The Forced Loan

Holdenby House

The Parliament of 1626 had not voted any taxation and Charles desperately needed money. He decided to demand directly from his people what their representatives in parliament had refused to grant, and in July 1626 sent letters to the JPs telling his subjects "lovingly, freely, and voluntarily" to give him money.

Throughout July and August, the vast majority of Charles's subjects refused to pay.

Rushton Lodge

Nothing daunted, in September Charles levied a Forced Loan. Earlier monarchs had occasionally ordered individual subjects to lend money in emergency, but Charles aimed at extracting the equivalent of five subsidies. Anyone who refused to "lend" (with virtually no hope of repayment) was to answer to the Privy Council. These threats had their effect, and altogether about £250,000 was extracted.

Demanding money with menaces was not Charles' only unpopular move, he also began to billet his soldiers in the houses of civilians all along the South Coast of England. [Normally soldiers were lodged in taverns and inns, but Charles had no money to pay the tariffs]. These underpaid, undisciplined and unwelcome guests were immune from local law - being subject only to military courts.
Charles even used the billeting of troops as a form of punishment for local opposition. One town that suffered in this way was Banbury - the puritan stronghold of William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, a formidable opponent of Charles.

Audley End

The Five Knights Case

	Most of those ordered to pay the Forced Loan had obeyed, but seventy-six gentlemen and Theophlius Clinton/ Fiennes, Earl of Lincoln were imprisoned for their refusal to pay.
	Charles did not bring any case against these men in court for fear that the judges might decide against the Forced Loan's legality.
	Five imprisoned gentlemen - Sir William Coryton (a client of the Earl of Pembroke), Sir Thomas Darnell (a Lincolnshire baronet), Sir Walter Earle (or Erle, a West Country Calvinist), Sir Edmund Hampden (uncle of John Hampden) and Sir John Heveningham applied to the Court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.
	The right of the monarch to imprison (without bringing specific charges) people who posed a danger to the state had long been accepted, and the Judges found in Charles I's favor. The Five Knights were sent back to prison.
	Although Charles won the Five Knights Case, he squandered political capital. The royal prerogative to imprison without cause shown was widely accepted in the case of seditious conspirators. The political nation was not happy for it to be used against respectable citizens objecting to extraordinary levies.

St James Palace, Chapel Royal

Sibthorpe, Maynwaring, & Montagu

Charles encouraged the Church of England's ministers to preach in favor of the Forced Loan. Two sermons were of particular importance: those of Roger Maynwaring (1590-1653) and Robert Sibthorpe (died 1662). Sibthorpe preached at the Northampton Assizes in February 1627 and Maynwaring before the King; both stressed the subject's duty of obedience to the King's commands. A subject's religious duty to obey the prince was far superior to particular English laws about taxation, and so the Forced Loan must be paid.

Even William Laud thought that Maynwaring's sermons were likely to offend, but Charles I thought these were truths his subjects should hear, and ordered the sermons to be printed.

When Archbishop George Abbot refused to license Maynwaring's extreme endorsement of Divine Right theory, he was suspended from office. Bishops who shared Charles' views - William Laud, Richard Neile and John Buckeridge - approved Maynwaring's sermons for the press. Buckeridge died in 1631, but Neile and (particularly) Laud grew steadily in importance.


Another outspoken cleric was Richard Montagu (or Mountague, 1577-1641). His New Gag for an Old Goose rejected as the extreme views of puritans Calvinist doctrines long accepted in England; this considerably annoyed many orthodox English Protestants. In the Parliament of 1624, Montagu was attacked as an Arminian.

Montagu's response - Appello Caesarem - was blunter still in its anti-Calvinism and provoked further attacks on his views in the Parliaments of 1625 and 1626. King Charles organized a conference (heavily rigged in Montagu's favor) to discuss his views. In 1628, he promoted Montagu to Bishop of Chichester.

The support given to Montagu by Charles - especially when combined with his lack of enthusiasm for penal laws against Catholics - convinced many people in England that Charles wanted to move the Church of England closer to Catholicism.