When parliament met (1625) the Commons at first contented
themselves with voting a sum of money far too small to carry on
the extensive military and naval operations in which
Charles had embarked. When the king explained his
necessities, they intimated that they had no confidence
Charles I. 1625–1649.
in Buckingham, and asked that, before they granted
further supply, the king would name counsellors whom they
could trust to advise him on its employment. Charles at once
dissolved parliament. He knew that the demand for ministerial
responsibility would in the end involve his own responsibility,
and, believing as he did that Buckingham’s arrangements had
been merely unlucky, he declined to sacrifice the minister whom
he trusted.
Charles and Buckingham did their best to win back popularity by strenuous exertion. They attempted to found a great Protestant alliance on the continent, and they sent a great expedition to Cadiz. The Protestant alliance and the expedition to Cadiz ended in equal failure. The second parliament of the reign (1626) impeached Buckingham for crimes against the state. As Charles would not dismiss him simply because the Commons were dissatisfied with him as a minister, they fell back on charging him with criminal designs. Once more Charles dissolved parliament to save Buckingham. Then came fresh enterprises and fresh failures. A fleet under Lord Willoughby (afterwards earl of Lindsey) was almost ruined by a storm. The king of Denmark, trusting to supplies from England which never came, was defeated at Lutter. A new war in addition to the Spanish war, broke out with France. A great expedition to Ré, under Buckingham’s command (1627), intended to succour the Huguenots of La Rochelle against their sovereign, ended in disaster. In order to enable himself to meet expenditure on so vast a scale, Charles had levied a forced loan from his subjects. Men of high rank in society who refused to pay were imprisoned. Soldiers were billeted by force in private houses, and military officers executed martial law on civilians. When the imprisoned gentlemen appealed to the king’s bench for a writ of habeas corpus, it appeared that no cause of committal had been assigned, and the judges therefore refused to liberate them. Still Charles believed it possible to carry on the war, and especially to send relief to La Rochelle, now strictly blockaded by the forces of the French crown. In order to find the means for this object he summoned his third parliament (1628). The Commons at once The Petition of Right. proceeded to draw a line which should cut off the possibility of a repetition of the injuries of which they complained. Charles was willing to surrender his claims to billet soldiers by force, to order the execution of martial law in time of peace, and to exact forced loans, benevolences, or any kind of taxation, without consent of parliament; but he protested against the demand that he should surrender the right to imprison without showing cause. It was argued on his behalf that in case of a great conspiracy it would be necessary to trust the crown with unusual powers to enable it to preserve the peace. The Commons, who knew that the crown had used the powers which it claimed, not against conspirators, but against the commonwealth itself, refused to listen to the argument, and insisted on the acceptance of the whole Petition of Right, in which they demanded redress for all their grievances. The king at last gave his consent to it, as he could obtain money in no other way. In after times, when any real danger occurred which needed a suspension of the ordinary safeguards of liberty, a remedy was found in the suspension of the law by act of parliament; such a remedy, however, only became possible when king and parliament were on good terms of agreement with one another.
That time was as yet far distant. The House of Commons brought fresh charges against Buckingham, whose murder soon after the prorogation removed one subject of dispute. But when they met again (1629) they had two quarrels left over from the preceding session. About a third Crown and parliament. part of the king’s revenue was derived from customs duties which had for many generations been granted by parliament to each sovereign for life. Charles held that this grant was little more than a matter of form, whilst the Commons held that it was a matter of right. But for the other dispute the difficulty would probably have been got over. The strong Protestantism of Elizabeth’s reign had assumed a distinctly Calvinistic form, and the country gentlemen who formed the majority of the House of Commons were resolutely determined that no other theology than that of Calvin should be taught in England. In the last few years a reaction against it had arisen especially in the universities, and those who adopted an unpopular creed, and who at the same time showed tendencies to a more ceremonial form of worship, naturally fell back on the support of the crown. Charles, who might reasonably have exerted himself to secure a fair liberty for all opinions, promoted these unpopular divines to bishoprics and livings, and the divines in turn exalted the royal prerogative above parliamentary rights. He now proposed that both sides should keep silence on the points in dispute. The Commons rejected his scheme, and prepared to call in question the most obnoxious of the clergy. In this irritated temper they took up the question of tonnage and poundage, and instead of confining themselves to the great public question, they called to the bar some custom-house officers who happened to have seized the goods of one of their members. Charles declared that the seizure had taken place by his orders. When they refused to accept the excuse, he dissolved parliament, but not before a tumult took place in the House, and the speaker was forcibly held down in his chair whilst resolutions hostile to the government were put to the vote.
For eleven years no parliament met again. The extreme action of the Lower House was not supported by the people, and the king had the opportunity, if he chose to use it, of putting himself right with the nation after no long delay. But he never understood that power only attends sympathetic leadership. He contented himself with putting himself technically in the right, and with resting his case on the favourable decisions of the judges. Under any circumstances, neither the training nor the position of judges is such as to make them fit to be the final arbiters of political disputes. They are accustomed to declare what the law is, not what it ought to be. These judges, moreover, were not in the position to be impartial. They had been selected by the king, and were liable to be deprived of their office when he saw fit. In the course of Charles’s reign two chief justices and one chief baron were dismissed or suspended. Besides the ordinary judges there were the extraordinary tribunals, the court of high commission nominated by the crown to punish ecclesiastical offenders, and the court of star chamber, composed of the privy councillors and the chief justices, and therefore also nominated by the crown, to inflict fine, imprisonment, and even corporal mutilation on lay offenders. Those who rose up in any way against the established order were sharply punished.
The harsh treatment of individuals only calls forth resistance
when constitutional morality has sunk deeply into the popular
mind. The ignoring of the feelings and prejudices
of large classes has a deeper effect. Charles’s foreign
policy, and his pretentious claim to the sovereignty
Ship-
money.
of the British seas, demanded the support of a fleet, which might
indeed be turned to good purpose in offering a counterpoise
to the growing navies of France and Holland. The increasing
estrangement between him and the nation made him averse from
the natural remedy of a parliament, and he reverted to the
absolute practices of the middle ages, in order that he might
strain them far beyond the warrant of precedent to levy a
tax under the name of ship-money, first on the port towns and
then on the whole of England. Payment was resisted by John
Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire; but the judges declared
that the king was in the right (1638). Yet the arguments used
by Hampden’s lawyers sunk deeply into the popular mind, and
almost every man in England who was called on to pay the tax
looked upon the king as a wrong-doer under the forms of law.
In his ecclesiastical policy Charles was equally out of touch with the feelings of his people. He shared to the full his father’s dislike and distrust of the Puritans, and he supported with the
