1628

Charles's

PROGNOSTICATIONS OF EVIL.

29

eye were of opinion that Charles was really anxious to avert 1628. all chance of a quarrel with the House of Commons.1 December. The dark side of the picture may be shown in difficulties. words which had not long before been addressed to Carlisle by a correspondent in England. "At home," he wrote, "the little thing that is done is done by my Lord Treasurer. They are about to satisfy some things both in religion and government to sweeten things to the Parliament, but most men doubt that they are not sincerely intended, and so will give little satisfaction. The Parliamentary men have an eye on your Lordship, and are afraid that you will join with my Lord Treasurer, who, though as I think an honest man and good patriot, has much ado to overcome and dissipate those clouds of suspicion concerning religion that are hung over him all this while.” 2

Parliamentary prospects.

It was a fair account of the situation. It was not enough for Charles to be well-intentioned. He could not in a moment do away with the impression produced upon his subjects by the errors of the past four years, or by his own moral and mental isolation amongst the people whom he ruled. No electric cord of sympathy stretched from his heart to the heart of the nation. From their aims, their hopes, their prejudices he stood apart. His Court was no place where the independent gentlemen of England could find a chance of reaching his ear. His progresses were made to some hunting seat of his own, not to the houses of his subjects, where Elizabeth had been wont to win all hearts by her queenly condescension. Above all, he did not understand the meaning of 'those clouds of suspicion concerning religion,' which were so exaggerated, but so natural, and which needed to be treated with judicious but sympathetic firmness if they were not to burst up in the fiercest intolerance, or to give rise to the most deep-seated discord.

"Fra dieci giorni si radunerà il Parlamento con opinione di buon successo, già S. M. invigila con ogni sollecitudine di ben preparar tutte le cose e di proceder più consultatamente di quello si fece per l' adietro. " Contarini to the Doge, Jan. 12, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.

22

* Aston to Carlisle, Dec. 19, S. P. Dom. clii. 58.

30

the session.

Jan. 22.

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE SESSION OF 1629.

So confident was Charles of the issue that, when the Houses met on January 20,' he did not even think it necessary to explain what he had done. The Commons, as soon as Jan. 20. Opening of they proceeded to business on the 22nd, showed that they looked upon the events of the past months from a point of view of their own. Complaints were at once heard that the speech in which the King at the close of the last session had claimed tonnage and poundage as his due, had been enrolled with the Petition of Right, and that a printed copy of the great statute had been circulated in the country 'with an answer which never gave any satisfaction,' that is to say, with the answer which had been rejected as insufficient, in addition to the final answer and the speech by which it had been finally expounded by the King.2

The

The ordinary account of the debates of this session appears in its best form in a volume in the possession of Lord Verulam, which was described by Mr. Bruce in the 38th volume of the Archeologia. Mr. Bruce's copy has, through Lord Verulam's kindness, been placed in my hands. Parliamentary history has additional matter from other sources, and Nicholas's Notes (S. P. Dom. cxxxv.) give a report entirely independent, commencing with Jan. 27. Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 197) gives from the MSS. at Port Eliot a speech said to have been spoken by Eliot on Jan. 20. I am afraid this must be relegated to the domain of speeches never uttered. Lord Verulam's MS. distinctly says of that day, that on it nothing was done but only the settling of the committees,' and Nethersole, in the letters in which he details the main occurrences of the session, has no mention of any such speech,

2 The copy of the statutes of the last session in the Museum Library

1629 ALLEGED VIOLATION OF THE PETITION.

Had the

Right been

violated?

31

Selden then stepped forward with a weightier charge. The Petition of Right, he said, had been actually broken. For liberties of state, he said, 'we know of an order made Petition of in the Exchequer, that a sheriff was commanded not to execute a replevin, and men's goods are taken away and must not be restored.' Further, 'one had lately lost his ears by a decree of the Star Chamber, by an arbitrary judgment.' "Next," he said, "they will take away our arms, and then our legs, and so our lives; let all see we are sensible of this. Customs creep on us; let us make a just representation hereof unto his Majesty."

Savage's

case.

1

The case of Savage, of which Selden spoke so bitterly, had been one of extreme harshness. Either from a foolish love of notoriety or from actual insanity he had announced that Felton had asked him to join in killing Buckingham. He was sentenced in the Star Chamber to lose his ears. It was well that Selden should raise his voice against the scandal, and that a limit should be set to the swelling jurisdiction of the Star Chamber;3 but it was absurd to argue shows that this was what was really done, and it is so put in Nethersole's letters to Elizabeth, S. P. Dom. cxxxiii. 4.

1 Meade to Stuteville, Sept. 27, Nov. 8, Court and Times, i. 402, 422. 2 Hudson, in his treatise on the Star Chamber, written before any controversy arose, holds that the Court had the power of cutting off ears in certain cases.

3 According to Nethersole, Chambers's case was expressly mentioned: "They began to complain that the Petition of Right granted the last session had been already invaded in all the parts thereof : that of the liberty of men's persons, by the imprisonment of a merchant without showing a lawful cause, the difficulty in showing a corpus habeas: that against the use of martial law, by the taking a man's ears off by a sentence in the Star Chamber, being an arbitrary Court, and having no power of life or limb: that of the property of men's goods, by the seizure of the wares of divers merchants, for refusing to pay the customs and impositions, there being no law to demand this, and the refusing of the grant of a writ of replevin when it was demanded." Nethersole to Elizabeth, Jan. 24, S. P. Dom, cxxxiv. 4. Not one of these charges necessarily involved a direct breach of the Petition, the question of property being the very one which the judges had to decide. The line taken here involved the assertion that the interpretation of the Petition belonged to the House of Commons, not to the judges.

The case of billeting at Chichester, Rushworth, ii. 32, is sometimes

that the jurisdiction of that court was in any way affected by the Petition of Right.

"Cast

Unluckily the question of Tonnage and Poundage, embarrassing enough in itself, was complicated by the fact that John Rolle, one of the merchants whose goods had Rolle's case. been seized, was a member of the House. your eyes," said the impetuous Phelips, "which way you please, and you shall see violations on all sides. Look on the privileges of this House! Let any say if ever he recall or saw the like violations by inferior ministers that ever do their commands. They knew the party was a Parliament man. Nay, they said, 'if all the Parliament were in you, this we would do and justify.' Phelips concluded by moving for a committee on the whole -question of the levy of tonnage and poundage.1

It was hardly possible to dwarf a great question more completely than to convert the mighty struggle against unparliaQuestion of mentary taxation into a mere dispute about privilege. privilege. Yet this was what the House seemed disposed to do. "Let the parties," said Littleton, "be sent for that violated the liberties." The Commons did not notice that in so doing they were leaving a strong position for a weak one. In resisting the King's claim to levy duties without consent of Parliament, they were guarding the purse of the subject from encroachments to which no limit could be placed. In resisting his claim to seize the goods of a member of Parliament, they gave a direct advantage to a merchant who happened to be a member of the House over one who was less fortunate. In point of fact, the claim of privilege for goods in the case of legal proceedings is one which has long ago been abandoned by a triumphant Parliament.

The privilege of Parliament had, of late years, been on the

alleged as a breach of the Petition; but the Petition forbade billeting against the householder's will. The authorities of Chichester were called in question for threatening to bar the gates of the city against the soldiers, so as to prevent the householders from exercising an option.

1 Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 205) says that Phelips alleged that 5,000l. worth of goods had been sold for dues not exceeding 2007. He gives no authority for his statement, and it is altogether improbable.

1629

Privilege of goods from

arrest.

PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT.

33

increase. Up to the accession of James, only three cases could be shown in which a member had established his claim to freedom for his goods, and in two of these the claim had been expressly limited to such goods as it was necessary for him to have with him during his attendance at Westminster or on his way home.1 In James's reign the interference of the House to protect members' goods in general had become frequent, and was justified on the principle that those who were engaged in the public service ought not to be distracted from their duties by the care of defending their own property; but nothing had been settled as to the exact time before and after each session during which the privilege was to last. It was only indeed by a technicality that Rolle's case could be brought within the largest limits which had ever been suggested. The seizure of his goods had been effected on October 30, more than four months after the close of one session, and more than two months before the commencement of another; but it so happened that Parliament had been originally prorogued to October 20, and Rolle was therefore supposed, by a legal fiction, to have been hindered in the fulfilment of duties which, as he was perfectly aware at the time, were not to be imposed upon him for many weeks

to come.

Jan. 24.

At last Charles discovered that it was unwise to allow the debates to proceed without a word from himself. Summoning the Houses to Whitehall, he assured them distinctly The King's that he had had no intention to levy the duties speech. by his hereditary prerogative.' "It ever was," he declared, "and still is my meaning, by the gift of my people to enjoy it; and my intention in my speech at the end of the last session was not to challenge tonnage and poundage of right, but for expedience de bene esse, showing you the necessity, not the right, by which I was to take it until you had granted it unto me; assuring myself, according to your general profession, that you wanted time and not good will to give it me." He had been startled, he added, by some things which had 2 Ibid. i. 99.

1 Hatsell, i. 67.