“For further proof, I cannot pass by that my Lord told His late Majesty King _Charles_ the First, and Her Majesty the now Queen-Mother, some time before the Wars, That he observed by the humours of the People, the approaching of a Civil War, and that His Majesties Person would be in danger of being deposed, if timely care was not taken to prevent it.”
Perhaps a very far-reaching gift of prophecy may not have been necessary to foretell all this. Early in 1640, things were looking very threatening. Both in England and in Scotland political as well as religious disputes were causing frictions likely at any moment to produce a flame. Charles was preparing for a war against the Scots, and, in order to obtain a vote of supplies for this war, he summoned a Parliament, afterwards known as the Short Parliament.
When it had assembled, a letter from the Scots to the King of France, appealing for his assistance in a war which they were contemplating against the English, was produced in the House to stimulate the loyalty of the Commons. It had little effect. Members boldly asserted that a Scottish invasion might be a bad thing, but that invasions by the Crown upon the liberties of Englishmen at home were worse things still and that these home invasions ought to be repelled before the Scottish invasion. As to either subsidies for the proposed campaign against the Scots, or ship-money, the Commons passed a Resolution that “till the liberties of the House and kingdom were cleared, they knew not whether they had anything to give or no”. Pym urged peace with the Scots, while Sir Henry Vane asked for £840,000 to make war upon them. The Commons, and even the Lords, were in a sulky humour, the King was now being publicly defied by his Government and he dissolved Parliament on 5 May, 1640.
Charles, Strafford and Vane tried every possible means of raising funds for the war. The citizens of London refused to make a loan at 8 per cent. and they also refused to levy a rate. An appeal to the King of Spain for a loan met with no better success. There were revolutionary risings in London. Torture was used for the last time in England upon one of the leaders[35] of the malcontents. Presently the bishops were persuaded to give a few thousands; Cottington managed to borrow £50,000 from the East India Company at the usurious interest of 16 per cent., and at last the City agreed to a loan of £200,000, on the security of the Peers. Of all the Peers none was more ready to help the King financially than Newcastle.