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CHAP. no bankrupts or outlaws, but men of known good behaviour and sufficient livelihood. All returns of elections were to be made to the chancery, and, if they were found not to conform to the proclamation, were to be rejected as unlawful. Although the elections were uneventful, the first meeting of the new sovereign with the estates of the realm could not but fix expectation. Never had there been so many members attending in their places on the first day of the session as when parliament assembled on March 19. The king's speech was not without dignity. He congratulated his people on the blessings which he had brought in his train, peace and the union of England and Scotland. He explained his policy with regard to differences in religion. The puritans could not be suffered in the commonwealth, because they were ever discontented with the present government and unwilling to submit to any form of authority. The papists he wished to treat with mildness, especially those laymen who would quietly obey the government. Their clergy could not be tolerated so long as they asserted the pope's civil jurisdiction over sovereigns. Nor would he allow the papists to make converts and increase until they became dangerous. While he promised always to prefer the common advantage in making good laws to his private ends, he said nothing which implied a wish to know more about the thoughts and feelings of his new subjects or readiness to yield anything in cases where their wishes might differ from his own.

In the house of commons there was scarcely any one entitled to claim even the informal and precarious leadership which alone was possible at that time. Yet from the first the house showed no want of decision. It immediately took into consideration two cases of privilege. After some delay and trouble it enforced the release from the Fleet of Sir Thomas Shirley, member for Steyning, who had been arrested for a private debt. Sir Francis Goodwin, though an outlaw, had been chosen by the county of Buckingham in preference to Sir John Fortescue, a privy councillor. When the return was made, the court of chancery declared the election void, and in a second election Fortescue was returned, Goodwin, who was not ambitious to defy the crown, himself soliciting the freeholders in his favour. But the house claimed cognisance of the matter and, after hearing Goodwin at the bar, bade him take his seat. Then, by the king's

1604

GOODWIN'S CASE.

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desire, the lords sent to ask the commons for information; and CHAP. the commons, after some demur, agreed to a conference, in which they set forth their reasons for acting as they had done. The king in person urged that outlaws were not eligible and that returns ought to be made into chancery. Since the commons derived all their privileges from his grant, they should not turn those privileges against himself. Finally he asked them to confer with the judges.

In order to show their dutiful temper, the commons adopted a bill to disqualify outlaws for the future, but in order to assert their privileges, they chose a committee to draw up a reply which they requested the lords to lay before the king. In this reply they maintained their right to determine returns of elections, and refused to confer with the judges. The king, after pressing some time longer for such a conference, gave way, acknowledged the jurisdiction of the house of commons, and merely asked that Fortescue and Goodwin might both be set aside and a new election held. Content with having established a principle, the house yielded to the king's wish and the dispute ended. The principle was indeed essential to the independence of the commons. That the house had always been the judge of disputed returns was not exactly true, and that the house was not a faultless tribunal for such causes is clear. In after times the trial of an election petition by the whole house became a mere test of party strength, conducted almost without a pretence of fairness. But in the seventeenth century any other tribunal would have been worse. To refer a disputed election to the court of chancery or any other court wholly dependent on the king's will, was to afford the king a sure means of packing the house. James had enlarged the scope of the debate by asserting that the privileges of the house should not be used against him, because they were his grant. The claim was logical if his conception of kingship was valid, but for that very reason the claim could not be allowed, if parliament were to exist otherwise than on sufferance. On this occasion, however, the king's good nature or his love of quiet averted the conflict which his theories had provoked, and both parties had reason to be satisfied with the issue of Goodwin's case.

Other controversies followed. The mixture of fear and affection which Elizabeth inspired had withheld parliament from

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CHAP. touching grievances which were more and more acutely felt in the general progress of society. The reforming spirit of the new house of commons might have been a means of popularity and power to a king who understood how to guide it; but to James it proved an irritation and an embarrassment. The royal right of purveyance, the right of the king's officers to take supplies and transport for the king's household at more or less arbitrary rates, had from remote times been the cause of much oppression, which a long series of statutes, from Magna Carta downwards, had sought with little success to render impossible. The commons drafted a bill declaring the abuses of purveyance illegal, and at the same time a petition explaining their case to the king. In the house of lords Cecil moved for a conference with the commons on this subject. When the conference was held, the representatives of the commons insisted that the king was not entitled to any compensation for putting down abuses so often forbidden by law. The representatives of the lords, hinting that the king was in want of money, proposed to offer him an annual revenue of £50,000 in lieu of the right of purveyance itself, adding the curious argument that, as there were many penal statutes which the king did not enforce, he might fairly expect some indulgence in return.

Another grievance was the survival of tenure in chivalry long after war had ceased to be waged with feudal levies. With the military tenures remained the oppressive rights of the crown over its tenants. On the death of a tenant in chivalry his heir under age became the king's ward. If he left an heiress, she could not marry without the king's consent. The administration of the court of wards was so bad as to inflict heavy loss on the estates entrusted to its care, and the royal power over the marriage of heiresses made them the prey of men who had influence with the king. The extinction of the military tenures in return for a fixed money revenue fully equal to all that the crown derived from them would have been an unspeakable boon to the military tenants, and a gain to the whole community. Early in the session, therefore, the commons asked the lords to join with them in a petition to the king for relief. As the lords were among those who suffered most by the continuance of the military tenures, they agreed to do so, but when the commons some time afterwards proposed to settle upon the king in return

1604

PARLIAMENT AND THE CHURCH.

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for the extinction of his feudal rights a larger revenue than he CHAP. had ever derived from them, and to pension the officers of the court of wards, the lords drew back and advised that nothing more should be done until the following session. They counselled thus in fear, for several circumstances had wrought up the king to high displeasure.

The king's desire for an entire and immediate union of England with Scotland had found no response in the lower house, where the old national grudge was refreshed by his profuse bounty to his countrymen. When it was proposed that James should take the style of King of Great Britain, the commons held that some understanding as to the terms of the union should come first. They would do no more than pass a bill for naming twenty-eight commissioners, taken equally from both houses, to confer with a like body chosen by the Scottish parliament, and to report when the parliament should meet for a second session. Then the commons insisted on debating a subject from which even Elizabeth had scarcely been able to withhold them, the state of the Church of England. The majority of the commons were what was then termed puritans, not indeed puritans such as afterwards fought in the Civil War, opposed on principle to government by bishops and to the Book of Common Prayer, but puritans in the sense of desiring that ministers who scrupled at certain ceremonies should be indulged, and that measures should be taken to secure a resident and a preaching clergy. In April, Sir Francis Hastings moved for a committee to consider how religion might be strengthened and a learned ministry increased. James asked the house before proceeding further to confer with convocation, but the commons refused to do this, while declaring themselves ready to confer with the bishops as lords of parliament. Bills for providing a learned and godly ministry and for abating pluralities were passed by the commons but lost in the house of lords. Vexed at all these crosses, the king came down to the parliament on May 30 and addressed a formal rebuke to the commons. Such rebukes had not yet been blunted by frequency. Anxious to show their deference, the commons said nothing more about wardship and purveyance, but hurried forward the bill appointing commissioners to treat for a union. They were not, however, disposed to own themselves culprits. They prepared an

CHAP. apology for their proceedings which remains one of the most instructive documents of that age.

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In terms of profound respect the commons lamented that the king had been misinformed as to certain matters: namely, that the privileges of the house were of grace, not of right, renewed every parliament on their petition; that the house of commons was not a court of record; and that the examination of election returns belonged not to them but to the chancery. They asserted that their privileges were their due inheritance, no less than their lands and goods, that their house was a court of record, and that it was the sole rightful judge of the election of its members. They declared that their privileges had been more dangerously impugned than at any former time, their freedom of election impeached, their freedom of speech impaired by many reproofs, and their house made contemptible in the eyes of the world. "The prerogatives of princes," they said, "may easily and do daily grow; the privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand. They may be by good providence and care preserved, but being once lost are not recovered but with much disquiet." Their long debates regarding the proposed union between England and Scotland they excused by the newness and grave consequences of that measure. As to the Church, they expressly denied the power of the crown to "alter religion" or to make any law concerning it otherwise than by consent of parliament. For themselves they disclaimed any wish to dispute upon doctrine or to change government. They had merely wished to restore unity by abandoning some small ceremonies, to reform certain abuses and to furnish the kingdom with a learned and godly ministry. With respect to the feudal tenures, they had proceeded by way of petition, as the king had encouraged them to do if they felt themselves burdened. They stood not in place to speak or do things pleasing. Their care was and must be to confirm the love and to tie the hearts of the subjects most firmly to his majesty.1

The pith of the apology lay in the contention that the privileges of the commons of England were their lawful inheritance, all forms which might be taken to imply the contrary

1Parliamentary History, i., 1030; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edw. VI.-James I., viii., 70.