Hello and Welcome to Western SIEV Episode three hundred and twenty. King and Parliament. The treasury was bear. The officers of the ground were demanding their salaries, but but James had no money with which to pay them. Parliament did not want to vote taxes, and local officials in the counties were not zealous in collecting the proper revenues from their neighbors. Much of the money raised on customs duties was diverted into the pockets of the men who were collecting it.
When Parliament reassembled in February sixteen ten, it was in not the best of moods. Robert Cecil outlined the financial problems of the nation, but the members of Parliament were more concerned to restrain the overspending of the court rather than to vote new taxes. One of them, Thomas Wentworth, argued that it would be worse than useless to grant new moneyes to the King if he refused to reduce
his expenditure. Wentworth asked, quote, to what purpose is it to draw a silver stream into the Royal cistern if it shall daily run out, thence by private clocks end quote. Cecil was not impressed. It was his understanding that the Commons had a duty to supply the needs of the King,
after which their grievances might be addressed. The Members, on the other hand, demanded that their complaints be answered before turning to the needs of the King, and so a conference was called, during which Robert Cecil put forward a long mediated plan, which became later known as as the Great Contract. The King would give up his feudal dues and ten years in exchange for a guaranteed annual sum. The commons offered one hundred thousand pounds, only half of
the amount James required. Parliament still seemed to believe that he should and could be as economical as his predecessor. The negotiations therefore were suspended. On May the twenty first, the King summoned both houses of Parliament into his presence, and he castigated them for sitting for fourteen weeks without dealing with his necessities. He would listen to what they had to say about increased taxation, but he would not be bound by their opinions. They must not question the
royal prerogative in such matters. The members answered that if this were the case, then the King might lawfully claim all they owned a deputation armed with a petition of right, met James at his palace in Greenwich. Realizing that he had probably gone too far, He welcomed them and explained that he had been misunderstood. He always knew when to draw back from confrontation, a lesson never learned by his two sons. The debate over the Great Contract continued on
June the eleventh. Both sides made a series of concessions, but there remained no deal in sight, so James parogued Parliament in July, allowing the various members of Parliament to return to their constituencies and discuss the terms of the proposal. The towns and the counties were not, however, concerned with the King's financial state. They were concerned with their own lists of wrongs and grievances. All this whole episode proved was the growing gulf between the King and his kingdom.
James looked increasingly out of touch with the needs and desires of a modernizing England, and this was all totally lost on James. In March of sixteen ten, he made the situation infinitely worse when he addressed the lords at Whitehall, declaring that kings were above all other men, and in fact that quote by God himself, they are called gods end quote. James went on to declare that kings have the power of raising up and casting down of life
and death for all their subjects. It was, in other words, a declaration of the divine right of kings, of total absolutism, and it did not sit well with the men in the room listening. James did not understand common law at all, as his previous confrontations with Sir Edward Coke had suggested. It seemed to be unaware that the principle of absolute sovereignty was not one that the English would even remotely entertain. One noted that quote the King speaks of France and
Spain what they may do end quote. He didn't realize, or maybe he pretended not to realize, that the sovereigns of those two countries were in a position very different from his own. He maintained the theory of divine right without any clear understanding of how it would operate in the context of parliamentary authority and a common law. He may have adopted his positions for less theoretical reasons. His hatred of the Presbyterian elders of Scotland derived from the
fact that they directly challenged his authority. The nobility of that country also had been inclined to talk to him and deal with him as if he were one among equals. So his statements about his own power are probably to have been in response to his difficult and sometimes dangerous position as King of Scotland. He had once observed that quote the highest bench is the slidriiest to sit upon. End quote. Now to be fair, also, James only said these things, he never acted on them. That was a
key difference between James and his son. James was never arbitrary or erratic with his power. In return, Parliament never made any major move to question or undermine his sovereignty. For the moment, this was all a war of words. In June sixteen ten, James's eldest son, Henry, was formerly invested as the Prince of Wales. Henry was a serious young man with a pious military character. He was very much cut out of the mold of another famous Henry,
Henry the Fifth, the Victor of Agincour. Everyone looked forward to the day when Henry might rule and perhaps even lead England to the successes enjoyed by his medieval predecessor. But Henry was not technically the only contender for the throne. There remained the king's cousin, Arabella Stuart. In Elizabeth's final days, she had considered her briefly a potential heir. Now Arabella
was just kind of hanging around. Arabella Stuart was the cousin of James, and for the first six years of his reign she enjoyed all the comforts and considerations of court. She had even been considered as a replacement for James himself by Walter Raleigh and others. Though she had taken no part in the plot, it was still of the
utmost importance that she married wisely and well. At the beginning of sixteen ten, however, she came to a pre contractual arrangement with William Seymour, who, by an extremely indirect route, had some small claim to the throne. This has always aroused the suspicion of James, as it always aroused the suspicion of every king. The couple agreed to renounce their plans, but in June they took part in a secret marriage ceremony at Greenwich. On hearing the news James was absolutely furious.
Seymour was instantly confined to the tower while Arabella was taken to Lambeth, before was decided to send her north to Durham. En route at Barnett, she planned her escape. She disguised herself, according to a contemporary by quote, drawing a hair of great French fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet a man like peruke with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black cloak, russet boots with red tops, and a rape here by
her side. She took ship for France at Lee, but was overtaken by a vessel from Dover to apprehend her. From there she was taken to the tower, where her reason ultimately gave way and she died completely insane. About four years later. When a new session of Parliament opened in the fall of sixteen ten, it appeared that Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, was losing ground on this great contract idea. Parliament simply was not going to grant James
the money he wanted. The King adjourned and then dissolved Parliament in a matter of weeks. Now, the economic problems that James was facing were not all of his own making. The The English economic system had been to a large extent formulated in the fourteenth century, and it simply couldn't deal with the problems of the seventeenth. It didn't work, especially in times of warfare. An all manner of fiscal
expedients had to be found to essentially plug the gaps. Thus, in the spring of the following year, James offered to sell hereditary titles to any knights or esquires who wanted them.
You could get the title of baronet for only one thousand and eighty pounds in three annual payments, but the overall gain to the exchequer of approximately ninety thousand pounds was not enough to balance the profusion of the king's expenditure, so peerages were put on the market four years later, when in sixteen sixteen Sir John Roper made the sum of ten thousand pounds to become Lord Tenningham, he was given the name the nickname, I should say of Lord
ten million. A seventeenth century historian, Arthur Williams remarked of the maulsiplicity of titles that quote made them cheap and invalid. In vulgar opinion, for nothing is more destructive to monarchy than lessening of the nobility. Upon their decline. The comments rise and anarchy increases. End quote. But the king had
another scheme to raise money. It was proposed to him that his oldest son might be married to the hand of the Infanta Maria Anna, the daughter of Philip the third of Spain, and James's son Henry wasn't the only potential heir available. He still had his daughter Elizabeth, so in the spring of sixteen eleven, James joined the Protestant Union, which by and large consisted of England and various other
German principalities. I'm going to get a lot more into the Protestant Union, by the way, when we pivot to start to discuss the Thirty Years War. More importantly, he decided to marry his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick of the Palatinate. The Palatinate included large swaths of modern Germany and several key towns, including Heidelberg. James appeared to be positioning himself as a champion of Protestantism. He had the credentials. By sixteen eleven, his King James Bible had supplanted both the
Geneva Bible and the Bishop's Bible. It had also become the model for seventeenth century British prose. Its mere existence prompted a new wave of Protestant religious publications throughout Europe. At home, James continued to consolidate Protestantism. When Archship Bancroft died in sixteen eleven, James appointed George Abbott as the Archbishop of Canterbury. His main qualification for the post was
his ardent opposition to Catholicism. Yet James was never a purest in this regard, because, as I mentioned, he was while he was marrying his daughter to one of the leading Protestants in Europe, trying to seek the hand of the daughter of the most arch Catholic king in all of Europe for his son. He was a pragmatist before a theologian. In the summer of sixteen twelve, Kit and James went on a progress of a monst duration taking in Leicester, Nottingham and Newark. All around him he could
see evidence of a prosperous and tranquil nation. A piece with Spain and a commercial treaty with France had encouraged trade, while a series of finally good harvests maintained a happy condition. Dairy produce flowed into London from Essex, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. Wool for export arrived at ports from Wiltshire and North Hampshire. Cattle from North Wales and Scotland, and sheep from Cotswolds were herded into the Great Market at Smithfield. Other trades
were also rising. Coal was rapidly becoming plentiful and as valuable as silver. Its production was rising rapidly each year. In the one hundred years from fifteen forty. The production of iron had also increased fivefold. Norwich was a safe haven for exiled weavers from France or Germany, while Chester dominated trade with Ireland. The struggle against monopolies, which had began late in the reign of Elizabeth, played its part
in the increasing economic power of the country. Overall, the economic conditions throughout England we could say had been improving since the late sixteenth century. That is not to say that there were not pockets of abject poverty. There were, and hundreds were still looking to the New World as a means of escape, but in general things were finally starting to get better. In a material sense. Yeomen were building larger houses, now with separate kitchens and divided rooms.
Chairs replaced benches, cutlery replaced the dagger as the principal means of consuming one's meals. Life was beginning to at least look a little modern. In sixteen twelve, Robert Cecil died. He had been the second most important person in England for decades, but his death came as a relief to James, now effectively rule as he wished. Two men took Cecil's place.
Robert Carr, chief favorite, became the Viscount Rochester. Henry Howard became the King's chief administrator in addition to Robert Cecil. It was around this time that another death occurred at court, this one much more consequential. All had seemed well with the heir to the throne. Prince Henry was an assertive and athletic youth. He excelled in masks as well as Marshall sports, but at the end of October in sixteen twelve, he fell ill. He was playing cards with his younger
brother Charles and a bystander, Sir Charles Cornwallace. Cornwallis noticed that quote His Highness for all this looked ill and pale, spoke hollow and somewhat strangely, with dead sunken eyes end quote. A doctor was called, but over the next eleven days, the doctor could do nothing to stop the slow spread of a disease that has been tentatively diagnosed as more likely than not toyphoid fever, but there's still a lot of debate over that amongst historians. He died raving to
the authentic dismay and dejection of the court. He had been the emblem of England's future destiny and had promised an age of heroic adventure, but this time in the Protestant cause. Queen Anne wept, and a year later it still wasn't safe to mention her son to her James mourned aloud, crying out, Henry is dead. Henry is dead. The crown was now destined for Charles, a silent, shy
and reserved prince very much unlike his brother. Despite his beloved son's death, James hated a gloomy court and insisted that everyone needed to move on. When his daughter wed Frederick in February sixteen thirteen, James put on a lavish and celebratory ceremony and party weddings are, after all, objectively more fun than funerals. As an interesting aside, it has long been argued that Shakespeare added the mask in the fourth act of The Tempest as a means of celebrating
the couple. And then it was time once more to summon a new parliament. There really wasn't much of a plan. B The government was now barely functioning, the ambassadors had not been paid, sailors were ready to mutiny, and frankly, the defenses of the kingdom were in a sorry state, to say the least. But the elections did not bode well for the king. Two thirds of the new members of Parliament had never before held office. These were reform minded new men. That was the last thing that James needed.
He opened Parliament on April fourth, sixteen fourteen. It was a disaster from the word go. The King gave a conciliatory speech promising reform while still requesting money. The commons responded with wave after wave of debate on the King's ability or lack thereof, to issue these impositions, or special taxes as they liked to call them. The King gave another speech a few days later, asking for a Parliament of love. In response, he was jeered to the point
that he nearly did not finish his comments. It was an angry, raucous House of Commons. James opened the proceedings on the fifth of April sixteen fourteen with a conciliatory speech and promised reform while requesting more revenue. The Commons chose to ignore the message and instead complained that the quote unquote undertakers had violated the freedom of election and privileges of parliament. They didn't want to vote supplies to the king. Instead, they wanted to challenge the King's right
to levy these impositions and special taxes. When the members refused James's order to debate supplies alone, he quickly dissolved parliament and committed five members to the Tower of London. The session had lasted less than three months and not one bill had received royal assent. Thus it became known
as the Adult or the Adult Parliament. No Assembly at all met again for the next seven years, but James still badly needed money, so he renewed marriage negotiations with France and Spain, hoping a foreign dowry would solve his financial woes, but that would take time, and James needed money now. As a result, he asked London the City Magistrates for a loan, but it refused, responding that James's
credit was too poor, which it was. The King appointed Thomas Howard, the Lord Treasurer, and he immediately set himself to the task of raising money by any means necessary. He issued fines against any new building built within seven miles of London, for example. These were never popular options, but the king had little other recourse in the absence of a parliament. The government was now the King and his council, dominated by Somerset, his favorite. All royal patronage
flowed through him. As an aside, and I mentioned this previously, we are again entering a period wherein royal favorites dominate the crown, much to its detriment. The names might change, but the problems they will not, and many around James had decided it was time for him to get a new favorite. In the summer of sixteen four fourteen, a young man of twenty two was presented to James. George Villiers, the son of a knight, had already been trained as
a courtier. He had become practiced in the arts of dancing and offensing. He had spent three years in France, where he had acquired a good manner to adorn what was called quote, the handsomest bodied man in all of England end quote. He also had very powerful allies, among them Archbishop Abbot and the Queen. Abbot supported him in the hope of diminishing the influence of Somerset and the Howards, who favored Catholic Spain. The Queen, influenced by Abbot, pressed
her husband to show favor to the young man. Villiers was accordingly appointed to be the royal cupbearer in constant attendance upon his sovereign in the spring of sixteen fifteen, and was knighted as a gentleman of the bedchamber. Somerset, sensing arrival, decided he would try to alienate Villiers. It backfired. The King liked Villiers, and he criticized Somerset for his constant complaining. With numerous plots lining up against him, Somerset
tried to take proactive measures. He had a writ drawn up for the King's signature. It was essentially a blanket and proactive pardon for him and his wife Somerset was pardoning himself for any in all crimes he may or may not have committed. It was an audacious move, to say the least. James was about to sign it, but the Queen and several other counselors talked him out of it.
Then a bombshell hit in sixteen fifteen, a certain Thomas Overbye, who was then staying in the Tower of London, was poisoned. The assassins had done a sloppy job of covering it up, and it didn't take authorities very long to follow the trail of evidence back to missus Carr and ultimately to her husband, Lord Somerset. Both husband and wife were charged and found guilty of murder. Both were sentenced to death.
The King commuted their sentences to one of imprisonment, and they remained in the Tower of London for six long years. So one favorite was gone. Sadly, George Villiers was about to take his place. And more, as we are going to see, Villiers was about to become the most important and powerful royal favored in England since the High Middle Ages. And I hope I do not need to tell you this, but that's not a good thing. War