JAMES I. 1603-1625. Tendency of political and religious thought at his accession. The Puritan party. CHAPTER XIII. THE STEWART PERIOD. (A.D. 1603-1688.) FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES 1. TO THE PASSING OF THE JAMES I. came to the English throne at a critical period of our history. The reactionary movement towards despotism, which began under Henry VI, reached its climax under Henry VIII., and had since been slowly receding before the reviving spirit of freedom. During the latter years of Elizabeth the Puritan party had become organized and powerful. Whilst the old queen lived, they were, for 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. 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 Effect of James's religion they had renounced. The Presbyterian education of James had led them to anticipate a ready acquiescence in such a moderate measure of reform. Presbyterian education. Although there But the king's experience of the Presbyterian 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 in affairs of State.' 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. He was The avowed antipathy of James to every kind of Pro- His political antipathy to testant nonconformity, was based on political, rather than nonconforon religious, reasoning. The presbytery,' he said, 'agreeth mity. as well with monarchy as God with the devil.' 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.2 1 Brodie, Hist. Brit. Emp. i. 332. * 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 Arbitrary nature of his civil government. 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.1 The civil government of James was no less impolitic and arbitrary than his ecclesiastical. At a time when the growing spirit of freedom, the general diffusion of knowledge, and the revived study of 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 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 'Lis 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 finable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion.' Hallam, Const. Hist. i. 298. 1 James soon found it necessary, in order to free himself from the impu tation 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.) 2 On the powerful influence of the classical writings in the direction of liberty, see Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii. 218. Hobbes (born 1588, died 1679) says in the Leviathan (ch. xxix) Inter rebellionis causas maximas numerari potest librorum politicorum et historicorum qes scripserunt veteres Graeci et Romani lectio. . . Mihi ergo monarchis nihil videtur esse damnosius posse, quam permittere ut hujusmodi Ibri publice doceantur, nisi simul a magistris sapientibus quibus venenum cor possit remedia applicentur. Morbum hunc comparari libet cum hydrophobia,' &c. English people, was constantly asserting, in the most offensive form, the novel and monstrous theory of his divine right to absolute and irresponsible sovereignty. This doctrine had already been advanced by him some Theory of years before in Scotland, in a treatise on the True Law divine right. of Free Monarchies."1 Adopted by the hierarchy and the courtiers, the theory of divine right was later on elaborated into a system by Filmer,3 and became the distinctive badge of the more violent high-churchmen and Tories. 'It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a Divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his rights; that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was merely a declaration of his present intentions, and 1 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 been 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. Sir Robert Filmer wrote his famous 'Patriarca' in the reign of Charles I., but it was not published till after the restoration of Charles II. He maintained that All government is absolute monarchy. No man is born free; and, therefore, could never have the liberty to choose either governor or form of government. The father of a family governs by no laws but his own. Kings, in the right of parents, succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction. They are above all laws. They have a divine right to absolute power, and are not answerable to human authority.' A conflict with the House of Commons inevitable. James is the aggressor. not a contract of which the performance could be demanded.'1 Such being the ideas of the king on regal government, it was inevitable that he should speedily come into conflict with the House of Commons, a body fully aware of its ancient rights and privileges, impressed with the duty of asserting and maintaining them, and strong in the consciousness that it represented the feelings and wishes of the great majority of all classes of the nation.2 The very first acts of James's reign were ominous of the arbitrary manner in which he designed to rule his new kingdom. On his journey to London he ordered a thief, taken in the fact, to be executed without the formality of a trial;3 and in the proclamation summon Macaulay, Hist. Eng. i. 55. The sublime pretensions of James were rendered ludicrous, as well as irritating, by the contemptible demeanour of the king himself. 'His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throne had long been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the single exception of the unfortunate Henry the Sixth, had been strong-minded, high-spirited, courageous, and of princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary level. It was no light thing that, on the very eve of the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogie." Id. p. 58. See also Mr. J. R. Green's ‘Short History of the English People, pp. 464-467. 2 Towards the end of the 16th, and during the earlier part of the 17th century, the House of Commons included among its members a large body of men of ability, recruited especially from amongst the lawyers who became known to the electors by the talent which they displayed at the bar. 'The services which this class of men rendered to the cause of freedom was incalculable. The learning of the ablest lawyers in the 16th century my have been small in comparison with the stores of knowledge which may be acquired in our own day; but, relatively to the general level of education, it stood far higher. A few years later a race of parliamentary statesmen would begin to arise from amongst the country gentlemen: but, as yet, almost all pretensions to statesmanship were confined to the council table and its supporters. For the present, the burthen of the conflict in the Commons lay upon the lawyers, who at once gave to the struggle again a the Crown that strong legal character which it never afterwards lost. S. R. Gardiner, Hist. Eng. from 1603 to 1616, i. 178. 3I hear our new king,' said Sir John Harrington, has hanged one man before he was tried; it is strangely done. Now, if the wind bloweth thas, why may not a man be tried before he has offended?'--Nuga Antiqint, & |