Constitutional History of England Volume II Part 8

Yet, notwithstanding the deference owing to contemporary opinions, I cannot but suspect that Clarendon has, in this instance as in some other pa.s.sages, attached too great an importance to particular individuals, measuring them rather by their rank in the state, than by that capacity and energy of mind, which, in the levelling hour of revolution, are the only real pledges of political influence. He thought it of the utmost consequence to the king that he should gain over the Earls of Ess.e.x and Northumberland, both, or at least the former, wavering between the two parties, though voting entirely with the Commons. Certainly the king's situation required every aid, and his repulsive hardness towards all who had ever given him offence displayed an obstinate unconciliating character, which deprived him of some support he might have received. But the subsequent history of these two celebrated earls, and indeed of all the moderate adherents to the parliament, will hardly lead us to believe that they could have afforded the king any protection. Let us suppose that he had returned to Whitehall, instead of proceeding towards the north. It is evident that he must either have pa.s.sed the bill for the militia, or seen the ordinances of both houses carried into effect without his consent. He must have consented to the abolition of episcopacy, or at least have come into some compromise which would have left the bishops hardly a shadow of their jurisdiction and pre-eminence. He must have driven from his person those whom he best loved and trusted. He would have found it impossible to see again the queen, without awakening distrust and bringing insult on them both. The royalist minority of parliament, however considerable in numbers, was lukewarm and faint-hearted. That they should have gained strength so as to keep a permanent superiority over their adversaries, led as they were by statesmen so bold and profound as Hampden, Pym, St. John, Cromwell, and Vane, is what, from the experience of the last twelve months, it was unreasonable to antic.i.p.ate. But, even if the Commons had been more favourably inclined, it would not have been in their power to calm the mighty waters that had been moved from their depths. They had permitted the populace to mingle in their discussions, testifying pleasure at its paltry applause, and encouraging its tumultuous aggressions on the minority of the legislature. What else could they expect than that, so soon as they ceased to satisfy the city apprentices, or the trained bands raised under their militia bill, they must submit to that physical strength which is the ultimate arbiter of political contentions?

Thus, with evil auspices, with much peril of despotism on the one hand, with more of anarchy on the other, amidst the apprehensions and sorrows of good men, the civil war commenced in the summer of 1642. I might now perhaps pa.s.s over the period that intervened, until the restoration of Charles II., as not strictly belonging to a work which undertakes to relate the progress of the English const.i.tution. But this would have left a sort of chasm that might disappoint the reader; and as I have already not wholly excluded our more general political history, without a knowledge of which the laws and government of any people must be unintelligible, it will probably not be deemed an unnecessary digression, if I devote one chapter to the most interesting and remarkable portion of British history.

FOOTNOTES:

[164] 4 E. 3, c. 14. It appears by the Journals, 30th Dec. 1640, that the Triennial Bill was originally for the yearly holding of parliaments. It seems to have been altered in the committee; at least we find the t.i.tle changed, Jan. 19.

[165] _Parl. Hist._ 702, 717; Stat. 16 Car. I, c. 1.

[166] C. 14.

[167] C. 8. The king had professed, in Lord-Keeper Finch's speech on opening the parliament of April 1640, that he had only taken tonnage and poundage _de facto_, without claiming it as a right, and had caused a bill to be prepared, granting it to him from the commencement of his reign. _Parl. Hist._ 533. See preface to Hargrave's _Collection of Law Tracts_, p. 195, and Rymer, xx. 118, for what Charles did with respect to impositions on merchandise. The long parliament called the farmers to account.

[168] 16 Car. I, c. 10. The abolition of the star-chamber was first moved (March 5th, 1641) by Lord Andover, in the House of Lords, to which he had been called by writ. Both he and his father, the Earl of Berks.h.i.+re, were zealous royalists during the subsequent war. _Parl.

Hist._ 722. But he is not, I presume, the person to whom Clarendon alludes. This author insinuates that the act for taking away the star-chamber pa.s.sed both houses without sufficient deliberation, and that the peers did not venture to make any opposition; whereas there were two conferences between the houses on the subject, and several amendments and provisos made by the Lords, and agreed by the Commons.

Scarce any bill, during this session, received so much attention. The king made some difficulty about a.s.senting to the bills taking away the star-chamber and high-commission courts, but soon gave way. _Parl.

Hist._ 853.

[169] c.o.ke has strongly argued the illegality of fining and imprisoning by the high commission. 4th Inst. 324. And he omitted this power in a commission he drew, "leaving us," says Bishop Williams, "nothing but the old rusty sword of the church, excommunication."

Cabala, p. 103. Care was taken to restore this authority in the reign of Charles.

[170] 16 Car. I, c. 11.

[171] Hyde distinguished himself as chairman of the committee which brought in the bill for abolis.h.i.+ng the court of York. In his speech on presenting this to the Lords, he alludes to the tyranny of Strafford, not rudely, but in a style hardly consistent with that of his _History_. _Parl. Hist._ 766. The editors of this, however, softened a little what he did say in one or two places; as where he uses the word _tyranny_, in speaking of Lord Mountnorris's case.

[172] C. 15.

[173] C. 19, 20.

[174] C. 16.

[175] C. 28.

[176] Journals, 16th Dec.; _Parl. Hist._ 968; Nalson, 750. It is remarkable that Clarendon, who is sufficiently jealous of all that he thought encroachment in the Commons, does not censure their explicit a.s.sertion of this privilege. He lays the blame of the king's interference on St. John's advice; which is very improbable.

[177] "A greater and more universal hatred," says Northumberland in a letter to Leicester, Nov. 13, 1640 (_Sidney Papers_, ii. 663), "was never contracted by any person than he has drawn upon himself. He is not at all dejected, but believes confidently to clear himself in the opinion of all equal and indifferent-minded hearers, when he shall come to make his defence. The king is in such a straight that I do not know how he will possibly avoid, without endangering the loss of the whole kingdom, the giving way to the remove of divers persons, as well as other things that will be demanded by the parliament. After they have done questioning some of the great ones, they intend to endeavour the displacing of Jermyn, Newcastle, and Walter Montague."

[178] Clarendon, i. 305. No one opposed the resolution to impeach the lord lieutenant, save that Falkland suggested the appointment of a committee, as more suitable to the gravity of their proceedings. But Pym frankly answered that this would ruin all; since Strafford would doubtless obtain a dissolution of the parliament, unless they could shut him out from access to the king.

_The Letters of Robert Baillie_, Princ.i.p.al of the University of Glasgow (two vols. Edinburgh, 1775), abound with curious information as to this period, and for several subsequent years. Baillie was one of the Scots commissioners deputed to London at the end of 1640, and took an active share in promoting the destruction of episcopacy. His correspondence breathes all the narrow and exclusive bigotry of the presbyterian school. The following pa.s.sage is so interesting that, notwithstanding its length, it may find a place here:--

"The lieutenant of Ireland came but on Monday to town late, on Tuesday rested, on Wednesday came to parliament, but ere night he was caged.

Intolerable pride and oppression cries to Heaven for a vengeance. The lower house closed their doors; the speaker kept the keys till his accusation was concluded. Thereafter Mr. Pym went up, with a number at his back, to the higher house; and, in a pretty short speech, did, in the name of the lower house, and in the name of the commons of all England, accuse Thomas Earl of Strafford, lord lieutenant of Ireland, of high treason; and required his person to be arrested till probation might be heard; so Mr. Pym and his back were removed. The Lords began to consult on that strange and unexpected motion. The word goes in haste to the lord lieutenant, where he was with the king; with speed he comes to the house; he calls rudely at the door; James Maxwell, keeper of the black rod, opens: his lords.h.i.+p, with a proud glooming countenance, makes towards his place at the board head: but at once many bid him void the house; so he is forced, in confusion, to go to the door till he was called. After consultation, being called in, he stands, but is commanded to kneel, and on his knees to hear the sentence. Being on his knees, he is delivered to the keeper of the black rod, to be prisoner till he was cleared of these crimes the House of Commons had charged him with. He offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone without a word. In the outer room, James Maxwell required him, as prisoner, to deliver his sword. When he had got it, he cries with a loud voice, for his man to carry my lord lieutenant's sword. This done, he makes through a number of people towards his coach; all gazing, no man capping to him, before whom, that morning, the greatest of England would have stood discovered, all crying, 'What is the matter?' He said, 'A small matter, I warrant you.' They replied, 'Yes, indeed, high treason is a small matter.' Coming to the place where he expected his coach, it was not there; so he behoved to return that same way, through a world of gazing people. When at last he had found his coach, and was entering, James Maxwell told him, 'Your lords.h.i.+p is my prisoner, and must go in my coach;' so he behoved to do."--P. 217.

[179] The trial of Strafford is best to be read in Rushworth or Nalson. The account in the new edition of the _State Trials_, I know not whence taken, is curious, as coming from an eye-witness, though very partial to the prisoner; but it can hardly be so accurate as the others. His famous peroration was printed at the time in a loose sheet. It is in the _Somers Tracts_. Many of the charges seem to have been sufficiently proved, and would undoubtedly justify a severe sentence on an impeachment for misdemeanours. It was not pretended by the managers, that more than two or three of them amounted to treason; but it is the unquestionable right of the Commons to blend offences of a different degree in an impeachment.

It has been usually said that the Commons had recourse to the bill of attainder, because they found it impossible to support the impeachment for treason. But St. John positively denies that it was intended to avoid the judicial mode of proceeding. Nalson, ii. 162. And, what is stronger, the Lords themselves voted upon the articles judicially, and not as if they were enacting a legislative measure. As to the famous proviso in the bill of attainder, that the judges should determine nothing to be treason, by virtue of this bill, which they would not have determined to be treason otherwise (on which Hume and many others have relied, to show the consciousness of parliament that the measure was not warranted by the existing law), it seems to have been introduced in order to quiet the apprehensions of some among the peers, who had gone great lengths with the late government, and were astonished to find that their obedience to the king could be turned into treason against him.

[180] They were confirmed, in a considerable degree, by the evidence of Northumberland and Bristol, and even of Usher and Juxon. Rushw.

Abr. iv. 455, 559, 586; Baillie, 284. But are they not also exactly according to the principles always avowed and acted upon by that minister, and by the whole phalanx of courtiers, that a king of England does very well to ask his people's consent in the first instance, but, if that is frowardly refused, he has a paramount right to maintain his government by any means?

It may be remarked, that Clarendon says: "the law was clear that less than two witnesses ought not to be received in a case of treason." Yet I doubt whether any one had been allowed the benefit of that law; and the contrary had been a.s.serted repeatedly by the judges.

[181] Lords' Journals, May 6; _Parl. Hist._ 757. This opinion of the judges which is not mentioned by Clarendon, Hume, and other common historians, seems to have cost Strafford his life. It was relied on by some bishops, especially Usher, whom Charles consulted whether he should pa.s.s the bill of attainder, though Clarendon puts much worse casuistry into the mouth of Williams. Parr's _Life of Usher_, p. 45; Hacket's _Life of Williams_, p. 160. Juxon is said to have stood alone among five bishops, in advising the king to follow his conscience.

Clarendon, indeed, does not mention this; though he glances at Usher with some reproach (p. 451); but the story is as old as the _Icon Basilike_, in which it is alluded to.

[182] The names of the fifty-nine members of the Commons, who voted against the bill of attainder, and which were placarded as Straffordians, may be found in the _Parliamentary History_, and several other books. It is remarkable that few of them are distinguished persons; none so much so as Selden, whose whole parliamentary career, notwithstanding the timidity not very fairly imputed to him, was eminently honourable and independent. But we look in vain for Hyde, Falkland, Colepepper, or Palmer. The first, probably, did not vote; the others may have been in the majority of 204, by whom the bill was pa.s.sed. Indeed, I have seen a MS. account of the debate, where Falkland and Colepepper appear to have both spoken for it. As to the Lords, we have, so far as I know, no list of the nineteen who acquitted Strafford. It did not comprehend Hertford, Bristol, or Holland, who were absent (Nalson, 316), nor any of the popish lords, whether through fear or any private influence. Lord Clare, his brother-in-law, and Lord Saville, a man of the most changeable character, were his prominent advocates during the trial; though Bristol, Hertford, and even Say, desired to have had his life spared (Baillie, 243, 247, 271, 292); and the Earl of Bedford, according to Clarendon, would have come into this. But the sudden and ill-timed death of that eminent peer put an end to the negotiation for bringing the parliamentary leaders into office, wherein it was a main object with the king to save the life of Strafford; entirely, as I am inclined to believe, from motives of conscience and honour, without any views of ever again restoring him to power. Charles had no personal attachment to Strafford; and the queen's dislike of him (according to Clarendon and Burnet, though it must be owned, that Madame de Motteville does not confirm this), or at least his general unpopularity at court, would have determined the king to lay him aside.

It is said by Burnet that the queen prevailed on Charles to put that strange postscript to his letter to the Lords, in behalf of Strafford, "If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him till Sat.u.r.day;" by which he manifestly surrendered him up, and gave cause to suspect his own sincerity. Doubts have been thrown out by Carte as to the genuineness of Strafford's celebrated letter, requesting the king to pa.s.s the bill of attainder. They do not appear to be founded on much evidence; but it is certain, by the manner in which he received the news, that he did not expect to be sacrificed by his master.

[183] _Parliamentary History_, ii. 750.

[184] See some judicious remarks on this by May (p. 64), who generally shows a good deal of impartiality at this period of history. The violence of individuals, especially when of considerable note, deserves to be remarked, as characteristic of the temper that influenced the house, and as accounting for the disgust of moderate men. "Why should he have law himself?" said St. John, in arguing the bill of attainder before the peers, "who would not that others should have any? We indeed give laws to hares and deer, because they are beasts of chase; but we give none to wolves and foxes, but knock them on the head wherever they are found, because they are beasts of prey."

Nor was this a mere burst of pa.s.sionate declamation, but urged as a serious argument for taking away Strafford's life without sufficient grounds of law or testimony. Rushworth Abr. iv. 61; Clarendon, i. 407.

Strode told the house that, as they had charged Strafford with high treason, it concerned them to charge as conspirators in the same treason all who had before, or should hereafter, plead in that cause.

Baillie, 252. This monstrous proposal seems to please the presbyterian bigot. "If this hold," he observes, "Strafford's council will be rare."

[185] Clarendon and Hume, of course, treat this as a very trifling affair, exaggerated for factious purposes. But those who judge from the evidence of persons unwilling to accuse themselves or the king, and from the natural probabilities of the case, will suspect, or, rather, be wholly convinced, that it had gone much farther than these writers admit. See the accounts of this plot in Rushworth and Nalson, or in the _Parliamentary History_. The strongest evidence, however, is furnished by Henrietta, whose relation of the circ.u.mstances to Madame de Motteville proves that the king and herself had the strongest hopes from the influence of Goring and Wilmot over the army, by means of which they aimed at saving Strafford's life; though the jealousy of those ambitious intriguers, who could not both enjoy the place to which each aspired, broke the whole plot. _Mem. de Motteville_, i.

253. Compare with this pa.s.sage, Percy's letter, and Goring's deposition (Nalson, ii. 286, 294), for what is said of the king's privity by men who did not lose his favour by their evidence. Mr.

Brodie has commented in a long note (iii. 189) on Clarendon's apparent misrepresentations of this business. But what has escaped the acuteness of this writer is, that the pet.i.tion to the king and parliament drawn up for the army's subscription, and a.s.serted by Clarendon to have been the only step taken by those engaged in the supposed conspiracy (though not, as Mr. Brodie too rashly conjectures, a fabrication of his own), is most carelessly referred by him to that period or to the agency of Wilmot and his coadjutors; having been, in fact, prepared about the July following, at the instigation of Daniel O'Neale, and some others of the royalist party. This is manifest, not only from the allusions it contains to events that had not occurred in the months of March and April, when the plot of Wilmot and Goring was on foot, especially the bill for triennial parliaments, but from evidence given before the House of Commons in October 1641, and which Mr. Brodie has published in the appendix to his third volume, though, with an inadvertence of which he is seldom guilty, overlooking its date and purport. This, however, is of itself sufficient to display the inaccurate character of Clarendon's history; for I can scarcely ascribe the present incorrectness to design. There are, indeed, so many mistakes as to dates and other matters in Clarendon's account of this plot, that, setting aside his manifest disposition to suppress the truth, we can place not the least reliance on his memory as to those points which we may not be well able to bring to a test.

[186] Journals; _Parliamentary Hist._ 784; May, 67; Clarendon.

According to Mrs. Hutchinson (p. 97) this bill originated with Mr.

Pierpoint. If we should draw any inference from the Journals, Sir John Colepepper seems to have been the most prominent of its supporters.

Mr. Hyde and Lord Falkland were also managers of the conference with the Lords. But in Sir Ralph Verney's ma.n.u.script notes, I find Mr.

Whitelock mentioned as being ordered by the house to prepare the bill; which seems to imply that he had moved it, or at least been very forward in it. Yet all these were moderate men.

[187] Neal (p. 632) has printed these canons imperfectly. They may be found at length in Nalson, i. 542. It is remarkable that the seventh canon expressly denies a corporal presence in the eucharist, which is quite contrary to what Laud had a.s.serted in his speech in the star-chamber. His influence does not seem to have wholly predominated in this particular canon, which is expressed with a moderation of which he was incapable.

[188] Clarendon; _Parl. Hist._ 678, 896; Neal, 647, 720. These votes as to the canons, however, were carried _nem. con._ Journals, 16th Dec. 1640.

[189] Neal, 709. Laud and Wren were both impeached Dec. 18: the latter entirely for introducing superst.i.tions. _Parl. Hist._ 861. He lay in the Tower till 1659.

[190] Neal says that the major part of the parliamentarians at the beginning of the war were for moderated episcopacy (ii. 4), and a.s.serts the same in another place (i. 715) of the puritans, in contradiction of Rapin. "How this will go," says Baillie, in April 1641, "the Lord knows; all are for the creating of a kind of presbytery, and for bringing down the bishops in all things spiritual and temporal, so low as can be with any subsistence; but their utter abolition, which is the only aim of the most G.o.dly, is the knot of the question."--i. 245.

[191] Neal, 666, 672, 713; Collier, 805; Baxter's _Life_, p. 62. The ministers' pet.i.tion, as it was called, presented Jan. 23, 1641, with the signatures of 700 beneficed clergymen, went to this extent of reformation. Neal, 679.

[192] _Parl. Hist._ 673; Clarendon, i. 356; Baillie's _Letters_, 218, etc. Though sanguine as to the progress of his sect, he admits that it was very difficult to pluck up episcopacy by the roots; for this reason they did not wish the house to give a speedy answer to the city pet.i.tion. P. 241. It was carried by 36 or 37 voices, he says, to refer it to the committee of religion. P. 245. No division appears on the Journals.

The whole influence of the Scots commissioners was directed to this object; as not only Baillie's _Letters_, but those of Johnstone of Wariston (Dalrymple's _Memorials of James and Charles I._, ii. 114, etc.) show. Besides their extreme bigotry, which was the predominant motive, they had a better apology for interfering with church-government in England, with which the archbishop had furnished them: it was the only sure means of preserving their own.

[193] Rushworth; Nalson.

[194] _Parl. Hist._ 814, 822, 828. Clarendon tells us, that being chairman of the committee to whom this bill was referred, he gave it so much interruption, that no progress could be made before the adjournment. The house came, however, to a resolution, that the taking away the offices of archbishops, bishops, chancellors, and commissaries out of this church and kingdom, should be one clause of the bill. June 12. Commons' Journals.

[195] Lord Hertford presented one to the Lords, from Somersets.h.i.+re, signed by 14,350 freeholders and inhabitants. Nalson, ii. 727. The Ches.h.i.+re pet.i.tion, for preserving the Common Prayer, was signed by near 10,000 hands. _Id._ 758. I have a collection of those pet.i.tions now before me, printed in 1642, from thirteen English and five Welsh counties, and all very numerously signed. In almost every instance, I observe, they thank the parliament for putting a check to innovations and abuses, while they deprecate the abolition of episcopacy and the liturgy. Thus it seems that the presbyterians were very far from having the nation on their side. The following extract from the Somersets.h.i.+re pet.i.tion is a good sample of the general tone: "For the present government of the church we are most thankful to G.o.d, believing it in our hearts to be the most pious and the wisest that any people or kingdom upon earth hath been withal since the apostles'

days; though we may not deny but, through the frailty of men, and corruption of times, some things of ill consequence, and other needless, are stolen or thrust into it; which we heartily wish may be reformed, and the church restored to its former purity. And, to the end it may be the better preserved from present and future innovation, we wish the wittingly and maliciously guilty, of what condition soever they be, whether bishops or inferior clergy, may receive condign punishment. But, for the miscarriage of governors, to destroy the government, we trust it shall never enter into the hearts of this wise and honourable a.s.sembly."

[196] The house came to a vote on July 17, according to Whitelock (p.