utmost; but money and men were not forthcoming, and there were those at home who did not desire that Buckingham should be successful and thus obtain greater credit than ever with his master. A French force landed on the island, and Buckingham, unable to resist superior numbers, after making one more gallant and ineffectual stand, gave orders for a retreat. Of the troops sent out, less than one-half returned to England (November, 1627).

§ 4. Meanwhile the money levied under colour of the prerogative had come in very slowly, and had left such ill humour in the nation, that it appeared dangerous to renew the experiment, and the absolute necessity of supply forced the king to call a third parliament. The commons who assembled (March 17, 1628) were men of the same spirit as their predecessors, and possessed of such riches that their property was computed to surpass three times that of the House of Peers. Some of them had been harshly used by the court or thrown into prison for refusing the loan; and the result was quickly shown in the speed with which they declared, by their votes, that all such imprisonment and all such loans were illegal. The king told them, in his opening speech, that it was his duty and theirs "to maintain their church and commonwealth; and certainly," he continued, "there never was a time in which this duty was more necessarily required than now. I therefore, judging a parliament to be the ancient, speediest, and best way, in common danger, to give such a supply as to secure ourselves, and to save our friends from universal ruin, have called you together. Every man must do according to his conscience; wherefore, if you (as God forbid) should not do your duty in contributing what the state needs, I must do mine, and use other means which God hath put into my hand." To conciliate the commons, Charles offered certain concessions. He agreed to their pe'ition for rigid execution of the laws against catholics; he released 78 gentlemen who had been imprisoned for resisting the loan. The commons promised five subsidies, but refused to pass any bill to that effect until they had secured the king's assent to the liberties and privileges claimed by them. Forced loans, Benevolences, taxes without consent of parliament, arbitrary imprisonments, the billeting of soldiers, martial law-these were the grievances complained of, and against these a sufficient remedy was to be provided. The commons pretended not, as they affirmed, to any unusual powers or privileges: they aimed at securing those which had been transmitted from their ancestors; and their petition, which provided against all these abuses, and which was founded on Magna Carta and other ancient statutes, they resolved to call a PETITION OF RIGHT -as implying that it contained a corroboration or explanation of the

ancient constitution, not any infringement of royal prerogative, or acquisition of new liberties. To some of these the king offered no objection. He was ready to promise never to raise a forced loan, to billet soldiers upon unwilling freeholders, or execute martial law in time of peace, but he shrank from promising never to send any one to prison without cause shown. This was, in effect, to part with his power of punishing political offences, and to leave them to the decision of the judges.

The lords were disposed to modify the bill by a saving clause in behalf of the sovereign power. But the commons stood firm, sent the bill in its original state to the upper house, and the peers passed it without any material alteration. Nothing but the royal assent was now wanting to give it the force of a law. The king came to the House of Lords, sent for the commons, and, being seated in his chair of state, the petition was read to him. Instead of the usual concise and clear form, by which a bill is either passed or rejected, Charles said, in answer to the petition (June 2), “The king willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm, and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrongs or oppressions, contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as much obliged as of his own prerogative." The result might have been foreseen. The commons returned in very ill humour. They proceeded to form a remonstrance, and showed a further disposition to censure the conduct of Buckingham. After some abortive attempts to divert the tempest that was ready to burst on the duke, the king thought proper, upon a joint application of the lords and commons, to come to the House of Peers. He then commanded the clerk of the parliament to cut out his former answer from the journals; and by pronouncing the usual form of words, "Let right be done as is desired," he gave full sanction and authority to the petition * (June 7). The commons, nevertheless, proceeded as before. They resumed their censure of Buckingham's conduct, to whom they attributed all their grievances. They sent to the lords a charge against doctor Manwaring for preaching a sermon on non-resistance. He was judged to be imprisoned, to pay a fine of £1000, to make his submission, to be suspended for three years, to be disabled from ever preaching at court or holding any ecclesiastical or secular dignity, and his book was ordered to be burned. They also remonstrated against "the undue taking of tonnage and poundage," and would come to no decision for

*This celebrated PETITION OF RIGHT, which is the second great charter of English liberties, is printed in extenso in

Notes and Illustrations at the end of this chapter.

conceding it as it had been conceded* in times past. To avoid all further remonstrance, the king came suddenly to the parliament, and prorogued it (June 26).

§ 5. The great object of the displeasure of the commons was soon after removed in a sudden and unexpected manner. The duke of Buckingham had repaired to Portsmouth to superintend the preparations for an expedition to relieve Rochelle. Immediately after breakfast (August 23), as he was passing through a narrow passage and stooped down to speak to sir Thomas Fryer, a colonel in the army, he was struck on the sudden, over sir Thomas's shoulder, upon the breast with a knife. Without uttering other words than "The villain has killed me," at the same moment pulling out the knife, he breathed his last. Soon after, a man without a hat was seen walking very composedly before the door. One crying out, "Here is the fellow who killed the duke," everybody ran to ask, "Which is he?" The man very sedately answered, "I am he." He was now known to be one Felton, who had served under the duke in the station of lieutenant. His captain being killed in the retreat at the isle of Rhé, Felton had applied for the company; and, being disappointed, he threw up his commission, and retired in discontent from the army. When asked at whose instigation he had performed the horrid deed, he replied that the resolution proceeded only from himself, and the impulse of his own conscience; and that his motives would appear if his hat were found: for that, believing he should perish in the attempt, he had there taken care to explain them. Though threatened with the rack, he made no disclosure, and was soon afterwards executed.

Meanwhile the distress of Rochelle had risen to the utmost extremity. After Buckingham's death, the command of the fleet and army was conferred on the earl of Lindsey, who, arriving before Rochelle, made some attempts to break through the mole erected across the harbour by Richelieu; but by the delays of the English that work was now fully finished and fortified; and the inhabitants, finding their last hopes fail them, were reduced to surrender at discretion, even in sight of the English admiral (October 18, 1628).

§ 6. For many years it had been the habitual usage of the commons to vote the king for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain duties on exports and imports, familiarly known as tonnage and

At any grant of public money, it was usual for the king to thank the commons for their benevolence. But it is clear from this debate that when the king promised, by the Bill of Right, not to levy

any benevolence without consent of parliament, the word was used in the strict technical sense of an extraordinary tax, and did not refer to tonnage and poundage.

poundage. From uniform practice it had come to be regarded as a sort of prescriptive right, for which the assent of the commons was merely nominal. In Charles's first parliament the commons had voted it for a year only; but the peers had allowed the bill to drop: and as a dissolution of parliament followed soon after, no attempt seems to have been made for obtaining tonnage and poundage in any other form. Charles, meanwhile, continued to levy this duty by his own authority, and the nation was so accustomed to this exertion of royal power, that no scruple was raised against it. He was anxious, however, to have the matter settled. He even condescended so far as to assure the commons that he had no intention to challenge these duties as a right, and pleaded the necessity he was under to take it until they had formally granted it. The case was urgent. It was precisely analogous to stopping the supplies. Without it the administration of the country could not be carried on. It would have been more dignified and candid in the commons to have returned a positive answer at once; but this was not their policy. The longer they delayed, the greater would be the king's necessities; the easier their victory. They diverted their attention from tonnage and poundage to controversial theology, to debates on Arminianism and the due interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles. On the 28th of January, Charles sent them a message to proceed with the bill of tonnage and poundage. They excused themselves on the ground that their attention was occupied with religion. Week after week passed away, and the settlement of the question was as distant as ever.

On March 2, sir John Eliot framed a remonstrance against levying those duties without consent of parliament, which the speaker and the clerk refused to read. He read it himself. The question being then called for, the speaker, sir John Finch, said, "That he had a command from the king to adjourn, and to put no question." Upon which he rose and left the chair. The whole house was in an uproar. They resolved to dispute the king's right to adjourn them without their own consent. The door was locked. The speaker was pushed back into the chair, and forcibly held in it by Holles and Valentine, till a short remonstrance was framed, and was passed by acclamation rather than by vote. In it papists and Arminians were declared capital enemies to the commonwealth. Those who levied tonnage and poundage were branded with the same epithet. Even the merchants who should voluntarily pay these duties were denominated betrayers of English liberty and public enemies. Maxwell, usher of the Black Rod, who was sent by the king, stood knocking at the door, but could not obtain admittance till these resolutions were adopted. He took

the mace from the table, which ended their proceedings; and a few days after, the parliament was dissolved (March 10, 1629). Sir John Eliot, Holles, Valentine, and some others, for seditious speeches in parliament, were committed to the Tower (March 5), and informations were exhibited against them in the Star Chamber. They applied to the court of King's Bench for their liberation, but were sent to separate prisons. The judges declared that they were entitled to bail, but must give sureties for good behaviour. On their refusal, they were condemned to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, to find the requisite sureties, and to be fined, the two former in 10007. apiece, the latter in 5007. Sir John Eliot died in custody (1632); his comrades made their submission one by one, and were discharged. (Supplement, Note V.)

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§ 7. After the turbulent proceedings of the last parliament, Charles resolved, for a time at least, to rule without one. Such an act did not at that time appear so unconstitutional as it appears to modern readers; for, from the time of Henry VII., long intervals had often occurred between the meetings of parliament. It did not appear unconstitutional to the nation at the time, nor probably to the king himself. 'If," says an able writer, "Charles had been asked whether he intended to tread the law and constitution underfoot, he would have shrunk back with horror at the thought. He would have replied, that he was in truth the supporter of the law. Always in theory, and since the accession of the house of Tudor, in practice as well, parliament had been but the great council of the king. The king had been the centre of government, the acting power round which all else revolved. What the commons now demanded was to take his place, to keep him short of money till he would comply with their wishes, and to render him powerless, by calling his ministers to account when they did what the commons considered to be illegal. Not only the authority of the king, but the decision of the judges, was to be swept aside. And all this was to be done in order that freedom of thought, except so far as it found favour in the eyes of the dominant majority, might be stamped out in England; that no one might print a book or preach a sermon without the leave of the House of Commons. Charles was not wrong in dissolving such a parliament. It had done its work in preparing the great Petition. . . . A parliament stereotyping upon the country a particular form of religious or political belief, which happened to be popular at the time, would degenerate into the most odious of despotisms. The mouth of the counsellors, whose work it is invariably to change public opinion, would be closed. The establishment of parliamentary supremacy in 1688 was a noble work. But it would not have been a noble work if it