Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/365

Rh THE FIRST TWO STUAUTS.] ENGLAND 345 the right of parliament to puuish officials who had enjoyed the favour of the crown, which had fallen into disuse since the accession of the House of York. There was no open contest between parliament and king in this matter. But the initiative of demanding justice had passed from the crown to the Commons. It is impossible to overestimate the effect of these proceedings on the position of parlia ment. The crown could never again be regarded as the sun of the governmental system. When the Commons met after the summer adjournment a new constitutional question was raised. The king was at last determined to find troops for the defence of the Palatinate, and asked the Commons for money to pay them. They in turn petitioned the crown to atandon the Spanish alliance, which they regarded as the source of ail the mischief. James told them that they had no right to discuss business on which he had not asked their opinion. They declared that they were privileged to discuss any matter relating to the commonwealth which they chose to take in hand, and embodied their opinion in a protest, which they entered on their journals. The king tore the protest out of the book, and dissolved parliament. Then followed a fresh call for a benevolence, this time more sparingly answered than before. A year of fruitless diplomacy failed to save the Palatinate from total loss. The ill-considered journey to Madrid, in which Prince Charles, accompanied by Buckingham, hoped to wring from the Spanish statesmen a promise to restore the Palatinate in compliment for his marriage with the infanta, ended also in total failure. In the autumn of 1623 Charles re turned to England without a wife, and without hope of regaining the Palatinate with Spanish aid. He came back resolved to take vengeance upon Spain. The parliament elected in 1624 was ready to second him. It voted some supplies on the understanding that, when the king had matured his plans for carrying on the war, it should come together in the autumn to vote the necessary subsidies. It never met again. Charles had promised that, if he married a Roman Catholic lady, he would grant no toleration to the English Catholics in consideration of the marriage. In the autumn he had engaged himself to marry Henrietta Maria, the sister of the king of France, and had bound himself to grant the very conditions which he had declared to the Commons that he never would concede. Hence it was that he did not venture to recommend his father to summon parliament till the marriage was over. But though there was but little money to dispose of, he and Buckingham, who, now that James was sick and infirm, were the real leaders of the Government, could not endure to abstain from the prosecution of the war. Early in 1625 an expedition, under Count Mansfeld, was sent to Holland, that it might ultimately cut its way to the Palatinate. Left without pay and without supplies, the men perished by thousands, and when James died in March, the new king had to meet his first parliament burthened by a broken promise and a disastrous failure. When parliament met (1625) the Commons at first con tented themselves with voting a sum of money far too small to carry on the extensive military and naval operation in which Charles had embarked. When the king explained his necessities, they intimated that they had no confidence iu Buckingham, and asked that, before they granted further supply, the king would name counsellors whom they could trust, to advise him on its employment. Charles at once dissolved parliament. He knew that the demand for ministerial responsibility would in the end involve his own responsibility, and, believing as he did that Buckingham s arrangements had been merely unlucky, he declined to sacrifice the minister whom he trusted. Charles and Buckingham did their best to win back popularity by strenuous exertion. They attempted to found a great Protestant alliance on the Continent, and they sent a great expedition to Cadiz. The Protestant alliance and the expedition to Cadiz ended in equal failure. The second parliament of the reign (1626) impeached Buckingham for crimes against the state. As Charles would not dismiss him simply because the Commons were dissatisfied with him as a minister, they fell back on charging him with criminal designs. Once more Charles dissolved parliament to save Buckingham. Then came fresh enterprises and fresh failures. A fleet under Lord Willoughby was almost ruined by a storm. The king of Denmark, trusting to supplies from England which never came, was defeated at Lutter. A new war, in addition to the Spanish war, broke out with France. A great expedition to Rhe, under Buckingham s command (1627), intended to succour the Huguenots of Rochelle against their sovereign, ended in disaster. In order to enable himself to meet expenditure on so vast a scale, Charles had levied a forced loan from his subjects. Men of high rank in society who refused to pay were imprisoned. Soldiers were billeted by force in pri vate houses, and military officers executed martial law on civilians. When the imprisoned gentlemen appealed to the King s Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, it appeared that no cause of committal had been assigned, and the judges therefore refused to liberate them. Still Charles believed it possible to carry on the war, and especially to send relief to Rochelle, now strictly blockaded by the French Govern ment. In order to find the means for this object he summoned his third parliament (1628). The Commons at The PetL- once proceeded to draw a line which should cut off the tion of possibility of a repetition of the injuries of which they Rl o ht - complained. Charles was willing to surrender his claim to billet soldiers by force, to order the execution of martial law in time of peace, and to exact forced loans, bene volences, or any kind of taxation, without consent of parliament; but he protested against the demand that he should surrender the right to imprison without showing cause. It was argued on his behalf that in case of a great conspiracy, it would be necessary to trust the crown with unusual powers to enable it to preserve the peace. The Commons, who knew that the crown had used the powers which it claimed, not against conspirators, but against the commonwealth itself, refused to listen to the argument, and insisted on the acceptance of the whole Petition of Right, in which they demanded redress for all their grievances. The king at last gave his consent to it, as he could obtain money in no other way. In after times, when any real danger occurred which needed a suspension of the ordinary safeguards of liberty, a remedy was found in the suspension of the law by Act of Parliament ; such a remedy, however, only became possible when king and parliament were on good terms of agreement with one another. That time was as yet far distant. The House of Com- Disputes mons brought fresh charges against Buckingham, whose on reli &quot; murder soon after the prorogation removed one subject of fixation dispute. But when they met again (1629) they had two quarrels left over from the preceding session. About a third part of the king s revenue was derived from customs duties, which had for many generations been granted by parliament to each sovereign for life. Charles held that this grant was little more than a matter of form, whilst the Commons held that it was a matter of right. But for the other dispute the difficulty would probably have been got over. The strong Protestantism of Elizabeth s reign had assumed a distinctly Calvinistic form, and the country gentlemen who formed the majority of the House of Commons were resolutely determined that no other theology than the Calvinistic should be taught in England. In the last few years a reaction against it had arisen, especially in vni. - 44