I.

PARLIAMENT OF 1628. PETITION OF RIGHT.

In the heat of controversy about the supplies to be granted and the
liberties to be confirmed by the King in return, it was once harshly
said in the Lower House during this Parliament that it was better to
be brought low by foreign enemies than to be obliged to suffer
oppression at home. The King answered by saying no less abruptly that
it was more honourable for the King to be straitened by the enemies of
his country, than to be set at nought by his own subjects.

So much more importance was attached by both sides to domestic than to
foreign struggles. But after the last failure both parties had come to
feel how much the honour of the country and religion itself suffered
from their dissensions. Among the politicians of the time there was a
school of learned men, who had studied the old constitution of the
country, and wished for nothing more than its restoration. They were
seriously bent on establishing an equilibrium between the royal
prerogative and the rights of Parliament. Among them were found Edward
Coke, John Selden, and John Glanvil; but Robert Cotton may be regarded
as the most distinguished of them all, a man who had studied most
deeply, and who combined with his studies an insight into the present
that was unclouded by passion. To Cotton we owe a report presented by
him to the Privy Council, in which he explains that the government
should proceed on the old royal road of collecting taxes by grant of
Parliament, and indeed should adopt no other method; while at the same
time he expresses the conviction that Parliament would be satisfied,
if its most pressing anxieties were dissipated. He says that he
himself would not advise the King to sacrifice the First Minister, for
that such a step had always had ruinous consequences: he thought
moreover that the old passionate hostility against the Duke need not
be feared, if he came forward himself as the man who had advised the
King to reassemble Parliament.[469] We learn that the King did not
determine to summon it, until the most prominent men had given him an
assurance that Buckingham should not be attacked. Moderation in the
attitude of Parliament, and security for the First Minister formed as
it were the condition under which the Parliament of 1628 was
summoned.[470]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1628.]

On March 22, five days after the beginning of the session, the
deliberations of the Lower House were opened by the remark