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Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1625-1629 |
1625-1629Charles called three Parliaments during the first four years of his reign, and quarrelled with each one of them. Then for eleven years he governed without a Parliament. Finally, a war with Scotland and the consequent need of money forced him in 1640 to call two Parliaments, the second of which reduced his powers, and eventually civil war broke out in 1642. Such is briefly the history of Charles's relations with his Parliaments. The subjects of dispute were many. There was, as in James's reign, the religious difficulty. Charles was an Anglican High Churchman, and because of his wife was inclined to tolerate the Roman Catholics; Parliament was Puritan and anti-Catholic. Parliament distrusted the king's ministers, Buckingham in the first four years, and Stafford and Laud in 1640; the king, on the contrary, thought these ministers able and efficient, and any parliamentary criticisms of them factious and impertinent. Parliament, in the early years of Charles's reign, was angry at the failure of the English foreign policy; and in later years, because of the Court intrigues with foreign powers.But underlying all these disputes Jay the questions indicated in the last chapter: Where did sovereignty reside? Who had the responsibility for the government of the country? The Parliament wanted, rightly or wrongly, a greater control of the government; Charles, rightly or wrongly, was unwilling to concede it— there lay the whole difficulty. We regard it now as an easy task to bring the powers of Crown and Parliament into harmony. But this dual control was not easy to arrange, and perhaps was impossible to obtain without friction. As a matter of fact, a Civil War occurred in 1642 and a Revolution in 1688 before an arrangement could be made—and even then it proved not to be permanent. Charles's first Parliament met in 1625 (Even an outbreak of the plague in London did not prevent an attendance at the opening of Charles's first Parliament which beat the record established when James I came to the throne), just after the king had arranged to pay very large subsidies to the King of Denmark and to send a fleet to attack Spain. Obviously large sums would be required. But Charles's reticence and want of frankness proved a fatal impediment. There were no Bluebooks or Whitebooks and no daily newspapers in those days, and it was difficult for members of Parliament to know what was going on. Though members knew, of course, that a great religious war was in progress in Germany, and were anxious that England should help the Protestants, they were yet unfamiliar with recent developments. But Charles would neither explain his policy, nor depute anyone else to do so. Consequently, as one member said, "They knew not their enemy", and the statement was literally true. Nor did Charles explain his needs; he made a definite demand for the navy, but only hinted at the largeness of the sums he really required. Consequently Charles only got one-seventh of the amount of money which he needed. At the same time Parliament only granted tunnage and poundage to the king for one year, though for the last two centuries it had been granted the king for life. Here Parliament was wrong. The Monarchy could not get on without the money. It had to meet the ordinary expenses of government; moreover, the Court spent more money than in Elizabeth';- day, whilst the great rise in prices, owing to the influx of silver from the New World, had made the king's revenue worth less than before. The only result of Parliament's action was that Charles continued to levy these customs right up till 1640 without any Parliamentary sanction at all, the judges supporting him. In this, as in the succeeding Parliaments, the Puritan majority had apprehensions about religion, for the king favoured Anglican High Churchmen such as Laud (Laud supplied the king with a list of clergy marked either O for Orthodox-Puritan, so that only those might receive promotion whom Laud considered Orthodox), and also allowed the administration of the laws against the Roman Catholics to become somewhat lax. |
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