nearest to this king, and most his favourites, were courtiers and prelates; men whose chief study was to find out which way the king inclined, and to imitate him exactly: how these men stood affected to parliaments cannot be forgotten. No man but may remember, it was their continual exercise to dispute and preach against them; and in their common discourse nothing was more frequent, than that" they hoped the king should now have no need of parliaments any more.' And this was but the copy which his parasites had industriously taken from his own words and actions, who never called a parliament but to supply his necessities; and having supplied those, as suddenly and ignominiously dissolved it, without redressing any one grievance of the people: * sometimes choosing rather to miss of his subsidies, or to raise them by illegal courses, than that the people should not still miss of their hopes to be relieved by parliaments. The first he broke off at his coming to the crown, for no other cause than to protect the Duke of Buckingham + against them who had accused him, besides other heinous crimes, of no less than poisoning the deceased king, his father; concerning which declaration of "No more addresses" hath *The house of commons, even so early as 1625, resolved, after voting some slight supplies, that they would grant no more, until certain grievances should have been redressed; upon which Charles, August 12th, haughtily dissolved it. Money being still wanting, it was determined to raise it by forced loans; and orders were immediately issued for the purpose, with further directions that the names of all who were backward, or who refused to lend, should be transmitted to the court. In six months another parliament was assembled, (Feb. 6th, 1626,) which commenced operations with the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, whom Warburton describes as "the most debauched, the most unable, and the most tyrannical (minister) that ever was." (Clarendon's History, t. vii. p. 513.) This parliament was again dissolved; (June 15th, 1626;) and another (17th of March, 1628) assembled, to which, at its opening, the king addressed a most haughty and menacing speech. It was prorogued ; (June 26th, 1628;) and it again assembled, (January 20th, 1629,) when Oliver Cromwell made his maiden speech, which is very ludicrously described by Guizot, (Histoire, &c. i. 55.) After a violent struggle between the house of commons and the court, this parliament also was dissolved. (March 10th, 1629.) Such was the fickleness of Charles I., who knew not how to govern the country with or without parliaments.-ED. + Clarendon was too much a courtier to speak boldly or honestly of Buckingham. His laboured character, (vol. i. p. 55—79,) however, contains admissions sufficient to enable a judicious reader to see further than the historian, perhaps, intended into his temper and principles.-ED. sufficiently informed us. And still the latter breaking was with more affront and indignity put upon the house and her worthiest members, than the former. Insomuch that in the fifth year of his reign, in a proclamation, he seems offended at the very rumour of a parliament divulged among the people; as if he had taken it for a kind of slander, that men should think him that way exorable, much less inclined: and forbids it as a presumption, to prescribe him any time for parliaments; that is to say, either by persuasion or petition, or so much as the reporting of such a rumour: for other manner of prescribing was at that time not suspected. By which fierce edict, the people, forbidden to complain, as well as forced to suffer, began from thenceforth to despair of parliaments. Whereupon such illegal actions, and especially to get vast sums of money, were put in practice by the king and his new officers, as monopolies, compulsive knighthoods, coat, conduct, and ship-money, the seizing not of one Naboth's vineyard, but of whole inheritances, under the pretence of forest or crown-lands; corruption and bribery compounded for, with impunities granted for the future, as gave evident proof, that the king never meant, nor could it stand with the reason of his affairs, ever to recal parliaments: having brought by these irregular courses the people's interest and his own to so direct an opposition, that he might foresee plainly, if nothing but a parliament could save the people, it must necessarily be his undoing. 66 Till eight or nine years after, proceeding with a high hand * Even Clarendon, whose work is rather an apology for Charles I. than a history, relates with disapprobation these flagrant invasions of the people's rights. "Supplemental acts of state," as he curiously phrases it, were made to supply defect of laws; and so tonnage, and poundage, and other duties upon merchandises, were collected by order of the board, which had been positively refused to be settled by act of parliament, and new and greater impositions laid upon trade; obsolete laws were revived, and rigorously executed, wherein the subject might be taught how unthrifty a thing it was, by a to strict detaining of what was his, to put the king as strictly to inquire what was his own. By this ill husbandry, the king received a vast sum of money from all persons of quality, or indeed of any reasonable condition, throughout the kingdom, upon the law of knighthood; which, though it had a foundation in right, yet, in the circumstances of proceeding, was very grievous. And no less unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot; the envy and reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men." (History, &c. i. 119, 120.)—Ed. in these enormities, and having the second time levied an injurious war against his native country, Scotland; and finding all those other shifts of raising money, which bore out his first expedition, now to fail him, not " of his own choice and inclination," as any child may see, but urged by strong necessities, and the very pangs of state, which his own violent proceedings had brought him to, he calls a parliament; first in Ireland, which only was to give him four subsidies, and so to expire; then in England, where his first demand was but twelve subsidies, to maintain a Scots war, condemned and abominated by the whole kingdom: * promising their grievances should be considered afterwards. Which when the parliament, who judged that war itself one of their main grievances, made no haste to grant, not enduring the delay of his impatient 'will, or else fearing the conditions of their grant, he breaks off the whole session, and dismisses them and their grievances with scorn and frustration. Much less therefore did he call this last parliament by his own choice and inclination; but having first tried in vain all undue ways to procure money, his army of their own accord being beaten in the north, the lords petitioning, and the general voice of the people almost hissing him and his ill-acted regality off the stage, compelled at length both by his wants and by his fears, upon mere extremity he summoned this last parliament. And how is it possible, that he should willingly incline to parliaments, who never was perceived to call them but for the greedy hope of a whole national bribe, his subsidies; and never loved, never fulfilled, never promoted the true end of parliaments, the redress of grievances; but still put them off, and prolonged them, whether gratified or not gratified; and was indeed the author of all those grievances? To say, therefore, that he called this parliament of his own choice and inclination, argues how little truth we can expect * Warburton, in his shrewd and interesting notes on Clarendon, (vol. vii. p. 523,) observes, on the following words of the historian,-" there was almost a general dislike to the wars, both by the lords of the court and of the country." &c.-"that is, almost all the nobility of England, (Laud and Strafford, and their creatures, being absent,) had a dislike of this war. What possibly could occasion so general a dislike, when the Scottish nation was as generally hated, but their belief that the king intended to govern arbitrarily; and nothing could so facilitate that project as his conquest of Scotland. Hence their dislike of this expedition.”—ED. first from the sequel of this book, which ventures in the very period to affront more than one nation with an untruth so remarkable; and presumes a more implicit faith in the people of England, than the pope ever commanded from the Romish laity; or else a natural sottishness fit to be abused and ridden: while in the judgment of wise men, by laying the foundation of his defence on the avouchment of that which is so manifestly untrue, he hath given a worse soil to his own cause, than when his whole forces were at any time overthrown. They, therefore, who think such great service done to the king's affairs in publishing this book, will find themselves in the end mistaken; if sense and right mind, or but any mediocrity of knowledge and remembrance, hath not quite forsaken men. But to prove his inclination to parliaments, he affirms here, "to have always thought the right way of them most safe for his crown, and best pleasing to his people." What he thought, we know not, but that he ever took the contrary way we saw; and from his own actions we felt long ago what he thought of parliaments or of pleasing his people: a surer evidence than what we hear now too late in words. He alleges, that "the cause of forbearing to convene parliaments was the sparks which some men's distempers there studied to kindle." They were indeed not tempered to his. temper; for it neither was the law, nor the rule, by which all other tempers were to be tried; but they were esteemed and chosen for the fittest men, in their several counties, to allay and quench those distempers, which his own inordinate doings had inflamed. And if that were his refusing to convene, till those men had been qualified to his temper, that is to say, his will, we may easily conjecture what hope there was of parliaments, had not fear and his insatiate poverty, in the midst of his excessive wealth, constrained him. "He hoped by his freedom and their moderation to prevent misunderstandings." And wherefore not by their freedom and his moderation? But freedom he thought too high a word for them, and moderation too mean a word for himself: this was not the way to prevent misunderstandings. He still "feared * Dr. Gauden, the real author of the Eikon Basilikè, was in search of a bishopric, not of truth, when he made this assertion; which, if it were be lieved, or judged to be a plausible falsehood, by those of his own party, would no doubt to his mind be success enough.-ED. VOL. I. Y passion and prejudice in other men;" not in himself: "and doubted not by the weight of his" own "reason, to counterpoise any faction; it being so easy for him, and so frequent, to call his obstinacy reason, and other men's reason, faction. We in the meanwhile must believe that wisdom and all reason came to him by title with his crown; passion, prejudice, and faction came to others by being subjects. "He was sorry to hear, with what popular heat elections were carried in many places." Sorry rather, that court-letters and intimations prevailed no more, to divert or to deter the people from their free election of those men whom they thought best affected to religion and their country's liberty, both at that time in danger to be lost. And such men they were, as by the kingdom were sent to advise him, not sent to be cavilled at, because elected, or to be entertained by him with an undervalue and misprision of their temper, judgment, or affection. In vain was a parliament thought fittest by the known laws of our nation, to advise and regulate unruly kings, if they, instead of hearkening to advice, should be permitted to turn it off, and refuse it by vilifying and traducing their advisers, or by accusing of a popular heat those that lawfully elected them. "His own and his children's interest obliged him to seek, and to preserve the love and welfare of his subjects." Who doubts it? But the same interest, common to all kings, was never yet available to make them all seek that which was indeed best for themselves and their posterity. All men by their own and their children's interest are obliged to honesty and justice: but how little that consideration works in private men, how much less in kings, their deeds declare best. "He intended to oblige both friends and enemies, and to exceed their desires, did they but pretend to any modest and sober sense;" mistaking the whole business of a parliament; which met not to receive from him obligations, but justice; nor he to expect from them their modesty, but their grave advice, uttered with freedom in the public cause. His talk of modesty in their desires of the common welfare, argues him not much to have understood what he had to grant, who misconceived so much the nature of what they had to desire. And for "sober sense," the expression was too mean, and recoils with as much dishonour upon himself, to be a king |