Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

1628.

The Petition

of Right.

He delayed and hung back as long as he could; the parliament at last laid before him what is called the "Petition of Right," which was almost as important and as precious as Magna Charta itself. The principal things on which it insisted were, that the king should raise no taxes without the consent of the parliament, and that no man should be imprisoned except in a lawful way. Charles was as sorry to sign this as John had been to sign Magna Charta, but he was obliged to do it; and the parliament then granted him a large sum of money.

21. Everything however went wrong; the war was unsuccessful and inglorious; and the Duke of Buckingham, who was at the head of it, was murdered in the streets of Portsmouth. The king lost no time in breaking all his promises, and went on raising money by the taxes of tonnage and poundage, without the consent of parliament, and in defiance of the "Petition of Right" which he had signed. Parliament then declared that whoever paid those taxes was an enemy to the liberties of England. The king forbade parliament to discuss the matter at all; and when they refused to obey him, dissolved the House, and put some of the members in prison. One of these was Sir John Eliot, who never lived to come out again.

1629.

The High Commission Court and

the Star

Chamber.

22. The king now determined to go on without parliament at all, and it was eleven years before they met again. Those were eleven terrible years of despotism and cruelty. There were two councils or courts which, though they had existed before, had not as yet done much mischief, but which now became the main instruments of tyranny, called the High Commission Court and the Star Chamber. They had the power of punishing anybody for what they called contempt of the king's authority, without any legal trial or fair means of defending himself. Strafford and Laud had all their own way. Laud looked after the religious affairs, and the Puritans were treated with pitiless cruelty. They were imprisoned, whipped, branded with red-hot irons; their ears were cut off. They fled from the country when they could, though they were not even allowed to do that in peace.

23. Strafford, on his part, gave his mind to the other department. He formed a great scheme, which he called by the expressive name of "Thorough." This scheme was to make the king absolute; to put all the people, "Thorough." their liberty and their property, entirely in his power,

The scheme

so that he might imprison or tax them just as he pleased; to put his will above all the laws, and all the judges, and all the rights of the people. Being a wonderfully clever and strongminded man, Strafford really went some way towards bringing his scheme to pass. He was for some time governor in the north of England, and he and his council at York defied the law and set up the royal power to such a point that it was as 1631. if Magna Charta had never existed. He went after

wards to Ireland, and did the same there.

24. But though he had appeared to succeed so far, he felt that there was one weak point still. He or the king might oppress to

He

such an extent that at last the people would rise and rebel. knew how often this had happened already in England. And if they did, if all classes being equally oppressed-all should rebel, what then? The king had no army; the hundred beefeaters or a few household guards would not avail much against a nation in arms. In France, where the king was now quite despotic, he had a standing army at his back. Strafford saw that to make his scheme "Thorough" work, the king must have an army too. But here was a great difficulty. For a standing army is a very expensive thing, and the king could get no money. The Crown lawyers and Strafford between them thought of what seemed a very clever expedient. They dared not make any new taxes, so they fell back upon a very old one; so old, however, and so altered by them, that it almost seemed new.

25. In former times, when there was danger of invasion, and before the nation had a regular fleet, the government had been used to call on the counties and large towns on the

Ship-money. sea-coast to provide ships to defend the country. Sometimes, if these towns had no ships ready or to spare, the king would take money from them instead and fit out ships himself. Strafford and others determined to try this old 1637. plan again. But there was a wide difference between what they did and the old plan. Ships or ship-money had never been asked for except in times of war, and now it was a time of peace. Nor had it ever been asked for except from the places on the coast; now it was demanded from all the inland counties too. Moreover, ship-money had never been wanted except for getting ships; now it was not for getting ships at all. The king was to do what he pleased with it; and the thing which he would please to do would, no doubt, be to raise an army.

26. This was a very terrible state of things; the whole country was alarmed and indignant. Some brave men, and notably

Hampden, who lived in Buckinghamshire, a long Hampden. way from the sea, had the courage to refuse to pay.

It was a very small sum which was demanded from him, not more than a few shillings; but he saw how great a matter was at stake; nothing less than the whole liberty of England. His cause was tried before twelve judges; but judges at this time were almost tools of the king, who could set them up and put them down at his pleasure; and the majority gave judgment against Hampden. Even of those twelve, however, five were opposed to the king, and only seven were on his side, so that the decision was looked on almost as a victory to Hampden. He was honoured and admired more than ever by the people, and more and more indignation was felt against the king and Strafford.

27. As if the king had not yet done mischief enough by alienating the people of England by his tyranny and broken promises, he now turned and exasperated Scotland.

Charles and

the Scotch.

It was not by unjust taxes this time, but by an aggression which they resented still more deeply, an attack on their religion. We saw how far the Scotch Protestants had carried the Reformation; they detested the Church of England and its bishops nearly as bitterly as the Church of Rome and its Pope. They put Popery and Prelacy together, and they hated the English prayer-book, the communion-service, the surplice, &c. most vehemently. Just at this moment Charles and Archbishop Laud determined to compel the Scotch to use the liturgy and ceremonies of England in all their churches.

28. The Scotch, who had always been a turbulent and ungovernable people, and who saw with great jealousy their Scotch kings turning into Englishmen, and Scotland sinking as they feared into a sort of province to England, resented this last insult and aggression more than all. They broke 1638. out into insurrection, just as the Devonshire Catholics had done, on the same provocation. The rising began on a Sunday the first Sunday when the prayer-book was to be read in the church. "No sooner was the book opened by the Dean of Edinburgh," it is Phillips, Milton's nephew, who tells the story, "but a number of the meaner sort, with clapping of their hands, and outcries, made a great uproar; and one of them called Jane or Janot Gaddis (yet living at the writing of this relation) flung a little folding-stool whereon she sat at the dean's head, saying, 'Out, thou false thief! dost thou say the mass at my lug (ear).' Which was followed with so great noise" that

the service could not go on at all. “All Edinburgh, all Scotland, and behind that all England and Ireland," says Carlyle, “rose into unappeasable commotion on the flight of this stool of Jenny's."

29. The king tried to put down the rebellion, but he could not succeed. He had not soldiers enough, and he had not money enough. He and Strafford could see no alternative before them but, after the eleven years they had had their own way, to call a parliament again; they dared not make any more attempts to raise taxes illegally, lest England should flame up as Scotland had done.

30. But when parliament met, and showed ever so mildly a desire to have their grievances, all the bitter grievances of those eleven years, looked into, the king, who could never learn wisdom, or see that he was walking over a mine of gunpowder, sent them about their business. He tried once more to govern at his pleasure, and even more tyrannically still. Ship-money was levied with increased rigour; soldiers were enlisted by force. But these soldiers did him no good; they were more inclined to side with the nation, and did not wish to fight the Scotch. Everything went so ill with him that he was obliged to summon another parliament-his last. This was the famous "Long Parliament.”

1640.

LECTURE XLVIII.-THE CIVIL WAR.

The Long Parliament. The five members. The war begins. Cromwell. His army. Trial and execution of the king. The military despotism. Battle of Worcester.

Oliver

1640. Meeting of the Long Parliament.

1. WHEN the parliament first met all the members seem to have been of one mind. The government had been so flagrantly oppressive and tyrannical that no one attempted to defend it. They all set vigorously to work to restore freedom. The king could make no head against them at all. Those odious courts, the High Commission, the Star Chamber, the Council of York, were abolished at once; ship-money was declared illegal, and it was decreed that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse between parliament and parliament. Next they resolved to punish the tyrants. Not that they yet thought of punishing the king; no one dreamt of that; but they were determined to get rid of those who had helped and advised him, especially of Strafford and Laud.

The end of Strafford and Laud.

2. Both these were imprisoned, and both, Strafford very soon, Laud after a few years, were beheaded. It only shows how the men on each side of these great conflicts persuaded themselves that they were right, that they were fighting for God, religion, and honour, to see the noble way in which they would go to their deaths. Strafford and Laud died, the one like a hero, the other like a saint; speaking with their latest breath of their devotion to their religion, loyalty to their king, and affection to the peace and welfare of the kingdom; though it seems so plain to us now how much they had done to injure them all.

3. Things had, however, come to so bad a pass that it was not the death of those two men which could set them right. A great rebellion broke out in Ireland. Strafford

had ruled them with a rod of iron, but he had only crushed the people outwardly, and when he was gone their smothered rage broke out. The Irish

1641. Rebellion

in Ireland.

« ZurückWeiter »