who had been there executed as traitors. He laid the blame upon the French attendants, whom he accused of perverting his wife from her duty to himself, and on 31 July, after a violent scene with the queen, had them all turned out of Whitehall. On 8 Aug. they were embarked for France [see Henrietta Marie, Queen of England]. Louis XIII complained of this proceeding as being, as indeed it was, an infraction of the marriage treaty. Another ground of quarrel was the seizure by English ships of war of French vessels charged with carrying contraband goods for the use of the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands, which was especially resented by the French, as Charles claimed to intervene in the dispute between Louis and his revolted protestant subjects [see Carleton, Dudley, Viscount Dorchester].
While hostilities with France were impending in addition to the existing war with Spain, fresh calls for money arose in Germany. Charles had engaged to pay 30,000l. a month to his uncle, Christian IV, king of Denmark; and as the payment was stopped soon after the promise was made, Christian, having been defeated at Lutter on 17 Aug., complained bitterly that his defeat was owing to his nephew's failure to carry out his engagement. In September, accordingly, Charles ordered the levy of a forced loan equal to the five subsidies which he had failed to secure as a gift. At first the loan came in slowly, and to fortify his position Charles applied to the judges for an opinion in favour of the legality of the demand. Failing to obtain it he dismissed Chief-justice Crewe. To make the judges dependent, Charles thus deprived them of that moral authority which he would sorely need whenever he wished to quote their judgments on his own side. A considerable part of the loan was ultimately brought in, but not till the leading statesmen of the popular party had been imprisoned for refusing to pay. In this way it became possible to send Sir Charles Morgan with some regiments of foot to assist the king of Denmark.
In the meanwhile the war with France had broken out. Buckingham went at the head of a great expedition to the Isle of Ré to relieve Rochelle, which was being besieged by the army of Louis XIII. A siege of fort St. Martin proved longer than was expected, and Buckingham cried out for reinforcements. Charles urged on his ministers to gather men and money; but Buckingham's unpopularity was so great that but little could be done. Before the reinforcements could reach Ré, Buckingham had been defeated, and had been obliged to abandon the island. On 11 Nov. he landed at Plymouth.
Charles was resolved to go on with the war. The king of France, he told the Venetian ambassador, 'is determined to destroy Rochelle, and I am to support, it; for I will never allow my word to be forfeited.' After all kinds of devices for getting money—including a levy of ship-money and the enforcement of an excise—had been discussed and abandoned, Charles's third parliament met on 17 March 1628. Charles had previously ordered the enlargement of those who had been prisoners on account of their refusal to pay the loan, after the court of king's bench had declined to liberate on bail five of the number who had applied to it for protection.
The commons found a leader in Sir Thomas Wentworth, and under Wentworth's guidance a bill was brought in to secure the liberties of the subject [see Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford]. It proposed to abolish Charles's claim to compel householders to receive soldiers billeted on them, to raise loans or taxes without consent of parliament, or to commit a man to prison by his own order without giving an opportunity to the judges to bail him. Into the events of the past year there was to be no inquiry. On the points of billeting and loans Charles was ready to give way; but he stood firm on the point of imprisonment, all the more because he had reason to think that the House of Lords was in his favour.
The question was one on which something at least might be said on Charles's side. From time to time dangers occur which the operation of the law is insufficient to meet. A widespread conspiracy or a foreign invasion threatens the nation at large, and it becomes of more importance to struggle against the enemy than to maintain the existing safeguards of individual liberty. In our own day parliament provides for such cases by refusing, to prisoners in certain cases the right of suing out a writ of habeas corpus, or by passing a bill of indemnity in favour of a minister who, when parliament was not sitting, had in some great emergency overstepped the law. The crown had in the Tudor times been tacitly allowed frequently to judge when the law was to be suspended by imprisoning without showing cause, a course which made a writ of habeas corpus inoperative, as no charge could be shown in the gaoler's return, and consequently the court of king's bench was powerless to act.
Wentworth's intervention was therefore thrust aside by Charles. The king was ready to confirm Magna Charta and other old statutes, and to promise to 'maintain all his
