guished, and a great part of the army sent to the continent perished through famine and disease.

In 1623 Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham set out on a romantic journey to Spain, travelling under the names of John and William Smith. Their object was to see the Infanta of Spain, whom James wished Charles to marry. The result of the journey was, that the treaty of marriage was broken off, and the Spanish court was so offended that war seemed imminent between England and Spain. This rupture was not displeasing to the nation; and in 1624, when the Parliament met, it was very willing to grant supplies to the king, to enable him to prosecute the war. James, in turn, was willing to make some concessions to the House of Commons: he proposed that the money should be paid into the hands of treasurers appointed by the House, who should issue money only on the warrant of the Council of War.

The Commons in this session again called attention to the abuses of monopolies; and an act was passed, declaring that they were contrary to the fundamental laws of the realm.

"The Commons had now been engaged for more than twenty years in a struggle to fortify their own and their fellow-subjects' liberties. They had obtained in this period but one legislative measure of importance,-the late declaratory act against monopolies. But they had rescued from disuse their ancient right of impeachment; they had placed on record a protestation of their claim to debate all matters of public concern; they had remonstrated against the usurped prerogatives of binding the subject by proclamation, and of levying customs at

the outports; they had secured, beyond controversy, their exclusive privilege of determining contested elections of their members. Of these advantages, some were evidently incomplete, and it would require the most vigorous exertions of future Parliaments to realise them. But such exertions the increased energy of the nation gave abundant cause to anticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom had taken hold of every class, except perhaps the clergy, from which, when viewed together with the rash pride of the Court, and the uncertainty of constitutional principles and precedents collected through our long and various history, a calm bystander might presage that the ensuing reign would not pass without disturbance, nor perhaps without confusion."*

One of the last acts of James was to ally himself with France; and he obtained from Louis XIII. the hand of his sister Henrietta Maria for Prince Charles.

James died on the 25th of March, 1625, at his palace of Theobalds, near London, in his fifty-ninth year.

CHAP. XXVIII.

CHARLES I. 1625-1648.

CHARLES Succeeded to the throne at a time when the question began to be, Who shall rule the nation? the King alone, or the King and Parliament ?

The character of the new king was in some respects better suited to the temper of the times than that of

*Hallam's Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 373.

his father had been. Charles was grave, sober, and decorous. His court was pure, compared with the preceding one. He had an excellent taste in literature and the fine arts; was the patron of painters, architects, and sculptors, and formed a magnificent collection of works of art. But he had inherited all his father's absurd theories, and (unfortunately for himself) more than his father's obstinacy. Determined to assert what he considered the rights of the crown, he forgot the rights and liberties of the people.

In the House of Commons he found great men ready to fight with unflinching determination for these rights and liberties. Coke, Pym, Elliot, Holles, and Hampden, were as firm as Charles.

The first Parliament called after his accession was willing to put the most favourable constructions on his acts; but it suspected his adviser, Buckingham, and was ill pleased that Charles should have married a Roman Catholic princess.

He

The House of Commons voted supplies very sparingly, for they were afraid lest, if they were too liberal, the king should at once dissolve them. They then proceeded to investigate the abuses of the Government. The failure of an expedition to Rochelle, for the purpose of assisting the French Protestants besieged in that town, was attributed to the Duke of Buckingham. was impeached, and, to save him, the king dissolved the Parliament. By resorting to illegal loans and benevolences, Charles succeeded in raising sufficient money to equip a fleet, which sailed to Cadiz, with the intention of capturing a richly-laden fleet of Spanish merchantmen lying in that harbour. The expedition failed;

the English ships lost half their crews by disease, while the enemy's fleet was victorious at sea, and harassed and interrupted English commerce.

The king called a second Parliament, but found it more intractable than the first.

In 1628 another was called, and the opposition was stronger than ever. It was led by the sage Sir Edmund Coke, who atoned for the servile acts of his earlier life by a patriotic old age; by Wentworth, afterwards the king's friend, Holles, Elliot, and Pym, the latter a cool and daring statesman. As soon as the House of Commons met, they drew up a document, setting forth their lawful privileges, and how these had been violated, and they asked for redress. This famous petition was called the "Petition of Right." After reciting Magna Charta, and the numerous statutes by which it had been confirmed and extended, the petition prayed:-1st. That no loan or tax might be levied, except by consent of Parliament. 2nd. That no man might be imprisoned but by legal process; and that the return to the writ of habeas corpus should not be held sufficient, though it stated the prisoners to be detained by the king's special command. 3rd. That no soldiers should be quartered on the people against their wills. 4th. That no commissions should be granted for executing martial law. The king ratified this petition, which was passed into a law, in the most solemn manner, amidst the joyful acclamations of his subjects. But it was soon seen that Charles had no intention of preserving the compact into which he had entered. The Parliament was dissolved, and some of its most eminent members cast into prison; one of them, Sir John Elliot,

L

after years of suffering, and in spite of many intercessions, died in the Tower.

In the end of 1628, Buckingham was assassinated by an Irishman, named Felton. At his trial, the assassin declared he had no accomplices, and no other intention than to rid the kingdom of its greatest foe. Charles ordered him to be racked, that he might confess his confederates, if he had any; but the judges declared that it was contrary to the law of England to enforce confession by torture. Charles called another Parliament in 1629, but after the House of Commons had declared that the duties of tonnage and poundage, levied without consent of Parliament, were illegal, he, in a rage, dissolved the Parliament, determined, if possible, never to call another.

From 1629 to 1640, no Parliament met,-an interval without precedent in our history. Charles now systematically violated all the provisions of the Petition of Right; he revived the illegal monopolies, and, by means of the Star Chamber, imposed fines, making numerous confiscations of private property, to fill his empty treasury.

In the Church, Charles found a supporter of his worst acts in the person of Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, a man of narrow mind, bigoted, and tyrannical. At the head of the High Court of Commission, Laud ruled the Church with despotic sway, punishing without mercy the Puritans, or reforming party, while the Roman Catholics were openly encouraged; till it seemed as if Laud and Charles wished to promote the return of England to the Roman Catholic faith.

The king's chief political adviser now was Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who had in the Parliaments at