The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (384 page)

So many grievances were offered, both by the members, and by petitions without-doors, that the house was divided into above forty committees, charged, each of them, with the examination of some particular violation of law and liberty, which had been PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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complained of. Besides the general committees of religion, trade, privileges, laws; many subdivisions of these were framed, and a strict scrutiny was every where carried on. It is to be remarked, that, before the beginning of this century, when the commons assumed less influence and authority, complaints of grievances were usually presented to the house, by any members who had had particular opportunity of observing them. These general committees, which were a kind of inquisitorial courts, had not then been established; and we find, that the king, in a former declaration,
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complains loudly of this innovation, so little favourable to royal authority. But never was so much multiplied, as at present, the use of these committees; and the commons, though themselves the greatest innovators, employed the usual artifice of complaining against innovations, and pretending to recover the ancient and established government.

From the reports of their committees, the house daily passed votes, which mortified and astonished the court, and inflamed and animated the nation. Ship-money was declared illegal and arbitrary; the sentence against Hambden cancelled; the court of York abolished; compositions for knighthood stigmatized; the enlargement of the forests condemned; patents for monopolies annulled; and every late measure of administration treated with reproach and obloquy. To day, a sentence of the star-chamber was exclaimed against: To morrow, a decree of the high commission. Every discretionary act of council was represented as arbitrary and tyrannical; and the general inference was still inculcated, that a formed design had been laid to subvert the laws and constitution of the kingdom.

From necessity, the king remained entirely passive during all these violent operations.

The few servants, who continued faithful to him, were seized with astonishment at the rapid progress made by the commons in power and popularity, and were glad, by their unactive and inoffensive behaviour, to compound for impunity. The torrent rising to so dreadful and unexpected a height, despair seized all those, who from interest or habit, were most attached to monarchy. And as for those, who maintained their duty to the king, merely from their regard to the constitution, they seemed by their concurrence to swell that inundation, which began already to deluge every thing.

“You have taken the whole machine of government in pieces,” said Charles in a discourse to the parliament; “a practice frequent with skilful artists, when they desire to clear the wheels from any rust, which may have grown upon them. The engine,”

continued he, “may again be restored to its former use and motions, provided it be put up entire; so as not a pin of it be wanting.” But this was far from the intention of the commons. The machine they thought, with some reason, was incumbered with many wheels and springs, which retarded and crossed its operations, and destroyed its utility. Happy! had they proceeded with moderation, and been contented, in their present plenitude of power, to remove such parts only as might justly be deemed superfluous and incongruous.

In order to maintain that high authority, which they had acquired, the commons, besides confounding and overawing their opponents, judged it requisite to inspire courage into their friends and adherents; particularly into the Scots, and the religious puritans, to whose assistance and good offices they were already so much beholden.

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No sooner were the Scots masters of the northern counties, than they laid aside their first professions, which they had not indeed means to support, of paying for every thing; and in order to prevent the destructive expedient of plunder and free quarters, the country consented to give them a regular contribution of 850 pounds a day, in full

of their subsistence.d
The parliament, that they might relieve the northern counties from so grievous a burden, agreed to remit pay to the Scottish, as well as to the English army; and because subsidies would be levied too slowly for so urgent an occasion, money was borrowed from the citizens upon the security of particular

members. Two subsidies, a very small sum,e
were at first voted; and as the intention of this supply was to indemnify the members, who, by their private, had supported public credit, this pretence was immediately laid hold of, and the money was ordered to be paid, not into the treasury, but to commissioners appointed by parliament: A practice, which, as it diminished the authority of the crown, was willingly embraced, and was afterwards continued by the commons, with regard to every branch of revenue, which they granted to the king. The invasion of the Scots had evidently been the cause of assembling the parliament: The presence of their army reduced the king to that total subjection, in which he was now held: The commons, for this reason, openly professed their intention of retaining these invaders, till all their own enemies should be suppressed, and all their purposes effected.
We cannot yet spare the Scots,
said Strode plainly in the house;
the sons of Zeruiah are still too strong for us:f
An allusion to a passage of scripture, according to the mode of that age. Eighty thousand pounds a month were requisite for the subsistence of the two armies; a sum much greater than the subject had ever been accustomed, in any former period, to pay to the public. And though several subsidies, together with a poll-tax, were from time to time voted to answer the charge; the commons still took care to be in debt, in order to render the continuance of the session the more necessary.

The Scots being such useful allies to the malcontent party in England, no wonder they were courted with the most unlimited complaisance and the most important services.

The king having, in his first speech, called them
rebels,
observed, that he had given great offence to the parliament; and he was immediately obliged to soften, and even retract the expression. The Scottish commissioners, of whom the most considerable were the earl of Rothes and lord Loudon, found every advantage in conducting their treaty; yet made no haste in bringing it to an issue. They were lodged in the city, and kept an intimate correspondence, as well with the magistrates, who were extremely disaffected, as with the popular leaders in both houses. St. Antholine’s church was assigned them for their devotions; and their chaplains, here, began openly to practise the presbyterian form of worship, which, except in foreign languages, had never hitherto been allowed any indulgence or toleration. So violent was the general propensity towards this new religion, that multitudes of all ranks crowded to the church. Those, who were so happy as to find access early in the morning, kept their places the whole day: Those, who were excluded, clung to the doors or windows, in hopes of catching, at least, some distant murmur or broken phrases of the holy

rhetoric.g
All the eloquence of parliament, now well refined from pedantry, animated with the spirit of liberty, and employed in the most important interests, was not attended to with such insatiable avidity, as were these lectures, delivered with ridiculous cant, and a provincial accent, full of barbarism and of ignorance.

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The most effectual expedient for paying court to the zealous Scots was to promote the presbyterian discipline and worship throughout England and to this innovation, the popular leaders among the commons, as well as their more devoted partizans, were, of themselves, sufficiently inclined. The puritanical party, whose progress, though secret, had hitherto been gradual in the kingdom, taking advantage of the present disorders, began openly to profess their tenets, and to make furious attacks on the established religion. The prevalence of that sect in the parliament discovered itself, from the beginning, by insensible, but decisive symptoms. Marshall and Burgess, two puritanical clergymen, were chosen to preach before them, and entertained them with

discourses seven hours in length.h
It being the custom of the house always to take the sacrament before they enter upon business, they ordered, as a necessary preliminary, that the communion table should be removed from the east end of St. Margaret’s into

the middle of the area.i
The name of the
spiritual lords
was commonly left out in acts of parliament; and the laws ran in the name of king, lords, and commons. The clerk of the upper house, in reading bills, turned his back on the bench of bishops; nor was his insolence ever taken notice of. On a day appointed for a solemn fast and humiliation, all the orders of temporal peers, contrary to former practice, in going to church, took place of the spiritual; and lord Spencer remarked, that the humiliation, that day, seemed confined alone to the prelates.

Every meeting of the commons produced some vehement

The bishops attacked.

harangue against the usurpations of the bishops, against the high commission, against the late convocation, against the new canons. So disgusted were all lovers of civil liberty at the doctrines promoted by the clergy, that these invectives were received without controul; and no distinction, at first, appeared between such as desired only to repress the exorbitancies of the hierarchy, and such as pretended totally to annihilate episcopal jurisdiction. Encouraged by these favourable appearances, petitions against the church were framed in different parts of the kingdom. The epithet of the ignorant and vicious priesthood was commonly applied to all churchmen, addicted to the established discipline and worship; though the episcopal clergy in England, during that age, seem to have been, as they are at present, sufficiently learned and exemplary. An address against episcopacy was presented by twelve clergymen to the committee of religion, and pretended to be signed by many hundreds of the puritanical persuasion. But what made most noise was the city petition for a total alteration of church government; a petition, to which 15,000 subscriptions were annexed, and which was presented by Alderman Pennington, the city-member.
k
It is remarkable, that, among the many ecclesiastical abuses there complained of, an allowance, given by the licencers of books, to publish a translation of Ovid’s Art of Love, is not forgotten by these rustic censors.
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Notwithstanding the favourable disposition of the people, the leaders in the house resolved to proceed with caution. They introduced a bill for prohibiting all clergymen the exercise of any civil office. As a consequence, the bishops were to be deprived of their seats in the house of peers; a measure not unacceptable to the zealous friends of liberty, who observed, with regret, the devoted attachment of that order to the will of the monarch. But when this bill was presented to the peers, it was rejected by a great majority:
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The first check which the commons had received in their popular career, and a prognostic of what they might afterwards expect from the upper house, whose PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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inclinations and interests could never be totally separated from the throne. But to show how little they were discouraged, the puritans immediately brought in another bill for the total abolition of episcopacy; though they thought proper to let that bill sleep at present, in expectation of a more favourable opportunity of reviving it.
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Among other acts of regal executive power, which the commons were every day assuming, they issued orders for demolishing all images, altars, crucifixes. The zealous Sir Robert Harley, to whom the execution of these orders was committed, removed all crosses even out of streets and markets; and from his abhorrence of that superstitious figure, would not any where allow one piece of wood or stone to lie over another at right angles.
o

The bishop of Ely and other clergymen were attacked on account of innovations.
p

Cozens, who had long been obnoxious, was exposed to new censures. This clergyman, who was dean of Peterborough, was extremely zealous for ecclesiastical ceremonies: And so far from permitting the communicants to break the sacramental bread with their fingers; a privilege on which the puritans strenuously insisted; he would not so much as allow it to be cut with an ordinary household instrument. A consecrated knife must perform that sacred office, and must never afterwards be

profaned by any vulgar service.q

Cozens likewise was accused of having said,
The king has no more authority in

ecclesiastical matters, than the boy who rubs my horse’s heels.r
The expression was violent: But it is certain, that all those high churchmen, who were so industrious in reducing the laity to submission, were extremely fond of their own privileges and independency, and were desirous of exempting the mitre from all subjection to the crown.

A committee was elected by the lower house as a court of inquisition upon the clergy, and was commonly denominated the committee of
scandalous ministers.
The politicians among the commons were apprized of the great importance of the pulpit for guiding the people; the bigots were enraged against the prelatical clergy; and both of them knew that no established government could be overthrown by strictly observing the principles of justice, equity, or clemency. The proceedings, therefore, of this famous committee, which continued for several years, were cruel and arbitrary, and made great havoc both on the church and the universities. They began with harassing, imprisoning, and molesting the clergy; and ended with sequestrating and ejecting them. In order to join contumely to cruelty, they gave the sufferers the epithet of
scandalous,
and endeavoured to render them as odious as they were miserable.
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