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 alterations do not appear to be material. Subsequent editions appeared in 1632 (with Lewis Owen's ‘Jesuit's Pilgrimage’ appended), 1637, 1638, 1673, and 1687. Sarpi's Italian translation, made from the 1605 edition, appeared with some additions in 1625, and in 1626 Diodati translated it, with Sarpi's additions, into French. A Dutch translation which Grotius had suggested appeared in 1675 (Epistolæ, pp. 865, 866).

Sandys returned to England in 1599, and in 1602 he resigned his prebend at Wetwang. Next year he made his way to James VI in Scotland, and accompanied him to England. He was knighted at the Charterhouse on 11 May 1603, and was returned on 12 March 1603–4 to James I's first parliament as member for Stockbridge, Hampshire. He at once assumed a leading position in the House of Commons. In May he was head of the commons' committee appointed to confer with the lords with a view to abolishing the court of wards, feudal tenures, and purveyance. Sandys drew up the committee's report, but the scheme came to nothing through the opposition of the lords (, Bacon, iii. 180, 210;, i. 170–6). In the same session Sandys opposed the change of the royal title from king of England and Scotland to king of Great Britain. He was also chief of a committee to investigate grievances against the great trading companies, and to consider a bill for throwing trade open, a course which he consistently advocated. On 8 Feb. 1605–6 he introduced a bill for the ‘better establishing of true religion,’ which was rejected by the commons after mutilation in the House of Lords (, iii. 264; Commons' Journals, i. 311). In February 1607 he advocated the concession of limited privileges to the ‘postnati,’ and argued against the claim of the crown that the personal union of the two kingdoms involved the admission of Scots to the rights and privileges of Englishmen (, i. 334;, iii. 328, 333–4). In the following June he urged that all prisoners should be allowed the benefit of counsel, a proposition which Hobart declared to be ‘an attempt to shake the corner stone of the law.’ In the same session Sandys carried a motion for the regular keeping of the ‘Journals’ of the House of Commons, which had not been done before. In April 1610 he was placed on a committee to consider the ‘great contract’ for commuting the king's feudal rights for an annual grant; a full report of his speech delivered on this subject on 10 April has been printed (from Harl. MS. 777) in the appendix to ‘Parliamentary Debates in 1610’ (Camden Soc.).

In 1613 Bacon reported to the king that Sandys had deserted the opposition (, iv. 365, 370). Probably to confirm this disposition, Sandys was on 12 March 1613–14 granted a moiety of the manor of Northbourne, Kent; but when parliament met on 5 April following, Sandys, who seems to have been returned both for Rochester and Hindon, Wiltshire, maintained his old attitude. In the first days of the session he opposed Winwood's demand for supply, and suggested that the grievances which had been presented to the last parliament should be referred to the committee on petitions. He was the moving spirit on a committee appointed to consider impositions, and in bringing up its report on 21 May delivered a remarkable speech, in which he maintained that the origin of every monarchy lay in election; that the people gave its consent to the king's authority upon the express understanding that there were certain reciprocal conditions which neither king nor people might violate with impunity; and that a king who pretended to rule by any other title, such as that of conquest, might be dethroned whenever there was force sufficient to overthrow him (Commons' Journals, i. 493). The enunciation of this principle, the germ of which Sandys derived from Hooker, and which subsequently became the cardinal whig dogma, was naturally obnoxious to the king, and his anger was increased by Sandys's animadversions on the bishop of Lincoln's speech [see ]. On the dissolution of parliament (7 June) Sandys was summoned before the council to answer for his speeches. According to Chamberlain, he was dismissed ‘without taint or touch,’ but he was ordered not to leave London without permission, and to give bonds for his appearance whenever called upon.

No parliament was summoned for more than six years, and meanwhile Sandys turned his attention to colonial affairs. He was a member of the East India Company before August 1614, when he requested the admission of Theodore Goulston or Gulston [q. v.], who ‘had saved his life.’ On 31 March 1618 he was sworn a free brother of the company, and from 2 July 1619 to 2 July 1623, and again from 1625 to 1629, he served on the committee. He took an active part in its proceedings (cf. Cal. State Papers, East Indies and Japan, 1614–30). On 29 June 1615 he was admitted a member of the Somers Islands Company, and the Sandys tribe in that group was named after him.