Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (428 page)
[b]Franklyn, p. 56. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 21, 36, 55. The king also, in imitation of his
predecessors, gave rules to preachers. Franklyn, p. 70. The pulpit was at that time much more dangerous than the press. Few people could read, and still fewer were in the practice of reading.
[c]Franklyn, p. 57. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 38.
[d]Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 484.
[f]Franklyn, p. 69. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 63.
[k]We find by private letters between Philip IV. and the Condé Olivarez, shown by
the latter to Buckingham, that the marriage and the restitution of the Palatinate were always considered by the court of Spain as inseparable. See Franklyn, p. 71, 72.
Rushworth, vol. i. p. 71, 280, 299, 300. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 66.
[n]Clarendon, vol. i. p. 11, 12.
[u]Franklyn, p. 80. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 89. Kennet, p. 769.
[w]Rushworth, vol. i. p. 82. Franklyn, p. 77.
[x]Franklyn, p. 80. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 103.
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[a]Rushworth, vol. i. p. 103. Clarendon, vol. i. p. 37.
[c]Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 57.
[d]Rushworth, vol. i. p. 105. Kennet, p. 776.
[e]Franklyn, p. 80. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 112.
[g]To show by what violent measures benevolences were usually raised, Johnstone
tells us, in his
Rerum Britannicarum historia,
that Barnes, a citizen of London, was the first who refused to contribute anything; upon which, the treasurer sent him word, that he must immediately prepare himself to carry by post a dispatch into Ireland. The citizen was glad to make his peace by paying a hundred pounds; and no one durst afterwards refuse the benevolence required. See farther, Coke, p. 80.
[h]Franklyn, p. 79. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 115. Kennet, p. 778.
[i]Franklyn, p. 89, 90, 91, &c. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 119, 120, &c. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p.
20, 21, &c.
[NOTE [L]]
The moment the prince embarked at St. Andero’s, he said, to those about him, that it was folly in the Spaniards to use him so ill, and allow him to depart: A proof that the duke had made him believe they were insincere in the affair of the marriage and the Palatinate: For, as to his reception, in other respects, it had been altogether unexceptionable. Besides, had not the prince believed the Spaniards to be insincere, he had no reason to quarrel with them, though Buckingham had. It appears, therefore, that Charles himself must have been deceived. The multiplied delays of the dispensation, though they arose from accident, afforded Buckingham a plausible pretext for charging the Spaniards with insincerity.
[l]It must, however, be confessed, that the king afterwards warned the house not to
take Buckingham’s narrative for his, though it was laid before them by his order. Parl.
Hist. vol. vi. p. 104. James was probably ashamed to have been carried so far by his favourite.
[m]Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 75.
[n]Franklyn, p. 98. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 128. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 103.
[p]Franklyn, p. 94, 95. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 129, 130.
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[NOTE [M]]
Among other particulars, he mentions a sum of 80,000 pounds borrowed from the king of Denmark. In a former speech to the parliament, he told them, that he had expended 5oo,ooo pounds in the cause of the Palatine, besides the voluntary contribution given him by the people. See Franklyn, p. 50. But what is more extraordinary, the treasurer, in order to show his own good services, boasts to the parliament, that by his contrivance, 60,000 pounds had been saved in the article of exchange in the sums remitted to the Palatine. This seems a great sum, nor is it easy to conceive whence the king could procure such vast sums as would require a sum so considerable to be paid in exchange. From the whole, however, it appears, that the king had been far from neglecting the interests of his daughter and son-in-law, and had even gone far beyond what his narrow revenue could afford.
[NOTE [N]]
How little this principle had prevailed, during any former period of the English government, particularly during the last reign, which was certainly not so perfect a model of liberty as most writers would represent it, will easily appear from many passages in the history of that reign. But the ideas of men were much changed, during about twenty years of a gentle and peaceful administration. The commons, though James, of himself, had recalled all patents of monopolies, were not contented without a law against them, and a declaratory law too; which was gaining a great point, and establishing principles very favourable to liberty: But they were extremely grateful, when Elizabeth, upon petition (after having once refused their requests) recalled a few of the most oppressive patents; and employed some soothing expressions towards them.
The parliament had surely reason, when they confessed, in the seventh of James, that he allowed them more freedom of debate, than ever was indulged by any of his predecessors. His indulgence in this particular, joined to his easy temper, was probably one cause of the great power assumed by the commons. Monsieur de la Boderie, in his dispatches, vol. i. p. 449. mentions the liberty of speech in the house of commons as a new practice.
[w]Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 19.
[y]See farther, Franklyn, p. 87.
[z]Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 37.
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[d]Rushworth, vol. i. p. 144. Hacket’s Life of Williams. Coke, p. 107.
[e]See Collection of State Papers by the Earl of Clarendon, p. 393.
[NOTE [O]]
Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 224. ’Tis certain that the young prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. had protestant governors from his early infancy; first the earl of Newcastle, then the Marquis of Hertford. The king, in his memorial to foreign churches after the commencement of the civil wars, insists on his care in educating his children in the protestant religion, as a proof that he was no-wise inclined to the catholic. Rushworth, vol. v. p. 752. It can scarcely, therefore, be questioned, but this article, which has so odd an appearance, was inserted only to amuse the pope, and was never intended by either party to be executed.
[k]Franklyn, p. 104. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 154. Dugdale, p. 24.
[*]This history of the house of Stuart was written and published by the author before
the history of the house of Tudor. Hence it happens that some passages, particularly in the present Appendix, may seem to be repetitions of what was formerly delivered in the reign of Elizabeth. The author, in order to obviate this objection, has cancelled some few passages in the foregoing chapters.
[n]Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 473. In Chambers’s case it was the unanimous opinion of the
court of King’s Bench, that the court of star-chamber was not derived from the statute of Henry VII. but was a court many years before, and one of the most high and honourable courts of justice. See Coke’s rep. term. Mich. 5 Car. I. See further Camden’s Brit. vol. i. introd. p. 254. Edit. of Gibson.
[o]During several centuries, no reign had passed without some forced loans from the
subject.
[NOTE [P]]
“Monarchies,” according to Sir Walter Raleigh, “are of two sorts touching their power or authority,
viz.
1. Entire, where the whole power of ordering all state matters, both in peace and war, doth, by law and custom, appertain to the prince, as in the English kingdom; where the prince hath the power to make laws, league and war; to create magistrates; to pardon life; of appeal, &c. Though, to give a contentment to the other degrees, they have a suffrage in making laws, yet ever subject to the prince’s pleasure and negative will.—2. Limited or restrained, that hath no full power in all the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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points and matters of state, as the military king that hath not the sovereignty in time of peace, as the making of laws, &c. But in war only, as the Polonian king.
Maxims of
State.”
And a little after, “In every just state, some part of the government is, or ought to be, imparted to the people, as in a kingdom, a voice and suffrage in making laws; and sometimes also of levying of arms (if the charge be great, and the prince forced to borrow help of his subjects) the matter rightly may be propounded to a parliament, that the tax may
seem
to have proceeded from themselves. So consultations and some proceedings in judicial matters may, in part, be referred to them. The reason, lest, seeing themselves to be in no number nor of reckoning, they mislike the state or government.” This way of reasoning differs little from that of king James, who considered the privileges of the parliament as matters of grace and indulgence, more than of inheritance. It is remarkable that Raleigh was thought to lean towards the puritanical party, notwithstanding these positions. But ideas of government change much in different times.
Raleigh’s sentiments on this head are still more openly expressed, in his
Prerogative
of parliaments,
a work not published till after his death. It is a dialogue between a courtier or counsellor and a country justice of peace, who represents the patriot party, and defends the highest notions of liberty, which the principles of that age would bear.
Here is a passage of it:
“Counsellor.
That which is done by the king, with the advice of his private or privy council, is done by the king’s absolute power.
Justice.
And by whose power is it done in parliament but by the king’s absolute power? Mistake it not, my lord: The three estates do but advise as the privy council doth; which advice, if the king embrace, it becomes the king’s own act in the one, and the king’s law in the other, &c.”
The earl of Clare, in a private letter to his son-in-law Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, thus expresses himself, “We live under a prerogative government, where book law submits to
lex loquens.”
He spoke from his own, and all his ancestors’ experience. There was no single instance of power, which a king of England might not, at that time, exert, on pretence of necessity or expediency: The continuance alone or frequent repetition of arbitrary administration might prove dangerous, for want of force to support it. It is remarkable that this letter of the earl of Clare was written in the first year of Charles’s reign; and consequently must be meant of the general genius of the government, not the spirit or temper of the monarch. See Strafford’s letters, vol. i. p. 32. From another letter in the same collection, vol. i. p. 10.
it appears that the council sometimes assumed the power of forbidding persons disagreeable to the court, to stand in the elections. This authority they could exert in some instances; but we are not thence to infer, that they could shut the door of that house to every one who was not acceptable to them. The genius of the ancient government reposed more trust in the king, than to entertain any such suspicion, and it allowed scattered instances, of such a kind as would have been totally destructive of the constitution, had they been continued without interruption.
I have not met with any English writer in that age, who speaks of England as a limited monarchy, but as an absolute one, where the people have many privileges. That is no contradiction. In all European monarchies, the people have privileges; but whether dependant or independant on the will of the monarch, is a question, that, in most PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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governments, it is better to forbear. Surely that question was not determined, before the age of James. The rising spirit of the parliament, together with that king’s love of general, speculative principles, brought it from its obscurity, and made it be commonly canvassed. The strongest testimony, that I remember from a writer of James’s age, in favour of English liberty, is in cardinal Bentivoglio, a foreigner, who mentions the English government as similar to that of the low-country provinces under their princes, rather than to that of France or Spain. Englishmen were not so sensible that their prince was limited, because they were sensible, that no individual had any security against a stretch of prerogative: But foreigners, by comparison, could perceive, that these stretches were, at that time, from custom or other causes, less frequent in England than in other monarchies. Philip de Comines too remarked the English constitution to be more popular, in his time, than that of France. But in a paper written by a patriot in 1627, it is remarked that the freedom of speech in parliament had been lost in England, since the days of Comines. See Franklyn, p. 238.