Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/259

 Struggle for Constitutional Government 221 give a plausible answer ; for it is an undutiful part in sub- jects to press their king, wherein they know beforehand he will refuse them. 1 II. The Petition of Right (1628) Charles I was, from the start, on even worse terms with Parliament than his father had been. The com- mons had, in addition to the old grievances, serious complaints to make in regard to the character and pol- icy of Charles' chief minister, Buckingham. Two Parlia- ments were dissolved by the king in anger, and he raised a great storm of opposition by forced loans, arbitrary imprisonment, and other tyrannical acts. When, how- ever, his third Parliament drew up the famous Petition of Right, a sort of second Magna Charta, he was forced to approve it, because he had to have money to carry on the war with France. To the king's Most Excellent Majesty : We humbly show unto our sovereign lord the king, the 304. The lords spiritual and temporal, and commons in Parliament assembled, that whereas it is declared and enacted by a statute made in the time of the reign of King Edward I, commonly called " Statutum de Tallagio non Coficedendo" that no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by the king or his heirs in this realm without the good will and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm ; 1 Yet James well knew the difference between an absolute king and a tyrant, as he makes clear in his instructions to his son ( Works of James I, p. 155) : Consider first the true difference between a lawful good king and an usurp- ing tyrant. . . . The one acknowledgeth himself ordained for his people, having received from God a burden of government, whereof he must be countable ; the other thinketh his people ordained for him, a prey to his passions and inordinate appetites. Petition of Right (1628). (Extracts.)