Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II (Vol. 1-3). Hallam Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ affection. That perfect fear which attended him must have cast out love. But he had a few qualities that deserve esteem, and several which a nation is pleased to behold in its sovereign. He wanted, or at least did not manifest in any eminent degree, one usual vice of tyrants, dissimulation; his manners were affable, and his temper generous. Though his schemes of foreign policy were not very sagacious, and his wars, either with France or Scotland, productive of no material advantage, they were uniformly successful, and retrieved the honour of the English name. But the main cause of the reverence with which our forefathers cherished this king's memory, was the share he had taken in the Reformation. They saw in him not indeed the proselyte of their faith, but the subverter of their enemies' power, the avenging minister of Heaven, by whose giant arm the chain of superstition had been broken, and the prison gates burst asunder.46

Government of Edward VI.'s counsellors.—The ill-assorted body of counsellors who exercised the functions of regency by Henry's testament, were sensible that they had not sinews to wield his iron sceptre, and that some sacrifice must be made to a nation exasperated as well as overawed by the violent measures of his reign. In the first session accordingly of Edward's parliament, the new treasons and felonies which had been created to please his father's sanguinary disposition, were at once abrogated.47 The statute of Edward III. became again the standard of high treason, except that the denial of the king's supremacy was still liable to its penalties. The same act, which relieves the subject from these terrors, contains also a repeal of that which had given legislative validity to the king's proclamations. These provisions appear like an elastic recoil of the constitution after the extraordinary pressure of that despotic reign. But, however they may indicate the temper of parliament, we must consider them but as an unwilling and insincere compliance on the part of the government. Henry, too arrogant to dissemble with his subjects, had stamped the law itself with the print of his despotism. The more wily courtiers of Edward's council deemed it less obnoxious to violate than to new-mould the constitution. For, although proclamations had no longer the legal character of statutes, we find several during Edward's reign enforced by penalty of fine and imprisonment. Many of the ecclesiastical changes were first established by no other authority, though afterwards sanctioned by parliament. Rates were thus fixed for the price of provisions; bad money was cried down, with penalties on those who should buy it under a certain value, and the melting of the current coin prohibited on pain of forfeiture.48 Some of these might possibly have a sanction from precedent, and from the acknowledged prerogative of the crown in regulating the coin. But no legal apology can be made for a proclamation in April 1549, addressed to all justices of the peace, enjoining them to arrest sowers and tellers abroad of vain and forged tales and lies, and to commit them to the galleys, there to row in chains as slaves during the king's pleasure.49 One would imagine that the late statute had been repealed, as too far restraining the royal power, rather than as giving it an unconstitutional extension.

Attainder of Lord Seymour.—It soon became evident that, if the new administration had not fully imbibed the sanguinary spirit of their late master, they were as little scrupulous in bending the rules of law and justice to their purpose in cases of treason. The Duke of Somerset, nominated by Henry only as one of his sixteen executors, obtained almost immediately afterwards a patent from the young king, who during his minority was certainly not capable of any valid act, constituting him sole regent under the name of protector, with the assistance indeed of the rest as his counsellors, but with the power of adding any others to their number. Conscious of his own usurpation, it was natural for Somerset to dread the aspiring views of others; nor was it long before he discovered a rival in his brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, whom, according to the policy of that age, he thought it necessary to destroy by a bill of attainder. Seymour was apparently a dangerous and unprincipled man; he had courted the favour of the young king by small presents of money, and appears beyond question to have entertained a hope of marrying the Princess Elizabeth, who had lived much in his house during his short union with the queen dowager. It was surmised that this lady had been poisoned to make room for a still nobler consort.50 But in this there could be no treason; and it is not likely that any evidence was given which could have brought him within the statute of Edward III. In this prosecution against Lord Seymour, it was thought expedient to follow the very worst of Henry's precedents, by not hearing the accused in his defence. The bill passed through the upper house, the natural guardian of a peer's life and honour, without one dissenting voice. The Commons addressed the king that they might hear the witnesses, and also the accused. It was answered that the king did not think it necessary for them to hear the latter, but that those who had given their depositions before the Lords might repeat their evidence before the lower house. It rather appears that the Commons did not insist on this any farther; but the bill of attainder was carried with a few negative voices.51 How striking a picture it affords of the sixteenth century, to behold the popular and well-natured Duke of Somerset, more estimable at least than any statesman employed under Edward, not only promoting this unjust condemnation of his brother, but signing the warrant under which he was beheaded!

      Attainder of Duke of Somerset.—But it was more easy to crush a single competitor, than to keep in subjection the subtle and daring spirits trained in Henry's councils, and jealous of the usurpation of an equal. The protector, attributing his success, as is usual with men in power, rather to skill than fortune, and confident in the two frailest supports that a minister can have, the favour of a child and of the lower people, was stripped of his authority within a few months after the execution of Lord Seymour, by a confederacy which he had neither the discretion to prevent, nor the firmness to resist. Though from this time but a secondary character upon the public stage, he was so near the throne as to keep alive the suspicions of the Duke of Northumberland, who, with no ostensible title, had become not less absolute than himself. It is not improbable that Somerset was innocent of the charge imputed to him, namely, a conspiracy to murder some of the privy councillors, which had been erected into felony by a recent statute; but the evidence, though it may have been false, does not seem legally insufficient. He demanded on his trial to be confronted with the witnesses; a favour rarely granted in that age to state criminals, and which he could not very decently solicit after causing his brother to be condemned unheard. Three lords, against whom he was charged to have conspired, sat upon his trial; and it was thought a sufficient reply to his complaints of this breach of a known principle, that no challenge could be allowed in the case of a peer.

From this designing and unscrupulous oligarchy no measure conducive to liberty and justice could be expected to spring. But among the Commons there must have been men, although their names have not descended to us, who, animated by a purer zeal for these objects, perceived on how precarious a thread the life of every man was suspended, when the private deposition of one suborned witness, unconfronted with the prisoner, could suffice to obtain a conviction in cases of treason. In the worst period of Edward's reign, we find inserted in a bill creating some new treasons, one of the most important constitutional provisions which the annals of the Tudor family afford. It is enacted, that "no person shall be indicted for any manner of treason, except on the testimony of two lawful witnesses, who shall be brought in person before the accused at the time of his trial, to avow and maintain what they have to say against him, unless he shall willingly confess the charges."52 This salutary provision was strengthened, not taken away, as some later judges ventured to assert, by an act in the reign of Mary. In a subsequent part of this work, I shall find an opportunity for discussing this important branch of constitutional law.

Violence of Mary's reign.—It seems hardly necessary to mention the momentary usurpation of Lady Jane Grey, founded on no pretext of title which could be sustained by any argument. She certainly did not obtain that degree of actual possession which might have sheltered her adherents under the statute of Henry VII.; nor did the Duke of Northumberland allege this excuse on his trial, though СКАЧАТЬ