Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England

Charles I

King James's last and greatest favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, was equally in favor with King Charles. He had risen from a very humble position, solely through his handsome face and good manners. He was now in the highest ranks of the English nobility, and had an income of thousands of pounds sterling a year. All of his family—father, mother, brothers, sisters—had also been enriched and ennobled.

Until Buckingham's death (in 1628) the government was entirely in his hands. But the war with Spain fared badly, and men thought with regret of the glorious victories of Elizabeth. Buckingham hurried England into a war with France, also, and this, too, was mismanaged. Illegal taxes were collected, and men who refused to pay were illegally punished. In addition, favor was shown to an anti-Puritan party, which now began to rise in the Church of England.

For all this, Buckingham was rightly held responsible, and finally was named in Parliament as "the grievance of grievances." To save him from "impeachment"—that is, trial and punishment by Parliament—Charles was obliged to dismiss his second Parliament. In the next Parliament which he called, the members decided not to renew their attack on Buckingham, but to pass a petition of Right, in which such arbitrary taxation and imprisonment as Buckingham and Charles had used were declared illegal. To this law Charles was forced to give his consent. It was the most important act limiting the power of the crown which had been passed since the granting of the Great Charter, by King John, 413 years before.

A few months later, Buckingham was slain by a private enemy; nevertheless, the quarrels between King and Parliament continued.

In 1629 this Parliament—the third one of King Charles's reign—broke up in great disorder. While the King's messenger knocked loudly upon their locked door, to summon them for dismissal, the leaders of the House of Commons forcibly held their Speaker in his chair, and passed a set of defiant resolutions. These declared that anyone who advised the King to bring in anti-Puritan charges in religion, or to collect (without Parliamentary grant) the taxes which were in dispute, should be considered "a capital enemy of the commonwealth"—that is, should be worthy of punishment by death.

Parliament House, Westminster Hall, and Westminster Abbey

For the next eleven years, no Parliament was held, and the King carried on the government by his "absolute" power.

Sir John Eliot was the statesman who had played the chief part in opposing the King's measures, and upon him chiefly the King's wrath now fell. In violation of the rights of free speech, granted to Parliament, the leaders of Parliament were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Others made their submission and were released, but Eliot's brave spirit refused to gain freedom for himself, by surrendering the principle of liberty for the nation. His imprisonment was made more close. He was placed in a room which was dark, cold, and wretchedly uncomfortable; and none but his sons were allowed to visit him. Under the weight of this punishment his health (but not his spirit) gave way, and he died in November, 1632. He was truly a martyr to the cause of constitutional liberty.

Charles's refusal to call Parliament forced him to raise money in many objectionable ways. Among these was the levying of "ship money."

In the old days, when an army might be raised by calling out the men of the country to serve in war, at their own expense, the counties bordering on the sea were often called upon to furnish ships for the King's service. This "ship service" King Charles now changed into a money payment; and he demanded it not only from the seaboard counties, but from the whole country. "Ship money" thus became a regular tax, laid upon the land without the consent of Parliament; and it was seen that, if this were permitted to pass unquestioned, Englishmen would lose one of their dearest rights.

A rich and patriotic Englishman, named John Hampden, refused to pay his "ship money" tax, which amounted to twenty shillings, and the question of the lawfulness of "ship money" thus came before the courts. The judges of that time felt that they were "the lions that supported the King's throne," and must uphold his power; the King, too, had been weeding out judges whom he thought to be unfriendly to his claims. Therefore, the case was decided against Hampden, and the collection of "ship money" continued. The "ship money" case was nevertheless of great importance. It gave to the leading men who opposed the King's claims a chance to speak their minds on the subject, and so to place before the people the dangers of the King's policy. It showed the nation how insecure were their rights of property, under the law as administered by the King's judges.

While the King trampled on the rights of Parliament, and arbitrarily took from his subjects their property, he angered the nation yet more deeply by his religious policies.

Charles appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury a well-meaning but narrow-minded man named William Laud, and allowed him to carry out changes in the Church, which seemed to the Puritans to pave the way for a restoration of the Catholic faith. Men who wrote and spoke against these changes, or against the power of the bishops, were made to stand in the pillory, had their ears cut off, were branded on the cheek with hot irons, were fined ruinous sums, and were cast into prison. Finally, to complete his folly, Laud and the King tried to "reform" the Church of Scotland, in the same way that they had already "reformed" the Church of England.

In Scotland, almost the whole nation banded themselves together to resist the changes. The result was a rebellion, called the "Bishop's Wars," in which Charles was defeated. The Scots then advanced into England. Charles was obliged to make peace with his Scottish subjects. In this he agreed that the Scots' army should stay in England until the changes which he promised should be carried through, and that he would pay its expenses.

To get money to pay the Scots, Charles was obliged, after eleven years of arbitrary government, at last to summon his Parliament—the famous Long Parliament—which sat (with interruptions) from 1640 to 1660.

Charles could not rid himself of the Long Parliament, when it opposed him, as he had done his earlier ones, because in its earlier stages it was backed by the army of the Scots. Later he was prevented from dissolving it, because he had been forced to agree that it should not be dismissed without its own consent.