Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (47 page)

It has to be said that Ralegh's History is not much to the modern taste. The earlier chapters are heavily encumbered with thickets of biblical commentary, forming a dense barrier between his readers and his narrative. The work is seriously unbalanced, with the earlier sections of narrative rapidly covered, the later sinking under the weight of detail. Ralegh is often unscrupulous in his treatment of evidence, for instance in his ridiculing of Darius as war leader. The book was, however, widely admired in its own day and beyond. Eight editions were published, three of them before the end of the reign of James I. The last complete one was the Oxford edition of 1829. Its admirers ranged from Milton and Cromwell to Gibbon.
54
What attracted Ralegh's contemporaries to this monumental work? First, its very scale was majestic and bold, in keeping with its author. Second, there was nothing comparable to it in English. Third, its author's own fame attracted readers, especially after he had been posthumously recruited to the Protestant and parliamentary causes. Fourth, it was philosophical history which illuminated the workings of Providence and therefore appealed especially to seventeenth-century Protestants.

Finally, the writing was vigorous, hard-edged and muscular. Henry Fenton wrote of it in his Dissertation on reading the classics, published in 1713: Ralegh's style is the most perfect, the happiest, and most beautiful of the Age he wrote in, majestic, clear and manly...the Spirit of Ronie and Athens seems to be breathed into his Work.
55
On the problems of composing contemporary history, Ralegh warns: 'whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.'
56
On the origins of government he writes that: 'necessity...made both the wise and foolish understand at once, that the estate of reasonable men would become far more miserable than that of beasts, and that a general flood of confusion would a second time overflow them, did they not by a general obedience to order and dominion prevent it'.
57
Sardanapalus, King of Assyria, was 'a most luxurious and effeminate palliard...passing away his time among strumpets, whom he imitated both in apparel and behaviour'.
58
Ralegh has this to say on treaties: 'the rusty sword and the empty purse do always plead the performance of covenants'.
59
On the uses of experience he is equally pragmatic: 'the cheese-wife knoweth it as well as the philosopher, that sour runnet doth coagulate her milk into a curd. But if we ask a reason of this cause, why the sourness doth it? whereby it doth it? and the manner how? I think that there is nothing to be found in vulgar philosophy, to satisfy this and many other like vulgar questions.'
60

While The History of the World was in the press during the spring and summer of 1614 financial pressure on King James forced him to call Parliament. His total debts came to 0500,000 and the annual deficit to 0160,000. In 1610, Robert Cecil had proposed a permanent settlement of the problem in the shape of a Great Contract. This entailed the surrender by the King of certain unpopular sources of revenue in return for a guaranteed annual income of £200,000. Between the objections of some parliamentarians that the figure was too high, and the King's reluctance to surrender any sources of income, the Great Contract failed and Parliament was dissolved. Three years later, with the situation again desperate, James yielded to the persuasions of a group in his Privy Council that the only cure lay in Parliament. It opened on 3 April 1614. James met it with a bad grace, declaring loftily that he would not bargain with them like a merchant. The central issue lay in the taxes known as impositions: these were customs duties levied on imports and authorized only by the King, not by Parliament. In 1606 the King's right to do this had been challenged by a merchant, John Bate, who refused to pay a duty on currants that he was bringing in from the Levant. The royal right had later been vindicated in a test case, Bate's Case, brought in the Court of Exchequer. James had offered in 1610 to levy no new impositions without parliamentary consent provided that the existing taxes were allowed. His offer was refused.
1

While impositions were the principal issue throughout the 1614 Parliament, other matters inflamed opinions on both sides. Some members of the House of Commons complained that the elections had been improperly influenced by the Crown through its agents, known as 'undertakers'. There was no firm evidence for this, but that did not prevent members from making wild assertions. In the Lords, Bishop Neile of Lincoln attacked the Commons for so much as questioning the King's right to levy impositions. Speaking on a proposal from the Commons that there should be a joint meeting of the two Houses, Neile virtually accused the lower House of sedition. United by this, the Commons responded with bitter attacks upon Neile himself and, by extension, on the clergy generally. By the end of May relations between the Houses had become so inflamed that discussion of the royal finances had almost come to a halt, and at the beginning of June the King threatened to dissolve Parliament within a week. The announcement provoked furious reactions from the Commons. John Hoskins, lawyer, wit and MP for Hereford, attacked the King's Scottish counsellors, especially Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, suggesting that they all be sent home.
2
He unwisely referred to the Sicilian Vespers, the rising of Sicilians against the rule of Charles of Anjou in 1282. In this atmosphere of bitterness and contention James carried out his threat and dissolved Parliament on 7 June. No statutes had been carried and nothing had been done to remedy the King's financial needs. James thought, rightly, that the royal revenue was wholly inadequate for his needs; the Commons believed, understandably, that he had wasted his money on Scottish favourites and feared that if he were allowed to continue levying impositions Parliament would never meet again. In this situation a rational solution was unlikely to be agreed.

In the next few years something was done to reduce the King's annual deficit, but the capital of the debt remained. The Privy Council was divided on the solution. Although a majority favoured the recall of Parliament, the Howards, Earls of Nottingham and of Suffolk, with the earl of Somerset and Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State, opposed it. The Spanish ambassador, Diego de Sarmiento, used his considerable influence with James to prevent it, correctly believing that most members of the House of Commons were hostile to Spain.
3

Early in 1615 Ralegh entered the debate with an address to the King urging him to summon Parliament. It was his first literary intervention in domestic politics and may have been prompted by the presence in the Tower with him of John Hoskins, imprisoned for his remarks on the Sicilian Vespers. For more than a decade the address remained in manuscript form without a formal title, until it was printed in 1628 as The Prerogative of Parliaments in England. Proved in a Dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a justice of Peace.
4
That the address remained in manuscript did not of course mean that its readership was restricted to the King. As we have already noted, circulation of manuscripts as a means of publication was common in the early seventeenth century and had certain advantages. The survival of several manuscript copies of the Dialogue shows that this was the case here.
5

The Counsellor in the Dialogue stands for a prominent nobleman, possibly Robert Carr, certainly one of the inner ring of royal government, the Justice for Ralegh himself. The justice's strategy for persuading James to call Parliament was to tell the story of individual Parliaments, reign by reign, demonstrating that kings never suffered from them and often gained advantage. The Counsellor tries to show that kings did on occasion suffer damage and that therefore James would be well advised to avoid them. When the Counsellor is able to point to some damage suffered by the king from a particular parliament, the justice ripostes that it was not a true Parliament. This does not make for exciting or entertaining reading. Ralegh does not dispute the right of the king to levy impositions, or indeed other taxes, without parliamentary consent. Indeed, he shows little interest in the legal arguments presented earlier in Bate's case and in Parliament itself. In his view, when the king needed money for an emergency the taxpayer must provide.
6
By contrast, William Hakewill, speaking in 1610, had argued that the common law provided certainty between king and subject and that this certainty together with the 'provision made by the Common Law, are in my poor opinion, Arguments of direct proofs that the King cannot impose.'
7
In Ralegh's Dialogue, when the Counsellor argues that whatever is done by the king on the advice of his intimates or of the Privy Council 'is done by the king's absolute power', the justice agrees with him: 'And by whose power is it done in Parliament, but by the king's absolute power? Mistake it not, my lord: the three estates do but advise, as the privy-council doth.' However, although kings have absolute power to tax their subjects without their consent, they would in practice be unwise to do so. Ralegh, or rather the justice, goes on to ask:

Is it a loss to the king to be beloved of the commons? If it be revenue which the king seeks, is it not better to take it of those that laugh, than those that cry?...Is it not more honourable and more safe for the king that the subject pay by persuasion, than to have them constrained?

He then asserts that 'there is nothing in the great Charter against impositions: besides that necessity doth persuade them'.
8

Ralegh had put forward similar views in The History of the World, asserting unequivocally that subjects have no right to disobey or resist their prince. That right belongs solely to God. Yet, while Ralegh's opinions are theoretically consistent, they are in practice difficult to reconcile with his assessment of princes. In the preface to the History he presents an almost uniformly black picture of monarchs, culminating in the cruel and malignant Henry VIII.
9
His commentary on Samuel's advice to the people of Israel against handing government to a single person contains a bleak warning.
10
Writing in the History of the contrasting stories of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, he reports that while the kings of Israel ruled by retaining the love of the people, those of Judah forfeited that love and suffered. He saw the government of these kingdoms and of England as resting upon the love of the people.

For a good form of government sufficeth by itself to retain the people, not only without assistance of a laborious wit, but even against all devices of the greatest and shrewdest politicians.

Monarchs will succeed provided that they have won and retained 'the hearts of the people, who will be sure to come in on their side'; and monarchs can best achieve this 'with the blood of some great officers'.
11
He illustrates the point in the 'Dialogue' by pointing to Henry III obtaining a grant from a thirteenth-century parliament for payment of his debts after he had 'squeezed those sponges of the commonwealth', Hubert be Burgh and his associates.
12

However, Ralegh writes, the political balance has changed since the days when it depended on the outcome of struggles between over-mighty subjects and the monarch. 'The lords in former times were far stronger, more warlike, better followed, living in their countries, than now they are.' Earls could then bring to the war a thousand 'barbed horses' and barons five or six hundred; but few of them now could deliver twenty. The threat to the king from over-mighty subjects has therefore vanished; but the people must still be contented, their power being 'in the flower', and by implication the best way to please them is by removing evil and greedy counsellors and by summoning parliament.
13
Ralegh does not make entirely clear who he has in mind by ,the people', but the term is likely to include those who are compelled to bear arms and pay subsidies, rather than the landless poor and wage-earners.

When the Counsellor asks what conditions would be demanded of the king if he were to call Parliament, Ralegh stresses the need for freedom of speech there. 'If any man of the commons' house should speak more largely than of duty he ought to do, all such offences [ought] to be pardoned and that to be of record.'
14
He insists that this does not entail a licence for men to speak what they want. He also criticizes the privy counsellors for imprisoning the king's subjects. In the opening address to King James, he refers in obscure and contorted language to his own condemnation by 'the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed, seeing their arms and hands that flung it are most of them already rotten'. Ralegh's pleasure at the deaths of his judges and the image of their rotting limbs is perhaps understandable; but the logic is weak.
15
He returns to the matter of imprisonment early in the main text when he refers to the imprisonment of the parliamentary dissidents, Cornwallis, Sharpe and Hoskins in 1614, 'with no suspicion of treason there'.
16
Towards the end of the Dialogue he insists that 'that which hath been ever grievous, and the cause of many troubles very dangerous, is, that your lordships, abusing the reasons of state, do punish and imprison the king's subjects at your pleasure'. To this the Counsellor replies that the Justice (Ralegh) should take care in speaking 'against our greatest, [for] those men in the end shall be your judges in their own cause: you, that trouble yourself with reformation, are like to be well rewarded.
17
With that threat he confirms Ralegh's fears.