act the case. The most favourable impression was produced
when the King in his speech from the throne (January 30, 1621), which
was principally taken up with this subject, declared his resolution to
defend the hereditary claim of his grandchildren to the territories of
the Palatine Electorate, and the free profession of Protestantism; to
compel peace if it were necessary sword in hand; for which objects he
claimed the assistance of the country. Parliament did not hesitate for
an instant to express its concurrence with him in these designs. Two
subsidies were granted on the spot, and the resolution was carried
into effect during the continuance of the debates, a step which was
altogether unprecedented. The King thanked the Parliament for this
extraordinary readiness, which would, he said, increase his importance
both at home and abroad.

But this did not prevent Parliament on the other hand from bringing
forward its claims with all possible energy. The power of granting
money was the sinew of all its powers. The necessity of asking
assistance from Parliament in urgent embarrassments, which the Tudors
had avoided as far as possible, now appeared as pressing as ever. Was
it not to be expected that demands should call forth counter-demands?
And the opposition in the previous Parliament rested on a far wider
basis than that of hostility to Somerset: at the present election also
the candidates of the government were rejected in most of the counties
and towns.[408]

The commission appointed for the investigation of abuses did not deal
only with those which were acknowledged to be such. The principal
question rather concerned the competence of the crown to confer such
privileges as those out of which the abuses originated. Under the lead
of Edward Coke, the great lawyer, Parliament adopted a principle which
secured for it a firm standing ground.

Coke, who moreover did not think it necessary to ask the King's
consent for liberty of speech, because this was, he thought, an
independent right of Parliament, vindicated the position that no royal
proclamation had validity if it contradicted an act of Parliament or
an existing law. He took his stand on the times of the later
Plantagenet and of the Lancastrian kings: and he considered that the
form which the relation between the government and Parliament then
assumed was the only legal form. But the government of James I had
granted extraordinarily obnoxious privileges--for instanc