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CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN KING AND PARLIAMENT.

CHAP.

VII.

Liberty.

WHEN Elizabeth died it was inevitable that the House of Commons should take a larger part in the direction of affairs than it had done before. In what precise way § 1. Nethe change would be effected depended partly on the city of character of the new king, and partly on the fitness of the Commons to undertake the work which lay before them. That work consisted in the relaxation of those restrictions which had necessarily been imposed by Elizabeth upon the free development of religious practices. As long as such a change presented itself as a mere obstruction to the higher development of the Commonwealth, the force of the State had been brought to bear against the negation of its authority. But if such action on the part of the government was a necessary evil, it was an evil none the less. The moment that men became willing to admit the supremacy of the State, it was beyond all things important both for themselves and for their fellow-citizens that they should be allowed, not merely to think as they pleased, but to write, to speak, and to pray as they pleased. Unless it conceded these rights, the State itself would be the first to suffer. What counsellors are to an arbitrary prince, a free press and a free pulpit are to a self-controlling community. Without them prince and people alike are apt to run in old grooves, and to think it needless to

K

CHAP.
VII.

§ 2. The

first Years of James I.

take account of new thoughts which from time to time arise. Where liberty is, not only are the individuals who compose the nation better, stronger, and more selfreliant, but the nation itself acquires strength from the very diversity of opinion which seems to undermine it. Liberty of speech and thought creates an organisation higher and nobler than that which it has destroyed.

It was not to be expected that the change either from the supremacy of the king to the supremacy of the Commons, or from the maintenance of church uniformity to the permission of diversified forms of worship, could be effected without a struggle. James I. brought with him from Scotland no practical knowledge of the English character or of the wants of the English people. He drew tighter than ever the limits of conformity, refused, after a short time of toleration, any concessions to the Roman Catholics, browbeat the Puritan ministers at the Hampton Court Conference, and put the finishing stroke to the establishment of the English Church system, as Elizabeth had planned it. Yet so completely had that system rooted itself in the affections of the bulk of the nation, that though there were many who would have wished to see the Puritans conciliated, the king was able to carry out his plans without serious difficulty. More dangerous, it seemed, was the extreme need in which the king stood of money, and the increasing demands which the Commons consequently made for concessions to their wishes before they would grant supplies. For a time indeed he succeeded in parrying their attacks by raising impositions upon exports and imports without their consent, a course which the Court of Exchequer pronounced to be within his rights, though the House of Commons, followed by the lawyers of later generations, took the opposite view. The divergency between the king and the mass of the country

gentlemen who mainly composed the House of Commons
led to his surrounding himself with courtiers who had
little or no influence with the nation. Though Somerset
and Buckingham, whom he selected as his intimate
friends, were both of them ignorant and ambitious
young men, he made over to them the patronage of the
kingdom, and allowed them to rise to princely fortunes
without any corresponding service to the people. But
the political quarrel was aggravated by religious dis-
agreement.
The Commons were indeed not prepared
to grant toleration to any Puritan sects. They wished
that there should still be one Church, and were con-
tent that its organisation should still be episcopal. But
they desired that latitude should be given to those
amongst the clergy who felt scruples about conformity,
and that any minister might wear a surplice or a black
gown, might use the sign of the cross in baptism or give
the ring in marriage or not, at his discretion. The
Church thus constituted would embrace all moderate
Protestant views at that time in existence, and would
answer very fairly to the actual feelings of the nation.
But the more anxious these men were to conciliate the
Puritans, the less ready were they to give fair play to the
Roman Catholics. The foul treason of the Gunpowder
Plot, planned as it had been by a mere handful of men,
yet bore so strong a resemblance to the old assassination
plots against Elizabeth, that Protestants could hardly
fail to draw the inference that the toleration of the
Roman Catholic religion was inconsistent with the safety
of the State. Yet it was precisely against this feeling, so
deeply rooted in his subjects, that James set himself.
His position was the worse because he did not stand out
on any broad ground of principle. He was
He was not so
imbued with the love of tolerance as to strive in season
and out of season to advance the good cause.

He

CHAP.

VII.

CHAP.
VII.

§3. The Spanish Alliance.

§ 4. Domestic Govern

ment.

imposed and remitted the legal penalties on the Roman Catholics by fits and starts, as his fancies or his interests demanded.

At last, in 1614, when it seemed hopeless, without grave concessions, to expect a grant of adequate supplies from the Commons, James took the most unpopular step of his life. He planned a marriage between his son, the future Charles I., and a Spanish Infanta. A Roman Catholic lady was to be the future Queen of England, to use all her influence for the protection of the members of her church, and for the gathering of fresh converts to its bosom. Other stipulations would probably have to be made before the marriage was concluded, stipulations which would bind James to the modification or suspension of the penal laws against the Roman Catholics, and would thus give a foreign sovereign, the son of that Philip of Spain who had launched the Armada against English independence, a treaty-right to complain if those laws were put in force. For the present, however, James hesitated to go so far as this, and the conclusion of the marriage treaty was in consequence deferred. Then came fresh complications on the Continent. The Thirty Years' War broke out in Germany, in which Catholics and Protestants were opposed to one another. James tried to mediate without sufficient knowledge of the facts, or resolution to support his wishes by action, and his inconsistencies and hesitations were made use of by the Spanish Government to carry out their purposes in Germany. The fact that James was engaged at the time in negotiating a marriage treaty with Spain, made men think that he supported Spanish interests on the Continent even more than he really did.

Whilst distrust of his foreign policy and of his attach ment to Protestantism was thus growing, his domestic government was exposed to the gravest suspicions. The

influence of the favourite had swallowed up the just authority of the crown. Applicants for office found that to obtain their object they must cringe to Buckingham. Those who gained Buckingham's good will were careless about conforming to the law. Monopolies were established, and special powers of interfering with trade were granted to his favourites, not always without some wish to advance the true interests of commerce and manufacture as they were then understood, but with a secondary intention of making the fortunes of those who had the good luck to get the working of these schemes into their hands. When at last a parliament met in 1621, it met with a settled distrust of the whole system which James was pursuing at home and abroad. That parliament accomplished much. It swept away the monopolies. It revived the disused right of impeachment, prosecuting' the great Lord Chancellor Bacon for corruption before the House of Lords. It taught courtiers and officials that it behoved them to be able to maintain their purity at the bar of public opinion as well as in the royal ear. It offered to support James if he would take part in the German war in defence of his son-in-law, the elector Palatine. But James's notions of carrying on war were peculiar. He thought that he could do much by mere good advice, and he thought that if good advice were not enough, and he were driven to fight, it would be possible to remain friends with Spain, whilst fighting the Emperor, who was the closest ally of Spain. The Commons thought otherwise. With such differences of opinion, a subject of quarrel was easily found. James dissolved parliament. Without the support of the nation, and without either an army or a well-filled treasury, he strove in vain to dictate peace to Europe. As a last resource, his son Charles, accompanied by Buckingham, undertook a journey to Madrid, in the

CHAP.

VII.