of the people, and this measure served to diffuse that feeling more thoroughly among the gentry and small landholders *. Another measure which served to extend the spirit of complaint more The Forest widely, and still higher, was the revival of certain laws laws revived. framed in remote ages for the protection of the royal forests. Our earlier history abounds with remonstrances opposed to those oppressive statutes; and during an extended period, it had been well known that they were frequently violated or evaded, sometimes in favour of the poor, and often at the pleasure of the rich. But the commons had spared no pains in the vindication and enforcement of old statutes favourable to liberty, and Charles appears to have regarded it as just, in such circumstances, to avail himself of the past, with still greater freedom, in support of the prerogative. Most of these encroachments on the wastes of the crown had been the work of past generations; but the present occupants were informed that the king had resumed his almost-forgotten claims, and that the lands possessed by them could not be retained without the payment of a heavy fine to the crown. The ravages to which private property became liable by this expedient were truly alarming. The ancient limits of Rockingham forest were sixty miles, of which not more than six remained without occupants of this description; and all these persons were now obliged to compound for their lands. Sir Christopher Hatton was sentenced in a fine of twelve thousand pounds, lord Westmoreland in nineteen thousand, and lord Salisbury in twenty thousand. Nor was this enough. Charles revived an old law, called the statute of Ely, which exposed proprietors to discretionary fines for converting arable land into pasture. He could not have regarded these exactions as tending to increase the loyalty of the sufferers †. Much had been done under Elizabeth, and still more under James, to lessen the evil of monopolies; but the pernicious custom Monopolies. was carried to an unprecedented extent during this period, particularly in the shape of charters to companies, on the pretence that the last statute relating to it contained a saving clause in favour of new inventions. The money paid by these companies to the king was of course laid upon the articles which they sold, and thus fell, in the issue, entirely on the consumer. Hence the effect of this scheme was a system of taxation regulated at the pleasure of the crown. It became necessary also that these companies should be vested with inquisitorial powers, rendering them still more unpopular, and hostile to liberty. The official papers relating to this interval not only show that almost Hume mentions the complaints on this subject as a striking proof of the evil disposition of the people with regard to the measures of the crown. But Clarendon does not hesitate to describe the proceeding as "very grievous." Ubi supra. Rushworth, ii. 70, 135, 214-219, 725; iii. 135, 136. Parl. Hist. ii. 948. + Clarendon, Hist. i. 120. Strafford's Letters, i. 335, 463, 467; ii. 117. Rushworth, ii. 268, 300. every article in daily use was made subject in this manner to an unlawful tax, but that the civil authorities, after the manner of the ecclesiastical, had managed to convert the sins of the people into a source of revenue, by admitting a multitude of delinquents to compound for their offences *. Abuse of Pro clamations. It has appeared that James would have given his proclamations the authority of law, and that the commons not only opposed that dangerous pretension, but recorded their most solemn. remonstrance against it, declaring such instruments to be wholly powerless, except as founded on the acknowledged meaning of existing laws t. Charles, however, issued these spurious enactments more frequently than his predecessor, interfering by such means with the commerce, agriculture, and manufactures of the country, and even regulating the price of provisions in the daily market. James and Elizabeth had often prohibited the increase of buildings around the metropolis; but as the legality of these prohibitions had been questioned, and they were more frequently issued than enforced, the capital was constantly extending its limits. The houses which had been built in the face of these royal interdicts were said to be so many as to yield the annual rent of a hundred thousand pounds. On a given day, the proprietors were assembled before certain commissioners, and those who refused to compound for the alleged contempt were either heavily amerced, or sentenced to pay a yearly rent to the crown. Nor did these vexatious interferences take place in the neighbourhood of the city only; they were felt within its walls. Some houses near St. Paul's were represented as an injury to the appearance of that building, and, by order of his majesty's council, and on terms which that council, an interested party, chose to dictate, they were removed. There were shops in Cheapside and Lombard-street that were considered a detriment in that avenue to the same edifice, and by another act of council they were ordered, with the exception of the goldsmiths, to be closed. The corporation of London was not forward to execute these arbitrary instructions, issued in manifest contempt of the old chartered rights of the English freeholder; but their hesitation was not to go unpunished. On this account, and some others, advantage was taken of their neglect with regard to some conditions on which they held a prosperous settlement in Ulster. The settlement was not only declared a forfeiture, but the parties who had made it what it was were sentenced to pay a *On these matters, see the series of proclamations at the close of each year, in the second volume of Rushworth ;-particularly pp. 12, 26, 49, 50, 91, 92, 111, 136, 143-145, 186, 187, 196, 197, 252, 253. 300, 317, 323, 333, 348, 452, 839. See the manner in which Laud meddled with such things in his Diary, July 12, 1635, aud March 6, ad an. See also the eighteenth and nineteenth volumes of Rymer. See p. 172 of this volume. Ibid., pp. 187, 188. fine of seventy thousand pounds to the king. The city submitted; but these were things to be remembered *. James had repeatedly admonished the nobility and gentry not to spend their time in the capital during the cessation of parliament; and Charles, who lived in the same fear of political association and intrigue, approved his policy in this respect, and issued similar proclamations. In one instance, during this interval, we find no less than seven lords, sixty knights, a hundred esquires, and a long train of females, all cited to answer in the star-chamber for having preferred the town to the country, notwithstanding these royal prohibitions +. These various measures, grievous as many of them were, inflicted their Ship-money. evils principally on individuals, or upon certain portions only 1634. of the great community; and so long as the injuries done were partial, the opposition encountered would probably be of the same limited nature, and the vessel of the government might still be found making its way. Any proceeding, however, that should operate as a general grievance, would assuredly serve as a rallying point to the individuals and parties who had suffered from the more limited exercises of arbitrary power, and could hardly fail to impart unity and animation to their particular resentments. A proceeding of this nature occurred in the memorable question of ship-money. At this time the dominion of the narrow seas had nearly passed from the English crown. The fisheries of the coast were visited with impunity by vessels from France and Holland; many depredations were committed by cruisers from other states; and Turkish pirates had not scrupled to carry off captives for the slave-market from the coast of Ireland. Charles was, moreover, engaged in a secret treaty with the king of Spain, by which he had bound himself to aid that monarch in lowering the pretensions of the United Provinces, the condition being an interference on the part of his catholic majesty, in favour of the elector Palatine. This treaty, however, could not be in any way acted upon without the aid of a considerable naval force; and to obtain the requisite supply of shipping, the partizans of the court spoke much of the disgrace and danger to which the nation was exposed by the present decayed state of its navy. It was at this moment that the apostate vigilance of Noy was to obtain its reward. It will be remembered that this person was among the number of those who, at the close of the last parliament, were seduced from their place with the patriots by the offers of the court. Noy had provoked the resentment of his old associates: he had to win the attachment of his new masters. His learning and ingenuity were *Rushworth, xlix. 92, 93, 111, 411, 412. Clarendon, ii. 151, 152. Whitelocke, 35. Rymer, xviii. xix.; and Strafford's Letters, + Rushworth. passim. See the note, page 259. accordingly employed in searching after precedents, and devising plans in support of maxims which he had been recently forward to oppose. Among the neglected records in the Tower, he discovered certain writs, which, on particular emergencies, had been issued to the different seaports, and sometimes to the maritime counties generally, requiring them to supply a given number of vessels for the defence of the kingdom. These precedents were hailed by the courtiers as promising to place the naval affairs of the country under the sole management of the sovereign, and as affording a powerful sanction to that method of taxation which it was their great concern to see substituted in the place of that which had grown up with the constitution. The writs were accordingly issued. Some opposition was shown; but the measure so far succeeded, that it was resolved to extend the demand from the maritime counties to those of the interior. The yearly amount of money thus obtained was somewhat more than two hundred thousand pounds. It appears to have been faithfully applied, as a fleet of sixty sail soon began to assert the supremacy of the English flag in the norrow seas. Noy was not permitted to witness the degree of success which attended his experiment. It does not indeed appear that he had contemplated its application beyond the sea-ports; and even there he probably viewed it as relating simply to the providing of certain vessels, which should be employed during a certain time by the sovereign, and not in the light of a direct pecuniary tax, which should be deposited in the royal treasury, and expended solely under the royal sanction. Had his life been spared, it would have been his lot to see that even for this object, something was required beyond those occasional and obsolete precedents, which his labour had supplied. Many, from the first, resisted the claim; and others, who submitted to it, denounced it as illegal. Charles, in consequence, deemed it important that his policy in this matter should be strengthened by a decision of the judges. Sir John Finch, the man who, as speaker, had refused to read the remonstrance of the commons in the last parliament, had been since raised to the place of lord chief justice; and he now claimed the gratitude of his patrons, by prevailing upon the judges to declare, "that as where the benefit redounded to the ports and maritime parts, the charge was, according to the precedents of former times, lawfully laid upon them; so by parity of reasoning, where the good and safety of the kingdom were generally concerned, the charge ought to be borne by the whole realm." But this decision, valued as it was by the court, left two important questions, intimately connected with it, untouched. It determined nothing with respect to the circumstances that should be regarded as affecting the good and safety of the kingdom, or with respect to the authority on which the determination of such matters should devolve. Hence the same men were called upon to repeat their former judgment, and to declare, moreover, that the monarch should be regarded as the sole judge with regard to the existence of national danger, and also as to the best time and means of providing against it. It was not expected, it seems, by the judges, that this opinion would be read, as it was by the lord keeper, in open court-but ought they not to have seen, that the public use to be made of their venality was, with Charles, its sole value? Croke and Hutton, indeed, had ventured to dissent from the slavish doctrine of their brethren, but allowed their names to appear with the rest, on the poor plea that the minority were included in the majority. The intention of Charles, and of his ministers, throughout this affair, is stated in one of Strafford's letters in the following explicit terms: "Since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax toward the equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army; and the same reason which authorises him to levy an army to resist, will authorise him to carry that army abroad, that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law in England, is law also in Scotland and in Ireland. The decision of the judges, therefore, will make the king absolute at home, and formidable abroad. Let him only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to a payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors *.” But while the expected end of our free constitution-free at least in John Hamp- theory-was thus producing a deep feeling of exultation den. 1637. among these conspirators in high places, the cause of the people was about to receive important aid from the adventurous patriotism of an individual hitherto unknown beyond the walks of private life. The name of this individual, who, until this time, had lived the life of a country gentleman, remarkable only for the mildness of his disposition and the modesty of his deportment, was John Hampden. As the intimate friend of sir John Eliot, and the appointed guardian of his children, we must presume that Hampden had long been distinguished among those who knew him by his love of freedom. He was now required to pay the sum of twenty shillings, the amount of an assessment, under the name of ship-money, for the estate on which he resided in Buckinghamshire, It was the policy of the government, that this impost should be, for the present, of inconsiderable amount; but while Strafford and the court looked forward with delight to the permanence and the gradual increase of this power of exaction, until it should be found to have put the crown once and for ever in the place of the constitution, the enlightened advocates of freedom, scattered through the land, had their eyes no less intently fixed on that probable result, and mingled their sorrows with their fears. Hampden was of this latter class, and when his contribution was demanded, he ventured to express a doubt with regard to the propriety of thus submitting to an extra-judicial opinion of the judges, * Strafford Papers, ii. 61, 62. Rushworth, ii. 352–358. Howell, State Trials, iii. 1204. Biblioth. Reg. 246–250. |