5.

Calendar of the State Papers, Domestic,

Page 236.

[London, June 9, 1614. Chamberlain to Carleton.]

The Commons refusing satisfaction from the Bishop of Lincoln and growing insolent, the King sent them word he would dissolve them unless they attended at once to his wants. Bold speeches of several members on which a commission was issued to dissolve the Parliament. The time was short, and discontents so great that they took no steps to mend matters, the House being more like a cockpit than a council, and on the 1st the House was dissolved, and some members summoned to the Council, and sent thence to the Tower.

Page 237.

[St. Bartholomewes (London), June 16, 1614. Sir Ralph Winwood to Carleton.]

Never saw so much faction and passion as in the late unhappy Parliament, nor so little reverence of a King. . . . The impositions were the great grievance, also a speech of the Bishop of Lincoln taxing the Commons with sedition, and the King’s messages were thought to abridge the liberty of the House. The breakneck was some seditious speeches which made the King impatient, and it was whispered to him that they would have his life and that of his favorites before they had done, on which he dissolved them. Four of their tribunes, Sir Walter Chute, Chris. Neville, Hoskins, and Wentworth, are sent to prison. . . .

[James’s son-in-law, Frederick, head of the south German electorate known as the palatinate, had in 1619 accepted the crown of Bohemia from the estates of that country who had deposed the Archduke Ferdinand. Frederick was defeated and driven out of Bohemia by the imperial forces, Ferdinand had now become emperor. Not only was Bohemia lost, but the Palatinate was invaded from the west by Spanish troops. These rapid moves in the Thirty Years’ War alarmed James, who called Parliament together to get money for a war against Spain and then concluded with surprising fatuity that he could gain what he wished, the security of the Palatinate, by negotiation, perhaps by the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta of Spain. Parliament, Puritan and anti-Spanish, had no will for such a policy and was disinclined toward watchful waiting. In any case they wished to discuss the policy. James wished money.]