The impost of ship money, which ultimately caused Charles I. so much trouble, was suggested to him in 1631 by Sir William Noye, Attorney-General, who had found among the records in the Tower, not only writs compelling the ports on certain occasions to provide ships for the use of the King, but others obliging their neighbours of the maritime counties to contribute to the expense. Writs were issued to London and the different ports, October 20, 1634, ordering them to supply a certain number of ships of a specified tonnage, sufficiently armed and manned, to rendezvous at Portsmouth on the 1st of March 1635. The writ is set out in Howell’s State Trials, vol. iii. pp. 830–832, and also the proceedings of the Common Council, and their petition to the King against it. By this contrivance the King obtained a supply of £218,500, which he devoted to providing a fleet. Twelve of the judges decided that the King had the right to make the levy. In the speech of Lord Keeper Coventry to the judges assembled in the Star Chamber on the 14th of February 1636 he stated that, “In the first year, when the writs were directed to the ports and the maritime places, they received little or no opposition; but in the second year, when they went generally throughout the kingdom, although by some well obeyed, have been refused by some, not only in some inland counties, but in some of the maritime places.”
Charles then called upon the whole nation to provide ship money. London was ordered to equip two more ships of 800 tons apiece. One, Robert Chambers by name, brought the question of the King’s right into the Court of the King’s Bench. Mr. Justice Berkeley, with amazing servility, refused to allow the case to be argued, because, he said, “there is a rule of law, and another of government,” thus actually separating the law and government. It was by this time fully evident that the King and Council were resolved upon the humbling of the City. If there was any doubt left in men’s minds, that doubt was surely dispelled by the action of the Star Chamber concerning the Irish Estates. The Star Chamber, after hearing a suit against the City charging them with mal-administration of their Irish property, condemned the City to forfeiture of all their lands in Ireland—lands which, as we have seen, the City had been forced to take up by James the First, and on which they had spent very large sums of money. In addition to losing their estates the citizens were fined £70,000. As for the fine, it was easier to inflict it than to levy it. The City let the Irish Estates go for the present, and paid the sum of £12,000 in full discharge of the fine. But the thing remained in their minds, and one of the first acts of Parliament, when it was called, was to reconsider the whole question (see [p. 209]).
Walker & Cockerell.
GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE (SECOND CREATION) OF BUCKINGHAM (1592–1628)
From the portrait by Gerard Honthorst.
I purpose in this place to interrupt the direct course of events in order to show, by reference to certain political events of the time, the mind of London.
In 1626 occurred the famous impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham by Sir John Eliot, when the Commons pronounced their first refusal to grant subsidies till grievances had been redressed. Eliot was arrested and confined to the Tower; after ten days he was released, but the Parliament was dissolved. The King appealed to the country to grant as a free gift what the Commons had refused.
The answer to this appeal should have left no doubt in the minds of the King’s friends that the words of Sir John Eliot stated the mind of the whole country. As regards London and Westminster they replied to those who would collect the subsidy with cries of “A Parliament! A Parliament!”
Charles then tried the expedient of a forced loan with equal want of success. It was found impossible to collect it.