Finch having been chosen speaker, the usual interchange of false eloquence, fulsome compliments, and court flattery, ensued. The election of Finch, afterwards lord keeper, whose character was already known*, would indicate a more moderate or manageable house of commons. The fact was widely different. Those whom the artifice of appointing them sheriffs had kept out of the last parliament, and the imprisoned refusers," who were returned by every constituency to which they offered themselves, brought into this parliament a spirit of resistance and purpose of redress more keen and resolute from personal exasperation.

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The commons immediately took up the matter of grievance, under the general heads of billeting soldiers, raising money by loans, benevolences, and privy seals, the imprisonment of persons who refused to lend, and the remanding of the five "refusers," who had brought their habeas corpus. It became obvious that the commons entertained the settled purpose of making redress of those grievances the condition of granting supplies. "How," said sir Francis Seymour in the first debate on the subject †, can we speak our affections while we retain our fears, or speak of giving till we know whether we have any thing to give? Hath it not been preached in the pulpit, or rather prated, all we have is the king's jure divino. But when preachers forsake their own calling, and turn ignorant statesmen, we see how willing they are to exchange a good conscience for a bishopric." Sir Robert Phillips, after going over the three main grievances of billeting soldiers, illegal imposts, and arbitrary imprisonments, said, "I can live, although another who has no right be put to live with me; nay, I

hearers: "Our friends of the Netherlands, besides the fear that justly troubles them, lest the whole force of the emperor may fall down upon them, are distracted by their voyages into the East, which hath carried both men and money into another world, and much weakened them at home." * See the two different versions of the speeches of the speaker and lord keeper, in Rushworth, i. 481., and Parl. Hist. ii. 222, &c.

+ March 22.

An expression of this eminent patriot may be cited, as one of the many proofs, that the representatives in those days considered themselves bound by the instructions of their constituents. "The county," says he, "I serve for, was pleased to command me," &c.— Rush. i. 503.

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can live, although I pay excises and impositions more than I do; but to have my liberty, which is the soul of my life, taken from me by power; and to have my body pent up in a gaol, without remedy by law, and to be so adjudged! Oh, improvident ancestors! Oh, unwise forefathers! To be so curious in providing for the quiet possession of our laws, and the liberties of parliament; and to neglect our persons and bodies, and to let them lie in prison, and that durante bene placito, remediless! If this be law, why do we talk of liberties? Why do we trouble ourselves with a dispute about law, franchises, property of goods, and the like? What may any man call his own, if not the liberty of his person? I am weary of treading these ways.". "We must," said he in conclusion, " govern ourselves as if this parliament were the crisis of all parliaments." Those free and fearless spirits did not affect to disguise the question at issue from others, or from themselves. Such was the really momentous question between this memorable house of commons and Charles I.

Sir Thomas Wentworth and sir Edward Coke took the same side. "I will begin," says Coke, "with a noble record it cheers me to think of it, 25 Edw. III. It deserves to be written in letters of gold."- "Loans against the will of the subject are against reason and the franchises of the land! What a word is that! franchise!"

-

Bold truths were spoken, momentous questions were propounded, without the excitement of the passions; stirring movements of the truest eloquence were united with the imposing grandeur of repose. Even Coke and Digges seemed to forget for a moment the elaborate conceits and pedantic citations which debased the forensic eloquence of the time.*

On the 25th of March secretary Cooke proposed the estimates of supply. The house went into a committee, but, instead of considering the estimates, entered upon *Fragments only are preserved; but they are carefully collected and disposed, from Rushworth, the Ephemeris Parliamentaria, and the MSS. of sir John Napier, in the New Parliamentary History

"the liberty of the subject," under these six heads attendance at the council board, imprisonment, confinement*, designation to foreign employment †, martial law, undue proceedings in matters of judicature. They however resolved, that five subsidies should be granted to the king. Secretary Cooke acquainted them. with the king's most gracious acceptance of the supply, though short of his wants. The king, by the secretary's account, said "that he now saw he should have the affections of his people, which would be to him above all value; that he liked parliaments at first, yet since (he knew not how), he was grown to a distaste of them; but was now where he was before, for he loved them."

Charles forgot, or affected to forget, that the commons had only come to a resolution, and it remained to pass the subsidy bill. His insincerity was too gross to cajole men so resolved and wise as the patriot leaders, and the secretary disgusted the house by reporting, immediately after that of the king, a speech of the duke of Buckingham respecting the subsidies addressed to the king in council. "Give me leave," said Buckingham, as reported by the secretary: "I beseech you to be an humble suitor to his majesty, first, for myself, that I, who have had the honour to be your

* "Confinement," says Selden (Parl. Hist. ii. 256.)," is different from imprisonment, and it is contrary to law that any should be confined to his house or elsewhere."

Sir Peter Hayman gave the following account of his forced mission to the palatinate: -"I have not forgot my employment into the palatinate. I was called before the lords of the council for what I knew not; but I heard it was for not lending on a privy seal. I told them, if they will take my estate, let them; I would give it up- lend I would not. When I was before the lords of the council, they laid to my charge my unwillingness to serve the king. I said, I had my life and my estate to serve my country and my religion. They told me, that if I did not pay I should be put upon an employment of service. I was willing. After ten weeks waiting, they told me I was to go with a lord into the palatinate, and that I should have employment there, and means befitting. I told them I was a subject, and desired means. Some put on very eagerly, some dealt nobly. They said I must go on my own purse. I told them, Nemo militat suis expensis. Some told me I must go. I began to think, what, must I? None were ever sent out in that way. Lawyers told me I could not be so sent. Having this assurance, I demanded means, and was resolved not to stir but upon those terms; and in silence and duty I denied. Upon this, having given me a command to go, after twelve days they told me they would not send me as a soldier, but to attend on an ambassador. I knew that stone would hit me; therefore I settled my troubled estate, and addressed myself to that service."

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favourite, may now give up that title unto them (the commons), they to be your favourites, and I to be your servant," &c.

Sir John Elliot was the organ of the indignation of the house. He rebuked both the favourite who uttered, and the minister who repeated the speech. "I know not," said he, "by what fatality or importunity it has crept in, but I observe in the close of Mr. Secretary's relation mention made of another, in addition to his majesty; and that which hath been formerly a matter of complaint I find here still, -a mixture with his majesty, not only in business, but in name. Let me beseech you, sir, let no man hereafter within these walls take this boldness to introduce it."

The inordinate presumption of Buckingham, in speaking such a speech, was, if possible, surpassed by the folly of repeating it. Such men as Coventry, Weston, Conway, Cooke himself, and other members of the king's council, must have known the temper of the commons and of the times too well to be blind to the consequences. Their submitting to a step so presumptuous and impertinent may be taken as a measure of their criminal servility to the favourite, and the infatuation of the king.

Charles, impatient to touch the subsidies, sent a message to the commons, desiring that the house would make no Easter recess. The house claimed the exclusive right of adjournment. "The king," says sir Edward Coke," makes a prorogation; the house adjourns itself." Message upon message came from the king to hasten the subsidy. Secretary Cooke, after delivering one of those messages, on the 12th of April, deprecated an opposition to "the royal power." The house, jealous of this ambiguous word, called upon him to state what he meant by the word "power," to which he replied, that it was the word used by the king, and he had no warrant to explain it.

The commons meanwhile were engaged in preparing the memorable petition of rights. In pursuance of a

conference of the two houses, the judges of the King's Bench were ordered to vindicate before the house of lords their decision in the habeas corpus case. The order for their appearance before the lords was made on the motion of that intriguing and unprincipled trafficker in popularity, the late lord keeper Williams.* Hyde the chief justice expressed his fear that, consistently with their oath to the king, they could not give an account of their proceedings without his warrant. Several peers considered this an invasion of the privileges of the house as a supreme court of appeal. The earl of Manchester said this was a matter not of appeal, but of prerogative. Meanwhile the earl of Anglesey, sent by Buckingham to the king, brought his permission, and the question was left undecided. The judges spoke severally. Their justification may be reduced to this that they merely remanded the prisoners, "that they might better advise in the matter;" that their decision was in the nature of an interlocutory order, and that they ordered the clerk of the court to make no entry as of a judgment, though earnestly demanded by the attorney-general; and that there was no case of a person committed by the king's special order, and bailed without his permission. It may also be collected, that the better advice for which they waited was the king's leave to bail or discharge the prisoners. James insisted that the judges should not even permit in their courts the questioning of any point affecting the royal prerogative, rege inconsulto.† Charles looked upon it as a degradation to renounce any pretension of his predecessors; and yet, with his all-jealous care to maintain the power and pretensions of former kings, the public rights were outgrowing and escaping from his grasp. He claimed exemption from the jurisdiction of the courts only for an act done by his special command, whilst his father claimed it for all matters touching the prerogative, even to holding a living in commendam.

*Parl. Hist. ii. 288.

+ See the Case of Commendams, Reign of James, v. 4.