168 CHARACTER OF JAMES. CHAP. VI. the commons voted to grant as a full composition for abolishing the right of wardship and dissolving the court that managed it, and for taking away all purveyance; with some further concessions, and particularly that the king's claim to lands should be bound by sixty years' prescription. Two points yet remained, of no small moment; namely, by what assurance they could secure themselves against the king's prerogative, so often held up by court lawyers as something uncontrollable by statute, and by what means so great an imposition should be levied; but the consideration of these was reserved for the ensuing session, which was to take place in October. They were prorogued in July till that month, having previously granted a subsidy for the king's immediate exigencies. On their meeting again, the lords began the business by requesting a conference with the other house about the proposed contract. But it appeared that the commons had lost their disposition to comply. Time had been given them to calculate the disproportion of the terms, and the perpetual burthen that lands held by knights' service must endure. They had reflected, too, on the king's prodigal humour, the rapacity of the Scots in his service, and the probability that this additional revenue would be wasted without sustaining the national honour, or preventing future applications for money. They saw that, after all the specious promises by which they had been led on, no redress was to be expected as to those grievances they had most at heart; that the ecclesiastical courts would not be suffered to lose a jot of their jurisdiction; that illegal customs were still to be levied at the outports; that proclamations were still to be enforced like acts of parliament. Great coldness accordingly was displayed in their proceedings, and in a short time this distinguished parliament, after sitting nearly seven years, was dissolved by proclamation. § 13. It was now perhaps too late for the king, by any reform or concession, to regain that public esteem which he had forfeited. Deceived by an overweening opinion of his own learning, which was not inconsiderable, of his general abilities, which were far from contemptible, and of his capacity for government, which was very small, and confirmed in this delusion by the disgraceful flattery of his courtiers and bishops, he had wholly overlooked the real difficulties of his position—as a foreigner, rather distantly connected with the royal stock, and as a native of a hostile and hateful kingdom come to succeed the most renowned of sovereigns, and to grasp a sceptre which deep policy and long experience had taught her admirably to wield. The people were proud of martial glory; he spoke only of the blessing of the peacemakers: they abhorred the court of Spain; he sought its friendship: they asked indulgence for scrupulous consciences; he would bear no deviation from conformity: they writhed under the yoke of the bishops, whose power he thought necessary to his own-they were animated by a persecuting temper towards the catholics; he was averse to extreme rigour: they had been used to the utmost frugality in dispensing the public treasure; he squandered it on unworthy favourites: they had seen at least exterior decency of morals prevail in the queen's court; they now heard only of its dissoluteness and extravagance: they had imbibed an exclusive fondness for the common law as the source of their liberties and privileges; his churchmen and courtiers, but none more than himself, talked of absolute power and the imprescriptible rights of monarchy. § 14. James lost in 1611 his son prince Henry, and in 1612 the lord treasurer Salisbury. He showed little regret for the former, whose high spirit and great popularity afforded a mortifying contrast, especially as the young prince had not taken sufficient pains to disguise his contempt for his father. Salisbury was a very able man, to whom, perhaps, his contemporaries did some injustice. The ministers of weak and wilful monarchs are made answerable for the mischiefs they are compelled to suffer, and gain no credit for those which they prevent. Cecil had made personal enemies of those who bad loved Essex or admired Raleigh, as well as those who looked invidiously on his elevation. It was believed that the desire shown by the house of commons to abolish the feudal wardships proceeded in a great measure from the circumstance that this obnoxious minister was master of the court of wards, an office both lucrative and productive of much influence. But he came into the scheme of abolishing it with a readiness that did him credit. His chief praise, however, was his management of continental relations. The only minister of James's cabinet who had been trained in the councils of Elizabeth, he retained some of her jealousy of Spain and of her regard for the protestant interests. The court of Madrid, aware both of the king's pusillanimity and of his favourable dispositions, affected a tone in the conferences held in 1604 about a treaty of peace which Elizabeth would have resented in a very different manner. On this occasion he not only deserted the United Provinces, but gave hopes to Spain that he might, if they persevered in their obstinacy, take part against them. Nor have I any doubt that his blind attachment to that power would have precipitated him into a ruinous connexion, if Cecil's wisdom had not influenced his councils. During this minister's life our foreign politics seem to have been conducted with as much firmness and prudence as his master's temper would allow ; the mediation of England was of considerable service in bringing about the great truce of twelve years between Spain and Holland in 1609; and in the dispute which sprang up soon afterwards concerning the succession to the duchies of Cleves and Juliers, a dispute ST. C. H. E. I 170 COKE'S ALIENATION FROM THE COURT. CHAP. VI. which threatened to mingle in arms the catholic and protestant parties throughout Europe, our councils were full of a vigour and promptitude unusual in this reign, nor did anything but the assassination of Henry IV. prevent the appearance of an English army in the Netherlands. It must at least be confessed that the king's affairs, both at home and abroad, were far worse conducted after the death of the Earl of Salisbury than before. § 15. The administration found an important disadvantage, about this time, in a sort of defection of sir Edward Coke (more usually called lord Coke), chief-justice of the king's bench, from the side of prerogative. He was a man of strong though narrow intellect; confessedly the greatest master of English law that had ever appeared, but proud and overbearing, a flatterer and tool of the court till he had obtained his ends, and odious to the nation for the brutal manner in which, as attorney-general, he had behaved towards sir Walter Raleigh on his trial. In raising him to the post of chief-justice the council had of course relied on finding his unfathomable stores of precedent subservient to their purposes. But, soon after his promotion, Coke, from various causes, began to steer a more independent course. He was little formed to endure a competitor in his own profession, and lived on ill terms both with the lord chancellor Egerton, and with the attorney-general, sir Francis Bacon. The latter had long been his rival and enemy. Discountenanced by Elizabeth, who, against the importunity of Essex, had raised Coke over his head, that great and aspiring genius was now high in the king's favour. The chief-justice affected to look down on one as inferior to him in knowledge of our municipal law, as he was superior in all other learning and in all the philosophy of jurisprudence. And the mutual enmity of these illustrious men never ceased till each in his turn satiated his revenge by the other's fall. Coke was also much offended by the attempts of the bishops to emancipate their ecclesiastical courts from the civil jurisdiction. But as the king and some of the council rather favoured these episcopal pretensions, they were troubled by what they deemed his obstinacy, and discovered more and more that they had to deal with a most impracticable spirit. It would be invidious to exclude from the motives that altered lord Coke's behaviour in matters of prerogative his real affection for the laws of the land, which novel systems, broached by the churchmen and civilians, threatened to subvert. In Bates's case, which seems to have come in some shape extra-judicially before him, he had delivered an opinion in favour of the king's right to impose at the outports; but so cautiously guarded, and bottomed on such different grounds from those taken by the barons of the exchequer, that it could not be cited in favour of any fresh encroachments. He now performed a great service to his country. The practice of issuing proclamations, by way of temporary regulation indeed, but interfering with the subject's liberty, in cases unprovided for by parliament, had grown still more usual than under Elizabeth. Coke was sent for to attend some of the council, who might perhaps have reason to conjecture his sentiments, and it was demanded whether the king, by his proclamation, might prohibit new buildings about London, and whether he might prohibit the making of starch from wheat. This was during the session of parliament in 1610, and with a view to what answer the king should make to the commons' remonstrance against these proclamations. Coke replied that it was a matter of great importance, on which he would confer with his brethren. This was agreed to by the council and three judges, besides Coke, appointed to consider it. They resolved that the king, by his proclamation, cannot create any offence which was not one before; for then he might alter the law of the land in a high point; for if he may create an offence where none is, upon that ensues fine and imprisonment. It was also resolved that the king hath no prerogative but what the law of the land allows him. But the king, for the prevention of offences, may by proclamation admonish all his subjects that they keep the laws and do not offend them, upon punishment to be inflicted by the law; and the neglect of such proclamation, Coke says, aggravates the offence. Lastly, they resolved that, if an offence be not punishable in the starchamber, the prohibition of it by proclamation cannot make it so. After this resolution, the report goes on to remark, no proclamation imposing fine and imprisonment was made. § 16. By the abrupt dissolution of parliament James was left nearly in the same necessity as before their subsidy being by no means sufficient to defray his expenses, far less to discharge his debts. He had frequently betaken himself to the usual resource of applying to private subjects, especially rich merchants, for loans of money. These loans, which bore no interest, and for the repayment of which there was no security, disturbed the prudent citizens, especially as the council used to solicit them with a degree of importunity at least bordering on compulsion. Forced loans or benevolences were directly prohibited by an act of Richard III., whose laws, however the court might sometimes throw a slur upon his usurpation, had always been in the statute-book. After the dissolution of 1610, James attempted as usual to obtain loans; but the merchants, grown bolder with the spirit of the times, refused him the accommodation. He had recourse to another method of raising money, unprecedented, I believe, before his reign, though long practised in France, the sale of honours. He sold several peerages for considerable sums, and created a new order of here 172 UNDERTAKERS. CHAP. VI. ditary knights, called baronets, who paid 10007. each for their patents. He § 17. Such resources, however, being evidently insufficient and temporary, it was almost indispensable to try once more the temper of a parliament. This was strongly urged by Bacon, whose fertility of invention rendered him constitutionally sanguine of success. submitted to the king that there were expedients for more judiciously managing a house of commons, than Cecil, upon whom he was too willing to throw blame, had done with the last: that some of those who had been most forward in opposing were now won over, such as Neville, Yelverton, Hyde, Crew, Dudley Digges; that much might be done by forethought towards filling the house with well-affected persons, winning or blinding the lawyers, whom he calls “the literæ vocales of the house," and drawing the chief constituent bodies of the assembly, the country gentlemen, the merchants, the courtiers, to act for the king's advantage; that it would be expedient to tender voluntarily certain graces, and modifications of the king's prerogative, such as might with smallest injury be conceded, lest they should be first demanded, and in order to save more important points. This advice was seconded by sir Henry Neville, an ambitious man, who had narrowly escaped in the queen's time for having tampered in Essex's conspiracy, and had much promoted the opposition in the late parliament, but was now seeking the post of secretary of state. Neville, and others who, like him, professed to understand the temper of the commons, and to facilitate the king's dealings with them, were called undertakers. This circumstance, like several others in the present reign, is curious, as it shows the rise of a systematic parliamentary influence, which was one day to become the mainspring of government. Neville, however, and his associates, had deceived the courtiers with promises they could not realise. It was resolved to announce certain intended graces in the speech from the throne; that is, to declare the king's readiness to pass bills that might remedy some grievances and retrench a part of his prerogative. These proffered amendments of the law, though eleven in number, failed altogether of giving the content that had been fully expected. Except the repeal of a strange act of Henry VIII., allowing the king to make such laws as he should think fit for the principality of Wales without consent of parliament, none of them could perhaps be reckoned of any constitutional importance. In all domanial and fiscal causes, and wherever the private interests of the crown stood in competition with those of a subject, the former enjoyed enormous and superior advantages, whereof what is strictly called its prerogative was principally composed. The terms of prescription that bound other men's right, the rules of pleading and procedure |