ecclesiastical estates. An eighth electorate was created in
favor of the Palatine house; but Bavaria kept the Upper
Palatinate. The imperial authority, but just now threaten-
ing, was annulled; in the diet the right of suffrage was
assured to all the princes and the German states upon all
questions of alliance, war, peace, and new laws; they were
confirmed in the full and entire exercise of sovereignty in
their own territory; and they had the privilege of allying
themselves with foreign powers, provided that it was not,
as a useless restriction read, "against the emperor or
against the empire." For a long time Switzerland and
Holland had been distinct from Germany; this separation
in fact received the sanction of law.

The two powers that had caused Austria's defeat had
stipulated important indemnities for themselves. Sweden
had the islands of Rugen, Wollin, and Usedom, Wismar,
Western Pomerania with Stettin, the archbishopric of
Bremen, and the bishopric of Verden, that is to say, the
mouths of the three great German rivers the Oder, Elbe,
and Weser, with 5,000,000 crowns and three votes in the
diet.

France continued to hold Lorraine, all the while promis-
ing to restore it to its duke when he had accepted the
French conditions. She caused the empire to waive all
claim to the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun,
which she had held for a century; to the town of Pignerol,
ceded by the Duke of Savoy in 1631; to Alsace, which was
given over to her, with the exception of Strasburg, whereby
her frontier in front of the Vosges reached the Rhine.
She still held upon the east bank of that river Vieux-
Brisach, and her right was recognized to put a garrison in
Philippsburg. Free navigation of the Rhine was guaran-
teed.

These were great advantages, for by conquering Alsace



o io



EUROPE

IN 1648.
(Treaty of Westphalia)




HI Longitude



CHAP. XVIII.] THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR. 285

France placed herself on one side between Lorraine and
Germany, on the other at the north of Franche-Cornte,
which since Henry IV. she enveloped on the south; so that
these two provinces found themselves thenceforward at
French discretion, and their union with France was here-
after nothing but a question of time.

Thus France traced her frontiers better for her own
defense; she was even assuming an offensive position.
Through Pignerol she had a hold beyond the Alps in
Italy; through Vieux-Brisach and Philippsburg she
obtained a footing beyond the Rhine in Germany. Be-
sides, by causing recognition of the right of the German
states to form alliance with foreign powers she held the
means of always buying some one of those indigent princes;
and by guaranteeing the execution of the treaty she gave
herself the right to interfere on every occasion in the affairs
of Germany. The empire, being hereafter only a sort of
confederation of four or five hundred states, Lutheran and
Catholic, monarchical and republican, laical and ecclesias-
tical, would of necessity become the theater of every in-
trigue, the battlefield of Europe, as Italy had been at the
beginning of modern times and for the same reasons its
divisions and anarchy.

The treaties of Westphalia, which are the basis of all
diplomatic agreements from the middle of the seventeenth
century down to the French Revolution, terminated the
supremacy of the house of Austria in Europe, and paved the
way for the ascendancy of the house of Bourbon.



CHAPTER XIX.
ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS AND CROMWELL.



The Stuarts: James I. (1603-25); Charles I. (1625-40). The Long Par-
liament (1640-49). The Commonwealth of England (1649-60).



IF the house of Bourbon reached such a degree of great-
ness under Louis XIV. it was not only because the Thirty
The Stuarts Years' War had humbled the house of Austria
King James in its two branches, the German and the
(1603-25). Spanish, before France; it was also because

the incompetency of the Stuarts during the same time
caused England to descend from the lofty position to which
Elizabeth had raised her.

After the death of Elizabeth, the King of Scotland,
James VI., son of Mary Stuart and great-grandson through
the female line of the English king Henry VII., was recog-
nized without opposition in England and Ireland under
the name of James I. The first of the Stuarts had an awk-
ward and embarrassed air and a grotesque figure. He pos-
sessed many vices, but not a single real and unmixed virtue.
His liberality was only profusion, his learning pedantry, his
love for peace faint-heartedness, his policy cunning, his
friendship a frivolous caprice. Henry IV. called him
"Master James," and Sully said of him that he was the
wisest fool whom he had ever known.

Abroad James I. abandoned the Protestant policy that
had made the greatness of England under Elizabeth. He
refused to co-operate in the great schemes of Henry IV.;
he sought for the friendship, even the alliance, of Spain,
and remained almost indifferent to the ruin of his son-in-
law, Frederick V., the Elector Palatine.

At home he attempted to render his power absolute, and
desired to make supreme the doctrine of the divine right of



ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. 287

kings. This was the motive of his whole conduct, the fun-
damental principle of his policy. The Catholics, so cruelly
persecuted by Elizabeth, counted, if not upon revenge, at
least upon an alleviation of their lot under the son of Mary
Stuart. James I. maintained the penal laws. As early as
1603 they tried to avenge themselves by two plots, the
Main and the Bye, which cost many persons of distinction
their liberty, among others Walter Raleigh, one of the
former favorites and ministers of Elizabeth, and two priests
their lives. In 1605 some of the most fiery spirits among
them formed the abominable Gunpowder Plot.

A few hours before the opening of Parliament a Catholic
peer received an anonymous letter, in which was written:
"I advise you, if you value your life, to find some excuse
for delaying your presence at Parliament; for God and
men are preparing to punish the perversity of the century.
The danger will be passed as soon as you have burned this
letter." The note was carried to the ministers, who
despised this anonymous advice. The king was wiser that
time than his counselors, and divined that a sudden explo-
sion was meant. A visit was made to the cellars beneath
the House of Lords, and thirty-six barrels of powder were
found there, designed to blow up at the same time the
king, his family, and the lords and commons, assembled for
the royal session. One of the conspirators stood near; he
was seized, put on the rack, and named his accomplices.
They were all Catholics. They were tortured to death.
Among their number was a provincial Jesuit, Father Garnet,
whose guilt some affirmed and others denied.

To-day England still celebrates on November 5 the
anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. The detection of
that infernal conspiracy brought on a real persecution of
the Catholics. They could not appear at court or in Lon-
don; their residence must be at least fifteen kilometers from
the capital, and they were forbidden to go more than seven
kilometers away without a special permit signed by four mag-
istrates. They were interdicted from the liberal professions
or public offices, as Louis XIV. had interdicted the Protes-
tants in France. A Catholic could not be either a phy-
sician, a surgeon, a lawyer, a judge, or a municipal officer.
In case of a mixed marriage that one, whether husband or
wife, who was of the ancient faith had no claim upon the
property of the other. Permission to keep a Catholic



288 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.

domestic cost ten pounds sterling a month; in case of
entertaining a Catholic guest the host must pay the same
amount. Their houses could be searched at any time, con-
trary to English law, which protects the individual liberty
of the citizens and the sanctuary of the domestic hearth.
Finally, in 1605 they were forced to take the oath of alle-
giance, whereby they pledged themselves to defend the king
against every plot, and acknowledged as impious and dam-
nable the doctrine that a prince excommunicated by the
Pope could be deposed by his subjects. It is only in our
own day that the Catholics in England have been formally
delivered from a legislation which placed them outside the
benefits of common law.

The Nonconformists had reason to expect better treat-
ment from a prince who had been nurtured in their doc-
trines in Scotland; James persecuted them pitilessly. Puri-
tanism was even more odious to him than the Roman
religion; for the Puritans set aside ecclesiastical hierarchy,
and James I. said with reason: "No bishops, no king. "
The first of the Stuarts, therefore, continued all his life
rigidly attached to the Church of England, persecuting the
Catholics who denied his religious supremacy, persecuting the
Nonconformists, whose republican tendencies he dreaded.
He failed in his attempt to establish Anglicanism in Scot-
land (1617). The Puritans in order to escape from his
executioners in 1620 sought in America, near Cape Cod
in Massachusetts, a land where they could pray to God in
their own way. Others were to follow them there. The
United States of America was the ultimate result. Thus
persecution succeeds!

The spirit of liberty, however, was springing up again
under a weak and prodigal prince, who wasted like a par-
venu the rich heritage that his birth had given him.
Thanks to her economy, Elizabeth had needed to convene
Parliament but rarely. James I. on account of his own
extravagance found himself involved in debt from the time
of his accession. He assembled Parliament three times;
three times he prorogued it almost immediately. The
Houses were not willing to grant subsidies unless the king
gave up his prerogative; the king promised no guarantee
of liberty unless the Houses first voted subsidies. Both
sides were equally persistent; it was useless for James in
1614 to send five members to the Tower; he could not



CHAP. XIX.] ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. 289

overcome the resistance made by the Commons. He was
no more fortunate in 1617, and was obliged to dissolve
Parliament.

Nothing could have served better to arouse and at the
same time to confirm the opposition of Parliament than the
peculiar mingling of haughtiness and weakness which char-
acterized James I. He wrote that the All-powerful had
placed kings above the law; yet he allowed himself to be
governed by prevaricating ministers or abandoned his
power to unworthy favorites. At first he had permitted
Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burleigh, whom he had found
minister at the death of Elizabeth, to continue in that
capacity, and had made him Earl of Salisbury. Covetous
and unscrupulous, Cecil was none the less able. In 1612 he
was replaced by a young Scotchman, Robert Carr, whom
James appointed successively Viscount of Rochester and
Earl of Somerest, and who, convicted of having poisoned
one of this former friends, was succeeded by another
favorite twenty-two years of age; this was George Villiers,
who possessed every physical and mental grace save
common sense. In two years he was made knight, gentle-
man of the king's chamber, baron, viscount, Marquis of
Buckingham, high admiral, guardian of the Cinque Ports,
finally, absolute dispenser of all the honors, offices, and
revenues of the three realms (1615).

Buckingham employed his power with scandalous avidity,
and in a short time amassed immense wealth, which he
squandered in foolish luxury. The king let him alone, for
he did the same. Unable to obtain subsidies from Parlia-
ment, he had recourse to the most disgraceful traffic.
The court offices and the judgeships were put up at auc-
tion; new titles were created which were sold for cash;
unjust lawsuits were instituted to confiscate the property of
the accused; this example became so contagious that the
famous Bacon, then chancellor, allowed himself peculations
which caused his condemnation by the court of Peers
to imprisonment and to the enormous fine of ,40,000
sterling (1621). The king, on his side, in 1616 sold
to the States General for 2,728,000 florins the towns
of Briel, Flushing, and Rammekens, given to Elizabeth
as security for certain sums of money advanced or ex-
pended by her on account of the United Provinces. The
larger part of this money quickly passed into the favorite's



290 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.

house, and the nation became indignant because traffic had
been made of its influence.

In spite of these expedients the treasury remained empty.
James profited by the dangers that Protestantism encoun-
tered in Germany to summon a new Parliament. But the
Commons granted subsidies only on condition that the griev-
ances of the nation should be redressed. The king again
dissolved the assembly (1622). Attracted by the bait of a
rich dowry, he resolved to give his son in marriage to an
infanta of Spain. But this scheme failed, thanks to the
scandalous folly of Buckingham, and, on the contrary,
brought on a war with Spain (1623). In order to obtain
money, it was necessary to grant to the parliamentary com-
missioners the right of collecting taxes and of superintend-
ing their use, to abolish monopolies and solemnly recognize
individual liberty. James died a short time afterward
(April i, 1625). He had just decided upon the marriage
of his son with Henrietta of France, the sister of Louis
XIII.

James I., or Master James, as Henry IV. called him, de-
bated a great deal and wrote no less. His principal works
were the "Basilicon Doron" and the "True Law of Free
Monarchy. ' ' The Tudors had established absolute power in
reality; the first of the Stuarts wished to establish it in law,
and the second of the works that we have just mentioned is
the dogmatic exposition of this theory. In it James de-
clares that the king rules and that the -subject obeys; that
kings rule in virtue of divine right, and that the All-
powerful, whose image they are, has set them above the
law; that consequently a prince can make statutes and
punish without the intervention of a parliament, and that he
is not bound to the strict observance of the laws of the
state. What the king wrote the Anglican clergy elevated to
a doctrine, and in its canons of 1606 expressly recom-
mended absolute obedience to the monarch.

This double affirmation was a double indiscretion. Des-
potism can exist a long time in deeds, it cannot suffer itself
to be long discussed. James I. wanted to be a despot, but
he did not know how. He lacked three necessary things:
money, of which Parliament was the jealous dispenser; an
army, which in that island did not exist; public opinion,
which he had alienated. While he wrote about the theory
of passive obedience the nation, by the discussion, accus-



CHAP. XIX. J ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. 291

tomed itself to liberty, and was shortly to gain it through
revolution.

England expected much from her new king. He was a
prince of sedate and pure morals, earnest, well educated,
who in his household maintained order and
) S I ' propriety. His manners and his air overawed
the courtiers and pleased the people. His
virtues would have gained him the esteem of all good peo-
ple if sincerity had been combined with them. His ac-
cession excited unanimous feelings of joy and hope. But
this joy diminished when the king was seen to confide
wholly in Buckingham and the new queen to be sur-
rounded only by Catholics. The defiant spirit of the
Reformers suspected a serious danger in the noisy but power-
less intrigues of an imprudent woman.

Compromised by the persons around him, Charles I. was
also out of sympathy with the nation upon fundamental
questions of political right. His father had imbued him
with the doctrines of absolutism. In the rest of Europe he
saw communal liberties abolished, aristocratic prerogatives
crushed, and the power of the kings raised above all con-
tradiction and obstacle. Charles I. loved his subjects; but
to assure their happiness he intended, like the Tudors, to
guard their liberty under lock and key. He forgot what
had caused, not the ruin, but the eclipse of public rights:
the fatigue of thirty years of war during the War of the
Roses; then the question of the Reformation, which for
thirty years more had occupied all minds; finally, the war
with Philip II., when even the life of England was at stake.
In the face of such perils the country could very well allow
her kings to assume absolute power; but now that Spain
was dying, that France was no longer threatening, and that
the religious question was settled once for all, England
wished to enter again upon her former ways and resume
her former representative government, suspended fora time.

In fact the love of public liberty was arising in the hearts
of the citizens, who, enriched under Elizabeth and James I.
by commerce and industry, had profited by the prodigalities
of the king and his courtiers to become creditors of the
nobility and of the crown. They felt their importance in
the state. They formed the majority in the House of
Commons; they exercised all the liberal professions; they
were the masters of capital, No wonder is it that now



292 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.

they wished to have a share in the power and to control the
actions of an illmanaged government.

Another force was driving England into the same path.
The king and the nobles had brought about, in the sixteenth
century, their reform in religion, wholly aristocratic; the
people had not accomplished theirs, and this reformation,
popular, democratic, radical, began to dawn : it was that of
the Puritans. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had established
an official Church, very richly endowed, and more docile
toward the government than the Catholic Church had ever
been. But this clergy, living in splendor, preaching abso-
lute obedience toward the princes, declaring itself a divine
institution, did not at all satisfy those in whose hands the
Bible had been put, and who wished to read there only the
devotion and poverty of the first Levites, the imprecations
of the prophets against tyrants, the denunciation against the
idolatrous practices of the established Church, against its
hierarchy, its worship, its liturgy, and its consecrated forms.
Those who demanded political liberty and those who de-
manded religious freedom were shortly to come together,
and, united, to bring on a revolution whose results they
were afterward to dispute.

The reign of Charles I. divides itself into three periods:

In the first (1625-29) he attempts to rule with Parlia-
ment.

In the second (1629-40) he rules without Parliament.

In the third (1640-48) he is forced to endure it; he re-
sists it and is defeated.

We have just seen that at the accession of Charles I. the
government and the country did not agree, the king cling-
ing to the absolutist theories of his father, and the nation
wishing to return to its former liberties. The inevitable
struggle broke out in the first days of his reign.

It was the practice to vote the customs duties for the
whole duration of the reign ; the Lower House voted them
only for one year. By this act it declared its distrust,
doubtless not of the king, but of his government. Charles,
irritated, pronounced the dissolution of the assembly.

The Parliament of 1626 went farther: to a demand for
a subsidy it replied by a statement of grievances, and im-
peached Buckingham. The king to save his favorite was
again obliged to dismiss Parliament, counting upon forced
loans to take the place of the taxes which the nation refused,



CHAP. XIX.] ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. 293

enrolling soldiers to intimidate the citizens, and in many
places proclaiming martial law in order to suspend the ordi-
nary course of justice.

In the hope of acquiring a little popularity Buckingham
persuaded Charles I., already engaged in a struggle with
Spain, to enter upon war with France, and commanded a
fleet for the relief of the Protestants of La Rochelle. But
the expedition failed in the attack upon the island of Re
through the incapacity of the general (1627), just as an
attempt upon Cadiz in 1625 had failed. To avert an
explosion of public discontent Charles summoned a third
Parliament. But Buckingham's defeat had emboldened the
Commons. They came with the resolution of overthrow-
ing the favorite and of reforming the abuses. They ad-
dressed two remonstrances to the king the one against the
illegal collection of the customs duties, the other against
Buckingham, whom they termed the author of the public
misery. Charles lost patience and prorogued Parliament.
Protestant fanaticism then found its Ravaillac. John Felton
assassinated Buckingham (1628), and the following year
Parliament drew up the Petition of Rights of the nation.
It was like a second Magna Charta of England. The king
accepted it; then he pledged himself never to levy a tax
without the consent of the Houses, never to imprison any-
one except according to the forms of law, never to estab-
lish courts martial. But a few weeks had scarcely passed
when he forgot his word, prorogued Parliament, and cast
into prison its most earnest members. One of them, Sir
John Eliot, died there after several years of suffering.
Charles then took as ministers two resolute men, Arch-
bishop Laud and Sir Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of
Strafford, one of the opposition leaders in Parliament, and
the author of the Petition of Rights, but who, devoured by
ambition, did not shrink from an apostasy, and who pro-
posed to play in England the part that Richelieu was at that
moment playing in France.

Charles remained eleven years without summoning Parlia-
ment, a longer interval than had ever elapsed before (March,
1629, to April, 1640). By dispensing with the Houses he
condemned himself to economy and inaction. The king
hastened to make peace with both France and Spain, and
held himself aloof from the great struggle waged upon the
Continent between the two principal religions which were dis-



294 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.

puting the empire of the world. England, which Elizabeth
had placed at the head of Protestantism, under Charles I.
remained apart from the Thirty Years' War!

Despised abroad, the king was not much stronger at
home. He had believed he would repose in the bosom of
absolute power; but in his own palace two parties were
already disputing for control in the nascent despotism: the
queen, the center of many an intrigue; the ministers, who
wanted neither the papacy nor the prodigality of Henri-
etta. The unfortunate prince had ample occupation would
he conciliate these domestic rivalries.

This government so weak was none the less tyrannical.
Taxes not voted by the Houses, as ship-money (1634), and
consequently illegal, were established; the enemies of the
court were imprisoned without trial and condemned by the
Star Chamber or by the Council of York, over which Straf-
ford presided. Laud and his High Commission, a real tri-
bunal of the Holy Office, persecuted the Dissenters with
incredible barbarity. Thus Dr. Leighton for a pamph-
let was sentenced to the pillory, to the whipping post, to
have his ears cut off, after which the hangman split his
nose and branded his face with a red-hot iron. The same
punishments were inflicted upon the barrister Prynne, upon
Bastwick, upon the minister Burton; the same heroism also
was shown by these new martyrs. Each day persecution
doubled the number of their adherents. "Christians," said
Prynne as he stood in the pillory, "if we had valued our
liberty we should not be here; it is for the liberty of you
all that we have forfeited ours; guard it well I beseech you;
hold firm; be faithful to the cause of God and of the land;
otherwise you and your children will fall into everlasting
servitude." The Puritan sects increased in spite of the
inquisitoral earnestness of the primate Laud, and intrepid
soldiers were preparing for the impending struggle.

Also about this time the emigration to America so in-
creased that it is estimated that goods valued at more
than 12,000,000 francs left the country. For many reasons
the government became so odious that thousands of men
quitted their native land. In 1627 Puritans departed to
rejoin the emigrants of 1620 around Massachusetts Bay;
three years later the colonies of New Hampshire and Maine
were founded. The government grew alarmed at this
expatriation of a disaffected population. An order of the



CHAP. XIX.] ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. 295

council forbade the Dissenters to emigrate. At that mo-