Civil War: The History of England Volume III (18 page)

Only now were the king’s finances given consideration. His plea for wartime expenditure was not taken very seriously, on the good grounds that no proper plans or policies had been brought forward. The incompetence of Buckingham, in the ill-timed and ill-executed march towards Breda at the end of the previous reign, was also borne in mind; why give money to inept commanders? ‘We know yet of no war,’ Sir Robert Phelips said, ‘nor of any enemy.’ Parliament proposed to give to the king only one tenth of the sum which he had anticipated and, to compound the offence, the customs duties of tonnage and poundage were granted for only one year. All of his predecessors, ever since the time of Henry VI (1421-71), had been awarded them for the duration of their reigns. It is likely that the duties of one year were in fact only a temporary measure, until parliament had the opportunity to debate a permanent settlement. Yet this session had set a precedent. The resistance to increased taxation, and opposition to the king’s religious policy, would be the prime movers of later discontent.

Charles was indignant at his lack of success, but he had no
strategy to deal with any parliamentary opposition; he had simply expected that his orders would be followed. Before any remonstrance could be entertained, in any case, the plague intervened. One courtier told his son that ‘I . . . in earnest do marvel that anyone who may be called reasonable would be now in London’. The tolling of the neighbourhood bells could clearly be heard in the chamber of the Commons. Joseph Mead wrote, on 2 July, to one of his correspondents that ‘my Lord Russell being to go to parliament, had his shoemaker to pull on his boots, who fell down dead of the plague in his presence’. On 11 July parliament was adjourned, to be convened once more in Oxford at the beginning of August.

The change of location did nothing to curb the rising hostility of the members to king and court. On a motion of Sir Edward Coke at the beginning of the session, the subsidies to the king were set to be thoroughly investigated, thus implying that parliament had the power to regulate the king’s income at will. Another member rose brandishing a pardon the king had issued to a Jesuit, just the day after he had promised to uphold the ‘pious petition’ against Roman Catholics. A general silence followed. This affected the integrity and honour of the sovereign. It was agreed that they should wait to hear Charles’s response. Charles had made contradictory promises to the French king and to parliament. Which would be the first to be broken?

Charles arrived from Woodstock three days later, and summoned the members to meet him in the hall of Christ Church. His mind was on matters of finance rather than of religion. He needed money for the fleet that Buckingham had collected, but the exchequer was bare. He found that his ‘credit’ was as yet too slim ‘to set forth that navy now preparing’. He was, as usual, spare of words. He said that he would answer the religious petitions in two days’ time.

It was still not at all clear how much money was required and to what purpose it would be put. Was a naval war against Spain contemplated? Or would an army be transported to aid the Palatinate? No one in the administration spoke with a certain voice. Why should the members of the Commons support a policy that they did not understand and upon which they had not been consulted? One declared that it would be better if parliament
concentrated upon domestic and financial affairs, of which it did have cognizance, rather than concern itself with foreign imbroglios.

Buckingham now came under attack. It could be inferred from the speeches against him that he was incapable of controlling the government or of organizing any credible war effort. So now he bent with the wind. The information was conveyed that he and his master had never really believed in religious toleration for its own sake; it was merely a device to woo the Spanish and then the French. Buckingham was supposed to believe that the religious treaty drawn up with Louis XIII was merely for the sake of form, a piece of paper to appease the pope. The king, with his connivance, was ready to cultivate the Commons by turning on the Catholics.

‘If you mean to put the laws into execution,’ an envoy from the French court, Father Berulle, told him, ‘I neither can nor will endure it, whatever sauce you may be pleased to add.’

‘Begone,’ Buckingham is supposed to have replied. ‘I know that you are only at home in your breviary and your Mass.’

But the duke’s evident lack of principle or consistency did not necessarily endear him to parliament. He had gathered together a fleet to boost his standing in the popular cause of war against Spain, but there was no money fully to prepare it. He was deemed to be too young, too rash and too inexperienced. In the ensuing debate, Sir Francis Seymour called out, ‘Let us lay the fault where it is.’ He then named the duke of Buckingham. Sir Edward Coke, sensing misgovernment and self-serving administrators, declared that ‘the ship hath a great leak’. This was coming too close to the king. On 11 August he and his council decided that it was not fit for this parliament to continue. The excuse of the plague, steadily encroaching upon Oxford, was used to save Buckingham from possible impeachment. Where Charles believed that he was defending an honest and faithful minister, the parliamentarians were of the opinion that they were protecting the nation against a selfish and incapable favourite. The Oxford parliament had lasted eleven days. Charles blamed a few troublemakers and ‘seditious men’ for the turmoil, a miscalculation he would also make in later years.

It is already possible to gauge something of the king’s character. He truly believed that his regal authority was paramount and that parliament was merely a compliant instrument to finance his requirements
in war and peace. The simple declaration of his wishes was sufficient to command obedience. On state papers he would scrawl, ‘Let it be done. C.R.’ He had certain firm convictions that could not be altered by arguments or by events; if you agreed with him, you were a friend, but any who questioned his judgement were enemies from that moment forward. Once he had formulated a policy, he maintained it to the end. He could never see the point of view of anyone but himself, and this lack of imagination would one day cost him the throne.

He was so convinced of the rightness of his cause that he never acquired the easiness and bonhomie of either his father or his son. He remained to most of his subjects cold and reserved. The Venetian ambassador wrote that ‘this king is so constituted by nature that he never obliges anyone, either by word or deed’. In succeeding years he would become enmeshed in the problems caused by his inability to use tact or craft in the affairs of the world. He once told a churchman that he could never have become a lawyer because ‘I cannot defend a bad, nor yield in a good, cause’. He was in other words too righteous for his own good, or for the good of his kingdom.

The official war against Spain was declared in the early autumn of 1625, and in the same period a treaty was established between England and the Dutch republic. Yet the perennial problem of finance had not been solved and, as a desperate remedy, it was proposed that the crown jewels should be sold. The soldiers had been pressed into service but they remained unpaid; they roamed about Plymouth, where the people of south Devon would not or could not supply them with food. So the hungry men killed the available sheep and oxen in front of them. Three of their captains were named Bag, Cook and Love; the joke soon spread that they were Bag without money, Cook without Meat and Love without charity. This was a period when rumours spread throughout the country that the king had been touched by the plague; the report was untrue, but it represented the uncertain atmosphere of the time.

The English fleet under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, who had first seen service in the reign of Elizabeth, finally left harbour on 8 October after much abortive sailing through wind and rain. Its principal purpose was as yet undecided, except that it should in some way strike a blow against the Spanish coast. A council of
war was called while the ships were at sea, when it was decided that an assault should be attempted upon Cadiz. The spirits of the men were raised when, at the advance of the English, the Spanish vessels fled the scene. The fort of Puntal, guarding the entrance to Cadiz harbour, was taken; but the attack had alerted the Spanish authorities to the dangers faced by the town.

While a blockade of Cadiz was attempted, news reached Cecil and his commanders that a large Spanish force was on its way to save the town; the English soldiers were disembarked and hurried to meet the threat, but the report was false. No enemy was in sight. Their forced march under a hot Spanish sun, however, had left them without provisions. Casks of wine were taken from neighbouring villages and dwellings; the men gorged themselves on the drink until they were senseless. It was said that every man became his own vintner. The Spanish defenders of Cadiz fell upon them and engaged in a general frenzy of slaughter. The siege of Cadiz, and the occupation of Puntal, were therefore abandoned in embarrassing failure.

The English vessels had also been charged to intercept the Spanish silver sailing from Mexico, but they were in no condition to confront anything. Their hulks were rotten, and their tackle frail. Whether through corruption or neglect, their supplies had been insufficient from the beginning. The drink, possibly a medley of wine and water, was foul; the food was evil-smelling ‘so as no dog in Paris Garden would eat it’. Paris Garden was part of the noisome suburb of Southwark. In the middle of November Cecil ordered his ships to return to England. It was a complete, and humiliating, fiasco. An enquiry was held, but such was the conflicting evidence and prejudiced testimony that it was considered best to bury the matter in a public silence.

An attempt was then made to avert the wrath of the country. At the beginning of November the execution of the penal laws against the Catholics was instituted once more; the fines and confiscations were to be used for the defence of the realm. It was reported that at Whitehall ‘they look strange on a papist’. Yet there was no stronger papist than the queen. Charles’s disillusion with Louis XIII for failing to assist him now seems to have extended to his sister, and especially to her entourage of Capuchin friars. Their rituals and
orisons were not welcome at the English court, in which Buckingham was still hoping to lead a Protestant league against Spanish and imperial pretensions.

The king and queen were dining together when her Catholic confessor tried to anticipate the grace being said by a Protestant cleric. He began praying in Latin, in a loud voice, according to Joseph Mead, ‘with such a confusion, that the king, in a great passion, instantly rose from the table, and, taking the queen by the hand, retired into the bedchamber. Was this not a priestly discretion?’ Charles was heard to state that a man must be master in his own house. But he had also to prove himself master of his own kingdom.

12

A fall from grace

The day of Charles’s formal coronation came on Candlemas, 2 February 1626, a little under a year since his accession to the throne. Henrietta Maria refused to accompany her husband to what she considered to be an heretical service, and so he proceeded alone; the queen watched some of the events from an apartment in the gatehouse of the palace yard. Charles did not go on the customary procession through the streets of London, however, and there was neither banquet nor masque after the ceremony; the plague was still leaving its mark. There was little rejoicing at the service itself. When the newly crowned king was presented to the people, they remained largely silent. The earl of Arundel, the lord marshal, then ordered them to cry out ‘God save King Charles’ at which juncture a few shouts of homage were heard.

Charles wore a cloak of white rather than a robe of regal scarlet; this was considered by many to be an unfortunate innovation in an ancient ceremony. The coronation oath was also carefully changed by William Laud, the bishop of St David’s, with a prayer that the king might have ‘Peter’s key of discipline, Paul’s doctrine’. This was not at the time considered to be ominous but, at a later date, Laud was accused of conferring absolute power upon the king to the injury of the people. Any ill will or resentment was at this time, however, largely directed against Buckingham rather than his sovereign.

Parliament met four days later in a state of seething discontent at Buckingham’s mismanagement of the expedition to Cadiz. He may have tried to waive blame by pleading that he had been conducting diplomatic negotiations at the time in The Hague, but this did not satisfy the angry members. Sir John Eliot, member for St Germans in Cornwall, had witnessed the return of the fleet to Plymouth after the debacle; he had seen the men, diseased and half-starved, staggering off their ships. He had also seen some of them die in the streets, mortally infecting the people of the town. He did not forget these scenes of suffering, and he placed all the blame for them on the folly and pride of the king’s favourite.

The king opened proceedings with a customary short and blunt speech. ‘I mean to show what I should speak’, he said, ‘in actions.’ He offered no apologies or explanations for what had transpired; he simply asked for more money. When Eliot rose to speak he demanded that no further supply should be granted until an account had been given of previous sums. He called for the inspection of the admiralty ledgers which, as vice-admiral of Devon, he was uniquely well placed to examine.