Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/160

146 trouble. He intimated that these evil disposed persons would meet with their rewards, and bade the lord keeper do as he had commanded. Then the lord keeper said, "My lords, and gentlemen of the commons, the king's majesty doth dissolve this parliament;" though the commons, with the exception of a few individuals, were not there, nor represented by their speaker.

This question of the right of the commons to determine their own adjournment, and to deny to the king the right of preventing the speaker putting any question from the chair, was a most vital one, and hitherto undetermined. If the king could at any moment adjourn the commons as well as prorogue parliament altogether, and could decide what topics should be entertained by the house, there was an end of the existence of the commons as an independent branch of the legislature: it sunk at once into the mere creature of the crown. There was a great battle for this as for other popular rights, and the determined conduct of the members showed that it was coming fast to a crisis. But at this moment Charles was as determined to conquer the parliament, as parliament was not to be conquered.

No sooner did this unprecedented scene with the speaker take place, than he adopted measures to punish those most prominently concerned in it. The compulsory detention of the speaker took place on the 2nd of March; on the 5th he issued warrants to arrest the "vipers"—Elliot, Selden, Hollis, Valentine, Hobart, Hayman, Coriton, Long, and Stroud, and commit them to the Tower or other prisons. Stroud and Long were not immediately caught, but on the issue of a proclamation for their apprehension they surrendered. The houses of Elliot, Hollis, Selden, Long, and Valentine, were forcibly entered, their desks broken open, and their papers seized.

Charles issued a proclamation dated 22nd of March, explaining the reasons for his now dissolving parliament, and plainly intimating that he meant to do without parliaments unless he could make them submit passively to his will. "We have showed," it said, "by our frequently meeting our people, our love to the use of parliaments; yet, the late abuse having for the present driven us unwillingly out of that course, we shall account it presumption for any to prescribe any time unto us for parliaments, the calling, continuing, and dissolving of which is always in our power; and shall be more inclinable to meet in parliament again, when our people shall see more clearly into our interests and actions, and when such as have bred this interruption shall have received their condign punishment."

From the last expression it was expected that the irate monarch would endeavour to bring these offenders to the block; but he found the judges more sensible of the real power of parliament and public opinion than himself. He put a series of questions to the judges, whose answers did not prove very satisfactory, and judge Whitelock even ventured to attribute the mischief to Laud, and said that if he went on in that way he would kindle a flame in the nation. The judge proved quite prophetically right. The prisoners sued for their habeas corpus, and were brought by its means into the Court of King's Bench, where the court counsel stated that they were imprisoned for notable contempt, and for stirring up sedition. Their own counsel argued that they had acted expressly on the king's confirmation of the Petition of Right, and had been perfectly within the law in their proceedings. But the attorney-general Heath openly avowed that the king had bound himself to nothing that was not law before, and that a petition was no law; that the matter stood just as it had done before the Petition of Right. Whilst he thus made a most deplorable case of it for the king, describing the granting of the petition as a mere excusable shuttle to get rid of a difficulty, and thus sinking Charles deeper than ever in the public opinion, as unprincipled and unworthy of all credit, at the same time, by admitting that what the Petition of Right defined as right, was already the old established right of the kingdom, he convicted the king of having violated that right wilfully and repeatedly, and by consequence fully justified the prisoners.

Heath, who was a thoroughly bred tool of despotism, declared that prisoners committed by the king or privy council were not bailable; but the judges wrote to the king to apprise him that they were bound by their oaths to bail the prisoners. On this the lord keeper informed them that his majesty desired to see them at Greenwich. There he gave them a sharp lecture, and forbade them to grant bail till they had consulted the rest of the judges. These other judges, obviously prepared to serve the crown, delayed their opinion till the end of term, and when the writs of habeas corpus were served on the keepers of the prisons where the prisoners had been first confined, to whom they were addressed, they were found to be removed to other gaols, so that the writs became void. This was one of the ingenious tricks of tyranny which Charles had hit upon, and extensively practised to defeat justice; "prisoners," says Whitelock, "being removed from pursuivant to pursuivant, and thus could have no benefit of law."

Charles, sensible of the odium of this proceeding, informed the judges of the King's Bench that he had done this, "not, as some people might say, to decline the course of justice, but because the prisoners had carried themselves insolently and unmannerly to himself and their lordships." Thus the prisoners were compelled to lie during the long vacation, without books, without papers, or admission of their friends. On the first day of Michaelmas term, they were brought into court, and ordered to find bail, and also to give security for their good behaviour. They were all ready to give bail, but all positively refused to give security for good behaviour, as that implied the commission of some crime, which they denied. They were then put upon their trial, but excepted to the jurisdiction of the court, being amenable only to their own high court of parliament for what was done therein. But they were told that their conduct had not been parliamentary, and that the common law could deal with all offences there by word or deed, as well as anywhere else. This was another attack on the privileges of parliament, which, if allowed, would have finished its independence; and these were not the men to surrender a jot of the out-works and defences of parliament. They were then sentenced as follows:— Sir John Elliot to be imprisoned in the Tower, the other prisoners in other prisons at the king's pleasure. None of them to be delivered out of prison till they have given security for their good behaviour,