ent four of the leading members of the Lower House to
the Tower, and fell back on an obstinate resolve to govern without any
Parliament at all. The resolve was carried recklessly out through the
next seven years. The protests of the Commons James looked on as a
defiance of the Crown, and he met them in a spirit of counter-defiance.
The abuses which Parliament after Parliament had denounced were not
only continued but carried to a greater extent than before. The
spiritual courts were encouraged in fresh encroachments. Though the
Crown lawyers admitted the illegality of proclamations they were issued
in greater numbers than ever. Impositions were strictly levied. But a
policy of defiance did little to fill the empty treasury. A large sum
was gained by the sale to the Dutch of the towns which had been left by
the States in pledge with Elizabeth; but even this supply was exhausted,
and a fatal necessity drove James on to a formal and conscious breach of
law. Whatever question might exist as to the legality of impositions, no
question could exist since the statute of Richard the Third that
benevolences were illegal. Nor was there any question that the levy of
benevolences would rouse a deep and abiding resentment in the nation at
large. Even in the height of the Tudor power Wolsey had been forced to
abandon a resource which stirred England to revolt. But the Crown
lawyers advised that while the statute forbade the exaction of gifts it
left the king free to ask for them; and James resolved to raise money by
benevolences. At the close of the Parliament of 1614 therefore letters
were sent out to the counties and boroughs in the name of the Council
requesting contributions. The letters remained generally unanswered; and
in the autumn fresh letters had to be sent out in which the war which
now threatened German Protestantism in the Palatinate was used to spur
the loyalty of the country to a response. The judges on assize were
ordered to press the king's demand. But prayer and pressure failed
alike. In the three years which followed the dissolution the strenuous
efforts of the sheriffs only raised sixty thousand pounds, a sum less
than two-thirds of the value of a single subsidy. Devonshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Warwickshire protested against the benevolences,
and Somersetshire appealed to the statute which forbade them. It was in
vain that the western remonstrants were silenced by threats from the
Council, and that the laggard shir