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Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1625-1629 1625-1629; Part 2 |
1625-1629; Part 2Charles's second Parliament met in 2626, after the loan of ships to the French king and the disaster to the Cadiz fleet had occurred. The House of Commons first demanded that an inquiry into the Cadiz disaster should precede any grant of supply, and wanted especially to investigate Buckingham's conduct. Charles held that he and not Parliament must be the judge of the capacity of his ministers: "I would not have the House to question my servants," he said, " much less one who is so near me." The House of Commons then went a step further, and under Eliot's leadership impeached Buckingham. Sir John Eliot was a Cornishman, a man of lofty nature, and a great orator, but apt—as those possessing the qualities of an orator often are—to exaggerate, and take either a better or a worse view of a man than he deserved. In 1625 he had expressed a hope to Buckingham that he might be " wholly devoted to the contemplation of his excellencies". But in the next year, when he saw, as he said, "our honour ruined, our ships sunk, our men perished, not by the sword, not by the enemy, not by chance, but by those we trust", his indignation knew no bounds. In a speech of wonderful power he applied to Buckingham the words in which Tacitus characterized Sejanus (Sejanus was governor of the praetorian troops, and for many years controlled the policy of the Emperor Tiberius): Sui obtegens, in alios criminator; juxta adulatio et superbia. "If he is Sejanus, I must be Tiberius," was Charles's comment on this comparison, and he never forgave Eliot as a consequence. Buckingham's impeachment led Charles to dissolve the second Parliament.The third Parliament met two years later, in 1628. Charles was needlessly rude in his first speech. If the Parliament did not supply his wants, he must, he said, use all means which God had put into his hands. " Take not this as a threat," he added, " for I scorn to threaten any but my equals." This was an unpromising beginning; but Parliament had more important causes of dissatisfaction than the king's speech. The Rhe expedition had failed. Parliament was still nervous about religion. Moreover, the king had recently levied a forced loan. But this was not all. Five knights had refused to pay the forced loan, and had been imprisoned. When brought up in a court of law, the justification for their imprisonment had been given as " the special command of the king". The Crown lawyers argued before the judges that the king must have, for the safety of the State, the power to commit people to, and to keep them in, prison without trial. That is true enough; but the danger was, as it has been well said, that the king was making the medicine of the constitution its daily food. Moreover, the knights' lawyers held that such a power as the king claimed was plainly contrary to an Englishman's liberty and to Magna Carta. The judges before whom the case was tried had given no definite ruling in such a difficult matter, though they had refused to release the knights from prison. |
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