Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/97

] state of parties on the Continent, as the unfortunate Frederick himself, had received with an outburst of joy the news of the palgrave being crowned king of Bohemia; and arch-bishop Abbot gave the very text from the Apocalypse in which this event, so favourable to the reformed faith, was predicted. James was urged to send an army to his son-in-law's support, but he saw no chance of keeping him on the Bohemian throne. The Bohemians were divided into three violent parties—Calvinists, Lutherans, and catholics. The protestants of Germany were equally divided; some of them had voluntarily offered their aid to the emperor, and others had submitted to his victorious generals. Spinola was marching on the Palatinate, and James was distracted by the fear of his daughter and son-in-law being reduced to beggary. Yet if he attempted to prop the king of Bohemia on his tottering throne, he should offend the catholic king of Spain, the sworn ally of the emperor, and with whom he was at this very time seeking an alliance. Without being able to save his protestant son-in-law, he should thus lose a catholic daughter-in-law. If he lay still, all men would call him an unnatural father, all protestants would declare him an apostate to his religion. Never was man in such a strait. One moment he declared to the Spanish ambassador that the palgrave was a fool and a villain, and that he would abandon him to his fate; at another he assured the protestant envoys from Germany that he would support him to the utmost. At length he hit upon the only rational course; which was, not to attempt an impossibility, the support of Frederick on the baseless throne of Bohemia, but to send a force to defend his patrimonial territories from the Spaniards. The first enterprise was, in fact, soon out of the question: Prague had fallen, his son-in-law and daughter were fugitives; but the second object was still possible, and more necessary than ever.

He sent an army of four thousand men under the earls of Oxford and Essex to the rescue of the Palatinate. This force was altogether inadequate to cope with the numerous army of the able Spinola; and yet James had exhausted all his means and all his efforts in raising it. Money he had none, and had been compelled to seek a loan and a voluntary subscription. By the autumn the lower Palatinate was overrun by the Spaniards, Lusatia had submitted to George of Saxony for the emperor, and Bohemia had sought and received pardon from the imperial court.

In this state of affairs James was compelled to summon a parliament. It assembled on the 30th of January, 1621, the king having used all the unconstitutional means in his power to influence the return of members. In his opening speech he now admitted what he had so stoutly denied before, the existence of undertakers in the last parliament, "a strange kind of beasts which had done mischief." In that shallow, wheedling tone, that rather showed the hollowness of the man than conciliated, as it was meant to do, he even went on in his confession, and admitted that he had been swayed by evil counsellors. He then demanded liberal supplies to carry on the war in the Palatinate, for which the people had indeed loudly called. The commons expressed their readiness, but first demanded that the king should enforce the penalties against the papists with additional rigour, observing that they were the papists in Germany who had deprived the elector palatine of his crown, and were now seeking to deprive him of his hereditary domains. They recommended that no recusants should be allowed to come within ten miles of London, that they should not be permitted to attend mass in their own houses, or in the chapels of ambassadors; and they offered to pass a bill, giving to the crown two-thirds of the property of recusants. They then granted him two subsidies, but no tenths or fifteenths—a sum wholly inadequate to the necessities of the war, much less of his expenditure in general. Yet James, to keep them in good humour—hoping to obtain more before the close of the session—professed to be more satisfied with it than if it had been millions, because it was so freely granted.

The commons showed more alacrity in complaining of the breach of their privileges. They reminded the king of the four members of their house whom he had imprisoned after the last session of parliament, and insisted that such a practice rendered the liberty of speech amongst them a mere fiction. As it was James's policy to remain on good terms with them, he made a solemn assurance that he would respect their freedom in that matter. Yet, the next day, the house, as if to show that they themselves were ready to destroy the liberty within, which they so warmly contended against being infringed from without, expelled one of their members named Shepherd, for declaring, in a speech against a bill for restraining the abuses of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was Saturday, and not Sunday; that the Scriptures recommended dancing on the Sabbath day, and that this bill was in direct opposition to the king's ordinances for the keeping of Sunday.

From their own members they next extended their prosecutions to public officers. They had appointed a committee of inquiry into public abuses, and now summoned witnesses. The conduct of public officers, judges, and their dependents, was subjected to a severe scrutiny. They first examined into the abuses of patents, and three of these incurred particular censure: the one for the licensing of ale-houses, another for the inspection of inns and hostelries, and the third for the exclusive manufacture of gold and silver thread. Patents, to secure to inventors the fruits of their discoveries in arts and manufactures, are beneficial, stimulating to improvement and extending traffic. But these patents were of a directly contrary nature, being grants, for money or through court favour, to individuals to monopolise some particular business; thus checking competition, and defrauding the fair trader of his legitimate profits. The inquiry laid open a scene of the most extraordinary fraud, corruption, and oppression. The three patents just mentioned were denounced as national injuries, and Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, a justice of the peace, his partner in them, were arrested as offenders. The culprits sought protection from the government, Buckingham having sold them the patents, and divided the profits with his half-brother, Sir Edward Villiers. The court was in a great tremor, and it was proposed to dissolve parliament to save the patentees. But Williams, dean of Westminster, represented this as a very imprudent measure, and another course was adopted at his recommendation. Buckingham affected a patriotic air, as if he himself had been no way concerned in it, and said if