Vol. IV, No. 2 JANUARY, 1919
Smith College Studies
in History
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT
SIDNEY BRADSHAW FAY
Editors
IN THE TIME OF SIR JOHN ELIOT--THREE STUDIES
IN ENGLISH HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
By MARY BREESE FULLER
Associate Professor of History in Smith College
NORTHAMPTON, MASS.
Published Quarterly by the
Department of History of Smith College
Entered as second class matter December 14, 1915 at the postoffice
at Northampton, Mass., under the act of August 24, 1912.
The Smith College Studies in History is published quarterly, in October, January, April and July, by the Department of History of Smith College. The subscription price is seventy-five cents for single numbers, two dollars for the year. Subscriptions and requests for exchanges should be addressed to Professor Sidney B. Fay, Northampton, Mass.
The Smith College Studies in History aims primarily to afford a medium for the publication of studies in History and Government by investigators who have some relation to the College, either as faculty, alumnae, students or friends. It aims also to publish from time to time brief notes in the field of History and Government which may be of special interest to alumnae of Smith College and to others interested in the higher education of women. Contributions of studies or notes which promise to further either of these aims will be welcomed, and should be addressed to Professor John S. Basset, Northampton, Mass.
| Vol. I. | ||
| No. 1. | An Introduction to the History of Connecticut as a Manufacturing State |
Grace Pierpont Fuller |
| Nos. 2, 3. | The Operation of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina |
Laura Josephine Webster |
| No. 4. | Women's Suffrage in New Jersey, 1790-1807 |
B. R. Turner |
The Cherokee Negotiations of 1822-1823 |
Annie Heloise Abel | |
| Vol. II. | ||
| No. 1. | The Hohenzollern Household and Administration in the Sixteenth Century | Sidney Bradshaw Fay |
| No. 2. | Correspondence of George Bancroft and Jared Sparks, 1823-1832 | Edited by John Spencer Bassett |
| No. 3. | The Development of the Powers of the State Executive in New York | Margaret C. Alexander |
| No. 4. | Trade of the Delaware District Before the Revolution | Mary Alice Hanna |
| Vol. III. | ||
| No. 1. | Joseph Hawley's Criticism of the Constitution of Massachusetts | Mary Catherine Chine |
| No. 2. | Finances of Edward VI and Mary | Frederick Charles Dietz |
| No. 3. | The Ministry of Stephen of Perche During the Minority of William II of Sicily | John C. Hildt |
| No. 4. | Northern Opinion of Approaching Secession | L. T. Lowrey |
| Vol. IV. | ||
| No. 1. | The Problem of Administrative Areas | Harold J. Laski |
VOL. IV, No. 2 JANUARY, 1919
Smith College Studies
in History
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT
SIDNEY BRAD SHAW FAY
Editors
IN THE TIME OF SIR JOHN ELIOT--THREE STUDIES
IN ENGLISH HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
By MARY BREESE FULLER
Associate Professor of History in Smith College
NORTHAMPTON, MASS.
Published Quarterly by the
Department of History of Smith College
| PREFACE | |
| I. SIR JOHN ELIOT AND JOHN NUTT, THE PIRATE | 71 |
| II. JAMES I AND THE PARLIAMENT OF 1621 | 95 |
| III. THE NEGOTIUM POSTERORUM | 110 |
For hints in regard to sources for the first of these studies
I am indebted to Mr. R. G. Marsden, of London, the author of
The High Court of Admiralty
and other writings on naval
history. Mr. Marsden was also kind enough to point out to
me certain mistakes in numbering in the Record Office Calendar
of the Admiralty Court papers and therefore to facilitate the
accuracy of the transcript work done for me there by Miss E.
Salisbury.
The chronological gap between the second and third studies is due to the impossibility of my obtaining at the present time satisfactory evidence from any original sources concerning the French marriage treaties of 1624. Certain comments which might be suggested by Eliot's narrative in the Negotium Posterorum are also withheld until more research in regard to those treaties can be made. Professor Gardiner's accounts of these negotiations do not seem to me clear or well founded.
November 20, 1918. M. B. F.In the year 1622[1] Sir John Eliot received his title of office as Vice Admiral of Devon under Buckingham as Lord High Admiral. The office had grown out of the two offices of "keeper of the coast" of Henry III's time and of the Lancastrian "conservator of truces"[2]. The holders of these earlier offices were merely shifting deputies of the Lord High Admiral with little individual responsibility. Henry VIII, however, among his other reforms of naval procedure, instituted for this place a permanent official of social rank and prestige, usually a county gentleman. His title was Vice Admiral and his business was to levy seamen, to inspect ships going to and coming from the harbors, to exact bonds and to look after prizes. The Vice Admiral got in return for this office a certain amount of wreck and salvage money, usually about one-tenth of each prize, part of which it was customary to tender to the Lord High Admiral. The Vice Admiral was rare, however, who, under stress of continual temptation, did not add to this acknowledged toll a fringe of less lawful receipts.
The first record we have of Eliot tugging in the harness of
office is a letter to the Privy Council in April, 1623,[3]
in which
he complains of the scarcity of seamen for impressment, many
he says having gone to Newfoundland.
Newfoundland or
Avalon, was exciting popular interest just at this time. Discovered
by Cabot in 1497, colonized by Whitbourne, Vaughan,
Mason and most recently by Wynne, an agent of Sir George
[72]
Calvert, it was an alluring bait to adventurers who were not
yet aware of its bleakness but were already getting profits
from the fish in its waters.[4] The impressment trouble, however,
was soon overshadowed by a larger woe, the struggle with the
famous pirate, Captain John Nutt. Correspondence about this
affair looms large in the state papers of the remainder of the
spring and summer of 1623.
Piracy in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
was a name applied to many types of naval adventure. The
legitimate enemy from Spain was called a pirate. A neutral
ship carrying an enemy's goods was a pirate. An English sailor
like Hawkins or Mainwaring who brought gold and glory to
the king on one voyage and plundered the English coast on the
next voyage was also a pirate. While, of course, the heathen
Turk
with a cutlass from Algiers or Morocco was a chief
example and flaunter of piracy. Piracy was the plague especially
of the western coasts afflicted with constant attacks of
each of these types of plunderers. Sixty men, women and
children were taken off a church in Mont's Bay at one time.
[5]
Ships were advised to consort with each other for protection.
A suit of 1617 condemns the master of Jonas (a merchant
ship) for not keeping company with
[6]
Abigail
, True Love
, and
six other ships, whereby two were captured by Turks and lost.
Though the coast dwellers feared these marauders they often
joined hands with the pirates of "Christian kind". Mainwaring,
a "gentleman pirate", as he called himself, whose life very
nearly coincided with that of Eliot, tells in his essay, A Discourse
of Pirates
, of the recruits that he gained from the
home shore, of the food and refreshment eagerly ready for
him wherever he might land.[7] In 1631 Captain Plumleigh wrote
to Sir John Coke about the pirates in the Irish Sea: An Irish
Harbor was one of their strongholds. Mr. Cormat, a confederate
[73]
though a man of fortune in that kingdom, received and
supported these people in the harbor of Broadhaven.
[8]
According to Mainwaring, not only subjects but many sovereigns
in Europe danced to the piping of the pirates. He boasts
of his pardons from Dukes of Medina, of Sidon and of Florence
and says The Dey of Tunis swore by his beard that if
I would stay with him he would divide his estate with me.
Allowance must be made for Mainwaring's imagination as for
the imagination of Captain John Smith. But at the same time
that the English government was fitting out Monson's expedition
against Algerian pirates in 1620 it was issuing one pardon
after another to English depredators of the coast. Mainwaring
himself was pardoned, knighted and made lieutenant to the
Warden of the Five Ports and Governor of Dover Castle between
1617 and 1620. He signs himself at the end of his
essay Your Majesty's new creature.
[9] The trouble which he
gave to the government lingered on after he made his confession.
Hill wrote to Brereton in 1623: Mainwaring, when
he was a pirate plundered a French ship, under value of £1000,
restitution for which having been vainly sought the King of
France has issued letters of reprisal for £15,000.
[10]
As in
the case which we shall take up in detail, these gentlemen pirates
were often confident of support from the highest officials
of the king's council. Oppenheim says: Their friends, agents,
informants and customers were to be found in every class of
society.
[11]
When Eliot took his office of Vice Admiral, the technical
jurisdiction over pirates captured along shore was in the hands
of the common law courts, where it had been put in 1526. This
arrangement left to the admiralty court judgment only over cases
dealing with the pirate caught on the open sea. Nevertheless the
line between the admiralty court cases and the common court
cases seems to have been very wavering; the functions of the
[74]
admiralty court were particularly irregular, fluctuating with
the growth and development of the law.
[12] And always the
admiralty court had been under close direction and supervision
of the Privy Council. This fact, combined with the complications
arising from the pirates being often in this period of exploration
and discovery a help rather than a hindrance to the
state, caused in all important trials of pirates an emphasis of
the judicial functions of the Privy Council and Star Chamber.
Appeals in behalf of the pirate in such cases were constantly
handed up from the juries of the shires. And the Vice Admiral
evidently leaned hard on the same right of appeal to the
sustaining power of a higher authority in conflicts of his authority
with that of mayor or sheriff.
Such was the legal situation when Eliot in the course of his duties as guardian of part of the southwest coast fell foul of Nutt. The struggle which he underwent in the Nutt case against injustice in high cases was a prologue to his fight in later years against Buckingham.
Captain John Nutt, according to his own statement during
examination before the admiralty court, came from Limpston
in Devonshire and had then been a pirate for nearly two years.[13]
Fuller, in his "Worthies",[14] states that Nutt had helped an
English ship bound for Newfoundland when attacked by French
cruisers but near the island he backslid. In August Laste Paste
was twelve months this examinate entered into and began the
unlawful course of taking ships and goods piratically.
The details
of this backsliding in the Newfoundland waters are given
in a letter of Thomas Spurwaie, the Mayor of Dartmouth, to
the Privy Council on June 12th, 1623[15] as follows:
May it please your Lordships to understand that about two
yeares since on John Nutt, an English man, beinge placed
[75]
gunner in a shipp of this Harborough bound for the Newfoundland
Where being a Rived in the time of Fishinge gott to him
selfe other Wicked and ill disposed Persons and entered a French
shipp Which hee posest, and With her tooke by subtiltie a
Shipp of Plymouth of good force by which he there commited
many outrages and greate spoyle upon poore fisher men, sithence
which time he possest him selfe with a Flemishe shipp about the
burthen of 140 Tonnes, In Which shipp he latly cam att ancor
in a place called Tor baye neare this Harbour in hope of a
pardon Which he assayed With some Gentelmen to Procure after
some assurance hereof (as it seemes) ranged againe the Coast
Where formerly he had robbed maney of our nation and tooke
a shippe of Colchester.
Spurwaie's story about the ravages of Nutt is confirmed by
the news in another letter from a ship's master, Thomas Fownes,
in the employ of a Bristol merchant, Richard Holworthy.[16]
Fownes says: I would entreat you that if you maye laye houlde
of him, that you woulde a rest him for Fifteene hundred pound
in losse. that I have by him, by the meanes of tackeing my shipp
in the Newfoundland I wish I hadd a thowsand for it, I will
asshure you I am soe muche the wourse for him; he hath sioce
pece of ordnance of myne now in the shipp; fower minniones a
boute 18c a pece; and two minnions a boute 15c a pece; he
toocke my shipp in the midst of there fishing, and toocke all
there sallt: and all there vittells from them; and toocke a waye
a Cabell and a hawser with three barrells of powder, and all
other munition and provitiones, and afterward turned a waye
the shipp, leaving them noe vittels to bring them home and
left my master and companey in the Newfoundland with ane
ould Portingalle shipp, and my man hath bine trubbled in Lawe
for that shipp in Portingall; and it hath cost me 200 li to buye
my peace from the Portingalls soe that I hadd a duble losse by
that vellon Nutt; I praye you doe your best to helpe mee to
Recover my losse from him as well as your own, if you maye
[76]
tacke him in hulland or in any other place; and I will doe
the licke for you if I maye aprehend him, in these parts.
This same letter has as its main object complaint of Nutt's attacks on Holworthy's own ships off the coast of Devonshire. It is worth quoting further for its vivid style, for its amusing mixture of piety and anger, as well as for its characterization of Nutt.
I am sorrey that I have noe better newes for to send
this Messenger unto you; the barcke that should have brought
your skines and Tallowe unto mee, came in yesterdaye in the
Morning; whoe was tacken one fraydaye laste at the Lands
end, being the 16th of this present, by Nutt the Pirate, whoe
toocke awaye all your goods, both tallowe and skines, and allsoe
toocke from the young man that you sent suche clothes as hee
hadd, and some money and lickewyse the moste parte of suche
clothes, as the companey hadd, he is a Merciles vellon, and
hath a crew of wicked vellones with him, that feares Neither
god nor man; hee brocke upe all your letters, and there did
see that the goods was but consigned unto mee, and that it was
your goods, the master and the younge man intreating him
verey muche to leave the goods; I hope you will macke the
best use of it, Acknowledging that nothing comes to passe, but
by gods providence, and therefore that it hath plesed the Lord
to suffer him, to bee ane instrument to correct bothe you and
mee, but in the end he shalle not escape gods fearful Judgments
to falle uppon him, without hee speedely repent, and macke satisfaction;
for my parte I am a thousand pounde the wourse for
him; and nowe this is a greate losse unto you; but howsoever I
am asshured it is fallen upon one that will thainckfully tacke
it, is (sic) a love and favor of god towards you, and patiently,
to submitt your sellfe under his hand. Whoe cann and will
restore it to you again, in a greater measure, if hee see it fitt
for you, the master of the barcke and allsoe the younge man
that you Imployd; doe Reporte that Nutt will goe for hulland
with suche goods as hee hath tacken, and there macke salle of
it; he toocke divers shippes and barckes that daye, that your
[77]
barcke was taken, and he useth all men verey badly; he came
out of Ireland wheare hee trimed his shipp; I thincke the younge
man hath written you from what place hee came I doe verely
believe that either hee will goe for hulland or for some parte of
Ireland againe, but I rather thincke he will goe for hulland and
therefore I thincke it fitt that you should write unto some
friend at Amsterdam that if hee com theather, or thereaboutes ;
that they would ley houlde one him, and allsoe one your goods.
I doubt not, but if hee com theather, and that hee maye bee
tacken; that you maye have satisfaction for your goods but
you must use all exspedition; I praye god he goe for hulland; I
am some what doubt full of it.
Another captain of Holworthy's, Richard Betterton, added
his tale to that of Fownes, writing from Plymouth the 20th of
May.[17] He brings out the fact of Nutt's having a place of
refuge in Ireland and, like Fownes, shows the pirate's habit of
disposing of his goods in Holland. Butt nowe wee be in
plymouth and all things ill for all our goods is taken from us which
grives mee to the hearte wee came from Elly oase the 12th
day of may and the 16th day in the morninge all our goods is
taken from us bytwene the lands end and mouse holle by Captaine
nutt an English man of warre and all English men When
hee came aboard us first we weare in good hope hee would
take nothinge soe he cald for our Cocketts and our bills of Ladinge
& never made mention to take a waye any Thinge tell hee sawe
the letter directed to Mr. Fowens then hee bid his men out with
it as fast as they could o my good frind Mr. Fowens lookes for
my liefe every Day if hee could take mee hee would hang mee
and I looke for his goods soe wee told him that the goods was
yours and that it was butt sent to him he bid us bee contente for
twas but a folly for us to speake to him for you weare partners
together and hee would have it all if it weare a thousand pounds
worth of good he lyes beetwene the lands End and Mounts bay
of and on soe that it is not possible for none to scape him they
ses all they will lade their shippe with goods ther and then
[78]
they will goe for Holland and make salle of the goods when wee
weare taken hee had 4 prices under hand be sides us hee hath
taken sixtene saille small and great already not ells havinge
to writte you at this time I leave you to the protection of the
Almighty god I end.
Before ever wee knewe what hee was Hee shotte at us and had stroke us if it had not bin for a cuntry man of the Master of our barcke, which was taken to days before us knew the barke and bag upon his knees hee should not hitt us all that Mr. tippett and I had a board the barke they tooke it away cleane savinge our bedinge and a fewe old clothes hee washt and trimd his shippe in Longe Hand in Erland and came ther hence not longe a gone hee hath 16 peces of Ordinance mounted & a great many in the hould.
Holworthy's own deposition of June 23[18] repeats the statements
made by these shipmasters, Fownes and Betterton. He
adds: Further he deposeth that the said Nutt on Saturday last
past in the afternone being brought to whit hall to mak his appearance,
he did then … volontaryly confes befor …
Lock the chief clarke belonging to Sir William Becher whoe
tock his appearance, that he did take away all the aforsaid
goods out of the aforsaid bark as above said. & that he did
carry the same for Dartmouth where he did delever the possession
therof to the Viz Admiral (eccepting about 5 or 6 bondles
of the said Calfskins) Sir John Elyot.
These letters as well as testimony from navy captains in later years show clearly that Nutt was one of the generals of his kind, daring, resourceful and able to keep under his control a number of consorts with which he terrorized the coasts of England and Ireland.
With complaints there came also to the authorities requests
for the privilege of capturing Nutt. In the state papers is a
[79]
letter of Best written on June 3, 1623,[19] where he says, when
telling of a farther attack of Nutt: my great desire is to be
employed one moneth to goe seeke him, which if it seeme good to
you to procure from his Majestie (under correction) I thinke you
should doe god good service w th much Ho: to the Kinge, besides
the gaine of many prayers to, and for your selves. If I
may be employed to seeke Nutt, I shall not doubt soone to
finde him if not departed the coaste before my cominge thither.
We have no record of Best's endeavors but Eliot was certainly
laying his plans to capture Nutt. In the case of these
gentlemen pirates who served two masters it was apparently
the custom for King and Council to grant pardons for set periods
of time so that the strain of being His Majesty's new
creature
was frequently not permanent. Before Eliot's contact
with Nutt the pirate had twice received official pardons
granting immunity from arrest.[20] Nutt's latest pardon had
expired for nearly a month when the news in the letter already
quoted and other complaints of the same sort came to the King
and to Eliot.
At the time when these complaints about Nutt came up to
the Privy Council its chief secretaries were Sir George Calvert
and Edward Conway. As Calvert was much occupied with
private schemes of commerce and colonization most of the direction
of judicial business fell to Conway. Buckingham, Lord
High Admiral, Eliot's immediate chief and therefore his natural
supporter, was out of England from February until September
on his famous and foolish expedition with Prince Charles seeking
the hand of the Infanta of Spain. Therefore when at last
the council felt obliged to bestir itself over the situation on
the western coasts it was Conway who wrote to Eliot. The
letter, dated June 12th,[21] was a cautious one. After stating that
[80]
news had come to the council of Nutt's many insolent and
brutish Pyracies
and that this Pyrat hath a wife and children
near Exeter
Conway says that it is the commandment of the
King that you imploy your best dilligence, care and discretion
to apprehend this Pyrat but it will be very important that the
directions you give herein bee carried with as much secrecie
as possibly can bee.
He adds that notice is to be taken of
such sea-faring men as come ashore and stay made of any that
are suspicious without naming Nutt.
Conway mentions Eliot's
discretion, experience and knowledge of the country,
but
evidently has not yet realized the Vice-Admiral's initiative.
This letter of Conway's apparently crossed one which Eliot
sent to the Commissioners on June 10th[22] in which he writes
(Nutt) has upon the knowledge of a pardon which his Majestic
has been pleased to grant him submitted himself and brought
his ship into the harbour of Dartmouth.
Eliot states: The
pardon is of the first of February, with extension for some
Liberty for notice, which it seems he mett not until now. ther
was three months onlie prefixt, since which time he has committed
many Depredations and spoils." Eliot asked for "direction
or commands", showing real hesitation and indecision.
Referring to the pardon granted Nutt he says: "the Majestie's
intention : but as something too high I must fly to your Lordship's
favors for construction which I most humbly crave, my
Desires strive to avoid the Dangers of an ignorance & (as they
would not contest his Majestie's pleasure, soe) to be held free
of neglect in my place.
The reader of this letter, knowing the
outcome of this arrest and its consequences for Eliot, wonders
if the Vice-Admiral himself was aware of the peculiar danger
he was running in doing his duty as he saw it. This letter of
June 10 referred to another since my last advertisement to
your honors of Captain Nutt,
a letter which apparently is not
to be found. Conway makes no reference to it in his letter
to Eliot of June 12th, quoted above, so it may not have reached
him.
[81]
The vagueness of the letter of June 12th about details is
supplemented by Eliot's more exact information to Conway on
June 16th.[23] Having had no answer from the Council with
instructions about the disposal of his "Pyrat" but having received
Conway's letter of the 12th he proceeded to carry out a
plan the initiative of which had been furnished by Nutt himself.[24]
In the early weeks of May when Nutt was hanging about Torbay
he had sent word by one Vittry
to Eliot's deputies, Randall
and Norber, to come aboard his man-of-war, that he might
talk with them about Eliot's getting him a pardon. In lordly
fashion he added for if he could not have it heere he told
them it was Pcured in holland
and in accordance with the
usage of the pirate day farther sayd that he would give two
hundred and fifty pounds or three hundred pounds in reddy
money for the pcuring of his pardon.
[25]
This was Eliot's opportunity. He determined to use a trick. He would give Nutt his pardon, but it was a pardon which had legally expired. Somehow a copy of such a pardon had fallen into Eliot's hands. A correspondence began between the Vice-Admiral and the pirate.[26] Nutt was suspicious of some ruse and refused to come on shore to meet Eliot. According to Eliot,[27] three or four weeks went by between the preliminary request of Nutt for a pardon and Eliot's finally getting him to accept it. In the meantime Nutt went on plundering, a fact to be taken into account in judging Eliot's ethics. At last, since Nutt would not go on shore to meet Eliot, Eliot went on board ship to meet Nutt. They chaffered together over a flask of wine in the pirate's own cabin. Nutt finally decided to accept the pardon and to pay Eliot as fine five hundred instead of three hundred pounds. This money, according to the usual custom, was to go partly to the Vice-Admiral, partly to the Lord High [82] Admiral. Already Nutt had given to the deputies of Eliot six packs of calf-skins—stolen from the Bristol merchant, Holworthy—for the Vice-Admiral and four pieces of baize for themselves.[28]
In the middle of the conclave between Eliot and Nutt the
captain of a Colchester ship came to the cabin door where
they were drinking and,
as Eliot said, petitioned (on his
knees) for his ship and goods where it was not in the power
of this examinste to do him any good nor Durst he earnestly
importune at that tyme on his behalf; for that at his firste
comeinge on board when he understood that the shippe was
Englishe, usinge some words special to persuade Nutt to quitt
her in respecte the Kinge had now granted him a pardon, Hee
the said Nutt presently fell into a passion and vowed not to
accepte the pardon but upon condition to enjoy what hee had,
neither doth hee beleve that there passed a word betweene him
and the man that knelte as aforesaid.
[29] About the injury of
the unhappy Colchester captain Eliot said in his examination that
he knew only by hearsay that the merchandise and men had
been beaten out
of the ship.
Suave and reassuring as Eliot seems to have been in this
interview, catering to the mood of the pirate, suspicion of some
trick still hovered in the consciousness of Nutt, shown by his
reluctance to come ashore. Finally, however, he brought his
ship into the harbour of Dartmouth, was arrested, ship and
crew, with the Colchester prize tacked on.[30] Spurwaie, the
Mayor of Dartmouth, was an interested spectator of Eliot's
capture of Nutt, and in the letter to the Privy Council already
quoted[31] about Nutt, the adventurer, sliding into Nutt, the
pirate, describes Nutt's blatant behavior on landing before arrest
[83]
He took away the clothes from the sailors on the Colchester
ship and he and his own crew paraded the quay, wearing
the stolen garments! Spurwaie took upon himself the responsibility
of putting back these outraged Colchesters on board
their ship in possession of there goodes.
[32]
Spurwaie in this
same informing letter to the council tells how Eliot interrupted
a neat plan of twelve Fleminges who cam scatteringe by land
(from Plymouth) to Torbaye of purpose to doe some mischief;
seized a ship from Hamburg in the harbor and were
departing to the west with her when Eliot, aided by the wind
and forty men of Dartmouth, towed the ship into port and threw
the men into prison. When Eliot himself wrote to the council
about the capture he added that the corn in the cargo ought to
be taken out and used for the poor as it was beginning to spoil
while waiting for the owners of the ship to prove their right
to her.[33]
In Eliot's own formal report to the council about these events
and in the personal letter following to Conway[34] there is an
uncertainty of tone, an over-obsequiousness, which implies a fear
lest he has gone beyond his authority. He was also meticulously
careful about further proceedings with Nutt and his men
until he received orders from the council. He stated that the
ship was safe without her sails and a guard on board. But
for the persons of the men until I know the extent of his Majesties
intentions in the pardon whereof I dare not be an interpreter,
I thought not fitt to touch them.
He wrote repeatedly for
these orders and always passed on copies of his letters to Conway.
Ten days went by without Eliot's having any acknowledgment
from the council. Conway answered on the 20th,
[84]
however,[35] telling Eliot to put crew and goods in custody and to
send up Nutt himself to the council. The letter from the admiralty
court finally came, repeating these same instructions.
Eliot complied. The crew was put in prison, the goods
stored
awaiting the issue of the trial and Nutt sent to London. Conway
in his letter had added his praise to Eliot when the matter
was reported at court, for which favor the Vice-Admiral returned
profound thanks.[36]
But the actual issue of this original venture in arrest was much more involved and unpleasant for Eliot than a courtly salutation with Majesty. In brief, a month later found Nutt continuing his ravages of the Irish coast under a limitless and unconditional pardon while Eliot himself was in the Marshalsea prison in London. The surface causes of this turning of the tables were brought out during the trials of Nutt, and of Eliot and his deputies in July and early August before the admiralty court. The underlying fundamental cause leaked out later. The whole situation is characteristically illustrative of the government complications in marine affairs during the early seventeenth century.
Eliot was under trial with Nutt before Sir Henry Marten because of two sets of accusations. The first group of accusations came from Nutt and the associates whom he coerced into helping him malign Eliot.[37] They charged the Vice-Admiral with taking more goods from Nutt than were his just perquisites and with inciting Nutt to further piracy while waiting for his pardon to be confirmed.
The second group of accusations came from the mayor of [85] Dartmouth and the owners of Nutt's prize, the Colchester ship, with its wools and sugar which Eliot had considered a side issue to be kept in abeyance until Nutt himself had been disposed of. They attacked Eliot for exceeding his authority. The owners of this ship had proved their claim to her and petitioned the council for her restoration.[38] They coupled this petition with a false statement about Eliot's boarding their ship and taking sugar from her.[39] Then Spurwaie, the same mayor of Dartmouth who had praised Eliot to the council for his capture of Nutt and the Hamburg ship, together with his associates in the local admiralty court, wrote to the council that Eliot refused to give up the ship even though the council had so ordered.[40] That Eliot had taken any goods from this prize was easily disproved at the trial both by his deputies and by other witnesses.[41] About the deliverance of the ship to its owners, there was a collision in authority. The order for restoration should have been sent to Eliot instead of to his inferior officers in the province. Moreover, the order sent to the mayor to restore the ship to her owners directly contradicted the order sent Eliot from the council through Conway to hold on to it. However influential in causing the arrest of Eliot, this accusation of the mayor played little part in the trial, and uncertainty in regard to its truth caused it soon to be dropped.
The trial of Eliot took place before the judge of the high
court of admiralty, Sir Henry Marten, in London, during July.
Randall, Eliot's chief deputy, gave his deposition at this court.
Norber, technically Eliot's marshal, was examined in August
before Kiste, judge of the admiralty court of Devon. The absurdity
of the other group of accusations that Eliot took goods
from Nutt for his own use and that he incited Nutt to further
piracy was brought out by all the examinates. Even Nutt
[86]
himself denied that Eliot took any goods for personal use.[42]
Both Norber and Randal declared it impossible that Eliot should
have done either of the things of which he was accused. Norber
asserted emphatically that the only money, jewels and goods he
received from Nutt before the final capture of his ship were
the six packs of calve skins and the four pieces of baize sent
to Eliot when the deputies went on board to treat. Norber
scrupulously adds that at his first being abord the sd Nutt
after his coming into Torbay he had from the sd Nutt a little
loafe of sugar contayning about 2 pounds & halfe, & one little
barrell of suckett (a conserve) contayning about 2 pounds but
more or other goods this examinant never received neither did know
that any other did receive any of the sd Nutt only excepting one
loafe of sugar wch the sd Nutt sent one Henry Lumbly's wife
of Dartmouth.
[43]
Eliot, of course, in his examination denied both accusations
and as we have seen, was exactly supported by Norber's later
examination. In regard to seizing the goods Eliot said that he
sent word to Mr. Kiste about those six packs of calve-skins taken
for the Lord Admiral's use
and twas publicly known in
Dartmouth.
As for encouraging Nutt to further piracies,
Eliot tells how he urged Nutt's brother-in-law to dissuade the
pirate from those spoils and rapines which he every day comitted
upon the coast, which otherwise would make him incapable
of any hope or favour.
About urging Nutt to attack some
Spanish ships Eliot said the facts were that with one Mr. Popes
and one Mr. Doves Masters of a Fleete of shippes at Dartmouth,
of Twenty or 21 saile he went to surprize the said Nutt
[87]
in Torbay.
[44] This plan was frustrated only because Nutt was
chased away by a Dutch man-of-war.
The evidence would seem to make the result of the trial a
foregone conclusion. But though the judge, Marten, sent up
the evidence of the witnesses first to the council,
then to Conway,[45]
in a summarized form ready for such conclusion, he refused
to conclude. That is, he preserved an almost wholly noncommittal
attitude. In his letter to Conway, he hedged by saying
that he had rather give his observations before the king,
personally, and the whole Council, not only about Eliot, but
about all others in the like place wthin the Kingdom.
This
acknowledgement he finally made: I must doe Sr John Eliot
this right to say, this bringing in of Nutt was factum bonum,
yf not bene: For thoughe Nutt did sollicite for his pardon and
offered thereuppon to come in, yet hee ceased not to pillage
and comitte outrage uppon all the vessells hee coulde meete and
master untill the day wherein Sir John Elliott did gull him wth
the shewe of an exemplification of a pardon out of date.
[46]
As the substance of his report Marten urged the release of
Eliot until the Lord High Admiral came back from Spain, "yf hee
bee cautelously bayled"; but he urged this release not on the
ground of justice to Eliot but only on the ground of the neglect
of the King's business under the charge of the Vice-Admiral
if the Vice-Admiral and his deputies were shut away from their
responsibilities. He detailed elaborately the various sides of
this neglect: Ships and goods may perish or vanish; the time
of year is one of greatest business; Nutt's 23 men doe soe
pester the Prison that they feare an infection
and the Vice-Admiral
ought to be there to get them out, judge them, and
hang them. This letter of Marten to Conway is shadowed by
a weak subservience and evident fear of offence. Beside the
shuffling about a definite decision in the case, he said he had
sent a copy of this letter to Calvert; and he filled a long paragraph
[88]
with thankfulness that after all the King had not withheld
the sign of his favor and had given him his annual buck!
Marten's advice was not heeded. Eliot remained in prison,
baffled in his attempt to get a meeting of the council to hear
his case. Neither in Marten's reports nor in other evidence is
the real reason of this injustice brought out. A very spirited
letter from Eliot to Conway written on the same day that Marten
wrote to Conway finally gives the real clue. After defending
his taking the £500 for the pardon and the six packs of calve-skins
as the customary concessions to the admiralty and after
telling of the return of the latter to the Bristol owners, Eliot
says: the originall cause of the distast conceivd against me is
(if I fail not much) my diligence in getting that exemplification.
It seems the pardon was at first procured by Mr. Secretarie
Calvert who may suppose him self therein crost by me; but my
ignorance may be my apologie, for which I have alreadie protested
both to Mr Secretarie in privat, & before the Lords at Counsell
table, wher that pointe was urg'd, whether I knew not that the
pardon had been procur'd by Mr Secretarie, which I trulie excused,
& findeinge itt out of date, was soe farr from seeking that, as
I imagined not ther had a thought hid under itt.
[47]
Eliot's surmise was strengthened by a letter from Calvert to Conway on
August 11th, asking for the release of Nutt from prison. The
poore man is able to doe the king service if he were imployed,
and I doe assure myselfe he doth soe detest his former course
of life as he will never enter into it againe. I have been at
charge all ready of one Pardon, and am contented to be at as
much more for this, if his Majesty will be gratiously pleased to
graunt it. Wherein I have no other end but to be grate full to
a poore man that hath been ready to doe mee and my associate
courtesies in a Plantacon which we have begunne in Newfoundland,
by defending us from others which perhapps in the infancy
of that work might have done us wronge.
[48]
The case was then one of two opposite view-points. To [89] Eliot Nutt was "a malicious assassin," as to Fownes "a merciless Vellon." To Calvert he was a daring and useful pioneer in new enterprises. The temperament and ideals of Eliot were in all things opposed to the temperament and ideals of Calvert. Calvert was intimate with Gondomar, the astute Spanish ambassador. He had already aroused public indignation by his partiality toward Spain and by exporting to Spain a hundred guns, manufactured in England, at a time when parliament had declared against exporting any munitions.[49] Eliot's sentiments toward Gondomar and Spain were most hostile.
Calvert was keenly interested in commerce and colonization. He was a shrewd man, fathering schemes dealing not only with guns bound for Spain but with a profitable exportation of raw silk from France, with fisheries and a plantation in Newfoundland and presently a plantation in Maryland. Eliot was little interested in such schemes and unable to appreciate the value of the new plantations.
Calvert was on the point of declaring himself a Roman
Catholic and was trying to get the penal laws for Catholics
lightened.[50] Eliot, on the other hand, was one of the first in
the ensuing parliament to demand greater insistence on the enforcement
of the recusancy laws against Catholics. It is easy
to understand that to Calvert the assistance of Nutt in a new
and exciting enterprise across the sea, promising value to king
and government, far outweighed the harm he had done by petty
depredations along the Irish and English coasts. The secretary
was irritated especially at Eliot's trick in taking Nutt, because,
as has been mentioned he, Calvert, had obtained that very pardon,
asking for the release of that unlucky fellow.
Calvert
was aggrieved that Nutt was not warned of the time of the expiration
of his pardon, since another pardon could have been
at once obtained. In fact the king did grant the pirate one as
soon as Calvert asked for it about June 1st. Since, therefore,
[90]
all the goods which Nutt took in the time between these pardons
have been restored, plead Calvert, why not let him be
free? Marten said all restoration had been made though hee
might have made his certificate fuller if it had pleased him
and with as good as a conscience also.
[51]
One now easily understands
why poor, cringing Marten had sent his letter about the
trial to Calvert as well as to Conway and why his judgment
was evasive and inconclusive. Also one sees why that meeting
of a full council to which Eliot wished his case appealed did
not take place, remembering that Calvert at this time was far
more influential with the king than was Conway.
As a result of Calvert's patronage, the outcome for Nutt was a speedy release. There is no record in the admiralty court papers of any indictment of him, although he was kept under the surveillance of commissioners of the court until his pardon was formally signed by the king a month later.[52]
As soon as Nutt was released both Conway and Marten
made fresh efforts on Eliot's behalf. They were pricked on by
a letter from Aylesbury, the secretary of Buckingham, to whom
Conway largely owed his office.[53] Eliot had naturally turned
to Aylesbury since the Lord High Admiral was out of the
country and reminded him that it was rather a difficult matter
to fulfil his responsibilities as Vice-Admiral of Devon when he
was shut up in prison in London and that the affairs of the
Lord High Admiral may suffer through some negligence or
miscarriage of businesses there.
But Calvert was too strong
for them and Eliot was not set free until sometime in September.
Marten wrote Conway on the failure of their attempts a
characteristic letter in which he said: I am glad I did forbear
to deliver my own opinion on the state of his cause least phaps it
might have differed somewhat. Well! I pray God this turn
not most to the disadvantage of my Lord Admirall!
[54]
[91]
Eliot's own letters to Conway emphasized the same point
made by Aylesbury and Marten. That is, they emphasized
utility rather than justice. He pleaded the need of his release
to attend to the business of the admiralty, as for the service
of my Lo. Admirall, to whom I know you are a frinde. his affaires
in the countrie, which are committed unto my trust, by reason
of my suddaine comminge thenc, stand uncertintie, & great
charge of ships & goods, wherein my Lo. may sustaine prejudice
by my absenc, besides the Loss of all new occurrents, which
I should attend.
[55]
But when Conway[56] evidently reproached him a bit beyond
patience he flashes out his innocence with much spirit. Beinge
conscious of myne owne freenes in all that can be alleadg'd, I
dare not wave my justification, which were to charge it with the
implicite confession of a guilt, wherein I humble praie to be excused.
He declared the taking of the goods and the £500 from
Nutt the proper duties of my place.
Regardless of Calvert's
patronage he vigorously inveighed against Nutt, & cannot soemuch
yet undervalue my integritie, to doubt that the words of
a malicious assassine now standinge for his life, shall have reputation
equall to the credit of a gentleman. In him I wonder not
to finde that baseness, havinge in all things profest himself a
villaine, & stain'd his countrie with barbarismes unheard of,
seinge himself train'd in by me upon the color of a pardon which
was out of date, & of noe force, & sent up hither with a true
relation of his facts that he might be hang'd, malice without an
instigator, were enough to putt him on this revenge.
[57]
The righteous indignation of this letter was appeased by
Conway, because the next letter of August 18th,[58] was warmly
grateful. It was also wistfully discouraged. I confess myself
an unap subiect for anie favor, having it in my Fortunes cast
[92]
to be unhappie, from whence aher reflect soe manie difficulties
on my best hopes, that my desires are become troublesome.
There had been a meeting of the council at last but only to
baffle Eliot. Opon your Honors direction I prepared my self to
instance the Lords for my discharge, & had an opportunitie of
their meeting, which gave me hope; but therein was prevented by
some other business intervenient, which suffred me not either to
be called, or heard. In these bad successes I must now submitt
to a long expectation, shadowing my innocenc under the protection
of your Judgment.
He became thus stoically resigned,
while humanly comforted by faith in Conway's understanding.
Eliot's resignation was far from apathy, however, especially
as regards his responsibilities. In his letter to Conway of August
18th he referred to having been a disturbance in the thought
of those businesses which concerned me.
That he kept a tight
hand on his deputies is shown by a letter from Nutt to the council
toward the middle of September, complaining that Eliot
refused to obey their order of the 18th to pay 100 pounds to
Nutt or to let his deputies pay it unless he, Eliot, were allowed
to be free to come down to the country.
[59]
This sturdy allegiance of Eliot's
subordinates was possibly stimulated by a visit
of Aylesbury to Devon. For Coke wrote to Buckingham on
October 17th that he won over Nutt in regard to the goods because
in spite of the note to the admiralty on August 10th, that
Nutt was to have all his ships and goods except those taken
after May 10th, Captain Nutt has been granted a pardon yet
his goods have been forfeited to the Lord Admiral.
[60]
Records of Nutt's farther career are not found until nine
years later in 1631 and 1632. But he evidently pursued successfully
the same merry ways, for Captain Plumleigh writes
to Coke on June 14, 1631: The pirates Nutt and Downs are
upon the western coast and have lately been so bold as to put
in Cawsand Bay and questionless the country people relieve
[93]
them for gain with whatsoever they want.
[61] Again in 1632
Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, wrote to Coke from Dublin,
Captain Nutt, an arch pirate has done much harm on the
western coasts. We have made the best preparation we can
to withstand any sudden attack.
[62]
Plumleigh again wrote to Coke from Watteford that in an
encounter with Nutt his consort was foundered. He put to sea
with his ship half mended leaving behind nine of his men of
whom I have two on board of whom I have learned these particulars.
Nutt has two Turks with him and one other consort.
The Irish are much terrified thinking a fleet to be his which
turns out to be honest Flemings.
[63]
Again on November 19 Captain Simon Digby wrote to
Coke from on board ship in the Downs: It is reported that
Captain Nutt is taken at the Groine.
[64] The report was false
or the taking, as usual, temporary. For our last news of Eliot's
tormentor and Calvert's friend is yet one year farther on in
connection with another high officer of the king. Wentworth
was in 1633 the newly appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
He had evidently been criticised for his delay in sailing to take
his new command. The reason for this delay is given in two
letters to Coke. On June 3 he wrote: It is madness for me
to cross sea without Plumleigh to carry me and my country over
in safety. The Pyrate hath already light of two hundred pounds
worth of my goods.
[65]
On June 9 he sent the following vigorous aspersion to the
lord treasurer: The Pyrate that lyes before Dublin, took on
the 20th of the last month a Bark of Liverpool, with Goods
worth 4000 pounds, and amongst them as much linen as cost
me 500 pounds. * * * By my faith this is but a cold welcome they
bring me withal to that coast * * The same Villain set upon a
Dutchman on the 19th of the same month and boarded her but
[94]
they defended themselves so well, as having blown up four of
his men, the Pirate gave them over; but in revenge he light of
anothr Hollander, on the one and twentieth Day, and pursued
her so near as enforced them to run on ground, to save themselves
within sight of Dublin. The Pirate for all that, gave
them not over but in despite of all the help the Lords Justices
could give them from the Land, (by sending men to beat him
off the shore) entered and riffled the Bark, taking out what
they pleased, setting her on Fire, so that there she burnt two
Days together, till it came to the Water, and was then all in
a Flame, when my cousin Radcliffe writ me that letter to be
seen forth in his Majesty's Castle. She was about two hundred
pounds in content.
The loss and misery of this is not so great as the scorn that
such a picking Villain as this, should dare do these insolences in
the Face of that State, and to pass away without Controul. Yet
I beseech your Lordship give me Leave to tell you once for all,
that if there be not a more timely and constant Course held
hereafter in setting forth the Ships by guarding the Coast
there, by the Admiralty here, the money paid for that purpose
thence is absolutely cast away; the Farmers of the Customs will
be directly undone; and the whole Kingdom grow beggarly and
barbarous, for want of Trade and Commerce.
[66]
What Wentworth did to secure the more timely and constant
Course
by clearing the sea of pirates; what he did to prevent
the Kingdom from growing beggarly and barbarous
is a matter
of later history. That Wentworth hanged Nutt is a matter
of surmise; it is not yet a matter of knowledge. For with
these letters our record of facts about Nutt ceases.
Eliot's name does not appear in the list of the members of the parliament of 1621. As has been shown in the previous chapter he was absorbed in the affairs of his Vice-Admiralty down in his particular corner of England. But no narrative of his times could omit national affairs of such importance and interest as took place in this parliament. It is a parliament of which there is especially vivid record from a literary point of view, and one which marks out clearly the growing distrust in which its members held the king and his advisors.
The parliament met with a background of grievances, domestic
and foreign, which had accumulated during the seven
years since the dissolution of the "Addled Parliament" of 1614.
The domestic grievances of taxation and religion had grown in
number and in power to irritate. James still collected taxes in
ways exasperating to his subjects. His methods for raising
money without parliament included impositions, monopolies,
benevolences of the old Tudor type, and loans from merchants.
He also got money from offices and titles freely sold for a goodly
sum
and he collected interest on money lent the Flemish
towns by Queen Elizabeth.[1] James said in his opening speech
of the first session, I will not make every day a
Christmas,
[2]
implying that he was retaining his habit of lavishing money
on court and favorites to an extent which angered the people.
As far as religion was concerned, parliament felt that increased
favor had been shown to Roman Catholics. Parliament
knew that the recusancy laws had been particularly neglected
when it came to dealing with foreign priests. It was said that
priests could go in and out of their prisons as if the prisons were
inns by paying a trifling sum to their jailors. Marked leniency
was being shown toward English Roman Catholics more so
than at any time since the Gun Powder Plot. Phillips said,
[96]
Papists dare now at Tables to maintain transubstantiation and
they are grown so powerful that their judges dare not receive
Indictments against them.
Parrett declared, There was found
within these two months a Print where Popish books were
printed in the Prison where also they have daily and duly Mass
said, to which there resort great store of Papists.
[3] The
natural tolerance of James was partly responsible for his laxity in
regard to the enforcement of the recusancy laws; but popular
opinion put his laxity down entirely to the influence of the Spanish
Ambassador.
Gondomar, or Sarmiento, the Spanish Ambassador, a most
astute and tactful person, had gained and maintained a great
ascendancy over the king of England; an ascendancy hateful to
the court and people. Those keen and dispassionate observers,
the envoys from Venice, in their dispatches home give many
pictures of the notorious influence of Gondomar. One of them,
Lando, wrote on February 5, 1621, The crown and sceptre of
these realms seem to be in the hands of the Spanish Ambassador
absolutely. He is engaged in uprooting all the plants which
do not bend to his breath.
[4] Again Lando in speaking of a
scene in the council room remarked: In the same day the king
gave audience to the Spanish Ambassador and whereas in the
morning he spent two hours with his council he now spent three
with the Ambassador.
[5]
As early as 1614 Gondomar had begun to manage James, not
only gaining privileges for the Roman Catholics, but helping to
widen the breach between the king and his parliament. James
had grumbled to the Spaniard about the parliament, just then
dismissed: The House of Commons is a body without a head.
The members give their opinion in a disorderly manner. I am
surprised that my ancestors should have ever allowed such an
institution to come into existence.
Gondomar smoothed down
the disgruntled king by reminding him that he could dismiss
[97]
parliament when he pleased. Yes,
said James, brightening up,
and what is more, without my consent, the words and acts of
the Parliament are altogether useless.
[6] D'Ewes said: He
[Gondomar] labored to breed distaste and jealousies in the king
under the false and adulterate name of Puritans so to prevent
future parliaments.
[7] Lando gave as a reason for Gondomar's
influence that although a Spaniard he tries to conform in all
things to the taste and inclinations of the king without
stiffness.
[8]
The English writer Wilson brings out the same reason when he
tells of Gondomar's fooling with James. He spoke Latin in
merry fits to please the king, saying, he, the king, spoke Latin
like a pedant, I like a gentleman.
[9]
The feeling in parliament about this Hispanophile
[10]
influence together with its growing resentment is indicated by its action
in the Floyd affair. Floyd was an old Catholic gentleman
who was reported to have said in regard to the Bohemian revolution
of 1618 that he heard that Prague had been taken and that
Goodman Palsgrave and Good Wife Palsgrave had taken to
their heels and gone away. The rumor followed directly on the
news of the whipping to death of an apprentice because of some
trifling offence towards Gondomar. The House of Commons
pitched on Floyd with primitive rage. Sir Robert Philips said
he should be carried from Westminster face to the horse tail;
Sir George Moore, that they should whip him back to the Fleet ;
Seymour, that he should go to the cart's tail with as many lashes
as he wore beads; Basil Darcy and Cecil declared that his tongue
should be bored through; Horsen, he should have his tongue cut
out; Jephson, that he should be whipped as far again as the
apprentice was whipped; and Goring said that his nose, ears,
and tongue should be cut off and that he should be made to
swallow a bead each stage. Sir Edwin Sandys and Goodwin
[98]
were the only men in the House raising voice against this welter
of brutality. They said it was not wise to punish him so severely
for his religion lest he be canonized
and also that he could
not be whipped because he was a gentleman.[11] The mob rage
gradually died down; but not before the House of Lords had
shared it. The sentence finally executed was the Lords' and
was as follows: That he should be degraded from his Gentility,
ride on Monday next from the Fleet to Cheapside on
Horseback without a saddle, with his face to the Horse's Tail,
and the Tail in his Hand, and there to stand Two Hours in
the Pillory and then to be there branded in the Forehead with
the letter K:—That on Friday following he shall ride from the
foresaid Place in the same Manner to Westminster, and there
spend Two Hours more in the Pillory with Words in a Paper
in his Hat showing his offense:—To pay for a Fine to the king
the Sum of Five Thousand Pounds, and to be prisoner in Newgate
during his Life.
[12]
This incident brings us to the new grievance of foreign affairs. Goodman Palsgrave and Good Wife Palsgrave were of course Frederick and Elizabeth, the son-in-law and daughter of James. Frederick was the Protestant ruler of the Palatinate, who had accepted the throne of Bohemia and been driven from it. We may be pardoned for reviewing the well known background of the international situation in 1621. The Thirty Years' War had broken out in Germany, a war both civil and religious. Since the agreement at the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555, each state had followed the religion of its ruler. In many states the religion of the ruler was that of the majority of his subjects. The western and northern states were mostly Protestants, the southern and eastern states Roman Catholic. There was one exception to this rule. Bohemia, largely Protestant, was under the Control of Austria, and compelled to put up with the Catholic ruler. But under the Emperor Rudolph, this rule was not heavy. Rudolph, who died in 1609, had made many concessions to the [99] Protestants by royal charter and the easy-going Emperor Mathias had confirmed them. When he died in 1612, however, quite a different type of ruler, Ferdinand, King of Austria, was candidate for Emperor. He was under Jesuit influence and a strong Catholic of the house of Hapsburg. All Protestant Europe was anxious and other candidates less bigoted were suggested.
In spite of scheming, Ferdinand gained the election, but Bohemia
would have none of him. In 1618, she revolted, threw
the Regents of the Emperor out of the window and invited
Frederick, the head of the Union of Protestant States, to become
its ruler. Frederick, as has already been said, had married
Elizabeth, daughter of James. In accepting the throne he
went against both the feeling and the judgment of his father-in-law.
In James' speech to parliament, December 11, 1621, he
said: This miserable war which has set all Christendom on
fire was caused by our son-in-law, his hasty and harsh resolution
following evil counsel to take to himself the crown of Bohemia.
Von Male, the Flemish agent in England, had agreed with
James and had made the prophecy which gave Frederick the
nickname of the Winter King.
He will last one season only.
When spring comes, he will be driven out with a single blow and
be deprived of his Crown by a mere puff from the House of
Austria.
Gondomar also remarked that the Bohemian Crown
would be one of thorns rather than one of jewels.[13] These
prophecies were fulfilled and the judgment of the old king was
confirmed. It is interesting to note that in spite of James' insight
and condemnation of Frederick's act, his vanity led him
to call a toast to the new Bohemian King in the presence of
others for which his majesty afterwards enjoined profound
secrecy.
[14] Later in November, another Venetian envoy,
Marioni, says He will not help the Palatinate if the causes do not
appear to him entirely reasonable … as his son-in-law
embarked on this adventure without his consent.
[15]
[100] The counsel was indeed evil. Frederick could not get on with the Bohemians nor did he have the force to become the center of Protestantism as his allies had hoped. In a short time Ferdinand, now made emperor, with the aid of Maximilian of Bavaria and his general, Tilly, at the Battle of White Hill, October 29, 1620, got the victory for the imperial troops. The Spaniards, coming to the aid of the Austrians, their kindred in blood and religion, with Spinola as leader, invaded the Lower Palatinate.
The news of this invasion set England on fire. Ignorant of
European politics, careless of Frederick's unwisdom, the English
people knew only that the king's family and Protestantism
were attacked, that the danger came from Spain, and that England's
duty and delight was to go to war with Spain in behalf
of Frederick, in defense of Protestantism. James utterly refused
to act. He would neither console Frederick nor yield to the people's
demand for war. He was hammered at on all sides by envoys
from Bohemia backed up by Donato, the Venetian ambassador,
and by the leaders of Dutch Protestantism. Donato,
also, speaks of the English Archbishop Abbott, hating to see
the king in such a lethargy, his most profound sleep.
[16]
Lando says of James at this crisis His nature is such that in his heart
great strokes sometimes please him when they turn out well
but he has no inclination to advise or handle them; and if they
turn out ill, he wishes to be free from any imputation of having
fomented or advised them.
[17]
It is to be questioned whether James was as lethargic, or as
passive, as he seemed. He did have a positive policy which was
that of peace through diplomacy. He thought that Spain in her
invasion of the Palatinate was only making a feint and saw no
gain in joining against Austria for a prolonged European war.
In large-minded tolerance, in sense of proportion, the king of
England was ahead of his time. He had the modern point of
view about the subordinate place of religion in political issues,
[101]
but his contemporaries in England were not modern. He knew
that the Catholic lion and the Protestant lamb would some day
lie down together, but he knew it too soon. His people hated
Catholicism. He thought that arbitration was better than war.
He was right when he shrewdly observed that a number of subjects
are so pampered with peace that they are desirous of
change, they know not what.
[18] But the time had not yet come
for arbitration. The people knew that no change was so welcome,
so desirable as war with Spain in behalf of Protestantism.
This irreconcilable gap between the views and plans of the king
in foreign affairs and the views of the people was to grow; but
James refused to call parliament until absolutely forced to do so
by lack of money. He did send a tiny band of Englishmen under
Sir Horace Vere as a stop-gap. Meanwhile in pursuance of his
own policy he sent Digby on a mission to the emperor who tried
to push on negotiations with Spain. Frederick himself had hired
Mansfeld, a soldier adventurer, to help him out and James too,
without consulting parliament, had given Frederick a little
money. Thus was the king estranged in the ways he had chosen
for it was not possible for him at once to please his people and
to satisfy his foreign interests.
[19]
His mercenaries were plunderers of the first water and harmed more than helped Frederick's interests. Frederick himself was most unwise in his policies. Even when Spain caused a truce, Frederick broke it by an attack on Catholic lands. However foolish the war seemed to James, he failed to grasp the fact that it was fundamentally a religious war and as yet religious wars must be waged and no other type of war could matter so much. The flame once started must inevitably spread. The English people realized from the beginning that it was a religious war. Before parliament met, national feeling was so bitter in regard to the king's hesitancy that there was fear of a popular rebellion.[20] When parliament was finally called, the failure of Frederick [102] seemed certain and the nation was begging for unreserved national aid to be sent to him.
It was under such circumstances that the parliament of 1621
met. It sat in two sessions, the first from January 31 to June 4;
the second from November 30 to December 18. The parliament
was one marked by some of James' most characteristic speeches,
characteristic both of his weakness and wisdom, showing vividly
his nearsighted policy in regard to the events of his day, revealing
also his farsightedness in ideals yet impossible to fulfill. This
parliament also marked a growing irritation and independence
against the king's attitude of
Faither and Kindly Maister,
[21]
an attitude which treated the members of parliament like children.
The House of Commons especially made evident a strong disposition
to emphasize in the first session grievances in taxation
and religion before giving any supplies and in the second
session the right to talk about foreign affairs, culminating in
the declaration of these rights in the famous Protestation of
December 18.
The councillors and chief officers of the king were Buckingham, who had succeeded Somerset as new favorite holding the office of Lord High Admiral; Calvert and Conway, Secretaries of State; Williams, Keeper of the Seal; Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Montague, Secretary; Bacon, Lord High Chancellor. The leaders in the House were Sir Robert Phillips, Sir Dudley Digges, Francis Seymour, and James Perrot.
The first session began with the speech of the king in which,
as has been said, he practically acknowledged his court extravagances
and promised reform.[22] The king also implied that he
knew he did not do. well in the earlier parliaments. He said he
was a novice in the first parliament but was led by Undertakers
in the second.
[103]
To Calvert's request for supply, Sir George Moore replied
that grievances and supplies might go together and the House
backed him up by attacking the monoplies, first in the person of
Sir Giles Mompesson, then in general.[23] On March 18, however,
to James' joy they granted a subsidy, though in making the
grant they asked that the giving of supplies so near the beginning
of the session might not be considered a precedent. Up to the
end of March there was no positive lack of harmony between the
king and parliament. Indeed, on the 26th of March, Lando reported,
things are going so smoothly the king wishes parliament
would go on forever.
[24]
The situation changed however in the next month when
parliament made a daring piece of assertion by impeaching
Francis Bacon for corruption in his work as judge. The attack
was tremendously significant from Bacon's position as the highest
judge in the land and from his being a member of the King's
Council. In bracing himself to the attack he said in his letter to
the Lords, March 19, I shall not trick up innocency with
cavillations.
[25] While Bacon and the witnesses against him
were preparing, the House went on with the attack on monopolies.
The king's speech to the Lords on March 26 was condescending
but gracious. He said rather reproachfully that he
would have punished any offenders out of parliament as severely
as they would have punished them within.[26] He talked about
how peaceful the times were and exhorted them that they should
do "bonum" and "bene." There was something unconsciously
humorous in the fact that the Lords voted in view of his Majesty's
speech the 26th of March should always be a Sermon
Day.
One smiles again when one reads of the king telling the
Commons on the 24th of April that they behaved so worthily that
he was resolved to speak oftener to them.[27] More than one
member must have given a sigh at the prospect. We know that
[104]
James' long speeches were afflictions to his parliaments because
when Charles I gave his brief opening speech to his first parliament
there was enormous relief expressed from those then
wearied from the long orations of King James that did inherit
but the wind.
[28]
The King must have felt need of graciousness in view of
Bacon's submission to the Lords in his wonderful speech of
April 22 where he could make no real excuses.[29] He said
Hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no sanctuary
or protection to him against guiltiness. After this example it is
like that judges will fly from anything in the likeness of corruption
as from a serpent which tends to the purging of the
courts of Justice and reducing them to their true honour and
splendors.
[30] The sentence against Bacon was a fine of 40,000
pounds, imprisonment in the tower at the king's pleasure and the
deprivation for the future of office in state or a seat in parliament.
Before the adjournment of this parliament, Yelverton,
the former attorney, was also condemned for bribery, the same
Yelverton who had made the king a present of 4000 pounds to
get his attorneyship.
The entering wedge of that topic which was to loom so large
in the second session of the parliament came in the Declaration
of the Commons before the adjournment of this session.[31] They
said in this declaration that they pity the state of English
Christians abroad
and if the treaty the king has under way
does not succeed—they humbly beseech his Majesty not to suffer
any longer delay
—they will be ready to assist him by sword.
The fact that the Commons were insisting on more expression
is shown by Rushworth's remarking a second proclamation was
issued forthwith against licentious speech touching state affairs
for notwithstanding the strictness of the King's former command
[105]
the people's inordinate liberty of unreverend speech increaseth
delay.
[32]
Substantially what James said about the restlessness
evident throughout the debates was stop discussing grievances
in Parliament and bring them to me in my council and we shall
redress them.
Notwithstanding his wish for the marriage with Spain, the
king, according to rumor, had promised that Catholics should
not be in one whit better condition. According to Rushworth,
he really said that if any of that party did grow insolent, let
his people count him not worthy to reign if he gave not extraordinary
punishment.
[33]
The second session of the parliament met on November 20
and though not formally dissolved until January did not meet
again after dismissal by the king before the Christmas recess on
December 18. It was a session almost wholly occupied with
foreign affairs and bitter feelings between the king and the Commons
were expressed in a number of vigorous declarations. The
situation was indeed trying. The king, as has been said, had
some good reasons to hope that Spain might keep out of the war
and in time do something to restore the Palatinate to Frederick.
Meanwhile, he wished money to feed Mansfeld's soldiers lest they
plunder the people of the Palatinate. As Digby said in reporting
the interview which he had with the emperor, Maximilian,
Mansfeld's army did not consist of men who fought for their
country, wives, or children but for money which they must have
speedily or they are gone.
Digby also implied that there was a
larger command soon going over to the emperor. This unpleasant
dependence or non-dependence on hired soldiers plagued the
English army throughout the Stuart reigns. Digby, wisely informed
as to the actual situation, justly demanded an army of
Englishmen and the money for it. Williams, the treasurer, in
presenting the king's speech used Digby's plea and asked parliament
[106]
to grant more money and so to have this business as to
make his Majesty in love with Parliaments.
[34]
The small English army which had already been sent were,
as Wilson says, bones in the way.
[35] Wilson also says that
Digby's embassy was to as little purpose as if he had stayed at
home.
The Bavarian had already swallowed the Electorate
and his voraginous appetite gaped after the possession of the
country.
Digby did the best he could on his mission but was
treated by James in cavalier fashion, the king giving him no pay
for the time he had been gone. Wise as Digby was and genuinely
respected, he was in an impossible situation, able to meet the
wishes of neither king nor people.
The Commons were sore at the king because the great match
with Spain was still on the carpet,
[36]
and because they were not
consulted, continued to growl about their grievances. There were
plenty of people about court to report to the king all the growlings
of the Commons. In a long remonstrance with fourteen
grievances and ten practical suggestions, the Commons formally
set forth their point of view which was, as has been said, the
waging of war on a larger scale for the return of the Palatinate,
also making it a war against Spain.[37] The king, very angry,
retorted that none shall presume to meddle with anything concerning
our government or deep matters of state.
[38] Parliament
replied humbly but firmly in a great bustle
with another
petition where they asserted their rights, saying that the time had
come that the voice of Bellona and not the voice of the turtle
should be heard in the land.
[39]
The King's speech of December 11th in reply to this petition
is one of his most characteristic utterances. Flashes of shrewd
and genuine wisdom alternate with obstinate and unreasonable
assertion of the royal prerogative. He told the Commons that
[107]
their privileges were derived from grace and from permission
of our ancestors and us.
For most privileges, he said, grow
from precedent which show rather a toleration than an inheritance.
He went back to his old grievance of the way the Scotch
hooked themselves into the cognizance of all causes,
saying
you usurp on our prerogative Royal and meddle with things far
beyond your reach. The difference is no greater than if we
would tell a merchant that we had a great need to borrow money
from him for raising an army that thereupon it would follow
that we were bound to follow his advice in the conduct of the
war.
[40]
In regard to the Palatinate James showed a more practical
point of view. It was not really a Protestant union which
James sought but a religious independence of all nations. As has
been said, to the king the question of religion was secondary, to
the English Commons it was primary. His ignorance of the
Commons' point of view and his tactlessness showed in his determination
to maintain that the Commons had no rights, only
privileges given them by grace.
The king was still set on the
Spanish match. He said parliament should trust him to manage
it without hurt to the Protestant religion. With Elizabethan insight
he added, we must not by hot persecution of our recusants
irritate Foreign Princes of contrary religions and teach them the
way to plague the Protestants in their dominions.
He was still
set on peace if possible, but if not, on making war in his own
way without advice or consent of parliament. The House of
Commons working themselves up more and more against Roman
Catholicism and foreseeing a speedy dissolution resolved on December 18
to put themselves on record. Meantime the king had
said instead of finding fault that they should have thanked him
for all he had done, who but those negotiating treaties can judge
of them?
He complained that they would make him ashamed
before foreign princes.
Wilson says that the Commons continued their protests.
They thought religion insecure, for as long as the bent of his
[108]
affections tended to the Spanish match there must needs be a
wide gap open as an inlet for Popery.
[41] The culminating
protestation was recorded on December 18 with its famous kernel:
That the liberties, Franchises, Privileges and Jurisdictions of
Parliament are the ancient and undoubted Birth-right and Inheritance
of the Subjects of England; and that the arduous and
urgent affairs concerning the King, State and Defense of the
Realm and of the Church of England; and the making and
maintenance of Laws, and Redress of Mischiefs and Grievances
which daily happen within this realm are proper subjects and
matter of counsel and Debate in Parliament and that in the handling
and proceeding of those business every Member of the
House of Parliament hath, and of Right, ought to have Freedom
of Speech.
[42]
This protestation was the second of the long series of informal
but vital documents which were the stepping stones to
the Puritan revolution, the first being the Apology of the Commons
in 1604. The second, in 1621, repeated certain fundamental
assertions of the first, stating the rights and privileges
of parliament, and thus making a distinct link of connection in
the chain with the documents that followed. They resolved,
said Wilson, to leave some prints and footsteps of their Parliamentary
rights and privileges left them by their great ancestors.
The Journals have a note to the effect that the king tore
out this protestation with his own hand.[43] Rushworth explains
that he did it because only part of the House was present and
he was already treating with their messengers for adjournment.[44]
The leaders of the House, ill-tempered spirits
as the
king called them, were either put
in prison or sent to Ireland.[45]
The doors and locks of Edward Coke's chambers in London
were sealed and his papers were seized. The Commons felt
[109]
that Gondomar, through his influence over the Privy Council,
had a great deal to do with this harshness.[46]
After the formal dissolution of parliament on January 6, 1622, the king appointed a special committee of the Council to hear and redress grievances, but we have no record of effectiveness on its part. England, chafing and distrustful, awaited the king's next move.
The Negotium Posterorum[1] is Sir John Eliot's account of the meetings of the House of Commons during its sessions of 1625, which constituted the first parliament of Charles I. The account was written some time after the events of which it tells, probably during Eliot's imprisonment in the tower between 1630 and 1632. Allowance must be made, therefore, for the coloring of Eliot's point of view from the events occurring between 1625 and the time of his writing this account. Especially must such allowance be made when dealing with an historian of as vivid imagination as Eliot, whose emotions and acts were so closely concerned with the personages of whom he writes.
Eliot's account is emphatically an account of people. As one reads over again and again his story, one seems to be actually with that group, so vividly does Eliot sketch the personality, the mode of speaking and the reactions of each of the prominent members of the Commons and of the representatives of the King whom he sends to deal with the Commons. The events of this parliament are given in several other accounts, correcting Eliot's story in certain respects, but as a piece of parliamentary narration it is unsurpassed by any other such account in the seventeenth century.
He makes alive the gravity of the king and parliament's joy
in the brevity of his speeches. He traces the bewilderment
which grew among the members as the omissions of those
speeches became glaring question marks before their minds.
He brings out the importance of Buckingham, the wit of May,
the pedantry of Sir John Coke, and the latent power of Wentworth.
He laughs at the cold rhetoric of Naunton. On the
other hand, he makes the great leaders of the House tower in
dignity and glow with ardent speech. Seymour and Philips did
deliver great speeches, but some of their phrases are Eliot's
[111]
own, as one sees by comparison with his later speeches in the
parliament of 1626. For example, the phrase used in Seymour's
speech on supply, Their luxuries and excesses had wasted
first the treasurer and then exposed the honor of the King,
[2]
is not found in any other account, but is the expression used by
Eliot himself in his own supply speech of 1626.[3]
The parliament of 1625 met June 18th in London, hopeful
because of the new king whose reputation was at least more
promising for ability to meet the wishes of the nation than that
of his father had been. His reticence kept hope alive, and his
purity of character appealed to the strong Puritan element in
this parliament. Rudyard, whom Eliot characterizes as languid
in expression,
and given to generals fitter for discourse
than counsel or debate,
[4]
says of the king: I may Stricktlie say
Ther can hardlie be found a privat man of his years soe free
from all ill, which as it is more rare and difficult in the person
of a King soe is it more exempla and extensive in the operation,
and noe doubt, being a blessing in itself, will call downe more
blessings from heaven vpon this kingdom for his sake.
[5] Eliot
says of his personal character: In some the consideration of
his pietie, his religious practise and devotion, his choise and
constant preservation of that iewell in the mids't of those prestigious
artes of Spaine, and his publick professions, being from
thence returned, did cause that ioye and hope; others were
moved by the innate sweetness of his nature, the calme habit
and composition of his minde; his exact government in the economic,
the order of his house, the rule of his affaires, the disposition
of his servantes, being Prince, all in a great care, and
providence.
[6]
The dissolution of the treaties with Spain—the untying of
those Knotts, the cutting of those Gordian yokes in which they
were held by Spaine,
—and Charles' apparent eagerness for war,
[112]
were contrasted with James' struggle to keep up with those
treaties, whereby religion was corrupted, iustice perverted; and
all this through facilities and a too much Love of peace.
[7]
His brief speech at the opening of parliament pleased by its courteous
tone and apparent trust in parliament: the sence and
shortness of his expression were well Likt, as meeting with the
inclination of the time, which wearied with the long orations
of King James that did inherit but the winde.
[8]
Underneath the feeling of hope was a determination on the part of the Commons to assert more vigorously than ever the disputed rights of parliament in taxation and in religion, and to understand and to direct, if possible, the action in foreign affairs. They did not understand how the French marriage had come about, bringing them a beautiful little queen with her Catholic faith and chapel. They did not understand what treaties had been violated nor what kept. They knew only that France had broken her promise to help Mansfeld in his expedition to recover the Palatinate, failing to allow his troops to go through her territory on his way to Holland. They knew constant woe that the laws against recusants were not enforced and they suspected justly that money was going to be asked for causes of whose inwardness they were ignorant.
Money was asked for immediately by Williams, the Lord
Keeper, who said that all the money was spent which they had
formerly given, and that more must be raised promptly. Crewe,
the Speaker of the House, responded in a rather florid speech
emphasizing over again the fundamental rights of parliament,
freedom from arrest, freedom of speech and access to the king
and asking for more light. He also hammered again on the
people's desire, so strongly brought out in the parliaments of
1621 and 1624, for rescue of the Palatinate, to England a symbol
of European Protestantism. His language in regard to religion
is Scotch in its vigor, grim as the language of the Covenanters.
(You) add happiness to your crowne and state, by
[113]
pulling downe the pride of that Anti-christian Hierarchie, and
in abandoning by publick edict, reallie executed, that wicked
generation of Jesuites and Seminarie preistes, who are the sonns
of Bichrie that blow the coales of contention, incendiaries that
lie in waite to sett combustion; blood and powder are the badges
of their wicked profession.
[9]
Eliot's comments that the lawyer's—Crewe's—expression
was divine, the divine's—William's—more historical and law-like,
and that states as divines use glosses on their texts
represent restlessness and bewilderment in the House's beginning.
One does not wonder that there was no haste in replying
to the request for supplies, and that the ever-popular subject
of religion was taken up with zeal despite Rudyard's proposition
that grievances should be postponed, and that they should
fall upon such things onlie as are necessarie,
cleer and of dispatch.
[10]
The trouble was to know what things were necessary,
clear, and easily dispatched: To the king and council, the necessity
was money, to the parliament the necessity represented
varied grievances, shown throughout their petitions and debates.
In regard to religion the Commons doubtless were bigoted
and tempted to go beyond their legal rights, especially in their
attitude toward Montague, that bone of contention thrown
over from James' reign. Eliot's point of view in regard to religion
was broader than that of many of his colleagues. His
aim was to uphold the ideal of unity and purity in a positive
way, rather than like Pym to insist on multiplying laws against
offenders, or like Crewe to formulate against Catholics. The
speech on religion attributed to Eliot is certainly characteristic
of him in its idealism and breadth. He particularly speaks
of religion in its relation to the state as its chief support and
ground work: Religion onlie it is that fortifies all pollicie, that
crownes all wisdome, that is the grace of excellence …
religion it is that keeps the subjects in obedience, as being taught
by God to honor his vicegerentes … the common obligation
[114]
amongst men, the tye of all frindship and societie, the band
of all office and relation.
[11]
He thinks that uniformity in religious
observance means unity in the kingdom: Where there
is division in religion as it does wrong divinities it makes distractions
amongst men, and soe dissolves all ties and obligations,
civill and natural.
In characteristic phrasing he says: What
divisions, what factions, haie what fractions in religion this
kingdom does not suffer, I need not recapitulat.
[12]
The discussion which followed seems fruitless to us, because the one practical
change possible, the lessening of the severity of the recusancy
laws, was never touched. Another committee was made,
another petition was sent to the king.
Later on in this session the question of Montague came up,
the Arminian preacher whose books and ideas were such a
source of irritation to the House of Commons. Montague's books
had been dealt tolerantly with by James. He understood their
struggle toward the modern ideal of harmony of the best in
the traditions of the past with the practical needs of the present,
the struggle in which Hooker was engaged in Queen Elizabeth's
reign and Laud in later days. The Commons had no
sympathy whatever with James' tolerance. To them Montague's
books were popish and seditious.
That when the
Archbishop Abbott told him to revise his first book he should
have replied with the production of a second equally obnoxious
was in the eyes of the Commons an insult to the king. That
James had not regarded it as such in no wise affected their
opinion.
It affected their action however; for they took the responsibility
off the new King's shoulders by hailing Montague before
their bar as a culprit, an act quite beyond their legal rights.
Moreover, Montague, called to examination in the House, declared
that the king had approved his tenets and opinions,
swearing, if that were to be a papist, so is he.
Nevertheless
the Commons managed to make out that he had harmed the
[115]
king by sowing jealousies between himself and his subjects,
that he had slighted those famous devines who have bene great
lights in the church, Calvine, Beza
and others, that he had
scorned the jurisdiction of parliament.[13] There was some
discussion over his commitment into the sergeant's hands as a
prisoner but it was finally done with the culprit kneeling at
the bar.[14]
To trace the affair of Montague through the year, he was
called to the bar again on the second day of the second session,
August 2. Meantime Charles had appointed him one of his
chaplains and the bitter feeling of the Commons is shown in
Eliot's account. The Sariant thervpon being required to bring
his prisoner to the barr, answeard that he had left him sicke, &
by a letter from him was advertised that his weakness was
such as he could not travell, which giving no satisfaction to the
house, that thought it an excuse, divers expressions were (used)
vpon (it), shewing a disaffection to the man.
[15] Eliot,
evidently, did not sympathize with this extreme severity. The
House, however, in spite of a message from the king that he
had taken Montague's cause into his care, continued to assert
their dominance in the case and to say that the king had no
right to interfere. The Sariant was therefore commanded to
produce or to answer the neglect.
Eliot also did not agree
with those who took occasion to argue the opinions of Montague.
Descending into the subtilties of the schoolemen,
about the infallibility of grace, the antecedent & consequent
wills of God.
[16] It is said that both now, and later in Pym's
report[17] on Montague in April, 1626, they decided not to
medle with the doctrinal points of his workes.
[18] In this
report of Pym's the clergyman was declared to have distributed the peace
of the church and of the Kingdom. The king's power and favor,
[116]
however, saved Montague from farther punishment and obtained
his release on bond. The House worried him yet again in
1628, in spite of Charles' command to them in 1626 to be silent.
Only when Parliament was perforce silenced on all matters in
1629 did they let this bone alone. Montague was then made
Bishop of Chichester.[19]
News that the plague which had broken out in London was
greatly increasing alarmed the members. A formal petition
on religion[20] was hurriedly prepared and presented by a
committee of both Houses. It contained sixteen points, asking, of
course, for the enforcement of laws against recusants, against
the holding of Catholic services, and, constructively, desiring
that teaching and preaching might be more carefully supplied
by abler schoolmasters and ministers. In illustration of the
feeling of the House it is worth noting that when the question
of supply came up it was proposed that recusants should give
double amounts!
[21]
To turn from the question of religion, most important in
the eyes of parliament, to that of supply, far more important
in the eyes of the king, at the very beginning of the session
they had been asked for money at once in some unusual way,
as Williams put it, if ye finde the vsuall
waie too slacke.
[22]
Seymour proposed one subsidy and one-fifteenth, a proposal
absurdly small. The final vote was to give two subsidies which
amounted to only one hundred and forty thousand pounds. The
engagements of the king, obviously, required many times that
sum.[23] Eliot gives as reasons for the small sums offered what
he judges to be the chief conclusions of the debate following:
First, it was too early in the parliament, then that the condition
of the people, through the manie violation(s) of their
rights, in the generall liberties of the kingdom, the particular
priviledges of that house, their burdens, their oppressions,
[117]
which noe times els could parallell, spoke them less able; & that
complaint postposd, shew'd them more affectionat.
He touches
lightly now on the real kernel of the reluctance to give more,
there being noe knowledg of an enemye,
[24] a reason heavily
emphasized in the second session of 1625.
In regard to the supply the business was unwisely started.
From any legal point of view, the king should have stated at
the beginning of the session the sum he desired and the purposes
for which it was to be used. On the other hand, the
Commons should not have hastily pitched on a sum at random.
The king again should not have accepted that sum, when he
knew quite well its inadequacy and was fully aware that he
should have to ask for more. Also, as Gardiner so clearly
brings out in the introduction to the Fawsley Debates, each
party felt that the aims of the other were not understood nor
appreciated. The king wished money to meet his obligation to
his continental allies and to pursue the war on land; the parliament
wished to emphasize the increase of the navy and the
attack on Spain by sea. Finally, the Commons were genuinely
ignorant of the uses to which their supply last voted had been
used. They believed it had been given for Mansfeld's expedition
to recover the Palatinate. That expedition had been a
failure. No profit or honor had come out of the enthusiasm
which had united king and people in declaring war at the beginning
of James's last parliament, in 1624. Eliot, especially, as
Vice-Admiral of Devon, had known the distressing state in which
sailors had come home during the early summer. The millions
of treasure spent without success in profit or honor to the
kingdom, manie thousand men, that had perisht & beene lost,
in the Pallatinat & with Mansfeilt.
[25] This statement
was an exaggeration, but that money had been ill-used and squandered
was true. When the king had so mistakenly intimated his acceptance
of the two subsidies, three-fourths of the parliament
[118]
fearing the plague, went away understanding that business was
nearly concluded.
In fact, the disease was increasing rapidly with the summer's
height. This was the latest wave of the plague which had
been sweeping over Europe from time to time since the Crusades.
Eliot says: The sickness was then risen to a great infection &
mortalities, noe part of the cities did stand free.
[26]
And again, the epedemicall infection of the plague being so
vniversallie disperst, that all persons were suspected & in ielosie,
men, if they could, even flying from themselves; the houses,
streets & waies, naie even the fields & hedges, almost in all
place neer London & about it (besides the miserable calamities
of the citie) presenting dailie
new spectacles of mortalities.
[27]
On the 9th of July, Locke wrote to Carlton: The sickness
increaseth still more and more; the Bill specified this weeke
but 1,222, and of the sicknes but 500 and odd, but by common
opinion there died many more. It is not onely in the cittie, but
spares neither Court nor country. Upon Sunday last, the 3. of
this present, there were 3 carried out of the backe part of the
Courte at Whitehall (the K. and Q. then there) sicke, who all
died since of the plague.
[28]
With this terror hanging over them and seeking adjournment, the quarter of the House remaining took up the tonnage and poundage bill. Tonnage and poundage had been granted to the king for life since the reign of Henry VI. Any discussion or hesitation about its grant by parliament was sure to be considered an affront by the sovereign. It was to him as much a special prerogative as the right to open parliament. In the minds of some members of the Commons, however, since the Bates's case of 1606, tonnage and poundage had become but one of a large group of impositions, over which parliament and king had disagreed all through the former reign. Therefore, the leaders of the Commons had decided to debate the whole [119] subject of indirect taxes before again granting tonnage and poundage to a king for life. Consequently, under the existing circumstances, the grant was made but for one year, suspending further action until investigation could be made by a full House. The bill was accepted by the Lords, but naturally not signed by the king. One would have liked to have had a glimpse of Charles's emotions when the bill was presented to him. His indignation must have been great.
After tonnage and poundage was disposed of came a question
of the Yorkshire election, involving the election of Wentworth.
Eliot made his second speech in this session, vexed because
Wentworth pleaded his own cause in the House. Eliot's
speech showed part of that idealization of the House which
made him extravagantly sensitive to its honor. He says: in
senatum venit, he comes into this Senat, but with a will to ruine
it; for soe I must interpret the intention of that act, that would
destroie the priviledge. But did say it was a member did it?
I must retract that error in the place, or be fals to the opinion
which I have; for either by the election he pretends, or for this
act & insolence, I cannot hould him worthie of that name & soe,
(involving both questions vnder one) as a full determination of
his case, let vs from hence expell him.
[29]
This is harsh judgment. Considering the merits of the case,
the election seems to have been one under genuine dispute. At
any rate the new election brought in Wentworth triumphantly to
the second session where he did good service. Eliot's description
of Wentworth's character was written after their ways had
parted. Eliot appreciated his eloquence, his keen reasoning
power, his abilities great both in judgment and presuasion.
He noted truly his imagination—his descriptions
exquisite
— and his pride, but he analyzed wrongly when he spoke of
Wentworth's virtues as seldom directed to good ends and when
they had that color some other secret mov'd them.
[30]
The session finally closed under very different circumstances
[120]
from those expected. The king, following the suggestion of the
Duke of Buckingham, proposed a new subsidy. Eliot tells the
story vividly. Buckingham sent first for a group of his special
friends at midnight, most of whom consented to his plan. Others
among them, especially Sir Humphrey May, struggled to dissuade
him from such a proposition, thus in spite of the fact that
May was Chancellor of the Duchy and presumably the king's
man. Finally, having travaild with much Industrie in that service,
but in vaine, he came in great hast to a gentleman whom he
thought more power full with the Duke and knew to be affectionate
to the public and him he importund to a new attempt
and triall for staie or diversion of that worke.
[31]
Eliot argued with Buckingham on the ground that the king
had professed satisfaction with the two subsidies already given,
and that the occasion was unseemly, when a large part of the
House had gone away. Such a proposal at that time would seem
a breach of confidence, an ambuscado and surprise; which at no
time could be honorable toward subjects.
[32] It was,
evidently, a long conference. In the course of it Eliot also warned Buckingham
of the disfavor into which he personally would fall if
such a proposition were made.
In reply Buckingham said that the two subsidies had been
accepted in respect of the affection to the King, not for satisfaction
to his business. That the absence of the Commons was
their owne fault and error, and their neglect must not prejudice
the State.
[33] Buckingham brought out the point, which he
evidently felt would most meet the approval of parliament, that
the money was needed for the fleet. Eliot, as Vice-Admiral of
Devon, was certainly interested in the fleet and it was natural
that Buckingham, as Lord High Admiral, should also emphasize
that side of the equipment. Eliot plead the unwisdom
of alienation of the affections of the subiectes, who being
pleased were a fountaine of supplie, with out whom those
[121]
streames would soon drie up.
[34] Though Eliot's persuasion
was in vain we know from his speech in the second session of
parliament that he and Buckingham parted still friends.
Sir John Coke was chosen to present the king's request showing
what had been spent, and what promises had been made to
Charles' allies on the Continent. He said boldly that about three
hundred and fifty thousand pounds were wanted. The king
and the Lord Admiral and others have given from their own
estates seventy thousand pounds.
He added, shall we proclaime
our owne poverty by loosing all that is bestowed vpon
it … the peace of christendome, the state of religion depend
upon this fleet, the adversaries deliver verie insolent
speeches ever since the taking of Breda.
Coke seemed to forget that the natural question would be :
Why were the adversaries allowed to take Breda?
All he said was, The French encline to civill warr.
How did England happen to be mixed up in French afairs?
the listening members would ask.
What have we to reunite the princes … to appose
the Catholic league but the reputation of Mansfielt's army and
the expectation of our fleet,
[35] was his reply.
The reputation of Mansfeld had proved a tottering support, a feeble buffer for any Protestant protection.
The motion of Coke died and perished
and through the
Lords the Commons sent a messenger to the king asking for a
dismissal. The king replied that he would shortly answer the
petition of religion and they would be adjourned July 11. But,
and this was a large but
they were to meet again at Oxford
August 1.[36]
The parliament did not like to meet at Oxford, the university
town being a peculiar seat of royal privilege. Also rumors of
the plague being there had come to them. But probably Eliot's
account of the plague there is exaggerated as the king would
[122]
not have been likely to call parliament where there would be
danger to himself. As a matter of fact, a member of the House
states that no Parliamente man died of it while we were
there.
[37]
After the adjournment in the last part of July Eliot went
home to Cornwall and as he journeyed along the coast, complaints
met him continually of the ravaging of Turkish pirates. The
description he gives is so vivid both of the ravaging of the pirate
and of the inadequacy of the protection of the coast that I
quote it in full. About the time of the adiornment of the Parliament
from London, the Turks were growen verie infestuous
to the marchants. Divers ships & vessels they had taken, with
a multitude of captives, drawn from thm. In the west parts
they had made the coasts soe dangerous through their spoiles,
as few dar'd putt forth of their harbors; hardlie in them was
the securitie thought enough. The boldness & insolenc of these
piratts was beyond all comparison, noe former times having
beene exampled with the like. Their adventure formerlie on
those seas was rare, almost vnhard of, which made their comming
then more strange. That being aggravated by their frequencie &
number, which their dailie spoiles did witness, & those much
heightened by their bouldness, it made a great impression on
the Countrie, & possesst it with much fear, that divers alarums
it received, which made divers motions in the people, who, as their
manner is, fain'd or enlarged the cause after apprehension of
their fancies, which passing to their neighbors, still affected them
with more, vntill it had a general influenc throughout all even
the cheife townes & strengths not privilegd or exempted. They
had in some parts entred even into the mouthes of the close
harbors, & shewd themselves in them, & all the open roads they
vs'd confidentlie as their owne. Some ships they had taken
vnder the fforts & castells. Nothing did deterr them, but the
whole Sea seem'd theirs. In Cornwall they had landed, & carried
divers prisoners from the shore. All fishermen that stird
became their prey & purchase. They had gained in that Summer,
at least, twelve hundred Christians, the loss of whom caused
[123]
great lamentation with their frinds. This man bewayld his sonns,
that his father, another his brother, a foorth his servant, & the
like; husbands & wives, with al relations els of nature & civilitie
did complaine; besides the preiudice of the marchants, the losing of
their ships, the interruption of their trade, which made a generall
damp on all things, commodities not being vendible where the
transportation is denied; this made a cry and exclamation that
noe part of that countrie did stand free, noe person but was affected
with that sence hereof a dailie intelligenc had been given
to the ministers of the State, with special addresses therevpon
to implore for some releife. Divers ships were then readie of
the ffleet, which might have beene commanded to that service. They
lay idle in their harbours, in the Thames, at Portsmouth, &
elsewhere all their men and provisions being aboard. They
were to attend the preparation of their fellows, for which generallie
was appointed the Rendezvous at Plimouth; soe as this
imploiment would have drawne them to that place. Their
countenanc in the passage would have dispeld those pirats. Noe
charge had been occasiond to the King noe wast of provisions,
noe vnreadiness in the ships, noe disorder to the service, but
rather an advantage given in all; yet nothing could be gotten,
noe ship might be remov'd, the trade & marchants were neglected,
the coast was left vnguarded, the Countrie stood expos'd,
as if in expiation of some sinne, it had been made a sacrifice to
those monsters.
[38]
This condition of things becoming known to Eliot, he put
it directly before the King. In response, eight ships were ordered
to be sent to Plymouth through the Commissioners of the
Navy. This was a body, as Eliot says, appointed for a check
and superintendanc to the Admiral, that the kingdom stood not
too much intrusted to one man, but after they be came only
subservient to the Admiral.
Although the order was delivered
to Sir John Coke, the head of the Commission, it was laid
[124]
aside and unheeded. The expectations of the Country were
all frustrated.[39]
Irritation over this new neglect was the more marked because
at the same time seven merchants' ships were consigned to the
French. This loan of the ships to the French opened another
most perplexing question before the Commons and people. These
merchants, who through the treaties of the merchants' alliance
were in duty bound to join a fleet to help France, found the
fleet was to go against French Protestants. D'Ewes says in regard
to England's feeling toward the French Protestants: We
and they made and constituted, with all the other Protestants in
the world, one true Catholic Church.
[40] a curious expression
for the seventeenth century. When the Huguenots of La Rochelle
revolted, the English ships in accordance with some unknown
clause of the treaty were bound to help the French King
against his Protestant subjects. The course of double dealing
which followed showed the struggle of Charles and Buckingham
(as in the matter of religion) to please the French and at the
same time not to offend the English. Coke wrote to Conway:
our seamen, generally, are most resolutly Protestant and will
rather be killed or thrown overboard than be forced to shed the
blood of protestants.
[41]
Pennington, the commander of the fleet, protested that he would take the ships over to France but would not stay and see them used against French Protestants.[42] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the captains, an earlier explorer along the New England coast, slipped away and returned to London. Further mutiny was saved by peace being made with the Huguenots by Richelieu. But the affair as much as was known of it, as the news gradually leaked out rankled in the minds of Englishmen. Charles's double dealing, the whole facts of which we do not yet know, was strongly suspected even though the issue was better than he deserved to have it.
[125]
Therefore, when the parliament met at Oxford, on August
1, reluctant and suspicious, the smoldering dissatisfaction was
kindled to a flame at once, because of the release granted by
crown officials to a Jesuit imprisoned at Exeter. This was
done twelve days after the adjournment of the last parliament
when the promise had been especially given of enforcement of
the laws against Jesuits. Eliot rushed into speech, into a tender
and gallant defense of the King and blame of his ministers. I
cannot thinke this rightly issued from the King or if it did that
he rightlie understood it.
He excused the King, intimating that
he was misled by his affections. Harts they have still and
affections like to others. And trust will whaer love had gone
before, therefore, I doubt this some abuse of ministers who
preferr their owne corruptions before religion or the
King.
[43]
This keynote of attack on bad counsel is struck again and
again through the speeches that follow. Marten, the judge who
had unjustly condemned Eliot in the Nutt affair, a condemnation
magnanimously ignored by Eliot who calls him learned
and grave
and says he spoke that truth which was written on
each hart
,[44] declared the ambassadors sent to arrange the
French marriage treaty unfit for their work. These ambassadors—the
Earl of Holland and the Earl of Carlisle—really
were little responsible for the conditions of the treaty. As in
regard to the Huguenot affair of La Rochelle, here, too, we are
ignorant of the real facts and we do not know what was arranged
by the French marriage treaties in the previous autumn and
winter. Much more then were the members of Parliament ignorant
of the facts, but again they suspected double dealing on
the part of the King.
After reprimanding Montague, as has been already related, the king, Conway and Coke presented the need of supply and threw open the great debate which lasted for a week. It was a debate marked with much real eloquence on both sides. On the king's side Coke, Buckingham, May, Heath and Weston [126] were the important speakers. On the side of the House, Seymour, Philips, Sir Edward Coke, and Sir Nathaniel Rich spoke with vigor and assurance. Wentworth and Alvord made brief remarks but said enough to keep themselves out of the next parliament. To prevent their election the king had them appointed sheriffs, together with Edward Coke, Seymour and Philips.[45]
The tone of the debate varied on different days. The debate of the 5th, in which Philips, Seymour and Sir Edward Coke opposed passionately the gift of more money without knowledge of the enemy and without good advice, was very different from the dispassionate and practical talking of the 6th where Eliot defended Buckingham as well as the king and where Rich summed up concisely in his petition of five heads the inquiries of the Commons. On the 9th came Buckingham's speech, answering the petition of both Houses framed from the nucleus of Rich's five heads, a speech followed by Coke's statements of sums needed to meet the king's engagements, amounting to over three hundred thousand pounds. The final debate against giving came on the 10th with Philips and Seymour in opposition.
Two speeches of Eliot's are recorded. One is found only
in the Negotium Posterorum, a speech based on researches of
Sir Robert Cotton prepared for the 10th, which Gardiner
argues was never spoken. The other, a brief defense of Buckingham
and attack on the Navy Commissioners, given on the
6th of August, is omitted by the Negotium Posterorum, referred
to in the main account of Fawsley, and given in full in
the appendix. Weston, Naunton, and May, urged for the King.
The discussion died away on the 11th and 12th under
knowledge of the impending dismissal, which was inexorably
made. As the closing sentiment of the House a protestation of
Granville's was adopted declaring loyalty, affection, and readiness
in a convenient time and in a parliamentary way freely
and dutifully to do our utmost endeavor to discover and reforme
the abuses and grievances of the realme & state, & in the
[127]
like sort to afford all necessarie supplie to his most excellent ma
vpon his present, & all other his iust occasions &
designes.
[46] The "parliamentarie way" was not the king's way.
To take up the events more in detail, first, the chief arguments
on the king's side were that the Commons were merely asked
to carry through the work which they themselves had started
and demanded when they cried for war in the parliament of
1624. Conway said: The war was occasioned by Parliament in
the counsell which they gave to the dissolution to the
treaties.
[47]
May vrg'd againe that the King's ingagement was by them, &
that he vndertooke but the designes which they propounded; &
that therevpon he inferd that the Parliament ought not to
recead.
[47] Coke said that (the war)
being the effect of the
counsell given by Parliament, by the Parliament he desir'd to
follow & accomplish it.
[49]
And Buckingham said my Master
entred into this business when ye had given the councell &
the means to execute it.
[50] The king, himself, is reported to
have told the parliament that they had drawn him into a war
and must find means to maintain it.[51]
Again the speakers on the king's side emphasized all through
that the money was desired for the fleet. In the first place, Conway
asked for forty thousand pounds for that special purpose.
It was the fleet emphasizing the war by sea which was the special
instrument of parliament's wishes. Coke said four hundred
thousand pounds had already been spent for the navy and
ten thousand men were waiting at Plymouth to embark; they
wants yet much monie to supplie them, some necessaries for
the ships, some provisions for the men, without which neither can
be serviceable.
He sagely hinted of a designe to trouble
Ireland & an increase of the enemies navie in the Low Countries,
with a purpose to thrust over part of their Armies into
[128]
England.
[52] May urged giving by an apothegm
as Eliot puts
it, that monie given in that house might be cast into the Sea,
& soe some treasure lost, but not given, posteritie might rue it,
reservation in such cases being more dangerous than
adventure.
[53] Eliot
admired the wit of May and that the Chancellor
of the Duchy always drew close attention when he arose is
shown by the fact that the accounts of his speeches in different
authorities differ very slightly.
The chief objections to giving made by the speakers on the other side were those which were summed up by Rich that grievances in religion were not redressed, that their enemy was not known, that the counsel was poor, that Parliament ought to have the chance to investigate the state of the King's income, and finally that the question of impositions ought to be cleared up.[54] This last point was made because Charles had refused to sign the tonnage and poundage bill.
The points of Rich were taken up by a committee of both
Lords and Commons, who made a new petition which was sent
to the King. The reply to this was given by Buckingham. It
was a reply marked by a certain winning frankness which makes
it impossible to accuse Buckingham of insincerity. To the prejudiced
this frankness approaches jauntiness in skimming surfaces
and in evading real issues. But at least no accuser can
find subtle deception in Buckingham's arguments. His optimism
about the success of continental affairs, hardly in accordance
with the facts, is an optimism characteristic of him
throughout his life. His assertion of consultations, formally and
informally, with the Council of War and the King's Council
was quite true, even though the Council was a notoriously weak
body and the king's effort to brace up reputation through such
council was as Dicey says but an evidence of the weakness of
the sovereignty.
[55] It was also quite true that the king was
[129]
"empty pocketed for the navy" after having supplied his friends
and allies. Buckingham had given of his own money and borrowed
from his friends for the kingdom's needs. It was, moreover,
a fact never sufficiently emphasized by historians of this
period that the value of money was not what public opinion
supposed it to be, the coinage having not yet recovered from
its debasement under Henry VIII, and for that reason the king
never had the amount he appeared to have. Most characteristic
of Buckingham's words and actions is his saying better
the fleet goe out and perish half then now not goe; for it would
show want of Councell and experience in the design, want of
courage in the execution, and would argue weakness and beaggerie
of the kingdom as not to able to go through with such
design.
[56]
In regard to the ships sent to France, Buckingham's saying
It is not at all time fit for kings to give accompt and
councels,
[57]
savors of impudence, but was not so intended.
The petition had said yea but wher is the enemie?
My master gave me command to bid you name the enemie
yourselves
was hardly a satisfactory answer, no more satisfactory
than was the answer to the question who gave Councell
to meet
again when the plague was still raging. The business
itself and the necessitie of that gave that Councell.
[58]
The speeches of May and of Naunton also ignored definite facts. May had already said that if they did not give posterity might rue it, reservation was more dangerous than adventure.[59] Weston, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised that if supply was given they should meet again in the winter to obtain redress of their grievances.
Heath was the one important speaker on the king's side not reported
by Eliot. His speech in the Fawsley Papers was telling
because he came straight across to the point. The king's
[130]
estate, like a shippe, hath a great leak.
[60]
The leak must be
closed,
he argued (regarding its cause). Sir John Coke gave
an account of the King's obligations. Eliot says: by infinit
calculation and accompts was to confound the intelligenc of
his hearers.
[61] Then the
debate of the 10th followed with full
vigor. Philips made one of his great speeches. Seymour attacked
the Duke directly and, on the next day, Shirland, a new
speaker, admired by Eliot, spoke to the point. Precedence of
supply before grievance was the center of these speeches. Philips,
especially, emphasized the necessity of redress of grievance and
of constant application of good counsels. Gardiner's assertion
that feeling against Buckingham had not begun in this parliament
is scarcely justified by the facts of these speeches. In his
first speech of August 4th Philips had said, speaking of the ignorance
and confusion of the people's mind in regard to foreign
affairs, that flattering councils of servants * * * * * had
betrayed him to the nets of (the Spaniards) those subtle, fox-like,
artificial, faithless people;
[62]
and again that counsells were
there monopolized * * * the whole wisdome was supposed to
be comprehended in one man.
[63] Seymour had also contrasted
the ministers of the Stuarts with those of Elizabeth. They
are the men which bring this necessitie; that they have exhausted
thus his treasures, spent his revenews.
[64]
Eliot, himself, in the
speech given in the appendix to the Fawsley Papers but omitted
in the Negotium Posterorum, blames not Buckingham but the
Commissioners of the Navy.
In reply to the precedent argument about attack on bad
counsel of the past May gave one of his epigrammatic speeches :
Let noe man dispise the presidents of antiquitie; noe man
adore them, though they are venerable yet they are noe gods,
examples are strong arguments, being proper, but times alter,
& with them oft, their reasons, everie parliament, as each man,
[131]
must be wise with his owne wisdom, not his ffathers. a dramme
of present wisdom is more pretious than mountaines of that which
was practis'd in ould times.
[65]
Eliot's two speeches on supply require some comment. The
first was probably spoken on August 6th and is omitted in Eliot's
own account because it did not represent his point of view when
the narrative about the parliament was written. As has been
said, Seymour and Philips had already criticized Buckingham for
the waste of money and small profits gained by supply already
given for the navy. Eliot, on the other hand, says: but
I dare, in my conscience, cleare and vindicate that noble Lord
who hath had some aspirations laid upon him; and that if there
hath been any abuse in the fleet it is not his fault, for there is
a commission for the furnishing of this Navy * * * and therefore,
the Commissioners, if any, faultie.
The other topic of his speech is the same on which he enlarges
in his famous supply speech of 1626, yet God forbid wee
should bee soe limited, that, upon whatsoever occasion, wee
should give noe more * * * God forbid that wee should denie
his Majestie supplie if there bee cause.
[66] Even believing in
Buckingham's blamelessness, it must have taken some courage
to say these words.
The other speech, of August 10th, Gardiner believes was prepared
by Cotton and Eliot in common but was never spoken.
A speech of Seymour's is put in its place. Gardiner gives two
chief reasons for his conjecture: First, the speech is given as
spoken in no other authority. Second, Weston's speech in reply
addresses itself to the arguments of Seymour rather than
to those of Eliot. He accounts for Eliot's comment: this inflam'd
the affection of the house & pitcht it wholie on the imitation
of their ffathers
by a surmise that the speech was passed
around in manuscript and so read by the members.[67]
I incline to the views of Forster and of Grosart that the speech
[132]
was delivered. Weston's phrase, These disorders have not been
in his Majestie's tyme
[68]
refers far more evidently to the precedents
quoted by Eliot than to anything in Seymour's speech.
Also, Eliot's direct retort to May's epigrams: Tis true
presidents are noe gods, yet some veneration they require, the
honor of antiquitie is great, though it be not an idoll,
[69]
shows a
quick retort and connection. Moreover the attack on Buckingham
does not seem to me either direct or severe or out of harmony
with Eliot's defence of the Duke on the 6th day of August. Poor
counsel had been much more severely arraigned by Seymour and
by Philips. Finally the accounts of these last days vary so much
in the list of speakers that little weight should be attached to
the inclusion or omission of any particular speech in any account.
The speech itself is not particularly vigorous or original. Eliot
contrasts the ministers of James's early years trained by Queen
Elizabeth with those of James' later days. He greatly overpraises
Somerset. He refers to Coke's account of the state
of the revenues as a disgrace—all vasted and
anticipated—ex-hausted from the people.
The precedents quoted to show the
abuse of ministers in earlier centuries, interspersed with numerous
Latin quotations, by no means show the illumination of his
great three precedent
speech in 1626.[70]
In short the descriptions
and comments of Eliot in the Posterorum are of far more
interest than are his speeches.
We have hinted at his sketches of individuals. It is fitting
to close this study by quoting his characterization of the House
as a whole, one example of that idealization of the Commons
which underlies all his political ideas. The characterization is
given in connection with the disorderly proceedings of one Clarke
who criticised the House with bitter invectives
for implying
censure of Buckingham.[71] The man was made a prisoner
kneeling before the bar. This judgment, as their whole proceeding in
like cases, is observable for their order, their gravitie is great in all
[133]
things, this more punctuallie does express it. * * * * noe personal
touches are admitted in anie argument or dispute, noe
cavills or exceptions nor anie member to be named or wher
ther is contrarietie & dissent may ther be mention of the persons
but by periphrasis & description, all bitterness is excluded
from their dialect, all words of scandall & aspersion; noe man
may be interrupted in his speech but for transgression of that
rule, or breach of some other order of the house; in all other
things the privileg houlds throughout; the business, as the person
has that freedom to pass quietly to the end; no disparite
or odds makes a difference in that course; he that does first
stand up, has the first liberty to be heard; the meanest burgess
has as much favor as the best knight or counsellor, all sitting in
one capacitie of Commoners, & in the like relation to their
Countries.
[72]
Part 1 Note 1 (page 71): R. G. Marsden, Eng. Hist. Review, XXIII, 741.
Part 1 Note 2 (page 71): Oppenheim, Victoria County History, Devon, 486.
Part 1 Note 3 (page 71): S. P. Dom., James I, CXL, 42.
Part 1 Note 4 (page 72): >John Mason, Discourse on Newfoundland; Prince Society, 1887, p. 131. Whitbourne, A Discovery of Newfoundland, London, 1620.
Part 1 Note 5 (page 72): Viet. Co. Hist., Devon, 481.
Part 1 Note 6 (page 72): R. G. Marsden, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., XVI, 82.
Part 1 Note 7 (page 72): United Service Mag. New Ser., XL, 137.
Part 1 Note 8 (page 73): G. Berkley, Naval Hist, of Britain, London, 1757, 463.
Part 1 Note 9 (page 73): Discourse of Pirates, 137.
Part 1 Note 10 (page 73): S. P. Dom., 1619-1623, CLX. 2.
Part 1 Note 11 (page 73): Vict Co. Hist., Devon, 489.
Part 1 Note 12 (page 74): E. S. Roscoe, Law Rev. and Mag. Ser. 5, XXIV-XXV, 153.
Part 1 Note 13 (page 74): High Court Admiralty Papers, Oyer and Terminer Ser. 1-49, 9 Jul., 1623. This series deals with criminal cases tried by judges on circuit, holding a special commission from the king for such trials.
Part 1 Note 14 (page 74): III, 418.
Part 1 Note 15 (page 75): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVI, 63.
Part 1 Note 16 (page 75): H. C. A. Miscellaneous Bundle, 857. Plymouth, 19th May, 1623.
Part 1 Note 17 (page 77): H. C. A. Miscellaneous Bundle, 857. 20th May, 1623.
Part 1 Note 18 (page 78): H. C. A. Miscellaneous, Bundle 857; Deposition of Richard Holworthy.
Part 1 Note 19 (page 79): S. P. Dom., James I, Vol. CXLV, 70, 10, 3d June, 1623 (Thomas Best was the hero of the fight with the Portugese off Surat in 1612 and the Senior Naval Officer in the Downs when the fleet went to bring Charles back from Spain.)
Part 1 Note 20 (page 79): Forster, Life of Sir John Eliot, I, 45.
Part 1 Note 21 (page 79): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVI, No. 62.
Part 1 Note 22 (page 80): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVI, No. 52.
Part 1 Note 23 (page 81): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVI, No. 107.
Part 1 Note 24 (page 81): Examination of Eliot, 24 July. S. P. Dom., James I, Vol. CXLIX, No. 45, III.
Part 1 Note 25 (page 81): Examination of Norber, 9 August, 1623, H. C. A., Mis. Bundle, 857.
Part 1 Note 26 (page 81): Examination of Eliot. Eliot to Conway, S. P. Dom., June 16.
Part 1 Note 27 (page 81): Ibid.
Part 1 Note 28 (page 82): Ibid. Examination of Norber.
Part 1 Note 29 (page 82): Eliot's examination. Nutt at his trial denied that he took the Colchester ship until later. H. C. A., Oyer and Terminer Series, 1-49, July, 1623.
Part 1 Note 30 (page 82): Eliot to Commissioners, 10 June, 1623. S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVI, No. 52.
Part 1 Note 31 (page 82): Spurwaie to Privy Council, 12 June, 1623. S. P. Dom., CXLVI, No. 63.
Part 1 Note 32 (page 83): There are two letters relating to the Colchester ship, a complaint to the Council by the Captain of the ship, (S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVII, No. 56) that Eliot stole sugar from them and a petition from the owners of the ship (S. P. Dom., James I, 57) that it be released from sequestration. From these two letters the date of the capture of the ship was evidently June 4, and the next day, June 5, Eliot interviewed Nutt on his ship.
Part 1 Note 33 (page 83): S. P. Dom., CXLVI, No. 65.
Part 1 Note 34 (page 83): S. P. Dom., CXLVI, No. 107.
Part 1 Note 35 (page 84): Mr. Marsden
in his article, English Prize Jurisdiction and Prize
Law in England, says that the Venetians complain of a curious law of
the English in the 17th Century: If you proceed against the person
of a thief you may not proceed against his property
and vice versa.
Eng. Hist. Review, XX, 243.
Part 1 Note 36 (page 84): >Eliot to Conway, June 25. S. P. Dom., CXLVII, No. 58.
Part 1 Note 37 (page 84): >There is evidence that Nutt tried with some success to bribe Norber and Randall, Eliot's deputies. Norber states in his deposition that he stayed aboard Nutt's ship for a time after Randall had gone back to Eliot and received from Nutt sugar and sweetmeats beside the regular perquisites sent to the Vice-Admiral. H. C. A., Mis., 857.
Part 1 Note 38 (page 85): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVII, No. 57 (no date given).
Part 1 Note 39 (page 85): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLVII, No. 56.
Part 1 Note 40 (page 85): S. P. Dom., CXLVIII, No. 27, July 4th.
Part 1 Note 41 (page 85): H. C. A., I, 49.
Examinations of Randall and Norber. The true
facts are well known about Dartmouth.
Eliot's examination.
Part 1 Note 42 (page 86): H. C. O. and T. Series, 1/49. Examination of Nutt, 9 July, 1623.
Part 1 Note 43 (page 86): H. C. Mis. Bundle, 857. Examination of Norber, 9 August, 1623. Forster (Life of Eliot, I, 60-67) in his account of the trial has evidently not seen Norber's deposition, while parts of Nutt's and of Randall's depositions referred to by Forster are not to be found. The examinations of Nutt and of Randall, identical in the Admiralty records and in the state papers (S. P. Dom., James I, CXIX, No. 45. I and II) are apparently now incomplete.
Part 1 Note 44 (page 87): S. P. Dom., James I, CXLIX, No. 45, III. Examination of Eliot. 24 July 1623.
Part 1 Note 45 (page 87): Ibid., 25 July, 1623.
Part 1 Note 46 (page 87): Ibid., CL, 23, 4 August, 1623.
Part 1 Note 47 (page 88): S. P. Dom., James I, CL, No. 23, 4 August, 1623.
Part 1 Note 48 (page 88): S. P. Dom., James I, CL, No. 82.
Part 1 Note 49 (page 89): Wilhelm, Life of Calvert, Baltimore, 1884, p. 121.
Part 1 Note 50 (page 89): Father Hughes, History of the Society of Jesus in North America, I, 178.
Part 1 Note 51 (page 90): Calvert to Conway, August 11, 1623.
Part 1 Note 52 (page 90): S. P. Dom., James I, CLI, No. 73, also see Vol. 150, No. 90, Conway to Calvert, Aug. 13th, 1623.
Part 1 Note 53 (page 90): Ibid., CXLIX, No. 78, 28 July, 1623.
Part 1 Note 54 (page 91): Ibid., CL, No. 76, Aug. 10th, 1623.
Part 1 Note 55 (page 91): Ibid., CXLIX, No. 89, Eliot to Conway, 29 July, 1623.
Part 1 Note 56 (page 91): In a letter of August 2, of which there is only this note to be
found: Sr John Eliott. Givinge him an accompt what is donn in his
business.
S. P. Dom., James I, CCXIV, Conway's Entrybook, p. 69.
Part 1 Note 57 (page 91): S. P. Dom., James I, CL, No. 23, Eliot to Conway, 4 Aug., 1623.
Part 1 Note 58 (page 91): S. P. Dom., James I, CLI, No. 9.
Part 1 Note 59 (page 92): Cal. S. P. Dom., James I, CLII, No. 89.
Part 1 Note 60 (page 92): Coke to Buckingham, Oct. 17, 1623. Coke Papers, Hist. Mss. Com., Rep. 12, App. I, 150.
Part 1 Note 61 (page 93): Coke Papers, 432.
Part 1 Note 62 (page 93): Ibid., 459.
Part 1 Note 63 (page 93): Coke Papers, Oct. 15, 1632, p. 477.
Part 1 Note 64 (page 93): Coke Papers, Oct. 15, 1632, p. 482.
Part 1 Note 65 (page 93): Letters and Papers of Strafford. Wm. Knowler, London, 1739, p. 87.
Part 1 Note 66 (page 94): Knowler, Strafford Papers, 90.
Part 2 Note 1 (page 95): Calendar Venetian State Papers, XVI, Introduction, p. xl.
Part 2 Note 2 (page 95): Proceedings and Debates, Oxford, 1766, I, 10.
Part 2 Note 3 (page 96): Proceedings and Debates, 1766, I, 24 and 25.
Part 2 Note 4 (page 96): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 725.
Part 2 Note 5 (page 96): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVL, No. 679.
Part 2 Note 6 (page 97): Gardiner: History of England, 1603-42, II, 251.
Part 2 Note 7 (page 97): Autobiography, 158.
Part 2 Note 8 (page 97): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, 218.
Part 2 Note 9 (page 97): Kennett's
Compleat History of England
. T. Wilson, I, 626.
Part 2 Note 10 (page 97): We grow more Hispanophile every day
quoted from a leading courtier. Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 758.
Part 2 Note 11 (page 98): Journals of the House of Commons, I, 599-602.
Part 2 Note 12 (page 98): Proceedings and Debates, 1766, II, 107.
Part 2 Note 13 (page 99): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 133.
Part 2 Note 14 (page 99): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 287.
Part 2 Note 15 (page 99): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 83.
Part 2 Note 16 (page 100): Cal. S. P., Ven., XV, No. 734.
Part 2 Note 17 (page 100): Cal. S. P., Ven., XV, No. 747.
Part 2 Note 18 (page 101): Rushworth, 48.
Part 2 Note 19 (page 101): Rushworth, 37.
Part 2 Note 20 (page 101): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 504.
Part 2 Note 21 (page 102): Basilikon Doron, Morley Miscellany, 110, 111.
Part 2 Note 22 (page 102): The report of this speech of James by the Old Parliamentary History seems more trustworthy than Rushworth's. It is characteristically abstract and philosophical. Rushworth's report is too concise and concrete to be natural for James.
Part 2 Note 23 (page 103): O. Parl. Hist., V, 360.
Part 2 Note 24 (page 103): Cal. S. P., Ven., XVI, No. 789.
Part 2 Note 25 (page 103): O. Parl. Hist., V, 355.
Part 2 Note 26 (page 103): O. Parl. Hist., V, 379.
Part 2 Note 27 (page 103): O. Parl. Hist, V, 396.
Part 2 Note 28 (page 104): Eliot's Negotium Posterorum, Ed. Grosart, I, 45.
Part 2 Note 29 (page 104): When Gondomar said derisively,
My Lord, I wish you a good
Easter
, Bacon replied, My Lord, I wish you a good passover.
Kennett's Wilson, 736.
Part 2 Note 30 (page 104): O. Parl. Hist., V, 399.
Part 2 Note 31 (page 104): C. J., June 4, I, 639.
Part 2 Note 33 (page 105): Ibid., 36.
Part 2 Note 34 (page 105): Ibid., 37.
Part 2 Note 34 (page 106): C. J., I, 485.
Part 2 Note 35 (page 106): Kennett, 738.
Part 2 Note 36 (page 106): C. J., I, 486.
Part 2 Note 37 (page 106): C. J., I, 487.
Part 2 Note 38 (page 106): Rushworth, 41.
Part 2 Note 39 (page 106): Rushworth, 45.
Part 2 Note 40 (page 107): Rushworth, 48.
Part 2 Note 41 (page 108): Kennett, 747.
Part 2 Note 42 (page 108): O. Parl. Hist., V, 508.
Part 2 Note 43 (page 108): C. J., I, 668.
Part 2 Note 44 (page 108): C. J., 653.
Part 2 Note 45 (page 108): O. Parl. Hist., I, 525.
Part 2 Note 46 (page 109): C. J., I, 654.
Part 3 Note 1 (page 110): Printed from the author's MSS. at Port Eliot and edited by Alexander Grosart for private circulation only, 1881.
Part 3 Note 2 (page 111): Negotium Posterorum, II, 83.
Part 3 Note 3 (page 111): Forster: Life of Eliot, I, 483.
Part 3 Note 4 (page 111): N. P. I, 69.
Part 3 Note 5 (page 111): N. P. I, 67.
Part 3 Note 6 (page 111): N. P. I, 41.
Part 3 Note 7 (page 112): N. P. I, 42.
Part 3 Note 8 (page 112): N. P. I, 44.
Part 3 Note 9 (page 113): N. P. I, 52.
Part 3 Note 10 (page 113): N. P. I, 68.
Part 3 Note 11 (page 114): N. P. I, 70-71.
Part 3 Note 12 (page 114): N. P. I, 72.
Part 3 Note 13 (page 115): N. P. I, 105-7.
Part 3 Note 14 (page 115): N. P. I, 109.
Part 3 Note 15 (page 115): N. P. II, 13.
Part 3 Note 16 (page 115): N. P. II, I5.
Part 3 Note 17 (page 115): N. P. II, 15.
Part 3 Note 18 (page 115): Fawsley Debates, Camden Society, Appendix, Sect. IV.
Part 3 Note 19 (page 116): Dict. Nat. Biog.
Part 3 Note 20 (page 116): N. P. I, 84-91.
Part 3 Note 21 (page 116): N. P. I, 78.
Part 3 Note 22 (page 116): N. P. I, 146.
Part 3 Note 23 (page 116): See Fawsley Debates, Intro., p. vi.
Part 3 Note 24 (page 117): N. P. I, 75, 76.
Part 3 Note 25 (page 117): N. P. I, 76.
Part 3 Note 26 (page 118): N. P. I, 84.
Part 3 Note 27 (page 118): N. P. I, 123.
Part 3 Note 28 (page 118): Fawsley Debates, App., p. 152.
Part 3 Note 29 (page 119): N. P. I, 102.
Part 3 Note 30 (page 119): N. P. I, 104.
Part 3 Note 31 (page 120): N. P. I, 110.
Part 3 Note 32 (page 120): N. P. I, 111.
Part 3 Note 33 (page 120): N. P. I, 112.
Part 3 Note 34 (page 121): N. P. I, 112.
Part 3 Note 35 (page 121): N. P. I, 116.
Part 3 Note 36 (page 121): N. P. I, 123.
Part 3 Note 37 (page 122): Fawsley Debates: Appendix, p. 151.
Part 3 Note 38 (page 123): N. P. II, 3-5.
Part 3 Note 39 (page 124): N. P. II, 6-7.
Part 3 Note 40 (page 124): Autobiography, p. 164.
Part 3 Note 41 (page 124): Cal. S. P. Dom., IV, No. 40.
Part 3 Note 42 (page 124): Cal. S. P. Dom., IV, No. 78, 79.
Part 3 Note 43 (page 125): N. P. II, 9, 10.
Part 3 Note 44 (page 125): N. P. II, 11, 12.
Part 3 Note 45 (page 126): Strafford Letters, p. 29.
Part 3 Note 46 (page 127): N. P. II, 205.
Part 3 Note 47 (page 127): N. P. II, 17.
Part 3 Note 48 (page 127): N. P. II, 27.
Part 3 Note 49 (page 127): N. P. II, 20.
Part 3 Note 50 (page 127): N. P. II, 63.
Part 3 Note 51 (page 127): Cal. S. P. Dom., III, No. 91.
Part 3 Note 52 (page 128): N. P. II, 17.
Part 3 Note 53 (page 128): N. P. II, 28.
Part 3 Note 54 (page 128): N. P. II, 50.
Part 3 Note 55 (page 128): History of the Privy Council, p. 127.
Part 3 Note 56 (page 129): N. P. II, 68.
Part 3 Note 57 (page 129): N. P. II, 69.
Part 3 Note 58 (page 129): N. P. II, 71.
Part 3 Note 59 (page 129): N. P. II, 28.
Part 3 Note 60 (page 130): Fawsley Debates: p. 18.
Part 3 Note 61 (page 130): N. P. II, 72.
Part 3 Note 62 (page 130): N. P. II, 32.
Part 3 Note 63 (page 130): N. P. II, 34.
Part 3 Note 64 (page 130): N. P. II, 25.
Part 3 Note 65 (page 131): N. P. II, 84.
Part 3 Note 66 (page 132): Fawsley Debates, App., p. 138.
Part 3 Note 67 (page 133): Fawsley Debates, Preface, xxi.
Part 3 Note 68 (page 132): Fawsley Debates, 112.
Part 3 Note 69 (page 132): N. P. II, 91.
Part 3 Note 70 (page 132): Forster: Life of Sir John Eliot I. 511.
Part 3 Note 71 (page 132): N. P. II, 51.
Part 3 Note 72 (page 133): N. P. II, 52.