Estate of France, the one articulate voice of the democracy in Western Europe, begged the King to proclaim as the fundamental law of France that he was an absolute monarch and that there was no reason, spiritual or temporal, which could justify resistance to his will. After this act of abdication the States-General were not again summoned until 1789. In 1616 Richelieu began his political career as adviser to the Queen Dowager, who was acting as Regent for Louis XIII.

One of Richelieu's services to France was the creation of a central admiralty to replace the independent provincial admiralties. Whilst England engaged in a suicidal civil war France was engaged in the problem of developing production, founding colonies, and creating the marine which should bind the colonist to the home producer. The conquest of the Huguenot seaport of La Rochelle made it certain that the New France which was being founded in Canada should be Catholic and loyal. The conduct of the Jesuit missionaries aided Richelieu in this matter. The English settlers exterminated the natives and Dutchmen sold firearms to the Mohawks to be used against Catholic Christian tribes. Both the English and the Dutch bought and sold African slaves. But the Canadians kept themselves free from the taint of slavery, and, in advance of the French settler, missionaries taught the Indians the Christian faith and built chapels, hospitals, and schools in which Indians and Frenchmen were treated as brothers in Christ. Loyalty, freedom, and piety were the characteristics of Canada from the very first.

The growth of French influence in North America became in time a serious danger to England's colonies. North America might have been French-speaking to-day had the French been true to the principles which guided them in the seventeenth century. The inevitable struggle between two strong nations for supremacy in North America was, after many years of fighting, decided in favour of the English more by the inability of the French to understand the value of Canada than by the power of the sword. But for Charles' early Parliaments this struggle need never have occurred. When Buckingham was failing to relieve La Rochelle the English in America were capturing French settlements, and before the end of the war the French flag almost ceased to wave in Canada. As one of the conditions of the peace which the opposition of Parliament forced Charles to make with France, Quebec and other Canadian settlements were restored to the French. Not until 1760, when the French were accepting the doctrines of laisserfaire, was Canada again part of the British Empire. It is difficult to over-estimate the gain to France and the loss to England of the decades of English disloyalty, of civil war, and of Cromwell's military usurpation.

XXIV

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE UNDER CHARLES I.

1625-1636

DURING the Reformation in Scotland the nobles had seized the revenues of the Church. Scotch bishops and clergy depended on aristocratic paymasters for their stipends. James I. did something to remedy this grievance by securing a permanent income for the clergy. The noble owner of tithe was still, however, able to oppress the tiller of the soil by compelling him "to keep his harvest ungarnered till it pleased the tithe owner to take possession of his share." To remedy this and other evils, in 1625 Charles issued an Act of Revocation by which the mass of Church property in the hands of laymen was re-annexed to the Crown, on the ground of technical flaws in the original concessions. At the same time the King issued a proclamation explaining that he did not intend to take full advantage of the Act. This was followed by an arrangement which allowed farmers to exchange tithe for a rent-charge or extinguish tithe by paying nine years' purchase. Church lands were left in the hands of the nobles in return for certain payments to the King. This "wise and beneficent reform gave the nobles a legal title to their lands in return for their payments

to the Crown; the poorer clergy received increased stipends; the King was enabled to re-endow bishops; and the farmers could reap their harvests in peace. But the nobles objected to a measure which deprived them of some of the wealth which came from the stolen lands, and they feared that more drastic measures would be taken against them at some future time."

A conciliatory policy was adopted in Ireland. Between 1626 and 1629, after much discussion, an arrangement was made by which a standing army was raised and paid for by the Irish in return for concessions or Graces granted by the Crown. These Graces abolished many, but not all, the Catholic grievances, gave landowners a title to lands which had been in private hands for sixty years, and promised the native chiefs of Connaught, where the English land system had not been established, a confirmation of their estates in the following year. In Monaghan, Catholic priests tried to take possession of their confiscated churches; but there is no reason to assume that the policy of conciliation would not have proved a success had it been adhered to. A loyal Irish army might well have answered the hopes of its creators by defending Ireland from Spanish intrigues and attacks. Land-grabbing wrecked this hopeful scheme.

The sept of the Byrnes held land in Wicklow which officials in Dublin, including Lord Deputy Falkland, coveted. The Byrnes had been guilty of turbulence and outrages in the reign of Elizabeth; but, after the accession of James, the chief of the Byrnes had induced his sept to settle down to a regular life. Nevertheless, in 1623 Falkland proposed to plant Wicklow. This

proposal was vetoed by the English Government. In 1625 Falkland reported that he had discovered a conspiracy in which the Byrnes were involved. Again the English Government forbade the plantation. Three years later the chief of the Byrnes and his two sons were arrested. Before their trial Charles intervened. A Commission was appointed to sift the evidence against the Byrnes, which reported that the Byrnes, instead of being conspirators, were themselves the victims of an infamous conspiracy. Falkland resigned, and Viscount Wentworth, who had led the opposition to the King in Charles' third Parliament, became Lord Deputy of Ireland.

The action of Parliament, after Charles' acceptance of the Petition of Right, caused many moderate parliamentarians to modify their views. Those who sought to establish constitutional monarchy left a party which aimed at making Parliament supreme and reducing the power of the King to that of a Stadtholder. Prominent amongst these new royalists was Wentworth, a commoner of ample fortune, like his colleague, Hampden, who with Wentworth and others had been imprisoned for resisting the illegal forced loan. Wentworth's action was not inconsistent. He had objected to an illegality which would have increased the prerogative of the Crown. When the King admitted his error by accepting the Petition of Right, Wentworth, not inconsistently, objected to the attempt to coerce the King into abandoning his legal right to tunnage and poundage, without which the Crown could neither defend England from a foreign foe nor maintain law and order in the British Isles.