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[ NOTE DDD, p. 465. This protestation is so remarkable, that it may not be improper to give it in its own words. “The commons now assembled in parliament, being justly occasioned thereunto, concerning sundry liberties, franchises, and privileges of parliament, amongst others here mentioned, do make this protestation following: That the liberties, franchises, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England; and that the urgent and arduous affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm and of the church of England, and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in parliament; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the house of parliament hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same; and that the commons in parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters, in such order as in their judgment shall seem fittest; and that every member of the said house hath like freedom from all impeachment, imprisonment, and molestation, (other than by censure of the house itself,) for or concerning any speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or matters touching the parliament or parliament business. And that if any of the said members be complained of or questioned for any thing done or said in parliament, the same is to be shown to the king by the advice and assent of all the commons assembled in parliament, before the king give credence to any private information.” Franklyn, p. 65. Rush, vol. i p. 53. Kennet, p. 747. Coke, p. 77.]

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[ NOTE EEE, p. 434. The moment the prince embarked at St. Andero’s, he said to those about him, that it was folly in the Spaniards to use him so ill, and allow him to depart: a proof that the duke had made him believe they were insincere in the affair of the marriage and the Palatinate; for as to his reception in other respects, it had been altogether unexceptionable. Besides, had not the prince believed the Spaniards to be insincere, he had no reason to quarrel with them, though Bucking-* *ham had. It appears, therefore, that Charles himself must have been deceived. The multiplied delays of the dispensation, though they arose from accident, afforded Buckingham a plausible pretext for charging the Spaniards with insincerity.]

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[ NOTE FFF, p. 486. Among other particulars, he mentions a sum of eighty thousand pounds borrowed from the king of Denmark. In a former speech to the parliament, he told them that he had expended five hundred thousand pounds in the cause of the palatine, besides the voluntary contributions given him by the people. See Franklyn, p. 50. But what is more extraordinary, the treasurer, in order to show his own good services, boasts to the parliament, that by his contrivance sixty thousand pounds had been saved in the article of exchange in the sums remitted to the palatine. This seems a great sum; nor is it easy to conceive whence the king could procure such vast sums as would require a sum so considerable to be paid in exchange. From the whole, however, it appears, that the king had been far from neglecting the interests of his daughter and son-in-law, and had even gone far beyond what his narrow revenue could afford.]

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[ NOTE GGG, p. 486. How little this principle had prevailed during any former period of the English government, particularly during the last reign, which was certainly not so perfect a model of liberty as most writers would represent it, will easily appear from many passages in the history of that reign. But the ideas of men were much changed during about twenty years of a gentle and peaceful administration. The commons, though James of himself had recalled all patents of monopolies, were not contented without a law against them, and a declaratory law too; which was gaining a great point, and establishing principles very favorable to liberty: but they were extremely grateful when Elizabeth, upon petition, (after having once refused their requests,) recalled a few of the most oppressive patents, and employed some soothing expressions towards them.

The parliament had surely reason, when they confessed, in the seventh of James, that he allowed them more freedom of debate than ever was indulged by any of his predecessors. His indulgence in this particular, joined to his easy temper, was probably one cause of the great power assumed by the commons. Monsieur de la Boderie, in his despatches, (vol. i. p. 449,) mentions the liberty of speech in the house of commons as a new practice.]

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[ NOTE HHH, p. 491. Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 224. It is certain that the young prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II., had Protestant governors from his early infancy; first the earl of Newcastle, then the marquis of Hertford. The king, in his memorial to foreign churches after the commencement of the civil wars, insists on his care in educating his children in the Protestant religion, as a proof that he was nowise inclined to the Catholic, Rush. vol. v. p. 752. It can scarcely, therefore, be questioned, but this article, which has so odd an appearance, was inserted only to amuse the pope, and was never intended by either party to be executed.]

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[ NOTE III, p. 499. “Monarchies,” according to Sir Walter Raleigh, “are of two sorts touching their power or authority, viz. 1. Entire, where the whole power of ordering all state matters, both in peace and war, doth by law and custom appertain to the prince, as in the English kingdom; where the prince hath the power to make laws, league, and war, to create magistrates, to pardon life, of appeal, etc. Though to give a contentment to the other degrees, they have a suffrage in making laws, yet ever subject to the prince’s pleasure and negative will. 2. Limited or restrained, that hath no full power in all the points and matters of state, as the military king that hath not the sovereignty in time of peace, as the making of laws, etc., but in war only, as the Polonian king.” Maxims of State.

And a little after: “In every just state, some part of the government is, or ought to be, imparted to the people, as in a kingdom, a voice and suffrage in making laws; and sometimes also of levying of arms, (if the charge be great, and the prince forced to borrow help of his subjects,) the matter rightly may be propounded to a parliament, that the tax may seem to have proceeded from themselves. So consultations and some proceedings in judicial matters may in part be referred to them. The reason, lest, seeing themselves to be in no number nor of reckoning, they mislike the state or government.” This way of reasoning differs little from that of King James, who considered the privileges of the parliament as matters of grace and indulgence, more than of inheritance. It is remarkable that Raleigh was thought to lean towards the Puritanical party, notwithstanding these positions. But ideas of government change much in different times.

Raleigh’s sentiments on this head are still more openly expressed in his Prerogatives of Parliaments, a work not published till after his death. It is a dialogue between a courtier, or counsellor, and a country justice of peace, who represents the patriot party, and defends the highest notion of liberty which the principles of that age would bear. Here is a passage of it: “Counsellor. That which is done by the king, with the advice of his private or privy council, is done by the king’s absolute power. Justice. And by whose power is it done in parliament but by the king’s absolute power? Mistake it not, my lord: the three estates do but advise as the privy council doth; which advice if the king embrace, it becomes the king’s own act in the one, and the king’s law in the other,” etc.

The earl of Clare, in a private letter to his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, thus expresses himself “We live under a prerogative government, where book law submits to lex loquens.” He spoke from his own and all his ancestors experience. There was no single instance of power which a king of England might not at that time exert, on pretence of necessity or expediency: the continuance alone, or frequent repetition of arbitrary administration, might prove dangerous, for want of force to support it. It is remarkable, that this letter of the earl of Clare was written in the first year of Charles’s reign; and consequently must be meant of the general genius of the government, not the spirit or temper of the monarch. See Strafford’s Letters, vol. i. p. 32. From another letter in the same collection, (vol. i. p. 10,) it appears that the council sometimes assumed the power of forbidding persons disagreeable to the court to stand in the elections. This authority they could exert in some instances; but we are not thence to inter, that they could shut the door of that house to every one who was not acceptable to them. The genius of the ancient government reposed more trust in the king, than to entertain any such suspicion; and it allowed scattered instances of such a kind, as would have been totally destructive of the constitution, had they been continued without interruption.

I have not met with any English writer in that age who speaks of England as a limited monarchy, but as an absolute one, where the people have many privileges. That is no contradiction. In all European monarchies the people have privileges; but whether dependent or independent on the will of the monarch, is a question that in most governments it is better to forbear. Surely that question was not determined before the age of James. The rising spirit of the parliament, together with that king’s love of general, speculative principles, brought it from its obscurity, and made it be commonly canvassed. The strongest testimony that I remember from a writer of James’s age in favor of English liberty, is in Cardinal Bentivoglio, a foreigner, who mentions the English government as similar to that of the Low Country provinces under their princes, rather than to that of France or Spain. Englishmen were not so sensible that their prince was limited, because they were sensible that no individual had any security against a stretch of prerogative: but foreigners, by comparison, could perceive that these stretches were at that time, from custom or other causes, less frequent in England than in other monarchies. Philip de Comines, too, remarked the English constitution to be more popular in his time than that of France. But in a paper written by a patriot in 1627, it is remarked, that the freedom of speech in parliament had been lost in England since the days of Comines. Franklyn, p. 238. Here is a stanza of Malherbe’s Ode to Mary de Medicis, the queen regent, written in 1614.

Entre les rois qui cet age Doit son principal ornement, Ceux de la Tamise et du Tage Font louer leur gouvernement: Mais en de si calmes provinces, O le peuple adore les princes, Et met au gr le plus haut L’honneur du sceptre lgitime, Sauroit-on excuser le crime De ne regner pas comme il faut.

The English, as well as the Spaniards, are here pointed out as much more obedient subjects than the French, and much more tractable and submissive to their princes. Though this passage be taken from a poet, every man of judgment will allow its authority to be decisive. The character of a national government cannot be unknown in Europe; though it changes sometimes very suddenly. Machiavel, in his Dissertations on Livy, says repeatedly, that France was the most legal and most popular monarchy then in Europe.]