The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution. Samuel Rawson Gardiner
to perceive. On the one hand direct taxation is always felt to be a greater annoyance than indirect, and on the other hand Ship-money was a new burden, whereas Tonnage and Poundage, and even the Impositions, had been levied for many years. The constitutional resistance rested on broader grounds. To levy direct taxation to meet extraordinary expenditure without recourse to Parliament was not only contrary to the Petition of Right, but was certain, if the system was allowed to establish itself, to enable the King to supply himself with all that he might need even in time of war without calling Parliament at all. As there could be no doubt that Charles’s main ground in omitting to summon Parliament was his fear lest his ecclesiastical proceedings might be called in question, the dissatisfaction of those who resented his attack on their religion was reinforced by the dissatisfaction of those who resented his attack on the Constitution, and of the far greater number who resented his attack on their pockets.
On the King’s side it was urged that Ship-money was not a tax at all, but an ancient payment in lieu of personal service in defence of the realm by sea, and also that the King was himself the sole judge of the existence of the danger which would require such exertions to be made. In 1637 Charles took the opinion of the judges on his case (No. 20, p. 108), and the whole question was thrashed out before the twelve judges in the Exchequer Chamber in the case of Hampden in 1637-38. The arguments on either side bristled with precedents and references to law books, but a fair idea of the broader grounds on which each party took its stand may be gathered from the extracts from the speech of Oliver St. John, who was one of Hampden’s counsel (No. 21, p. 109), and from the argument of Sir Robert Berkeley (No. 22, p. 115). In reading St. John’s speech, it must not be forgotten that he was precluded by his position as an advocate from adducing any considerations drawn from his suspicions of Charles’s motives in levying Ship-money by prerogative rather than by Parliamentary authority.
Ultimately judgment was given for the King, only two of the judges dissenting on the main point at issue, though three others refrained from giving their support to the King on other grounds.
Whether, if England had been left to itself, any resistance would have ensued it is impossible to say. There were no signs of anything of the sort, and the whole organisation of the country being in the hands of the King, it would have been very difficult, unless the King chose to summon a Parliament, to obtain a nucleus for more than passive resistance. Passive resistance in the shape of a wide-spread refusal to pay Ship-money indeed existed, but however annoying may be the difficulties of a government exposed to general ill-will, they are not likely at once to endanger its existence. It is when dangers threaten it from abroad, and when it becomes necessary to rouse the national spirit in its defence, that the weakness of an unpopular government stands clearly revealed.
This danger was already approaching. In 1637 Charles attempted to force a new liturgy and canons upon the Scottish people, and in Scotland he had not the governmental organisation on his side which he had in England. The Bishops who had been set up by his father had far less influence than the English Bishops, and the members of the Privy Council which governed in his name, though nominated by himself, were for the most part noblemen whose position in the country was much stronger than that of the English nobility, and who were actuated by jealousy of the Scottish Bishops and by fear lest the King should give wealth and power to the Bishops at the expense of the nobility. In consequence, resistance not only broke out but organised itself; and in 1638 a religious manifesto, the Scottish National Covenant (No. 23, p. 124), was signed by the greater part of the nation. It attacked the church system of Charles, though it nominally professed respect for his authority and avoided all direct attack on Episcopacy.
All attempts at a compromise having failed, and an Assembly which met at Glasgow in the end of 1638 having continued to sit after Charles’s High Commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, had pronounced its dissolution, and having then declared Episcopacy to be abolished, Charles attempted in 1639 an invasion of Scotland. He was unable, however, to bring money enough together to support an army, and he agreed in the Treaty of Berwick to terms which involved a practical surrender of his claims to dictate the religion of Scotland. His subsequent attempt to construe the Treaty to his own advantage led to the threat of a new war, and on April 13, 1640, by the advice of Strafford, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who had come to England in September, 1639, and had from that date become Charles’s principal counsellor, an English Parliament met at Westminster.
The Short Parliament, as it was called, was soon dissolved. It was ready to grant supplies if the King would come to terms with the Scots, and this Charles refused to do.
A new war was the result. The Scots invaded England, defeated a large part of the Royal Army at Newburn, and occupied Northumberland and Durham. Charles had neither an army nor a people behind his back, and he was forced to treat with the invaders. The feelings of the English nation were expressed in the Petition of the Twelve Peers for a New Parliament, laid before the King on August 28, 1640 (No. 24, p. 134). In addition to the piled-up grievances of the past eleven years, was the new one that Charles was believed to have purposed making himself master of England as well as of Scotland by means of an Irish army led into England by Strafford, and paid by subsidies granted by the Irish Parliament. So utterly powerless was Charles before the demands of the Scots for compensation for the expenses of invading England that, on September 7, he summoned a Great Council, or an assembly of the House of Lords alone (No. 25, p. 136), to meet at York to advise him and to guarantee a loan. On November 7, the Long Parliament met at Westminster.
III.: From the meeting of the Long Parliament to the outbreak of the Civil War. [1640-1642.]
For the first time in the reign of Charles I, a Parliament met with an armed force behind it. Though the Scottish army, which continued to occupy the northern counties till August 1641, was not directly in its service, it depended for its support upon the money voted by the English Parliament, and would consequently have placed itself at the disposition of Parliament if Charles had threatened a dissolution. Charles was therefore no longer in a position to refuse his assent to Bills of which he disapproved, and the series of Constitutional Acts passed during the first ten months of the existence of the Long Parliament (Nov. 1640-August 1641), bear witness to the direction taken by it in constitutional matters. The Triennial Act (No. 27, p. 144), enacting that Parliament was to meet at least once in three years, and appointing a machinery by which it might be brought together when that period had elapsed, if the Crown neglected to summon it, struck at Charles’s late system of governing without summoning Parliament until it suited him to do so, but it did nothing to secure the attention of the King to the wishes of the Houses. Whilst measures were being prepared to give effect to the further changes necessary to diminish the King’s authority, the attention of the Houses and of the country was fully occupied by the impeachment, which was ultimately turned into the attainder of the Earl of Strafford.
No great constitutional change can take place without giving dire offence to those at whose expense the change is made, and Parliament had therefore from the very beginning of its existence to take into account the extreme probability that Charles, if he should ever regain power, would attempt to set at naught all that it might do. Against this, they attempted to provide by striking at his ministers, especially at Strafford, whom they knew to have been, for some time, his chief adviser, and whom they regarded as the main supporter of his arbitrary government in the past, and also as the man who was likely from his ability and strength of will to be most dangerous to them in the future, in the event of an attempted reaction. They imagined that if he were condemned and executed no other minister would be found daring enough to carry out the orders of a King who was bent upon reducing Parliament to subjection. They therefore impeached him as a traitor, on the ground that his many arbitrary acts furnished evidence of a settled purpose to place the King above the law, and that such a purpose was tantamount to treason; because, whilst it was apparently directed to strengthening the King, it in reality weakened him by depriving him of the hearts of his subjects.
Whether it was justifiable or not to put Strafford to death for actions which had never before been held to be treasonable, it is certain that the Commons, in imagining that Strafford’s death would end their troubles, under-estimated the gravity of the situation. They imagined that the King, in breaking through what they called the fundamental laws, had been led astray by wicked counsel, and that they