He permitted no person to leave the island without his licence.  He established vast monopolies for his own private benefit.  He imposed taxes arbitrarily.  He levied them by military force.  Some of his acts are described even by the partial Clarendon as powerful acts, acts which marked a nature excessively imperious, acts which caused dislike and terror in sober and dispassionate persons, high acts of oppression.  Upon a most frivolous charge, he obtained a capital sentence from a court-martial against a man of high rank who had given him offence.  He debauched the daughter-in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and then commanded that nobleman to settle his estate according to the wishes of the lady.  The Chancellor refused.  The Lord Lieutenant turned him out of office and threw him into prison.  When the violent acts of the Long Parliament are blamed, let it not be forgotten from what a tyranny they rescued the nation.

Among the humbler tools of Charles were Chief-Justice Finch and Noy the Attorney-General.  Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the cause of liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, abandoned that cause for the sake of office.  He devised, in conjunction with Finch, a scheme of exaction which made the alienation of the people from the throne complete.  A writ was issued by the King, commanding the city of London to equip and man ships of war for his service.  Similar writs were sent to the towns along the coast.  These measures, though they were direct violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show of precedent in their favour.  But, after a time, the government took a step for which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent writs of ship-money to the inland counties.  This was a stretch of power on which Elizabeth herself had not ventured, even at a time when all laws might with propriety have been made to bend to that highest law, the safety of the state.  The inland counties had not been required to furnish ships, or money in the room of ships, even when the Armada was approaching our shores.  It seemed intolerable that a prince who, by assenting to the Petition of Right, had relinquished the power of levying ship-money even in the out-ports, should be the first to levy it on parts of the kingdom where it had been unknown under the most absolute of his predecessors.

Clarendon distinctly admits that this tax was intended, not only for the support of the navy, but “for a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an everlasting supply of all occasions.”  The nation well understood this; and from one end of England to the other the public mind was strongly excited.