of a book he dedicated to Lord Essex, being a story of the first year of Henry IV., thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the people's heads boldness and faction: * she said, she had an opinion that there was treason in it, and asked me if I could not find any places in it that might be drawn within the case of treason? Whereto I answered, For treason, sure I found none; but for felony, very many: and when her majesty hastily asked me, Wherein? I told her, the author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them into English, and put them into his text. And another time, when the queen could not be persuaded that it was his writing whose name was to it, but that it had some more mischievous author, and said with great indignation, that she would have him racked to produce his author; I replied, Nay, madam, he is a doctor; never rack his person, but rack his style: let him have pen, ink, and paper, and help of books, and be enjoined to continue the story where it breaketh off, and I will undertake, by collating the styles, to judge whether he were the author or no." † Thus, had it not been for Bacon's humanity, or rather his wit, this author, a man of letters, had been put to the rack for a most innocent performance. His real offence was his dedicating a book to that munificent patron of the learned, the earl of Essex, at a time when this nobleman lay under her majesty's displeasure. The queen's menace of trying and punishing Haywarde for treason could easily have been executed, let his book have been ever so innocent. While so many terrors hung over the people, no jury durst have acquitted a man when the court was resolved to have him condemned. The practice, also, of not confronting witnesses with the prisoner, gave the crown lawyers all imaginable advantage against him. And indeed there scarcely occurs an instance during all these reigns, that the sovereign or the ministers were ever disappointed in the issue of a prosecution. Timid juries, and judges who held their offices during pleasure, never failed to second all the views of the crown. And as the practice was To our apprehension, Haywarde's book seems rather to have a contrary tendency. For he has there preserved the famous speech of the bishop of Carlisle, which contains, in the most express terms, the doctrine of passive obedience. But Queen Elizabeth was very difficult to please on this head. † Cabala, p. 81. H anciently common of fining, imprisoning, or otherwise punishing the jurors, merely at the discretion of the court, for finding a verdict contrary to the direction of these dependent judges, it is obvious that juries were then no manner of security to the liberty of the subject. The power of pressing, both for sea and land service, and obliging any person to accept of any office, however mean or unfit for him, was another prerogative totally incompatible with freedom. Osborne gives the following account of Elizabeth's method of employing this prerogative : "In case she found any likely to interrupt her occasions," says he, " she did seasonably prevent him by a chargeable employment abroad, or putting him upon some service at home, which she knew least grateful to the people; contrary to a false maxim, since practised with far worse success, by such princes as thought it better husbandry to buy off enemies than reward friends.”* The practice with which Osborne reproaches the two immediate successors of Elizabeth, proceeded partly from the extreme difficulty of their situation, partly from the greater lenity of their disposition. The power of pressing, as may naturally be imagined, was often abused, in other respects, by men of inferior rank; and officers often exacted money for freeing persons from the service.† The government of England during that age, however different in other particulars, bore in this respect some resemblance to that of Turkey at present: the sovereign possessed every power, except that of imposing taxes; and in both countries, this limitation, unsupported by other privileges, appears rather prejudicial to the people. In Turkey, it obliges the sultan to permit the extortion of the bashas and governors of provinces, from whom he afterwards squeezes presents or takes forfeitures: in England, it engaged the queen to erect monopolies, and grant patents for exclusive trade; an invention so pernicious, that had she gone on during a tract of years at her own rate, England, the seat of riches, and arts, and commerce, would have contained at present as little industry as Morocco or the coast of Barbary. We may further observe that this valuable privilege, valuable only because it proved afterwards the means by which the parliament extorted all their other privileges, was very much encroached on, in an indirect manner, during the reign of * Page 392. † Murden, p. 181. Elizabeth, as well as of her predecessors. She often exacted loans from her people; an arbitrary and unequal kind of imposition, and which individuals felt severely; for though the money had been regularly repaid, which was seldom the case,* it lay in the prince's hands without interest, which was a sensible loss to the persons from whom the money was borrowed.t There remains a proposal, made by Lord Burleigh, for levy ing a general loan on the people, equivalent to a subsidy; ‡ a scheme which would have laid the burden more equally, but which was, in different words, a taxation imposed without consent of parliament. It is remarkable, that the scheme thus proposed, without any visible necessity, by that wise minister, is the very same which Henry VIII. executed, and which Charles I., enraged by ill usage from his parliament, and reduced to the greatest difficulties, put afterwards in practice, to the great discontent of the nation. The demand of benevolence was another invention of that age for taxing the people. This practice was so little conceived to be irregular, that the commons in 1585 offered the queen a benevolence; which she very generously refused, as having no occasion at that time for money. Queen Mary, also, by an order of council, increased the customs in some branches; and her sister imitated the example. There was a species of ship money imposed at the time of the Spanish invasion: the several ports were required to equip a certain number of vessels at their own charge: and such was the alacrity of the people for the public defence, that some of the ports, particularly London, sent double the number demanded. of them. When any levies were made for Ireland, France, or the Low Countries, the queen obliged the counties to levy the soldiers, to arm and clothe them, and carry them to the seaports at their own charge. New-year's gifts were at that *Bacon, vol. iv. p. 362. † In the second of Richard II., it was enacted that in loans which the king shall require of his subjects, upon letters of privy seal, such as have "reasonable" excuse of not lending, may there be received without further summons, travel, or grief. See Cotton's' Abridg. p. 170. By this law, the king's prerogative of exacting loans was ratified; and what ought to be deemed a "reasonable" excuse was still left in his own breast to determine. Haynes, p. 518, 519. § D'Ewes, p. 494. ¶ Monson, p. 267. time expected from the nobility, and from the more considera ble gentry.* Purveyance and preemption were also methods of taxation, unequal, arbitrary, and oppressive. The whole kingdom sensibly felt the burden of those impositions; and it was regarded as a great privilege conferred on Oxford and Cambridge, to prohibit the purveyors from taking any commodities within five miles of these universities. The queen victualled her navy by means of this prerogative, during the first years of her reign.t Wardship was the most regular and legal of all these impositions by prerogative; yet was it a great badge of slavery, and oppressive to all the considerable families. When an estate devolved to a female, the sovereign obliged her to marry any one he pleased: whether the heir were male or female, the crown enjoyed the whole profit of the estate during the minority. The giving of a rich wardship was a usual method of rewarding a courtier or favorite. The inventions were endless which arbitrary power might employ for the extorting of money, while the people imagined that their property was secured by the crown's being debarred from imposing taxes. Strype has preserved a speech of Lord Burleigh to the queen and council, in which are contained some particulars not a little extraordinary. Burleigh pro poses, that she should erect a court for the correction of all abuses, and should confer on the commissioners a general inquisitorial power over the whole kingdom. He sets before her the example of her wise grandfather, Henry VII., who by such methods extremely augmented his revenue; and he recommends, that this new court should proceed, as well by the direction and ordinary course of the laws, as by virtue of her majesty's supreme regiment and absolute power, from whence law proceeded." In a word, he expects from this institution greater accession to the royal treasure than Henry VIII. derived from the abolition of the abbeys, and all the forfeitures of ecclesiastical revenues. This project of Lord Burleigh's needs not, I think, any comment. A form of government must be very arbitrary indeed, where a wise and good minister could make such a proposal to the sovereign. Embargoes on merchandise was another engine of royal * Strype's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 137. † Camden, p. 388. power, by which the English princes were able to extort money from the people. We have seen instances in the reign of Mary. Elizabeth, before her coronation, issued an order to the custom-house, prohibiting the sale of all crimson silks which should be imported, till the court were first supplied.* She expected, no doubt, a good pennyworth from the merchants while they lay under this restraint. The parliament pretended to the right of enacting laws, as well as of granting subsidies; but this privilege was, during that age, still more insignificant than the other. Queen Elizabeth expressly prohibited them from meddling either with state matters or ecclesiastical causes; and she openly sent the members to prison who dared to transgress her imperial edict in these particulars. There passed few sessions of parliament, during her reign, where there occur not instances of this arbitrary conduct. But the legislative power of the parliament was a mere fallacy, while the sovereign was universally acknowledged to possess a dispensing power, by which all the laws could be invalidated, and rendered of no effect. The exercise of this power was also an indirect method practised for erecting monopolies. Where the statutes laid any branch of manufacture under restrictions, the sovereign, by exempting one person from the laws, gave him in effect the monopoly of that commodity. There was no grievance at that time more universally complained of, than the frequent dispensing with the penal laws.‡ But in reality the crown possessed the full legislative power, by means of proclamations, which might affect any matter, even of the greatest importance, and which the star chamber took care to see more rigorously executed than the laws themselves. The motives for these proclamations were sometimes frivolous, and even ridiculous. Queen Elizabeth had taken offence at the smell of woad; and she issued an edict prohibiting any one from cultivating that useful plant. She was also pleased to take offence at the long swords and high ruffs then in fashion: she sent about her officers to break every man's sword, and clip every man's ruff which was * Strype, vol. i. p. 27. † Rymer, tom. xv. p. 756. D'Ewes, p. 645. Townsend's Journals, p. 250. Stow's Annals. |