[ca. 1603-1625 A.D.]

James and his successor than that the court of Star Chamber should cease to exist, or that it should become at all less arbitrary or less active than in preceding reigns.

The court of High Commission was instituted to ascertain and correct all heresies and disorders subject to ecclesiastical authority. According to the commission issued in 1583, this tribunal consisted of forty-four persons, including twelve prelates, and the majority of the privy council, besides the members chosen from among the civilians, and the clergy generally. It devolved on these persons to inquire from time to time, either by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, or by such other lawful means as they could devise, with respect to all contempts and offences contrary to the acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. It was their province to take cognisance of seditious books, heretical opinions, false rumours or talks, and slanderous words, and of a variety of offences against good morals; and in so doing they were accustomed to examine suspected persons upon oath, and punished contempt of their authority not only by the sentence of excommunication, but by fines and imprisonment; and it was determined by the commissioners that these serious penalties might be inflicted by any three of their number, one of them being a prelate. The court of High Commission, therefore, was a kind of national bishops' court, with enlarged powers, embracing those questions of religion and morality which had pertained to the jurisdiction of the clergy during the Middle Ages. From all the provincial bishops' courts an appeal lay to this superior tribunal. It should be added, that the creation of this court was the act of the first parliament under Elizabeth, and that five commissions relating to it had been framed before that of 1583.

As these commissioners were selected in nearly equal numbers from the laity and the clergy, it was to be expected that their jurisdiction would not prove to be purely of an ecclesiastical character. Had the penalties awarded by these functionaries been restricted to excommunication in the case of the laity, and deprivation in the case of the clergy, the former sentence alone exposed the person on whom it was pronounced to many weighty grievances as a subject. But to this means of enforcing obedience these guardians of the ecclesiastical state added direct fines and imprisonment; and it was this encroachment of a jurisdiction which should have been strictly ecclesiastical, on the province of the courts of law, which rendered the court of High Commission so much an object of dislike with the friends of liberty generally. During the reign of James, the Puritans, and every succeeding house of commons, did themselves honour by the temper and intelligence with which they exposed and resisted the usurpations and the dangerous usages of this power. Nor should we forget to mention the patriotic conduct of Sir Edward Coke in this respect. The commons, indeed, would have abolished this instrument of arbitrary rule, but the utmost that could be at present accomplished was to limit its excesses.1

We have had occasion to notice the complaints of the commons during the reign of James with respect to the partial enforcement of the laws against Catholics; and this practice of the crown in enforcing certain statutes very much at its discretion, and in sometimes conferring on individuals a dispensation from the penalties of particular enactments, was an irregularity in the working of the English government that could not be too seriously deplored.

In the forty-second year of Elizabeth, one Simpson killed an officer of the commission court who attempted to make a forcible entry into his house by virtue of a warrant from that authority, and the judges acquitted him, declaring that he had only availed himself of the protection of the law. The tyranny of this court reached its highest point under Charles I.

[ca. 1603-1625 A.D.]

It must always be admitted that somewhat of a dispensing power pertains to the crown so long as the king is allowed to pardon criminals, and is not bound legally to prosecute in any particular instance. But under the Tudor princes this power was not confined to such narrow limits, though, according to Sir Edward Coke, "all grants of the benefit of any penal law, or of power to dispense with the law, or to compound for the forfeiture, are contrary to the ancient fundamental laws of the realm." This was no doubt the view of the case generally entertained during the age of Elizabeth, and, in consequence, the occasional abuses of this nature which occurred were exceedingly unpopular.

Hooker, whose views on such a topic must be entitled to the greatest deference, remarks: "I cannot but choose to commend highly their wisdom by whom the foundation of the commonwealth has been laid, wherein though no manner of person or cause be unsubject to the king's power, yet so is the power of the king over all, and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule. The axioms of our regal government are these: ler facit regem-the king's grant of any favours made contrary to the law is void; rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest-what power the king hath, he hath it by law: the bounds and limits of it are known, the entire community giveth general order by law, how all things publickly are to be done, and the king, as the head thereof, the highest in authority over all, causeth, according to the same law, every particular to be framed and ordered thereby. The whole body politic maketh laws, which laws give power unto the king; and the king having bound himself to use according to law that power, it so falleth out that the execution of the one is accomplished by the other."

It has been justly said that this writer's account of the origin of society absolutely coincides with that of Locke. He affirms that without the consent of a primary contract, "there were no reasons that one should take upon him to be lord or judge over another; because, although there be, according to the opinion of some very great and judicious men, a kind of natural right in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to govern them which are of a servile disposition; nevertheless for manifestation of this their right, and men's more peaceable contentment on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed seemeth necessary-the lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belonging so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority received at first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny.

"Laws they are not, therefore, which public approbation has not made so. But approbation not only they give, who personally declare their assent by voice, sign, or act, but also when others do it in their names, by right originally, at the least, derived from them. As in parliaments, councils, and the like assemblies, although we be not personally ourselves present, notwithstanding our assent is by reason of other agents there in our behalf. And what we do by others, no reason but that it should stand as our deed. Against all equity it were that a man should suffer detriment at the hands of men for not observing that which he never did either by himself or others, mediately or immediately, agree unto."

It will occasion less surprise that the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity should express himself thus, when it is remembered that these views had been published long before, not only by Aylmer, but by a writer possessing more of a kindred spirit with the great defender of the Anglican church.

[ca. 1603–1625 A.D.]

This writer was Sir Thomas Smith,9 a lawyer and a philosopher, who held the office of principal secretary to Edward VI and Elizabeth. "The most high and absolute power of the realm of England," he says, "consisteth in the parliament. Upon mature deliberation every bill or law, being thrice read and disputed upon in either house, the other two parts, first each apart, and after the prince himself, in presence of both the parties, doth consent unto and alloweth that is the prince's and whole realm's deed: whereupon justly no man can complain, but must accommodate himself to find it good and obey it. That which is done by this consent is taken for law.

"The parliament abrogateth old laws, maketh new, giveth order for things past, and for things hereafter to be followed, changeth right and possessions of private men, legitimateth bastards, establisheth forms of religion, altereth weights and measures, giveth form of succession to the crown, defineth of doubtful rights whereof is no law already made, appointeth subsidies, tailes, taxes, and impositions, giveth most free pardons and absolutions, restoreth in blood and name, as the highest court condemneth or absolveth them whom the prince will put to that trial. And, in short, all that ever the people of Rome might do, either in centuriatis comitiis or tributis, the same may be done by the parliament of England, which representeth and hath the power of the whole realm, both the head and the body."

The Puritan leader Cartwright, Hooker's great antagonist, expressed himself on the nature of the English constitution in the following terms: "In respect of the queen it is a monarchy, in respect of the most honourable council it is an aristocracy, and having regard to the parliament which is assembled of all estates it is a democracy.

These passages will suffice to show what the great principles and theory of the English constitution really were, in the judgment of the best informed men, during the reign of Elizabeth and James. That the conduct of the rulers was sometimes at variance with these principles is confessed, but the great point to be observed here is, that the usurpations of a government do not alter the nature of a constitution.h

LET events speak and the mighty forces be revealed which, rising from and increasing upon one another for centuries, now stood face to face and mingled in a stormy conflict which gave birth to fierce and bloody outbursts, of the utmost moment in the decision of problems important to all Europe. The British Isles had been of old the outer margin or even beyond the outer margin of civilisation; they were now one of its chief centres, and, thanks to their recent union, one of the grand powers of the world; though it is clear that the elements of the population were as yet by no means fused and unified.-VON RANKE.b

CHARLES I was born at Dunfermline, in Scotland, on the 19th of November, 1600, and, like Queen Elizabeth, was twenty-five years of age on his accession to the throne. In his youth he was weakly and self-willed, but strengthened his constitution by temperance, and gradually acquired much skill in bodily exercises. In consequence of a local defect it was difficult for him to speak fluently, and he was so destitute of gracefulness and affability that he was not able even to confer favours in an engaging manner. As he had not interfered in public affairs as prince royal, perhaps from obedience to his father, and had never expressed any decided opinions, most persons expected he would now act with double energy, and only a few attributed his former reserve to want of decision and firmness. The person who expressed the greatest apprehensions was the palatine ambassador Rusdorf:c "If," said he, "the new king trusts entirely to the direction of one man, and disdains sincere advice; if, like his father, he neglects business, gives ear to informers and calumniators, raises disputes with his people, and looks upon concession as disgraceful, he will become contemptible to his enemies, bring shame upon his friends, and entirely ruin the tottering state.'

At the beginning, however, the contrary of all this took place. The persons belonging to the new court were required to be strictly moral in their

[1625 A.D.]

conduct; fools and buffoons, whom James had loved to have about him, were kept at a distance; able men were employed, and artists and men of learning encouraged. The king read and wrote several languages, possessed a knowledge of history, divinity, and mathematics, and a taste for all the fine arts. Though Charles was born in Scotland, the English considered him as one of their own countrymen, and his dignified deportment could not fail to please when compared with the loquaciousness of James and his predilection for unworthy favourites.d

Charles I was proclaimed king on the day of his father's death. The possessor of the crown was changed. The administration of government was unaltered. Buckingham was still the first in power, with equal influence over the proud and dignified Charles of twenty-five as over the vain and vulgar James of fifty-nine. We are told by Mrs. Hutchinsone that "the face of the court was much changed in the change of the king"; that the grossnesses of the court of James grew out of fashion. The general change could have been little more than a forced homage to decency whilst Buckingham was the presiding genius of the court of Charles; but from the first the king exhibited himself as "temperate, chaste, and serious." A letter written within a few weeks of his accession says, "Our sovereign, whom God preserve, is zealous for God's truth; diligently frequents and attentively hearkens to prayers and sermons; will pay all his father's, mother's, and brother's debts, and that by disparking most of his remote parks and chases; will reform the court as of unnecessary charges, so of recusant papists." At the beginning of this reign the people must have had a reasonable expectation of being religiously and quietly governed.

The marriage of Charles with the princess Henrietta Maria of France [sister of Louis XIII] was the result of the treaty made in the previous reign, and it was concluded by proxy even before James was laid in the tomb at Westminster. There were bonfires in London for the marriage on the 3rd of May. On the 7th Charles was the chief mourner at the funeral of his father. The young queen arrived at Dover on the 12th of June. She came at a gloomy time, for London was visited with pestilence. Although the bonfires had been lighted in London for the king's marriage, the union with a Roman Catholic princess was in itself offensive; and Charles had given indications of concessions to the papists which were distinctly opposed to the existing laws. Although he vailed his crown to the lords and the commons when he first spoke from the throne, he had roused the suspicions of the sturdy band who had resisted the despotic attempts of his father. He defied public opinion by granting special pardons to Roman priests, without the intervention of the law. There was a restrictive code, harsh and unjust, no doubt, but not to be dispensed with by an exercise of the prerogative. Buckingham had led the parliament into the sanction of a war, but his popularity was fast passing away.f

Buckingham had been commissioned to fetch the princess from Paris. An immense number of very costly dresses and a train of five or six hundred persons had manifested his vanity rather than the power and wealth of England. On the 22nd of June, 1625, Charles, then twenty-six years of age, was married at Canterbury to Henrietta, who was then sixteen; and it was expected from the highly moral character of both that the marriage would be happy. Soon, however, occasion for mutual complaint arose: in the first place, Henrietta thought that she had not been received with as much pomp and respect as was her due, and was angry that she was made to sleep in an old state bed of Queen Elizabeth's. Soon afterwards she had a dispute with Bucking