A.D. 1633. necessary instances, as could not but give offence in a country where so much the greater part of A.D. 1634. the people were presbyterians. When the pro Arbitrary proceedings vosts of Powis presented plate to him, one of them was not admitted to kiss his hand, because he was not a churchman; and when the nobility and gentry at Fife had prepared an entertainment for him, he refused to go to it, because many of them were presbyterians. He afterwards endeavoured by force to establish an hierarchy, and introduce the liturgy among them: and this drew upon him a war with that nation, which he was not able to support. As the discontinuance of parliaments in Engin England. land drove the king to any resources for raising money, it gave encouragement to every kind of projectors. But of all the inventions for supplying the king, the writs for ship-money gave the greatest and most general dissatisfaction. A writ was sent in 1634 to the city of London,* Ship-mo ney. * By this, dated October 20, 1634, they were commanded and enjoined, upon their faith and allegiance, and under the forfeiture of all which they could forfeit, to carry to Ports mouth, before the 1st of March following, one man-of-war of nine hundred tons, one of eight hundred, four of five hundred, and one of three hundred, furnished with men, victuals, and all warlike provisions.-Rushworth. to prepare a certain number of men-of-war for A.D. 1634. the king's use.24 Writs, likewise, were sent into the several counties for assessing the people; and, for five years together, this scheme produced two hundred thousand pounds a year. The writ was presented by the grand jury of Northampton as a grievance; upon which the clerk of the peace and freemen of the jury were ordered to attend, A.D. 1639. and give an account of their conduct; and the privy council sent a letter to Sir Christopher Yelverton, high sheriff of Northampton, reprimanding him in very haughty terms for officiously sending them the petition of the grand jury, and for representing the difficulties which he found in the execution of the king's writs. Upon the general sense which the people had of the injustice of this tax, Mr. Hampden had Mr. Hampin the year 1637, at his own expense, withstood conduct. the exaction of it, by which he acquired at that time a great and just reputation with the pub 24 This was only an extension of the demand that had been made eight years before. The king had then by his own authority called upon the maritime parts of his kingdom to supply him with a fleet; he now went a step farther, and taxed the whole of the kingdom for the ostensible purpose of building and maintaining one. Precedents are dangerous things in the hand of such a monarch as Charles. den's noble A.D. 1639. lic; and notwithstanding the opprobrious cha Lord Clarendon's re racter given him by one historian, and the insidious attempts of others to detract from the merit and motives of his conduct, he has transmitted his name to posterity as a true asserter of the liberties of his country, and will be held in veneration so long as the least spark of English freedom is cherished in the breast. Lord Clarendon, speaking of the tranquillity presentation of the nation during this intermission of parliaconsidered. ment, says, "That for twelve years they enjoyed of things, the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long time together had been blessed with; yet he allows there were extraordinary grievances. A proclamation, he admits, was published to inhibit all men to speak of another parliament; supplemental acts of state were made to supply defects of laws; tonnage and poundage, and other duties, which the parliament had refused, collected by order of council; new and greater impositions laid upon trade; obsolete laws revived and rigorously executed; unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot; and, for the better support of these extraordinary ways, and to protect the agents, and to discountenance and suppress all bold inquirers and opposers, the A.D. 1639. council-table and star-chamber enlarged their jurisdiction to a vast extent: that any disre * spect to acts of state or to the persons of statesmen was in no time more penal; and those foun * Mr. Bellasis, Lord Fauconberg's son, was committed to the Gate-house for not pulling off his hat to Lord Wentworth, lord president of the north. Many instances of extraordinary severity were shown to persons who had spoken even slightly of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was jealous to the greatest degree of his dignity, and earnest for punishing the least offenders against it. One re. markable instance was in the Rev. Mr. Lambert Osbaldston, a prebend and master of Westminster school. He and the Bishop of Lincoln were charged by information in the starchamber, February 14, 1638-9, to have plotted together to divulge false news and lies, and to breed a difference between Lord Treasurer Weston and the archbishop. charge was grounded upon some passages in two letters written by Mr. Osbaldston in January 1633-4; as for in VOL. I. The stance: "The jealousy grows great and sharp between the Leviathan and the little meddling Hocus Pocus." And in another letter, "My dear lord, I cannot be quiet but I must write to your lordship: the sport is grown tragical; anything would be given for a sound and thorough charge to push at, and confound the little urchin." These letters were found in a box in the Bishop of Lincoln's palace at Bugden, some years after their being written, and at a time when he was in the Tower: there could be no purpose, therefore, of divulging them. Mr. Osbaldston denied that he meant the treasurer and the archbishop by those words; and they were applied to them only by an innuendo. The sentence, however, was, that the Bishop of Lincoln should be fined five thousand pounds to the king, and should pay three thousand pounds damages to the archbishop; should be im H A.D. 1639. dations of right, by which men valued their security, to the apprehension of wise men, never more in danger to be destroyed.” If it is true that the foundations of right were in such danger, it was necessary for patriots to exert themselves; and it is evident that the opposition made by the subsequent parliaments of A.D. 1640. April and November 1640, proceeded from an honest zeal and firm resolution to strengthen those foundations, to prop the bulwarks of the consti prisoned during the king's ears nailed to the pillory. Mr. gone beyond 25 Laud had established a most efficient censorship of the press. Selden was bold enough to publish his elaborate treatise upon tithes during the archbishop's day of power. In this work he treats the divine origin claimed for that institution with very little ceremony; but the high commission court soon convinced him of his error, and Selden made haste to retract his heretical tenet. |
