thundred out their Anathemaes not onely against such as should dare to levie it but those also who should willingly pay it The news of which riotous proceeding being brought immediately to the King he sent his Band of Pensioners accompanied by his ordinary Guard to force open the doors and going himself to the House of Peers he dissolved the Parliament not having continued in that Session above forty dayes At the end of the former Session he had admitted Sir John Savill of Yorkshire a busie man in the House of Commons but otherwise a politique and prudent person to be one of his Privy Council created him Lord Savill of Ponfract and made him Comptroller of his Houshold in the place of Sir John Suckling deceased And a little before the beginning of the following Session he took into his Council Sir Thomas wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse in the same County whom be created Viscount Wentworth and made Lord President of the North and within two years after Lord Deputy of Ireland also A man he was of prodigious Parts which he made use of at the first in favour of the Popular Faction But being gained unto the King by Sir Ri. Weston then Chancellour of the Exchequer afterwards Lord Treasurer and Earl of Portland he became the most devout friend of the Church the greatest Zelot for advancing Monarchichall Interesse and the ablest Minister of State which our Histories have afforded to us On the judgement of these two his Majesty did much rely in Civil matters as he did on the advice of Doctor Neile then Bishop of Durham and Doctor Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells in matters which concerned the Church These last he had called unto his Council in the beginning of April 1627. and finding them to be of as great abilities to advise as sincere affections to his person he advanced the first to the See of Winchester and afterwards to the Archbishoprick of York Anno 1631. the second to the See of London and from thence to Canterbury Anno 1633. 1629. But whilest it was such hot weather at home it grew cold abroad the breach betwixt him and France being closed up at the same time by the prudent and seasonable intervention of the State of Venice And not long after he concluded a Peace also with the King of Spain all things being left on both sides in the same condition in which they were before the war but that the Spaniard did ingage that he would make use of all his Interest with the Emperour for restoring the Prince Elector Paâ—â—â—ine to his lost Estate And now the King having thrown away his Crutches which had as often deceived him as he trusted to them he began to stand on his own legs and in short time became more considerable in the eyes of the world then any of his Predecessors The Spaniard sent hither yearly in English Bottoms no lesse then six hundred thousand Crowns in Bullion for the use of his Army in the Netherlands redounding very much to the Kings benefit in the coinage and no lesse to the profit of the Merchants also most of the money being returned into Flanders in Leather Cloth Lead Tinne and other the manufactures and Native Commodities of this Kingdome The Dutch and Easterlings looke upon London as the safest Bank not onely to lodge but increase their Treasure so that in short time the greatest part of the Trade of Christendom was driven up the Thames 1630. To make him yet more estimable in the sight of his People God blest him with a Son the presumptive Heir of his Dominions on the twenty ninth of May Anno 1630. and seconded that blessing with the birth of a Daughter on the fourth of November in the next year after as afterwards with a plentifull issue of both Sexes 1633. Nor did he meet with any check in his Prosperity till the year 1633. at what time the Coles of Faction and Sedition which seemed for some years to have been raked up in the ashes of contentment kindled the next combustible matter and brake forth again to the inflaming of both Kingdoms Scotland burneth first and takes fire on this occasion In the minority of King James the Lands of all Cathedrall Churches and Religious Houses which had been setled on the Crown by Act of Parliament were shared amongst the Lords and great men of that Kingdome by the connivence of the Earl of Murray and some other of the Regents to make them sure unto the side And they being thus possessed of the said Lands with the Regalities and Tithes belonging to those Ecclesiasticall Corporations Lorded it with pride and insolence enough iâ— their severall Territories holding the Clergy to small stipends and the poor Paisant under a miserable vassalage and subjection to them King Charles ingaged in War at his first coming to the Crown and having little aid from thence for the maintenance of it by the advice of his Council of that Kingdome was put upon a course of resuming those Lands Tithes and Regalities into his own hands to which the present Occupants could pretend no other Title then the unjust usurpation of their Ancestors This he endeavoured first by an Act of Revocation but that course not being like to speed he followed it in the way of a legal processe which drew on the Commission for surrendering of Superiorities and Tithes to be retaken from the King on such conditions as might bring some profit to the Crowne some Augmentation to the Clergy and far more ease and benefit to the common people But these proud Scots chuse rather to expose their Countrey to the danger of a publick Ruine then to part with any of that power it might be called a Tyranny rather which they had exercised on their Vassals as they commonly called them and thereupon conspired together to oppose the King in any thing that should be offered in the following Parliament which had relation to the Church or to Church-affaires But because Religion and the care thereof is commonly the best bait to catch the vulgar they must find out some other means to divert the King from the prosecuting of that Commission then the consideration of their own personall and private interesse and they found means to do it on another occasion which was briefly this King James from his first coming to this Crown had a design to bring the Kirk of Scotland to an uniformity with the Church of England both in government and forms of worship And he proceeded so far as to settle Episcopacy amongst them naming thirteen new Bishops for so many Episcopal Sees as had been anciently in that Church three of which received Consecration from the Bishops of England and conferred it on the rest of their Brethren at their coming home Which Bishops he armed also with the power of an High Commission the better to keep down the insolent and domineering Spirit of the Presbyterians In order to the other he procured an Act to be passed
the advice of his Privy Councel dispatcht a command to the Earl of Bristol not to deliver up the Proxie unlesse the businesse of the Palatinate were concluded also The expectation whereof not being answered by Successe a Parliament is summoned to begin on the sixteenth day of February then next following to the end that all things might be governed in this great Affair by the publick Counsel of the Kingdom Not long after the beginning whereof the Duke declared before both Houses more to the disadvantage of the Spaniard then there was just ground for how unhandsomely they had dealt with the Prince when he was in Spain how they had fed him with delaies what indignities they had put upon him and finally had sent him back not onely without the Palatinate but without a Wife leaving it to their prudent Consideration what course to follow It was thereupon voted by both Houses that his Majesty should be desired to break off all Treaties with the King of Spain and to engage himself in a war against him for the recovery of the Palatinate not otherwise to be obtained And that they might come the better to the end they aimed at they addresse themselves unto the Prince whom they assured that they would stand to him in that War to the very last expence of their lives and fortunes and he accordingly being further set on by the Duke became their instrument to perswade his Father to hearken to the Common Votes and desires of his Subjects which the King prest by their continuall importunities did at the last assent to But in the conduct of this Businesse the Prince consulted more the Dukes passion and the pleasing of the Commons in Parliament then either his own or the Regall interesse For there is nothing more unsafe for a King of England then to cast himself upon the necessity of calling Parliaments and depending on the purse of the Subject By means whereof he makes himself obnoxious to the Humour of any prevailing Member in the House of Commons and becomes lesse in Reputation both at home and abroad The Commons since the time of King James have seldome parted with a peny but they have paid themselves well for it out of the prerogative And this appeared by their proceedings in this very Parliament For though they had ingaged the King in a War with Spain and granted him three Subsidies and three Fifteens toward the beginning of that War yet would they not suffer that grant to passe into an Act of Parliament till the King had yielded to another against Concealments Insomuch as it was affirmed by Justice Dodderidge at the next Publick Assizes held in Oxford that the King by passing that Act had bought those Subsidies and Fifteens at ten years purchase Nor dealt they otherwise with this Prince then they did with his Father those very Commons who had ingaged him in the Warre and bound themselves to make good that ingagement with their lives and fortunes most shamefully deserting him in the first Parliament of his Reign and after working more and more upon his necessities till they had robbed him of the richest Jewels in the Regal Diadem 1624. But to proceed the Treaty with Spain being like to come to a Rupture it was judged necessary to counterballance the Power of that King by negotiating a Match with the Princesse Henrietta Maria the youngest Daughter of France first set on foot by the Mediation of the Earl of Holland who found that Court inclinable thereunto and afterwards concluded at the coming over of the Earl of Carlile joyned in Commission to that purpose It was reported that when she was told that the Prince of Wales had been at the Court and was gone for Spain she Answered that if he went to Spain for a Wife he might have had one nearer hand and saved himself a great part of the trouble And I have read that receiving at one time two Letters from England the one from King James and the other from the Prince she put that from King James into her Cabinet and that from Prince Charles into her Bosom Of which King James being told he was exceedingly pleased with it saying that he took it for a very good Omen that she should preserve his Name in her Memory and lodge Charles in her heart 1625. During these preparations for War and Marriage King James departed this life at Theobalds on Sunday the twenty seventh of March Anno 1625. Immediately upon whose death Prince Charles was proclaimed at the Court-Gates to be King of Great Britain France and Ireland c. The like done presently after at London and by degrees in all the other Cities and Towns of the Kingdom with infinite rejoycings and Acclamations of the People The Funeralls of the deceased King were celebrated on the seventh of May his body being brought from Somerset-House with great Magnificence to Saint Peters Church in Westminster where he was interred the King himself being principall Mourner Which though it were contrary to the Custome of his Predecessours yet he chose rather to expresse his Piety in attending the dead body of his Father to the Funerall Pile then to stand upon any such old Niceties and points of State The Funerall being past he thought it was time for him to quicken the coming over of his dearest Consort to whom he had been married on the Sunday before at the Church of Nostre-Dame in Paris the Duke of Chevereux a Prince of the House of Guise from which House King Charles derived himself by the Lady Mary of Lorain Wife to James the fifth espousing the Princesse in his Name On Trinity Sunday late at night she was brought by a Royall Fleet of Ships from Bulloign to Dover which being signified to the King who was then at Canterbury he went to her betimes the next morning and received her with great expressions of Affection professing that he would be no longer Master of himself then whilest he was a Servant to her The same day He brought her to Canterbury where he gave himself up to those Embraces to which from that time he confined himself with such a Conjugal Chastity that on the day before his death he commanded his Daughter the Princesse Elizabeth to tell her Mother that his thoughts had never straied from her and that his love should be the same to the last On the Thursday after being the sixteenth of June they came from Gravesend to White-hall in their Royal Barges attended with an infinite number of Lords Ladies and other people who could get Boats to wait upon them the Ordnance from the Ships which were then preparing for the Wars those from the Merchants Ships and the Tower of London thundering her Welcome as she past But in the heat of these Solemnities and entertainments the King forgat not the main Concernments of himself and the Kingdome and to that end began his first Parliament on Saturday the eighteenth of June which fell out not unseasonably that
the French Lords might see with what Royall Magnificence he was attended by the Peers Prelates and other Officers of State besides his own Domestick Servants to the Parliament-House At their first meeting he put them in mind of the War in which they had ingaged his Father and of the promise they had made to stand to him in it with their lives and fortunes that both his Land and Sea-forces were now in readinesse to set forwards and that there wanted nothing but a present supply of money to quicken and expedite the Affair In Answer whereunto the Commons past a Bill of two Subsidies onely so short of the excessive Charge which the maintenance of so great a Fleet and Army required at their hands that being distributed amongst the Officers Souldiers and Mariners it would scarce have served for Advance-money to send them going Which notwithstanding the King very graciously accepted of it taking it as an Ernest of their good Affections in reference to the greater Summes which were to follow But the Plague growing hot in London the Parliament on the eleventh day of July was adjourned to Oxford there to be held on the first of August at what time the King put them in mind again of the necessity of setting forward his Fleet and that the eyes of his Confederates were fixt upon it But the Commons had other fish to fry and began to quarrel at the greatnesse of the Duke of Buckingham whom in the last Parliament of King James they had idolized above all men living But he had served their turn already and now they meant to serve their own This was the first Assault which the Commons made upon this King though not directly on his Person wounding him through the sides of his principal Minister they were so well verst in the Arts of a Parliament-war as to take in the Out-works first that so the Fort it self might lie the more open to continuall Batteries Concerning which and the sad consequents thereof take here the words of a Letter written to the King from an unknown Person These men saith he either cannot or will not remember that never any Noble man in favour with his Soveraign was questioned in Parliament except by the King himself in case of Treason or unlesse it were in the Nonage and tumultuous time of Richard the 2. Henry the 6. or Edward the 6. which hapned to the destruction both of the King and Kingdome And that not to exceed our own and Fathers Memories in King Henry the eight's time Wolsies exorbitant power and pride and Cromwels contempt of the Nobility and the Lawes were not yet permitted to be discussed in Parliament though they were most odious and grievous to all the Kingdome And that Leicesters undeserved favour and faults Hattons insufficiency and Rawleighs insolence far exceeded what yet hath been though most falsly objected against the Duke yet no Lawyer durst abet nor any man else begin any invectives against them in Parliament And then he addes some other passages intervening that it behoves his Majesty to uphold the Duke against them who if he be but decourted it will be the corner-stone on which the demolishing of his Monarchy will be builded For if they prevaile with this they have hatched a thousand other Demands to pull the feathers of the Royalty they will appoint him Counsellours Servants Alliances Limits of his Expenses Accompts of his Revenue chiefly if they can as they mainly desire they will now dazle him in the beginning of his Reign How true a Prophet this man proved the event hath shewn and the King saw it well enough and therefore since he could not divert them from that pursuit he dissolved the Parliament by whose neglect I will not call it a perversenesse the Fleet went out late and returned unprosperously In which conjuncture if he had clapt up a Peace with Spain which the Spaniards had as much reason to accept as he to offer he might have prevented the following Rupture betwixt him and France and freed himself from the necessity of calling Parliaments till he had no necessity for a Parliament to work upon and then he might have found them as pliant to him as he could reasonably require But he resolves to try his fortune in another as soon as he had performed the Solemnities of his Coronation which was celebrated on the second of February commonly called Candlemas Day then next ensuing In the externall Pomp whereof he omitted his triumphant riding thorow the City from the Tower to White-Hall the Charge whereof would have stood him in sixty thousand pounds as some compute it and he had then more necessary occasions to expend his money then Money to answer those occasions In the sacred part of it there was nothing altered but the adding of a clause to one of the Prayers which had been pretermitted since the time of King Henry the sixth and is this that followeth viz. Let him obtain favour for the People like Aaron in the Tabernacle Elisha in the Waters Zacharias in the Temple give him Peters key of Discipline Pauls Doctrine Which clause had been omitted in time of Popery as intimating more Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction to be given to our Kings then the Popes allowed of and for the same reason was now quarrel'd by the Puritan Faction As for the Coronation-oath it was the same which had been taken by his Predecessors as appears by the Records of Exchequer Not made more advantageous to the King and lesse beneficiall to the People by the late Archbishop though both the long Parliament in the year 1642. and the lewd Pamphlets of that time did object the contrary The Coronation being passed over he began his second Parliament on the sixth of the same moneth in which he sped no better then he did in his first The Commons voted some Subsidies to be granted to him but they never past them into Act that bait being onely laid before him to tempt him to give over the Duke to their pride and fury against whom they had framed a large impeachment ushered in by Sir Dudley Diggs prosecuted with six bitter invectives made by the best Speakers and most learned Lawyers of that House and finally concluded by Sir John Eliot who brought up the Rear 1626. But the King easily perceived that his Royal Father and himself were as much concerned in it as the Duke their favours being made his crimes and their authority in bestowing Offices and Honours on whom they pleased not obscurely questioned But the storm went higher then the Duke some part of it falling down-right on the King himself it being openly affirmed in the House of Commons by one Mr. Coke a true chip of the old block that it was as good to die by a forraign Enemy as to be destroyed at home Of this reproach tending so much to the dishonour of his Government he complained in a Speech before both Houses but without any remedy And being further incensed by the
noise of a Declaration which they had then upon the Anvil he dissolved the Parliament on the eighteenth day of June then following No sooner was he freed from this but the necessity of his Affairs involved him in another Embroylment The French Priests and Domesticks of that Nation which came into England with the Queen were grown so insolent and had put so many affronts upon him that he was forced to send them home in which he did no more then what the French King had done before him in sending back all the Spanish Courtiers which his Queen brought with her But the French King not looking on his own example and knowing on what ill termes the King stood both at home and abroad first seized on all the Merchants ships which lay on the River of Burdeaux and then brake out into open war So that the King was fain to make use of those Forces against the French which were designed to have been used against the Spaniard and to comply with the desires of the Rochelers who humbly sued for his protection and Defence But the Fleet not going out till after Michaelmas found greater opposition at the Sea then they feared from the Land being encountred with strong Tempests and thereby necessitated to return without doing any thing but onely shewing the Kings good-will and readinesse toward their assistance 1627. But the next yeare this design was followed with greater vigour by the Duke of Buckingham who hoped thereby to make himself of some consideration in the eyes of the people The gaining of the Isle of Re which lay before the Town of Rochel and imbarred their Trade was the matter aimed at and he had strength enough both for Sea and Land to have done the work if he had not followed it more like a Courtier then a Souldier suffering himself to be complemented out of the taking of their chief Fort when it was almost at his mercy and standing upon points of Honour in facing those Forces which were sent from the French King to raise the siege when he might have made a safe retreat unto his ships without losse or danger In the mean time his Majesty neither neglected his Affairs at home nor his Friends abroad At home he found the Puritan faction to be much increased by the remisnesse of the goverment of Archbishop Abbot whom therefore he suspended from all his Metropoliticall Jurisdiction and confined him to his House at Ford in Kent committing the exercise thereof to the Bishops of London Durham Rochester Oxford Bath and Wells by Letters Patents bearing date the 9. day of October Anno 1627. Abroad he found the Princes of Germany wormed out of their Estates one after another by the Emperours Forces the King of Denmark whom they had made the Head of their League being driven out of the Countrey by Count Tilly and hardly able to defend his own Dominions No Prince so fit for the prosecution of that cause as Gustavus Adolphus King of Sweden whom therefore he elects into the Noble Order of the Garter and solemnly invests him with it in the midst of his Army then lying at the Siege of Darsaw a Town of Pomerella belonging to the Crown of Poland on Sunday the twenty third of October of the same year also At which time he laid the grounds of that Confederacy which being seconded by the French the States of the Vnited Provinces and the distressed Princes of the Empire brought that King into Germany where he gave the first great check to the Emperours fortunes and had restored the Prince Elector Palatine to his ancient Patrimony if he had not fallen unfortunately at the Battell of Lutzen 1628. Being thus ingaged and embroiled he gave a beginning to his third Parliament on the seventeenth of March and freely declares to them the necessities under which he lay in Answer whereunto the Commons voted five Subsidies but meant he should pay dearly for them before he had them Such grievances as they thought fit to insist upon were cast into the mold of a petition by them called a Petition of Right which if the King granted he must lose his prerogative if he denied it he must lose all hopes of their supply in his great extremities The consideration of which last induced him to yield to their desires and confirm that petition by Act of Parliament the Prerogative never so much descending from Perch to popular Lure as by that concession But though this Act of grace might have given satisfacton even to supererogation as one well observeth yet the Commons were not so contented but were preparing a Remonstance to take away his Right of Tonnage and Poundage as disclaimed by him in that Act which coming to the Kings knowledge on the twenty sixth of June he adjourns the Parliament till the twentieth day of October then next ensuing In the mean time the Duke prepares for the relief of Rochel both by Sea and Land and being ready to set sail was suddenly cut off at Ports-muth by the hand of one John Felton a discontented Officer of the last years Army alledging no other reason for that bloody act but that the Duke had been declared an Enemy to the Common-wealth in a Remonstrance tendred to the King in the former Session But such was the constancy of the Kings temper and the known evenness of his spirit that this sad Accident made little or no stop in the proceedings of the Fleet which at the last set forwards under the command of the Earl of Lindsey who found the Haven of Rochel so strongly barred that it was utterly impossible for his Ships to force their way though it was gallantly attempted and give relief to the besieged who thereupon set open their Gates and received their King into their Town without more delay To smooth his way to the next Session of Parliament adjourned again till the twentieth of January Arch-bishop Abbot is admitted to kisse his hand by whom he is commanded not to fail of his attendance at the Councel table Dr. Barnaby Potter a through-paced Calvinian is made Bishop of Carlisle and Mr. Mountagues book called Appello Caesarem for which he had been questioned and molested in the beginning of the Kings first Parliament must be supprest and called in by Proclamation But this little edified with the faction in the house of Commons who not onely took upon them the reforming of the Church and State but called the Customers in question for levying Tonnage and Poundage not then granted nor ever likely to be granted as it had been formerly by Act of Parliament and distraining such Merchants goods as refused to pay it And in this point they went so high that fearing they should be dissolved before they had vented their own passions in that particular upon the second day of March they lockt the Doors of the Parliament-house kept the key thereof in one of their pockets and held the Speaker by strong hand in his Chair till they had