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Home King James I and Domestic Affairs The King and Parliament |
The King and ParliamentThe Puritans, if they found no favour with the Monarchy, found plenty of support in the House of Commons. In every Parliament of James I and Charles I, and to an increasing extent as the years went on, there was a strong Puritan element in the Lower House, and eventually that element became supreme. It is this fact that largely accounts for the differences between the first two Stuart kings and their Parliaments. The Lower House was fanatically anti-Catholic; the two kings were inclined to be tolerant to the Catholics, James because he was naturally of a tolerant disposition and Charles because he had married a Roman Catholic wife. The Crown supported the Anglican or Arminian position in the English Church; the majority in the House of Commons was strongly opposed to the Arminian doctrines and regarded with considerable suspicion all the king's High Church appointments.There were, however, many other causes besides religious differences for the struggle round which centres the chief interest of the seventeenth century, the struggle between King and Parliament. Of these we must say something before tracing the history of the struggle in detail. One cause of the struggle undoubtedly was the absence of external danger, already referred to in the last chapter. It is often said that an Englishman can only think of one thing at a time. For a great part of Elizabeth's reign his mind was taken up with dangers from abroad. When Elizabeth's life alone stood between her subjects and anarchy or a foreign domination, it was no time to discuss rights and privileges. But by 1603 these dangers were over. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 meant the destruction not only of Philip's ambitions, but also of the Tudor dictatorship—for it was no longer required. Englishmen might, therefore, safely devote themselves to criticizing and reforming their own government. Another cause of the struggle was the development, during the sixteenth century, of the national character, That century, it has been said, saw the birth of the modern Englishman. He had realized his possibilities in enterprise, in seamanship, in difficult situation in regard to their Parliaments. But James, instead of relieving the situation, merely aggravated it. A wise man once said that the rights of kings and peoples never agree so well together as in silence. James, however, was both loquacious and pedantic. He was always wanting to define matters of government which had much better be left undefined, and to theorise concerning powers which he might have exercised, in practice, without notice, but which, uncompromisingly enunciated, were bound to provoke opposition. |
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