12—
Charles Saves the Duke

Relations with France were indeed deteriorating and incidents were accumulating daily concerning the merchant ships of each nation; on one occasion the whole English-Scottish wine fleet sailing from Bordeaux with a year's supply was seized by the French, and merchants' complaints to the Privy Council could not be ignored. Charles was mortified that the French had failed to keep their treaty obligations and had done little to help the Palatinate. His personal relations with the French in general were bad in spite, even because of, his French wife, and he demanded the recall of the Sieur de Blainville, the French Ambassador, whom he accused of causing trouble between Henrietta-Maria and himself. The French aversion to Buckingham continued and they refused to allow him even to pass through their country for any kind of negotiation. The Duke was now as strongly anti-French as he had been anti-Spanish and he made no more effort than Charles to save the alliance. All these factors combined and received expression in Charles's strong reaction to the plight of the Huguenots in La Rochelle. No doubt he felt some pang of conscience over the English ships he had lent to France, but the practical issue took shape after 5 September 1625 when the French defeated a Huguenot fleet under the Duke of Soubise, one of Charles's godparents, and laid siege to the town. There then began to rise in Charles the conviction, which over the next few years became almost an obsession, that he was in honour bound to help the Huguenots. As the battered wrecks from Cadiz crept back to English harbours during the winter of 1625 he was glad to discover a new focus for his warlike intentions, wiping out the ignominy of Cadiz by the thought of the relief of La Rochelle. That it entailed fighting the French seemed scarcely to occur to him; nor the fact that to be on unfriendly terms with both France and Spain at the same time was upsetting the basic

tenets of centuries of English foreign policy. His main concern was to find the money to re-equip the fleet and reluctantly his mind turned once more to a Parliament.

He made more effort this time to manage elections by exercising his right of appointment to the shrievalty: since a sheriff was not eligible for election to Parliament the device should rid him of the more troublesome Members of 1625. When his second Parliament met on 6 February 1626 Sir Robert Phelips was not there, nor Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Seymour, Edward Alford nor Sir Thomas Wentworth. Further intervention in the elections was not very effective. Sir Edwin Sandys, after an initial defeat, was returned for Penryn; he was joined by Sir Dudley Digges and, of the younger men, by Sir John Eliot, John Pym and Clement Coke, son of the eminent lawyer.

In the Upper House manipulation was at once more direct and more difficult; it is surprising that Charles had not used the obvious device of creating peers who would support him. He tried instead to disarm those who stood in his way. He had already relieved the moderate Bishop Williams of the Great Seal, he now imprisoned the pro-Spanish Arundel on a flimsy pretext, he placated the choleric Pembroke, he attempted to keep Bristol from taking his seat. Bristol succeeded in appearing on May 1, Arundel was not back in his place in the House of Lords until June 8. Both were petty and ineptly-handled affairs which did nothing to improve the political atmosphere.

The opening ceremony was kept at a minimum. Once more Laud preached the sermon, his theme the unity of the state in the person of the King: the session, unfortunately, raised doubts. The King's speech was even more brief than to the previous Parliament though it was, as usual, dignified. He came to them, he said, 'in the midst of necessity to learn how he was to frame his course and councils' and he warned them that 'unseasonable slowness may produce as ill effect as denial'. Again the Houses were given no concrete statement, no specific request. Still less was there any reference to what had happened at Cadiz. But they knew enough to be both angry and uneasy. Sir John Eliot was well aware, as a Cornishman, of the effect of pirate raids upon the West country; as Vice-Admiral for Devon he had watched the return of the ships and the pitiful remnants of their crews from Cadiz. Four days after the opening of Parliament he was on his feet demanding an enquiry into that expedition and some indication of future plans before considering supply. 'Our honour is ruined, our

ships are sunk, our men perished; not by the sword, not by the enemy, not by chance', he cried, 'but . . . by those we trust'. Tension was running through the House. Since constitutionally the King could do no wrong the blame must be taken by the man with most power under the King — the Duke of Buckingham — who was, besides, the Lord Admiral. Moved apparently by sudden anger, perhaps feeling that in his father's absence some responsibility devolved upon him, Clement Coke, a man not usually vocal, exclaimed on March 11 that it were better to die by an enemy than to suffer at home! This loosened the tongue of Dr Turner, another Member not generally to the forefront, and he made an impassioned attack upon Buckingham. Had the Duke guarded the seas against pirates? Had he not, by the appointment of unworthy officers, caused the failure of the expedition to Cadiz? Had he not engrossed a large part of the Crown lands to himself, his friends and his relations? Had he not sold places of judicature and titles of honour? Was he not dangerous to the state, his mother and his father-in-law being recusants? Was it fit that he should, in his own person, enjoy so many great offices? The cause of all their troubles, he cried, was 'that great man, the Duke of Buckingham!'. Perhaps the House was not quite ready for such an outburst. At any rate it hastened to assure the King that no monarch was ever dearer to his people and that it wished to make him 'safe at home and feared abroad'. Charles's answer was to demand justice upon Clement Coke and Turner and to summon the Houses to Whitehall.

There, four days later, he spoke incisively. He might claim his stammer on occasion, but he could speak well and to the point when he wished. He now told them to spend less time discussing grievances and more time in preventing and redressing them. Then he went on:

But some there are . . . that do make inquiry into the proceedings, not of any ordinary servant, but of one that is most near unto me. It hath been said, 'What shall be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honour?' But now it is the labour of some to seek what may be done against the man whom the King thinks fit to be honoured.

He reminded the Members that when Buckingham was to the fore in breaking the treaties with Spain he was considered worthy of all the honour James conferred upon him. Since then, Charles maintained, he had done nothing but what arose out of that policy and had engaged himself and his estate in furtherance of it and in the service of the King.

Indeed, said Charles, some of the actions of which the House accused him were done at his express command. 'I would not have the House', he concluded, 'to question my servants, much less one that is so near me.' Though the language was more restrained, it might have been James who was standing there before them. Once more he had disclaimed, emphatically, any question of the responsibility of ministers to Parliament.

March 27 was the day fixed to consider supply and once again Rudyerd spoke for the Crown, asking for three subsidies and three fifteenths. Eliot's reply indicated that Charles's speech had fallen upon deaf ears. How could they give, he cried, when enterprise after enterprise, at home and abroad, met with disaster? And he did not hesitate to name the cause. They were all undertaken, if not planned and made, by that great lord, the Duke of Buckingham. He had exhausted and consumed the treasures, not only of the subjects but of the King. Without some reformation in these things, Eliot averred, he did not know what wills or what abilities men could have to give a new supply. He proposed, and the House agreed, that the supply asked for should be approved but not converted into a Bill until their grievances had been redressed. The inference was clear. As the Commons set to work to build up the case against Buckingham Charles addressed them once more in a fighting speech. He had begun the war upon their advice and now

that I am so far engaged that you think there is no retreat, now you begin to set the dice, and make your own game; but I pray you to be not deceived; it is not a Parliamentary way, nor it is not a way to deal with a king. Mr. Coke told you it was better to be eaten up by a foreign enemy than to be destroyed at home. Indeed, I think it more honour for a king to be invaded and almost destroyed by a foreign enemy, than to be despised by his own subjects. Remember that Parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore, as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.

They were his last words to them before the Easter recess. They had so little effect that when the Commons reassembled on April 13 they immediately appointed a committee to formulate charges against the Duke.^[1]

In this situation Bristol was doubly to be feared. From his seat in the Lords he could both attack and sit in judgment upon Buckingham. To prevent that, Charles on May 1 brought Bristol to the bar of the House

of Lords on a charge of high treason: he had got Charles to Spain under false pretences, attempted to change his religion there, and had been willing to accept marriage terms less advantageous to the country than they could have been.

When Bristol rose to reply it was apparent at once that Charles had given him the very opportunity he needed, for he launched into a series of counter-charges against Buckingham: 'My Lords, I am a freeman and a peer of the realm, unattainted', he began. 'Somewhat I have to say of high consequence for his majesty's service; and therefore I beseech your lordships give me leave to speak.' This being granted, 'my lords', he said, 'I accuse that man', pointing to the Duke of Buckingham, 'of high treason; and I will prove it.' So Buckingham was in the unprecedented position of facing simultaneously an impeachment charge by the House of Commons and a charge of High Treason in the House of Lords. Part of Bristol's case covered familiar ground, the Duke's conduct in Spain, his intimations of the Prince's conversion to Rome — here Bristol made the point that Charles could at any time have scotched those rumours by a straightforward statement to the contrary — and, above all, he offered what appeared to be proof that the Duke, unknown to James, had planned the visit with Gondomar a full year before it took place. Time and time again as Bristol made his case Charles attempted to intervene. First he sent to the House of Lords to say that Bristol's charges against Buckingham were merely recriminatory, and that he himself could witness against them; then he contested Bristol's right to be counsel in his own cause. In neither case was his point taken.^[2]

On May 8, with Bristol's trial in full swing, the Commons had completed their Declaration and Impeachment against the Duke of Buckingham and at a conference between the two Houses the charge was laid. It covered his plurality of office, his purchase of place, procuring honours for his kin, compelling the purchase of honours, failure to guard the seas, giving English ships to the French, 'exhausting, intercepting, and mis-employing the King's revenue' and his 'transcendent Presumption in giving Physick' to King James on his death bed. The impeachment did not include any reference to the charges which Bristol was making concerning Buckingham's part in the Spanish escapade. So far as the Commons were concerned, Bristol might have been flogging a dead horse.

Their charge against the Duke took two days to complete. Dudley Digges opened the case. He laid the ills of the country at the Duke's

door: 'the laws of England have taught us that kings cannot command ill or unlawful things. And whatsoever ill events succeed, the executioners of such designs must answer for them', and he ran briefly over the heads of the charges made against the Duke, concluding with a somewhat obscure reference to his presence by James's death bed. Buckingham himself appeared to take the proceedings lightly. Contrary to precedent he was in the House of Lords when his accusers came to the bar and when at one point in his charge Dudley Digges, speaking of Buckingham as 'a comet, exhaled out of base and putrid matter', looked up it was full into the smiling face of the Duke — 'sitting there, outfacing his accusers, outbraving his accusations'. Yet earlier in the session Buckingham had been worried and, as so often when he was under stress, he fell ill: 'it may be animo as well as corpore ' remarked Mead to Stuteville.

Edward Herbert, a future Attorney General, followed Digges and spoke of Buckingham's monopoly of office, of his purchase of the Admiralty from the Earl of Nottingham, of the Cinque Ports from Lord Zouch. John Selden spoke of Buckingham's failure to guard the narrow seas, of the disasters to English ships and naval enterprise; John Glanville, who had been secretary to the Cadiz expedition, spoke both of that disaster and of the ships that had been sent to La Rochelle. Sherland told how the Duke had compelled the purchase of honours and office for money; John Pym how he had accumulated honours and rewards both to himself and to his family and friends. Christopher Wandesford, a friend of Wentworth, spoke guardedly of the charges of administering medicine to James on his sick bed. Sir John Eliot then rose for the summing up of the Commons' case against the favourite and chief minister of two kings, a man who was unique in that his influence with the son was even greater than it had been with the father. With burning oratory he went over the points again, spoke of the 'immensity' of Buckingham's waste of the revenues of the Crown: what they had granted in subsidies Buckingham had spent on himself. 'No wonder, then, our King is now in want, this man abounding so!' Having said the worst he could, Eliot could think of nothing more but a comparison: in his pride, his high ambition, his solecisms, his neglect of counsels, his veneries, his venefices, above all in his pride, Buckingham was like Sejanus who was styled laborum imperatoris socius . 'My Lords', concluded Eliot, 'I have done. You see the man. What have been his actions, whom he is like, you know. I leave him to your judgments.'^[3]

Eliot had made an oratorically and emotionally strong case against the Duke, but he had put the House of Commons in a paradoxical position. While accepting the doctrine that constitutionally the King could do no wrong, they were seeking to condemn the actions of a minister which the King had already accepted as his own. They were driven back, consequently, on a series of specious arguments. If a king contemplated a rash act it was the responsibility of the minister to advise him against it, to appeal to his Council and finally to appeal to Parliament. Unless he did this he, and not the king, must bear the blame. Once more the responsibility of ministers to Parliament had been raised and the Commons were reaching out to a principle that would be basic both to the political thought of Englishmen and to the practice of constitutional government. At the same time, though even more dimly perceived, they were thinking in terms of Parliamentary sovereignty.

It was insulting and appeared to be a prejudging of the issue that the House of Commons asked for Buckingham's restraint while the impeachment was proceeding. The House of Lords refused the request. Charles spoke bitterly to his friends. 'If the Duke is Sejanus', he said, 'I must be Tiberius.' On May 11, the day after Eliot's summing up, he went from Whitehall by barge to Westminster accompanied by the Duke and other peers, and before the House of Lords made a full refutation of every charge made against Buckingham, taking all the Duke was charged with upon himself. But while speaking soft words to the Lords, in the Commons Charles had acted, seizing Eliot and Digges at the door of the House and taking them by water to the Tower. When the news of their imprisonment broke, the indignation, confusion, and uproar in the House should have warned Charles of the dangerous path he was treading. 'Rise! Rise! Rise!' shouted the Members, and the House broke up in confusion. But before it met again the following day the words 'liberty of Parliament' were on every lip, and the Speaker was not allowed to proceed with ordinary business. 'Sit down!, sit down!' the Members cried as he made to rise in his seat to open proceedings for the day. They were hardly mollified by Sir Dudley Carleton, speaking undoubtedly on behalf of the King, who begged them not to trench upon the King's prerogative lest they brought him out of love with Parliaments.

At this moment, with the charge of High Treason against Bristol and the impeachment of Buckingham in full swing, Charles perpetrated an extraordinary act of defiance. The Earl of Suffolk,

Chancellor of Cambridge University, died on May 28 and Charles nominated Buckingham for the office. It was a triple defiance in adding one more office to the accumulation which formed part of the indictment against the Duke; in demonstrating once more the King's confidence in his friend; and in showing his own opposition to Puritan beliefs. For Suffolk had been a staunch Puritan and his followers were advancing his son, the Earl of Berkshire, as their nominee. Buckingham secured the election by 108 votes to 103, although what degree of pressure was brought to bear is difficult to assess.

But the election could not affect the broader issue and on June 8 Buckingham began his defence. He was probably helped by Nicholas Hyde, later to be knighted and to become Chief Justice of the King's Bench, by Laud, and by the Attorney General, Sir Robert Heath. He was in the position of knowing far more of the circumstances and events at issue than the Commons who had accused him. Some charges he was able to rebut, some actions he claimed were on the King's orders, others, like the purchase of office from a retiring officer, were according to custom. He answered the charges of accumulating riches at the state's expense by claiming how largely he had spent them for the King and the country. 'I never had any end of my own', he said, and he cited the eight ships he had kept on the coasts at his own charge.

When you know the truth and when all shall appear, I hope I shall stand right in your opinions. It is no time to pick quarrels one with another . . . though I confess there may be some errors I will not justify, yet they are not gross defects as the world would make them appear. They are no errors of wilfulness, nor of corruption, nor oppressing of the people, nor injustice.^[4]

But the Commons were disregarding the most elementary principle of justice in paying no attention to Buckingham's defence. While he was answering their charges in the Lords they were working on a new Remonstrance which announced that they had presented only part of their case against him. They now declared in so many words that he was an enemy both to Church and to State, and they begged the King to remove him. For, they said, 'until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of State, we are out of hope of any good success'. In particular they feared that any supply they might grant would, through his mismanagement, be turned to the prejudice of the kingdom. It was clear that they would withhold

supply until Buckingham was gone, and it was clear that they intended to remove Buckingham.

Perhaps they realized the legal weakness of their case and intended to bluster through; possibly they felt driven to extremities by the Cambridge Chancellorship; it is possible that Charles, by throwing the Chancellorship into the ring at this time, was deliberately provoking the Commons. He certainly professed to be outraged by the Remonstrance. He was possibly glad to use it as an excuse for an immediate dissolution, ready to be quit of a Parliament that had yet granted him no supply, because he feared the outcome of the impeachment. Sir Robert Heath had assured him that its result could only exonerate Buckingham. But there could have been other issues, less openly spoken of, which alarmed Charles.

One of the reasons for Digges's imprisonment had been the way he dealt with the last of the charges in the Commons' indictment of Buckingham, that of administering medicine to the late King. There was considerable disagreement as to what he said. One report spoke of him as saying that he forebore to speak further on the poisoning charge in regard of the King's honour; another that he said he was commanded by the Commons, in making the charge, 'to take Care of the Honour of the King our Sovereign that lives'. Charles referred to 'insolent speeches against myself'. Digges maintained that he had not wished to reflect upon the person either of the dead or of the present King. Since much turned upon Digges's actual words a committee met on May 8 to determine them. Nothing conclusive emerged but a majority of peers expressed their belief that Digges had said nothing that reflected upon the King's honour. This was the ruling Charles wanted, and he released Digges from prison on May 16.

Wandesford, who had spoken to the actual charge against Buckingham of administering medicine to James, had merely spoken, like the indictment, of an act 'of transcendent presumption'. He had not been imprisoned. Eliot, on the other hand, in his summing up, had been even more damning than Digges against Buckingham, although he made no reference to Charles. 'Not satisfied', he said, with the wrongs of honour, with the prejudice of religion, with the abuse of State, with the misappropriation of revenues, his attempts go higher, even to the person of his sovereign. 'You have before you his making practice on that, in such manner and with such effect as I fear to speak it, nay, I doubt and hesitate to think it.' Eliot's imprisonment lasted longer than Digges's and he was not released until the 19th. On May

20 the Commons formally cleared both Eliot and Digges of any charges against them.

Whatever his intentions, however brave a show he put on in public, in private Charles was much distressed. 'What can I do more?' he was heard saying to the Duke in his bedchamber. 'I have engaged mine honour to mine Uncle of Denmark, and other princes. I have, in a manner, lost the love of my subjects. What wouldst thou have me do?' One thing was certain. All reports agreed that there was no abatement, but rather an increase, in his affection for the Duke. Whether for Buckingham, or whether to protect himself from further charges, Charles went to the House of Lords once more on June 15 to dissolve another Parliament. He was doing so, he said, because it was 'abused by the violent and ill advised passions of a few Members . . . for private and personal ends', that it neglected public business, was intent upon the prosecution of a peer of the realm, and that it had forgotten its engagements to the King and to the country. The Lords begged for two days more to complete their business. 'Not a minute!' was Charles's reply and his second Parliament was then and there ended without a penny of subsidy being granted or any customs duties legalized.

A Proclamation ordered the destruction of all copies of the Remonstrance and on July 7 Charles published his own account of the 1626 Parliament. Since he was no longer protected by privilege of Parliament Bristol was sent to the Tower. Charles wished him to be condemned and Buckingham to be triumphantly vindicated by a trial in the Star Chamber. Buckingham's trial there broke down because the Parliament men who had charged the Duke insisted that they had done so in the name of the House of Commons and that body being no longer in existence they could not proceed. After a merely formal hearing, therefore, the Star Chamber gave judgment in Buckingham's favour. Bristol fell ill. The charges against him were quietly dropped and he was allowed to return to his home.

Charles's second Parliament was no more high-principled and, in spite of the central theme of Buckingham's impeachment, no more coherent than his first. Eliot had assumed the leadership and given it such direction as it had. But the Commons as a whole were too obsessed with the charges they were levelling against the Duke, and with their determination to withhold supply, to consider general questions of policy. They showed little interest in Europe, little sympathy for their co-religionists who were fighting for their faith, no

understanding of the magnitude of the problems that Charles was trying to handle. Yet the dissolution of two Parliaments in so short a time by so new a king had inevitably caused misgivings. Some people forecast there would never be another. 'Is it not time to pray?' asked Mead of Stuteville when dissolution was imminent. The meteor that appeared over the Thames, the storm that swept Westminster on June 12, were taken to augur disaster. But Charles made no concessions. He had shown his faith in the Duke. Five days after the dissolution he showed his support of William Laud by appointing him Bishop of Bath and Wells. It was not the see that Laud would have wished, but he had to wait for dead men's shoes and, as he wrote, he 'had to fasten upon any indifferent thing' to get out of Wales. Three months later, when Lancelot Andrewes died, Charles kept his see of Winchester vacant for a year in order to give it to Laud, meanwhile conveniently appropriating its revenues to the Crown. The Deanery of the Chapel Royal, which Andrewes also held, Charles gave to Laud immediately. He had expressed, in no uncertain terms, his support of the Laudian Church as well as his devotion to Buckingham.