Charles the King (10 page)

He and others like him joined with members such as John Pym, a lawyer and a convinced Puritan, and John Hampden whose family had been Squires in Buckinghamshire since the Norman Conquest. Hampden was a rich man who had found an outlet for his energies and his opinions in election to the House of Commons; he was a Puritan whose religion was a consequence of centuries of independence and responsibility untouched by the atmosphere of Courts and the cult of the Sovereign. To him, and to all who made a study of the history of the Commons, it appeared that successive Kings had encroached upon its rights and powers, and that those rights and powers should be restored. The King's petition for money reminded them once again that he was unable to govern without them and inevitably posed a question of where his authority ended and their right to interfere began. There was nothing in the appearance or the mode of life of Charles which inspired love or loyalty in the Pyms and Hampdens of his Parliament. They suspected his youth, and they thought his lace and velvets and uncropped hair were the vanities of the Devil. The incarnation of the Devil was his Minister, Buckingham, who had once worn a suit embroidered with diamonds to the value of ten thousand pounds.

Pym rose in a packed House of Commons and once more demanded the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham. Nothing would be granted to the King until the grievances set forth had been redressed. In the middle of a noisy and defiant debate, an escort arrived from Whitehall accompanying the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, the official empowered to dismiss Parliament in the King's name. His appearance in the Chamber brought the members to their feet and silenced the speakers. The Speaker himself was an officer of the Commons exercising the function of arbiter in debate, and it was hallowed custom that no motion could be carried without his presence in the Speaker's chair in the middle of the Chamber. Black Rod advanced into the centre of the floor and pronounced the King's sentence of dissolution to a silent and hostile House. It was an unfortunate part of the rights and usages of the Commons that the presence of Black Rod suspended their activities automatically and disbanded the members until the King chose to summon them again. They had challenged Charles and Charles had answered them through the power of what was termed the Royal Prerogative, the right of the Monarch to dismiss his Parliament if they resisted his demands.

He had silenced them and deprived them of their only means of exerting public pressure on him. But if Black Rod was the King's weapon, money was the Parliament's, and the two hundred members returned to their homes all over England and waited to see how long he would be able to last without it.

“My Lords, you all know that what I intend asking of others, I have given myself. I have sent the gold plate to the Mint and sold some of the jewels belonging to the Queen and myself. Many of you who serve in my household have suffered a reduction in salary.”

Charles addressed the members of the Privy Council who were meeting at Greenwich Palace. St. Stephen's Hall at Westminster was empty, the doors had been locked and the Commons were scattered. He was alone with his responsibility for the relief of La Rochelle, a half-empty Treasury, and a grumbling, discontented Court who found their amusements curtailed and their allowances suspended. He looked down the line of faces, at the men whom he had called to advise him and help him in his struggle to maintain the independence of his Crown. There was Holland—he was able, but inclined to be lazy; there was the Duke of Newcastle, enormously wealthy, narrow in vision and inclined to act on impulse, but perhaps the loyalest of them all; the Lord Treasurer, Weston, who was already disliked for preaching strict economy in the Court itself; and the Lord Chief Justice, Nicholas Hyde, who was newly appointed because his predecessor had denounced Charles's proposals as illegal. Hyde and Newcastle had much in common. Both believed in the Divine Right of their King, and that its resistance or denial was a crime which deserved punishment by imprisonment or, in obstinate offenders, death. They would not hesitate to carry out the orders Charles was going to give.

“Our fleet will be ready in three months,” the King continued. “But I need not tell you that it will never sail for France unless we get more money. I have considered many ways and means of raising what is needed. I tried in the first instance to appeal to the loyalty and generosity of my subjects by asking for free subscriptions from those who could well afford it. The response was shameful.” His expression hardened. There was an enormous and unequal distribution of wealth among his people, and he had directed his plea to them in terms covering every contingency. He had called on the aristocracy and the immensely rich landowners to support him out of loyalty to the Crown, and made a less exalted appeal to the City of London, never notorious for generosity to the Sovereign, by explaining the danger to their trade if the wool markets of the Netherlands succumbed to Catholic arms. The response was shameful indeed. The money came in grudging dribbles, given in many cases by those who could ill afford it, and ignored by those whose homes and coffers were bursting with treasure. He was shocked and disgusted and then suddenly bitterly angry. If his people would not give to their country and their King and support them both in time of war, then he would take what he needed by force.

“The Lord Chief Justice has looked into the matter of a Forced Loan,” he said, “and he finds that the Tudors had recourse to it more than once and thereby established a precedent. It is a precedent which has become part of my Prerogative, and I intend to make use of it now. Demands for sums of money will be sent to every person in the realm who has substance, under the authority of the Great Seal of England. If those demands are refused, the offenders will be committed to prison until they pay.”

“I can think of some who will not,” Lord Holland remarked. “If Your Majesty is including some of the wealthier members of the late Parliament in that list …”

“Then they will be punished,” Newcastle snapped. “It may teach them to vote it without arguing next time.”

“There will not be a next time until we've relieved La Rochelle,” Charles said shortly. “That is the purpose of these measures. Now, my Lord Justice Hyde, the responsibility for enforcing the Loan will rest with you and your justices. In cases of contumacy, the Sheriff's Courts in each district will try the offender and extract the money without punishment if possible. I am not interested in being vindictive; I am only interested in collecting the money. We need at least a million pounds.”

“We shall have it, Sire.” Hyde rose from the table and bowed. “We will have it within three months, I give my word.”

The Proclamation was drawn up and the Great Seal affixed to it in the presence of the King and the members of the Privy Council, and according to ancient and as yet unchallenged custom, the contents became law. Other proclamations followed; recruits for the Duke of Buckingham's army could be pressed into service against their will, and the townspeople and the villagers were bound to lodge them and provide for them out of their own resources until embarkation; soldiers and civilians came under the provisions of Martial Law until the King pleased to suspend it. Charles signed every document. He signed away the liberties and the rights of appeal which his people had begun to take for granted and which even his father, by no stretch of imagination a champion of justice for the common man, had never dared deny them. He did so because he had no choice. Their elected representatives had proved themselves disloyal and irresponsible, and the people themselves had not responded when the King appealed to their finer feelings. He had made up his mind and from that moment he never hesitated. And no one tried to reason with him. Buckingham, intent upon the expedition and triumphant over the failure of the attack upon him, praised every measure and encouraged more. And the Queen, violently partisan towards her husband and the rights of Royalty, curtailed her expenses, pawned her jewels and raised a little money for him among her English Catholic friends.

In the following months the Court lived quietly at Whitehall. Charles himself worked until he was exhausted, supervising the ordnance and supplies for the fleet gathered at Portsmouth and watching the money extorted from his subjects go out to the shipwrights and gunsmiths as fast as it came into the Treasury. The Lord Chief Justice had kept his word; those who refused to pay were imprisoned and kept there without trial and their numbers included John Hampden, Sir John Eliot, Denzil Holles, and other Members of Parliament. In the country itself, enthusiasm for the war was fading; it was prosperous and lazy and primarily concerned with trade. If the King stinted himself in London, the Commander of his forces lived in sumptuous style at Portsmouth, where his excesses with women and his arrogance to the City officials mocked at what was supposed to be a religious crusade. When the fleet sailed at last for France, it did so at the cost of the King's popularity with his people and the liberty of hundreds of respectable citizens and gentry who had been thrown into prison without any prospect of release. Charles went to Portsmouth and said good-bye to Buckingham. The Duke knelt on the quarter-deck of his flagship and kissed the King's hand and promised to return victorious before the autumn.

But the spirit of the great Elizabethan captains Hawkins, Frobisher and Drake did not exist in the fleet Buckingham took to France; one man's courage was not enough; the Duke's worst enemies had never accused him of being a coward, but he could not hope to overcome the lack of enterprise and loyalty which poisoned his command from the officers to the lowest ranks of his troops. Nearly forty years of peace had softened English backbones; the defeat of the Armada was a tale told by old men over the fire, and the swords of Charles's people had long been beaten into ploughshares.

It was three months before the remains of the expedition returned to Portsmouth Harbour, leaving two thousand corpses in the salt marshes and the seas round La Rochelle. The blockade was unbroken, and Buckingham brought nothing back to England but disgrace and defeat.

Charles blamed himself. He received Buckingham at Hampton Court, holding Henrietta by the hand, and refused to listen to the Duke's apologies. Something had happened to Buckingham; some of his infuriating, fascinating buoyancy had gone, and his face was lined and tired. He had even gone down on his knee to the Queen, and when he tried to tell Charles how he had failed him, tears came into his eyes.

“It's not your fault,” Charles said. “You did what you could with what I provided for you, but it was not enough! You begged me for reinforcements and supplies and I couldn't send them in time … I know it, Steenie, I know it all!”

“Ah, but you don't, Sire! It is useless to blame my defeat on yourself. I led them there, and by God I had to take a cudgel and beat my own men round the head to make them disembark and face the fire of a miserable little force of Frenchmen. All the reinforcements in the world cannot make a fighting force out of a cowardly rabble—that is the Commander's responsibility and that is where I failed.”

He looked at the serious face of the King, undarkened by reproach, and felt overcome with shame for the first time in his life. He had been so shamed by his men that his own initiative was broken; he knew nothing of the conduct of war except that courage and resource were essential, and the commanders who went with him, men like Sir Edward Cecil who had fought in the Dutch war, were too jealous of him and each other to supply the tactical experience he lacked.

The King had quarrelled with Parliament to protect him, staking everything upon the success of the venture, and even Henrietta whom he had hated and despised had proved that at last her loyalties lay with Charles and England.

“I beg of you both,” the Duke said, “to forgive me. I also beg of you to give me one more chance.”

“You are not suggesting you go back?” Henrietta asked.

“I must,” Buckingham said. “I must go back and I must win, or I'll have done the King an injury which can never be healed. Believe me, Sire, I'll die at La Rochelle rather than have you stand before your people as a King who cannot win a war without the help of the Commons who defied you. You see that, Madam,” he appealed to Henrietta, “you see that this is no scheme to glorify myself or excuse my own failure. I am a rich man, and every penny I possess will go into equipping another fleet—I will ask nothing of the King but his permission to go back to La Rochelle!”

“I am not thinking of myself,” Charles told him gently. “I undertook this war on a point of honour; I gave my word as King and Head of the Protestant Church that I would help the Protestants at La Rochelle, and I cannot break that word. I do not know yet what must be done, but I do know this. I regret nothing except that I let you go too soon and without the money and men you needed to back you at the crisis of the battle. And I thank God you've come safely back to us.” He squeezed Henrietta's hand. “I know the Queen joins me in that.”

“I do,” she said, and she said it for his sake alone, without looking directly at the Duke. They had been so happy in his absence that she wished Buckingham would sail to the end of the world.

“We will meet in Council tomorrow morning, and you can make a full report,” Charles said. “And be sure that I shall support you in everything.”

There was silence for a few moments after the Duke left them.

“He's right,” Charles said suddenly. “He must go back. But God knows how we're going to do it without money. We've come to the end of the Loan and what we got from it was insufficient.”

“Then levy more taxes,” Henrietta suggested. She had little patience with people like Lord Holland and the dour Earl of Sussex quibbling over the need for Parliament's assent. If that was the law in England, it was a bad law and should be changed.

Charles sighed and put his arm round her. The simplicity of her approach was frightening; it offered the plain solution to all his problems, but at the same time it invested the Crown with powers which it had never had, even under the despotism of the Tudors.