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
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
following And it was intimated so long before-hand for these two reasons First that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland might in the mean time hold a Parliament in that Kingdome which he did and managed so much to the Kings advantage that an Army of 8000 Horse and Foot was speedily raised and money granted by the Parliament to keep them in pay and furnish them with Ammunition Arms and all other necessaries Secondly that by the Reputation of a following Parliament he might be the better enabled to borrow money for the carrying on of the war in case the Parliament should fail him as it after did For being come together at the time appointed instead of Acting any thing in order to his Majesties service they were at the point of passing a Vote for blasting his war against the Scots To prevent which his Majesty was forced to dissolve them on the fifth of May the Convocation still continuing who granted him a Benevolence of foure shillings in the pound for all their Ecclesiasticall promotions to be paid six years together then next ensuing The Members of the dissolved Parliament inflamed the people in all parts of the Kingdome with such discontentments which actually brake out in Southwark into open sedition not pacified without much danger and the executing of the principal Leader In the middle of which Distempers his Majesty was blest with a third Son born on the eight of July Christned by the name of Henry and by his Majesties command called Duke of Glocester 1640. To welcome this young Prince into the world the Scots put themselves into Armes again and backt by a strong faction here thought that they could not do enough by standing on their defence at home unlesse they entred England also as they did accordingly But they took not his Majesty unprovided who had raised another gallant Army under the command of the Earl of Northumberland as chief Generall and the Earl of Strafford as the chief Commander under him himself with all speed posting towards the North as soon as the News of this invasion had been brought unto him But scarce was he well setled in the head of his Army but he was followed by a Petition from some Lords of England conformable in the main points of it to a Declaration of the Scots which they called the Intention of their Army So that the Cloud which gathered behind him in the South threatned more danger to him then the Northern Tempest which blew directly in his teeth Sailing thus between Scylla and Charybdis it concerned him to steer as even a course as he could and thereupon he summoned the great Councel of his Peers to attend him at York that doing nothing in this great businesse without their advice he might give himself the better hopes of their assistance as his occasions should require By their advice Commissioners are appointed to treat with the Scots to understand their Grievances the reasonablenesse or unreasonablenesse of their Demands and finally to make up the breach by such an Accommodation as might conduce to the peace and happinesse of both Kingdomes and his Majesties honour In the mean time he calls a Parliament to begin at Westminster the third day of November then next following which if it had been held at York as lying nearest to the danger and Scene of action might not have proved so fatall and destructive to him as it after did In the beginning of this Parliament he cast himself on the love and loyalty of his English Subjects in which he found himself deceived of his expectation For the first thing they did was to deprive him of the Counsels of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Archbishop of Canterbury and thereby to terrifie all others from adhering to him in the times of his greatest need These they impeacht of High Treason removed them from the House of Peers and committed them to the Tower of London where the Archbishop staid four years before any particular charge or any prosecution upon that charge was brought against him But with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland they made quicker work inviting the People of all the three Kingdomes to bring them in such matter as they had or could devise against him and having made all things ready for a publick Tryal they brought him to the Bar before the Peers sitting in VVestminster-Hall on the sixth of April then next following but he so rationally pleaded in his own behalf and so fully satisfyed all objections which were made against him that the Commons were fain to desist from the Course which they had begun and to proceed against him in a Bill of Attainder For the better passing whereof the Commons framed a Protestation on the third of May in many things not unlike the Scotish Covenant before mentioned by which they bound themselves among other things to maintain and defend the Power and Priviledges of Parliament the lawfull Rights and Liberties of the Subject to endeavour to bring to condigne punishment all such as shall either by Force Practice Plots Counsels and Conspiracies or otherwise do any thing to the contrary amongst which they reckon the Earl of Strafford to be one and finally to stand unto one another and to every other person whatsoever in any thing he shall do in pursuance of the said Protestation Which Protestation being first taken by themselves was the next day taken also by the House of Peers and not long after obtruded on all the rest of the Kingdom But not finding this sufficient to effect their purpose they first forced the Lords by Tumults and afterwards the King by their importunities to passe that unhappy Bill of Attainder which having obtained they brought him to the Scaffold on Tower-Hill on the thirteenth of May where with as much Christian confidence and magnanimity as could be exprest by flesh and blood he delivered up his neck to the Executioner In order to this great work which they knew the Scots much laboured for and had declared so much in a Pamphlet called The intentions of their Army at their first coming into England the leading men in the house of Commons held a strict correspondency with the Scots Commissioners then residing in London and voted no lesse then three hundred thousand pounds by the name of a brotherly Assistance to be given to the Scots in generall under colour of repairing such damages as they had sustained in the time of this breach but in plain truth to bind them fast unto themselves And having made sure work with them they deprived the King by little and little of almost all the ancient and undoubted prerogatives which of right belonged unto his Crown The power of calling Parliaments in case of his neglect or refusall is put into the hands of Sheriffs and Constables his right to Tonnage and Poundage must be disclaimed by Act of Parliament the Bill of the Attainder of the Earl of Strafford and that for the continuance of this Parliament during
the pleasure of the Houses are extorted by tumults And by the terrour of the like the Act for Knighthood is repealed and the imposition for ship-money condemned as an illegall Tax and abolished also The like Acts passed against the office of the Clerk of the Market the Court of Stanneries his propriety in the making of Gun-powder the authority of the Council-Table the Courts of Star-Chamber and High Commission the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiasticall Courts as also the Presidiall Courts held for a long time in York and the Marches of VVales And finally that he might lose both his strength in Parliament and his power with the People they extorted the passing of two Acts the one for taking away the Bishops Votes and place in the House of Peers the other for disclaiming of his power in pressing Souldiers enjoyed by all his Predecessors for defence of his Person and the Realm And that they might the better awe the King to their Concessions the Army of the Scots must be maintained with pay and plunder till there was almost nothing left for them to crave or the King to grant But being at the last sent home his Majesty followed not long after to settle his affairs in that broken kingdom where to oblige that Nation to him he confirmed not onely all his former concessions by Act of Parliament but all such things also as had been acted by them in their Assembly held at Glasco And more then so he parted with so much of his Eoyall Prerogative invaded usurped by them in the late Confusions that he had allmost nothing left remaining to him but the empty title the having of a Sword carried before him and some other outward pomps of Court which signifie just nothing when the power is gone This good successe of the Scots encouraged the Irish Papists to attempt the like and to attempt it in the same way as the Scots had gone that is to say by seizing his Towns Forts and Castles putting themselves into the body of an Army banishing or imprisoning all such as oppose their practises and then petitioning the King for a publick Exercise of their Religion The 23. of October Anno 1641. was the day designed for the seizing of the City and Castle of Dublin and many places of great importance in the Kingdom But failing in the main design which had been discovered the night before by one Ocanelle they break out into open arms dealing no better with the Protestants there then the Covenanters had done with the Royall party in Scotland Of this Rebellion for it must be called a Rebellion in the Irish though not in the Scots the King gives present notice to his Houses of Parliament requiring their counsel and assistance for the extinguishing of that flame before it had wasted and consumed that Kingdome But neither the necessity of the Protestants there nor the Kings importunity here could perswade them to levie one man towards the suppression of those Rebels till the King had disclaimed his power of pressing souldiers in an Act of Parliament and thereby laid himself open to such acts of violence as were then hammering against him Which having done they put an army of Scots their most assured Friends into the Northern parts of Ireland delivering up into their hands the strong Town and Port of Carickfergus one of the chief keys of that Kingdom and afterwards sent a small body of English to preserve the South which English forces having done notable service there against the Rebels were kept so short both in respect of pay and other necessaries by the Houses of Parliament who had made use of the mony raised for the relief of Ireland to maintain a War against their King that they were forced to come to a Cessation and cheerefully returned home again to assist the King in that just War which he had undertaken for his own defence The ground and occasion of which War we are next to shew At such time as he was in Scotland and expostulated with some of the chiefs among them touching their coming into England in an hostile manner he found that some who were now leading men in the Houses of Parliament had invited them to it And having furnished himself with some proofs for it he commanded his Attorney Generall to impeach some of them of high Treason that is to say the L. Kimbolton a Member of the House of Peers Mr. Hollis Sir Arthur Haslerig Mr. Hambden Mr. Pym and Mr. Strode of the House of Commons But sending his Serjeant at Arms to arrest their persons there came a countermand from the House of Commons by which the Serjeant was deterred from doing his office and the Members had the opportunity of putting themselves into the Sanctuary of the City The next day being the 4. of January his Majesty being no otherwise attended then with his ordinary Guard went to the House of Commons to demand the five Members of that House that he might proceed against them in a way of justice but his intention was discovered and the birds flown before his coming This was voted by the Commons for such an inexpiable breach of priviledge that neither the Kings qualifying of that Action nor his desisting from the prosecution of that impeachment nor any thing that he could either say or do would give satisfaction Nothing must satisfie their jealousies and secure their fears but the putting of the tower of London into their hands together with the command of the Royal Navie as also all the Forts Castles and the Train-bands of the Kingdome all comprehended under the name of the Militia which if his Majesty would fling after all the rest they would continue his most loyall subjects On this the King demurs a while but having shipt the Queen for Holland and got the Prince into his own power he becomes more resolute and stoutly holds on the denyal Finding the Members too strong for him and London by reason of the continuall Tumults to be a dangerous neighbour to him he withdraws to York that being in a place of safety he might the better find a way to compose those differences which now began to embroil the kingdome At Hull he had a Magazine of arms and ammunition provided for the late intended war against the Scots and laid up there when the occasion of that War was taken away Of this Town he intended to possesse himself and to make use of his own Arms and Ammunition for his own preservation but coming before the gates of the Towne he was denyed entrance by Sir John Hotham who by the appointment of the House of Commons had took charge of that place The Gentry of York-shire who had petitioned the King to secure that Magazin became hereby more firmly united to him The like had been done also by the Yeomandry and those of the inferiour sort if his proceedings had not been undermined by the Committee of four Gentlemen all Members of the House and all of them