36 POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY,
give except in a parliamentary way. A very rickety fleet was
collected from the maritime towns and counties, and those who
objected were sharply told that in times of danger ordinary
precedents no longer applied.1 There was still no money, how-
ever, to feed or pay mariners, although the probability of a war
with France made the equipment of the fleet more imperative
than ever. Therefore the king had recourse to a forced loan, to
be raised by commissioners who were to exact from all men
rated in the subsidy-books sums equivalent to what they would
have paid if parliament had voted five subsidies. To make the
scheme more palatable, Charles called upon the clergy for help
from their pulpits. In a letter to the archbishop—doubtless in-
tended to serve as a text for many a sermon—the king urged that,
having been led into war by the advice of parliament, he could
not now be abandoned but with the sin and shame of all men.2
The section of the clergy that good protcstants were beginning
to label 'Arminian' willingly responded to the call. Sibthorpe
and Roger Manwaring preached sermons magnifying the pre-
rogative above law and parliament. Charles was so pleased
with the former's effusion that he directed the archbishop to
license it. The archbishop refused. Thereupon he was ordered
to confine himself to his house and was supplanted in the church
courts by a commission headed by Laud. Other methods than
persuasion were adopted in dealing with those who refused to
contribute. By way of warning, the lord chief justice, Sir
Randolph Crew, was dismissed for refusing to acknowledge the
legality of the loan. Some of the recalcitrants were sent to prison,
or into confinement, or to serve on board ship, and an attempt
was even made to compel fifty men from Essex to accept press-
money for service with the king of Denmark. Among those who
refused to contribute were Eliot, destined to be a martyr for
parliamentary liberties, Hampden, the future hero of the struggle
against ship-money, and Wentworth, who, after changing sides,
became the great exponent of personal government;
During the year 16127 the situation went from bad to worse.
The king of Denmark was expelled from Germany, and the
protestant cause lay at the feet of the victorious Roman catholics;
the French Huguenots were encouraged to rebel, but Buckingham
suffered a decisive defeat on the Isle of R<£ when he tried to
relieve La Rochelle.3 These disasters increased the need of
1 Rushworth, i. 4.19-20. a Gardiner, vi. 143. * $«<• beluw, pp. 63-4*