reason, the sole direction; the imperfect and unformed laws left in every thing a latitude of interpretation; and when the ends pursued by the monarch were in general agreeable to his subjects, little scruple or jealousy was entertained with regard to the regularity of the means.
During the reign of an able, fortunate, or popular prince, no member of either house, much less of the lower, durst think of entering into a formed party in opposition to the court; since the dissolution of the parliament must in a few days leave him unprotected to the vengeance of his sovereign, and to those stretches of prerogative which were then so easily made in order to punish an obnoxious subject. During an unpopular and weak reign, the current commonly ran so strong against the monarch, that none durst enlist themselves in the court party; or if the prince was able to engage any considerable barons on his side, the question was decided with arms in the field, not by debates or arguments in a senate or assembly. And upon the whole, the chief circumstance which, during ancient times, retained the prince in any legal form of administration, was, that the sword, by the nature of the feudal tenures, remained still in the hands of his subjects; and this irregular and dangerous check had much more influence than the regular and methodical limits of the laws and constitution. As the nation could not be compelled, it was necessary that every public measure of consequence, particularly that of levying new taxes, should seem to be adopted by common consent and approbation.
The princes of the house of Tudor, partly by the vigor of their administration, partly by the concurrence of favorable circumstances, had been able to establish a more regular system of government; but they drew the constitution so near to despotism, as diminished extremely the authority of the parliament. The senate became in a great degree the organ of royal will and pleasure: opposition would have been regarded as a species of rebellion: and even religion, the most dangerous article in which innovations could be introduced, had admitted, in the course of a few years, four several alterations, from the authority alone of the sovereign. The parliament was not then the road to honor and preferment: the talents of popular intrigue and eloquence were uncultivated and unknown: and though that assembly still preserved authority, and retained the privilege of making laws and bestowing public money, the members acquired not upon that account, either with prince or people, much more weight and consideration. What powers were necessary for conducting the machine of government, the king was accustomed of himself to assume. His own revenues supplied him with money sufficient for his ordinary expenses. And when extraordinary emergencies occurred, the prince needed not to solicit votes in parliament, either for making laws or imposing taxes, both of which were now became requisite for public interest and preservation.
The security of individuals, so necessary to the liberty of popular councils, was totally unknown in that age. And as no despotic princes, scarcely even the Eastern tyrants, rule entirely without the concurrence of some assemblies, which supply both advice and authority, little but a mercenary force seems then to have been wanting towards the establishment of a simple monarchy in England. The militia, though more favorable to regal authority than the feudal institutions, was much inferior in this respect to disciplined armies; and if it did not preserve liberty to the people, it preserved at least the power, if ever the inclination should arise, of recovering it.
But so low at that time ran the inclination towards liberty, that Elizabeth, the last of that arbitrary line, herself no less arbitrary, was yet the most renowned and most popular of all the sovereigns that had filled the throne of England. It was natural for James to take the government as he found it, and to pursue her measures, which he heard so much applauded; nor did his penetration extend so far as to discover, that neither his circumstances nor his character could support so extensive an authority. His narrow revenues and little frugality began now to render him dependent on his people, even in the ordinary course of administration: their increasing knowledge discovered to them that advantage which they had obtained; and made them sensible of the inestimable value of civil liberty. And as he possessed too little dignity to command respect, and too much good nature to impress fear, a new spirit discovered itself every day in the parliament; and a party, watchful of a free constitution, was regularly formed in the house of commons.
But notwithstanding these advantages acquired to liberty, so extensive was royal authority, and so firmly established in all its parts, that it is probable the patriots of that age would have despaired of ever resisting it, had they not been stimulated by religious motives, which inspire a courage unsurmountable by any human obstacle.
The same alliance which has ever prevailed between kingly power and ecclesiastical authority, was now fully established in England; and while the prince assisted the clergy in suppressing schismatics and innovators, the clergy, in return, inculcated the doctrine of an unreserved submission and obedience to the civil magistrate. The genius of the church of England, so kindly to monarchy, forwarded the confederacy; its submission to episcopal jurisdiction; its attachment to ceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor of worship; and, in a word, its affinity to the tame superstition of the Catholics, rather than to the wild fanaticism of the Puritans.
On the other hand, opposition to the church, and the persecutions under which they labored, were sufficient to throw the Puritans into the country party, and to beget political principles little favorable to the high pretensions of the sovereign. The spirit too of enthusiasm; bold, daring, and uncontrolled; strongly disposed their minds to adopt republican tenets; and inclined them to arrogate, in their actions and conduct, the same liberty which they assumed in their rapturous flights and ecstasies. Ever since the first origin of that sect, through the whole reign of Elizabeth as well as of James, Puritanical principles had been understood in a double sense, and expressed the opinions favorable both to political and to ecclesiastical liberty. And as the court, in order to discredit all parliamentary opposition, affixed the denomination of Puritans to its antagonists, the religious Puritans willingly adopted this idea, which was so advantageous to them, and which confounded their cause with that of the patriots or country party.
Thus were the civil and ecclesiastical factions regularly formed; and the humor of the nation, during that age, running strongly towards fanatical extravagancies, the spirit of civil liberty gradually revived from its lethargy, and by means of its religious associate, from which it reaped more advantage than honor, it secretly enlarged its dominion over the greater part of the kingdom.
This note was in the first editions a part of the text; but the author omitted it, in order to avoid as much as possible the style of dissertation in the body of his History. The passage, however, contains views so important, that he thought it might be admitted as a footnote] [Footnote 56: NOTE DDD, p. 465. This protestation is so remarkable, that it may not be improper to give it in its own words. “The commons now assembled in parliament, being justly occasioned thereunto, concerning sundry liberties, franchises, and privileges of parliament, amongst others here mentioned, do make this protestation following: That the liberties, franchises, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England; and that the urgent and arduous affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm and of the church of England, and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in parliament; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the house of parliament hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same; and that the commons in parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters, in such order as in their judgment shall seem fittest; and that every member of the said house hath like freedom from all impeachment, imprisonment, and molestation, (other than by censure of the house itself,) for or concerning any speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or matters touching the parliament or parliament business. And that if any of the said members be complained of or questioned for any thing done or said in parliament, the same is to be shown to the king by the advice and assent of all the commons assembled in parliament, before the king give credence to any 747. Coke, p. 77.]
[Footnote 57: NOTE EEE, p. 434. The moment the prince embarked at St.
Andero’s, he said to those about him, that it was folly in the Spaniards to use him so ill, and allow him to depart: a proof that the duke had made him believe they were insincere in the affair of the marriage and the Palatinate; for as to his reception in other respects, it had been altogether unexceptionable. Besides, had not the prince believed the Spaniards to be insincere, he had no reason to quarrel with them, though Bucking-* *ham had. It appears, therefore, that Charles himself must have been deceived. The multiplied delays of the dispensation, though they arose from accident, afforded Buckingham a plausible pretext for charging the Spaniards with insincerity.]
[Footnote 58: NOTE FFF, p. 486. Among other particulars, he mentions a sum of eighty thousand pounds borrowed from the king of Denmark. In a former speech to the parliament, he told them that he had expended five hundred thousand pounds in the cause of the palatine, besides the voluntary contributions given him by the people. See Franklyn, p. 50.
But what is more extraordinary, the treasurer, in order to show his own good services, boasts to the parliament, that by his contrivance sixty thousand pounds had been saved in the article of exchange in the sums remitted to the palatine. This seems a great sum; nor is it easy to conceive whence the king could procure such vast sums as would require a sum so considerable to be paid in exchange. From the whole, however, it appears, that the king had been far from neglecting the interests of his daughter and son-in-law, and had even gone far beyond what his narrow revenue could afford.]
[Footnote 59: NOTE GGG, p. 486. How little this principle had prevailed during any former period of the English government, particularly during the last reign, which was certainly not so perfect a model of liberty as most writers would represent it, will easily appear from many passages in the history of that reign. But the ideas of men were much changed during about twenty years of a gentle and peaceful administration. The commons, though James of himself had recalled all patents of monopolies, were not contented without a law against them, and a declaratory law too; which was gaining a great point, and establishing principles very favorable to liberty: but they were extremely grateful when Elizabeth, upon petition, (after having once refused their requests,) recalled a few of the most oppressive patents, and employed some soothing expressions towards them.
The parliament had surely reason, when they confessed, in the seventh of James, that he allowed them more freedom of debate than ever was indulged by any of his predecessors. His indulgence in this particular, joined to his easy temper, was probably one cause of the great power assumed by the commons. Monsieur de la Boderie, in his despatches, (vol.
i. p. 449,) mentions the liberty of speech in the house of commons as a new practice.]
[Footnote 60: NOTE HHH, p. 491. Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 224. It is certain that the young prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II., had Protestant governors from his early infancy; first the earl of Newcastle, then the marquis of Hertford. The king, in his memorial to foreign churches after the commencement of the civil wars, insists on his care in educating his children in the Protestant religion, as a proof that he was nowise inclined to the Catholic, Rush. vol. v. p. 752. It can scarcely, therefore, be questioned, but this article, which has so odd an appearance, was inserted only to amuse the pope, and was never intended by either party to be executed.]
[Footnote 61: NOTE III, p. 499. “Monarchies,” according to Sir Walter Raleigh, “are of two sorts touching their power or authority, viz. 1.
Entire, where the whole power of ordering all state matters, both in peace and war, doth by law and custom appertain to the prince, as in the English kingdom; where the prince hath the power to make laws, league, and war, to create magistrates, to pardon life, of appeal, etc. Though to give a contentment to the other degrees, they have a suffrage in making laws, yet ever subject to the prince’s pleasure and negative will. 2. Limited or restrained, that hath no full power in all the points and matters of state, as the military king that hath not the sovereignty in time of peace, as the making of laws, etc., but in war only, as the Polonian king.” Maxims of State.
And a little after: “In every just state, some part of the government is, or ought to be, imparted to the people, as in a kingdom, a voice and suffrage in making laws; and sometimes also of levying of arms, (if the charge be great, and the prince forced to borrow help of his subjects,) the matter rightly may be propounded to a parliament, that the tax may seem to have proceeded from themselves. So consultations and some proceedings in judicial matters may in part be referred to them. The reason, lest, seeing themselves to be in no number nor of reckoning, they mislike the state or government.” This way of reasoning differs little from that of King James, who considered the privileges of the parliament as matters of grace and indulgence, more than of inheritance.
It is remarkable that Raleigh was thought to lean towards the Puritanical party, notwithstanding these positions. But ideas of government change much in different times.
Raleigh’s sentiments on this head are still more openly expressed in his Prerogatives of Parliaments, a work not published till after his death.
It is a dialogue between a courtier, or counsellor, and a country justice of peace, who represents the patriot party, and defends the highest notion of liberty which the principles of that age would bear.
Here is a passage of it: “Counsellor. That which is done by the king, with the advice of his private or privy council, is done by the king’s absolute power. Justice. And by whose power is it done in parliament but by the king’s absolute power? Mistake it not, my lord: the three estates do but advise as the privy council doth; which advice if the king embrace, it becomes the king’s own act in the one, and the king’s law in the other,” etc.
The earl of Clare, in a private letter to his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, thus expresses himself “We live under a prerogative government, where book law submits to lex loquens.”
He spoke from his own and all his ancestors experience. There was no single instance of power which a king of England might not at that time exert, on pretence of necessity or expediency: the continuance alone, or frequent repetition of arbitrary administration, might prove dangerous, for want of force to support it. It is remarkable, that this letter of the earl of Clare was written in the first year of Charles’s reign; and consequently must be meant of the general genius of the government, not the spirit or temper of the monarch. See Strafford’s Letters, vol. i.
p. 32. From another letter in the same collection, (vol. i. p. 10,) it appears that the council sometimes assumed the power of forbidding persons disagreeable to the court to stand in the elections. This authority they could exert in some instances; but we are not thence to inter, that they could shut the door of that house to every one who was not acceptable to them. The genius of the ancient government reposed more trust in the king, than to entertain any such suspicion; and it allowed scattered instances of such a kind, as would have been totally destructive of the constitution, had they been continued without interruption.
I have not met with any English writer in that age who speaks of England as a limited monarchy, but as an absolute one, where the people have many privileges. That is no contradiction. In all European monarchies the people have privileges; but whether dependent or independent on the will of the monarch, is a question that in most governments it is better to forbear. Surely that question was not determined before the age of James. The rising spirit of the parliament, together with that king’s love of general, speculative principles, brought it from its obscurity, and made it be commonly canvassed. The strongest testimony that I remember from a writer of James’s age in favor of English liberty, is in Cardinal Bentivoglio, a foreigner, who mentions the English government as similar to that of the Low Country provinces under their princes, rather than to that of France or Spain. Englishmen were not so sensible that their prince was limited, because they were sensible that no individual had any security against a stretch of prerogative: but foreigners, by comparison, could perceive that these stretches were at that time, from custom or other causes, less frequent in England than in other monarchies. Philip de Comines, too, remarked the English constitution to be more popular in his time than that of France. But in a paper written by a patriot in 1627, it is remarked, that the freedom of speech in parliament had been lost in England since the days of Comines. Franklyn, p. 238. Here is a stanza of Malherbe’s Ode to Mary de Medicis, the queen regent, written in 1614.
Entre les rois à qui cet age Doit son principal ornement, Ceux de la Tamise et du Tage Font louer leur gouvernement: Mais en de si calmes provinces, Où le peuple adore les princes, Et met au gré le plus haut L’honneur du sceptre légitime, Sauroit-on excuser le crime De ne regner pas comme il faut.
The English, as well as the Spaniards, are here pointed out as much more obedient subjects than the French, and much more tractable and submissive to their princes. Though this passage be taken from a poet, every man of judgment will allow its authority to be decisive. The character of a national government cannot be unknown in Europe; though it changes sometimes very suddenly. Machiavel, in his Dissertations on Livy, says repeatedly, that France was the most legal and most popular monarchy then in Europe.]
[Footnote 62: NOTE KKK, p. 499. Passive obedience is expressly and zealously inculcated in the homilies composed and published by authority in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The convocation, which met in the very first year of the king’s reign, voted as high monarchical principles as are contained in the decrees of the University of Oxford during the rule of the Tories. These principles, so far from being deemed a novelty introduced by James’s influence, passed so smoothly, that no historian has taken notice of them: they were never the subject of controversy, or dispute, or discourse; and it is only by means of Bishop Overall’s Convocation Book, printed near seventy years after, that we are acquainted with them. Would James, who was so cautious, and even timid, have ventured to begin his reign with a bold stroke, which would have given just ground of jealousy to his subjects? It appears from that monarch’s Basilicon Doron, written while he was in Scotland, that the republican ideas of the origin of power from the people, were at that time esteemed Puritanical novelties. The patriarchal scheme, it is remarkable, is inculcated in those votes of the convocation preserved by Overall; nor was Filmer the first inventor of those absurd notions.]
[Footnote 63: NOTE LLL, p. 514. That of the honest historian Stowe seems not to have been of this number. “The great blessings of God,” says he, “through increase of wealth in the common subjects of this land, especially upon the citizens of London; such within men’s memory, and chiefly within these few years of peace, that, except there were now due mention of some sort made thereof, it would in time to come be held incredible,” etc. In another place, “Amongst the manifold tokens and signs of the infinite blessings of Almighty God bestowed upon this kingdom, by the wondrous and merciful establishing of peace within ourselves, and the full benefit of concord with all Christian nations and others; of all which graces let no man dare to presume he can speak too much; whereof in truth there can never be enough said, neither was there ever any people less considerate and less thankful than at this time, being not willing to endure the memory of their present happiness, as well as in the universal increase of commerce and traffic throughout the kingdom, great building of royal ships and by private merchants, the repeopling of cities, towns, and villages, beside the discernible and sudden increase of fair and costly buildings, as well within the city of London as the suburbs thereof, especially within these twelve years,” etc.]