The Five Knights' Case and Debates in the Parliament of 1628: Division and Suspicion Under King Charles I

This article discusses the Five Knights' Case of 1628 and also the more general ideas that were debated in England at the time about how much power a monarch should be allowed to have. This article is available in Constructing the Past: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol7/iss1/11 Constructing the Past The Five Knights' Case and Debates in the Parliament of 1628: Division and Suspicion Under King Charles I Sarah Willms In 1628, Parliament faced a difficult question regarding sovereignty: had King Charles I overstepped his bounds as King with his actions surrounding the Five Knights' Case? The Members of Parliament (MPs) debated this question in an attempt to come to a conclusion about royal prerogative and how far it should extend. The debate centered on the issue of arbitrary imprisonment and whether or not King Charles could imprison his subjects by royal command with no cause shown. These debates regarding arbitrary imprisonment following the Five Knights' Case shed light on the realities of Parliament under the rule of King Charles-these debates can also help resolve the debate between modern Revisionist and Whig historians. On one side are Revisionist historians, such as Conrad Russell and Kevin Sharpe, whoclaim there was no clear division within Parliament, especially prior to 1640. However, it is Whig historians, including S.R. Gardiner, and neo-Whig historians, such as Richard Cust and L.J. Reeve, who report the truth in their works by identifying and discussing a division that was present in Parliament under the rule of King Charles I. Another important discussion that the Five Knights' Case created was the questioning of whether ornot the records from the case were manipulated by Charles or one of his advisors, Attorney General Robert Heath. This accusation affected the historiography of the late 1620's in England. While Mark Kishlansky disproved the Whig claim that records were manipulated, the questioning is still significant because of the implications this accusation had for the Parliament of 1628 and the subjects' ideas of their King. The two debates that the Five Knights' Case produced are important to the study of Stuart history because of the division that they represent within Parliament as well as the suspicion that they sQ.ow towards the King. I. Background on the Five Knights Case In 1626, King Charles I created a difficult situation stemming from his extraparliamentary means of raising money. Charles had dissolved Parliament in order to save his trusted advisor, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, from impeachment by the Parliament of 1626.526 England was also in the middle of a war with France and Spain that was draining the nation's financial and military resources. Therefore, King Charles was in desperate need of money to finance the war as well as the other needs of his court and nation. Yet, the dissolution of the Parliament of 1626 meant that Charles had to give up any potential subsidies that would have been voted upon. This forced the King to turn to what he called new counsels in an attempt to acquire the money he needed. On one occasion, Charles threatened Parliament when he said, "Now this wee must lett you knowe that if you make this present supplie wee will then goe on with our Parliament, if not then wee must think of a more speedie way.,,527 By "a more speedie way" the King was suggesting that he was not afraid to use means other than parliament to raise the money that he needed. Thus, faced with a dissolved Parliament and a high demand for money, Charles decided to create the forced loan, also known as The Loan of Five Subsidies.s28 On the upside, the forced loan was effective in raising money 526 Michael B. Young, Charles I (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997) 34. 527 Richard Cust, "Charles I, the Privy Council and the Forced Loan," The Journal ofBritish Studies 24 no. 2 (Apr. 1985): 220. . 528 L.J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (New York, NY: University of Gambridge Press, 1989) 13.