1627 soldiers. THE EXPEDITION TO RE 507 Moreover, the forced loan had been exacted, and some of those who refused to pay had been imprisoned by the mere order of the king and the Privy Council. Against this last injury, five knights, who had been imprisoned, appealed to the Court of King's Bench. A writ of habeas corpus was issued that is to say, an order was given to the gaoler to produce the prisoners before the Court, together with a return showing the cause of committal. All that the gaoler could show was that the prisoners had been committed by order of the king, signified by the Privy Council. The lawyers employed by the five knights argued that every prisoner had a right to be tried or liberated on bail; that, unless cause was shown-that is to say, unless a charge was brought against him— there was nothing on which he could be tried; and that, therefore, these prisoners ought to be bailed. The lawyers for the Crown argued that when the safety of the state was concerned, the king had always been allowed to imprison without showing cause, and that his discretion must be trusted not to imprison any one excepting in cases of necessity. The judges did not decide this point, but sent the five knights back to prison. In a few days, all the prisoners were set free, and Charles summoned a third Parlia ment, hoping that it would vote money for a fresh expedition to relieve Rochelle. 8. Wentworth and Eliot in the Third Parliament of Charles I. 1628.-Charles's third Parliament met on March 17, 1628. The leadership was at once taken by Sir Thomas Wentworth, who, as well as Eliot, had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the loan. Though the two men now worked together, they were, in most points, opposed to one another. Eliot had been a warm advocate of the war with Spain, till he found it useless to carry on the war under Buckingham's guidance. Wentworth disliked all wars, and especially a war with Spain. Eliot believed in the wisdom of the House of Commons, and thought that, if the king always took its advice, he was sure to be in the right. Wentworth thought that the House of Commons often blundered, and that the king was more likely to be in the right if he took advice from wise counsellors. Wentworth, however, believed that in this case Charles had unfortunately preferred to take the advice of foolish counsellors, and though not sharing the opinions of Eliot and his friends, threw himself into the struggle in which the House of Commons was trying to stop Buckingham in his rash course. From time to time Wentworth contrived to show that he was no enemy of the king, or of a strong government such as that which had existed in the reign of Elizabeth. He was, however, an ardent and impetuous speaker, and threw himself into any cause which he defended with more violence than he could, in calmer moments, have justified to himself. He saw clearly that the late aggressions on the liberty of the subject weakened, instead of strengthening, the Crown ; and he now proposed a bill which should declare them illegal in the future. Charles refused to accept the bill, and Wentworth, unwilling to take a prominent part in a struggle with the king himself, retired into the background for the remainder of the session. 9. The Petition of Right. 1628.-Instead of Wentworth's bill, Eliot and the lawyers-Coke and Selden being prominent amongst them-brought forward a Petition of Right, not merely providing for the future, but also declaring that right had actually been violated in the past. Charles was willing to promise everything else asked of him, but he resisted the attempt to force him to promise never to imprison without showing cause, and thus to strip himself of the power of punishing offences directed against the safety of the State. The Commons, who held that he had directed his powers against men who were patriots, proved inexorable. Charles 1628 THE PETITION OF RIGHT 509 needed money for another fleet which he was preparing for the relief of Rochelle, which was straitly besieged by the French king. He tried hard to get over the difficulty by an evasive answer, but at last, on June 7, he gave way, and the Petition of Right became the law of the land After that, so far as the George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, 1592-1628: from the law went, there was to be no more martial law or enforced billeting, no forced loans or taxes imposed without a Parliamentary grant, or imprisonment without cause shown. 10. Tonnage and Poundage. 1628.-Before the end of the session a fresh question was raised. For many reigns Parliament had voted to each king for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain customs duties known as Tonnage and Poundage. In addition to these James had added the impositions (see p. 484) without a Parliamentary grant. In the first Parliament of Charles, the Commons, probably wishing to settle the question of impositions before permanently granting Tonnage and Poundage, had passed a bill granting the latter for a single year; but that Parliament had been dissolved before the bill had passed the Lords. The second Parliament was dissolved before the Commons had even discussed the subject, and the third Parliament now sitting had found no time to attend to it till after the Petition of Right had been granted. Now that the session was drawing to a close the Commons again proposed to grant Tonnage and Poundage for a year only. Charles, who had been levying the duties ever since his accession, refused to accept a grant on these terms, and the Commons then asserted that the clause of the Petition of Right forbidding him to levy taxes without a vote of Parliament made his raising of Tonnage and Poundage illegal. It was a nice legal point whether customs were properly called taxes, and Charles answered that he did not think that in demanding the petition they had meant to ask him to yield his right to Tonnage and Poundage, and that he was sure he had not meant to do so. The Commons then attacked Buckingham, and on June 26 Charles prorogued Parliament. II. Buckingham's Murder. 1628. In return for the Petition of Right Charles had received a grant of money large enough to enable him to send out his fleet. In August Buckingham went to Portsmouth to take the command. He was followed by John Felton, an officer to whom he had refused employment, and who had not been paid for his former services. Language used by the House of Commons in their recent attack on Buckingham persuaded Felton that he would render service to God and man by slaying the enemy of both. On August 23 he stabbed the Duke as he came out from breakfast, crying, 'God have mercy on thy soul!' Buckingham fell dead on the spot. The fleet went out under the command of the Earl of Lindsey to relieve Rochelle, but it failed utterly. There was no heart in the sailors or resolution in the commanders. Rochelle surrendered to the King of France, and Charles was left to bear the weight of the unpopularity of his late favourite. 12. The Question of Sovereignty. 1628.-Charles was anxious to come to terms with his Parliament on the question of Tonnage and Poundage, and would probably have consented to accept the compromise proposed in 1610 (see p. 486). Neither party, indeed, could afford to surrender completely to the other. The customs 1625-1628 RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 5 duties were already more than a third of the revenue, and, if Char could levy what he pleased, he might so increase his income as have no further need of parliaments; whereas, if the Commons refused to make the grant, the king would soon be in a state of bankruptcy. The financial question, in short, involved the further question whether Charles or the Parliament was to have the sovereignty. Dangerous as it would be for both parties to enter upon a quarrel which led up to such issues, it was the more difficult to avoid it because the king and the Commons were already at variance on another subject of pre-eminent importance. 13. Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628.— That subject was the subject of religion. The country gentlemen, who almost entirely filled the benches of the House of Commons, were not Puritan in the sense in which Cartwright had been Puritan in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 446). They did not wish to abolish episcopacy or the Prayer Book; but they were strongly Protestant, and their Protestantism had been strengthened by a sense of danger from the engagements in favour of the English Catholics into which James and Charles had entered. Lately, too, the power of the Catholic States on the Continent had been growing. In 1626 the King of Denmark had been defeated at Lutter. In 1628 the French Huguenots had been defeated at Rochelle. It was probably in consequence of these events that there was in England a revival of that attachment to Calvinistic doctrines which had accompanied the Elizabethan struggle against Spain and the Pope. 14. Religious Differences. 1625-1628.-On the other hand, a small but growing number amongst the clergy were breaking away from the dogmas of Calvinism, and especially from its stern doctrine on the subject of predestination. The House of Commons claimed to represent the nation, and it upheld the unity of the national belief as strongly as it had been upheld by Henry VIII. In 1625 the House summoned to its bar Richard Montague, who had challenged the received Calvinist opinions on the ground that they were not the doctrines of the Church of England. In 1626 it impeached him. Naturally, Montague and those who agreed with him warmly supported the royal power, and in 1627 urged the duty of paying the forced loan. Another clergyman, Roger Manwaring, preached sermons in which Parliaments were treated with contempt, and the Commons retaliated by impeaching the preacher. Charles would have acted in a spirit in advance of his times, and certainly in advance of his opponents, if he had merely upheld the right of the minority to liberty of speech. Instead of contenting |