Raleigh was still under the weight of the old sentence of death pronounced against him fifteen years previously, without which it would have been difficult to convict him this time of a crime involving capital punishment. "Your recent offences have roused the justice of his Majesty," declared the great judge Montague; "May God have mercy on your soul!" Weak and ill as he was, Raleigh defended himself with as much skill as complacency. He asked for a short delay, in order to put his affairs in order. "Not," he said, "that I desire to gain a minute of existence. Old, sick, and dishonored, and approaching my end, life has become wearisome to me." It was, indeed, the expression of supreme weariness in this man, who had always loved life more than he had dreaded death, even according to the statements of his enemies. The respite was refused. Lady Raleigh, on going to say farewell to her husband, announced to him that she had obtained the favor of receiving his body after the execution. The hideous punishment of traitors had been commuted. Raleigh was to be beheaded. "Well done, Bess," he said, smiling; "it is fortunate that you will be able to dispose in death of a husband whom you have not always had when alive at your disposal." He had cast aside, by an effort of his powerful will, all the ambitious projects, all the romantic, adventurous, strange ideas, which still crowded in his brain. The greatness of his soul, often darkened during lifetime by many faults and even vices, was freed from the dark mist at the hour of death. On the 29th of October he was calm, grave, pious. He received the sacrament before walking to the scaffold, erected at Westminster. An immense crowd surrounded it. He addressed the people and made a long speech, protesting his innocence. The morning was cold. It was proposed to the condemned man that he should warm himself for an instant before the fatal moment. "No," said Raleigh, "it is the day of my ague; if I were to tremble presently, my enemies will say I quake for fear. It were better to have done with it." He knelt, uttering aloud a beautiful prayer. He touched the axe, "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases," he said, and he laid his head upon the block. The executioner delayed. "What do you fear?" exclaimed Raleigh; "strike." His head fell immediately. The great soldier, the illustrious sailor, the statesman, the scholar, the incomparable adventurer, was not yet sixty-seven years of age. King James had truckled to Spain, and had added one more stain to his name.
One of the most implacable of the judges who were the instruments of the ruin of Raleigh was already threatened in his exalted seat. At the beginning of 1621 the king was compelled to convoke a Parliament, to obtain the subsidies which he needed. His son-in-law, the Elector-Palatine, placed by the Protestant faction on the throne of Bohemia, had imprudently accepted that offer without measuring the opposition which was about to be raised against him on the part of the Catholics of the Empire. He was now in danger of being driven from Bohemia, and deprived at the same time of his hereditary states. The Lower Palatinate had been attacked by the Catholic armies. James hesitated, lamented, cursing the ambition of his son-in-law, which had placed this business upon his shoulders; but he had already sent a small army corps to his assistance, and promised larger reinforcements. Parliament alone could place him in a position to keep his promises.
Parliament had no objection to this war, popular in England as a Protestant crusade; but it desired to set a price upon its liberality, and demanded that several retainers of monopolies should be tried, who had unworthily abused their scandalous privileges. From Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, they soon came to the Attorney-General, Sir Henry Yelverton, and from him to one of the judges of the court of prerogatives, to the Bishop of Llandaff, convicted of having sold or bought justice. The vengeance of the Commons aimed even higher still: the Chancellor Bacon had said that corruption was the vice of the time. He had been profoundly smitten with it, and was to bear a signal punishment for his offences. On the 21st of March, 1621, the commission of Parliament entrusted with the inquiry into abuses in the matter of justice accused the Lord Chancellor, viscount of St. Alban's, upon twenty-two personal counts, while at the same time he was reproached with his connivance at offences of the same nature among his subordinates.
Bacon had hitherto resolutely denied the deeds with which the public voice reproached him; but the blow was too bold and the accusations too plainly specified for him to be able to resist the evidence any longer. His eloquence, the marvellous resources of his mind, the brilliancy of his genius, all failed him with the decline of court favor. He felt himself abandoned by the king, who had never had any liking for him, the servility of Bacon not succeeding in veiling his intellectual superiority. The Duke of Buckingham coveted his offices for some of his own dependents. The great chancellor was stricken with sickness, he took to his bed and asked for time to prepare his defence. It was not a defence, but a general confession which he caused to be presented on the 24th of April to the House of Lords. Being pressed with questions, he avowed one after another all the shameful actions of which he was accused, palliating them as well as he was able and asking mercy of his judges. "The poor gentleman," wrote a contemporary, "elevated formerly above pity, has now fallen below it; his tongue, which was the glory of his time for eloquence, is like a forsaken harp hung upon the willow, while the waters of affliction flow over upon the banks." The abasement was complete. The Lords had spared this great criminal the humiliation of appearing at their bar, but a deputation repaired to his residence in order to cause the authenticity of the writing and the circumstantial confession to be certified. "It is my act, my hand, my heart. Oh my Lords, spare a broken reed!" sobbed the great philosopher, the brilliant genius, the profound thinker who is still one of the glories of England. Moral character had been lacking to these intellectual gifts.
Bacon was condemned to lose all his offices and to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds sterling, which was remitted by the king, for he was in no condition to discharge it. His imprisonment was commuted into exile within his estates. It was forbidden him during his lifetime to approach the court, to sit in Parliament, or to serve his country in whatever capacity it might be.
No punishment could be more bitter to Bacon. Confined to his country seat, he revised his former works, his Essays, his Novum Organum, or New Philosophy, his two books on the Progress of Science. He caused them to be translated into Latin; he even wrote a History of Henry VII.; but his heart was still in court and in public life. He only asked to reappear upon that scene from which he had been so ignominiously expelled, and he harassed the King, Prince Charles, and the Duke of Buckingham with his petitions. None gave ear to him, none replied to him; his temper became embittered, his health became impaired, and this great mind, fallen so low, was extinguished in 1626, five years after his disgrace. He died at the age of sixty-five.
The affairs of the Elector-Palatine, who had become King of Bohemia, were becoming more and more serious. The five thousand Englishmen sent by King James, ill-paid and poorly commanded, had rendered little service. The embassies with which he importuned all the powers interested exerted no influence. The throne of Bohemia, like the hereditary states of Prince Frederick, had been taken from him, and, driven from Germany, he had been compelled to take refuge at the Hague with his wife and children, there to live upon a pension allowed him by the Dutch; but his father-in-law, King James, had conceived a project which was, he thought, calculated at least to re-establish his son-in-law in the Palatinate. He counted in this affair upon the influence of Spain.
In spite of the national opposition to a Catholic marriage for the heir to the throne, and notwithstanding the recent petitions of Parliament to this effect, King James, who had moreover quarrelled with the House of Commons and had caused several of its members to be arrested, continued his negotiations with Philip IV. for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, Donna Maria. For nearly twenty years the King of England had, in common with Spain, dreamed of this alliance, which he at length regarded as on the point of being realized. The scheme had been proposed more than once in the shape of a union between Prince Henry with the Infanta Anne; the prince had died and the Infanta had married the King of France. The King of Spain, Philip III., had at first appeared favorable to the marriage, but on his death-bed he recommended his son Philip IV. to make his sister an empress by uniting her to her cousin the Emperor Ferdinand. King James did not know of the last wish of the dying king, but he hoped to find the new Spanish sovereign more accommodating than his father. After endless negotiations and journeys to and fro, after Catholic pretensions on the part of Spain, and displays of pecuniary avidity on that of King James, who threatened to break off everything, an almost complete understanding had been arrived at in the month of January, 1623: the Infanta was to preserve the free exercise of her religion; the English Catholics were to enjoy a practical, if not legal, toleration; the payments of the dowry of two millions of crowns were arranged, the dispensation of Rome was expected, and people spoke of celebrating the marriage by proxy through the ambassador forty days after the arrival of that important document. Everything appeared propitious. Lord Digby, Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, wrote to the king, "I do not wish to inspire by uncertain reasons a vain hope in your Majesty, but I can inform you that the court of Spain openly manifests its intention of giving you real and prompt satisfaction. If this is not really their design, they are more false than all the devils in hell, for they could not make more protestations of sincerity nor more ardent vows."
The Spaniards could scarcely be absolved from the reproach of double-dealing in this affair; for notwithstanding appearances, the two negotiations in favor of the Elector-Palatine and the Prince of Wales did not make progress. The towns of the Palatinate, which still held out for their hereditary prince, were falling by degrees into the hands of the emperor without Spain intervening in any manner, and the dispensation of Rome did not arrive. A strange and chivalrous project suddenly arose in the mind of Prince Charles, suggested, it is said, by Buckingham, who had himself conceived it upon a proposal of the Duke Olivarez, first and all-powerful minister in Spain. Why not go himself to Madrid to conquer and bring back the Infanta? Why not put an end to this interminable negotiation by the act of an amorous, headstrong prince? King James consented to the scheme after much hesitation and even after tears. He had the matter at heart; his self-love was at stake. The prince set out secretly, accompanied by Buckingham.
The undertaking was hazardous, and it appeared even more so than it was. When it was known in England that the prince had departed, and with what object, the emotion and uneasiness were great. Public agitation communicated itself to the king. "Do you think," he said to his keeper of the seals, Bishop Williams, "that this knight-errant journey will succeed?" "Sire," said the bishop, "if my Lord Marquis of Buckingham treat the Duke Olivarez with great consideration, remembering that he is the favorite in Spain, and if the Duke Olivarez is very polite and careful towards my Lord Marquis of Buckingham, remembering that he is the favorite in England, the prince your son may pay his addresses happily to the Infanta; but if the duke and the marquis mutually forget what they both are, it will be very dangerous for the design of your Majesty. God will that neither one nor the other will fall into that error."
The far-seeing good sense of the bishop keeper of the seals had not deceived him. The whims and vanity of Buckingham encountering the Spanish haughtiness, were to be as a rock to this frail bark. The undertaking had succeeded well: the prince and the favorite had traversed Paris and France under an incognito, which was penetrated on several occasions, and they had arrived safe and sound at Madrid on the 17th of March, 1623, "more gay than they had ever been in their lives." This chivalrous freak, the imprudent straightforwardness of the proceeding for a moment appeared to seduce the Spaniards. "It only remains for us to throw the Infanta into his arms," Count Olivarez exclaimed, and the prince, putting aside all mystery, was sumptuously received at the court of Spain, admitted to the presence of the Infanta, and entertained with hopes of a speedy triumph. Appearances were soon to give way to reality. The months elapsed, the Prince of Wales and Buckingham were still at Madrid. The demands of Pope Gregory XV. became every day more extensive, and the situation more treacherous. The three sovereigns reciprocally demanded an act of respect for religious liberty, which in the main and on principle neither of them recognized nor intended to grant. The King of England wished his son to marry a Catholic princess, while remaining exclusively Protestant himself, his son, and his people. The King of Spain desired that his daughter and all her personal servants should remain openly Catholics, while living in a Protestant family and among a Protestant people, while he himself absolutely excluded all Protestants from his realm. The Pope claimed for the Catholics of England full liberty of conscience, while peremptorily refusing the same privilege to the Protestants throughout his dominions, and called upon the King of England to return, together with his people, to the yoke of the only true and sovereign Church.
So many conflicting and obstinate pretensions could not be reconciled. King James yielded as much as he could; he signed the articles of toleration with regard to the Catholics which were demanded of him, publicly so far as public opinion in England grudgingly permitted; secretly in respect of that which concerned the influence to be exerted upon Parliament on the subject of penal laws. He even sent (to his son and Buckingham) a blank signature, which approved in advance all that they might concede. Matters proceeded from bad to worse; the first surprise at the proceeding of the Prince of Wales had subsided. There was no longer any hope of seeing Charles become a Catholic. "I have come to Spain to seek a wife and not a religion," he said frankly. The views of the English and Spanish favorites had clashed upon several occasions. Buckingham, irritated at not having succeeded immediately in an undertaking which his foolish vanity had suggested, altered his mind, and no longer urged the completion of the project. Nothing had been broken off, but everything remained in suspense, and King James as well as England had for more than six months been demanding the return of the absent Prince of Wales. "I care neither for the marriage nor for aught else, provided I fold you once more in my arms," wrote the king to his son and the favorite. "God grant it! God grant it! God grant it! Amen! amen! amen!" There was a tender separation in appearance, at least, between the royal persons. The two favorites were more bitter. "I remain for ever," said Buckingham to Olivarez, "the servant of the King of Spain, the queen, the Infanta, and I will render to them all the good offices in my power. As to you, you have so often thwarted and disobliged me that I make you no declaration of friendship." "I accept your words," dryly replied the Count Duke. "If the prince had come here alone he would not have gone away alone," it was said in Madrid. He embarked at Santander, on the 28th of September, and landed, on the 5th of October, at Portsmouth, amidst the acclamations and transports of joy of all England. This time, Buckingham was of the same opinion as the people of England, and he henceforth exerted all his influence toward preventing this marriage for which he had toiled so long, and which Spain at length appeared to seriously desire. In the month of January, 1624, the Earl of Bristol was recalled from Spain, where he had loyally served the king his master, and made a mortal enemy in the Duke of Buckingham. The sumptuous preparations for the nuptials were suspended. The Infanta renounced the title of Princess of Wales, which she already bore, and war with Spain became imminent. King James, who detested war, and who had striven for so many years for a union with Spain, was greatly dejected. "War," he said, "will not restore the Palatinate to my son-in-law." The Protestant passion of England and the ill-humor of Buckingham, fomented by the tardiness and the demands of the Pope and Spain, had triumphed. Parliament, convoked with regret in 1624, immediately offered substantial supplies, and the rigorous laws against the Catholics, suspended for a moment, were applied with more severity than ever. Alliances began to be formed against the House of Austria in Germany and in Spain. France, Savoy, Denmark, Sweden, united with England and Holland, which latter country having already resumed the war with its perpetual enemies, it was a question of nothing less than completely delivering the soil of the Low Countries from the presence of the Spaniards and retaking the Palatinate. The English troops, placed under the orders of Prince Maurice of Nassau, were defeated. The prince died at the Hague. The Count of Mansfeldt, then the great adventurer in war, came to seek in England the reinforcements which had been promised him. The soldiers were inexperienced, the quarters unhealthy; before arriving at the frontiers of the Palatinate half the troops were unfit for service. The Elector-Palatine was not yet upon the point of recovering his states.
While England was thus raising the standard of the Protestant war, King James was negotiating another Catholic marriage. He had long kept the court of Spain in suspense, pretending successively to seek for his two sons the hand of a French princess. When the affair decisively miscarried at Madrid, he turned again towards Paris. Cardinal Richelieu was more resolute and his designs were grander than those of Olivarez. "The marriage of the Princess Henrietta-Maria with the King of England, and the league of the Protestant states under the patronage of the King of France were necessary to the greatness of France and to his own power." He had formed a league against the House of Austria, and consolidated it by promising the sister of Louis XIII. to the Prince of Wales. A secret act, securing to the English Catholics not only toleration, but more liberty and immunity, was signed on the 12th of December, 1624, by King James and the Prince of Wales. The preparations were already begun for receiving the French princess in London, when King James fell ill and died on the 6th of April, 1625, at the age of fifty-eight. He had been twenty-two years king of England. His foolish pretensions to absolute power, his religious tyranny, his bad and weak policy had prepared the storm which was to burst upon the head of his son.
King James I. had wearied his people, who had learned to despise him. King Charles I. ascended the throne amidst the hopes of his people. He was already respected, and his subjects were disposed to have confidence in him. He immediately convoked a Parliament. When, on the 18th of June, 1625, the two Houses assembled at Westminster, Parliament, as well as the king, was as yet ignorant of the profound hostility which separated a sovereign imbued with all the notions of absolute power which had been developed half a century previously upon the Continent, and a people who, on their part, had made progress and who now claimed to take part in the affairs of the country and in their own government.
The struggle was not long in beginning. It was to the king that all the petitions and remonstrances of the House of Commons were addressed, but Parliament looked to everything and claimed to reform all abuses. The supplies necessary for sustaining the war against Spain were withheld during the examination of grievances. They had only been partially voted when the king, young and impatient, wearied by delays and complaints, pronounced the dissolution of Parliament, and had recourse to a loan to procure money.
The loan succeeded ill, and the enterprise against Cadiz, which had rendered it necessary, having miscarried, the king found himself compelled to convoke another Parliament, which it was hoped would be found more docile; but at the court of Charles, and in his closest intimacy, lived a man, the favorite of the son as well as of the father, to whom the English people attributed the dissensions which separated them from their sovereign. The Commons arrived in London, resolved to overthrow Buckingham. The king protected him and angrily rejected the accusations which were presented. Two of the commissioners entrusted with the impeachment—Sir John Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges—were placed in the Tower for insolent words. On the 15th of June, 1626, the second Parliament of the reign of Charles I. was dissolved like the first, and the monarch felt himself king.
He was resolved to govern alone, but he had no money. The war with Spain and Austria weighed heavily upon his finances. Buckingham, animated by personal spite against Cardinal Richelieu, involved his master in a struggle with France, in the interests of threatened Protestantism. It was thought that the heart of the English people would be regained, and its purse everywhere opened by announcing an expedition for the deliverance of La Rochelle, which was besieged. Buckingham himself was to command it.
Distrust was felt towards the favorite and his zeal for the Protestant cause. The new loan supplied little money; the tax called ship-money, imposed for the first time upon the ports and seaside districts, produced fewer vessels, armed and equipped, than had been hoped for, and the expedition sent to the assistance of La Rochelle failed miserably. Buckingham, who had effected a descent upon the island of Ré, was unable to take possession of it. He lost many men, and returned to England after this sanguinary blow, more hated and despised than ever. "All the known or possible resources of tyranny were exhausted." The king and the favorite, haughty as they were, felt the necessity of becoming reconciled with the people. A fresh Parliament was convoked, on the advice of Buckingham, as was everywhere announced.
Parliament assembled on the 17th of March, 1628. It numbered in its midst nearly all the men who, in their counties, had resisted the royal tyranny or exactions. The language of the king, on opening the session, was haughty and threatening. He had wavered, but he desired to raise himself in his own eyes as well as those of the world by an especially regal attitude. The Houses did not trouble themselves about threats. They too were animated by a passionate and haughty resolve. Their purpose was to proclaim aloud their liberties and cause them to be recognized by the Government. The aged Coke, young Wentworth, destined shortly to serve the interests of absolute power under the name of Lord Strafford, Denzil Hollis, Pym, and many others, of different manners and sentiments, but united in the same patriotic desire, were at the head of the Parliamentary coalition. Less than two months after its assembling, on the 8th of May, 1628, the House of Commons had voted the famous political declaration known under the name of the Petition of Right. After some hesitation, the Upper House accepted it also. The petition was immediately presented to the king, who, after struggling in vain for several weeks, ultimately promised his assent.
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Assassination Of Buckingham.
It was one of the misfortunes, perhaps the greatest misfortune of King Charles I., never to admit that a monarch owed his subjects, however refractory, truth and fidelity. He evaded replying to the Petition of Right, contenting himself with protesting his attachment to the Great Charter, and he forbade the House to meddle in future with state affairs.
The exasperation was great. Charles and Buckingham took alarm; they yielded. This Parliament which had but lately been thought of no use but to vote subsidies, was already treated with upon a footing of equality; the Petition of Right was again presented to the king, and he replied with the usual formula, always uttered in French: Soit droit fait comme il est désiré. But the abuses were not reformed; it was a question of applying the principles. The king collected the customs dues without the authority of Parliament. The conflict recommenced; the king wished to gain some respite without dissolving Parliament. He prorogued the Houses until the month of January, 1629. Before that period, on the 23rd of August, 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated by a disaffected officer, named Felton, and in the hat of the latter was found some writing which recalled to mind the recent remonstrance of the House. The king, indignant and disconsolate, returned noiselessly into the path of despotism which he had, for a moment, apparently forsaken. He lost a favorite odious to Parliament; he detached from the coalition of the Commons one of its boldest and most esteemed chiefs. Sir Thomas Wentworth, soon afterwards Lord Strafford, entered the council of the king, notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends. When the House again assembled, on the 20th of January, 1629, it learned that the evasive reply of the king to the Petition of Right had been affixed at the bottom of the petition. The printer had received orders to modify the legal text in this manner. The commissioners of the Commons, entrusted to verify the matter, did not mention it, as though blushing to disclose such a breach of faith; but their silence did not promise oblivion.
All the attacks against the abuses still subsisting recommenced. The king, on his part, endeavored to obtain the concession of the customs dues, which he claimed in advance and for all the duration of his reign, like the majority of his predecessors. The Commons remained immovable; the voting of the supplies was the sole efficacious arm which remained to them wherewith to fight against absolute power. The king spoke of proroguing the Houses again. The Commons caused their doors to be closed in order to deliberate without restraint. As preparations were being made for breaking them open, the Council were apprised that the members had retired, after having voted that the collecting of the customs duties was illegal, and that those who should raise them, or who should merely consent to pay them, were traitors to the country. On the 16th of March, 1629, Parliament was dissolved. A few days afterwards the king published a declaration, which ended in these terms: "It is spread abroad, with evil design, that a Parliament will soon be assembled. His Majesty has well proved that he had no aversion to Parliaments, but their last excesses have determined him against his wish to change his conduct. He will in future account it presumption for any to prescribe a time for convoking a new Parliament."
The king was about to endeavor to govern alone, after having attempted in vain to govern with his Parliament.
The English people did not rise in revolt. They were exasperated and distrustful, preoccupied with the political trials which everywhere awaited the leaders of the parliamentary resistance; but nowhere did they disregard the laws. At the beginning of his exercise of absolute power, Charles I. met no obstacle on the part of his subjects. It was his friends who soon caused embarrassment to his government. The capricious frivolity of Queen Henrietta Maria, her attachment to her favorites, ambitious and frivolous like herself, the court intrigues, and the division which was becoming greater and greater between these persons absorbed in pleasures and the serious part of the nation, which was passionately devoted to the affairs of this world and those of eternal life; such were the first obstacles which King Charles encountered. He had to assist him, however, the two ministers to whom he had given his confidence, Lord Wentworth and Bishop Laud.
In forsaking the national party, to which he belonged, for hatred to Buckingham rather than from personal or fixed principles, Wentworth had embraced the royal cause with all his heart. "With an intellect too great to confine itself to domestic intrigues, and a pride too passionate to bow to the proprieties of the palace, he gave himself up enthusiastically to business, braving all rivalries as he shattered all resistance, ardent in extending and strengthening the royal authority, which had become his own, but assiduous at the same time in re-establishing order, in repressing abuses, in subjugating private interests which he deemed illegitimate, in serving the general interests which he did not fear." A friend of Wentworth, Laud, who was soon nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, had, with less worldly passions and with sincere piety, carried to the Council the same dispositions and the same designs. He had less understanding than his colleague, and "pursued incessantly with an activity, indefatigable but narrow, violent, and harsh, whatever fixed idea dominated him, with all the transport of passion and the authority of duty."
Such counsels would necessarily enter before long into contention with the court. Strafford (we give him the title under which he is known in history, although he did not yet bear it) went to Ireland, where he re-established order in the country and in the finances, so that kingdom, but lately a source of great expenditure, furnished revenues to the king. Laud was commissioner of the treasury, and endeavored to apply the same rules to the resources of the royal treasury in England; but the prodigality of the queen, the somewhat disdainful generosity of the king, who easily granted pensions, and the sumptuous life of the court, exhausted the resources of the arbitrary but regular government of the two ministers. The central power was weak and impotent, foreign politics were ill-directed, and the king was little regarded upon the Continent. Barbary Corsairs ventured into the British Channel, and as far as St. George's Channel, landing, pillaging the houses, and making prisoners. The merchant navy in vain asked for protection; the royal fleet was unarmed and ill equipped. Everywhere money was wanted; recourse was had to ever-increasing exactions. Strafford convoked the Irish Parliament, and contrived to chain it to his feet like a docile slave. The king forbade him to assemble it again, for both he and the queen dreaded the mere name of Parliament. There, as elsewhere, the able, skillful, and foreseeing minister suffered under the yoke of feeble incompetence. Monopolies reappeared, affecting trade in all commodities: justice was sold, and everything furnished matter for litigation, out of which there was no escape but by payment of money. Absolute government continued without power, while its mean tyranny and administrative abuses weighed upon all classes of the nation. The country gentlemen especially were incessantly a mark for the rigors of authority, and saw grow up beside them, in every village, a new power. Laud enrolled the Anglican Church in the service of his king. He thus brought him a faithful and numerous militia. Charles, sincerely pious and Protestant, notwithstanding the weaknesses charged against him with regard to the Catholics, ardently confided himself to this army which came to his assistance. The alliance between the king and the Church soon became close and irrevocable.
It was the Puritans, as the dissenting sects were then called, who bore the burden of this alliance. Laud insisted upon establishing everywhere an absolute conformity in the rites and ceremonies which he modified without scruple in the Roman Catholic spirit. Everywhere where the conscience of the Anglican ministers was opposed to these innovations, they were dismissed from their livings. The churches which they went forth to found in France, Holland, and Germany, did not even secure to them the liberty of their faith. Laud claimed to extend his jurisdiction upon the Continent, and pursued them with his tyranny upon the foreign soil on which they sought to establish themselves.
The numerous refugees who were driven from their country by religious persecution, and who had obtained charters for the free exercise of their national worship in England, found these charters abolished. Absolute conformity with the Anglican rite was required by the Archbishop, supported by the royal power. Imprisonment and exile overtook the delinquents on all hands.
The anger and terror of the English people were becoming great. The Reformation had been, in England, of a double nature. Interested and worldly on the part of the king and the great noblemen, it had been earnest, sincere, profound, among the nation properly so called, and it had always leaned to the side of the Puritans. The novelties introduced by Laud into the worship agitated minds and consciences alike. The Catholics rejoiced, and the Pope thought himself in a position to cause a Cardinal's hat to be offered to the Archbishop; but the latter only wished to secure the supremacy of the Anglican Church and of the bishops in the Anglican Church. When he caused the office of high treasurer to be given to Juxon, Bishop of London, Laud exclaimed in excess of his joy, "Now that the Church subsists and supports itself unassisted, all is consummated; I can no more."
He had done enough, for he had brought the Anglican Church to the brink of the abyss, and had prepared for it grievous trials.
For some time disaffection had been increased among all classes of society. The weakness and incapacity of the government in general, notwithstanding the efforts of Strafford and Laud, the pecuniary exactions and religious tyranny attacked and exasperated all citizens; numerous emigrations had begun; men passionately attached to their faith went to seek upon the Continent, and even in America, the liberty of worship which was refused to them in their own country. Obscure and unknown sectaries had been the first to adopt the refuge of exile; by degrees men of greater consideration followed their example. When an order of the royal council forbade emigration, a ship anchored in the Thames already bore the future heroes of the revolution of England, ready to expatriate themselves in order to escape an odious government. It was the hand of the king himself which retained in England Pym, Haslerig, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell.
The wrath of the people did not yet burst forth, but it began to be heard in suppressed tones; the assemblages of nonconformists increased everywhere under different names. The Independents or Brownists were the most numerous of those who separated themselves openly from the Anglican Church, and all the vigilance of Laud did not suffice to disperse the faithful, nor his severity to punish them. Numerous pamphlets circulated among the people of an insolent and vigorous kind. They were bought eagerly, and the rigors of the star chamber did not succeed in arresting the smugglers who brought them from Holland, and the pedlars who spread them throughout the country. It was resolved to make a great example; a lawyer, a theologian, and a physician, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, were arrested at the same time, and, after an iniquitous trial, were condemned to the pillory, to lose their ears, and to pay an enormous fine. Their imprisonment was to be for life.
The populace of London thronged around the pillory, when the three condemned men, pale and bleeding, were fixed there. Their courage did not falter for a moment, and their sufferings served their cause better than all their writings. A libeller by profession, John Lilburne, condemned to a punishment of the same kind, received at the hands of the nation the same impassioned, albeit still silent sympathy. The whole country was moved, but it awaited a chief who should give the signal of legal resistance—a name around which the scattered forces might range themselves. It was for John Hampden that this honor was reserved.
Grave and irreproachable in conduct, Hampden was also a man of substance. He lived peacefully in Buckinghamshire, esteemed and honored by all. He was known to be adverse to the government, but not violently so, and when, in 1636, the king was desirous of collecting ship-money, which was illegal without the authorization of Parliament, Hampden was rated at twenty shillings only. He refused to pay, being determined to carry the question personally before the courts. The trial was conducted with moderation on the part of the accused as well as on that of the counsel and judges. No insult to the government, no violence towards Hampden, but justice was deaf to legal argument, and Hampden was condemned. The court congratulated itself upon the judgment which gave a sanction to arbitrary power. It did not foresee that the name of Hampden was about to serve as a rallying-point to all malcontents and all conspiracies. The party of resistance now began its existence.
The outburst came sooner and with more violence in Scotland. King James had succeeded in founding the episcopate there against the wish and notwithstanding the traditional habits of the people, passionately attached to the Presbyterian system; but the new bishops had been prudent and had attempted nothing, either against the clergy whom the people loved, or against the worship to which they were accustomed. Charles I. and Laud were more bold. By degrees the bishops had raised their heads; secure of being acknowledged and supported, they had become imbued with the doctrine of the divine right of the episcopate, and had taken a place in political councils. The Archbishop of St. Andrew's was chancellor of Scotland, the Bishop of Ross was about to become treasurer, nine bishops sat in the privy council. On the 23d of July, 1637, the Anglican litany was suddenly put in force in the cathedral at Edinburgh.
When the astonished people heard these accents, which were strange to their ears and which they regarded as savoring of Popery, a profound emotion took possession spontaneously of the whole assembly. An old woman threw her footstool at the head of the officiating clergyman; sedition sprang up in the streets. Repression did not calm the agitation. From Edinburgh it spread into all the counties of Scotland. Every day the privy council and the municipal council were besieged by a numerous, earnest, and ardent mob; by gentlemen, farmers, townsmen, artisans, peasants, who complained of the innovations introduced into their worship. Upon being ordered to retire, they gave way without violence, but the petitioners came back in greater numbers on the morrow. Everywhere resistance was being organized, and when a royal order was at length promulgated, prohibiting any assemblage under pain of treason, the Lords Hume and Lindsay, both peers of the Realm, following in the steps of the herald who read the royal proclamation, caused to be affixed to the walls a protest which they had signed in the name of their fellow-citizens. The same care was taken in all places in which the king's proclamation was made public. Six weeks after the imprudent and arbitrary act of Charles, the whole of Scotland was confederated under a solemn pledge called the "Covenant," a profession of religious faith, and a national protest against the new liturgy which the Government wished to impose upon the public. The king and Laud had roused the Scottish nation to rebellion against them.
Charles was both astonished and indignant. Imbued with all the principles which flourished on the Continent respecting the royal dignity and authority, he looked upon resistance as a crime of the lower classes, and marvelled to see noblemen and gentlemen united in the same feeling and serving the same cause. He immediately resolved to have recourse to force in order to chastise the rebels, but he required time to raise an army. The Marquis of Hamilton, despatched into Scotland to negotiate with the Covenanters, promised all that was desired, and authorized the assembling of a general synod, wherein all the controverted questions might be discussed. The assembly met at Glasgow; but the Scots, distrusting with good cause so much condescension, soon perceived that Hamilton was merely endeavoring to delay matters. At the moment when the synod was preparing to accuse the bishops, the marquis suddenly declared its dissolution. At the same time it learned that war was imminent, and that a body of troops raised in Ireland by Strafford was about to land in Scotland. The king was preparing to chastise his rebellious subjects, and Hamilton returned precipitately to London, while the synod, without troubling itself about its dissolution, continued its deliberations and abolished the episcopate.
The Scottish Covenanters did not confine themselves to mere words or even to serious and impassioned utterances. They raised troops. The Scots who were serving upon the Continent and one of their best officers, Alexander Lesley, formerly in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, were induced to come over and defend their country. The Scottish people addressed to the English, their brothers, a declaration intended to expound their grievances. Before the common beliefs and opinions which now united the two peoples the old national hatred disappeared. When the king arrived at York with all his court, and his general, the Earl of Essex, entered Scotland, the two armies communicated with each other fraternally. The soldiers were more disposed to embrace than to fight. The royal troops did not begin the struggle. Lord Holland, who commanded the first corps, fell back without a struggle. Negotiations were soon resorted to, and peace was concluded at Berwick on the 18th of June, 1639, without a musket having been fired. The disbanding of the two armies was resolved upon, as well as the convocation of a synod and a Scottish Parliament; but the treaty did not affect the root of the difficulties, and the situation remained the same. It was a suspension of arms, not a peace.
Both parties felt this. The Scots disbanded their troops, but maintained the staff officers. Charles summoned Lord Strafford from Ireland to his assistance; this was announcing a predetermination to abandon a conciliatory policy. "It is necessary," said the earl, "to bring back all these people to their senses with the lash." The conditions of peace with the Scots, ill-defined and scarcely reduced to writing, gave occasion to interminable discussions. Parliament and the synod assembled at Edinburgh, raised every day fresh pretensions. War was resolved upon in the royal council, but a pretext was necessary. A letter, addressed by the Scottish chiefs to Louis XIII., with the simple title, To the King, fell into the hands of Strafford. The support of the foreign monarch was being invoked. Charles I., indignant himself, thought that his indignation would be shared by all his people. He needed money wherewith to fight the Scots; his coffers were empty, and he had exhausted every means, legal and otherwise, of obtaining resources. He determined upon his course, and convoked a Parliament.
Great was the astonishment in England. Time had calmed public excitement. The king, in his own person, had governed ill, but people remembered the impediments which the last Parliament had placed in the way of the royal administration; they desired more prudence and moderation in the newly-elected members. The former leaders of the liberal party re-entered the House; but they found themselves surrounded by a sensible and moderate knot of men, resolved to abolish abuses without violence and without insult. They desired neither to alienate the king nor to trouble the repose of the country. Charles himself was animated by the same spirit towards Parliament.
The power of circumstances easily triumphs over good intentions. Upon the reading of the letter of the Scots to the King of France the House remained cold; and thus the arm upon which the king had reckoned failed him when within his grasp. Charles had decided for war, and demanded supplies, but the House was resolved to cause the redress of grievances to be passed before voting the taxes. Parleyings were again of no avail; the king began to grow angry; Parliament was still calm, hurrying on its discussion, but without departing from its pacific resolutions. At length the king caused the House to be informed that if they would vote twelve subsidies, payable in three years, he would abandon the system of demanding ship-money without the approbation of Parliament. The sum was enormous, they became alarmed and angry, but the House would not sever their connection with the king. They were about to proceed to the voting of some subsidies without fixing the amounts, when Sir Henry Vane, a favorite of Queen Henrietta Maria, who had been raised against the wish of Strafford to the post of secretary of state, rose from his seat, and announced that, without adopting the entire message, the vote was useless; for the king would not accept a reduction of his demands. The anger and amazement of the Commons were at their height, when, on the morrow, at the moment of opening the sitting, the king caused them to be summoned to the Upper House, and announced the dissolution of Parliament; it was on the 5th of May, 1640; the Houses had assembled on the 13th of April.
Strafford had succeeded better than his master; he had obtained from the Irish Parliament all that he had demanded, and the voluntary subscriptions which he instigated, brought to the royal treasury nearly three hundred thousand pounds sterling. Vexations of all kinds resumed their course; the policy was to get money at all costs. Strafford impelled the king towards despotism; it was necessary either to conquer or die. Twice the earl fell seriously ill; but he raised himself from his bed when scarcely recovered, and set out with the king for the army of Scotland, which he was to command.
The Scots did not wait for his arrival. They entered England, and defeated at Newburne the first English army which they encountered. It was an easy matter; the war was still less popular among the English people than it was with Parliament, and the secret negotiations between the Scottish generals and the chiefs of the malcontents in England were re-echoed among the soldiers. When Strafford assumed the command of the army, he found it undisciplined and disaffected. The two camps confronting each other were really animated by the same feelings as well as the same beliefs. An action took place upon the banks of the Tyne, insignificant in itself, but the Scots crossed the river, and Strafford was compelled to fall back upon York, leaving the enemy masters of the north of England. The anger of the king was powerless in presence of the popular passion. All the authority and ardor of the general could not make the soldiers fight against those whom they called their brothers, and Charles felt a dread of the energy of Strafford's policy. The negotiations between the two armies continued without regard to the king and notwithstanding the protestations of loyalty of the Scots. The cry of peace began to be associated with the word Parliament.