Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/32

18 and the sufferings of the people; whilst in the council, before the king, he declared that his majesty was the voice of God in man, the good spirit of God in the mouth of man.

The struggle continued betwixt the crown and the commons through the whole session. As the crown would not agree to reform the abuses complained of, the commons declined to grant the king any money beyond the usual rate of tonnage and poundage. So apprehensive, in fact, was the king of another defeat in the present temper of the house, that he sent a message to it requesting them not to enter on the business of subsidy, notwithstanding his urgent need of money.

The struggle regarding religious liberty was carried on by the puritans in the house with equal obstinacy. The convocation sitting at the same time with parliament, occupied itself in framing a new code of ecclesiastical canons. In spite of the resolution of the conference at Hampton Court, which declared that no excommunication should issue except for very grave offences, these canons, one hundred and forty-one in number, equalled in ecclesiastical despotism anything which had been decreed under Henry VIII. Excommunication was pronounced against all who denied the supremacy of the king or the orthodoxy of the church; who affirmed the book of common prayer to be superstitious or unlawful, that any one of the thirty-nine articles was erroneous, or that the ordinal was opposed to the word of God. All who should separate from the established church, or establish conventicles, were equally denounced; and this bigoted code James ratified by letters patent under the great seal. But it did not pass without severe comment from the puritan members of the house, in the midst of which the king prorogued parliament; and so remained the question of the canon law of England, which in reality was and is a law binding only on the clergy, having received their own sanction and that of their head the king, but not that of the legislature; for which reason the judges in Westminster Hall have always held that it binds the clergy who framed, but not the people whose representatives refused it.

Chamber in which Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

No sooner was the canon law promulgated, and parliament prorogued, than Bancroft, the new archbishop, let loose the fury of the church against the nonconformists, whether catholic or protestant. All were called on to conform to the new regulations, and no less than three hundred clergymen were forced from their livings. The catholics, on their part, were equally harassed, fined, and insulted. The legal penalty of twenty pounds a month for recusancy was again enforced, notwithstanding James had promised to overlook this; and it was executed with a new rigour of barbarity, the fines for the whole time during which James had been professing leniency being levied. Thus the sufferers were called on to pay thirteen payments at one time, which at once reduced a vast number of families to absolute beggary. What rendered these oppressions the more intolerable was, that the court was now crowded by whole shoals of hungry Scots, who had flocked after their king into this new land of Goshen, and were clamorous for place, pension, and grants of the estates of the recusants. From the book of Free Gifts, it appears that James, in his first year, gave out of the goods of recusants, £150 to Sir Richard Person; in his third, £3,000 to John Gibb, the Scotch messenger; in his fourth, £2,000 to John Murray, and £1,500 to Sir James Sandilands: in his fifth, £2,000 to John Auchmoutie, £3,000 to Martin and Abraham Hardaret, and £200 to John Potten; in his eleventh, £3,000 to Charles Chambers, £6,000 to the lord of Loreston, £2,000 to Sir William Wade, £1,000 to Sir Ralph Bowes, £1,000 to Sir Richard Wigmore, £4,000 to Sir James Simple and Thomas Lee, and £3,000 to Sir Hugh Beeston.

The puritans did not submit to the outrages perpetrated on them without sturdy resistance and remonstrance. The catholics, or at least a section of them, proceeded to something more dangerous. James, amid all this discontent