been enforced. But now that the practice had been revived, there was little chance of its falling into desuetude; and, for one hundred years, there was hardly a parliament in which a bill of impeachment was not introduced. Foreign After the prosecution of Bacon and Michell parliament separated for a short adjournment, and when it met again the whole attention of the House was given to foreign affairs. The great object of the members was to hold James to his declaration, that if negotiations failed he would risk blood and treasure for the Protestant cause, and many members were in favour of an open declaration of war. Such were not the views of James. His desire was for a marriage The between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain; his mind was powerfully influenced by the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, and he knew that unless he could secure toleration for the Roman Catholics such a match was impossible. The temper of the Commons, on the other hand, was shown by their decision that towards the war subsidy recusants should pay a double share, by a petition for putting the laws against recusants into full force, and by another for the marriage of the prince to a Protestant. What the Commons feared was that toleration for recusants would prove to be merely the thin end of the wedge towards a re-establishment of Roman Catholicism. As a young member, John Pym, put it: 'If the Papists once obtain a connivance, they will press for a toleration; from thence to an equality; from an equality to a superiority; from a superiority to an extirpation of all contrary religions.' Under the influence of Gondomar and Buckingham James roundly bade the members not to interfere in 'mysteries of state,' and attacked their privilege of free speech by declaring his ability, whether in or out of session, to punish members for their conduct in the House. This brought matters to a crisis; and the House, led by Coke and Thomas Wentworth, member for Yorkshire (afterwards the famous earl of Strafford), enrolled on their journals their opinion, 'That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England,' and that 'in the handling and proceeding of these businesses every member of the House hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech.' When the Commons sent their first petition James showed his appreciation of the position by ordering seats to be set for 'the ambassadors,' as though the House of Commons were a sovereign power. After ten days' reflection he sent for the journals of the House, and tore out the obnoxious protest with his own hand. Parliament was then dissolved, without even passing a subsidy bill; Coke, Phelips, and Mallory were Imprison. sent to the Tower, and Pym was ordered to confine himself to his house. Gondomar took James' action as 'a resolution to leave all and to attach himself to Spain.' All hope of England ment of giving effective aid to the German Protestants was now at an end. Members. The Match. James, however, by no means despaired of effecting something by negotiations, and his idea of bringing about a general reconciliation between the Catholic and Protestant powers, for which the keynote was to be given by the marriage of the Prince of Spanish Wales to the Infanta Mary, was not without a certain nobility. Unfortunately, however, the hostility of parliament to the Catholics, the determination of the emperor to punish Frederick for taking Bohemia, and the fixed principle of the Spaniards not to make war upon the house of Austria, were facts which could not be overcome. Nevertheless, so sanguine was the prince, and so overweening was the belief of Buckingham in his own powers, that the two young men set off on a romantic journey to Madrid, where they hoped to The Madrid conclude the marriage treaty and bring back the Infanta in Journey. triumph. This was quite a false step. No sooner was Charles at Madrid than he found himself compelled by fear of failure to make one concession after another, and finally swore, on behalf of his father and himself, to give full immunity to the English Catholics, and to get parliament to confirm his action within three years. Finding, however, that the Infanta would not be allowed to return with him, even if he married her, Charles left a form of process to authorise someone else to represent him at the marriage ceremony, and then hurried home. When he reached England without his bride the joy of the nation knew no bounds; but cautious men saw that by going as far as he had there was no choice between concluding the marriage and open war. Charles' honour seemed to be bound up in the completion of the match, for which elaborate preparations were going forward at Madrid; but three days before the ceremony Bristol, the English ambassador, was ordered to make fresh demands, and the marriage was indefinitely postponed. Subsequent knowledge places the conduct of Charles in a very bad light, but at the time his popularity was great; and James, having seen the failure of his negotiations, practically withdrew from public affairs, and allowed Buckingham and Charles to take charge of the preparations for an attempt to recover the Palatinate by arms. Accordingly, a parliament elected when the hostility to Spain was at its height assembled in 1624. Hardly a voice was raised for peace; the one question was whether it was better to attack the Palatinate directly, or to bring our main force to bear upon Spain. Finally it was decided to begin by an attack on the Palatinate, and twelve thousand Englishmen were placed for the purpose under Count Mansfeld, a clever but unscrupulous soldier of fortune, who was acting for Frederick. The affair was terribly mismanaged; the English, who would have fought readily The German against Spain, showed little inclination to enter upon a Expedition. wild-goose chase in Germany; the soldiers, when they arrived in Holland, were sent up the Rhine in open boats, half-starved and wretchedly clad. Numbers died, and the chief result was to fill the country with the conviction that Charles and Buckingham had no skill in administration. Impeachment of Meanwhile, the earl of Middlesex, better known as Lionel Cranfield, the clever and economical lord-treasurer, was impeached and punished— nominally for malversation, really because he opposed the war-a proceeding in which Charles, with inconceivable folly, Middlesex. took a leading part. Monopolies, except for new inventions, were abolished, and a request made by parliament for the enforcement of the laws against recusants, at the very time when a secret agreement was being made by James and Charles to suspend these laws as a condition of a marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria, sister of the French king, Louis XIII. The death of James I. followed soon on his retirement from active political life. Worn out by repeated attacks of gout and ague, his mind and body had long been giving way; but at times the old wit flashed forth, and not long before his death he is said to have told Charles, propos of the impeachment of Middlesex, that 'he would live to have his bellyful of impeachments.' He died in March 1625. CHAPTER II ᏢᎪᎡᎢ 1 CHARLES I.: 1625-1649 Born 1600; married, 1625, Henrietta Maria; beheaded 1849. France. CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES Spain. Philip III., d. 1631. Emperors. Ferdinand II., d. 1637. Ferdinand III., d. 1657. Quarrels with his first Parliament-The Petition of Right-The Rise of Laud and Wentworth-Imprisonment of Eliot-Arbitrary Rule-Wentworth in Ireland -Religious Difficulties in Scotland-First Bishops' War-The Short Parliament-Second Bishops' War. Character. AT his accession Charles was twenty-five years old, and his character was fully formed. In all that concerned the externals of royalty he was admirable. Unlike his father, his look and deportment Charles' were regal; but he had little of James' good-nature, and his reserve, which was largely the effect of shyness, prevented him from mixing with his subjects on such terms as to learn their true opinions, as Elizabeth and Henry VIII. had always been able to do. Unfortunately, the delicacy of his constitution as a child had caused his lessons to be excused, and consequently he had none of the solid fund of information in history, politics, and religion for which his father had been distinguished. James, in fact, had been learned but ineffective; Charles was ill-informed, and obstinate through being able to see only one side of a question. Charles, too, had been brought up as a spoilt child, always expecting to have his own way; and Sir Ferdinand Fairfax said of him, 'The king in his own nature is very stiff.' Worse than all these faults, which in many ways were rather to be counted misfortunes, Charles was wanting in ingenuousness. This arose largely from his lack of imagination, which prevented him from seeing what his promises really meant, or what they would seem to mean in the eyes of those to whom they were made. Almost the only thing Charles derived from his father was his overweening belief in the power and prerogatives of a king. He held himself entitled to exercise all the powers of the Tudors, without regard either to the changes in the times which he might have observed, or to differences in character of which he could hardly be expected to be a fair judge. At the date of Buckingham's arrival at court Charles had been fifteen, and as by the folly of James the two young men had been thrown together, Charles had learned to look on the ignorant and self-confident Buckingham as a model of all that was excellent, and nothing had since been able to dissipate the illusion. Nor was Buckingham by any means a mere darling of the Buckingham. court. There was in him a certain magnificence which differentiates him altogether from favourites of the Gaveston type, and places him more on a level with Elizabeth's Leicester. He was eager after great things, and dreamed of renewing in his own time the glories of Elizabeth; but had no idea of taking efficient means to turn his dreams into realities. Charles began his reign by a fatal mistake. In the negotiations for a marriage with Henrietta Maria it had been found that the French The Roman would not accept less favourable terms for the Roman Catholics. Catholics than had been granted at the demand of Spain, so it had been agreed that the Roman Catholic disabilities should be suspended. As he had distinctly promised the parliament of 1624 that favour to the Roman Catholics should form no part of the marriage contract with France, this act put him in an utterly false position, and compelled him either to break his word to parliament or to the king of France. This double-dealing, however, was characteristic of Charles' method, and goes a long way to explain his subsequent disasters. Charles, blind to his mistake, and hoping to win advantages from France, completed his marriage, declared war on Spain, and summoned a parliament to vote the necessary supplies. When parliament met, the lead in the Commons was taken by Parliament. Phelips, who had already played a large part in the later parliaments of James L., and he was supported by Edward Coke, Sir John Eliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and John Pym. It was soon perceived that between king and parliament the seeds of disagreement were many. While Charles was bound by his promise to France to suspend the Roman Catholic disabilities, the Commons petitioned that the laws against recusants might be strictly enforced. While Charles eagerly First |