Part 66

419. The Divine Right of Kings, 1604; the Protest of the Commons; "Favorites."

As if with the desire of further alienating his people, James now constantly proclaimed the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. This theory, which was unknown to the English constitution, declared that the King derived his power and right to rule directly from God, and in no way from the people. "It is atheism and blasphemy," he said, "to dispute what God can do, ... so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do."

James's favorite saying was, "A Deo rex, a rege lex" (God makes the king, the king makes the law). He boasted that kings might, as he declared, "make what liked them law and gospel."

In making these utterances James seems to have entirely forgotten that he owed his throne to that act of the English Parliament which accepted him as Elizabeth's successor (S415). In his exalted position as head of the nation, he boasted of his power much like the dwarf in the story, who, perched on the giant's shoulders, cries out, "See how big I am!"

Acting on this assumption, James levied customs duties on goods without asking the consent of Parliament; violated the privileges of the House of Commons; rejected members who had been legally elected; and imprisoned those who dared to criticize his course. The contest was kept up with bitterness during the whole reign.

Toward its close James truckled meanly to the power of Spain, hoping thereby to marry his son Charles to a Spanish princess. Later, he made a feeble and futile effort to help the Protestant party in the great Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which had begun between the Catholics and Protestants in Germany. The House of Commons implored the King not to humiliate himself and the nation at the feet of Spain. The King replied by warning the House not to meddle with matters which did not concern them, and denied their right to freedom of speech. The Commons solemnly protested, and James seized their official journal, and with his own hands tore out the record of the protest (1621).

Yet, notwithstanding his arbitrary character, James was easily managed by those who would flatter his vanity. For this reason he was always under the control of worthless favorites like Carr, Earl of Somerset, or Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. These men were the secret power behind the throne, and they often dictated the policy of the Crown.

420. The Gunpowder Plot (1605).

The King's arbitrary spirit angered the House of Commons, many of whom were Puritans (S378). They believed that the King secretly favored the Roman Catholics; and for this reason they increased the stringency of the laws against persons of that religion. To vindicate himself from this suspicion, the King proceeded to execute the new statutes with rigor. As a rule, the Catholic were loyal subjects. We have seen that when Spain threatened to invade the country, they fought as valiantly in its defense as the Protestants themselves (SS399, 400). Many of them were now ruined by enormous fines, while the priests were driven from the realm.

One of the sufferers by these unjust measures was Robert Catesby, a Catholic gentleman of good position. He, with the aid of a Yorkshire man, named Guy Fawkes, and about a dozen more, formed a plot to blow up the Parliament House on the day the King was to open the session (November 5, 1605). Their intention, after they had thus summarily disposed of the government, was to induce the Catholics to rise and proclaim a new sovereign. The plot was discovered, the conspirators were executed, and the Catholics treated with greater severity than ever (S382).

421. American Colonies, Virginia, 1607.

A London joint-stock company of merchants and adventurers, or speculators, established the first permanent English colony in America, on the coast of Virginia, in 1607, at a place which they called Jamestown, in honor of the King. (See map facing p. 222.) The colony was wholly under the control of the Crown.

The religion was to be that of the Church of England. Most of those who went out were described as "gentlemen," that is, persons not brought up to manual labor. Fortunately the eneergy and determined courage of Captain John Smith, who was the real soul of the enterprise, saved it from miserable failure.

Negro slavery, which in those days touched no man's conscience, was introduced, and by its means great quantities of tobacco were raised for export. The settlement grew in population and wealth, and at the end of twelve years (1619) it had secured the privilege of making its own local laws, thus becoming practically a self-governing community.

422. The Pilgrims; the New Power.

The year after the Virginia legislature was established, another band of emigrants went out from England, not west, but east; not to seek prosperity, but greater religious freedom. James's declaration that he would make all men conform to the Established Church, or drive them out of the land, was having its due effect (S418).

Those who continued to refuse to conform were fined, cast into filthy prisons, beaten, and often half starved, so that the old and feeble soon died. Strange to say, this kind of treatment did not win over the Puritans to the side of the bishops and the King. On the contrary, it set many of them to thinking more seriously than ever of the true relations of the government to religion.

The result was that not a few came to the conclusion that each body of Christians had the right to form a religious society of its own, wholly independent of the state. That branch of the Puritans (S378) who held this opinion got the name of Independents, or Separatists, because they were determined to separate from the Established Church of England and conduct their worship and govern their religious societies as they deemed best.

In the little village of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire (see map opposite), Postmaster William Brewster, William Bradford, John Carver, and some others, mostly farmers and poor men of the neighborhood, had organized an independent religious society with John Robinson for its minister. After a time they became convinced that so long as they remained in England they could never be safe from persecution. They therefore resolved to leave their native country. They could not get a royal license to go to America, and for this reason they emigrated to Holland, where all men were free to establish societies for the worship of God in their own manner. With much difficulty and danger they managed to escape to that country.

After remaining in Holland about twelve years, a part of them succeeded in obtaining from King James the privilege of emigrating to America. A London trading company, which was sending out an expedition for fish and furs, agreed to furnish the Pilgrims passage by the Mayflower, though on terms so hard that the poor exiles said the "conditions were fitter for thieves and bondslaves than for honest men."

See "Why did the Pilgrim Fathers come to New England?" by Edwin D. Mead, in the New Englander, XLI, 711.

These Pilgrims, or wanderers, set forth in 1620 for that New World beyond the sea, which they hoped would redress the wrongs of the Old. Landing at Plymouth, in Massachusetts, they established a colony on the basis of "equal laws for the general good." Ten years later, John Winthrop, a Puritan gentleman of wealth from Groton, Suffolk (see map opposite), followed with a large number of emigrants and settled Boston (1630). During the next decade no less than twenty thousand Englishmen found a home in America. But to the little band that embarked under Bradford and Brewster in the Mayflower, the scene of whose landing at Plymouth is painted on the walls of the Houses of Parliament, belongs the first credit of the great undertaking.

Of that enterprise one of their brethren in England wrote in the time of their severest distress, with prophetic foresight, "Let it not be grievous to you that you have been instruments to break the ice for others; the honor shall be yours to the world's end." From this time forward the American coast south of the Bay of Fundy was settled mainly by English emigrants, and in the course of a little more than a century (1620-1733), the total number of colonies had reached thirteen. Thus the nation of Great Britain was beginning to expand into that *greater* Britain which it had discovered and planted beyond the sea.

Meanwhile a new power had arisen in England. It was mightier even than that of kings, because greater for both good and evil. Its influence grew up very gradually. It was part of the fruit of Caxton's work undertaken nearly two centuries earlier (S306). This power appeared in the spring of 1622, under the name of the Weekly News,--the first regular newspaper.

423. The Colonization of Ireland (1611).

While the colonization of America was going on, King James was himself planning a very different kind of colony in the northeast of Ireland. The greater part of the province of Ulster, which had been the scene of the rebellion under Elizabeth (S402), had been seized by the Crown. The King now granted these lands to settlers from Scotland and England. The city of London founded a colony which they called Londonderry, and by this means Protestantism was firmly and finally established in the north of the island.

424. The "Addled Parliament"; the New Stand taken by the House of Commons (1610-1614).

The House of Commons at this period began to slowly recover the power it had lost under the Tudors (S350). James suffered from a chronic lack of money. He was obliged to apply to Parliament to supply his wants (1614), but that body was determined to grant nothing without reforms. It laid down the principle, to which it firmly adhered, that the King should not have the nation's coin unless he would promise to right the nation's wrongs.