Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/240

534 cess Henrietta Maria. On the 27th of March, 1625, Charles succeeded his father as king; and, on the 22d of June, the princess, to whom he had previously been espoused by proxy, arrived in London.

It would be foreign to the character of this work to enter into a full detail of the public transactions in which Charles was concerned in his regal character. We shall, therefore, be content with an outline of these transactions. The arrogant pretensions of his father, founded on "the right divine of kings to govern wrong," had roused a degree of jealousy and resistance among the people; whilst the weakness and vacillation of his character, and the pusillanimity of his administration, had gone far to bring the kingly office into contempt. Charles had imbibed the arbitrary principles of his father, and, without appreciating the progress of public opinion, resolved, on his accession, to carry out the extravagant theories of James. During the whole reign of the latter, the Commons had kept up a constant warfare with the crown, making every supply which they voted the condition of a new concession to the popular will. The easy nature of James had got over these collisions much better than was to be expected from the grave and stern temperament of his son. After a few such disputes with his parliament (for the House of Lords always joined with the Commons), Charles concluded his wars, to save all expense, and, resolving to call no more parliaments, endeavoured to support the crown in the best way he could by the use of his prerogative. For ten years subsequent to 1628, when the duke of Buckingham was assassinated, he contrived to carry on the state with hardly any assistance from his officers, using chiefly the ill-omened advice of Laud, bishop of London, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and also relying considerably upon the queen, to whom he was devotedly attached. The result was to sow distrust and discontent throughout the kingdom, to array the subject against the sovereign, and leave no alternative betwixt the enthralment of the people and the destruction of the king. The earnest struggles for religious freedom, in England and Scotland, added a fresh impulse to the growing spirit of civil liberty. Charles rashly encountered the powerful body of nonconformists in England and the sturdy presbyterians of Scotland, and at last sank under the recoil.

The dissenters from the Church of England were at this time a rapidly increasing body; and the church, to maintain her power, thought proper to visit them with some severe sentences. The spirit with which the regular clergy were animated against the nonconformists, may be argued from the fact, that Laud publicly blessed God, when Dr Alexander Leighton was sentenced to lose his ears, and be whipped through the streets of London. The king and the archbishop had always looked with a jealous eye upon Scotland, where the episcopal form of government was as yet only struggling for supremacy over a people who were, almost without exception, presbyterian. In 1633, Charles visited Scotland for the purpose of receiving the crown of his ancient kingdom; and measures were thenceforth taken, under the counsel of his evil genius Laud, who accompanied him, for enforcing episcopacy upon the Church of Scotland. It was not, however, till 1637, that this bold project was carried into effect.

The Scots united themselves in a solemn covenant against this innovation, and at the close of the year 1638, felt themselves so confident in their own strength as to abolish episcopacy in a General Assembly of the church held in Glasgow, and which conducted its proceedings in spite of the prohibition of the king's commissioner. In 1639, his finances being exhausted, Charles was compelled, after the lapse of eleven years, to assemble a parliament, which met in April, 1640. Like their predecessors, the Commons refused to grant supplies till they had stated their grievances. The king hastily dissolved parliament, and prose.