nature, are wholly and directlie contrary to the said lawes and statutes of this your realme. VII. They doe therefore humblie pray your most excellent Remedies Majestie that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yeild prayed for: any guift, loane, benevolence, taxe, or such like charge, without common consent by Acte of Parliament; and that none be called to make aunswere or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same or for refusall thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before mencioned, be imprisoned or deteined; and that your Majestie would be pleased to remove the said souldiers and marriners, and that your people may not be soe burthened in tyme to come; and that the aforesaid commissions, for proceeding by martial lawe, may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever to be executed as aforesaid, lest by colour of them any of your Majestie's subjects be destroyed or put to death contrary to the lawes and franchise of the land. liberties All which they most humblie pray of your most excellent as their Majestie as their rights and liberties, according to the lawes and rights and statutes of this realme; and that your Majestie would alsoe vouchsafe to declare, that the awards, doings, and proceedings, the laws ana according to to the prejudice of your people in any of the premisses, shall not statutes. be drawen hereafter into consequence or example; and that your Majestie would be alsoe graciouslie pleased, for the further comfort and safetie of your people, to declare your royall will and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid all your officers and ministers shall serve you according to the lawes and statutes of this realme, as they tender the honor of your Majestie, and the prosperitie of this kingdome. Qua quidem peticione lectâ et plenius intellectâ per dictum dominum regem taliter est responsum in pleno parliamento, videlicet, Soit droit fait come est desire. (Statutes of the Realm, v. 23, 24.) The Commons were triumphant; and grateful amidst their rejoicings. They immediately passed a bill granting Subsidies the five subsidies already promised; and were preparing granted. another giving the King tonnage and poundage for life, but Tonnage delayed its passing in order to remonstrate against the con- and tinued illegal levying of those duties without the sanction of Parliament, and to pray for the removal from office of Buckingham, to whose evil influence they attributed all the misfortunes of the kingdom both at home and abroad. To poundage. Parliament prevent the delivery of this remonstrance, the King prorogued, suddenly (June 26th) prorogued Parliament. 26 June, 1628. Session II. 10 March. Merchants On the 20th of January, 1628-9, the two Houses reassembled. During the recess the assassination of Buckingham by Felton (Aug. 23rd) had removed one great cause of contention between Charles and his people; but the King had continued, in violation of the Petition of imprisoned Right,' to raise the customs duties as before, and several for refusing merchants, on refusal to pay, had been punished by distonnage and traint of their goods and imprisonment. On appealing to poundage. the courts of law, they were informed by the judges that the King's right was conclusively established by the decision in Bates's case. to pay Copies of King's first answer an nexed. The natural irritation of the Commons was increased on hearing that the speech in which Charles, at the close of the last session, had claimed tonnage and poundage as his due, had been entered on the Parliament roll together with the Petition of Right, and that he had caused 1,500 copies of that great Constitutional compact between the Crown and the people to be circulated throughout the country with his first and repudiated answer annexed, in addition to the final answer which alone formed part of the statute.9 Selden com- Selden at once complained to the House of the breach (as plains to the House. 1 The customs duties were not mentioned by name in the Petition of Right, but it might fairly be contended that they were included in the words 'taxe or such like charge' which that statute had declared that no man should be com pelled to pay without common consent by Act of Parliament. The word 'tax' had actually been employed officially, to include customs duties. (See Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1876.) In the remonstrance which the Commons were prevented from delivering by the prorogation, they had declared that the levying of tonnage and poundage without consent was illegal by the Petition of Right. Charles, however, relied on the decision of the judges in Bates's case (supra, p. 503), and the legal question was certainly not free from doubt. 2 State Papers [Dom. 1628-9, p. 456], cxxxiii. 4; S. R. Gardiner, Pers. Gov. of Ch. I., i. 46. [Sir Francis Nethersole writes to the Queen of Bohemia (State Papers, loc. cit.), Jan. 24, 1629, that the House of Commons is much discontented with the printing of the Petition of Right with the several answers given thereto, and his Majesty's speech the last day of the session, it having been first printed with the answer, Droit soit fait comme il est désiré, and that impression afterwards suppressed. But that which troubleth them most, Sir Francis adds, is the recording that last speech of his Majesty in the Clerk's Book of the Commons' House since the recess. The Commons evidently felt strongly that the authenticity of their Records was at stake.-ED.] he alleged) of the Petition of Right in the case of the merchants whose goods had been seized, and also of the cutting off of a man's ears by an arbitrary judgment of the Star Chamber. 'Next,' he said, 'they will take away our arms, and then our legs, and so our lives; let us all see we are sensible of this. Customs creep on us; let us make a just representation hereof unto his Majesty.' The dispute as to tonnage and poundage was embittered and compli- Question of cated by the fact that Henry Rolle, one of the merchants privilege: Rolle's case. whose goods had been seized, was a member of the House. At this period, privilege of Parliament was held to protect not only the persons but the goods of members from arrest, and although owing to the time (the middle of the parliamentary recess) when the seizure in Rolle's case had been effected, it could only be brought technically within the privilege by means of a legal fiction, the Commons were disposed to resent the matter as an attack on their liberties: and while one member, Phelips, moved for a committee on the whole question of the levy of tonnage and poundage, another, Littleton, desired that 'the parties be sent for that had violated the liberties.'1 The King now thought it Charles reprudent to attempt to allay the rising storm. Sending for nounces the right to levy the two Houses to Whitehall, he explicitly renounced all tonnage and claim to levy tonnage and poundage as of right. 'It ever poundage. was, and still is my meaning,' he told them, 'by the gift of my people to enjoy it, and my intention in my speech at the end of the last session was not to challenge tonnage and poundage of right, but for expedience de bene esse, shewing you the necessity, not the right, by which I was to take it until you had granted it unto me; assuring myself, according to your general profession, that you wanted time and not good will to give it me.' This politic speech made a most favourable impression, and two days afterwards a proposal was made by Sir John Coke to bring in 1 Gardiner, Pers. Gov. of Ch. I., i. 47, 48. 2 Contarini's Despatch, Venetian MSS., cited by Gardiner, Pers. Gov. of Ch. I., i. 50. Conservative position of the Com mons in politics: and in religion. Position taken by the a bill granting tonnage and poundage to the King; but there still remained a grievance which the Commons had even more at heart than illegal taxation, and the latter question was postponed until the recent innovations in religion had been discussed. The position taken up by the Commons alike in politics and religion was a conservative one. In politics, they sought to preserve the free English Constitution as it had existed prior to the despotic practices of the Tudors and the despotic theories as well as practices of the Stuarts. In religion, they adhered to the narrow Calvinistic theology which had been prominent in the National Church from the Reformation to the beginning of the seventeenth century. This they regarded as the orthodox doctrine, and considered it to be supported by the Prayer Book, the Catechism, the Homilies, the writings of Bishop Jewel, the Lambeth Articles of 1595, the Resolutions of the Synod of Dort in 1618, the uniform consent of writers whose works had been published by authority, and by the submission enjoined by the two Universities upon the opponents of the Lambeth Articles. They complained of the spread of Popery and Arminianism; the removal of communiontables to be set up as altars at the eastern end of churches; the placing of candlesticks on them; and the obeisance made towards them; the ordering that congregations should stand up at the singing of the Gloria Patri, and that women coming to be churched should wear veils; the setting up of pictures and lights and images in churches, praying towards the east, crossing and other devout but to them objectionable gestures.1 In December 1628, at Laud's suggestion, the King had endeavoured to silence all religious controversy by issuing King and Laud in the a new edition of the Articles of Religion, prefaced by a religious controversy. Declaration (which is still printed in the Book of Common Prayer) directing that thereafter no man should either in writing or preaching put his own sense or comment as the 1 Parl. or Const. Hist. iii. 483; Gardiner, Pers. Gov. of Ch. I., i. 87. meaning of the Articles, but should take them in their literal and grammatical sense. He at the same time inferentially repudiated the right of Parliament to deal with religious questions, by declaring that to the King, as Supreme Governor of the Church, and to the Convocation, acting by his leave and with his approval, such matters exclusively belonged. But while professing to act impartially, the King's sympathies were unmistakeably shown not only by his close alliance with Laud, but his ostentatious bestowal of promotion upon those of the clergy who had rendered themselves notorious, and incurred the animosity of the House of Commons, by their simultaneous advocacy of anti-Calvinistic doctrines in the Church and of the Divine right of kings in the State. Dr. Montague, whose Appello Caesarem in 1625 had been condemned by the Commons as containing matters contrary to the Thirty-nine Articles, and who in 1627 had been foremost in inculcating the duty of paying the forced loan, was promoted by the King to a bishopric shortly after the prorogation of Parliament in 1628; and at the same time Dr. Mainwaring, who had but recently been impeached by the Commons and condemned by the Lords for his advocacy, in the pulpit and the press, of the right of the King to tax his subjects without the consent of Parliament,1 was rewarded with a rich living, and ultimately advanced to the bishopric of St. David's. The idea of Toleration and Religious liberty was as yet Toleration unthought of by either King or Parliament, and the Com- unthought of by King, or mons, having declared their interpretation of the Articles Parliament. of religion to be the only true one, proceeded to summon the authors of the ceremonial innovations to answer at the bar of the House. In the meantime the question of tonnage and poundage Question of was again taken up, and, contrary to the advice of Pym, tonnage and poundage who wished the matter to be dealt with on the broad resumed. national basis of the illegality of taxation without consent, the Commons resolved to give prominence to the breach 1 Supra, p. 526. |