1640 PYM ON CHURCH AND STATE. 105 originally been borne by the Crown. Elizabeth in her need had sometimes asked the counties to advance the money till she was able to repay it. By degrees the exception had become the rule, whilst the engagement to repay the advance had ceased to be observed. New customs were already springing up. Not only were men pressed against their will, but the counties were compelled to furnish public magazines for powder and munitions, to pay certain officers, and to provide horses and carts for the King's service without any remuneration whatever. As Pym knew, the strength of the King's authority lay in his being able to fall back upon the courts of law. As yet no one was prepared to strike at the root of the evil. Pym contented himself with protesting against 'extrajudicial declarations of judges,' made without hearing counsel on the point at issue, and against the employment of the Privy Council and the Star Chamber in protecting monopolists. Many of the clergy had thrust themselves forward to undertake the defence of unconstitutional power. It was now the high way to preferment' to preach that there was 'Divine authority for an absolute power in the King' to do what he would with 'the persons and goods of Englishmen.' Dr. Manwaring had been condemned in the last Parliament for this offence, and he had now 'leapt into a bishop's chair. The intro Then, returning to the point from which he started, Pym pointed to the source of all other grievances in 'the mission of long intromission of Parliaments, contrary to the two Parliaments. statutes yet in force, whereby it is appointed there should be Parliaments once in the year.' How then was the mischief to be remedied? Here Pym refused to follow Grimston. He refrained from requiring that any individual minister should be called to account. The remedy. Let them ask the Lords to join in searching out 'the causes and remedies of these insupportable grievances,' and in petitioning the King for redress.1 I cannot agree with Ranke in holding that the draft in the State Paper Office is more accurate than that given by Rushworth. It leaves out all about the privileges of Parliament. The printed speech in the King's Pamphlets, used by Mr. Forster, is not perhaps to be taken as being Such a speech, so decisive and yet so moderate, carried the House with it. It laid down the lines within which, under altered conditions, the Long Parliament afterwards moved. It gave no offence to the hesitating and timid, as Eliot had given offence by summoning the King's officers to the bar, and by his wild attack upon Weston. It seemed as if both Houses in both April 18. had agreed to follow Pym. The next day the Lords Proceedings called in question the appointment of Manwaring Houses. to a bishopric, whilst the Commons placed Grimston in the chair of a Committee of the whole House, sent for the records of the case of Eliot and his fellow-prisoners, and appointed a Select Committee to draw up a narrative of the proceedings against them. Before the House rose, it had ordered that the records of the ship-money case should also be brought before it. The three estates of the realm. The feeling against the bishops was perhaps even stronger in the Lords than in the Commons. There was more of personal jealousy there, as there had been among the nobility of Scotland. It was in the House of Lords that, for the first time since the days of Lollardism, the old constitutional doctrine, that the lay peers, the clergy, and the Commons were the three estates of the realm, was brought in question. The bishops were distinctly told that the three estates were the King, the Barons, and the Commons. "The bishops then," it was said, "would make four estates or exclude the King." 1 The King to The words thus defiantly spoken did not touch the bishops alone. The notion that Parliament was the soul of be an estate. the body politic, had been welcomed by the Lords. The King was no longer to reign supreme, summoning his literally Pym's as it was spoken. There was no thorough system of shorthand in those days. But it has every characteristic of Pym, and most probably was corrected by him, or by some one present on the occasion of its delivery, and I have quoted from it as from something better than ‘a later amplification.' The report given in Rushworth, iii. 21, is, as Mr. Forster has pointed out, another report of this speech. Mr. Forster was, however, wrong in saying that Pym did not speak on Nov. 7. Harl. MSS. 4,931, fol. 47. 1640 THE THREE ESTATES. IC7 estates, as Edward I. had summoned them, to gather round his throne. He was to be no more than a first estate, called on to join with the others, but not called on to do more. Το such a pass had Charles brought himself by his resolution to walk alone. The time was not far off when even so much participation would be denied him. April 21. to beg On the 21st the feeling of the Peers was even more strongly manifested. Bishop Hall had recently attracted attention to himself by publishing, at Laud's instigation, a work Hall obliged entitled Episcopacy by Divine Right, in which he had pardon. argued that the primitive character of Episcopacy stamped it with Divine authority. He now rashly spoke of Saye as one who 'savoured of a Scottish Covenanter.' He was at once ordered to the bar. "If I have offended," he said, "I cry pardon." The words were received with a shout of "No ifs!" and Hall was forced to beg pardon in positive terms. In the meanwhile, the Lower House was busy with its The Lower grievances. Preparations were made to petition the House busy King on the breach of privilege in 1629, and to draw up a statement of the case against the Crown on with griev ances. ship-money and the impositions. Finch ex In On this, both Houses were summoned to Whitehall. the King's presence, Finch explained the absolute plains that necessity of a fleet, and declared that the King 'was not wedded to this particular way' of supporting it, and that if the Houses would find the money in some other manner he would readily give his consent to the change. Then, after holding up the example of the Irish Parliament as worthy of imitation, Finch turned the King will accept any other way of sup porting a navy. 'Professor Masson is rather hard upon Hall all through this affair (Life of Milton, ii. 124). It should be remembered that the book was intended not as a private venture of Hall's, but as a manifesto of the English Church. It was therefore perfectly reasonable that Laud, being invited to comment, should do as he was asked. After all, the comments were merely those which would suggest themselves to a mind rather more resolute and thorough than that of Hall, and Hall did himself no discredit by accepting them. There is nothing in them in the slightest degree discordant with Hall's own system, which may be seen briefly in a paper of propositions sent by him to Laud (Laud's Works, iv. 310). to the Lords. His Majesty, he said, did not doubt 'that, if the House of Commons should fail in their duty,' the Lords would concur with him to preserve himself and the nation. April 22. Subsidies voted in Convoca The appeal to the Lords was followed by an appeal to a body upon which the Commons looked with no slight jealousy. On the 22nd, at Laud's request, Convocation unanimously granted six subsidies from the clergy. These subsidies would, in the usual course, require the confirmation of Parliament before they could be levied, but it was natural that the Commons should not be very well pleased with the contrast between the alacrity of the clergy and their own deliberate hesitation. tion. April 23. Resolution of the Com The next day, accordingly, the House went into committee on the message delivered by the Lord Keeper, and resolved to demand a conference with the Lords. mons to take "Till the liberties of the House and kingdom were grievances cleared, they knew not whether they had anything to give or no." 2 first. Strafford in When the news of this resolution reached the King, he was at supper. He rose angrily from the table, and summoned the Council to meet at once. That evening he had his sternest counsellor once more by his side. In spite of gout, Strafford had come back from Ireland. He found that his opponents at Court had taken advantage of his absence to complain of him as the main author of the summoning of so untoward a Parliament.3 He little heeded their words. He fiercely urged that Charles should go down to the House of Lords the next morning before the message of the Commons had been delivered, and should urge the Peers to declare that it was right that the satisfaction to be given to the King should precede the presentation of grievances. Strafford's advice was taken, and at the opening of the next morning's sitting, Charles appeared in the Upper House. This Nalson, i. 36. Rossetti to Barberini, Montreuil to Bellievre, 2 Harl. MSS. 3,931, fol. 47 b. April 24, R. O. Transcripts. May 4 April 30 Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 81. 1640 April 24. Charles appeals to the Lords. AN APPEAL TO THE LORDS. 109 time he spoke with his own mouth. The Commons, he said, had put the cart before the horse. His necessities were too serious to admit of delay. If the Commons would trust him, he would make good all that Finch had promised in his name, and hear their grievances in the winter. In the other alternative, he conjured their lordships not to join with them, but to leave them to themselves.' The Lords King, In an attack upon the bishops, the Lords were ready to go at least as far as the Commons. But they were too accustomed to support the Crown to fall into opposition on such support the an appeal as this. In a House of 86, of which 18 were bishops, 61 voted that the King's supply ought to have precedence of grievances. The minority of 25 contained the names of Hertford and Southampton, who afterwards took the side of the King in the Civil War, as well as those of Bedford, Essex, Brooke, and Saye.1 Strafford had done neither the King nor the Lords service in thus thrusting the Upper House forward in opposition to the Lower. What he did amiss sprang from his fundamental misconception of the situation. Like Wellington in 1831 and 1832, he saw the constitution threatened by a change which would shift completely, and for ever, the basis of power. Believing in his heart that this change would be prejudicial to the country, he was ready to resist it with every instrument that came to his hand. Like Wellington, he would have appealed first to the House of Lords, in the hope that the voice of the Lords would serve as a rallying cry for the well-affected part of the nation; but there can be little doubt that he would have refused to be controlled by any numerical majority whatever, and would have fallen back upon an armed force if necessary, to beat down a resistance which he believed to be destructive of all that was most valuable in the country. The minority were Rutland, Southampton, Bedford, Hertford, Essex, Lincoln, Warwick, Clare, Bolingbroke, Nottingham, Bath, Saye and Sele, Willoughby of Parham, Paget, North, Mandeville, Brooke, Robartes, Lovelace, Savile, Dunsmore, Deyncourt, Montague of Boughton, Howard of Escrick, and Wharton. Note by Windebank, S. P. Dom. ccccli. 39. |