Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/292

 2 8o THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY uniformity. But in England the people held the power of the purse. The revenues at the king's disposal were not sufficient to 4. England enable him to maintain troops at his own cost, and Scot- For that purpose it was necessary to obtain grants from the House of Commons. Without troops the king could not enforce his will, and he endeavoured by every device for which he could obtain the authority of the Law Courts to ex- tract from his subjects the money which they would not grant him The Civil except on their own terms. The practical effect was War - that on the one hand the king was still unable to obtain sufficient supplies, and the parliament practically claimed the control of policy as a condition of granting them. After long wrangles, and an attempt on the part of the king, extended over eleven years, to live by his exactions, the Crown was re- duced to extremities when the Scots took up arms in defence of their religious liberties. The English parliament was summoned that it might grant supplies for the Scots war. It refused supplies, attainted the king's great minister Strafford, and arraigned the king himself of unconstitutional practices. A civil war resulted. The arms of the parliament triumphed, and Charles became a prisoner ; but the power of control passed from parliament itself to the captains of its army. The king attempted by intrigues and plots to recover his own ascendency. Insurrections in his favour were crushed, and almost at the moment when the treaty of West- phalia was completed Charles was arraigned on the charge of treason before an unconstitutional tribunal, and was executed. For nine years England was practically under the control of the military dictator, Oliver Cromwell, who received the title of The Com- Lord Protector. Under the Commonwealth England monwealth. was a bl e to adopt a vigorous foreign policy from which she had been debarred by the strife between the Crown and the parliament. But such a military monarchy, inevitably ignoring all tradition, was intolerable to England, and its continuity was impossible as soon as Cromwell himself died. In 1660 the nation recalled the exiled King Charles 11. But while Crown and parliament were wrangling during the reign of James 1., and the earlier years of Charles 1., England