the long CHAPTER IV. Summary view of Charles the First's reign continued, till the time when Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper began to distinguish himself in the management of public affairs. A.D. 1640. THE king now laboured under the greatest diffiMeeting of culties. He could no longer struggle with or parliament. supply his wants: his own army was discontented, and the Scotch army successful; while both of them were very burthensome to the public. He was, therefore, obliged to give way to the universal call of the nation, and to summon a parliament. This parliament met on the 3rd of November 1640. Petitions relating to grievances were immediately presented to the commons from every part of the country; and these petitions were so numerous, that the whole house was divided and subdivided into above forty committees to hear and examine them. The canons and constitutions made by the convocation were condemned by the unanimous liament. voice of the house, as containing in them mat- A.D. 1640 ters repugnant to the king's prerogative, to the Spirited proceedings fundamental laws and statutes of the realm, to of the parthe rights of parliament, to the property and liberty of the subjects, and tending to sedition. The writs for ship-money, and the extra-judicial opinions of the judges concerning it, were also unanimously condemned, as being contrary to the laws of the realm, the right of property, the liberty of the subject, to former resolutions in parliament, and the petition of rights. No one was at this time more forward, or vehement in representing the public grievances, than Mr. Hyde, who was afterwards Earl of Clarendon. In his impeachment of three of the judges, he said, "the great resolution in shipmoney was a crime of a prodigious nature ;" * Though the judges had been highly criminal in supporting the arbitrary conduct of the court, those were much more so who had obliged them to it by threats or solicitations. Mr. Hyde was one of a committee who were appointed, December the 7th, to go forthwith to the judges, to know how they were threatened or solicited, and in what manner and by whom, to give It is apparent, likewise, that Zeal of Mr Hyde. A.D. 1640. and he set forth the state of the public in a different light from what it appears in his history. Instead of that " plenty and felicity" which he there describes, he said to the lords, that "the peace of this island had been shaken and frightened into tumults and commotions, into the poverty, though not into the rage, of war, as a people prepared for destruction and desolation:" and "it is no marvel than an irregular, extravagant, arbitrary power, like a torrent, hath broke in upon us, when our banks and our bulwarks, the laws, were in the custody of such persons." who advised him to commit him." The king, upon this, ordered the opinion of the judges to be taken, whether Felton might be racked; and, on November 14, 1628, being assembled together in Serjeants' Inn, they agreed that no such punishment was known or allowed by the law. When Felton was sentenced to death, he offered his hand that did the fact to be cut off; but the court said, they could not inflict that punishment. The king, however, sent to the judges to desire that his hand might be cut off before execution; but the court answered, that it could not be. ministers The commons, upon the grounds of the peti- A.D. 1640. tions presented to them, proceeded with vigour The king's in an inquiry into the conduct of the ministers. prosecuted. Lord Keeper Finch, and Sir Francis Windebank, secretary of state, a noted papist, fled into foreign parts; but the Earl of Strafford, who trusted, though unwillingly, to the king's power to protect him, was soon brought to the scaffold. He had at first been as loud in complaints, and as zealous for rectifying the disorders of the nation, as any man; but he afterwards deserted the popular party, and became as forward a supporter of the arbitrary proceedings of the crown. Though Earl of he was prosecuted by the commons, and fell under beheaded. an act of attainder, he more properly fell a victim to his enemies* at court; for he might have been *Though the Earl of Strafford was the only one that, for some years, suffered death under the prosecution of the commons, (for Archbishop Laud was not beheaded till 1644,) Lord Clarendon charges them, at the beginning of this parliament, with having an appetite for blood. At the same time, he intimates that Secretary Windebank ought to have suffered death likewise; though it is evident that the secretary was but an under instrument; and he declared Strafford A.D. 1640. preserved if the king had not been overruled by these, and if he had strictly adhered to the advice of Mr. Holles.* Remarks on the king's conduct. It is an observation frequently made, that King Charles lost his power by giving up Lord Strafford to the parliament; an observation which appears calculated to ensure the safety of succeeding ministers, by encouraging their masters to support them at any rate. But the truth of the case is, that the king had it not in his power openly to protect the Earl of Strafford, without a breach with his parliament, which, considering his necessities, would have been too hazardous an attempt. It is evident, that the loss of his power should be really dated from the period in which he lost the confidence of his people. It was not owing to his making concessions, but to his not making them in time. By the tenacity with which he clung to every abuse and every usurpation, he showed that each concession was dictated by a sense of weakness to resist his subjects, not by a feeling of affection for them. * Bishop Burnet has given a relation of this from Lord Holles. Mr. Stringer (who died in 1702, many years before the bishop's history ap peared) has related the same with no material alterations, and says, he had often heard it from Lord Holles. |