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Updated: June 19, 2025
The royal Government was bankrupt, the resistance to the payment of ship-money was already making itself felt, and disturbances in the central and eastern counties were absorbing the attention and energies of the Government.
With his big family he was very gentle, yet obedience was demanded, and given, without question or dispute, and a glance at the portrait of the man makes the matter plain. It was easier to agree with him than successfully to oppose him. So slipped the years away, broken only by an echo from cousin John Hampden, who refused to pay "ship-money."
Which even of their cruel and unreasonable requisitions, so as it were not inconsistent with all law and order, was refused? Had they not sent Strafford to the block and Laud to the Tower? Had they not destroyed the Courts of the High Commission and the Star Chamber? Had they not reversed the proceedings confirmed by the voices of the judges of England, in the matter of ship-money?
Ministerial rank worked a wonderful change; so much so that Noye was actually the originator of the ship-money tax which played so large a share in embroiling the nation. Hals goes so far as to say that Noye "was blow-coal, incendiary, and stirrer-up of the Civil War"; and it was he who prosecuted the arrested members of the House of Commons.
No more irregular financial expedients, such as the imposition of ship-money, were to be adopted, except by the consent of Parliament. As if this were not enough to put the king under the thumb of his Parliament, the royal prerogative of dissolving that body was abrogated, and meetings at least every three years were provided for by a "Triennial Act."
Like the English Parliament in the days of Charles I.'s ship-money, the Reichstag could in the last resort refuse supplies, and so bring the machinery of government to a standstill. But this situation has never yet arisen or seemed likely to arise.
It was that party which, on the great question of monopolies, stood up against Elizabeth. It was that party which, in the reign of James the First, organised the earliest parliamentary opposition, which steadily asserted the privileges of the people, and wrested prerogative after prerogative from the Crown. It was that party which forced Charles the First to relinquish the ship-money.
At last the quiet patience was broken by the news of the ship-money, and of a writ addressed to the High Sheriff, Sir Peter Temple of Stave, ordering him to raise £4500 on the county of Buckingham. Hampden's resolve was soon known.
Rushworth, vol. i. p. 415. Franklyn, p. 206. This is the first appearance, in Charles's reign, of ship-money; a taxation which had once been imposed by Elizabeth, but which afterwards, when carried some steps further by Charles, created such violent discontents. In the most absolute governments, such expedients would be regarded as irregular and unequal.
He deserved his nickname, Old Subtlely, for he had a clear insight into the real issues from the very beginning of the great quarrel: he headed in Oxfordshire the resistance to the levying of Ship-money, and was the champion of the Independents, the most determined of the king's opponents.
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