1633 RICHELIEU AND PORTLAND. 219 Understand. The Cardinal had seized from De Jars a correspondence in which the intrigues of some of the Queen's Court against the Treasurer were unveiled. He sent the compromising letters to England, that Portland might have evidence being between fore him that he was attacked by those who sought to effect a change in the government of France.1 In this way Richelieu hoped to secure an ally against the suggestions of the Queen on behalf of her mother, which were in reality suggestions made in the interests of Spain. Richelieu and Portland. Memoir for Boutard, Aff. Étr. xlv. 336. 220 CHAPTER LXXI. DIVERGENT TENDENCIES IN POLITICS AND RELIGION. It is impossible to pass from the foreign to the domestic politics of 1631 and 1632 without being conscious of the im1631. mense gulf between them. On the Continent great Contrast between domestic problems were presented to the human mind, and foreign and great intellects applied themselves to their solution politics. with the pen and with the sword. Gustavus, Richelieu, and Frederick Henry tower above ordinary men. At home all things appear tame and quiet. English life seems to be unruffled by any breeze of discontent. It is only here and there that some solitary person puts forth opinions which, read in the light of subsequent events, are seen to be the precursors of the storm, only here and there that the legal action of the Government is put forth to settle controversies which, but for those subsequent events, would not seem to possess any very great importance. It was a time of preparation and development for good or for evil, which Charles, if he had been other than he was, might have guided to fruitful ends, but in which it was impossible for the man whose diplomatic helplessness has just passed before us to act with forethought or decision. One great advantage Charles had. The lawyers began to rally to his side. In August 1631 Chief Justice Hyde died, August. little regretted, and his place was taken by Richardson. The Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas thus vacated was deservedly allotted to Heath. Legal pro motions. To the surprise of all men the new Attorney-General was William Noy. His long Parliamentary opposition was re 1631 October. LEGAL PROMOTIONS. 221 membered, but the special opinions which had separated him from the leaders of that Opposition, like the special Noy Attor- opinions of Wentworth, were forgotten. In 1628 he ney-General. had supported Wentworth's conciliatory policy. In 1629, though he had declared strongly for the Parliamentary view of the question of tonnage and poundage, he had opposed Eliot's mode of action, and had expressed his dislike of the interference of the Commons with the law courts and of their claim to make the ministers of the Crown responsible to themselves. A link too between him and the Government was probably found in his dislike of Puritanism. He had never made pretensions to any grasp of constitutional law, and to one whose brain was a mere storehouse of legal facts, it may have seemed as easy to quote precedents on one side as on the other. Contemporaries appear rather to have amused themselves with the oddity of seeing a man so rugged and uncourtly in such a situation, than to have censured him as a turncoat. They told how he replied to the King's offer of the post by asking bluntly what his wages were to be, and how when Coventry, seeing him proceed unattended to Westminster Hall like an ordinary lawyer, directed a messenger to accompany him, he drove the man away, telling him that 'people would take him to be his prisoner.' 1 Dec. 7. Two months later, Lyttelton, who had also distinguished himself on the popular side, accepted the Recordership of the City. Though the office was not directly in the King's' Littleton gift, it was virtually at the disposal of the Crown. Other lawyers less distinguished were not long in following Lyttelton's example in desisting from an apparently hopeless opposition. Recorder. The acceptance of Charles's claims by the principal lawyers of the day may no doubt be ascribed, to a great extent, to the hope of professional advancement. Other causes Legal po sition of the may also have been at work with them. RevoluGovernment. tionary as Charles's government in reality was, he did not profess to have broken with the old constitutional system. He took his stand upon rights which had been possessed by 1 Gresley to Puckering, Oct. 27, Court and Times, ii. 136. English kings for centuries, and if he disregarded other rights which had been possessed by English Parliaments, he could argue that these rights were necessarily in abeyance till the Commons consented to resume their proper place in the State. In truth there was much to induce a lawyer to cast in his lot with Charles rather than with the House of Commons. If only the judges could make up their minds to avoid challenging the King's claim to supreme headship of the nation, and the consequences which he deduced from it, they were certain to be treated with the highest respect. Charles's attack upon the independence of the Bench was directed against individuals. Though in the persons of Crewe and Walter, the whole legal profession had in reality been assailed, no other member of the profession need feel personally insulted. The House of Commons, on the other hand, had proceeded much more undisguisedly. It had openly found fault with a judicial declaration solemnly pronounced in the Court of Exchequer, and had summoned the Barons to give account of the reasons by which they had been guided. It is not strange if many lawyers preferred the silken chains of the Court to the iron yoke of a popular assembly not yet conscious of the necessity of submitting to those restraints which it was one day to impose upon itself in the hour of victory. Sir Simonds How far the lawyers who now took the side of Charles were led by these considerations we have no means of knowing. In the case of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, however, we are able to examine the feelings of a man who, without being a practising lawyer himself, had received a legal education, and whose Puritanical turn of mind would lead us to expect a decided antagonism to the King. A prim and acrid young man in his twenty-eighth year, he had made the study of legal antiquities the delight of his life, though he kept a human corner in his heart for his wife, the little lady who possessed, as he boasted, the smallest foot in England. As a proof of the tenderness of his affection, he tells how at the time of his courtship, he could not find leisure once to visit the Court of Common Pleas, or continue' his 'course of reporting law cases, but devoted mornings and afternoons to the service and attend 1631 SIR SIMONDS D'EWES. 223 ance of' his dearest.' Happily his two passions coalesced into one. The lady had so many ancestors that his 'very study of records grew more delightful and pleasant than ever before,' as he often met with several particulars of moment which concerned some of those families to which she was heir, both His religious of their bloods and coat-armour.' The happiness of sympathies. the antiquary's domestic life was sustained and permeated by an abiding sense of religious duty and of religious sympathy, not the less real because it ran in narrow and sectarian channels. A Protestant victory on the Continent called forth a triumphant outburst of thanksgiving. A Protestant defeat thrust him into the depths of despair.1 His view of the late dissolution. That such a man should not have sided with Eliot's resistance to the Crown may indeed to some extent be accounted for by the smallness of his nature; but it is also some evidence of the amount of support on which Royalty was still able to reckon. The day of the late dissolution indeed, he pronounced to be 'the most gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that had happened in five hundred years;' but he added his opinion that 'the cause of the breach and dissolution was immaterial and frivolous, in the carriage whereof divers fiery spirits in the House of Commons were very faulty and cannot be excused.' They ought never, he says, to have attempted to summon the King's officers to their bar. The quarrel, he thinks, was the work of some 'Machiavellian politics, who seemed zealous for the liberty of the commonwealth,' but who sought to 'raise dispute between the King and his people, as they verily feared that their new Popish adorations and cringes would not only be inhibited but punished.' 2 The explanation is ridiculous enough, and looks like the suggestion of personal vanity or dislike. What is worthy of notice is the decision which the man of precedents and records gives against the claim of the House of Commons to seize the ' D'Ewes, Autobiography, i. 321. 2 Selden and Noy seem to be aimed at, Selden as an Arminian, or at least an anti-Calvinist; Noy as an anti-Puritan. The whole passage displays complete want of intelligence, and should put the reader on his guard against attaching too much importance to D'Ewes's opinion. |