Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 18

"But if any person shall be committed for any other cause, then the same ought specially to be returned."

This paper bears the original signatures of eleven judges. It has no date, but is indorsed 5 June 1591. In the printed report, it is said to have been delivered in Easter term 34 Eliz., that is, in 1592. The Chancellor Hatton, whose name is mentioned, died in November 1591; so that, if there is no mistake, this must have been delivered a second time, after undergoing the revision of the judges. And in fact the differences are far too material to have proceeded from accidental carelessness in transcription. The latter copy is fuller, and on the whole more perspicuous, than the ma.n.u.script I have followed; but in one or two places it will be better understood by comparison with it.

_Proclamations unwarranted by law._--It was a natural consequence, not more of the high notions entertained of prerogative than of the very irregular and infrequent meeting of parliament, that an extensive and somewhat indefinite authority should be arrogated to proclamations of the king in council. Temporary ordinances, bordering at least on legislative authority, grow out of the varying exigencies of civil society, and will by very necessity be put up with in silence, wherever the const.i.tution of the commonwealth does not, directly or in effect, provide for frequent a.s.semblies of the body in whom the right of making or consenting to laws has been vested. Since the English const.i.tution has reached its zenith, we have endeavoured to provide a remedy by statute for every possible mischief or inconvenience; and if this has swollen our code to an enormous redundance, till, in the labyrinth of written law, we almost feel again the uncertainties of arbitrary power, it has at least put an end to such exertions of prerogative as fell at once on the persons and properties of whole cla.s.ses. It seems by the proclamations issued under Elizabeth, that the Crown claimed a sort of supplemental right of legislation, to perfect and carry into effect what the spirit of existing laws might require, as well as a paramount supremacy, called sometimes the king's absolute or sovereign power, which sanctioned commands beyond the legal prerogative, for the sake of public safety, whenever the council might judge that to be in hazard.

Thus we find anabaptists, without distinction of natives or aliens, banished the realm; Irishmen commanded to depart into Ireland; the culture of woad,[378] and the exportation of corn, money, and various commodities, prohibited; the excess of apparel restrained. A proclamation in 1580 forbids the erection of houses within three miles of London, on account of the too great increase of the city, under the penalty of imprisonment and forfeiture of the materials.[379] This is repeated at other times, and lastly (I mean during her reign) in 1602, with additional restrictions.[380] Some proclamations in this reign hold out menaces, which the common law could never have executed on the disobedient. To trade with the French king's rebels, or to export victuals into the Spanish dominions (the latter of which might possibly be construed into a.s.sisting the queen's enemies) incurred the penalty of treason. And persons having in their possession goods taken on the high seas, which had not paid custom, are enjoined to give them up, on pain of being punished as felons and pirates.[381] Notwithstanding these instances, it cannot perhaps be said on the whole that Elizabeth stretched her authority very outrageously in this respect. Many of her proclamations, which may at first sight appear illegal, are warrantable by statutes then in force, or by ancient precedents. Thus the council is empowered by an act (28 H. 8, c. 14) to fix the prices of wines; and abstinence from flesh in Lent, as well as on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days (a common subject of Elizabeth's proclamations), is enjoined by several statutes of Edward VI. and of her own.[382] And it has been argued by some not at all inclined to diminish any popular rights, that the king did possess a prerogative by common law of restraining the export of corn and other commodities.[383]

_Restrictions on printing._--It is natural to suppose that a government thus arbitrary and vigilant must have looked with extreme jealousy on the diffusion of free enquiry through the press. The trades of printing and bookselling, in fact, though not absolutely licensed, were always subject to a sort of peculiar superintendence. Besides protecting the copyright of authors,[384] the council frequently issued proclamations to restrain the importation of books, or to regulate their sale.[385] It was penal to utter, or so much as to possess, even the most learned works on the catholic side; or if some connivance was usual in favour of educated men, the utmost strictness was used in suppressing that light infantry of literature, the smart and vigorous pamphlets with which the two parties arrayed against the church a.s.saulted her opposite flanks.[386] Stowe, the well-known chronicler of England, who lay under suspicion of an attachment to popery, had his library searched by warrant, and his unlawful books taken away; several of which were but materials for his history.[387] Whitgift, in this, as in every other respect, aggravated the rigour of preceding times. At his instigation, the star-chamber, in 1585, published ordinances for the regulation of the press. The preface of these recites enormities and abuses of disorderly persons professing the art of printing and selling books to have more and more increased in spite of the ordinances made against them, which it attributes to the inadequacy of the penalties. .h.i.therto inflicted. Every printer therefore is enjoined to certify his presses to the Stationers' Company, on pain of having them defaced, and suffering a year's imprisonment. None to print at all, under similar penalties, except in London, and one in each of the two universities. No printer who has only set up his trade within six months to exercise it any longer, nor any to begin it in future, until the excessive mult.i.tude of printers be diminished, and brought to such a number as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London for the time being shall think convenient; but, whenever any addition to the number of master printers shall be required, the Stationers' Company shall select proper persons to use that calling with the approbation of the ecclesiastical commissioners. None to print any book, matter, or thing whatsoever, until it shall have been first seen, perused, and allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Bishop of London, except the queen's printer, to be appointed for some special service, or law-printers, who shall require the licence only of the chief justices. Every one selling books printed contrary to the intent of this ordinance, to suffer three months' imprisonment. The Stationers' Company empowered to search houses and shops of printers and booksellers, and to seize all books printed in contravention of this ordinance, to destroy and deface the presses, and to arrest and bring before the council those who shall have offended therein.[388]

The forms of English law, however inadequate to defend the subject in state prosecutions, imposed a degree of seeming restraint on the Crown, and wounded that pride which is commonly a yet stronger sentiment than the l.u.s.t of power, with princes and their counsellors. It was possible that juries might absolve a prisoner; it was always necessary that they should be the arbiters of his fate. Delays too were interposed by the regular process; not such, perhaps, as the life of man should require, yet enough to weaken the terrors of summary punishment. Kings love to display the divinity with which their flatterers invest them, in nothing so much as the instantaneous execution of their will; and to stand revealed, as it were, in the storm and thunderbolt, when their power breaks through the operation of secondary causes, and awes a prostrate nation without the intervention of law. There may indeed be times of pressing danger, when the conservation of all demands the sacrifice of the legal rights of a few; there may be circ.u.mstances that not only justify, but compel, the temporary abandonment of const.i.tutional forms.

It has been usual for all governments, during an actual rebellion, to proclaim martial law, or the suspension of civil jurisdiction. And this anomaly, I must admit, is very far from being less indispensable at such unhappy seasons, in countries where the ordinary mode of trial is by jury, than where the right of decision resides in the judge. But it is of high importance to watch with extreme jealousy the disposition, towards which most governments are p.r.o.ne, to introduce too soon, to extend too far, to retain too long, so perilous a remedy. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the court of the constable and marshal, whose jurisdiction was considered as of a military nature, and whose proceedings were not according to the course of the common law, sometimes tried offenders by what was called martial law, but only, I believe, either during, or not long after, a serious rebellion. This tribunal fell into disuse under the Tudors. But Mary had executed some of those taken in Wyatt's insurrection without regular process, though their leader had his trial by a jury. Elizabeth, always hasty in pa.s.sion and quick to punish, would have resorted to this summary course on a slighter occasion. One Pete Burch.e.l.l, a fanatical puritan, and perhaps insane, conceiving that Sir Christopher Hatton was an enemy to true religion, determined to a.s.sa.s.sinate him. But by mistake he wounded instead a famous seaman, Captain Hawkins. For this ordinary crime, the queen could hardly be prevented from directing him to be tried instantly by martial law. Her council, however (and this it is important to observe), resisted this illegal proposition with spirit and success.[389] We have indeed a proclamation some years afterwards, declaring that such as brought into the kingdom or dispersed papal bulls, or traitorous libels against the queen, should with all severity be proceeded against by her majesty's lieutenants or their deputies, by martial law, and suffer such pains and penalties as they should inflict; and that none of her said lieutenants or their deputies be any wise impeached, in body, lands, or goods, at any time hereafter, for anything to be done or executed in the punishment of any such offender, according to the said martial law, and the tenor of this proclamation, any law or statute to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.[390] This measure, though by no means const.i.tutional, finds an apology in the circ.u.mstances of the time. It bears date the 1st of July 1588, when within the lapse of a few days the vast armament of Spain might effect a landing upon our coasts; and prospectively to a crisis, when the nation, struggling for life against an invader's grasp, could not afford the protection of law to domestic traitors. But it is an unhappy consequence of all deviations from the even course of law, that the forced acts of over-ruling necessity come to be distorted into precedents to serve the purposes of arbitrary power.

_Martial law._--No other measure of Elizabeth's reign can be compared, in point of violence and illegality, to a commission in July 1595, directed to Sir Thomas Wilford; whereby upon no other allegation than that there had been of late sundry great unlawful a.s.semblies of a number of base people in riotous sort, both in the city of London and the suburbs, for the suppression whereof (for that the insolency of many desperate offenders is such, that they care not for any ordinary punishment by imprisonment), it was found necessary to have some such notable rebellious persons to be speedily suppressed by execution to death, according to the justice of martial law, he is appointed provost-marshal, with authority, on notice by the magistrates, to attach and seize such notable rebellious and incorrigible offenders, and in the presence of the magistrates to execute them openly on the gallows. The commission empowers him also "to repair to all common highways near to the city, which any vagrant persons do haunt, and, with the a.s.sistance of justices and constables, to apprehend all such vagrant and suspected persons, and them to deliver to the said justices, by them to be committed and examined of the causes of their wandering, and finding them notoriously culpable in their unlawful manner of life, as incorrigible, and so certified by the said justices, to cause to be executed upon the gallows or gibbet some of them that are so found most notorious and incorrigible offenders; and some such also of them as have manifestly broken the peace, since they have been adjudged and condemned to death for former offences, and had the queen's pardon for the same."[391]

This peremptory style of superseding the common law was a stretch of prerogative without an adequate parallel, so far as I know, in any former period. It is to be remarked, that no tumults had taken place of any political character or of serious importance, some riotous apprentices only having committed a few disorders.[392] But rather more than usual suspicion had been excited about the same time by the intrigues of the jesuits in favour of Spain, and the queen's advanced age had begun to renew men's doubts as to the succession. The rapid increase of London gave evident uneasiness, as the proclamations against new buildings show, to a very cautious administration, environed by bold and inveterate enemies, and entirely dest.i.tute of regular troops to withstand a sudden insurrection. Circ.u.mstances of which we are ignorant, I do not question, gave rise to this extraordinary commission. The executive government in modern times has been invested with a degree of coercive power to maintain obedience, of which our ancestors, in the most arbitrary reigns, had no practical experience. If we reflect upon the mult.i.tude of statutes enacted since the days of Elizabeth in order to restrain and suppress disorder, and above all on the prompt and certain aid that a disciplined army affords to our civil authorities, we may be inclined to think that it was rather the weakness than the vigour of her government which led to its inquisitorial watchfulness and harsh measures of prevention. We find in an earlier part of her reign an act of state somewhat of the same character, though not perhaps illegal.

Letters were written to the sheriffs and justices of divers counties in 1569, directing them to apprehend, on a certain night, all vagabonds and idle persons having no master, nor means of living, and either to commit them to prison, or pa.s.s them to their proper homes. This was repeated several times; and no less than 13,000 persons were thus apprehended, chiefly in the north, which, as Strype says, very much broke the rebellion attempted in that year.[393]

Amidst so many infringements of the freedom of commerce, and with so precarious an enjoyment of personal liberty, the English subject continued to pride himself in his immunity from taxation without consent of parliament. This privilege he had a.s.serted, though not with constant success, against the rapacity of Henry VII. and the violence of his son. Nor was it ever disputed in theory by Elizabeth. She retained, indeed, notwithstanding the complaints of the merchants at her accession, a custom upon cloths, arbitrarily imposed by her sister, and laid one herself upon sweet wines. But she made no attempt at levying internal taxes, except that the clergy were called upon, in 1586, for an aid not granted in convocation, but a.s.sessed by the archdeacon according to the value of their benefices; to which they naturally showed no little reluctance.[394] By dint of singular frugality she continued to steer the true course, so as to keep her popularity undiminished and her prerogative unimpaired; asking very little of her subjects' money in parliaments, and being hence enabled both to have long breathing times between their sessions, and to meet them without coaxing or wrangling; till, in the latter years of her reign, a foreign war and a rebellion in Ireland, joined to a rapid depreciation in the value of money, rendered her demands somewhat higher. But she did not abstain from the ancient practice of sending privy-seals to borrow money of the wealthy.

_Loans of money not quite voluntary._--These were not considered as illegal, though plainly forbidden by the statute of Richard III.; for it was the fas.h.i.+on to set aside the authority of that act, as having been pa.s.sed by an usurper. It is impossible to doubt that such loans were so far obtained by compulsion, that any gentleman or citizen of sufficient ability refusing compliance would have discovered that it were far better to part with his money than to incur the council's displeasure.

We have indeed a letter from a lord mayor to the council informing them that he had committed to prison some citizens for refusing to pay the money demanded of them.[395] But the queen seems to have been punctual in their speedy repayment according to stipulation; a virtue somewhat unusual with royal debtors. Thus we find a proclamation in 1571, that such as had lent the queen money in the last summer should receive repayment in November and December.[396] Such loans were but an antic.i.p.ation of her regular revenue, and no great hards.h.i.+p on rich merchants; who, if they got no interest for their money, were recompensed with knighthoods and gracious words. And as Elizabeth incurred no debt till near the conclusion of her reign, it is probable that she never had borrowed more than she was sure to repay.

A letter quoted by Hume from Lord Burleigh's papers, though not written by him, as the historian a.s.serts, and somewhat obscure in its purport, appears to warrant the conclusion that he had revolved in his mind some project of raising money by a general contribution or benevolence from persons of ability, without purpose of repayment. This was also amidst the difficulties of the year 1569, when Cecil perhaps might be afraid of meeting parliament, on account of the factions leagued against himself.

But as nothing further was done in this matter, we must presume that he perceived the impracticability of so unconst.i.tutional a scheme.[397]

_Character of Lord Burleigh's administration._--Those whose curiosity has led them to somewhat more acquaintance with the details of English history under Elizabeth than the pages of Camden or Hume will afford, cannot but have been struck with the perpetual interference of men in power with matters of private concern. I am far from pretending to know how far the solicitations for a prime minister's aid and influence may extend at present. Yet one may think that he would hardly be employed, like Cecil, where he had no personal connection, in reconciling family quarrels, interceding with a landlord for his tenant, or persuading a rich citizen to bestow his daughter on a young lord. We are sure, at least, that he would not use the air of authority upon such occasions.

The vast collection of Lord Burleigh's letters in the Museum is full of such petty matters, too insignificant, for the most part, to be mentioned even by Strype.[398] They exhibit, however, collectively, a curious view of the manner in which England was managed, as if it had been the household and estate of a n.o.bleman under a strict and prying steward. We are told that the relaxation of this minister's mind was to study the state of England and the pedigrees of its n.o.bility and gentry: of these last he drew whole books with his own hands; so that he was better versed in descents and families than most of the heralds, and would often surprise persons of distinction at his table by appearing better acquainted with their manors, parks, and woods, than themselves.[399] Such knowledge was not sought by the crafty Cecil for mere diversion's sake. It was a main part of his system to keep alive in the English gentry a persuasion that his eye was upon them. No minister was ever more exempt from that false security which is the usual weakness of a court. His failing was rather a bias towards suspicion and timidity; there were times, at least, in which his strength of mind seems to have almost deserted him, through sense of the perils of his sovereign and country. But those perils appear less to us, who know how the vessel outrode them, than they could do to one hara.s.sed by continual informations of those numerous spies whom he employed both at home and abroad. The one word of Burleigh's policy was prevention; and this was dictated by a consciousness of wanting an armed force or money to support it, as well as by some uncertainty as to the public spirit, in respect at least of religion. But a government that directs its chief attention to prevent offences against itself, is in its very nature incompatible with that absence of restraint, that immunity from suspicion, in which civil liberty, as a tangible possession, may be said to consist. It appears probable, that Elizabeth's administration carried too far, even as a matter of policy, this precautionary system upon which they founded the penal code against popery; and we may surely point to a contrast very advantageous to our modern const.i.tution, in the lenient treatment which the Jacobite faction experienced from the princes of the house of Hanover. She reigned however in a period of real difficulty and danger. At such seasons, few ministers will abstain from arbitrary actions, except those who are not strong enough to practise them.

_Disposition of the House of Commons._--I have traced, in another work, the acquisition by the House of Commons of a practical right to enquire into and advise upon the public administration of affairs, during the reigns of Edward III., Richard II., and the princes of the line of Lancaster. This energy of parliament was quelled by the civil wars of the fifteenth century; and, whatever may have pa.s.sed in debates within its walls that have not been preserved, did not often display itself in any overt act under the first Tudors. To grant subsidies which could not be raised by any other course, to propose statutes which were not binding without their consent, to consider of public grievances, and procure their redress, either by law or pet.i.tion to the Crown, were their acknowledged const.i.tutional privileges, which no sovereign or minister ever pretended to deny. For this end liberty of speech and free access to the royal person were claimed by the speaker as customary privileges (though not quite, in his modern language, as undoubted rights), at the commencement of every parliament. But the House of Commons in Elizabeth's reign contained men of a bold and steady patriotism, well read in the laws and records of old time, sensible to the dangers of their country and abuses of government, and conscious that it was their privilege and their duty to watch over the common weal. This led to several conflicts between the crown and parliament; wherein, if the former often a.s.serted the victory, the latter sometimes kept the field, and was left on the whole a gainer at the close of the campaign.

It would surely be erroneous to conceive, that many acts of government in the four preceding reigns had not appeared at the time arbitrary and unconst.i.tutional. If indeed we are not mistaken in judging them according to the ancient law, they must have been viewed in the same light by contemporaries, who were full as able to try them by that standard. But, to repeat what I have once before said, the extant doc.u.ments from which we draw our knowledge of const.i.tutional history under those reigns are so scanty, that instances even of a successful parliamentary resistance to measures of the Crown may have left no memorial. The debates of parliament are not preserved, and very little is to be gained from such histories as the age produced. The complete barrenness indeed of Elizabeth's chroniclers, Holingshed and Thin, as to every parliamentary or const.i.tutional information, speaks of itself the jealous tone of her administration. Camden, writing to the next generation, though far from an ingenuous historian, is somewhat less under restraint. This forced silence of history is much more to be suspected after the use of printing and the reformation, than in the ages when monks compiled annals in their convents, reckless of the censure of courts, because independent of their permission. Grosser ignorance of public transactions is undoubtedly found in the chronicles of the middle ages; but far less of that deliberate mendacity, or of that insidious suppression, by which fear, and flattery, and hatred, and the thirst of gain, have, since the invention of printing, corrupted so much of historical literature throughout Europe. We begin however to find in Elizabeth's reign more copious and unquestionable doc.u.ments for parliamentary history. The regular journals indeed are partly lost; nor would those which remain give us a sufficient insight into the spirit of parliament, without the aid of other sources. But a volume called Sir Simon D'Ewes's journal, part of which is copied from a ma.n.u.script of Heywood Townsend, a member of all parliaments from 1580 to 1601, contains minutes of the most interesting debates as well as transactions, and for the first time renders us acquainted with the names of those who swayed an English House of Commons.[400]

_Addresses concerning the succession._--There was no peril more alarming to this kingdom during the queen's reign than the precariousness of her life--a thread whereon its tranquillity, if not its religion and independence, was suspended. Hence the Commons felt it an imperious duty not only to recommend her to marry, but, when this was delayed, to solicit that some limitations of the Crown might be enacted, in failure of her issue. The former request she evaded without ever manifesting much displeasure, though not sparing a hint that it was a little beyond the province of parliament. Upon the last occasion, indeed, that it was preferred, namely, by the speaker in 1575, she gave what from any other woman must have appeared an a.s.sent, and almost a promise. But about declaring the succession she was always very sensible. Through a policy not perhaps entirely selfish, and certainly not erroneous on selfish principles, she was determined never to p.r.o.nounce among the possible compet.i.tors for the throne. Least of all could she brook the intermeddling of parliament in such a concern. The Commons first took up this business in 1562, when there had begun to be much debate in the nation about the opposite t.i.tles of the Queen of Scots and Lady Catherine Grey; and especially in consequence of a dangerous sickness the queen had just experienced, and which is said to have been the cause of summoning parliament. Their language is wary, praying her only by "proclamation of certainty already provided, if any such be," alluding to the will of Henry VIII., "or else by limitations of certainty, if none be, to provide a most gracious remedy in this great necessity;"[401] offering at the same time to concur in provisions to guarantee her personal safety against any one who might be limited in remainder. Elizabeth gave them a tolerably courteous answer, though not without some intimation of her dislike to this address.[402] But at their next meeting, which was not till 1566, the hope of her own marriage having grown fainter, and the circ.u.mstances of the kingdom still more powerfully demanding some security, both houses of parliament united, with a boldness of which there had perhaps been no example for more than a hundred years, to overcome her repugnance. Some of her own council among the peers are said to have a.s.serted in their places that the queen ought to be obliged to take a husband, or that a successor should be declared by parliament against her will. She was charged with a disregard to the state and to posterity. She would prove, in the uncourtly phrase of some st.u.r.dy members of the lower house, a step-mother to her country, as being seemingly desirous that England, which lived as it were in her, should rather expire with than survive her; that kings can only gain the affections of their subjects by providing for their welfare both while they live and after their deaths; nor did any but princes hated by their subjects, or faint-hearted women, ever stand in fear of their successors.[403] But this great princess wanted not skill and courage to resist this unusual importunity of parliament. The peers, who had forgotten their customary respectfulness, were excluded the presence-chamber till they made their submission. She prevailed on the Commons, through her ministers who sat there, to join a request for her marriage with the more unpalatable alternative of naming her successor; and when this request was presented, gave them fair words, and a sort of a.s.surance that their desires should by some means be fulfilled.[404] When they continued to dwell on the same topic in their speeches, she sent messages through her ministers, and at length a positive injunction through the speaker, that they should proceed no further in the business. The house however was not in a temper for such ready acquiescence as it sometimes displayed. Paul Wentworth, a bold and plain-spoken man, moved to know whether the queen's command and inhibition that they should no longer dispute of the matter of succession, were not against their liberties and privileges. This caused, as we are told, long debates; which do not appear to have terminated in any resolution.[405] But, more probably having pa.s.sed than we know at present, the queen, whose haughty temper and tenaciousness of prerogative were always within check of her discretion, several days after announced through the speaker, that she revoked her two former commandments; "which revocation," says the journal, "was taken by the house most joyfully, with hearty prayer and thanks for the same." At the dissolution of this parliament, which was perhaps determined upon in consequence of their steadiness, Elizabeth alluded in addressing them with no small bitterness to what had occurred.[406]

This is the most serious disagreement on record between the Crown and the Commons since the days of Richard II. and Henry IV. Doubtless the queen's indignation was excited by the nature of the subject her parliament ventured to discuss, still more than by her general disapprobation of their interference in matters of state. It was an endeavour to penetrate the great secret of her reign, in preserving which she conceived her peace, dignity, and personal safety to be bound up. There were, in her opinion, as she intimates in her speech at closing the session, some underhand movers of this intrigue (whether of the Scots or Suffolk faction does not appear), who were more to blame than even the speakers in parliament. And if, as Cecil seems justly to have thought, no limitations of the Crown could at that time have been effected without much peril and inconvenience, we may find some apology for her warmth about their precipitation in a business, which, even according to our present const.i.tutional usage, it would naturally be for the government to bring forward. It is to be collected from Wentworth's motion, that to deliberate on subjects affecting the commonwealth was reckoned, by at least a large part of the House of Commons, one of their ancient privileges and liberties. This was not one which Elizabeth, however she had yielded for the moment in revoking her prohibition, ever designed to concede to them. Such was her frugality, that, although she had remitted a subsidy granted in this session, alleging the very honourable reason that, knowing it to have been voted in expectation of some settlement of the succession, she would not accept it when that implied condition had not been fulfilled, she was able to pa.s.s five years without again convoking her people.

_Session of 1571._--A parliament met in April 1571, when the lord keeper Bacon,[407] in answer to the speaker's customary request for freedom of speech in the Commons, said that "her majesty having experience of late of some disorder and certain offences, which, though they were not punished, yet were they offences still, and so must be accounted, they would therefore do well to meddle with no matters of state, but such as should be propounded unto them, and to occupy themselves in other matters concerning the commonwealth."

_Influence of the puritans in parliament._--The Commons so far attended to this intimation, that no proceedings about the succession appear to have taken place in this parliament, except such as were calculated to gratify the queen. We may perhaps except a bill attainting the Queen of Scots, which was rejected in the upper house. But they entered for the first time on a new topic, which did not cease for the rest of this reign to furnish matter of contention with their sovereign. The party called puritan, including such as charged abuses on the actual government of the church, as well as those who objected to part of its lawful discipline, had, not a little in consequence of the absolute exclusion of the catholic gentry, obtained a very considerable strength in the Commons. But the queen valued her ecclesiastical supremacy more than any part of her prerogative. Next to the succession of the Crown, it was the point she could least endure to be touched. The house had indeed resolved, upon reading a bill the first time for reformation of the common prayer, that pet.i.tion be made to the queen's majesty for her licence to proceed in it, before it should be further dealt in. But Strickland, who had proposed it, was sent for to the council, and restrained from appearing again in his place, though put under no confinement. This was noticed as an infringement of their liberties. The ministers endeavoured to excuse his detention, as not intended to lead to any severity, nor occasioned by anything spoken in that house, but on account of his introducing a bill against the prerogative of the queen, which was not to be tolerated. And instances were quoted of animadversion or speeches made in parliament. But Mr. Yelverton maintained that all matters not treasonable, nor too much to the derogation of the imperial Crown, were tolerable there, where all things came to be considered, and where there was such fulness of power as even the right of the Crown was to be determined, which it would be high treason to deny. Princes were to have their prerogatives, but yet to be confined within reasonable limits. The queen could not of herself make laws, neither could she break them. This was the true voice of English liberty, not so new to men's ears as Hume has imagined, though many there were who would not forfeit the court's favour by uttering it. Such speeches as the historian has quoted of Sir Humphry Gilbert, and many such may be found in the proceedings of this reign, are rather directed to intimidate the house by exaggerating their inability to contend with the Crown, than to prove the law of the land to be against them. In the present affair of Strickland, it became so evident that the Commons would at least address the queen to restore him, that she adopted the course her usual prudence indicated, and permitted his return to his house. But she took the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses out of their hands, sending word that she would have some articles for that purpose executed by the bishops under her royal supremacy, and not dealt in by parliament. This did not prevent the Commons from proceeding to send up some bills in the upper house, where, as was natural to expect, they fell to the ground.[408]

This session is also remarkable for the first marked complaints against some notorious abuses, which defaced the civil government of Elizabeth.[409] A member having rather prematurely suggested the offer of a subsidy, several complaints were made of irregular and oppressive practices, and Mr. Bell said, that licences granted by the Crown and other abuses galled the people, intimating also, that the subsidy should be accompanied by a redress of grievances.[410] This occasion of introducing the subject, though strictly const.i.tutional, was likely to cause displeasure. The speaker informed them a few days after of a message from the queen to spend little time in motions, and make no long speeches.[411] And Bell, it appears, having been sent for by the council, came into the house "with such an amazed countenance, that it daunted all the rest," who for many days durst not enter on any matter of importance.[412] It became the common whisper, that no one must speak against licences, lest the queen and council should be angry. And at the close of the session, the lord keeper severely reprimanded those audacious, arrogant, and presumptuous members who had called her majesty's grants and prerogatives in question, meddling with matters neither pertaining to them, nor within the capacity of their understanding.[413]

The parliament of 1572 seemed to give evidence of their inheriting the spirit of the last by choosing Mr. Bell for their speaker.[414] But very little of it appeared in their proceedings. In their first short session, chiefly occupied by the business of the Queen of Scots, the most remarkable circ.u.mstances are the following. The Commons were desirous of absolutely excluding Mary from inheriting the crown, and even of taking away her life, and had prepared bills with this intent.

But Elizabeth, constant to her mysterious policy, made one of her ministers inform them that she would neither have the Queen of Scots enabled nor disabled to succeed, and willed that the bill respecting her should be drawn by her council: and that, in the meantime, the house should not enter on any speeches or arguments on that matter.[415]

Another circ.u.mstance worthy of note in this session is a signification, through the speaker, of her majesty's pleasure that no bills concerning religion should be received, unless they should be first considered and approved by the clergy, and requiring to see certain bills touching rites and ceremonies that had been read in the house. The bills were accordingly ordered to be delivered to her, with a humble prayer that, if she should dislike them, she would not conceive an ill opinion of the house, or of the parties by whom they were preferred.[416]

_Speech of Mr. Wentworth in 1576._--The submissiveness of this parliament was doubtless owing to the queen's vigorous dealings with the last. At their next meeting, which was not till February 1575-6, Peter Wentworth, brother, I believe, of the person of that name before mentioned, broke out, in a speech of uncommon boldness, against her arbitrary encroachments on their privileges. The liberty of free speech, he said, had in the two last sessions been so many ways infringed, that they were in danger, while they contented themselves with the name, of losing and foregoing the thing. It was common for a rumour to spread through that house, "the queen likes or dislikes such a matter; beware what you do." Messages were even sometimes brought down, either commanding or inhibiting, very injurious to the liberty of debate. He instanced that in the last session, restraining the house from dealing in matters of religion; against which and against the prelates he inveighed with great acrimony. With still greater indignation he spoke of the queen's refusal to a.s.sent to the attainder of Mary, and after surprising the house by the bold words, "none is without fault, no not our n.o.ble queen, but has committed great and dangerous faults to herself," went on to tax her with ingrat.i.tude and unkindness to her subjects, in a strain perfectly free indeed from disaffection, but of more rude censure than any kings would put up with.[417]

This direct attack upon the sovereign, in matters relating to her public administration, seems no doubt unparliamentary; though neither the rules of parliament in this respect, nor even the const.i.tutional principle, were so strictly understood as at present. But it was part of Elizabeth's character to render herself extremely prominent, and, as it were, responsible in public esteem, for every important measure of her government. It was difficult to consider a queen as acting merely by the advice of ministers, who protested in parliament that they had laboured in vain to bend her heart to their councils. The doctrine that some one must be responsible for every act of the Crown was yet perfectly unknown; and Elizabeth would have been the last to adopt a system so inglorious to monarchy. But Wentworth had gone to a length which alarmed the House of Commons. They judged it expedient to prevent an unpleasant interference by sequestering their member, and appointing a committee of all the privy counsellors in the house to examine him. Wentworth declined their authority, till they a.s.sured him that they sat as members of the Commons, and not as counsellors. After a long examination, in which he not only behaved with intrepidity, but, according to his own statement, reduced them to confess the truth of all he advanced, they made a report to the house, who committed him to the Tower. He had lain there a month when the queen sent word that she remitted her displeasure towards him, and referred his enlargement to the house, who released him upon a reprimand from the speaker, and an acknowledgment of his fault upon his knees.[418] In this commitment of Wentworth, it can hardly be said that there was anything, as to the main point, by which the house sacrificed its acknowledged privileges. In later instances, and even in the reign of George I., members have been committed for much less indecent reflections on the sovereign. The queen had no reason upon the whole to be ill-pleased with this parliament, nor was she in haste to dissolve it, though there was a long intermission of its sessions.

The next was in 1581, when the chancellor, on confirming a new speaker, did not fail to admonish him that the House of Commons should not intermeddle in anything touching her majesty's person or estate, or church government. They were supposed to disobey this injunction and fell under the queen's displeasure, by appointing a public fast on their own authority, though to be enforced on none but themselves. This trifling resolution, which showed indeed a little of the puritan spirit, pa.s.sed for an encroachment on the supremacy, and was only expiated by a humble apology.[419] It is not till the month of February 1587-8, that the zeal for ecclesiastical reformation overcame in some measure the terrors of power, but with no better success than before. A Mr. Cope offered to the house, we are informed, a bill and a book, the former annulling all laws respecting ecclesiastical government then in force, and establis.h.i.+ng a certain new form of common prayer contained in the latter. The speaker interposed to prevent this bill from being read, on the ground that her majesty had commanded them not to meddle in this matter. Several members however spoke in favour of hearing it read, and the day pa.s.sed in debate on this subject. Before they met again, the queen sent for the speaker, who delivered up to her the bill and book.

Next time that the house sat, Mr. Wentworth insisted that some questions of his proposing should be read. These queries were to the following purport: Whether this council was not a place for any member of the same, freely and without control, by bill or speech, to utter any of the griefs of this commonwealth? Whether there be any council that can make, add, or diminish from the laws of the realm, but only this council of parliament? Whether it be not against the orders of this council to make any secret or matter of weight, which is here in hand, known to the prince or any other, without consent of the house? Whether the speaker may overrule the house in any matter or cause in question? Whether the prince and state can continue and stand, and be maintained without this council of parliament, not altering the government of the state? These questions Serjeant Pickering, the speaker, instead of reading them to the house, showed to a courtier, through whose means Wentworth was committed to the Tower. Mr. Cope, and those who had spoken in favour of his motion, underwent the same fate; and notwithstanding some notice taken of it in the house, it does not appear that they were set at liberty before its dissolution, which ensued in three weeks.[420] Yet the Commons were so set on displaying an ineffectual hankering after reform, that they appointed a committee to address the queen for a learned ministry.

_The Commons continue to seek redress of ecclesiastical grievances._--At the beginning of the next parliament, which met in 1588-9, the speaker received an admonition that the house were not to extend their privileges to any irreverent or misbecoming speech. In this session Mr.

Damport, we are informed by D'Ewes,[421] moved neither for making of any new laws, nor for abrogating of any old ones, but for a due course of proceeding in laws already established, but executed by some ecclesiastical governors contrary both to their purport and the intent of the legislature, which he proposed to bring into discussion. So cautious a motion saved its author from the punishment which had attended Mr. Cope for his more radical reform; but the secretary of state, reminding the house of the queen's express inhibition from dealing with ecclesiastical causes, declared to them by the chancellor at the commencement of the session (in a speech which does not appear), prevented them from taking any further notice of Mr. Damport's motion.

They narrowly escaped Elizabeth's displeasure in attacking some civil abuses. Sir Edward Hobby brought in a bill to prevent certain exactions made for their own profit by the officers of the exchequer. Two days after he complained that he had been very sharply rebuked by some great personage, not a member of the house, for his speech on that occasion.

But instead of testifying indignation at this breach of their privileges, neither he nor the house thought of any further redress than by exculpating him to this great personage, apparently one of the ministers, and admonis.h.i.+ng their members not to repeat elsewhere anything uttered in their debates.[422] For the bill itself, as well as one intended to restrain the flagrant abuses of purveyance, they both were pa.s.sed to the Lords. But the queen sent a message to the upper house, expressing her dislike of them, as meddling with abuses, which, if they existed, she was both able and willing to repress; and this having been formally communicated to the Commons, they appointed a committee to search for precedents in order to satisfy her majesty about their proceedings. They received afterwards a gracious answer to their address, the queen declaring her willingness to afford a remedy for the alleged grievances.[423]

Elizabeth, whose reputation for consistency, which haughty princes overvalue, was engaged in protecting the established hierarchy, must have experienced not a little vexation at the perpetual recurrence of complaints which the unpopularity of that order drew from every parliament. The speaker of that summoned in 1593 received for answer to his request of liberty of speech, that it was granted, "but not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh into his brain to utter; their privilege was aye or no. Wherefore, Mr. Speaker," continues the lord keeper Pickering, himself speaker in the parliament of 1588, "her majesty's pleasure is, that if you perceive any idle heads which will not stick to hazard their own estates, which will meddle with reforming the church and transforming the commonwealth, and do exhibit such bills to such purpose, that you receive them not, until they be viewed and considered by those, who it is fitter should consider of such things, and can better judge of them." It seems not improbable that this admonition, which indeed is in no unusual style for this reign, was suggested by the expectation of some unpleasing debate. For we read that the very first day of the session, though the Commons had adjourned on account of the speaker's illness, the unconquerable Peter Wentworth, with another member, presented a pet.i.tion to the lord keeper, desiring the Lords of the upper house to join with them of the lower in imploring her majesty to entail the succession of the Crown, for which they had already prepared a bill. This step, which may seem to us rather arrogant and unparliamentary, drew down, as they must have expected, the queen's indignation. They were summoned before the council, and committed to different prisons.[424] A few days afterwards a bill for reforming the abuses of ecclesiastical courts was presented by Morice, attorney of the court of wards, and underwent some discussion in the house.[425] But the queen sent for the speaker, and expressly commanded that no bill touching matters of state or reformation of causes ecclesiastical should be exhibited; and if any such should be offered, enjoining him on his allegiance not to read it.[426] It was the custom at that time for the speaker to read and expound to the house all the bills that any member offered. Morice himself was committed to safe custody, from which he wrote a spirited letter to Lord Burleigh, expressing his sorrow for having offended the queen, but at the same time his resolution "to strive," he says, "while his life should last, for freedom of conscience, public justice, and the liberties of his country."[427] Some days after a motion was made that, as some places might complain of paying subsidies, their representatives not having been consulted nor been present when they were granted, the house should address the queen to set their members at liberty. But the ministers opposed this, as likely to hurt those whose good was sought, her majesty being more likely to release them, if left to her own gracious disposition. It does not appear however that she did so during the session, which lasted above a month.[428] We read, on the contrary, in an undoubted authority, namely, a letter of Antony Bacon to his mother, that "divers gentlemen, who were of the parliament, and thought to have returned into the country after the end thereof, were stayed by her majesty's commandment, for being privy, as it is thought, and consenting to Mr. Wentworth's motion."[429] Some difficulty was made by this House of Commons about their grant of subsidies, which was uncommonly large, though rather in appearance than truth, so great had been the depreciation of silver for some years past.[430]

_Monopolies, especially in the session of 1601._--The admonitions not to abuse freedom of speech, which had become almost as much matter of course as the request for it, were repeated in the ensuing parliaments of 1597 and 1601. Nothing more remarkable occurs in the former of these sessions than an address to the queen against the enormous abuse of monopolies. The Crown either possessed or a.s.sumed the prerogative of regulating almost all matters of commerce at its discretion. Patents to deal exclusively in particular articles, generally of foreign growth, but reaching in some instances to such important necessaries of life as salt, leather, and coal, had been lavishly granted to the courtiers, with little direct advantage to the revenue. They sold them to companies of merchants, who of course enhanced the price to the utmost ability of the purchaser. This business seems to have been purposely protracted by the ministers and the speaker, who, in this reign, was usually in the court's interests, till the last day of the session; when, in answer to his mention of it, the lord keeper said that the queen "hoped her dutiful and loving subjects would not take away her prerogative, which is the choicest flower in her garden, and the princ.i.p.al and head pearl in her crown and diadem; but would rather leave that to her disposition, promising to examine all patents, and to abide the touchstone of the law."[431] This answer, though less stern than had been usual, was merely evasive; and in the session of 1601, a bolder and more successful attack was made on the administration than this reign had witnessed. The grievance of monopolies had gone on continually increasing; scarce any article was exempt from these oppressive patents. When the list of them was read over in the house, a member exclaimed, "Is not bread among the number?" The house seemed amazed: "Nay," said he, "if no remedy is found for these, bread will be there before the next parliament." Every tongue seemed now unloosed; each as if emulously descanting on the injuries of the place he represented. It was vain for the courtiers to withstand this torrent. Raleigh, no small gainer himself by some monopolies, after making what excuse he could, offered to give them up. Robert Cecil the secretary, and Bacon, talked loudly of the prerogative, and endeavoured at least to persuade the house that it would be fitter to proceed by pet.i.tion to the queen than by a bill. But it was properly answered, that nothing had been gained by pet.i.tioning in the last parliament. After four days of eager debate, and more heat than had ever been witnessed, this ferment was suddenly appeased by one of those well-timed concessions by which skilful princes spare themselves the mortification of being overcome. Elizabeth sent down a message that she would revoke all grants that should be found injurious by fair trial at law: and Cecil rendered the somewhat ambiguous generality of this expression more satisfactory by an a.s.surance that the existing patents should all be repealed, and no more be granted. This victory filled the Commons with joy, perhaps the more from being rather unexpected.[432] They addressed the queen with rapturous and hyperbolical acknowledgments, to which she answered in an affectionate strain, glancing only with an oblique irony at some of those movers in the debate, whom in her earlier and more vigorous years she would have keenly reprimanded. She repeated this a little more plainly at the close of the session, but still with commendation of the body of the Commons. So altered a tone must be ascribed partly to the growing spirit she perceived in her subjects, but partly also to those cares which clouded with listless melancholy the last scenes of her ill.u.s.trious life.[433]

The discontent that vented itself against monopolies was not a little excited by the increasing demands which Elizabeth was compelled to make upon the Commons in all her latter parliaments. Though it was declared in the preamble to the subsidy bill of 1593, that "these large and unusual grants, made to a most excellent princess on a most pressing and extraordinary occasion, should not at any time hereafter be drawn into a precedent," yet an equal sum was obtained in 1597, and one still greater in 1601. But money was always reluctantly given, and the queen's early frugality had accustomed her subjects to very low taxes; so that the debates on the supply in 1601, as handed down to us by Townsend, exhibit a lurking ill-humour, which would find a better occasion to break forth.

_Influence of the Crown in Parliament._--The House of Commons, upon a review of Elizabeth's reign, was very far, on the one hand, from exercising those const.i.tutional rights which have long since belonged to it, or even those which by ancient precedent they might have claimed as their own; yet, on the other hand, was not quite so servile and submissive an a.s.sembly as an artful historian has represented it. If many of its members were but creatures of power, if the majority was often too readily intimidated, if the bold and honest, but not very judicious, Wentworths were but feebly supported, when their impatience hurried them beyond their colleagues, there was still a considerable party sometimes carrying the house along with them, who with patient resolution and inflexible aim recurred in every session to the a.s.sertion of that one great privilege which their sovereign contested, the right of parliament to enquire into and suggest a remedy for every public mischief or danger. It may be remarked, that, the ministers, such as Knollys, Hatton, and Robert Cecil, not only sat among the Commons, but took a very leading part in their discussions; a proof that the influence of argument could no more be dispensed with than that of power. This, as I conceive, will never be the case in any kingdom where the a.s.sembly of the estates is quite subservient to the Crown. Nor should we put out of consideration the manner in which the Commons were composed. Sixty-two members were added at different times by Elizabeth to the representation; as well from places which had in earlier times discontinued their franchise, as from those to which it was first granted;[434] a very large proportion of them petty boroughs, evidently under the influence of the Crown or peerage. This had been the policy of her brother and sister, in order to counterbalance the country gentlemen, and find room for those dependants who had no natural interest to return them to parliament. The ministry took much pains with elections, of which many proofs remain.[435] The house accordingly was filled with placemen, civilians, and common lawyers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone of these persons, as we collect from the minutes of D'Ewes, is strikingly contrasted by the manliness of independent gentlemen. And as the house was by no means very fully attended, the divisions, a few of which are recorded, running from 200 to 250 in the aggregate, it may be perceived that the court, whose followers were at hand, would maintain a formidable influence. But this influence, however pernicious to the integrity of parliament, is distinguishable from that exertion of almost absolute prerogative, which Hume has a.s.sumed as the sole spring of Elizabeth's government, and would never be employed till some deficiency of strength was experienced in the other.

_Debate on election of non-resident burgesses._--D'Ewes has preserved a somewhat remarkable debate on a bill presented in the session of 1571, in order to render valid elections of non-resident burgesses. According to the tenor of the king's writ, confirmed by an act pa.s.sed under Henry V., every city and borough was required to elect none but members of their own community. To this provision, as a seat in the Commons' house grew more an object of general ambition, while many boroughs fell into comparative decay, less and less attention had been paid; till, the greater part of the borough representatives having become strangers, it was deemed by some expedient to repeal the ancient statute, and give a sanction to the innovation that time had wrought; while others contended in favour of the original usage, and seemed anxious to restore its vigour. It was alleged on the one hand by Mr. Norton that the bill would take away all pretence for sending unfit men, as was too often seen, and remove any objection that might be started to the sufficiency of the present parliament, wherein, for the most part against positive law, strangers to their several boroughs had been chosen: that persons able and fit for so great an employment ought to be preferred without regard to their inhabitancy; since a man could not be presumed to be the wiser for being a resident burgess: and that the whole body of the realm, and the service of the same, was rather to be respected than any private regard of place or person. This is a remarkable, and perhaps the earliest a.s.sertion, of an important const.i.tutional principle, that each member of the House of Commons is deputed to serve, not only for his const.i.tuents, but for the whole kingdom; a principle which marks the distinction between a modern English parliament and such deputations of the estates as were a.s.sembled in several continental kingdoms; a principle to which the House of Commons is indebted for its weight and dignity, as well as its beneficial efficiency, and which none but the servile wors.h.i.+ppers of the populace are ever found to gainsay. It is obvious that such a principle could never obtain currency, or even be advanced on any plausible ground, until the law for the election of resident burgesses had gone into disuse.

Those who defended the existing law, forgetting, as is often the case with the defenders of existing laws, that it had lost its practical efficacy, urged that the inferior ranks using manual and mechanical arts ought like the rest to be regarded and consulted with on matters which concerned them, and of which strangers could less judge. "We," said a member, "who have never seen Berwick or St. Michael's Mount, can but blindly guess of them, albeit we look on the maps that come from thence, or see letters of instruction sent; some one whom observation, experience, and due consideration of that country hath taught, can more perfectly open what shall in question thereof grow, and more effectually reason thereupon, than the skilfullest otherwise whatsoever." But the greatest mischief resulting from an abandonment of their old const.i.tution would be the interference of n.o.blemen with elections; lords' letters, it was said, would from henceforth bear the sway; instances of which, so late as the days of Mary, were alleged, though no one cared to allude particularly to anything of a more recent date.

Some proposed to impose a fine of forty pounds on any borough making its election on a peer's nomination. The bill was committed by a majority; but as no further entry appears in the Journals, we may infer it to have dropped.[436]

It may be mentioned, as not unconnected with this subject, that in the same session a fine was imposed on the borough of Westbury for receiving a bribe of four pounds from Thomas Long, "being a very simple man and of small capacity to serve in that place;" and the mayor was ordered to repay the money. Long, however, does not seem to have been expelled.

This is the earliest precedent on record for the punishment of bribery in elections.[437]

_a.s.sertion of privileges by Commons._--We shall find an additional proof that the House of Commons under the Tudor princes, and especially Elizabeth, was not so feeble and insignificant an a.s.sembly as has been often insinuated, if we look at their frequent a.s.sertion and gradual acquisition of those peculiar authorities and immunities which const.i.tute what is called privilege of parliament. Of these the first, in order of time if not of importance, was their exemption from arrest on civil process during their session. Several instances occur under the Plantagenet dynasty, where this privilege was claimed and admitted; but generally by means of a distinct act of parliament, or at least by a writ of privilege out of chancery. The House of Commons for the first time took upon themselves to avenge their own injury in 1543, when the remarkable case of George Ferrers occurred. This is related in detail by Holingshed, and is perhaps the only piece of const.i.tutional information we owe to him. Without repeating all the circ.u.mstances, it will be sufficient here to mention, that the Commons sent their serjeant with his mace to demand the release of Ferrers, a burgess who had been arrested on his way to the house; that the gaolers and sheriffs of London having not only refused compliance, but ill-treated the serjeant, they compelled them, as well as the sheriffs of London, and even the plaintiff who had sued the writ against Ferrers, to appear at the bar of the house, and committed them to prison; and that the king, in the presence of the judges, confirmed in the strongest manner this a.s.sertion of privilege by the Commons. It was however, so far at least as our knowledge extends, a very important novelty in const.i.tutional practice; not a trace occurring in any former instance on record, either of a party being delivered from arrest at the mere demand of the serjeant, or of any one being committed to prison by the sole authority of the House of Commons. With respect to the first, "the chancellor," says Holingshed, "offered to grant them a writ of privilege, which they of the Commons' house refused, being of a clear opinion that all commandments and other acts proceeding from the nether house were to be done and executed by their serjeant without writ, only by show of his mace, which was his warrant." It might naturally seem to follow from this position, if it were conceded, that the house had the same power of attachment for contempt, that is, of committing to prison persons refusing obedience to lawful process, which our law attributes to all courts of justice, as e