and cunning, and a man of excellent parts. But it was not until after the death of Cecil, in 1612, that the minion was allowed to take his flight to the pinnacle of honour, and to become a sort of dictator both in the court and the kingdom.

A.D. 1608, 1609.-All the rest of Europe might despise the personal character and the timid policy of the English monarch; but there was one infant republic obliged, by circumstances which he had not made, to look to James with anxiety and awe. This was the government of Holland and the United Provinces, some of the keys to which he held in the cautionary towns of Flushing, Brill, and Rammekens. At one moment there was a report that James was in treaty with Philip III. for the sale of those places which the Dutch had not been able or willing to redeem with money; and after concluding his treaty of peace with Spain, by which he bound himself to be neutral, he had permitted troops to be levied in England for the service of the Spaniards and the Archduke Albert, who yet flattered himself with hopes of reducing the free States. Soldiers of fortune and volunteers, chiefly Papists, passed over to the Low Countries, to endeavour to undo what their Protestant countrymen had done in the time of Elizabeth. But the temper of the English nation made it dangerous to derange the great Protestant scheme of the preceding reign, or to espouse the cause of the Spaniards against the Dutch; and Cecil, whom was left almost the entire management of foreign politics, apprehended that, if the war should be once finished in the Netherlands, it might be transferred by Philip to Ireland. The Earl of Tyrone, who had incurred the suspicion of planning a new insurrection, had found it expedient to flee from his native country, and throw himself upon the protection of the Spaniards, who treated him as a sovereign prince, and allowed him liberal pensions.

Thus Philip had a fireband always ready to throw into Ireland. Cecil had the spirit to resent this conduct. "Tell them," he wrote to Sir Charles Cornwallis, the English ambassador at Madrid, "that, when the King of Spain shall think it time to begin with Ireland, the king, my master, is more likely than ever Queen Elizabeth was to find a wholesome place of the King of Spain's where he would be loth to hear of the English, and to show the Spaniards that shall be sent into Ireland as fair a way as they were taught before."* Luckily, however, Philip was not much more warlike than James, and equally poor: Tyrone was allowed to go into Italy to live upon the bounty of the pope; and Ireland, for the present, was left quiet. There was a deal of insidious diplomatizing on all sides-for France (which was an ally of Holland), England, and Spain, had each its views and interests, and the new republic itself was by no means remarkable for sincerity or plain dealing. In the end, the archduke either made or listened to an overture to negotiate separately with the Dutch, upon the basis of their independence,

Winwood,

without communicating with James, who would fain have held himself as arbitrator, or with any other party. When a truce was agreed upon with the archduke, the Dutch, in the month of April, 1607, informed the King of France that they had opened negotiations for a definitive peace with Spain, and invited their ally, Henry, to participate with them in the treaty. Three months after, the States condescended to give, in a formal manner, the same information and the same invitation to the King of England. The vanity of James must have been hurt, but he acceded with alacrity, and joined himself with Henry IV., as mediator and guarantee. The Hague became the scene of apparently endless negotiations; but, at last, on the 29th of March, 1609, a truce was concluded for twelve years between Spain and the new republic -a truce equivalent to a peace. By this treaty the brave and persevering Hollanders, after a forty years' war, obtained from their tyrannical masters entire independence, liberty to trade to the Indies, and the closing of the Scheldt. James got for himself the acknowledgment of a debt of 818,000/., as the sum total of what was due to the English crown; and the promise of the States to discharge this debt by annual instalments of 60,000/. each; the first payment to be made two years after the date of this treaty. In the mean while, and until liquidation, James was to retain possession of Flushing, Brill, and Rammekens.*

The grand merit-perhaps the greatest of Elizabeth's government-was its strict order and economy. This, as we have remarked before, enabled her to maintain her high notions of prerogative, which were, however, on most public occasions, coloured over with kind and popular language, and varnished with dignity and grace.† But James was extravagant beyond all precedent, and he allowed the queen and his children, or the corrupt and greedy courtiers about them, to squander great sums. He was always in want of money, and, people naturally looked more narrowly into the pretensions of a pauper king (though heavendescended) who had always his hands in their pockets, or wanting to have them there. They also saw the court exposed and humiliated in various ways. In the third year of his reign he could neither pay his servants, nor decently supply his own table. The treasurer, Lord Dorset, was stopped in the streets by the servants of the household, who wanted their wages, and the purveyors refused further supplies till they should be settled with. Upon the death of the Earl of Dorset, in 1608, the Earl of Salisbury (Cecil) succeeded to the post of treasurer, still retaining his secretaryship of state. The Earl of Northampton, who became lord privy seal about the same time, had considerable authority or influence with the king; but Cecil might be regarded now as prime minister,

or sole acting minister, of England. He found the treasury empty, but fortunately a portion of the subsidies had not yet been paid in and spent. This money was something to stand by, and his fertile mind devised other means of raising supplies without consent of parliament. James, as we have seen, pretended to an authority paramount to all parliaments; in his theory the property of the subject was always the property of the king; and Cecil's political conscience did not prevent his labouring to establish all this in practice. Monopolies more oppressive than any that had preceded them were established and bartered; a right of fishery off the coasts of England and Scotland was sold to the Dutch; a feudal aid of twenty shillings on each knight's fee was levied by an old law, and duties were imposed upon the import and export of goods by the prerogative alone, without any reference even to the sanction of parliament. In the latter course Dorset had begun before him, by laying an import duty on Corinth raisins, or currants, by letters-patent. Bates, a Turkey merchant, resisted payment. He was proceeded against in the Court of Exchequer, where the barons decided for the crown, and laid down a right of taxation in the king without parliament, which was highly satisfactory to James and his ministers. With this precedent before him, Cecil went boldly to work, and imposed duties upon various kinds of goods by orders under the great scal. But all these sources of revenue were not sufficient to supply James's expenditure, and he was driven by his necessities to call together his parliament, which had been prorogued some thirty months.

A.D. 1610.-The Houses began their session on the 14th of February, when Cecil represented to the Lords, instead of causing it to be represented to the Commons, that the king's necessities were such as to call for an immediate supply. Neither time nor anything else was gained by this irregular mode of proceeding, and the minister was brought to a dead pause by the murmurs of the Commons, who took up the question of taxation and duty-making. Several of the members had sifted the legal authorities, and had arrived at the conclusion that the decision of the Barons of the Exchequer in the case of Bates was illegal. Hakewill and Yelverton made two elaborate speeches to this effect, and they were lamely answered by Bacon and Sir John Davis, who sustained the cause of prerogative. The country gentlemen were made to feel that, if the court were allowed to impose duties on merchandise as it chose, it would soon levy taxes on their lands in the same arbitrary manner, and the opposition became resolute and clamorous. James intimated, by a message, that they must not talk upon such subjects; but it appears that they talked louder than ever. He then called both Houses before him at Whitehall, and delivered to them a long lecture, which was at once blasphemous and ridiculous. “Kings," said this unroyal specimen, "are justly

called gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth; for, if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy-to make or unmakeat his pleasure; to give life or send death; to judge all, and to be judged nor accountable to none; to raise low things and to make high things low at his pleasure; and to God both soul and body are due. And the like power have kings: they make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death,-judges over all their subjects, and in all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things and abase high things, and make of their subjects like men of chess,—a pawn to take a bishop or a knight; and to cry up or down any of their subjects as they do their money. And to the king is due both the affection of the soul and the service of the body of his subjects."* In the end he told them that it was sedition in subjects to dispute what a king might do in the plenitude of his power,-that kings were before laws, and that all laws were granted by them as matter of favour to the people. But, notwithstanding this parallelizing of himself with the divinity, the Commons would not allow that he had any right to lay duties upon currants or broadcloth without their consent, and they presented a strong remonstrance against his inhibitions. They claimed 66 as an ancient general and undoubted right of parliament, freely to debate all matters which do properly concern the subject." They did not take upon themselves to review the judg ment given by the Court of Exchequer, but they desired to know the reasons whereon that judgment was grounded, especially as it was generally apprehended that the reasons of that judgment extended much farther, even to the utter ruin of the ancient liberty of this kingdom, and of the subjects' rights of property in their lands and goods." They told him that the kings of this realm, with the assent of parliament, make laws

King James's Works.-Winwood's Memorials.-Journals.

Journals. There was certainly a provocation to the very worst suspicious. The Chief Baron Fleming and Baron Clerk had declared that" the king's power is double-ordinary and absolute; and these have several laws and ends. That of the ordinary is for the profit of particular subjects, exercised in ordinary courts, and called common law, which cannot be changed in substance without parliament. The king's absolute power is applied to no particular person's benefit, but to the general safety; and this is not directed by the rules of common law, but more properly termed policy and government, varying according to his wisdom for the common good; and all things done within those rules are lawful. The matter in question is matter of state, to be ruled according to poliay by the king's extraordinary power. All customs (duties so called) are the effects of foreign commerce; but all affairs of commerce, and all treaties with foreign nations, belong to the king's absolute power; he therefore who has power over the cause must have it also over the effect. The sea-ports are the king's gates, which he may open and shut to whom he pleases." They asserted that the ancient customs on wine and wool had originated in the king's absolute power, and not in a grant of parliament. But many statutes had subsequently controlled this prerogative. In the reign of the great and warlike Edward III. it had been settled by parliament that no new imposition should be laid on wool or leather: but one of the barons maintained that this did not bind Edward's successors, for the right to impose such duties was a principal part of the prerogative of the crown of England, which the king could not diminish. They extolied the king's goodness in permitting the case to be argued at all, and taxed Bates and his party with insolence in presuming to dispute so clear a right.— State Trials.-Hallam's Const. Hist.

and taxes, and impose duties upon goods and merchandise, but not otherwise: that the people of this kingdom had been ever careful to preserve these liberties and rights when anything had been done to prejudice them: that his majesty's most humble Commons, following the example of their ancestors, and finding that his majesty, without advice or consent of parliament, had lately, in time of peace, set both greater impositions, and far more in number, than any of his ancestors had ever done in times of war, with all humility presumed to petition that all impositions set without assent of parliament should be quite abolished and taken away, and that his majesty, in imitation of his noble progenitors, would be pleased that a law be made during this session of parliament, declaring that all impositions or duties set, or to be set, upon his people, their goods or merchandise, save only by common consent of parliament, are, and ever shall be, void.* This was gall and wormwood to James; but the Commons did more than petition;-they passed a bill taking away impositions. This, however, was rejected by the Lords, who were not disposed to do anything to check the march of absolutism; and the bench of bishops were always ready to find texts in Scripture for the support of the prerogative. whole high church party had by this time gone far into the divine right, and had adopted the theory that the king's power was of God, and that of the parliament only of man. Bancroft,

The

the primate, would fain have been a sort of Protestant Becket, but the circumstances of the times induced him to seek for power, not by opposing the sovereign, but by making the church a sharer in the royal prerogative. In his eyes

it seemed as a consequence, that if kings were esteemed as being of God, the bishops also, being appointed by him, might claim the divine right under him, and that the crown and the mitre should be alike above law. The ecclesiastical courts were daily encroaching on the temporal courts; and the established clergy were never tired of repeating that the king's authority was paramount in his own courts, and that all jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, belonged to him. By these pretensions the church exasperated some of the judges, who thenceforward began to regard the Puritans with a less severe eye; and at the same time the common lawyers, who had always been jealous of the ecclesiastical courts, watched their encroachments more keenly than ever. One Doctor Cowell, a high churchman, who was patronised by the archbishop and eulogised by the king, brought the tempest to a head, though unfortunately its bursting did not purify the atmosphere of court or church. In his Interpreter, or Law Dictionary, which was dedicated to Bancroft, this man explained to the unlearned that the king was solutus à legibus (untied from laws),—that he was above all law by his absolute power, and though in the making of laws he might admit the

VOL. III.

• Somers's Tracts.

parliament or three estates unto council, this was not of constraint, but of his own benignity, or by reason of the promise made upon oath at the time of his coronation. But never was jesuit made to give less value to an oath than this learned doctor gave to the coronation oath of an English monarch. Although," he says, "at his coronation he take an oath not to alter the laws of the land, yet, this oath notwithstanding, he may alter or suspend any particular law that seemeth hurtful to the public estate. Thus much, in short, because I have heard some to be of opinion that the laws are above the king." And in treating of parliament, the doctor declares,-" Of these two one must be true, either that the king is above the parliament, that is, the positive laws of his kingdom, or else that he is not an absolute king; and therefore though it be a merciful policy, and also a politic mercy, not alterable without great peril, to make laws by the consent of the whole realm, because so no part shall have cause to complain of a partiality, yet simply to bind the prince to or by these laws were repugnant to the nature and constitution of an absolute monarchy." And as if this were not enough, in that part of his dictionary where he explains the word prerogative, the doctor says that the king, by the custom of this kingdom, maketh no laws without the consent of the three estates, though he may quash any law concluded of by them :" and that he "holds it incontrollable that the king of England is an absolute king." The Commons were incensed at this bold book, and they requested a conference with the Lords upon it in order to punish its author. The Lords consented, and the conference was managed on the part of the Lower House by Sir Francis Bacon, who could shift and change like Proteus, and be all for prerogative one hour and all for parliamentary rights the next. James shrunk before the storm, and made a scape-goat of his learned doctor, who had only expressed the king's own opinions without his blasphemy. Cowell was sent to prison for a short time, and his book, which had been publicly sold with impunity, was suppressed by the king's proclamation. The Commons, with exceeding great joy, returned thanks.*

On coming into the office of lord treasurer, Cecil had found that the king's debts amounted to 1,300,000l., while his ordinary expenditure was calculated to exceed his revenue by 81,000l. at least. He had reduced the debt by about twothirds; but he saw it accumulating afresh. He roundly proposed a perpetual yearly revenue to be granted, once for all, by parliament; and, as the price of this vote, he promised in the king's name that every grievance should be redressed and other

Journals of Commons and Lords.-Parl. Hist.-Winwood.R. Coke's Detection. Coke says that the Commons took fire and intended to have proceeded severely against Cowell; but the king interposed, and promised to call in the books by proclamation, as he did, but they were out, and the proclamation could not call them in, but only served to make them more taken notice of. He tells us that there were many others published to the same purpose, and among them, one by Blackwood, who concluded that the English were all slaves by reason of the Norman Conquest ! G

modes of raising money abandoned. The Commons instantly brought forward a host of grievances: the minister and the courtiers wished them to vote the money first and complain afterwards, but they stuck to their grievances. One of the most important of these was the ecclesiastical High Commission Court, a most arbitrary tribunal, which fined and imprisoned,-passed sentence without appeal,-constantly interfered with men's domestic concerns and their civil rights, and in its ordinary procedure despised the rules and precautions of the common law. Another glaring abuse was the king's attempting to do everything by his own proclamation. James, indeed, might have been called the King of Proclamations. The Commons told him that there was nothing "which they have accounted more dear and precious than this,-to be guided and governed by the certain rule of the law, which giveth both to the head and members that which of right belongeth to them, and not by any uncertain or arbitrary form of government." They told him that it was the indubitable right of the people of this kingdom not to be made subject to any punishment that shall extend to their lives, lands, bodies, or goods, other than such as are ordained by the common law of this land, or the statutes made by their common consent in parliament. They then complained that it had been attempted to make royal proclamations take the place of law; that proclamations had been of late years much more frequent than they had ever been before, extending to liberty, property, inheritances,

and livelihoods of men; some of them tending to alter the law; some made shortly after a session of parliament for matter rejected in the same session; some ordering punishments to be inflicted before lawful trial and conviction; some referring the punishment of offenders to courts of arbitrary discretion; some to support oppressive monopolies, &c. "By reason whereof," continued the Commons, "there is a general fear conceived and spread amongst your majesty's people, that proclamations will, by degrees, grow up and increase to the strength and nature of laws, whereby not only that ancient happiness and freedom will be much blemished (if not quite taken away), which their ancestors have so long enjoyed; but the same may also (in process of time) bring a new form of arbitrary government upon the realm: and this their fear is the more increased by occasion of certain books lately published, which ascribe a greater power to proclamations than heretofore had been conceived to belong unto them; as also by the care taken to reduce all the proclamations made since your majesty's reign into one volume, and to print them in such form as acts of parliament formerly have been, and still are used to be, which seemeth to imply a purpose to give them more reputation and more establishment than heretofore they have had."* The Commons, after giving a list of James's arbitrary proclamations, proceeded to complain of the delay of the courts of law in granting writs of prohibition and habeas corpus, and of the jurisdiction of

Somers's Tracts.-Carte.

the council of Wales over the four bordering shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and Salop, which it was pretended were included within their authority as Marches of Wales. Their other chief grievances were the Duke of Lennox's patent for searching and sealing new drapery, monopolies of wine, licences and taxes recently set upon all public-houses, and a tax or duty upon sea-coal.

The lofty, the firm and moderate tone of this petition of grievances ought to have warned James that the spirit of the Commons was undergoing a great change, and that whatever had been their timidity and servility under the House of Tudor, they would now aim at occupying their elevated and proper position in the constitution. But James, though alarmed and in dreadful want of their money, clung fast to his prerogative, and thought to satisfy them with civil words and paltry concessions. With regard to the Court of High Commission, which probably indisposed the minds of a greater number of his subjects than any other single cause, he would not cede a line. As to the proclamations, he vouchsafed to promise that they should never exceed what the law warranted. The royal licences to public-houses he generously agreed to revoke. But the Commons, who maintained that he had no right to lay it on, would not vote him a perpetual revenue in exchange for this tax upon victuallers, and there was a pause exceedingly distressing to the needy king.

There remained certain parts of his royal prerogative which the Commons had hardly ventured to dispute; but as the minister spoke of "retribution" for "contribution," they came under discussion. These were the matters of wardship, tenure by knight service, and the old grievance of purveyance. The Commons got the Lords to discuss the several subjects with them in committees of conference, and Cecil showed a willingness to bargain for the surrender of these feudal sources of revenue in exchange for a fixed annual sum. But it was soon found that James, though willing to give up wardship and purveyance, was exceedingly reluctant to part with tenure by knight service, holding it to be highly indecorous that his nobility and gentry should hold their lands on the same ignoble tenure as base people. Still, however, the Commons thought the concessions he was willing to make well worth the purchasing. It remained to fix the price. James asked 300,000l. per annum as a full composition for abolishing the right of wardship, and for taking away all purveyance, with some other concessions.* thought too dear, and, after a good deal of haggling, the king reduced it to 220,000l. per annum. The Commons, under the threat of a dissolution, bade up to 200,000l., and the court gladly closed with them at that price. But

This was

Among these was the odious right of interference in the mar riages of infants and widows.

parliament had to guard itself against the prerogative, which had been held up as beyond the control of statute; and they had also to devise by what means the 200,000l. per annum should be levied. They were resolved to be slow and cautious; their session had been already prolonged to the middle of July, and it was therefore agreed that they should vote something to meet the king's immediate exigencies, and resume the subject after prorogation. All that the Commons voted was an aid of one subsidy and one-tenth; upon which they were prorogued to the month of October. When they met again, James was astonished and irritated to find that the Commons were in a less complying humour than before. He wanted to concede less than he had promised: they insisted upon having more than they had bargained for. During the recess they had reflected seriously on the growing extravagance of the king and the rapacity of his courtiers. They suspected that the king would not keep his part of the bargain; they saw that no redress was to be expected as to the tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts, that illegal customs were still exacted at the out-ports, that proclamations were to have the force of acts of parliament. In this frame of mind (and there was a large party that had brooded with horror or disgust over James's blasphemous boastings) they declared their reluctance to voting the 200,000l. per annum without a better assurance of an equivalent in substantial reforms. James, who never doubted of the efficacy of his mischievous intermeddling and insulting oratory, summoned them to a conference; and about thirty members waited upon his majesty at Whitehall. The king desired them to make a direct answer to some questions which he should put to them. The first was, Whether they thought he was really in want of money, as his treasurer and chancellor of the exchequer had informed them? "Whereto, when Sir Francis Bacon had begun to answer in a more extravagant style than his majesty did delight to hear, he picked out Sir Henry Neville, commanding him to answer, according to his conscience. Thereupon Sir Henry Neville did directly answer, that he thought his majesty was in want. Then,' said the king, tell me whether it belongeth to you, that are my subjects, to relieve me or not.' To this,' quoth Sir Harry, 'I must answer with a distinction: where your majesty's expense groweth by the commonwealth, we are bound to maintain it;-otherwise not.' And so, continuing his speech, he gave a note, that in this one parliament they had already given four subsidies and seven fifteenths, which is more than ever was given by any parliament, at any time, upon any occasion; and yet, withal, they had no relief of their grievances. Then was his majesty instant to have him declare what their grievances were. To all their grievances,' said Sir Harry, 'I am not privy, but of those that have come to my knowledge I will make recital.' And so began to say that, in matter of justice, they could not have