1640 MILITARY CHARGES. 115 insolence to Strafford. The men of Yorkshire, he now said, 'required to be eased of coat-and-conduct money, and other such military charges.' Unless their representatives brought them that relief they dared not return home. Another Yorkshireman, Sir John Hotham, put the case as strongly as possible. Ship-money, he said, had cost his county but 12,000/ The military charges cost it 40,000l. Others again attacked the whole system of impressment as Selden had attacked it in 1628.1 Such speeches, received with evident approbation by the House, drew forth a fresh declaration from Vane. He rose to Vane insists on the acceptance of the King's terms. state that the King would accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. Upon this the committee broke up without coming to a resolution, postponing further consideration of the matter to the following day. It is incredible that Vane should have thus acted without express authority from Charles. The question of the military Rossingham to Conway, May 12, S. P. Dom. ccccliii. 24. By entirely omitting the matter of the military charges Clarendon reduces the whole affair to a personal question. My account is founded on two completely independent statements. There are amongst the State Papers some notes (S. P. Dom ccccl. 94) which I believe to have been drawn up by Rossingham for circulation amongst his correspondents. In these we are told that the sense of the House was that not only shipmoney should be abolished, but also all military taxes or other taxes for the future, by what name or title soever it might be called, should be provided against before that twelve subsidies were granted, so that no positive answer was this day given to his Majesty.' Northumberland, in a letter to Conway, of May 5 (ibid. cccclii. 33) is equally explicit. "The King," he wrote, "did yesterday offer the House of Commons to relinquish absolutely the shipping money if they would at this time supply him with twelve subsidies. This gave them not satisfaction. They desired to be also eased of the military charge, as they termed it, which was from the pressing, coating, and conducting of soldiers. Innovations in religion they likewise insisted much upon. Other grievances they trenched upon, but these were the main ones they complained of; and had they been well advised I am verily persuaded they might in time have gained their desires, but they in a tumultuous and confused way went on with their businesses, which gave so great offence unto his Majesty that this morning he hath dissolved the Parliament." charges affected the King far more deeply than even the question of ship-money. Charles knew well that, whether shipmoney were levied by the prerogative or not, England could Bearing of no longer endure to be without a navy. At that very this demand. moment Barbary pirates were cruising off the mouth of the Channel, scuttling English ships and dragging English sailors into a miserable captivity. But if the Commons could not refuse to supply the Government with a navy, they might very well refuse to supply it with an army. If Charles assented to their present demand, the machinery by which he had been in the habit of collecting a military force would be hopelessly disarranged. Nor was this all. Though it docs not seem that any word of direct sympathy with the Scots was spoken in that day's committee, it must have been evident to the Privy Councillors present that the war itself found but little support amongst the members of the House. Already, indeed, the leaders of the popular party had opened communications with some of the Scottish Commissioners, asking them to lay the grievances of their countrymen before the Commons. To this the Commissioners had replied that, as their lives were now at the King's mercy, they could not venture to take such a step, but that if the House of Commons, after reading their printed Declaration, chose to send for them and to inquire into the truth of its allegations, they would be ready to reply to any Proposed questions which might be asked. The English against the leaders, in fact, had accepted this proposal, and had fixed the 7th as the day on which the Scots' Declaration should be discussed. The debate of the 4th, however, changed their plans. After Vane's threatening language it was impossible to doubt that a dissolution was imminent. That evening, therefore, it was resolved that Pym should bring forward the subject as soon as the House met on the following morning. A petition, it would seem, was to be drawn up to beg the King to come to terms with the Scots, and it is probable that the Lords were to be asked to concur in this petition.' petition war. Heylyn's statement (Cyprianus Angl. 396) that the Commons' came to a resolution of yielding somewhat towards his Majesty's supply, but in the grant thereof blasted his Majesty's expedition against the Scots,' only puts 1640 A HASTY DISSOLUTION. 117 Some one who could not be trusted was present at this meeting. That very evening the King received intelligence The Council of Pym's plan of operations. He at once summoned summoned. the Privy Council to meet at the unusual hour of six on the following morning. He sent for the Speaker and forbade him to take his place, least the dreaded petition should be voted before he had time to intervene.1 votes for a When the Council met the next morning the King announced his intention of proceeding to a dissolution. Strafford, who May 5. arrived late, begged that the question might first be The Council seriously discussed, and that the opinions of the dissolution. Councillors who were also members of the Lower House might first be heard. Vane declared that there was no hope that the Commons' would give one penny.' On this the votes were taken. Northumberland and Holland were alone in wishing to avert a dissolution. Supported by the rest of the Council the King hurried to the House of Lords and dissolved Parliament. End of the The Short Parliament, for by that name this asShort Parlia- sembly is known in history, had sat for three weeks. ment. As far as actual results were concerned it accomplished nothing at all. For all that, its work was as memorable as the intention into positive terms. "Our Parliament," writes a Scotchman in London, "hath yet settled nothing. They are this day about to petition his Majesty to hearken to a reconciliation with you, his subjects in Scotland." Johnstoun to Smith, May 5, S. P. Dom. cccclii. 46. A few days later we hear that the members of the dissolved Parliament spoke freely of their disinclination to grant money for a Scottish war, and said that the cause of the Scots was in reality their own. Salvetti's News-Letter, May The greater part of what I have stated is drawn from an anonymous deposition and a paper of interrogatories founded on it (S. P. Dom. cccclii. 114, 115). We there learn that it was otherwise resolved on Monday night that the next morning the book should have been produced, as he conceived, by Mr. Pym, who should have spoken then also in that business.' Mr. Hamilton is to be congratulated on this important discovery, which first appeared in his Calendar for 1640. 8 18* "Lest that they should urge him to prefer any petition to the Upper House." Harl. MSS. 4931, fol. 49. * Laud's Works, iii. 284. Whitaker's Life of Radcliffe, 233. that of any Parliament in our history. It made England conscious of the universality of its displeasure. Falkland, we are told, went back from this Parliament full of dissatisfaction with the Court,' and doubtless he did not stand alone. The chorus of complaint sounded louder when it was echoed from Cornwall to Northumberland than when it seemed to be no more than a local outcry. Nor was this Parliament more memorable for the complaints which it uttered than for the remedies which it proposed. The work which it assigned to itself was of no less import than that to which the Long Parliament subsequently addressed itself. Its moderation consisted rather in the temper in which it approached its labours, than in the Revolution proposed by it. demands which it made. What it proposed was nothing short of a complete change in the relations between the King and the nation. It announced through the mouth of Pym that Parliament was the soul of the commonwealth, and there were some amongst its members who sought for that soul in the Lower House alone. It was impossible that such a body should long have escaped a dissolution. From the very first the resolution had A dissolution been taken at Court to break up the Parliament unavoidable. unless it would give its support to the war. When it laid hands upon fleet and army, and seemed likely to give its voice for peace, the moment foreseen in Charles's Council had arrived. It needed all Hyde's bland conviction that contradictory forces were to be reconciled by his own lawyer-like dexterity, to throw the whole blame of the dissolution upon Vane. Oliver St. John understood better what the facts of the case really were, when he said 'that all was well, and that it must be worse before it could be better; and that this Parliament would never have done what was necessary to be done.' St. John knew full well what he wanted. Hyde never knew what he wanted beyond some dream of his own, in which Charles and Laud were to come to a happy compromise with all moderate men, and tyranny and sedition were to be renounced as equally impracticable. Clarendon, vii. 222. 1640, Strafford's view of the situation. CHAPTER XCII. PASSIVE RESISTANCE. STRAFFORD, at least, had no notion of coming to a compromise with a Parliament which was bent on peace with Scotland, and which was determined to place the whole military force of the Crown at its own disposal. The knowledge of Pym's intercourse with the Scots, which he doubtless acquired in the course of the day, changed his longing for conciliation to bitter hostility. The King, he thought, might leave his subjects to provide support for the navy, but he could not safely depend on them for the very existence of an army. If Charles gave way now, a modification of the whole constitution of England would be the result. The English Parliament would claim all the rights which the Scottish Parliament had asserted. The country, he may well have thought, would be handed over to the persuasive rhetoric of factious adventurers. The functions of government would be at an end. He saw all the weak points of the Parliamentary system without seeing any of its strong ones. He had no belief in the possibility that a better organisation might arise out of the chaotic public opinion of his day. The secret of the future, the growth of cabinet government, was a veiled mystery to him as it was to the rest of his generation. In conversation with his friends, Strafford made no secret of his conviction that the summoning of Parliament had been an experiment to which he indeed had heartily desired success, but that it had been nothing more than an experiment. The King's cause, he said to Conway, 'was very just and lawful, and if the Parliament would not His conversation with Conway. |