1640

SHIP-MONEY ATTACKED.

245

Henry, as his subsequent conduct shows, was capable of attempting to re-enact the sorry part which had been played by St. Louis at Amiens, but it may be that Charles would for the present be content with merely moral support. He at once took a higher tone than he had done since the meeting of Parliament. He would not allow the Houses, he said, to punish his servants. A few days after these words were uttered, Land was impeached, and Finch had fled to Holland.

Dec. 7.

against ship

The foundations for an attack upon the Lord Keeper were already laid. On December 7, on St. John's report, the House resolved that ship-money was an utterly illegal impost, Resolutions and that the judges who had declared the contrary, money, had acted in defiance of the law. To this result no supported by man contributed more than Falkland. Smail of Falkland, stature and without any advantages of voice or person, he placed himself at once in the first rank of Parliamentary orators. Burning indignation against wrong gave light and strength to his words. His ideal commonwealth was in

deed very different from that of Pym. He was not anxious to put an end to the meddlesome interference of the few, mere'y to give free scope to the meddlesome interference of the many, and he would be sure to distrust any system which threatened to lay intellectual freedom at the feet of a Parliamentary majority. On the point for the moment at issue he was, however, at one with Pym, and in expressing the opinion which he had formed he was far more vehement and impetuous. He took no account of the natural tendency of the judges to give a hard and legal form to the political ideas which were floating in their minds, and he treated their arguments as an insult to common sense. They had seen danger from an enemy where danger there was none. It was strange that they saw not the law, which all men else saw but themselves. He then proceeded to reason that there was now no more question whether the judges were to be punished or not for past offences. Men who had delivered

20

Giustinian to the Doge, Nov. Dec.

30'

4, 12. 18 14, 22, 28'

Ven. Transcripts,

R. O. Vane to the Prince of Orange, Dec. 11, Groen Van Prinsterer, Ser. 2, iii. 206.

such opinions could not safely be left on the Bench. They were the advisers in all legal matters of the House of Lords. If the law was to regain its force, they must be punished and removed. Had not Finch declared that the power of levying ship-money was so inherent in the Crown that it was not in the power even of Parliament to take it away? Had he not gone round to solicit the judges to give opinions against their knowledge and conscience? Yet it was this man who was now the Keeper of his Majesty's conscience, and was always ready to infuse into his mind opinions hostile to his Parliament.

He is

Falkland was at once supported by his friend Hyde. Hyde's legal mind was shocked at the action of the judges, not so much because they had defied the nation, as because seconded by they had brought the law into disrepute. He moved Hyde. that the eight judges who were left on the Bench out of the twelve who had sat on it in Hampden's case might be asked to reveal the solicitations to which they had been subjected. The report of their answers was not favourable to Finch, and at Falkland's motion, orders were given to draw up a charge against him.'

Dec. 21.

Finch

defends

himself

before the Commons.

Before the day arrived, when the impeachment of the Lord Keeper would finally be decided on, Finch unexpectedly sent a request to be heard by the Commons. On the 21st he appeared, and was received by the House with all the honour due to his office. The manner in which his defence was made extorted admiration even from his bitterest opponents. There can be little doubt that, harsh and insolent as he was, his most outrageous arguments had resulted from an honest conviction that he was in the right. Yet he could hardly have expected that any justification of his conduct would find favour with the audience to which it was addressed. His defence seemed to the Commons to have been an aggravation, rather than a mitigation, of his offence. Sir Thomas Jermyn, the Comptroller of the Household, asked whether this were a treason within the statute or by the construction of the House.' Pym loftily replied, 'that to endeavour the subversion of the laws of this Rushworth, iv. 86. D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 55.

1640

FLIGHT OF FINCH.

247

kingdom was treason of the highest nature.' "Tis treason," said Hyde, "to kill a judge, much more to slay justice itself." The vote for the impeachment of the Lord Keeper as a traitor was carried with scarcely a dissentient voice.1 That night Finch followed the example which had been set by Windebank. After an interview with Charles, he fled across the sea in a vessel belonging to the Royal Navy. He It was a matter of

Dec. 23.

now finally voted,

His flight, chose the Hague as the place of his exile. course that his impeachment was and at the same time six of the judges who were selected as sharing his offence in the matter of shipmoney were ordered to give security that they would appear whenever they were called for.

and impeachment.

Unanimity of the House.

On the political questions before the House, on the impeachment of Strafford and Finch, on the condemnation of ship-money, and on the necessity of defensive measures against the Catholics, the House was practically unanimous. No Royalist party was in existence. The few Privy Councillors who had a seat in the House-Vane, Roe, and Jermyn-had no power and probably no wish to defend the fallen system.

Division, if it came at all, would come from another quarter. Whatever difficulties might arise about the political system to be substituted for that which had failed so utterly, men were pretty well agreed as to the general character of the institutions which they desired to found. They wanted to restore the reign of law in combination with the authority of Parliament. With respect to religion they were far from being equally unanimous, and they had an instinctive feeling that it was here that the seeds of future division were to be found. On the The London 11th a violent petition for Church-reform and the against abolition of Episcopacy, signed by 15,000 Londoners, Episcopacy. was presented to the House. An approving crowd of some 1,500 persons followed it into Westminster Hall. For the first time opinion in the House was seriously divided. "There were many against, and many for the same.” 2

Dec. 11.

petition

1 Rushworth, iv. 124. D'Ewes's Diary, Hari. MSS. clxii. fol. 90. ? The Scottish Commissioners in London to the Committee in Newcastle, Adv. Libr. Edin. 33, 4, 6.

Its consideration postponed.

Dec. 9.

the new

canons.

Yet, in spite of Vane's official objection that many of the petitioners were Brownists, the Commons resolved to take their prayer into consideration on the 17th. When, however, the 17th arrived, it was discovered that the House was too busy to attend to it for the present, and the subject was postponed to a more convenient season. Yet, if the House was not as yet prepared to discuss the merits of Episcopacy, it was resolved to put an end to that clerical domination which had been the most generAttack on ally obnoxious part of the Laudian system. Of this domination the late canons and the etcetera oath were regarded as the most complete expression, and when the question of their legality was moved by Rouse there was no wish to evade the discussion. Yet even on this ground a small knot of members threw themselves athwart the prevailing current. Holborne, who had shared with St. John the glory Holborne's of the defence of Hampden, broke away from the their favour. majority on the ecclesiastical question. Convocation, he argued, was an independent body, entitled, with the King's assent, to bind both clergy and laity, so long as its canons did not come into conflict with the law of the land. In former reigns, canons had been made which had never been confirmed by Parliament. "If we be of the Church," he expressly added, "the canons must bind us." To Holborne's assertion that the laity were bound by the clergy in Convocation, St. John replied by the counter-assertion that Convocation was unable, unless its canons were confirmed by Parliament, to bind even the clergy. When it was put to the vote that the late canons bound neither the clergy nor the laity, not a single voice was raised in the negative.

Dec. 15.

argument in

Dec. 16. The canons voted to be illegal.

The next day the obnoxious canons were voted to have been illegal. It was impossible, in such a discussion, that Laud's name should be forgotten. One member asked whether there had not been a principal solicitor here' as there had been amongst the judges. Sir John Hotham suggested that there was good reason to accuse Laud of treason. Pym was of the same opinion. On the 18th Grimston gave voice to the general feeling. 'The Archbishop,'

1640

LAUD'S IMPEACHMENT.

249

he said, 'was the root and ground of all our miseries.' He had

Dec. 18.

Laud impeached of

treason.

6

preferred Strafford, Windebank, Wren, and all the other wicked bishops now in England,' to their places. At Pym's motion a messenger was sent to the Lords impeaching the Archbishop of high treason. The Lords at once sequestered him from Parliament, and committed him to custody. At the same time they directed that Bishops Wren and Pierce, over whom charges were impending, should give security for their appearance whenever they were sent for.1

Nature of Laud's offence.

Whether Laud's offence was properly characterised as treason or not, there can be no doubt in what his offence consisted. If the expression-the fundamental laws of England -meant the supremacy of Parliament, Laud was as guilty of assailing them as Strafford had ever been. Modern writers frequently speak of him as if he were altogether contemptible. Contemporaries were of a very different opinion. They believed that he was even more dangerous than Strafford could possibly be, and there can be little doubt that, from one point of view at least, contemporaries were in the right. Strafford's vigour and energy would but last for his own lifetime: Laud was engaged in the completion of an instrument which would outlive himself. The forces of Calvinism once expelled, the Church would, as he hoped, at last realise the ideal of the Reformation, and stand forth clothed in the authority of a pious king, as the enlightened guide in all spiritual matters of a willing and submissive people. Laud's enemies might well struggle against such development of influence. It was indeed a formidable thing that such a man as Laud should have in his hands the whole teaching power of England, and thus be able to train those to whose utterances the nation was Sunday by Sunday constrained to listen, and who were sure to inculcate the duty of obeying the King at least as loudly as they inculcated the duty of serving God. Yet, if contemporaries were right in fearing Laud in the day of his power, it may well be asked whether they had still any reason to fear him in the day of his weakness. No doubt if the Commons had had but to reckon with Laud and

1 C. F. ii. 54. D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 72, 82, 86.