the power of imposing herein practised.[17] It was a fundamental truth, essential to the constitution and government of this kingdom—an hereditary liberty and privilege of all the freeborn subjects of the land—that no tax, tallage, or other charge might be laid upon us, without common consent in Parliament. This was acknowledged by the Conquerro; ratified in that contract which he made with this nation, upon his admittance to the kingdom; declared and confirmed in the laws which he published. This hath never been denied by any of our kings—though broken and interrupted by some of them, especially by King John and Henry III. Then, again, it was confirmed by Mag. Chart., and other succeeding laws; yet not so well settled but that it was sometime attempted by the two succeeding Edwards, in whose times the subjects were very sensible of all the breaches made upon the common liberty, and, by the opportunity of frequent parliaments, pursued them with fresh complaints, and for the most part found redress, and procured the right of the subject to be fortified by new statutes.
He observed that those kings, even in the acts whereby they did break the law, did really affirm the subject’s liberty, and disclaim that right of imposing which is now challenged: for they did usually procure the merchants’ consent to such taxes as were laid, thereby to put a color of justice upon their proceeding; and ordinarily they were limited to a short time, and then propounded to the ratification of the Parliament, where they were cancelled or confirmed, as the necessity and state of the kingdom did require. But for the most part such charges upon merchandise were taken by authority of Parliament, and granted for some short time, in a greater or lesser proportion, as was requisite for supply of the public occasions—six or twelve in the pound, for one, two or three years, as they saw cause to be employed for the defence of the sea: and it was acknowledged so clearly to be in the power of Parliament, that they have sometimes been granted to noblemen, and sometimes to merchants, to be disposed for that use. Afterward they were granted to the King for life, and so continued for divers descents, yet still as a gift and grant of the Commons.
Betwixt the time of Edward III. and Queen Mary, never prince (that he could remember) offered to demand any imposition but by grant in Parliament. Queen Mary laid a charge upon cloth, by the equity of the statute of tonnage and poundage, because the rate set upon wool was much more than upon cloth; and, there being little wool carried out of the kingdom unwrought, the Queen thought she had reason to lay on somewhat more; yet not full so much as brought them to an equality, but that still there continued a less charge upon wool wrought into cloth, than upon wool carried out unwrought; until King James’ time when upon Nicholson’s project, there was a further addition of charge, but still upon pretence of the statute, which is that we call the pretermitted custom.
In Queen Elizabeth’s time, it is true, one or two little impositions crept in, the general prosperity of her reign overshadowing small errors and innovations. One of these was upon currants, by occasion of the merchants’ complaints that the Venetians had laid a charge upon the English cloth, that so we might be even with them, and force them the sooner to take it off. But this being demanded by King James, was denied by one Bates, a merchant, and upon a suit in the exchequer, was adjudged for the King. Now the manner of that judgment was thus: There were then but three judges in that court, all differing from one another in the grounds of their sentences. The first was of opinion, the King might impose upon such commodities as were foreign and superfluous, as currants were, but not upon such as were native and to be transported, or necessary, and to be imported for the use of the kingdom. The second judge was of opinion, he might impose upon all foreign merchandise, whether superfluous or no, but not upon native. The third, that for as much as the King had the custody of the ports, and the guard of the seas, and that he might open and shut up the ports as he pleased, he had a prerogative to impose upon all merchandise, both exported and imported. Yet this single, distracted, and divided judgment, is the foundation of all the impositions now in practice; for, after this, King James laid new charges upon all commodities outward and inward, not limited to a certain time and occasion, but reserved to himself, his heirs and successors, forever,—the first impositions in fee-simple that were ever heard of in this kingdom. This judgment, and the right of imposing thereupon assumed, was questioned in septimo and duodecimo[18] of that king, and was the cause of the breach of both those parliaments. In 18 and 21 Jacobi, indeed, it was not agitated by this House, but only that they might preserve the favor of the king, for the despatch of some other great businesses, upon which they were more especially attentive.[19] But in the first of his present Majesty, it necessarily came to be remembered, upon the proposition on the King’s part, for renewing the bill of tonnage and poundage; yet so moderate was that Parliament, that they thought rather to confirm the impositions already set by a law to be made, than to abolish them by a judgment in Parliament; but that and divers ensuing parliaments have been unhappily broken, before that endeavor could be accomplished: only at the last meeting a remonstrance was made concerning the liberty of the subject in this point; and it hath always been expressed to be the meaning of the House, and so it was (as he said) his own meaning in the proposition now made, to settle and restore the right according to law, and not to diminish the king’s profit, but to establish it by a free grant in Parliament.