Chapter VII (2)

_State of catholics under James._--James, well instructed in the theology of the reformers, and inured himself to controversial dialectics, was far removed in point of opinion from any bias towards the Romish creed. But he had, while in Scotland, given rise to some suspicions at the court of Elizabeth, by a little clandestine coquetry with the pope, which he fancied to be a politic means of disarming enmity.[676] Some knowledge of this, probably, as well as his avowed dislike of sanguinary persecution, and a foolish reliance on the trifling circumstance that one if not both of his parents had professed their religion, led the English catholics to expect a great deal of indulgence, if not support, at his hands. This hope might receive some encouragement from his speech on opening the parliament of 1604, wherein he intimated his design to revise and explain the penal laws, "which the judges might perhaps," he said, "in times past have too rigorously interpreted." But the temper of those he addressed was very different. The catholics were disappointed by an act inflicting new penalties on recusants, and especially debarring them from educating their children according to their consciences.[677] The administration took a sudden turn towards severity; the prisons were filled, the penalties exacted, several suffered death,[678] and the general helplessness of their condition impelled a few persons (most of whom had belonged to what was called the Spanish party in the last reign) to the gunpowder conspiracy, unjustly imputed to the majority of catholics, though perhaps extending beyond those who appeared in it.[679] We cannot wonder that a parliament so narrowly rescued from personal destruction endeavoured to draw the cord still tighter round these dangerous enemies. The statute passed on this occasion is by no means more harsh than might be expected. It required not only attendance on worship, but participation in the communion, as a test of conformity, and gave an option to the king of taking a penalty of L20 a month from recusants, or two-thirds of their lands. It prescribed also an oath of allegiance, the refusal of which incurred the penalties of a praemunire. This imported that, notwithstanding any sentence of deprivation or excommunication by the pope, the taker would bear true allegiance to the king, and defend him against any conspiracies which should be made by reason of such sentence or otherwise, and do his best endeavour to disclose them; that he from his heart abhorred, detested, and abjured as impious and heretical, the damnable doctrine and position that princes, excommunicated or deprived by the pope, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever; and that he did not believe that the pope or any other could absolve him from this oath.[680]

Except by cavilling at one or two words, it seemed impossible for the Roman catholics to decline so reasonable a test of loyalty, without justifying the worst suspicions of protestant jealousy. Most of the secular priests in England, asking only a connivance in the exercise of their ministry, and aware how much the good work of reclaiming their apostate countrymen was retarded by the political obloquy they incurred, would have willingly acquiesced in the oath. But the court of Rome, not yet receding an inch from her proudest claims, absolutely forbade all catholics to abjure her deposing power by this test, and employed Bellarmine to prove its unlawfulness. The king stooped to a literary controversy with this redoubted champion, and was prouder of no exploit of his life than his answer to the cardinal's book; by which he incurred the contempt of foreign courts and of all judicious men.[681] Though neither the murderous conspiracy of 1605, nor this refusal to abjure the principles on which it was founded, could dispose James to persecution, or even render the papist so obnoxious in his eyes as the puritan; yet he was long averse to anything like a general remission of the penal laws. In sixteen instances after this time, the sanguinary enactments of his predecessor were enforced, but only perhaps against priests who refused the oath;[682] the catholics enjoyed on the whole somewhat more indulgence than before, in respect to the private exercise of their religion; at least enough to offend narrow-spirited zealots, and furnish pretext for the murmurs of a discontented parliament, but under condition of paying compositions for recusancy; a regular annual source of revenue which, though apparently trifling in amount, the king was not likely to abandon, even if his notions of prerogative, and the generally received prejudices of that age, had not determined him against an express toleration.[683]

In the course, however, of that impolitic negotiation, which exposed him to all eyes as the dupe and tool of the court of Madrid, James was led on to promise concessions for which his protestant subjects were ill prepared. That court had wrought on his feeble mind by affected coyness about the infanta's marriage, with two private aims; to secure his neutrality in the war of the Palatinate, and to obtain better terms for the English catholics. Fully successful in both ends, it would probably have at length permitted the union to take place, had not Buckingham's rash insolence broken off the treaty; but I am at a loss to perceive the sincere and even generous conduct which some have found in the Spanish council during this negotiation.[684] The king acted with such culpable weakness, as even in him excites our astonishment. Buckingham, in his first eagerness for the marriage on arriving in Spain, wrote to ask if the king would acknowledge the pope's spiritual supremacy, as the surest means of success. James professed to be much shocked at this, but offered to recognise his jurisdiction as patriarch of the west, to whom ecclesiastical appeals might ultimately be made; a concession as incompatible with the code of our protestant laws as the former. Yet with this knowledge of his favourite's disposition, he gave the prince and him a written promise to perform whatever they should agree upon with the court of Madrid.[685] On the treaty being almost concluded, the king, prince, and privy council swore to observe certain stipulated articles, by which the infanta was not only to have the exercise of her religion, but the education of her children till ten years of age. But the king was also sworn to private articles; that no penal laws should be put in force against the catholics, that there should be a perpetual toleration of their religion in private houses, that he and his son would use their authority to make parliament confirm and ratify these articles, and revoke all laws (as it is with strange latitude expressed) containing anything repugnant to the Roman catholic religion, and that they would not consent to any new laws against them. The Prince of Wales separately engaged to procure the suspension or abrogation of the penal laws within three years, and to lengthen the term for the mother's education of their children from ten years to twelve, if it should be in his own power. He promised also to listen to catholic divines, whenever the infanta should desire it.[686]

These secret assurances, when they were whispered in England, might not unreasonably excite suspicion of the prince's wavering in his religion, which he contrived to aggravate by an act as imprudent as it was reprehensible. During his stay at Madrid, while his inclinations were still bent on concluding the marriage, the sole apparent obstacle being the pope's delay in forwarding the dispensation, he wrote a letter to Gregory XV., in reply to one received from him, in language evidently intended to give an impression of his favourable dispositions towards the Romish faith. The whole tenor of his subsequent life must have satisfied every reasonable inquirer into our history, of Charles's real attachment to the Anglican church; nor could he have had any other aim than to facilitate his arrangements with the court of Rome by this deception. It would perhaps be uncandid to judge severely a want of ingenuousness, which youth, love, and bad counsels may extenuate; yet I cannot help remarking that the letter is written with the precautions of a veteran in dissimulation; and, while it is full of what might raise expectation, contains no special pledge that he could be called on to redeem. But it was rather presumptuous to hope that he could foil the subtlest masters of artifice with their own weapons.[687]

James, impatient for this ill-omened alliance, lost no time in fulfilling his private stipulations with Spain. He published a general pardon of all penalties already incurred for recusancy. It was designed to follow this up by a proclamation prohibiting the bishops, judges, and other magistrates to execute any penal statute against the catholics. But the lord keeper, Bishop Williams, hesitated at so unpopular a stretch of power.[688] And, the rupture with Spain ensuing almost immediately, the king, with a singular defiance of all honest men's opinion, though the secret articles of the late treaty had become generally known, declared in his first speech to parliament in 1624, that "he had only thought good sometimes to wink and connive at the execution of some penal laws, and not to go on so rigorously as at other times, but not to dispense with any or to forbid or alter any that concern religion; he never permitted or yielded, he never did think it with his heart, nor spoke it with his mouth."[689]

When James soon after this, not yet taught by experience to avoid a catholic alliance, demanded the hand of Henrietta Maria for his son, Richlieu thought himself bound by policy and honour as well as religion to obtain the same or greater advantages for the English catholics than had been promised in the former negotiation. Henrietta was to have the education of her children till they reached the age of twelve; thus were added two years, at a time of life when the mind becomes susceptible of lasting impressions, to the term at which, by the treaty of Spain, the mother's superintendence was to cease.[690] Yet there is the strongest reason to believe that this condition was merely inserted for the honour of the French Crown, with a secret understanding that it should never be executed.[691] In fact, the royal children were placed at a very early age under protestant governors of the king's appointment; nor does Henrietta appear to have ever insisted on her right. That James and Charles should have incurred the scandal of this engagement, since the articles, though called private, must be expected to transpire, without any real intentions of performing it, is an additional instance of that arrogant contempt of public opinion which distinguished the Stuart family. It was stipulated in the same private articles, that prisoners on the score of religion should be set at liberty, and that none should be molested in future.[692] These promises were irregularly fulfilled, according to the terms on which Charles stood with his brother-in-law. Sometimes general orders were issued to suspend all penal laws against papists; again, by a capricious change of policy, all officers and judges are directed to proceed in their execution; and this severity gave place in its turn to a renewed season of indulgence. If these alterations were not very satisfactory to the catholics, the whole scheme of lenity displeased and alarmed the protestants. Tolerance, in any extensive sense, of that proscribed worship was equally abhorrent to the prelatist and the puritan; though one would have winked at its peaceable and domestic exercise, which the other was zealous to eradicate. But, had they been capable of more liberal reasoning upon this subject, there was enough to justify their indignation at this attempt to sweep away the restrictive code established by so many statutes, and so long deemed essential to the security of their church, by an unconstitutional exertion of the prerogative, prompted by no more worthy motive than compliance with a foreign power, and tending to confirm suspicions of the king's wavering between the two religions, or his indifference to either. In the very first months of his reign, and while that parliament was sitting, which has been reproached for its parsimony, he sent a fleet to assist the French king in blocking up the port of Rochelle; and with utter disregard of the national honour, ordered the admiral, who reported that the sailors would not fight against protestants, to sail to Dieppe, and give up his ships into the possession of France.[693] His subsequent alliance with the Hugonot party in consequence merely of Buckingham's unwarrantable hostility to France, founded on the most extraordinary motives, could not redeem, in the eyes of the nation, this instance of lukewarmness, to say the least, in the general cause of the Reformation. Later ages have had means of estimating the attachment of Charles the First to protestantism, which his contemporaries in that early period of his reign did not enjoy; and this has led some to treat the apprehensions of parliament as either insincere or preposterously unjust. But can this be fairly pretended by any one who has acquainted himself with the course of proceedings on the Spanish marriage, the whole of which was revealed by the Earl of Bristol to the House of Lords? Was there nothing, again, to excite alarm in the frequent conversions of persons of high rank to popery, in the more dangerous partialities of many more, in the evident bias of certain distinguished churchmen to tenets rejected at the Reformation? The course pursued with respect to religious matters after the dissolution of parliament in 1629, to which I shall presently advert, did by no means show the misgivings of that assembly to have been ill-founded.

It was neither, however, the Arminian opinions of the higher clergy, nor even their supposed leaning towards those of Rome, that chiefly rendered them obnoxious to the Commons. They had studiously inculcated that resistance to the commands of rulers was in every conceivable instance a heinous sin; a tenet so evidently subversive of all civil liberty that it can be little worth while to argue about right and privilege, wherever it has obtained a real hold on the understanding and conscience of a nation. This had very early been adopted by the Anglican reformers, as a barrier against the disaffection of those who adhered to the ancient religion, and in order to exhibit their own loyalty in a more favourable light. The homily against wilful disobedience and rebellion was written on occasion of the rising of the northern earls in 1569, and is full of temporary and even personal allusions.[694] But the same doctrine is enforced in others of those compositions, which enjoy a kind of half authority in the English church. It is laid down in the canons of convocation in 1606. It is very frequent in the writings of English divines, those especially who were much about the court. And an unlucky preacher at Oxford, named Knight, about 1622, having thrown out some intimation that subjects oppressed by their prince on account of religion might defend themselves by arms; that university, on the king's highly resenting such heresy, not only censured the preacher (who had the audacity to observe that the king by then sending aid to the French Hugonots of Rochelle, as was rumoured to be designed, had sanctioned his position), but pronounced a solemn decree that it is in no case lawful for subjects to make use of force against their princes, nor to appear offensively or defensively in the field against them. All persons promoted to degrees were to subscribe this article, and to take an oath that they not only at present detested the opposite opinion, but would at no future time entertain it. A ludicrous display of the folly and despotic spirit of learned academies![695]

Those, however, who most strenuously denied the abstract right of resistance to unlawful commands, were by no means obliged to maintain the duty of yielding them an active obedience. In the case of religion, it was necessary to admit that God was rather to be obeyed than man. Nor had it been pretended, except by the most servile churchmen, that subjects had no positive rights, in behalf of which they might decline compliance with illegal requisitions. This, however, was openly asserted in the reign of Charles. Those who refused the general loan of 1626, had to encounter assaults from very different quarters, and were not only imprisoned, but preached at. Two sermons by Sibthorp and Mainwaring excited particular attention. These men, eager for preferment which they knew the readiest method to attain, taught that the king might take the subject's money at his pleasure, and that no one might refuse his demand, on penalty of damnation. "Parliaments," said Mainwaring, "were not ordained to contribute any right to the king, but for the more equal imposing and more easy exacting of that which unto kings doth appertain by natural and original law and justice, as their proper inheritance annexed to their imperial Crowns from their birth."[696] These extravagances of rather obscure men would have passed with less notice, if the government had not given them the most indecent encouragement. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of integrity, but upon that account as well as for his Calvinistic partialities, long since obnoxious to the courtiers, refused to license Sibthorp's sermon, alleging some unwarrantable passages which it contained. For no other cause than this, he was sequestered from the exercise of his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, and confined to a country-house in Kent.[697] The House of Commons, after many complaints of those ecclesiastics, finally proceeded against Mainwaring by impeachment at the bar of the Lords. He was condemned to pay a fine of L1000, to be suspended for three years from his ministry, and to be incapable of holding any ecclesiastical dignity. Yet the king almost immediately pardoned Mainwaring, who became in a few years a bishop, as Sibthorp was promoted to an inferior dignity.[698]

_General remarks._--There seems on the whole to be very little ground for censure in the proceedings of this illustrious parliament. I admit that, if we believe Charles the First to have been a gentle and beneficient monarch, incapable of harbouring any design against the liberties of his people, or those who stood forward in defence of their privileges, wise in the choice of his counsellors, and patient in listening to them, the Commons may seem to have carried their opposition to an unreasonable length. But, if he had shown himself possessed with such notions of his own prerogative, no matter how derived, as could bear no effective control from fixed law or from the nation's representatives; if he was hasty and violent in temper, yet stooping to low arts of equivocation and insincerity, whatever might be his estimable qualities in other respects, they could act, in the main, no otherwise than by endeavouring to keep him in the power of parliament, lest his power should make parliament but a name. Every popular assembly, truly zealous in a great cause, will display more heat and passion than cool-blooded men after the lapse of centuries may wholly approve.[699] But so far were they from encroaching, as our Tory writers pretend, on the just powers of a limited monarch, that they do not appear to have conceived, they at least never hinted at, the securities without which all they had obtained or attempted would become ineffectual. No one member of that house, in the utmost warmth of debate, is recorded to have suggested the abolition of the court of star-chamber, or any provision for the periodical meeting of parliament. Though such remedies for the greatest abuses were in reality consonant to the actual unrepealed law of the land; yet, as they implied, in the apprehension of the generality, a retrenchment of the king's prerogative, they had not yet become familiar to their hopes. In asserting the illegality of arbitrary detention, of compulsory loans, of tonnage and poundage levied without consent of parliament, they stood in defence of positive rights won by their fathers, the prescriptive inheritance of Englishmen. Twelve years more of repeated aggressions taught the long parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already suspected, that they must recover more of their ancient constitution from oblivion, that they must sustain its partial weakness by new securities, that, in order to render the existence of monarchy compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it had usurped, but of something that was its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[629] The general temperance and chastity of Charles, and the effect those virtues had in reforming the outward face of the court, are attested by many writers, and especially by Mrs. Hutchinson, whose good word he would not have undeservedly obtained. _Mem. of Col. Hutchinson_, p. 65. I am aware that he was not the perfect saint as well as martyr which his panegyrists represent him to have been; but it is an unworthy office, even for the purpose of throwing ridicule on exaggerated praise, to turn the microscope of history on private life.

[630] War had not been declared at Charles's accession, nor at the dissolution of the first parliament. In fact, he was much more set upon it than his subjects. Hume and all his school keep this out of sight.

[631] Hume has disputed this, but with little success, even on his own showing. He observes, on an assertion of Wilson, that Buckingham lost his popularity after Bristol arrived, because he proved that the former, while in Spain, had professed himself a papist--that it is false, and _was never said by Bristol_. It is singular that Hume should know so positively what Bristol did not say in 1624, when it is notorious that he said in parliament what nearly comes to the same thing in 1626. See a curious letter in Cabala, p. 224, showing what a combination had been formed against Buckingham, of all descriptions of malcontents.

[632] _Parl. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 6.

[633] _Id._ 33.

[634] The language of Lord-Keeper Coventry in opening the session was very ill calculated for the spirit of the Commons: "If we consider aright, and think of that incomparable distance between the supreme height and majesty of a mighty monarch and the submissive awe and lowliness of loyal subjects, we cannot but receive exceeding comfort and contentment in the frame and constitution of this highest court, wherein not only the prelates, nobles, and grandees, but the commons of all degrees, have their part; and wherein that high majesty doth descend to admit, or rather to invite, the humblest of his subjects to conference and counsel with him," etc. He gave them a distinct hint afterwards that they must not expect to sit long. _Parl. Hist._ 39.

[635] _Parl. Hist._ 60. I know of nothing under the Tudors of greater arrogance than this language. Sir Dudley Carleton, accustomed more to foreign negotiations than to an English House of Commons, gave very just offence by descanting on the misery of the people in other countries. "He cautioned them not to make the king out of love with parliaments by incroaching on his prerogative; for in his messages he had told them that he must then use new councils. In all Christian kingdoms there were parliaments anciently, till the monarchs seeing their turbulent spirits, stood upon their prerogatives, and overthrew them all, except with us. In foreign countries the people look not like ours, with store of flesh on their backs; but like ghosts, being nothing but skin and bones, with some thin cover to their nakedness, and wearing wooden shoes on their feet; a misery beyond expression, and that we are yet free from; and let us not lose the repute of a free-born nation by our turbulency in parliament." Rushworth.

This was a hint, in the usual arrogant style of courts, that the liberties of the people depended on favour, and not on their own determination to maintain them.

[636] _Parl. Hist._ 119; Hatsell, i. 147; Lords' Journals. A few peers refused to join in this.

Dr. Lingard has observed that the opposition in the House of Lords was headed by the Earl of Pembroke, who had been rather conspicuous in the late reign, and whose character is drawn by Clarendon in the first book of history. He held ten proxies in the king's first parliament, as Buckingham did thirteen. Lingard, ix. 328. In the second Pembroke had had only five, but the duke still came with thirteen. Lords' Journals, p. 491. This enormous accumulation of suffrages in one person led to an order of the house, which is now its established regulation, that no peer can hold more than two proxies. Lords' Journals, p. 507.

[637] _Parl. Hist._ 125; Hatsell, 141.

[638] Mr. Brodie has commented rather too severely on Bristol's conduct. Vol. ii. p. 109. That he was "actuated merely by motives of self-aggrandisement," is surely not apparent; though he might be more partial to Spain than we may think right, or even though he might have some bias towards the religion of Rome. The last, however, is by no means proved; for the king's word is no proof in my eyes.

[639] See the proceedings on the mutual charges of Buckingham and Bristol in Rushworth, or the _Parliamentary History_. Charles's behaviour is worth noticing. He sent a message to the house, desiring that they would not comply with the earl's request of being allowed counsel; and yielded ungraciously, when the Lords remonstrated against the prohibition. _Parl. Hist._ 97, 132. The attorney-general exhibited articles against Bristol as to facts depending in great measure on the king's sole testimony. Bristol petitioned the house "to take in consideration of what consequence such a precedent might be; and thereon most humbly to move his majesty for the declining, at least, of his majesty's accusation and testimony." _Id._ 98. The house ordered two questions on this to be put to the judges: 1. Whether, in case of treason or felony, the king's testimony was to be admitted or not? 2. Whether words spoken to the prince, who is after king, make any alteration in the case? They were ordered to deliver their opinions three days afterwards. But when the time came, the chief justice informed the house that the attorney-general had communicated to the judges his majesty's pleasure that they should forbear to give an answer. _Id._ 103, 106.

Hume says, "Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham, when he corroborated his favourite's narrative by his testimony." But no assertion can be more gratuitous; the supposition indeed is impossible.

[640] _Parl. Hist._ 193. If the following letter is accurate, the privy-council themselves were against this dissolution: "Yesterday the Lords sitting in council at Whitehall to argue whether the parliament should be dissolved or not, were all with one voice against the dissolution of it; and to-day, when the lord keeper drew out the commission to have read it, they sent four of their own body to his majesty to let him know how dangerous this abruption would be to the state, and beseech him the parliament might sit but two days--he answered not a minute."--15 June, 1626. Mede's Letters, _ubi supra_. The author expresses great alarm at what might be the consequence of this step. Mede ascribes this to the council; but others, perhaps more probably, to the house of peers. The king's expression "not a minute" is mentioned by several writers.

[641] Rushworth, Kennet.

[642] Mede's Letters--"On Monday the judges sat in Westminster-hall to persuade the people to pay subsidies; but there arose a great tumultuous shout amongst them: 'A parliament! a parliament! else no subsidies!' The levying of the subsidies, verbally granted in parliament, being propounded to the subsidy men in Westminster, all of them, saving some thirty among five thousand (and they all the king's servants), cried 'A parliament! a parliament!' etc. The same was done in Middlesex on Monday also, in five or six places, but far more are said to have refused the grant. At Hicks's hall the men of Middlesex assembled there, when they had heard a speech for the purpose, made their obeisance; and so went out without any answer affirmative or negative. In Kent the whole county denied, saying that subsidies were matters of too high a nature for them to meddle withal, and that they durst not deal therewith, lest, hereafter they might be called in question." July 22, _et post_. In Harleian MSS. xxxvii. fol. 192, we find a letter from the king to the deputy lieutenant and justices of every county, informing them that he had dissolved the last parliament because the disordered passion of some members of that house, contrary to the good inclination of the greater and wiser sort of them, had frustrated the grant of four subsidies, and three-fifteenths, where they had promised; he therefore enjoins the deputy lieutenants to cause all the troops and bands of the county to be mustered, trained, and ready to march, as he is threatened with invasion; that the justices do divide the county into districts, and appoint in each able persons to collect and receive moneys, promising the parties to employ them in the common defence; to send a list of those who contribute and those who refuse, "that we may hereby be informed who are well affected to our service, and who are otherwise." July 7, 1626. It is evident that the pretext of invasion, which was utterly improbable, was made use of in order to shelter the king's illegal proceedings.

[643] Rushworth's Abr. i. 270.

[644] The 321st volume of Hargrave MSS. p. 300, contains minutes of a debate at the council-table during the interval between the second and third parliaments of Charles, taken by a counsellor. It was proposed to lay an excise on beer; others suggested that it should be on malt, on account of what was brewed in private houses. It was then debated "how to overcome difficulties, whether by persuasion or force. Persuasion, it was thought, would not gain it; and for judicial courses, it would not hold against the subject that would stand upon the right of his own property, and against the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom. The last resort was to a proclamation; for in star-chamber it might be punishable, and thereupon it rested." There follows much more; it seemed to be agreed that there was such a necessity as might justify the imposition; yet a sort of reluctance is visible even among these timid counsellors. The king pressed it forward much. In the same volume (p. 393) we find other proceedings at the council-table, whereof the subject was, the censuring or punishing of some one who had refused to contribute to the loan of 1626 on the ground of its illegality. The highest language is held by some of the conclave in this debate.

Mr. D'Israeli has collected from the same copious reservoir, the manuscripts of the British Museum, several more illustrations, both of the arbitrary proceedings of the council, and of the bold spirit with which they were resisted. _Curiosities of Literature_, New Series, iii. 381. But this ingenious author is too much imbued with "the monstrous faith of many made for one," and sets the private feelings of Charles for an unworthy and dangerous minion, above the liberties and interests of the nation.

[645] Rushworth, Kennet.

[646] See above, in chap. v. Coke himself, while chief justice, had held that one committed by the privy-council was not bailable by any court in England. _Parl. Hist._ 310. He had nothing to say when pressed with this in the next parliament, but that he had misgrounded his opinion upon a certain precedent, which being nothing to the purpose, he was now assured his opinion was as little to the purpose. _Id._ 325; _State Trials_, iii. 81.

[647] _State Trials_, iii. 1-234; _Parl. Hist._ 246, 259, etc.; Rushworth.

[648] At the council-table, some proposing a parliament, the king said, he did abominate the name. Mede's Letters, 30th Sept. 1626.

[649] Rushworth; Mede's Letters in Harl. MSS. _passim_.

[650] Rushworth's Abr. i. 304; Cabala, part ii. 217. See what is said of this by Mr. Brodie, ii. 158.

[651] A commission addressed to Lord Wimbledon, 28th Dec. 1625, empowers him to proceed against soldiers or dissolute persons joining with them, who should commit any robberies, etc., which by martial law ought to be punished with death, by such summary course as is agreeable to martial law, etc. Rymer, xviii. 254. Another, in 1626, may be found. P. 763. It is unnecessary to point out how unlike these commissions are to our present mutiny-bills.

[652] Bishop Williams, as we are informed by his biographer, though he promoted the petition of right, stickled for the additional clause adopted by the Lords, reserving the king's sovereign power; which very justly exposed him to suspicion of being corrupted. For that he was so is most evident by what follows; where we are told that he had an interview with the Duke of Buckingham, when they were reconciled; and "his grace had the bishop's consent with a little asking, that he would be his grace's faithful servant in the next session of parliament, and was allowed to hold up a seeming enmity, and his own popular estimation, that he might the sooner do the work." Hacket's _Life of Williams_, pp. 77, 80. With such instances of baseness and treachery in the public men of this age, surely the distrust of the Commons was not so extravagant as the school of Hume pretend.

[653] The debates and conferences on this momentous subject, especially on the article of the habeas corpus, occupy near two hundred columns in the _New Parliamentary History_, to which I refer the reader.

In one of these conferences, the Lords, observing what a prodigious weight of legal ability was arrayed on the side of the petition, very fairly determined to hear counsel for the Crown. One of these, Serjeant Ashley, having argued in behalf of the prerogative in a high tone, such as had been usual in the late reign, was ordered into custody; and the Lords assured the other house, that he had no authority from them for what he had said. _Id._ 327. A remarkable proof of the rapid growth of popular principles!

[654] Hargrave MSS. xxxii. 97.

[655] _Parl. Hist._ 436.

[656] Stat. 3 Car. I. c. 1. Hume has printed in a note the whole statute with the preamble, which I omit for the sake of brevity, and because it may be found in so common a book.

[657] _Parl. Hist._ 431.

[658] Rushworth Abr. i. 409.

[659] _Parl. Hist._ 441, etc.

[660] Cawdrey's Case, 5 Reports; Cro. Jac. 37; Neal, p. 432. The latter says, above three hundred were deprived; but Collier reduces them to forty-nine. P. 687. The former writer states the nonconformist ministers at this time in twenty-four counties to have been 754; of course the whole number was much greater. P. 434. This minority was considerable; but it is chiefly to be noticed, that it contained the more exemplary portion of the clergy; no scandalous or absolutely illiterate incumbent, of whom there was a very large number, being a nonconformist. This general enforcement of conformity, however it might compel the majority's obedience, rendered the separation of the incompliant more decided. Neal, 446. Many retired to Holland, especially of the Brownist, or Independent denomination. _Id._ 436. And Bancroft, like his successor Laud, interfered to stop some who were setting out for Virginia. _Id._ 454.

[661] Lord Bacon, in his advertisement respecting the _Controversies of the Church of England_, written under Elizabeth, speaks of this notion as newly broached. "Yea and some indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonourable and derogatory speech and censure of the churches abroad; and that so far, as some of our men ordained in foreign parts have been pronounced to be no lawful ministers."--Vol. i. p. 382. It is evident, by some passages in Strype, attentively considered, that natives regularly ordained abroad in the presbyterian churches were admitted to hold preferment in England; the first bishop who objected to them seems to have been Aylmer. Instances, however, of foreigners holding preferment without any re-ordination, may be found down to the civil wars. _Annals of Reformation_, ii. 522, and Appendix, 116; _Life of Grindal_, 271; Collier, ii. 594; Neal, i. 258.

The divine right of episcopacy is said to have been laid down by Bancroft, in his famous sermon at Paul's cross, in 1588. But I do not find anything in it to that effect. It is, however, pretty distinctly asserted, if I mistake not the sense, in the canons of 1606. Overall's _Convocation Book_, 179, etc. Yet Laud had been reproved by the university of Oxford in 1604, for maintaining, in his exercise for bachelor of divinity, that there could be no true church without bishops, which was thought to cast a bone of contention between the church of England and the reformed upon the Continent. Heylin's _Life of Laud_, 54.

Cranmer and some of the original founders of the Anglican church, so far from maintaining the divine and indispensable right of episcopal government, held bishops and priests to be the same order.

[662] See the queen's injunctions of 1559 (_Somers Tracts_, i. 65), and compare preamble of 5 and 6 of Edw. VI. c. 3.

[663] The first of these Sabbatarians was a Dr. Bound, whose sermon was suppressed by Whitgift's order. But some years before, one of Martin Mar-prelate's charges against Aylmer was for playing at bowls on Sundays: and the word sabbath as applied to that day may be found occasionally under Elizabeth, though by no means so usual as afterwards. One of Bound's recommendations was that no feasts should be given on that day, "except by lords, knights, and persons of quality;" for which unlucky reservation his adversaries did not forget to deride him. Fuller's _Church History_, p. 227. This writer describes in his quaint style the abstinence from sports produced by this new doctrine; and remarks, what a slight acquaintance with human nature would have taught Archbishop Laud, that "the more liberty people were offered, the less they used it; it was sport for them to refrain from sport." See also Collier, 643; Neal, 386; Strype's _Whitgift_, 530; May's _Hist. of Parliament_, 16.

[664] Heylin's _Life of Laud_, 15; Fuller, part ii. p. 76.

The regulations enacted at various times since the Reformation for the observance of abstinence in as strict a manner, though not ostensibly on the same grounds, as it is enjoined in the church of Rome, may deserve some notice. A statute of 1548 (2 and 3 Edward VI. c. 19), after reciting that one day or one kind of meat is not more holy, pure, or clean than another, and much else to the same effect, yet "forasmuch as divers of the king's subjects, turning their knowledge therein to gratify their sensuality, have of late more than in times past broken and contemned such abstinence, which hath been used in this realm upon the Fridays and Saturdays, the embering days and other days commonly called vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent, and other accustomed times; the king's majesty considering that due and godly abstinence is a mean to virtue and to subdue men's bodies to their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that fishers and men using the trade of fishing in the sea may thereby the rather be set on work, and that by eating of fish much flesh shall be saved and increased," enacts, after repealing all existing laws on the subject, that such as eat flesh at the forbidden seasons shall incur a penalty of ten shillings, or ten days' imprisonment _without flesh_, and a double penalty for the second offence.

The next statute relating to abstinence is one (5th Eliz. c. 5) entirely for the increase of the fishery. It enacts (Sec. 15, etc.) that no one, unless having a licence, shall eat flesh on fish-days, or on Wednesdays, now made an additional fish-day, under a penalty of L3, or three months' imprisonment. Except that every one having three dishes of sea-fish at his table, might have one of flesh also. But "because no manner of person shall misjudge of the intent of this statute," it is enacted that whosoever shall notify that any eating of fish or forbearing of flesh mentioned therein is of any necessity for the saving of the soul of man, or that it is the service of God, otherwise than as other politic laws are and be; that then such persons shall be punished as spreaders of false news (Sec. 39 and 40). The act 27th Eliz. c. 11, repeals the prohibition as to Wednesday; and provides that no victuallers shall vend flesh in Lent, nor upon Fridays or Saturdays, under a penalty. The 35th Eliz. c. 7, Sec. 22, reduces the penalty of three pounds or three months' imprisonment, enacted by 5th of Eliz. to one-third. This is the latest statute that appears on the subject.

Many proclamations appear to have been issued in order to enforce an observance so little congenial to the propensities of Englishmen. One of those in the first year of Edward was before any statute; and its very words respecting the indifference of meats in a religious sense were adopted by the legislature the next year. Strype's _Eccles. Memor._ ii. 81. In one of Elizabeth's, A.D. 1572, as in the statute of Edward, the political motives of the prohibition seem in some measure associated with the superstition it disclaims; for eating in the season of Lent is called "licentious and carnal disorder, in contempt of God and man, and only to the satisfaction of devilish and carnal appetite;" and butchers, etc., "ministering to such foul lust of the flesh," were severely mulcted. Strype's _Annals_, ii. 208. But in 1576 another proclamation to the same effect uses no such hard words, and protests strongly against any superstitious interpretation of its motive. _Life of Grindal_, p. 226. So also in 1579 (Strype's _Annals_, ii. 608), and, as far as I have observed, in all of a later date, the encouragement of the navy and fishery is set forth as their sole ground. In 1596, Whitgift, by the queen's command, issued letters to the bishops of his province, to take order that the fasting-days, Wednesday and Friday, should be kept, and no suppers eaten, especially on Friday evens. This was on account of the great dearth of that and the preceding year. Strype's _Whitgift_, p. 490. These proclamations for the observance of Lent continued under James and Charles, as late, I presume, as the commencement of the civil war. They were diametrically opposed to the puritan tenets; for, notwithstanding the pretext about the fishery, there is no doubt that the dominant ecclesiastics maintained the observance of Lent as an ordinance of the church. But I suspect that little regard was paid to Friday and Saturday as days of weekly fast. Rymer, xvii. 131, 134, 349; xviii. 268, 282, 961.

This abstemious system, however, was only compulsory on the poor. Licences were easily obtained by others from the privy-council in Edward's days, and afterwards from the bishop. They were empowered, with their guests, to eat flesh on all fasting-days for life. Sometimes the number of guests was limited. Thus the Marquis of Winchester had permission for twelve friends; and John Sanford, draper of Gloucester, for two. Strype's _Memorials_, ii. 82. The act above mentioned for encouragement of the fishery, 5th Eliz. c. 5, provides that L1 6_s._ 8_d._ shall be paid for granting every licence, and 6_s._ 8_d._ annually afterwards, to the poor of the parish. But no licence was to be granted for eating beef at any time of the year, or veal from Michaelmas to the first of May. A melancholy privation to our countrymen! but, I have no doubt, little regarded. Strype makes known to us the interesting fact, that Ambrose Potter, of Gravesend, and his wife, had permission from Archbishop Whitgift "to eat flesh and white meats in Lent, during their lives; so that it was done soberly and frugally, cautiously, and avoiding public scandal as much as might be, and giving 6_s._ 8_d._ annually to the poor of the parish." _Life of Whitgift_, 246.

The civil wars did not so put an end to the compulsory observance of Lent and fish days but that similar proclamations are found after the Restoration, I know not how long. Kennet's Register, p. 367 and 558. And some orthodox Anglicans continued to make a show of fasting. The following extracts from Pepys' diary are, perhaps, characteristic of the class. "I called for a dish of fish which we had for dinner, this being the first day of Lent; and I do intend to try whether I can keep it or no." Feb. 27, 1661. "Notwithstanding my resolution, yet for want of other victuals, I did eat flesh this Lent, but am resolved to eat as little as I can."

[665] Wilson, 709.

[666] Debates in parliament, 1621, vol. i. pp. 45, 52. The king requested them not to pass this bill, being so directly against his proclamation. _Id._ 60. Shepherd's expulsion is mentioned in Mede's Letters, Harl. MSS. 389.

[667] Vol. ii. 97. Two acts were passed (1 Car. I. c. 1 and 3 Car I. c. 2) for the better observance of Sunday; the former of which gave great annoyance, it seems, to the orthodox party. "Had any such bill," says Heylin, "been offered in King James's time, it would have found a sorry welcome; but this king being under a necessity of compliance with them, resolved to grant them their desires in that particular, to the end that they might grant his also in the aid required, when that obstruction was removed. The Sabbatarians took the benefit of this opportunity for the obtaining of this grant, the first that ever they obtained by all their strugglings, which of what consequence it was we shall see hereafter." _Life of Laud_, p. 129. Yet this statute permits the people lawful sports and pastimes on Sundays within their own parishes.

[668] Without loading the page with too many references on a subject so little connected with this work, I mention Strype's _Annals_, vol. i. p. 118, and a letter from Jewel to P. Martyr in Burnet, vol. iii. Appendix 275.

[669] Collier, 568.

[670] Strype's _Annals_, i. 207, 294.

[671] Strype's _Whitgift_, 434-472.

[672] It is admitted on all hands that the Greek fathers did not inculcate the predestinarian system. Elizabeth having begun to read some of the fathers, Bishop Cox writes of it with some disapprobation, adverting especially to the Pelagianism of Chrysostom and the other Greeks. Strype's _Annals_, i. 324.

[673] Winwood, iii. 293. The intemperate and even impertinent behaviour of James in pressing the states of Holland to inflict some censure or punishment on Vorstius, is well known. But though Vorstius was an Arminian, it was not precisely on account of those opinions that he incurred the king's peculiar displeasure, but for certain propositions as to the nature of the Deity, which James called atheistical, but which were in fact Arian. The letters on this subject in Winwood are curious. Even at this time, the king is said to have spoken moderately of predestination as a dubious point (p. 452), though he had treated Arminius as a mischievous innovator for raising a question about it; and this is confirmed by his letter to the States in 1613. Brandt, iii. 129; and see p. 138; See Collier, p. 711, for the king's sentiments in 1616; also Brandt, iii. 313.

[674] Sir Dudley Carleton's _Letters and Negotiations, passim_; Brandt's _History of Reformation in Low Countries_, vol. iii. The English divines sent to this synod were decidedly inclined to Calvinism, but they spoke of themselves as deputed by the king, not by the church of England which they did not represent.

[675] There is some obscurity about the rapid transition of the court from Calvinism to the opposite side. It has been supposed that the part taken by James at the synod of Dort was chiefly political, with a view to support the house of Orange against the party headed by Barnevelt. But he was so much more of a theologian than a statesman, that I much doubt whether this will account satisfactorily for his zeal in behalf of the Gomarists. He wrote on the subject with much polemical bitterness, but without reference, so far as I have observed, to any political faction; though Sir Dudley Carleton's letters show that _he_ contemplated the matter as a minister ought to do. Heylin intimates that the king grew "more moderate afterwards, and into a better liking of those opinions which he had laboured to condemn at the synod of Dort." _Life of Laud_, 120. The court language, indeed, shifted so very soon after this, that Antonio de Dominis, the famous half-converted Archbishop of Spalato, is said to have invented the name of doctrinal puritans for those who distinguished themselves by holding the Calvinistic tenets. Yet the synod of Dort was in 1618; while De Dominis left England not later than 1622. Buckingham seems to have gone very warmly into Laud's scheme of excluding the Calvinists. The latter gave him a list of divines on Charles's accession, distinguishing their names by O. and P. for orthodox and puritan; including several tenets in the latter denomination, besides those of the quinquarticular controversy; such as the indispensable observance of the Lord's day, the indiscrimination of bishops and presbyters, etc. _Life of Laud_, 119. The influence of Laud became so great that to preach in favour of Calvinism, though commonly reputed to be the doctrine of the church, incurred punishment in any rank. Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, one of the divines sent to Dort, and reckoned among the principal theologians of that age, was reprimanded on his knees before the privy-council for this offence. Collier, p. 750. But in James's reign the University of Oxford was decidedly Calvinistic. A preacher, about 1623, having used some suspicious expressions, was compelled to recant them, and to maintain the following theses in the divinity school: Decretum praedestinationis non est conditionale--Gratia sufficiens ad salutem non conceditur omnibus. Wood, ii. 348. And I suppose it continued so in the next reign, so far as the university's opinions could be manifested. But Laud took care that no one should be promoted, as far as he could help it, who held these tenets.

[676] Winwood, vol. i. pp. 1, 52, 388; _Lettres d'Ossat_, i. 221; Birch's _Negotiations of Edmondes_, p. 36. These references do not relate to the letter said to have been forged in the king's name, and addressed to Clement VIII. by Lord Balmerino. But Laing, _Hist. of Scotland_, iii. 59, and Birch's _Negotiations_, etc. 177, render it almost certain that this letter was genuine, which indeed has been generally believed by men of sense. James was a man of so little consistency or sincerity that it is difficult to solve the problem of this clandestine intercourse. But it might very likely proceed from his dread of being excommunicated, and, in consequence, assassinated. In a proclamation, commanding all jesuits and priests to quit the realm, dated in 1603, he declares himself personally "so much beholden to the new bishop of Rome for his kind office and private temporal carriage towards us in many things, as we shall ever be ready to requite the same towards him as Bishop of Rome in state and condition of a secular prince." Rymer, xvi. 573. This is explained by a passage in the memoirs of Sully (l. 15). Clement VIII., though before Elizabeth's death he had abetted the project of placing Arabella on the throne, thought it expedient, after this design had failed, to pay some court to James, and had refused to accept the dedication of a work written against him, besides, probably, some other courtesies. There is a letter from the king addressed to the pope, and probably written in 1603, among the Cottonian MSS. Nero B. vi. 9, which shows his disposition to coax and coquet with the Babylonian, against whom he so much inveighs in his printed works. It seems that Clement had so far presumed as to suggest that the Prince of Wales should be educated a catholic; which the king refuses, but not in so strong a manner as he should have done. I cannot recollect whether this letter has been printed, though I can scarcely suppose the contrary. Persons himself began to praise the works of James, and show much hope of what he would do. Cotton, Jul. B. vi. 77.

The severities against catholics seem at first to have been practically mitigated. Winwood, ii. 78. Archbishop Hutton wrote to Cecil, complaining of the toleration granted to papists, while the puritans were severely treated. _Id._ p. 40; Lodge, iii. 251. "The former," he says, "partly by this round dealing with the puritans, and partly by some extraordinary favour, have grown mightily in number, courage, and influence."--"If the gospel shall quail, and popery prevail, it will be imputed principally unto your great counsellors, who either procure or yield to grant toleration to some." James told some gentlemen who petitioned for toleration, that the utmost they could expect was connivance. Carte, iii. 711. This seems to have been what he intended through his reign, till importuned by Spain and France to promise more.