written; if she might decree and make laws alone without her senate; if she judged offences according to her wisdom, and not by limitation of statutes and laws; if she might dispose alone of war and peace; if, to be short, she were a mere monarch, and not a mixed ruler, you might peradventure make me to fear the matter the more, and the less to defend the cause.'1 Onslow's the Queen, Again, in 1566, Mr. Onslow, then Solicitor-General and Speaker of Mr. Speaker the Commons, addressing Queen Elizabeth at the conclusion of the address to session said: 'By our common law, although there be for the prince 1366. provided many princely prerogatives and royalties, yet it is not such as the prince can take money or other things, or do as he will at his own pleasure without order; but quietly to suffer his subjects to enjoy their own without wrongful oppression; wherein other princes by their liberty do take as pleaseth them.'* Harrison, in his 'Description of England,' published in 1577, says Harrison's of the Parliament: This House hath the most high and a solute con of England, power of the realm; for thereby kings and mighty princes have from 1577 time to time been deposed from their thrones; laws either enacted or abrogated; offenders of all sorts punished; and corrupted religion either disannulled or reformed. To be short, whatsoever the people of Rome did in their centuriatis or tribunitiis comitiis, the same is and may be done by authority of our Parliament House, which is the head and body of all the realm, and the place wherein every particular person is intended to be present, if not by himself, yet by his advocate or attorney. For this cause also, anything there enacted is not to be misliked, but obeyed by all men without contradiction or grudge.' 3 Ecclesiasti That the same theory of the Constitution prevailed in the later Hooke.'s period of Elizabeth's reign is evidenced by the words of the judicious cal Polity. Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity.' 'I cannot choose,' he says, 'but commend highly their wisdom, by whom the foundations of this commonwealth have been laid; wherein, though no manner, person 1 Harborowe of True and Faithful Subjects, 1559, cited by Brodie, Hist. Brit. Emp.-Title in margin 'It is less danger to be governed in England by a woman than anywhere else. Aylmer afterwards presents a picture of the wretchedness of the French, and compares their condition, and that of other continental states, with the situation of England. 4 D'Ewes, p. 115. 3 Harrison's Description of England, cited by Brodie, Hist. Brit. Emp. 4 (On Hooker, his intellectual characteristics, and the influence exercised by his great work, see Gardiner, Hist. Eng., 1603-1642, i. 39-41, where the more than theological significance of the book is noted. It was the sign of the reunion of Protestantism with the new learning of the Renaissance. . partake of the many-sidedness of the world around it, and peer of Spenser and of Shakespeare.'-C.] Religion began to Sir Thomas or cause be unsubject unto the king's power, yet so is the power of the king over all and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule. The axioms of our regal government are these: “Lex facit regem "—the king's grant of any favour made contrary to the law is void;—“ Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest.” . . . what power the King hath he hath it by law; the bounds and limits of it are known, the entire community giveth general order by law how all things publicly are to be done; and the King as the head thereof, the highest in authority over all, causeth, according to the same law, every particular to be framed and ordered thereby. The whole body politic maketh laws, which laws give power unto the King; and the King having bound himself to use according to law that power, it so falleth out that the execution of the one is accomplished by the other.' Similar views of the Constitution-vaguely and somewhat timidly expressed it is true-are found in the Commonwealth of England' of Sir Thomas Smith, one of Elizabeth's Secretaries of State. On the other hand a novel theory-utterly unknown to the ancient English Constitution-of an absolute and paramount power inherent in the very nature of the Regal office, had already found not a few supporters among the lawyers and courtiers of Elizabeth's reign. It was only after long years of bitter conflict, after the decapitation of one monarch and the deposition of another, that this theory of government which the Stuart dynasty adopted, developed, and pushed to its extreme logical results, was at length finally vanquished by the ancient free principles of the Constitution which it had attempted to supplant. 1 Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. viii. [c. ii. 13]. The first four books were published in 1594; the fifth in 1597; the remaining three not till forty-seven years after his death, which happened in the year 1600. The sixth book, though written by Hooker, did not belong to this work; the real sixth book appears therefore to ave been lost. See Keble's edition. 2 Smith's Commonwealth, book ii. c. 3. This work was not published till 1589. twelve years after the author's death. 405 CHAPTER XIII. THE STUART PERIOD. (1603-1688.) 1. FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE PASSING Of the PETITION OF RIGHT. 1603-1625 his acces party. JAMES I. came to the English throne at a critical period of our JAMES I. history. The reactionary movement towards despotism, which began Tendency of under Henry IV., reached its climax under Henry VIII., and had political and religious since been slowly receding before the reviving spirit of freedom. thought at During the latter years of Elizabeth the Puritan party had become sion. organised and powerful. Whilst the old Queen lived, they were, for The Puritan the most part, content to postpone the active assertion of the rights of the people against the Crown. They looked forward with hope to the advent of her successor, in the expectation of voluntary concessions; but were determined in any case to carry out further reforms in the Ecclesiastical system, and to insist upon all the ancient privileges of Parliament, and all the legal liberties of the subject. Violent changes were not, however, generally desired. Although there was a party hostile to the Hierarchy, the bulk of the Puritans had no desire to abolish Episcopacy,' and would have been fully satisfied with a dispensation from certain ceremonies which too forcibly reminded them of the religion they had renounced. The Presbyterian education Effect of James's Pres of James had led them to anticipate a ready acquiescence in such a byterian moderate measure of reform. But the King's experience of the Pres- education. byterian clergy had, in fact, been productive of prejudices the very opposite to what the English Puritans had expected. The Scotch clergy,' observes Mr. Brodie, 'full of the highest ambition, had converted the pulpit into a theatre for political declamation; and James had imbibed the bitterest hostility to everything which approached to the Presbyterian form of ecclesiastical establishment, declaring that under it Jack and Tom and Dick and Will presumed to instruct him ["From the year 1595 the dissenting body had become known under the party name of Sabbatarians, and under James I. the sects had attained considerable proportions. Still, however, a consciousness of a fundamental schism in the political system as a whole did not exist."-Gneist, Hist. Engl. Const. p. 548, note (1). "The first warning which the Monarchy received of the coming Revolution was given towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, when the Puritan element, strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small country proprietors, began to return a majority to the House of Commons, "Hannis Taylor, Origin of the Engl. Const. p. 598.—ED.] in affairs of state.'1 Under the tuition of the celebrated George Buchanan, James had acquired more learning than he had understanding to digest. Puffed up with literary pride and self-sufficiency, he imagined himself possessed of supereminent wisdom, while in reality lacking the judgment of a man of ordinary abilities. The Duc de Sully called him the wisest fool in Europe,'-a phrase which epigrammatically sums up the peculiarities of the King's intellect. His political The avowed antipathy of James to every kind of Protestant Nonantipathy to Noncontor conformity was based on political, rather than on religious, reasoning. The Presbytery,' he said, 'agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the devil.' He was convinced that the Hierarchy was the firmest support of the Crown, and that where there was no Bishop there would soon be no King. He determined, therefore, to allow not the slightest toleration to Nonconformists, a resolution in which he was confirmed by the fulsome flattery of the prelates, some of whom, at the Hampton Court Conference, did not hesitate to ascribe to him immediate inspiration from Heaven. mity. 1 Brodie, Hist. Brit. Emp. i. 332. " In the princes of the house of Stuart we see little of the sober Gothic honesty of the lowland Scot, much of the vanity, unsteadiness, and insincerity natural to the Italian Gallic stock from which they came.' Gneist, Const. Hist., p. 546, citing Vaughan, iii. 13.—ED.] (For a fairer estimate of James's power, see Gardiner, who says, Hist. Eng. 1603-1642, i. 48-0, His mental powers were of no common order; his memory was good, and his learning, especially on theological points, was by no means contemptible. He was intellectually tolerant, anxious to be at peace with those whose opinions differed from his own. He was above all things eager to be a reconciler, to make peace where there had been war before, and to draw those to live in harmony who had hitherto glared at one another in mutual defiance. He was penetrated with a strong sense of the evil of fanaticism.' That these merits were marred by grave defects,' the history of his reign in England sufficiently shews.-C.1 3 On his journey to London, the Puritan clergy presented to the King what is commonly called the Millenary Petition,' because it purported to proceed from more than 1000 ministers,' though the actual number of those who signified their assent to it is said not to have exceeded 825. It contained nothing inconsistent with the established hierarchy; but the petitioners prayed for a reformation in the church service, ministry, livings, and discipline. In order to obtain further information on the points in dispute, James summoned the famous conference at Hampton Court between the Archbishop of Canterbury, eight Bishops, five Deans and two Doctors on the one side, and Dr. Reynolds and three other Puritan divines on the other. At the conference, which was held before the King on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of January, 1603-4, instead of acting as moderator, James, eager to display his theological learning, assumed the part of Advocate for the Church. Transported with admiration, the Primate exclaimed that his majesty spoke by the special assistance of God's spirit;' and the Bishop of London said his heart melted within him to hear a king, the like of whom had not been since the time of Christ.' (Howell's State Trials, ii. 86, 87.) Some slight alterations in the Book of Common Prayer were made after the Conference; but ten of the men who had presented the Millenary Petition were committed to prison, the judges having declared in the star chamber that it was an offence fineable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion,' Hallam, Const, Hist. i, 298, While sternly repressing the nonconforming Protestants, James at the same time showed an inclination to grant some partial indulgence to the Roman Catholics,-a policy which excited disgust and jealousy throughout the kingdom, and thus strengthened the hands of the Puritan faction.' nature of his The Civil government of James was no less impolitic and arbitrary Arbitrary, than his Ecclesiastical. At a time when the growing spirit of free- Civil govern dom, the general diffusion of knowledge, and the revived study of ment. Greek and Roman authors had caused a Republican tendency to manifest itself in Parliament, and among the people, this alien King, —who, having been legally excluded from the English throne by the testament of Henry VIII., had no title to it but such as he derived from the will of the English people,-was constantly asserting, in the most offensive form, the novel and monstrous theory of his Divine right to absolute and irresponsible sovereignty. The doctrine had Theory of already been advanced by him some years before in Scotland, in a treatise on the True Law of Free Monarch.es. Adopted by the Hierarchy and the courtiers, the theory of Divine Right was later on The facts concerning the so-called Millenary Petition have been much in dispute. Fuller's assertion, Church Hist., v. 263, that it only had 750 signatures, is criticised by Gardiner, Hist. Eng. 1603-1542. 143, who says, the fact seems to have been that there were no signatures at all to it, basing on the assertion of the Petitioners themselves in a subsequent Defence of the Petition, Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 8978, Neither before were any hands required to it, but only consent.'—C.] 1 James soon found it necessary, in order to free himself from the imputation of Papistry with which the Puritans assailed him, to cause the penal laws against the catholics to be put into execution. After the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot additional severity was added to the statutes in force by two Acts containing more than seventy articles inflicting penalties on the Catholics in all their several capacities of masters, Servants, husbands, parents, children, heirs, executors, patrons, barristers, and physicians. (3 James I. c. 4. For the better discovering and repressing of Popish recusants; and 3 James I. c. 5, To prevent and avoid dangers which grow by Popish recusants.' See also 7 James I. c. 2 and c. 6. On the powerful influence of the Classical writings in the direction of liberty, see Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii. 218. Hobbes (born 1988, died 1679) says in the Leviathan (ch. xxix) Inter rebellionis causas maximas numerari potest librorum politicoruni et historicorum quos scripserunt veteres Gra.ci et Romani lectio... Mihi ergo monarchiis nihil videtur esse dannosius posse, quam permittere ut hujusmodi libri publice doceantur, nisi simul a magistris sapientibus quibus venenum corrigi possit remedia applicentur, Morbam hunc comparari libet cum hydrophobia,' &c. On the Italian Renaissance as the "mother of modern political science," v. Hannis Taylor, Origin of the Engl. Const., pp. 595, 596.-ED. 5 King James's Works, p. 207. In 1604, Convocation drew up a set of Canons, 141 in number, which received the Royal assent, but never having ben sanctioned by Parliament are not legally binding upon the laity. Besides declaring every man to be excommunicated who should question the complete accordance of the Prayer Book with the word of God, they denounce as erroneous a number of tenets believed to be hostile to Royal government, and inculcate the duty of passive obedience to the King, in all cases without exception, Dit ine |