administration, seems no doubt unparliamentary; though neither the
rules of parliament in this respect, nor even the constitutional
principle, were so strictly understood as at present. But it was part of
Elizabeth's character to render herself extremely prominent, and, as it
were, responsible in public esteem, for every important measure of
her government. It was difficult to consider a queen as acting merely
by the advice of ministers, who protested in parliament that they had
laboured in vain to bend her heart to their councils. The doctrine that
some one must be responsible for every act of the Crown was yet
perfectly unknown; and Elizabeth would have been the last to adopt a
system so inglorious to monarchy. But Wentworth had gone to a
length which alarmed the House of Commons. They judged it
expedient to prevent an unpleasant interference by sequestering their
member, and appointing a committee of all the privy counsellors in
the house to examine him. Wentworth declined their authority, till they
assured him that they sat as members of the Commons, and not as
counsellors. After a long examination, in which he not only behaved
with intrepidity, but, according to his own statement, reduced them to
confess the truth of all he advanced, they made a report to the house,
who committed him to the Tower. He had lain there a month when the
queen sent word that she
240
remitted her displeasure towards him, and referred his enlargement
to the house, who released him upon a reprimand from the speaker,
and an acknowledgment of his fault upon his knees.[418] In this commitment of Wentworth, it can hardly be said that there was
anything, as to the main point, by which the house sacrificed its
acknowledged privileges. In later instances, and even in the reign of
George I., members have been committed for much less indecent
reflections on the sovereign. The queen had no reason upon the
whole to be ill-pleased with this parliament, nor was she in haste to
dissolve it, though there was a long intermission of its sessions. The
next was in 1581, when the chancellor, on confirming a new speaker,
did not fail to admonish him that the House of Commons should not
intermeddle in anything touching her majesty's person or estate, or
church government. They were supposed to disobey this injunction
and fell under the queen's displeasure, by appointing a public fast on
their own authority, though to be enforced on none but themselves.
This trifling resolution, which showed indeed a little of the puritan
spirit, passed for an encroachment on the supremacy, and was only
expiated by a humble apology.[419] It is not till the month of February 1587-8, that the zeal for ecclesiastical reformation overcame in some
measure the terrors of power, but with no better success than before.
A Mr. Cope offered to the house, we are informed, a bill and a book,
the former annulling all laws respecting ecclesiastical government
then in force, and establishing a certain new form of common prayer
contained in the latter. The speaker interposed to prevent this bill
from being read, on the ground that her majesty had commanded
them not to meddle in this matter. Several members however spoke
in favour of hearing it read, and the day passed in debate on this
subject. Before they met again, the queen sent for the speaker, who
delivered up to her the bill and book. Next time that the house sat, Mr.
Wentworth insisted that some questions of his proposing should be
read. These queries were to the following purport: Whether this
council was not a place for any member of the same, freely and
without control, by bill or speech, to utter any of the griefs of this
commonwealth? Whether there be any council that can make, add, or
diminish from the laws of the realm, but only this council of
parliament? Whether it be not against the orders of this council to
make any secret or matter of weight, which is here in hand, known to
the prince
241
or any other, without consent of the house? Whether the speaker
may overrule the house in any matter or cause in question? Whether
the prince and state can continue and stand, and be maintained
without this council of parliament, not altering the government of the
state? These questions Serjeant Pickering, the speaker, instead of
reading them to the house, showed to a courtier, through whose
means Wentworth was committed to the Tower. Mr. Cope, and those
who had spoken in favour of his motion, underwent the same fate;
and notwithstanding some notice taken of it in the house, it does not
appear that they were set at liberty before its dissolution, which
ensued in three weeks.[420] Yet the Commons were so set on displaying an ineffectual hankering after reform, that they appointed a
committee to address the queen for a learned ministry.
The Commons continue to seek redress of ecclesiastical
grievances. —At the beginning of the next parliament, which met in
1588-9, the speaker received an admonition that the house were not
to extend their privileges to any irreverent or misbecoming speech. In
this session Mr. Damport, we are informed by D'Ewes,[421] moved neither for making of any new laws, nor for abrogating of any old
ones, but for a due course of proceeding in laws already established,
but executed by some ecclesiastical governors contrary both to their
purport and the intent of the legislature, which he proposed to bring
into discussion. So cautious a motion saved its author from the
punishment which had attended Mr. Cope for his more radical reform;
but the secretary of state, reminding the house of the queen's
express inhibition from dealing with ecclesiastical causes, declared to
them by the chancellor at the commencement of the session (in a
speech which does not appear), prevented them from taking any
further notice of Mr. Damport's motion. They narrowly escaped
Elizabeth's displeasure in attacking some civil abuses. Sir Edward
Hobby brought in a bill to prevent certain exactions made for their
own profit by the officers of the exchequer. Two days after he
complained that he had been very sharply rebuked by some great
personage, not a member of the house, for his speech on that
occasion. But instead of testifying indignation at this breach of their
privileges, neither he nor the house thought of any further redress
than by exculpating
242
him to this great personage, apparently one of the ministers, and
admonishing their members not to repeat elsewhere anything uttered
in their debates.[422] For the bill itself, as well as one intended to restrain the flagrant abuses of purveyance, they both were passed to
the Lords. But the queen sent a message to the upper house,
expressing her dislike of them, as meddling with abuses, which, if
they existed, she was both able and willing to repress; and this
having been formally communicated to the Commons, they appointed
a committee to search for precedents in order to satisfy her majesty
about their proceedings. They received afterwards a gracious answer
to their address, the queen declaring her willingness to afford a
remedy for the alleged grievances.[423]
Elizabeth, whose reputation for consistency, which haughty princes
overvalue, was engaged in protecting the established hierarchy, must
have experienced not a little vexation at the perpetual recurrence of
complaints which the unpopularity of that order drew from every
parliament. The speaker of that summoned in 1593 received for
answer to his request of liberty of speech, that it was granted, "but
not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh into his brain
to utter; their privilege was aye or no. Wherefore, Mr. Speaker,"
continues the lord keeper Pickering, himself speaker in the parliament
of 1588, "her majesty's pleasure is, that if you perceive any idle
heads which will not stick to hazard their own estates, which will
meddle with reforming the church and transforming the
commonwealth, and do exhibit such bills to such purpose, that you
receive them not, until they be viewed and considered by those, who
it is fitter should consider of such things, and can better judge of
them." It seems not improbable that this admonition, which indeed is
in no unusual style for this reign, was suggested by the expectation of
some unpleasing debate. For we read that the very first day of the
session, though the Commons had adjourned on account of the
speaker's illness, the unconquerable Peter Wentworth, with another
member, presented a petition to the lord keeper, desiring the Lords of
the upper house to join with them of the lower in imploring her
majesty to entail the succession of the Crown, for which they had
already prepared a bill. This step, which may seem to us rather
arrogant and unparliamentary, drew down, as they must have
expected, the queen's indignation. They were summoned before the
council, and committed to different prisons.[424] A few 243
days afterwards a bill for reforming the abuses of ecclesiastical courts
was presented by Morice, attorney of the court of wards, and
underwent some discussion in the house.[425] But the queen sent for the speaker, and expressly commanded that no bill touching matters
of state or reformation of causes ecclesiastical should be exhibited;
and if any such should be offered, enjoining him on his allegiance not
to read it.[426] It was the custom at that time for the speaker to read and expound to the house all the bills that any member offered.
Morice himself was committed to safe custody, from which he wrote a
spirited letter to Lord Burleigh, expressing his sorrow for having
offended the queen, but at the same time his resolution "to strive," he
says, "while his life should last, for freedom of conscience, public
justice, and the liberties of his country."[427] Some days after a motion was made that, as some places might complain of paying subsidies,
their representatives not having been consulted nor been present
when they were granted, the house should address the queen to set
their members at liberty. But the ministers opposed this, as likely to
hurt those whose good was sought, her majesty being more likely to
release them, if left to her own gracious disposition. It does not
appear however that she did so during the session, which lasted
above a month.[428] We read, on the contrary, in an undoubted authority, namely, a letter of Antony Bacon to his mother, that "divers
gentlemen, who were of the parliament, and thought to have returned
into the country after the end thereof, were stayed by her majesty's
commandment, for being privy, as it is thought, and consenting to Mr.
Wentworth's motion."[429] Some difficulty was made by this House of Commons about their grant of subsidies, which was uncommonly
large, though rather in appearance than truth, so great had been the
depreciation of silver for some years past.[430]
Monopolies, especially in the session of 1601. —The admonitions not
to abuse freedom of speech, which had become almost as much
matter of course as the request for it, were repeated
244
in the ensuing parliaments of 1597 and 1601. Nothing more
remarkable occurs in the former of these sessions than an address to
the queen against the enormous abuse of monopolies. The Crown
either possessed or assumed the prerogative of regulating almost all
matters of commerce at its discretion. Patents to deal exclusively in
particular articles, generally of foreign growth, but reaching in some
instances to such important necessaries of life as salt, leather, and
coal, had been lavishly granted to the courtiers, with little direct
advantage to the revenue. They sold them to companies of
merchants, who of course enhanced the price to the utmost ability of
the purchaser. This business seems to have been purposely
protracted by the ministers and the speaker, who, in this reign, was
usually in the court's interests, till the last day of the session; when, in
answer to his mention of it, the lord keeper said that the queen
"hoped her dutiful and loving subjects would not take away her
prerogative, which is the choicest flower in her garden, and the
principal and head pearl in her crown and diadem; but would rather
leave that to her disposition, promising to examine all patents, and to
abide the touchstone of the law."[431] This answer, though less stern than had been usual, was merely evasive; and in the session of 1601,
a bolder and more successful attack was made on the administration
than this reign had witnessed. The grievance of monopolies had gone
on continually increasing; scarce any article was exempt from these
oppressive patents. When the list of them was read over in the
house, a member exclaimed, "Is not bread among the number?" The
house seemed amazed: "Nay," said he, "if no remedy is found for
these, bread will be there before the next parliament." Every tongue
seemed now unloosed; each as if emulously descanting on the
injuries of the place he represented. It was vain for the courtiers to
withstand this torrent. Raleigh, no small gainer himself by some
monopolies, after making what excuse he could, offered to give them
up. Robert Cecil the secretary, and Bacon, talked loudly of the
prerogative, and endeavoured at least to persuade the house that it
would be fitter to proceed by petition to the queen than by a bill. But it
was properly answered, that nothing had been gained by petitioning
in the last parliament. After four days of eager debate, and more heat
than had ever been witnessed, this ferment was suddenly appeased
by one of those well-timed concessions by which skilful princes spare
themselves the mortification of
245
being overcome. Elizabeth sent down a message that she would
revoke all grants that should be found injurious by fair trial at law: and
Cecil rendered the somewhat ambiguous generality of this expression
more satisfactory by an assurance that the existing patents should all
be repealed, and no more be granted. This victory filled the
Commons with joy, perhaps the more from being rather
unexpected.[432] They addressed the queen with rapturous and hyperbolical acknowledgments, to which she answered in an
affectionate strain, glancing only with an oblique irony at some of
those movers in the debate, whom in her earlier and more vigorous
years she would have keenly reprimanded. She repeated this a little
more plainly at the close of the session, but still with commendation
of the body of the Commons. So altered a tone must be ascribed
partly to the growing spirit she perceived in her subjects, but partly
also to those cares which clouded with listless melancholy the last
scenes of her illustrious life.[433]
246
The discontent that vented itself against monopolies was not a little
excited by the increasing demands which Elizabeth was compelled to
make upon the Commons in all her latter parliaments. Though it was
declared in the preamble to the subsidy bill of 1593, that "these large
and unusual grants, made to a most excellent princess on a most
pressing and extraordinary occasion, should not at any time hereafter
be drawn into a precedent," yet an equal sum was obtained in 1597,
and one still greater in 1601. But money was always reluctantly given,
and the queen's early frugality had accustomed her subjects to very
low taxes; so that the debates on the supply in 1601, as handed
down to us by Townsend, exhibit a lurking ill-humour, which would
find a better occasion to break forth.
Influence of the Crown in Parliament. —The House of Commons,
upon a review of Elizabeth's reign, was very far, on the one hand,
from exercising those constitutional rights which have long since
belonged to it, or even those which by ancient precedent they might
have claimed as their own; yet, on the other hand, was not quite so
servile and submissive an assembly as an artful historian has
represented it. If many of its members were but creatures of power, if
the majority was often too readily intimidated, if the bold and honest,
but not very judicious, Wentworths were but feebly supported, when
their impatience hurried them beyond their colleagues, there was still
a considerable party sometimes carrying the house along with them,
who with patient resolution and inflexible aim recurred in every
session to the assertion of that one great privilege which their
sovereign contested, the right of parliament to enquire into and
suggest a remedy for every public mischief or danger. It may be
remarked, that, the ministers, such as Knollys, Hatton, and Robert
Cecil, not only sat among the Commons, but took a very leading part
in their discussions; a proof that the influence of
247
argument could no more be dispensed with than that of power. This,
as I conceive, will never be the case in any kingdom where the
assembly of the estates is quite subservient to the Crown. Nor should
we put out of consideration the manner in which the Commons were
composed. Sixty-two members were added at different times by
Elizabeth to the representation; as well from places which had in
earlier times discontinued their franchise, as from those to which it
was first granted;[434] a very large proportion of them petty boroughs, evidently under the influence of the Crown or peerage. This had been
the policy of her brother and sister, in order to counterbalance the
country gentlemen, and find room for those dependants who had no
natural interest to return them to parliament. The ministry took much
pains with elections, of which many proofs remain.[435]
248
The house accordingly was filled with placemen, civilians, and
common lawyers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone of these
persons, as we collect from the minutes of D'Ewes, is strikingly
contrasted by the manliness of independent gentlemen. And as the
house was by no means very fully attended, the divisions, a few of
which are recorded, running from 200 to 250 in the aggregate, it may
be perceived that the court, whose followers were at hand, would
maintain a formidable influence. But this influence, however
pernicious to the integrity of parliament, is distinguishable from that
exertion of almost absolute prerogative, which Hume has assumed as
the sole spring of Elizabeth's government, and would never be
employed till some deficiency of strength was experienced in the
other.
Debate on election of non-resident burgesses. —D'Ewes has
preserved a somewhat remarkable debate on a bill presented in the
session of 1571, in order to render valid elections of non-resident
burgesses. According to the tenor of the king's writ, confirmed by an
act passed under Henry V., every city and borough was required to
elect none but members of their own community. To this provision, as
a seat in the Commons' house grew more an object of general
ambition, while many boroughs fell into comparative decay, less and
less attention had been paid; till, the greater part of the borough
representatives having become strangers, it was deemed by some
expedient to repeal the ancient statute, and give a sanction to the
innovation
249
that time had wrought; while others contended in favour of the original
usage, and seemed anxious to restore its vigour. It was alleged on
the one hand by Mr. Norton that the bill would take away all pretence
for sending unfit men, as was too often seen, and remove any
objection that might be started to the sufficiency of the present
parliament, wherein, for the most part against positive law, strangers
to their several boroughs had been chosen: that persons able and fit
for so great an employment ought to be preferred without regard to
their inhabitancy; since a man could not be presumed to be the wiser
for being a resident burgess: and that the whole body of the realm,
and the service of the same, was rather to be respected than any
private regard of place or person. This is a remarkable, and perhaps
the earliest assertion, of an important constitutional principle, that
each member of the House of Commons is deputed to serve, not only
for his constituents, but for the whole kingdom; a principle which
marks the distinction between a modern English parliament and such
deputations of the estates as were assembled in several continental
kingdoms; a principle to which the House of Commons is indebted for
its weight and dignity, as well as its beneficial efficiency, and which
none but the servile worshippers of the populace are ever found to
gainsay. It is obvious that such a principle could never obtain
currency, or even be advanced on any plausible ground, until the law
for the election of resident burgesses had gone into disuse.
Those who defended the existing law, forgetting, as is often the case
with the defenders of existing laws, that it had lost its practical
efficacy, urged that the inferior ranks using manual and mechanical
arts ought like the rest to be regarded and consulted with on matters
which concerned them, and of which strangers could less judge.
"We," said a member, "who have never seen Berwick or St. Michael's
Mount, can but blindly guess of them, albeit we look on the maps that
come from thence, or see letters of instruction sent; some one whom
observation, experience, and due consideration of that country hath
taught, can more perfectly open what shall in question thereof grow,
and more effectually reason thereupon, than the skilfullest otherwise
whatsoever." But the greatest mischief resulting from an
abandonment of their old constitution would be the interference of
noblemen with elections; lords' letters, it was said, would from
henceforth bear the sway; instances of which, so late as the days of
Mary, were alleged, though no one
250
cared to allude particularly to anything of a more recent date. Some
proposed to impose a fine of forty pounds on any borough making its
election on a peer's nomination. The bill was committed by a majority;
but as no further entry appears in the Journals, we may infer it to
have dropped.[436]
It may be mentioned, as not unconnected with this subject, that in the
same session a fine was imposed on the borough of Westbury for
receiving a bribe of four pounds from Thomas Long, "being a very