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Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By Lord Nugent. Two
vols. 8vo. London: 1831.
We have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly with that kind of
pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord Nugent would have been
able to collect, from family papers and local traditions, much new and
interesting information respecting the life and character of the renowned leader
of the Long Parliament, the first of those great English commoners whose plain
addition of Mister has, to our ears, a more majestic sound than the proudest of
the feudal titles. In this hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly not
from any want of zeal or diligence on the part of the noble biographer. Even at
Hampden, there are, it seems, no important papers relating to the most
illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable memorials of
him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend Sir John Eliot. Lord
Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with
some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and
probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild
penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of
the mouth, sufficiently guarantee the likeness. We shall probably make some
extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord
Nugent has been able to procure respecting the private pursuits of the great man
whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not extravagant veneration.
The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity. His history, more
particularly from the year 1640 to his death, is the history of England. These
Memoirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such,
they well deserve to be attentively perused. They contain some curious facts
which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative, many judicious remarks,
and much eloquent declamation.
We are not sure that even the want of information respecting the private
character of Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as strikingly
characteristic as any which the most minute chronicler, O'Meara, Mrs. Thrale, or
Boswell himself, ever recorded concerning their heroes. The celebrated Puritan
leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor
shunned greatness, who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of
duty. During more than forty years he was known to his country neighbors as a
gentleman of cultivated mind, of high principles, of polished address, happy in
his family, and active in the discharge of local duties; and to political men as
an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parliament, not eager to display
his talents, stanch to his party and attentive to the interests of his
constituents. A great and terrible crisis came. A direct attack was made by an
arbitrary government on a sacred right of Englishmen, on a right which was the
chief security for all their other rights. The nation looked round for a
defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire Esquire placed
himself at the head of his countrymen, and right before the face and across the
path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service,
perilous, arduous, delicate, was required, and to every service the intellect
and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a
debater of the first order, a most dexterous manager of the House of Commons, a
negotiator, a soldier. He governed a fierce and turbulent assembly, abounding in
able men, as easily as he had governed his family. He showed himself as
competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty sessions.
We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and,
at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned, so willingly
contracting itself to the humblest duties, so easily expanding itself to the
highest, so contented in repose, so powerful in action. Almost every part of
this virtuous and blameless life which is not hidden from us in modest privacy
is a precious and splendid portion of our national history. Had the private
conduct of Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have
been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest
proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had there been even
any weak part in the character of Hampden, had his manners been in any respect
open to ridicule, we may be sure that no mercy would have been shown to him by
the writers of Charles's faction. Those writers have carefully preserved every
little circumstance which could tend to make their opponents odious or
contemptible. They have made themselves merry with the cant of injudicious
zealots. They have told us that Pym broke down in speech, that Ireton had his
nose pulled by Hollis, that the Earl of Northumberland cudgeled Henry Martin,
that St. John's manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell
had a red nose. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the scurrilous Denham could
venture to throw the slightest imputation on the morals or the manners of
Hampden. What was the opinion entertained respecting him by the best men of his
time we learn from Baxter. That eminent person, eminent not only for his piety
and his fervid devotional eloquence, but for his moderation, his knowledge of
political affairs, and his skill in judging of characters, declared in the
Saint's Rest, that one of the pleasures which he hoped to enjoy in heaven was
the society of Hampden. In the editions printed after the Restoration, the name
of Hampden was omitted. "But I must tell the reader," says Baxter, "that I did
blot it out, not as changing my opinion of the person. . . . Mr. John Hampden
was one that friends and enemies acknowledged to be most eminent for prudence,
piety, and peaceable counsels, having the most universal praise of any gentleman
that I remember of that age. I remember a moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far
from him, but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, that if he might
choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden." We
cannot but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man who, after passing
through the most severe temptations by which human virtue can be tried, after
acting a most conspicuous part in a revolution and a civil war, could yet
deserve such praise as this from such authority. Yet the want of memorials is
surely the best proof that hatred itself could find no blemish on his memory.
The story of his early life is soon told. He was the head of a family which had
been settled in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. Part of the estate which he
inherited had been bestowed by Edward the Confessor on Baldwyn de Hampden, whose
name seems to indicate that he was one of the Norman favorites of the last Saxon
king. During the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, the Hampdens
adhered to the party of the Red Rose, and were, consequently, persecuted by
Edward the Fourth, and favored by Henry the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the
family was great and flourishing. Griffith Hampden, high sheriff of
Buckinghamshire, entertained Elizabeth with great magnificence at his seat. His
son, William Hampden, sate in the Parliament which that Queen summoned in the
year 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell, aunt of the celebrated man who
afterwards governed the British islands with more than regal power; and from
this marriage sprang John Hampden.
He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father died, and left him heir to a very large
estate. After passing some years at the grammar school of Thame, young Hampden
was sent, at fifteen, to Magdalen College, in the University of Oxford. At
nineteen, he was admitted a student of the Inner Temple, where he made himself
master of the principles of the English law. In 1619 he married Elizabeth
Symeon, a lady to whom he appears to have been fondly attached. In the following
year he was returned to parliament by a borough which has in our time obtained a
miserable celebrity, the borough of Grampound.
Of his private life during his early years little is known beyond what Clarendon
has told us. "In his entrance into the world," says that great historian, "he
indulged himself in all the license in sports, and exercises, and company, which
were used by men of the most jolly conversation." A remarkable change, however,
passed on his character. "On a sudden," says Clarendon, "from a life of great
pleasure and license, he retired to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, to a
more reserved and melancholy society." It is probable that this change took
place when Hampden was about twenty-five years old. At that age he was united to
a woman whom he loved and esteemed. At that age he entered into political life.
A mind so happily constituted as his would naturally, under such circumstances,
relinquish the pleasures of dissipation for domestic enjoyments and public
duties.
His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself in its
mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners
of an accomplished courtier. Even after the change in his habits, "he
preserved," says Clarendon, "his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and,
above all, a flowing courtesy to all men." These qualities distinguished him
from most of the members of his sect and his party, and, in the great crisis in
which he afterwards took a principal part, were of scarcely less service to the
country than his keen sagacity and his dauntless courage.
In January 1621, Hampden took his seat in the House of Commons. His mother was
exceedingly desirous that her son should obtain a peerage. His family, his
possessions, and his personal accomplishments were such as would, in any age,
have justified him in pretending to that honor. But in the reign of James the
First there was one short cut to the House of Lords. It was but to ask, to pay,
and to have. The sale of titles was carried on as openly as the sale of boroughs
in our times. Hampden turned away with contempt from the degrading honors with
which his family desired to see him invested, and attached himself to the party
which was in opposition to the court.
It was about this time, as Lord Nugent has justly remarked, that parliamentary
opposition began to take a regular form. From a very early age, the English had
enjoyed a far larger share of liberty than had fallen to the lot of any
neighboring people. How it chanced that a country conquered and enslaved by
invaders, a country of which the soil had been portioned out among foreign
adventurers and of which the laws were written in a foreign tongue, a country
given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have
become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of
surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of
history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman
conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the
Conquest, the first House of Commons met. Froissart tells us, what indeed his
whole narrative sufficiently proves, that of all the nations of the fourteenth
century, the English were the least disposed to endure oppression. "C'est le
plus perilleux peuple qui soit au monde, et plus outrageux et orgueilleux." The
good canon probably did not perceive that all the prosperity and internal peace
which this dangerous people enjoyed were the fruits of the spirit which he
designates as proud and outrageous. He has, however, borne ample testimony to
the effect, though he was not sagacious enough to trace it to its cause. "En le
royaume d'Angleterre," says he, "toutes gens, laboureurs et marchands, ont
appris de vivre en paix, et a mener leurs marchandises paisiblement, et les
laboureurs labourer." In the fifteenth century, though England was convulsed by
the struggle between the two branches of the royal family, the physical and
moral condition of the people continued to improve. Villenage almost wholly
disappeared. The calamities of war were little felt, except by those who bore
arms. The oppressions of the government were little felt, except by the
aristocracy. The institutions of the country when compared with the institutions
of the neighboring kingdoms, seem to have been not undeserving of the praises of
Fortescue. The government of Edward the Fourth, though we call it cruel and
arbitrary, was humane and liberal when compared with that of Lewis the Eleventh,
or that of Charles the Bold. Comines, who had lived amidst the wealthy cities of
Flanders, and who had visited Florence and Venice, had never seen a people so
well governed as the English. "Or selon mon advis," says he, "entre toutes les
seigneuries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, ou la chose publique est mieulx
traitee, et ou regne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou il n'y a nuls
edifices abbatus ny demolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et
le malheur sur ceulx qui font la guerre."
About the close of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth century,
a great portion of the influence which the aristocracy had possessed passed to
the crown. No English king has ever enjoyed such absolute power as Henry the
Eighth. But while the royal prerogatives were acquiring strength at the expense
of the nobility, two great revolutions took place, destined to be the parents of
many revolutions, the invention of Printing, and the reformation of the Church.
The immediate effect of the Reformation in England was by no means favorable to
political liberty. The authority which had been exercised by the Popes was
transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidable powers which had often
served to check each other were united in a single despot. If the system on
which the founders of the Church of England acted could have been permanent, the
Reformation would have been, in a political sense, the greatest curse that ever
fell on our country. But that system carried within it the seeds of its own
death. It was possible to transfer the name of Head of the Church from Clement
to Henry; but it was impossible to transfer to the new establishment the
veneration which the old establishment had inspired. Mankind had not broken one
yoke in pieces only in order to put on another. The supremacy of the Bishop of
Rome had been for ages considered as a fundamental principle of Christianity. It
had for it everything that could make a prejudice deep and strong, venerable
antiquity, high authority, general consent. It had been taught in the first
lessons of the nurse. It was taken for granted in all the exhortations of the
priest. To remove it was to break innumerable associations, and to give a great
and perilous shock to the principles. Yet this prejudice, strong as it was,
could not stand in the great day of the deliverance of the human reason. And it
was not to be expected that the public mind, just after freeing itself by an
unexampled effort, from a bondage which it had endured for ages, would patiently
submit to a tyranny which could plead no ancient title. Rome had at least
prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance, despotism in an upstart
sect, infallibility claimed by guides who acknowledged that they had passed the
greater part of their lives in error, restraints imposed on the liberty of
private judgment at the pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own
proceedings only by asserting the liberty of private judgment, these things
could not long be borne. Those who had pulled down the crucifix could not long
continue to persecute for the surplice. It required no great sagacity to
perceive the inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost all
Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves, who demanded freedom
of conscience, yet refused to grant it, who execrated persecution, yet
persecuted, who urged reason against the authority of one opponent, and
authority against the reasons of another. Bonner acted at least in accordance
with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of
being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.
Thus the system on which the English Princes acted with respect to
ecclesiastical affairs for some time after the Reformation was a system too
obviously unreasonable to be lasting. The public mind moved while the government
moved, but would not stop where the government stopped. The same impulse which
had carried millions away from the Church of Rome continued to carry them
forward in the same direction. As Catholics had become Protestants, Protestants
became Puritans; and the Tudors and Stuarts were as unable to avert the latter
change as the Popes had been to avert the former. The dissenting party increased
and became strong under every kind of discouragement and oppression. They were a
sect. The government persecuted them; and they became an opposition. The old
constitution of England furnished to them the means of resisting the sovereign
without breaking the law. They were the majority of the House of Commons. They
had the power of giving or withholding supplies; and, by a judicious exercise of
this power, they might hope to take from the Church its usurped authority over
the consciences of men, and from the Crown some part of the vast prerogative
which it had recently acquired at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.
The faint beginnings of this memorable contest may be discerned early in the
reign of Elizabeth. The conduct of her last Parliament made it clear that one of
those great revolutions which policy may guide but cannot stop was in progress.
It was on the question of monopolies that the House of Commons gained its first
great victory over the throne. The conduct of the extraordinary woman who then
governed England is an admirable study for politicians who live in unquiet
times. It shows how thoroughly she understood the people whom she ruled, and the
crisis in which she was called to act. What she held she held firmly. What she
gave she gave graciously. She saw that it was necessary to make a concession to
the nation; and she made it not grudgingly, not tardily, not as a matter of
bargain and sale, not, in a word, as Charles the First would have made it, but
promptly and cordially. Before a bill could be framed or an address presented,
she applied a remedy to the evil of which the nation complained. She expressed
in the warmest terms her gratitude to her faithful Commons for detecting abuses
which interested persons had concealed from her. If her successors had inherited
her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might have died of old age, and
James the Second would never have seen St. Germains.
She died; and the kingdom passed to one who was, in his own opinion, the
greatest master of king-craft that ever lived, but who was, in truth, one of
those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening
revolutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom Britain has produced, he was at
once the most harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the
man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to fury, by shaking a
red rag in the air, and by now and then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting,
but too small to injure. The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover
their violent acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic
theories on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His foolish talk
exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans or benevolences would have
done. Yet, in practice, no king ever held his prerogatives less tenaciously. He
neither gave way gracefully to the advancing spirit of liberty nor took vigorous
measures to stop it, but retreated before it with ludicrous haste, blustering
and insulting as he retreated. The English people had been governed during near
a hundred and fifty years by Princes who, whatever might be their frailties or
their vices, had all possessed great force of character, and who, whether
beloved or hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the first time
since the day when the scepter of Henry the Fourth dropped from the hand of his
lethargic grandson, England had a king whom she despised.
The follies and vices of the man increased the contempt which was produced by
the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous gallantries of the Court, the
habits of gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone
sufficient to disgust a people whose manners were beginning to be strongly
tinctured with austerity. But these were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful
kind had been discovered; others were suspected. The strange story of the
Gowries was not forgotten. The ignominious fondness of the King for his minions,
the perjuries, the sorceries, the poisonings, which his chief favorites had
planned within the walls of his palace, the pardon which, in direct violation of
his duty and of his word, he had granted to the mysterious threats of a
murderer, made him an object of loathing to many of his subjects. What opinion
grave and moral persons residing at a distance from the Court entertained
respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. England was no place,
the seventeenth century no time, for Sporus and Locusta.
This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the wretched
Solomon of Whitehall, pedantry, buffoonery, garrulity, low curiosity, the most
contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and education had done their best to
produce a finished specimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward
figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous tremblings, his
slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch accent, were imperfections which might have
been found in the best and greatest man. Their effect, however, was to make
James and his office objects of contempt, and to dissolve those associations
which had been created by the noble bearing of preceding monarchs, and which
were in themselves no inconsiderable fence to royalty.
The sovereign whom James most resembled was, we think, Claudius Caesar. Both had
the same feeble vacillating temper, the same childishness, the same coarseness,
the same poltroonery. Both were men of learning; bath wrote and spoke, not,
indeed, well, but still in a manner in which it seems almost incredible that men
so foolish should have written or spoken.
The follies and indecencies of James are well described in the words which
Suetonius uses respecting Claudius: "Multa talia, etiam privatis deformia, nedum
principi, neque infacundo, neque indocto, immo etiam pertinaciter liberalibus
studiis dedito." The description given by Suetonius of the manner in which the
Roman prince transacted business exactly suits the Briton. "In cognoscendo ac
decernendo mira varietate animi fuit, modo circumspectus et sagax, modo
inconsultus ac praeceps, nonnunquam frivolus amentique similis." Claudius was
ruled successively by two bad women: James successively by two bad men. Even the
description of the person of Claudius, which we find in the ancient memoirs,
might, in many points, serve for that of James. "Ceterum et ingredientem
destituebant poplites minus firmi, et remisse quid vel serio, agentem multa
dehonestabant, risus indecens, ira turpior, spumante rictu, praeterea linguae
titubantia."
The Parliament which James had called soon after his accession had been
refractory. His second Parliament, called in the spring of 1614, had been more
refractory still. It had been dissolved after a session of two months; and
during six years the King had governed without having recourse to the
legislature. During those six years, melancholy and disgraceful events, at home
and abroad, had followed one another in rapid succession; the divorce of Lady
Essex, the murder of Overbury, the elevation of Villiers, the pardon of
Somerset, the disgrace of Coke, the execution of Raleigh, the battle of Prague,
the invasion of the Palatinate by Spinola, the ignominious flight of the
son-in-law of the English king, the depression of the Protestant interest all
over the Continent. All the extraordinary modes by which James could venture to
raise money had been tried. His necessities were greater than ever; and he was
compelled to summon the Parliament in which Hampden first appeared as a public
man.
This Parliament lasted about twelve months. During that time it visited with
deserved punishment several of those who, during the preceding six years, had
enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping
patentees who had purchased of the favorite the power of robbing the nation, was
fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of
Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even
Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave
England. A greater name is to be added to the ignominious list. By this
Parliament was brought to justice that illustrious philosopher whose memory
genius has half redeemed from the infamy due to servility, to ingratitude, and
to corruption.
After redressing internal grievances, the Commons proceeded to take into
consideration the state of Europe. The King flew into a rage with them for
meddling with such matters, and, with characteristic judgment, drew them into a
controversy about the origin of their House and of its privileges. When he found
that he could not convince them, he dissolved them in a passion, and sent some
of the leaders of the Opposition to ruminate on his logic in prison.
During the time which elapsed between this dissolution and the meeting of the
next Parliament, took place the celebrated negotiation respecting the Infanta.
The would-be despot was unmercifully browbeaten. The would-be Solomon was
ridiculously over-reached. Steenie, in spite of the begging and sobbing of his
dear dad and gossip, carried off baby Charles in triumph to Madrid. The sweet
lads, as James called them, came back safe, but without their errand. The great
master of king-craft, in looking for a Spanish match, had found a Spanish war.
In February 1624, a Parliament met, during the whole sitting of which, James was
a mere puppet in the hands of his baby, and of his poor slave and dog. The
Commons were disposed to support the King in the vigorous policy which his
favorite urged him to adopt. But they were not disposed to place any confidence
in their feeble sovereign and his dissolute courtiers, or to relax in their
efforts to remove public grievances. They therefore lodged the money which they
voted for the war in the hands of Parliamentary Commissioners. They impeached
the treasurer, Lord Middlesex, for corruption, and they passed a bill by which
patents of monopoly were declared illegal.
Hampden did not, during the reign of James, take any prominent part in public
affairs. It is certain, however, that he paid great attention to the details of
Parliamentary business, and to the local interests of his own country. It was in
a great measure owing to his exertions that Wendover and some other boroughs on
which the popular party could depend recovered the elective franchise, in spite
of the opposition of the Court.
The health of the King had for some time been declining. On the twenty-seventh
of March 1625, he expired. Under his weak rule, the spirit of liberty had grown
strong, and had become equal to a great contest. The contest was brought on by
the policy of his successor. Charles bore no resemblance to his father. He was
not a driveller, or a pedant, or a buffoon, or a coward. It would be absurd to
deny that he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of exquisite tastes in the
fine arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business were
respectable; his demeanor was kingly. But he was false, imperious, obstinate,
narrow-minded, ignorant of the temper of his people, unobservant of the signs of
his times. The whole principle of his government was resistance to public
opinion; nor did he make any real concession to that opinion till it mattered
not whether he resisted or conceded, till the nation, which had long ceased to
love him or to trust him, had at last ceased to fear him.
His first Parliament met in June 1625. Hampden sat in it as burgess for
Wendover. The King wished for money. The Commons wished for the redress of
grievances. The war, however, could not be carried on without funds. The plan of
the Opposition was, it should seem, to dole out supplies by small sums, in order
to prevent a speedy dissolution. They gave the King two subsidies only, and
proceeded to complain that his ships had been employed against the Huguenots in
France, and to petition in behalf of the Puritans who were persecuted in
England. The King dissolved them, and raised money by Letters under his Privy
Seal. The supply fell far short of what he needed; and, in the spring of 1626,
he called together another Parliament. In this Parliament Hampden again sat for
Wendover.
The Commons resolved to grant a very liberal supply, but to defer the final
passing of the act for that purpose till the grievances of the nation should be
redressed. The struggle which followed far exceeded in violence any that had yet
taken place. The Commons impeached Buckingham. The King threw the managers of
the impeachment into prison. The Commons denied the right of the King to levy
tonnage and poundage without their consent. The King dissolved them. They put
forth a remonstrance. The King circulated a declaration vindicating his
measures, and committed some of the most distinguished members of the Opposition
to close custody. Money was raised by a forced loan, which was apportioned among
the people according to the rate at which they had been respectively assessed to
the last subsidy. On this occasion it was, that Hampden made his first stand for
the fundamental principle of the English constitution. He positively refused to
lend a farthing. He was required to give his reasons. He answered, "that he
could be content to lend as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that
curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who
infringe it." For this spirited answer, the Privy Council committed him close
prisoner to the Gate House. After some time, he was again brought up; but he
persisted in his refusal, and was sent to a place of confinement in Hampshire.
The government went on, oppressing at home, and blundering in all its measures
abroad. A war was foolishly undertaken against France, and more foolishly
conducted. Buckingham led an expedition against Rhe, and failed ignominiously.
In the mean time soldiers were billeted on the people. Crimes of which ordinary
justice should have taken cognizance were punished by martial law. Near eighty
gentlemen were imprisoned for refusing to contribute to the forced loan. The
lower people who showed any signs of insubordination were pressed into the
fleet, or compelled to serve in the army. Money, however, came in slowly; and
the King was compelled to summon another Parliament. In the hope of conciliating
his subjects, he set at liberty the persons who had been imprisoned for refusing
to comply with his unlawful demands. Hampden regained his freedom, and was
immediately re-elected burgess for Wendover.
Early in 1628 the Parliament met. During its first session, the Commons
prevailed on the King, after many delays and much equivocation, to give, in
return for five subsidies, his full and solemn assent to that celebrated
instrument, the second great charter of the liberties of England, known by the
name of the Petition of Right. By agreeing to this act, the King bound himself
to raise no taxes without the consent of Parliament, to imprison no man except
by legal process, to billet no more soldiers on the people, and to leave the
cognizance of offences to the ordinary tribunals.
In the summer, this memorable Parliament was prorogued. It met again in January
1629. Buckingham was no more. That weak, violent, and dissolute adventurer, who,
with no talents or acquirements but those of a mere courtier, had, in a great
crisis of foreign and domestic politics, ventured on the part of prime minister,
had fallen, during the recess of Parliament, by the hand of an assassin. Both
before and after his death the war had been feebly and unsuccessfully conducted.
The King had continued, in direct violation of the Petition of Right, to raise
tonnage and poundage without the consent of Parliament. The troops had again
been billeted on the people; and it was clear to the Commons that the five
subsidies which they had given as the price of the national liberties had been
given in vain.
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