CHAPTER III.

THE SHIP WRITS.

1634-1641.

The ship writs. Position of the king as regards the imposition of taxes upon property. The Petition of Right. Expedients for obtaining revenue used during the personal rule of Charles I. The king is desirous, in 1634, of increasing the navy. Noy frames the ship writs. Precedents for these writs in the times of the Plantagenets, the Spanish Armada in 1588, the attack on Algiers in 1618, and the war with Spain, 1626. Noy's difficulty in draughting the first writs for maritime counties and towns. First issue of the writs in October, 1634. The amount raised by the writs. No serious opposition to them. Second issue of writs for inland as well as maritime counties and towns in Aug. 1635. The amount raised. Resistance to the levy. A case is submitted to the judges. Their opinion. Third and fourth issues of writs. Hampden's case. Decision of the court. Fifth and sixth issues of writs. The short parliament. The long parliament, Sept. 1640. The Act against ship money.

THE famous ship writs of king Charles I. formed an extra-parliamentary method of obtaining the result of a tax on property. They embodied the ultimate expression of the ingenuity of the king's advisers in the invention of means to enable him to rule without a parliament.

It will be remembered that the position of the king as regards the levy of taxes on property was clear and acknowledged. Except in the case of the Jews, who had been liable to indefinite extortion at the hands of the king because they were permitted to

be here solely at his will, and in the case of the tenants of royal demesne, who by reason of their relation to the king as their landlord, were liable to tallage when he was in debt-with these two exceptions, the king never had any right to take an aid or subsidy from the subject without the consent of parliament, unless it were for knighting his son, for the marriage of his eldest daughter, or to ransom his person, and then only to a reasonable amount. On any other occasion the grant was in the hands of parliament.

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An acknowledgment of this right of parliament was implied in the terms used for the contributions in aid of the king, which were demanded as for 'gifts' and benevolences,' or under the specious pretext of 'loans;' and these attempts at exaction and any tax of the kind had been suppressed by the Petition of Right, to which the king had given his assent in 1628.

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In the period of the personal rule of king Charles without a parliament, 1629-1640, his officers strained to the utmost the feudal revenue from wardship and the incidents of the feudal tenures, which, in consequence of the difficulties in the way of carrying out the Great Contract in 1610, still continued in force; fines for knighthood were rigidly enforced; large tracts of land were claimed for the king, as in encroachment on the royal forests; monopolies were revived for companies established in evasion of the statute of monopolies ; and projects for an excise were started. But all the methods enforced for obtaining money for the king failed to bring the total revenue more than up to the mark of the ordinary peace expenditure.

At last, in 1634, when additional revenue was required by the king, who was extremely desirous to increase his navy, the ship writs were devised as a means for the purpose by William Noy, a hard-headed lawyer, who formerly, when on the popular side, had introduced into the house of commons, in 1621, a motion for an inquiry into the monopolies, but who, subsequently, joining the king's party, had been appointed attorney general, in October 1631. He was already famous for his project of soap' to produce a revenue from this article by means of a monopoly to the corporation of soap-boilers.1

There was nothing new in the use of ship writs. They formed a well-known means of getting together a navy in times of war. Before the invention of cannon there was little difference between any ship worthy to be called a merchant vessel and a ship of war; and in the times of the Plantagenets, when we had no permanent navy, when ships were wanted for war, the sea-port towns had been required to furnish their ships with men and equipment for the defence of the kingdom.2 A permanent navy, commenced by Henry VIII., with the Regent and the Harry Grâce à Dieu, or the Great Harry,' had been carefully increased by him and Elizabeth, who, to the one and twenty great ships and three notable galleys, with the sight whereof and the rest of the royal navy it was incredible how much her grace was delighted,' added, after the breach with Spain, one large ship at least every year. But even after this formation of a permanent royal navy, it was from 2 Writ to London, A.D. 1335. Foedera, iv. 664.

1 Post, p. 244.

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the merchant navy that two-thirds of the ships that formed the fleet against the Armada were derived; and they were the result of ship writs, issued according to precedent, to London and the other port towns, requiring them to furnish ships and their equipment for the defence of the kingdom. Thus also, in 1618, the greater number (12 out of 18) of the vessels employed in the attack on Algiers-the only warlike operation by sea undertaken by James I.—were ships hired from private merchants; and on this occasion the port towns had been required to provide ships, and ship money was levied for the purpose.1 And lastly, as late as in 1626, when we were at war with Spain, the seaports had been required, after the dissolution of parliament, to provide and maintain a fleet of ships for three months.2

But all these were war precedents, and applied only to the port towns; and Noy's ingenuity in building upon them his famous superstructure consisted in

Gardiner, P. Charles, i. 276.

In 1619 the city of Exeter paid 500l. towards suppressing pirates." Hamilton, Quarter Sessions, p. 64.

2 See, as to the ships required from Exeter, viz., two ships of 200 tons, with twelve pieces of ordnance and 132 men. Ibid. p. 119.

draughting the preamble of the 'new writs of an old edition,' so as to bring the case, as far as possible, within the precedents, and to prepare the way for

more extensive issue of writs throughout the kingdom, on the plan of the ship-geld of Anglo-Saxon times.1

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At this time, though England was at peace with other nations, a rising jealousy of the importance of the Dutch threatened at no distant date to lead to war with them upon the question of the close or open sea. War was going on between the Spaniards and French and the Dutch. While the Barbary pirates had extended their ravages upon our merchant ships even to within sight of our coasts. Such was the state of affairs. Noy made the most of them. He began by infusing a spirit of crusade into the business by stigmatising the corsairs as Turks, enemies of the Christian name;' grouped these thieves, robbers, and pirates of the sea' together in bands; recited their capture of ships and men in the channel and their further preparations of ships to molest our merchants and grieve the kingdom;' and, referring to the wars abroad and the possibility that we might be involved in them-'the dangers which in these times of war do hang over our heads; thus presented a strong case for providing for 'the defence of the kingdom, safeguard of the sea,

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1 Ante, p. 10.

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2 A brief statement of the purport of Hugo Grotius' treatise, 'Mare Liberum, sive de jure quod Batavis competit ad Indicana commercia Dissertatio,' 1612, and W. Welwood's treatise, 'De Dominio Maris,' 1615, in answer, is given in Anderson, Commerce, ii. 255-57. Selden's Mare Clausum, 1635, see ibid. 361; and for Sir P. Medow's Summary thereof, ibid. iii. 345, Appendix.

As to