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1634-1637

SHIP-MONEY

523 exempted from the act in restraint of monopolies which had been passed in 1624 (see p. 501). So, too, was a claim put forward by Charles in 1637 to levy fines from those who had encroached on the old boundaries of the forests. It is true that, in the teeth of the opposition roused, Charles exacted but a small part of the fines imposed, but he incurred almost as much obloquy as if he had taken the whole of the money.

4. Ship-money. 1634-1637.-More important was Charles's effort to provide himself with a fleet. As the Dutch navy was powerful, and the French navy was rapidly growing in strength, Charles, not unnaturally, thought that England ought to be able to meet their combined forces at sea. In 1634, by the advice of Attorney-General Noy, he issued writs to the port towns, to furnish him with ships. He took care to ask for ships larger than any port -except London—had got, and then offered to supply ships of his own, on condition that the port towns should equip and man them. In 1635-Noy having died in the meantime - Charles asked for ships not merely from the ports, but from the inland as well as from the maritime counties. Again London alone provided ships; in all the rest of England money had to be found to pay for the equipment and manning of ships belonging to the king. In this way Charles got a strong navy which he manned with sailors in the habit of managing ships of war, and entirely at his own orders. The experience of the Cadiz voyage had shown him that merchant-sailors, such as those who had done good service against the Armada, were not to be trusted to fight in enterprises in which they took no interest, and it is from the ship-money fleet that the separation of the naval and mercantile marine dates. Necessarily, however, Englishmen began to complain, not that they had a navy, but that the money needed for the navy was taken from them without a Parliamentary grant. Year after year ship-money was levied, and the murmurs against it increased. In February, 1637, Charles consulted the judges, and ten out of the twelve judges declared that the king had a right to do what was necessary for the defence of the realm in time of danger, and that the king was the sole judge of the existence of danger.

5. Hampden's Case. 1637-1638.—It was admitted that, in accordance with the Petition of Right, Charles could not levy a tax without a Parliamentary grant. Charles, however, held that ship-money was not a tax, but money paid in commutation of the duty of all Englishmen to defend their country. Common sense held that, whether ship-money was a tax or not, it had been

levied without consulting Parliament, simply because the king shrank from consulting Parliament; or, in other words, because he was afraid that Parliament would ask him to put an end to Laud's system of managing the Church. Charles was ready, as he said, to allow to Parliament liberty of counsel, but not of control. The sense of irritation was now so great that the nation wanted to control the Government, and knew that it would never be able to do so if Charles could, by a subterfuge, take what money he needed without summoning Parliament. Of this feeling John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, became the mouthpiece. He refused to pay 20s. levied on his estate for ship-money. His case was argued before the twelve judges sitting in the Exchequer Chamber. In 1638 two pronounced distinctly in his favour, three supported him on technical grounds, and seven pronounced for the king. Charles continued to levy ship-money, but the arguments of Hampden's lawyers were circulated in the country, and the judgment of the majority on the Bench was ascribed to cowardice or obsequiousness. Their decision ranged against the king all who cared about preserving their property, as the Metropolitical visitation had ranged against him all who cared for religion in a distinctly Protestant form. Yet, even now, the Tudor monarchy had done its work too thoroughly, and had filled the minds of men too completely with the belief that armed resistance to a king was unjustifiable, to make Englishmen ripe for rebellion. They preferred to wait till some opportunity should arrive which would enable them to express their disgust in a constitutional way.

6. Scottish Episcopacy. 1572-1612.-The social condition of Scotland was very different from that of England. The nobles there had never been crushed as they had been in England, and they had tried to make the reformation conduce to their own profit. In 1572 they obtained the appointment of what were known as Tulchan bishops, who, performing no episcopal function, received the revenues of their sees and then handed them over to certain nobles. The Presbyterian clergy, however, represented the popular element in the nation-and that element, though it had hitherto been weak, was growing strong through the discipline which it received in consequence of the leading share assigned to the middle and lower classes in the Church Courts (see p. 434). The disagreement between these classes and the nobles gave to James the part of arbitrator, and thus conferred on him a power which no Scottish

1 A Tulchan was a stuffed calf's skin set by a cow to induce her to give her milk freely.

1592-1638

THE SCOTTISH CHURCH

525

king had had before. After much vacillation, he consented, in 1592, to an act fully re-establishing the Presbyterian system. It was not long before he repented. The Presbyterian clergy attacked his actions from the pulpit, and one of them, Andrew Melville, plucking him by the sleeve, called him 'God's silly vassal.' The nobles, too, were angry because the clergy assailed their vices, and tried to subject them to the discipline of the Church. Though their ancestors had, at almost all times, been the adversaries of the kings, they now made common cause with James. Gradually episcopacy was restored. Bishops were re-appointed in 1599. Step by step episcopal authority was regained for them. In 1610 three of their number were consecrated in England, and in 1612 the Scottish Parliament ratified all that had been done.

7. The Scottish Bishops and Clergy. 1612-1637.-In England bishops had a party (lay and clerical) behind them. In Scotland they were mere instruments of the king and the nobles to keep the clergy quiet. In 1618, James, supported by the bishops and the nobles, forced upon a general assembly the acceptance of the Five Articles of Perth, the most important of which was a direction that the Communion should be received in a kneeling posture. Yet, in spite of all that James had done, the local popular Church courts still existed, and the worship of the Church remained still distinctly Calvinistic and Puritan. Charles was more eager than his father to alter the worship of the Scottish Church, and, in 1637, at his command, certain Scottish bishops—often referring for advice to Laud-completed a new Prayer Book, not unlike that in use in England, but differing from it, for the most part, in a sense adverse to Puritanism. The clergy declared against it, and this time the clergy had on their side the nobles, who not only feared lest Charles should take from them the Church lands appropriated by their fathers, but were also irritated at the promotion of some bishops to high offices which they claimed for themselves.

8. The Riot at Edinburgh and the Covenant. 1637-1638.— On July 23, 1637, an attempt was made to read the new service in St. Giles's, at Edinburgh. The women present burst into a riot, and one of them threw her stool at the head of the officiating minister, fortunately missing him. All Scotland took part with the rioters. The new Prayer Book was hated, not only because it was said to be Popish, but also because it was English. In November four committees, known as the Tables, practically assumed the government of Scotland. In February, 1638, all good Scots were signing a National Covenant. Nothing was said in it

about episcopacy, but those who signed it bound themselves to labour, by all means lawful, to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel, as it was established and professed before the recent innovations.

9. The Assembly of Glasgow, and the Abolition of Episcopacy. 1638.—The greater part of 1638 was passed by Charles in an endeavour to come to an understanding with the Scots. On September 2 he revoked the Prayer Book, and offered to limit the powers of the bishops. On November 21 a general assembly met at Glasgow, in which ninety-six lay members-for the most part noblemen-sat with 144 clergymen, and which may therefore be regarded as a sort of Ecclesiastical Parliament in which the clergy predominated as the nobles predominated in the single house which made up the real Parliament. The Assembly claimed to judge the bishops, on which the king's commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, dissolved the Assembly rather than admit its claim. The Assembly, however, on the ground that it possessed a Divine right to settle all affairs relating to the Church independently of the King, sat on, as if nothing had happened, deposed the bishops, and re-established the Presbyterian system.

10. The First Bishops' War. 1639.-In refusing to obey the order for dissolution, the Scottish General Assembly had practically made itself independent of the king, and Charles was driven-unless he cared to allow the establishment of a precedent, which might some day be quoted against him in England-to make war upon the Scots. Yet he dared not summon the English Parliament, lest it should follow their example, and he had to set forth on what came to be known as the First Bishops' War-because it was waged in the cause of the bishops-with no more money than he could get from a voluntary contribution, not much exceeding 50,000l. Soon after he reached Berwick with his army, he found that the Scots had, on Dunse Law,' an army almost equal to his own in numbers, commanded by Alexander Leslie, an old soldier who had fought in the German wars, and mainly composed of veterans, who had seen much service on the Continent, whilst his own men were raw recruits. His money soon came to an end, and it was then found impossible to keep the army together. The war was one in which there was no fighting, and in which only one man was killed, and he by an accident. On June 24 Charles signed the Treaty of Berwick. Both sides passed over in silence the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly, but a promise was given that all affairs civil 1 Law,' in the Lowlands of Scotland, means a solitary hill.

1632-1639

WENTWORTH IN IRELAND

527

and ecclesiastical should be settled in an assembly and Parliament. Assembly and Parliament met at Edinburgh, and declared in favour of the abolition of episcopacy; but Charles, who could not, even now, make up his mind to submit, ordered the adjournment of the Parliament, and prepared for a new attack on Scotland.

II. Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639. In preparing for a new war, Charles had Wentworth by his side. Wentworth, who was by far the ablest of his advisers, after ruling the north of England (see p. 514) in a high-handed fashion, had, in 1632, been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. In 1634 he summoned an Irish Parliament, taking care that the English Protestant settlers and the Irish Catholics should be so evenly balanced that he could do what he would with it. He carried through it admirable laws and a vote of money which enabled him to be independent of Parliament for some time to come. As far as its material interests were concerned, Ireland had never been so prosperous. Trade grew, and the flax industry of the North sprang into existence under Wentworth's protection. Churches which had lain in ruins since the deso

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