CONTENTS. A SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEMATIC ATTEMPTS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS OF THE FAMILIES OF PLANTAGENET, TUDOR, AND STUART, TO REDUCE THE ENGLISH PEOPLE TO SLAVERY I THE STRUGGLE OF LAUD WITH THE SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS-THE HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. A SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEMATIC ATTEMPTS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS OF THE FAMILIES OF PLANTAGENET, TUDOR, AND STUART, TO REDUCE THE ENGLISH PEOPLE ΤΟ SLAVERY. THE struggle for parliamentary government in England may be said to have lasted for some four hundred years. But to trace it through all its various stages and fluctuations for that long tract of time would be uninstructive and useless. The crisis came on in the seventeenth century. The portion, therefore, of the long contest between the English people and their kings which began and ended in the second quarter of the seventeenth century is the subject of the following pages. Of the earlier parts of that long struggle, and of the means adopted by the kings to defeat those who sought, by parliamentary government, to emancipate themselves from monarchical tyranny, I will give a summary in this chapter. The first relief which the oppressed English obtained VOL. I. A from the tyranny of their Norman oppressors came from the violent dissensions between the Norman kings and their barons, and the consequent necessity the Norman. barons found themselves under of seeking the aid of the English against the fresh bands of military foreigners whom their kings were constantly bringing in to coerce or destroy them and seize their baronies. Charles I. attempted to play the same game, but he found in the English Independents an enemy more formidable than John, or Henry III., or Richard II. had met with in the Anglo-Norman barons. When it is said that the principle of representation had, when Charles I. succeeded to the English throne, worked in England for four hundred years, it is not meant that parliamentary government had been established. Though the struggle had been going on for that time, that struggle had not yet terminated in the establishment of parliamentary government. It is unnecessary to go further than Mr. Forster's "Life of Sir John Eliot," compiled from original MSS., many of them in Eliot's own handwriting, to see that government in England, from the accession of Charles I. to the death of Buckingham, was not parliamentary government, but government by Buckingham, "the poor slave and dog Steenie;" and after the death of Buckingham to the meeting of the Long Parliament, was government by King Charles and Archbishop Laud. When Simon de Montfort in 1265, or rather 1264-the date of the writs being the 12th of December 1264—after the battle of Lewes, in calling a Parliament, issued writs requiring the several Sheriffs to return, besides two knights for each shire, two citizens for each city, and two burgesses for each borough, it is not likely that he foresaw all the consequences of his general summoning; for to him seems to be attributable the first general summoning-there may have been partial or occasional summoning before of representative citizens and burgesses to Parliament. Neither is it probable that either Simon de Montfort or Edward I., in calling together so large a number of representatives from towns, foresaw that they were calling into existence a power which, though at its origin it seemed by no means formidable, was in time to become the destroyer of the pretensions of feudalism. It is vain to inquire what were the precise views with which Simon de Montfort issued his writs of summons to the cities and boroughs to send representatives to Parliament. De Montfort's views may have been of larger scope than taxation merely; but it may be affirmed that Edward I., in following the example of De Montfort in issuing writs of summons to the cities and boroughs, did it simply for the purpose of taxing them with greater facility and uniformity. But the King soon found that the citizens and burgesses, in their representatives, were apt to get 1 If the authority of Sir Robert Cotton be accepted for the authenticity of the Roll of Parliament from which Sir John Eliot read in the second Parliament of Charles I. a precedent of 16th Henry III. for the Commons refusing a supply to the King, though the first general summoning of representative citizens and burgesses to Parliament seems to be attributable to Simon de Montfort in the year 1265, while Henry III. was a prisoner in De Montfort's power after the battle of Lewes, there must have been before that date occasional and partial summoning of citizens and burgesses to Parliament for the purpose of being called upon to supply the King with money. And this will explain the precedent in 16th Henry III., when, in the words of Sir John Eliot, "the Commons being required to make a supply unto the King, excused themselves, because, says the record, they saw all things disordered by those that were about him." See the rest of this precedent quoted in Chapter II. of this History. This precedent, furnished to Sir John Eliot by Sir Robert Cotton, and published by Mr. Forster from the MSS. at Port Eliot, will help to explain the reason why no writer of the time notices the summoning of the citizens and burgesses by De Montfort as an innovation, nor are the writs so framed as to lead us to suppose that the practice was then introduced for the first time. |