| Copyright | ||
|
Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1640-1642 |
1640-1642We must now trace the influence of Scottish affairs upon English politics. The Scottish rebellion, it has been said, gave back to England her Parliamentary system. For eleven years Charles had done without Parliament. A certain skill in finding pretexts for gathering money combined with a rigid economy had made this possible. But the money was only just enough for current expenses;- any extra strain would break down Charles's system and make a Parliament inevitable. After the First Bishops' War was over Stratford arrived in England, and, by his advice, in order to obtain funds to renew the war with Scotland, a Parliament was summoned. That Parliament — called the Short Parliament—met in April, 1640, and it lasted but three weeks. The king tried to bargain for subsidies in return for giving up ship-money, but he failed; and Parliament, when it proceeded to petition for a peaceful settlement with Scotland, was dissolved. This Parliament was.sufficiently long-lived to bring to the front a Somersetshire squire named Pym, who was to show himself a great Parliamentarian. Though he lacked the nobility and the fire of Eliot, he was a clear and cogent speaker, a clever tactician, and the possessor of unbounded energy. In a speech of two hours—an exceptionally long speech for that period—he attacked the misgovernment of the king, and summed up his political creed by declaring that " the powers of Parliament are to the body politic as the rational faculties of the soul to a man". And he quickly achieved for himself a position which led his enemies to call him, in the next Parliament, "King Pym".The Second Bishops’ War followed the dissolution of the Short Parliament. In the peace which ended it Charles, as we have seen, promised to pay £850 a day to the Scottish army. But with this large sum of money required, he was compelled to summon another Parliament and, what is more, to listen to its demands. The House of Commons was, at that time, an aristocratic and not what we should now consider a democratic assembly; and the Parliament which met in November, 1640—to be known in history as the Long Parliament—was composed, it has been said, of the very flower of the English gentry and educated laity. The work of this Parliament for the first nine months of its.existence was the abolition of the arbitrary power of the Crown. |
Chronology |
| copyright by uuo-ununoctium.info |