Short and Long Parliaments

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Previously on The End of the Star Chamber. And now the conclusion of Part 2 by Thomas Macaulay

Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, England owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was, indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland; but a large part of the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of the insurgents, and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court and to make the calling of a parliament necessary.

Troubles in Scotland

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Previously on The End of the Star Chamber. And now Part 2 by Thomas Macaulay continued.

Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sat at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star-chamber, that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on the north of the Trent.

No More Parliament – for Now

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Previously on The End of the Star Chamber. And now Part 2 by Thomas Macaulay.

Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

Now commenced a new era. Many English kings had occasionally committed unconstitutional acts; but none had ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March, 1629, to April, 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

The Star Chamber Moves into the Reign of Charles I

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Previously on The End of the Star Chamber. And now the conclusion of Part 1 by Henry Hallam.

Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

It is evident that the strong interest of the court in these fines must not only have had a tendency to aggravate the punishment, but to induce sentences of condemnation on inadequate proof. From all that remains of proceedings in the Star-chamber, they seem to have been very frequently as iniquitous as they were severe. In many celebrated instances, the accused party suffered less on the score of any imputed offence than for having provoked the malice of a powerful adversary, or for notorious dissatisfaction with the existing government. Thus Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, once lord-keeper the favorite of King James, the possessor for a season of the power that was turned against him, experienced the rancorous and ungrateful malignity of Laud, who, having been brought forward by Williams into the favor of the court, not only supplanted by his intrigues, and incensed the King's mind against his benefactor, but harassed his retirement by repeated persecutions. It will sufficiently illustrate the spirit of these times to mention that the sole offence imputed to the Bishop of Lincoln in the last information against him in the Star-chamber was that he had received certain letters from one Osbaldiston, master of Westminster school, wherein some contemptuous nickname was used to denote Laud.

Prior Proceedings of the Star Chamber

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Previously on The End of the Star Chamber. And now Part 1 by Henry Hallam continued.

Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

Among the exertions of authority practised in the Star-chamber which no positive law could be brought to warrant he enumerates "punishments of breach of proclamations before they have the strength of an act of Parliament; which this court hath stretched as far as ever any act of Parliament did. As in the 41st of Elizabeth, builders of houses in London were sentenced, and their houses ordered to be pulled down, and the materials to be distributed to the benefit of the parish where the building was; which disposition of the goods soundeth as a great extremity, and beyond the warrant of our laws; and yet, surely, very necessary, if anything would deter men from that horrible mischief of increasing that head which is swollen to a great hugeness already."

The Star Chamber’s Power in Past Reigns

Featuring Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay

Introduction to our series The End of the Star Chamber:
The English Civil War decided whether England would be Constitutional Monarchy or an Absolute Monarchy like Spain already was and France became. The political struggles set the ground for the military ones and the eventual outcome after Cromwell’s government ended. Terminating the Star Chamber was a key milestone in that political struggle.

Part 1 of this series is by Henry Hallam from his Constitutional History of England. Part 2 is by Lord Macaulay. Both were Whig historians in the 19th. century. I’ve always admired Macaulay’s History of England even though it only covered the reigns of James II to William III. More is more. The more details, the more involved the reader can become in the time and place of the past. Macaulay made some mistakes in his narrative of Marlborough which led Winston Churchill to call him a “liar”. Sigh!

And now, Part 1 by Henry Hallam

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Time: 1641
Place: London

The Long Parliament

The levies of tonnage and poundage without authority of Parliament; the exaction of monopolies; the extension of the forests; the arbitrary restraints of proclamations; above all, the general exaction of ship-money, form the principal articles of charge against the government of Charles, so far as relates to its inroads on the subject's property. These were maintained by a vigilant and unsparing exercise of jurisdiction in the Court of Star-chamber. It was the great weapon of executive power under Elizabeth and James; nor can we reproach the present reign with innovation in this respect, though in no former period had the proceedings of this court been accompanied with so much violence and tyranny. But this will require some fuller explication.