Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/103

 Roman Catholics found homes in the wilds of North America. In 1634, Lord Baltimore founded the colony of Maryland, where one of the first laws was that religious liberty should be allowed to all.

7. Ship-money.—Charles now found a new way of raising money. A fleet was needed in the English channel to protect English trade, but Charles had no money to equip one. A lawyer told him that it was once the custom for the coast towns to provide ships, and the king saw in the suggestion a means of keeping up a fleet and army without any expense to himself. He, therefore, commanded the people living in the coast towns to provide him with ships. The next step was to get them to pay him money to equip a fleet, and then as the people living inland were benefited by this fleet protecting England’s shores, he called upon them, also, to pay a tax. When John Hampden, who lived in Buckinghamshire, refused to pay, he was brought before the king’s judges, who decided by a vote of seven to five, that the king had a right to collect this tax, although the Petition of Right said no tax could be levied without the consent of Parliament. Hampden lost his case, but his refusal to pay roused the people to a sense of their danger.

8. Laud and Scotland.—How long Charles would have ruled without a parliament, we know not, had not Laud by his excessive zeal brought him into conflict with the Scotch. Wentwerth who was in Ireland, and Laud had been writing letters to each other, and laying a plan by which the king was to be made absolute in the State, and the Puritans and Presbyterians were to be forced to submit to Laud’s rule in the Church. This scheme which they called ‘‘Thorough,” proposed that a standing army should be raised, and by it all opposition to the king’s will crushed out. Wentworth was carrying out part of this plan in Ireland, and Laud was anxious to try the rest in Scotland. So he persuaded Charles to appoint bishops in Scotland, and to order that a Prayer-Book, much like the English Prayer-Book, should be used in all the Scotch churches. The Scotch did not use any Prayer-book, and when an attempt was made to read the new service in a church in Edinburgh, an old woman, Jenny Geddes, threw her stool at the preacher's head, and there was a riot, during which the preacher was driven out. When Charles heard of this he commanded the Scotch to submit; but,