Digges’s ancestors had lived in Kent since the thirteenth century, producing a knight of the shire in 1437. His father, Thomas, who sat in Elizabeth’s fourth and fifth parliaments, was a distinguished astronomer and mathematician, and served under Leicester in the Netherlands as muster-master-general. Digges, Leicester’s godson, was patriotically pressed for service against the Armada at the age of five.
Still under age at the first general election of the new reign, Digges set out on his travels, meeting Theophilus Howard*, Lord Howard de Walden in Paris. On his return he published his father’s book on military discipline, which he dedicated to Howard, adding some remarks of his own on the army as the most worthy career for a gentleman, though his own experience was distinctly limited. It was reputedly Howard’s father, lord chamberlain Suffolk, who arranged his knighthood in 1607, and subsequently his marriage to Mary Kempe, a Kent heiress. Digges’s own patrimony amounted to just two manors and a few hundred acres, and his wife brought him ‘his best means of livelihood’, including Chilham Castle.
The first Jacobean Parliament was already into its fourth session when Digges took his seat on 16 Apr. 1610, the first day after the Easter recess. Despite his novice status and his absence from the session’s initial phase, he settled rapidly, receiving his first committee nomination, to scrutinize a bill on women tenants in tail, on only his second day in the House. In all he received 17 committee nominations during the session, and made six speeches. Digges’s speaking style was very distinctive. He himself later acknowledged his ‘imperfection of speaking fast’, and he acquired a reputation for both ‘volubility and elegancy of speech’.
Despite the paucity of records for this Parliament’s fifth session, three speeches by Digges were recorded, all relating to the Great Contract, the future of which now hung in the balance. On 2 Nov. 1610, with the king agitating for a final verdict from the Commons, Digges changed his tune. Presumably under pressure from his patron, Salisbury, he now urged Members to do as they were requested, and to seek improved relations with James. The next day, he argued that the Commons had now received sufficient assurances to justify accepting what was offered, and that the remaining problems could be resolved later. After the Contract’s abandonment, he helped to report from the conference on 14 Nov., at which Salisbury requested a conventional grant of supply.
Towards the end of 1611 the newsletter-writer John Chamberlain reported that Digges was under consideration for the post of ambassador to Brussels, ‘if this new discovery of the North-West Passage (wherein he is a great undertaker) will give him leave to think of anything else, for it possesseth him wholly’. The following year saw the publication of his tract promoting the Passage, Of the Circumference of the Earth, and the incorporation of the North-West Passage Company under the patronage of Prince Henry. Digges was also a partner in the syndicate which purchased the Bermudas from the Virginia Company.
Although Digges received only 24 committee nominations during the Addled Parliament, a modest increase on his total in 1610, he made 36 recorded speeches, a sign of his growing prominence in the House. He was named on 8 Apr. to the prestigious committee for privileges and returns, and also to the committee to search for precedents on whether attorney-general Bacon should be allowed to sit in the Commons. Three days later, ‘for satisfaction to His Majesty’, he backed the compromise decision to allow Bacon to remain in the House on the proviso that his successors were barred from membership of the Lower House in subsequent parliaments. On 19 Apr., in the context of the disputed Cambridgeshire election, he ‘complained of preventions of free elections by great men’s letters’, and proposed a bill to enable the Commons to examine witnesses under oath. He was promptly nominated to help draft a bill to regulate elections. Predictably, he backed calls on 9 May for Sir Thomas Parry to be sequestered from the House over his manipulation of the Stockbridge election.
This episode aside, Digges was consistently hostile in his pronouncements on Catholics, on 6 May backing Secretary Winwood’s motion for tougher action against recusants. He was also appointed on 14 Apr. to the conference with the Lords on the bill to ensure that Princess Elizabeth’s children by the Protestant Elector Palatine were not debarred from the succession. Surprisingly for a man who was neither a lawyer nor even, as yet, a magistrate, Digges was named to the committee to review statutes requiring repeal or continuance (8 April). On 23 May he responded cautiously to the petition against baronets, agreeing that there were grounds for questioning the establishment of this Order, but insisting that it would be ‘prejudicial to the king to bind his successors not to advance virtue’. He was subsequently named to help consider the petition.
Digges apparently remained silent during the attacks on the French Company, apart from observing on 3 May that the king should be informed of the allegation that the Company’s charter had been obtained by bribery. However, his stance on impositions had not weakened since 1610. On 18 Apr. he supported the bill against such levies, calling for the arguments assembled during the previous Parliament to be presented to the king. Claiming that each merchant bankrupted by impositions was ‘a feather pulled away from the commonwealth’, he recited an anecdote relating to Edward the Confessor, who, when confronted by the sight of a danegeld collection
thought he saw a little devil upon it, whereupon he never after would receive any more of it. So he thought if our king did but look well into these impositions he might see such another little devil amongst them as he would utterly abhor them.
On 21 May he dismissed Secretary Winwood’s argument that Continental practice supported the Crown’s prerogative right to establish impositions, asserting that this was no justification for departing from traditional English practices. He even claimed on 7 June to have found a precedent in an old Parliament roll that equated impositions with villeinage. Having argued on 5 May for discussion of these taxes to take precedence over consideration of supply, he was named later that day to help prepare for a conference with the Lords concerning impositions. Subsequently entrusted with drafting one clause of the petition to James on the same subject (12 and 19 May), he opposed moves on 16 May for a further conference on the grounds that there was nothing left to discuss.
Surprisingly, when Bishop Neile of Lincoln made his disparaging remarks about the Commons’ stance on impositions (24 May), Digges responded cautiously. While deeply critical of Neile, he was anxious that reports of his speech should be verified before further action was taken (25 May). The second Member named to the committee to decide on a plan of action, he insisted on 26 May that the Commons must approach the Lords before appealing to James, and was duly appointed to help compose a message to the peers. Although he apparently supported the suspension of business while the Lords’ reply was awaited, he was also keen to resolve as fast as possible the resulting dispute with the king (27 May), and he was appointed on 28 May to attend James when the Commons sought to justify its behaviour.
After the Parliament’s abrupt end, Digges was summoned before the Privy Council with the other managers of the impositions conference, and ordered to burn his notes. According to one newsletter-writer, he was also ‘confined to the city’ until further notice. Despite this treatment, he contributed £100 to the 1614 Benevolence. His prospects of public employment were once again bleak, and in July 1614 he was also defeated by Sir Thomas Smythe* in a contest for the governorship of the East India Company. In the following year he addressed The Defence of Trade, a detailed rebuttal of charges against the company, to his successful rival, and devoted his energies to building a new house at Chilham. This activity may have enhanced his local standing, as he was added to the Kent bench in 1616.
Still abroad at the general election of 1620, Digges nonetheless reported to Carleton that there was ‘such strange packing for burgesses ... that an old seaman may already fear a storm by the working of the sea’. However, he viewed the Parliament as a fresh opportunity to advance his claims to office, and was re-elected at Tewkesbury in his absence.
Much of this business concerned national affairs, but Digges also conspicuously served the interests of his own constituency, not least by promoting a bill to secure additional local funding for the reconstruction of Tewkesbury’s bridge. This measure, which began its passage on 7 Mar., received its second reading on 5 May, when Digges vigorously defended it against its critics. He chaired the committee, reporting the bill on 29 May, but although it was engrossed it proceeded no further.
Nevertheless, Digges did not hesitate to vary his position on these issues when he felt it was appropriate. As he observed on 9 May during a debate on the Irish cattle bill, although ‘we must remember the places we serve for as our private benefit’, Members must also ‘look to the public good’. Thus on 21 Apr., notwithstanding his earlier attack on the Merchant Adventurers, he acknowledged that production of poor quality cloth had helped to drive down foreign sales, and that the prevailing imbalance between imports and exports was also partly due to the English merchant navy’s failure to compete effectively with Dutch carriers. Similarly, he was quite prepared to adopt a protectionist stance on certain issues, on 21 Feb. supporting the bill against wasteful apparel on the grounds that ‘it cannot be good to send away our cloth, and to receive for it matters of vanity and superfluity’. Again, he was keen to ban imports of Spanish tobacco, which he believed were a major cause of the shortage of coin (18 April).
Digges brought the same independent mindset to many of the other debates on reform during this sitting. When Thomas Wentworth I denounced the Virginia Company’s lottery on 24 Feb., he countered that it was at worst a ‘voluntary grievance in those that did suffer by it’, because participation was not obligatory. On 26 Mar. he successfully defended the exemption from the monopolies bill of the patent for making ordnance. Having helped to devise the grant’s terms, in his capacity as a commissioner for ordnance, he was able to reassure the House that in this case the privileges conferred were conducive to the public good. He was even willing to admit that while patents remained in force, Parliament had no power to vary their conditions (23 April).
Digges’s commitment to reform was undoubtedly genuine. When the Commons agreed to grant two subsidies on 16 Feb., he wrote to Carleton, rejoicing at the thought that this would encourage the king to settle grievances, and calling it ‘the happiest day I ever saw in Parliament’.
Digges may have had mixed feelings about the attack on the patent for regulating inns, given that one of the interested parties was his fellow Tewkesbury Member, Giles Bridges. Nevertheless, he called on 20 Feb. for the patent to be carefully investigated, and was named a week later to the committee to consider the options for punishing the main patentee, (Sir) Giles Mompesson*. On 5 Mar. Digges successfully moved for the drafting of a bill setting out the penalties for future projectors, and any referees who supported their proposals. He provided the introductory speech at the conference on 8 Mar. when the charges against Mompesson were presented, and was the only Member other than Sir Edward Coke who was deemed afterwards to have fulfilled his brief.
Digges appreciated the need to smooth the path of reform by avoiding unnecessary disputes, inside or outside the House. On 2 June, speaking in favour of the proposal to clear Members of suspicion of having abused their freedom of speech, he commented that ‘long sitting brings differences of opinion and so breeds heat’. He was particularly concerned to prevent misunderstandings with the Lords or the king. For example, on 16 Mar. he supported the peers’ request for two Members of the Commons to deliver their testimony concerning Lord Chancellor St. Alban under oath, a proposal which many of his colleagues viewed as a gross insult.
As late as 18 Apr. Digges felt able to report to Carleton that Members were proceeding ‘very mannerly with the king and lovingly with the Lords, unanimously among themselves, and constantly, though slowly, in examination, and reformation of things amiss’. However, he viewed the approaching end of the first sitting with mounting anxiety at how little of substance had been achieved, pushing on 28 May for something to be done about Chancery reform, trade problems, and his own project about justices of the peace. Two days later he warned Members that if they failed to complete more legislation before the recess it would be taken badly by their constituents. Nevertheless, as the principal Commons’ spokesman during the conferences called on 30 and 31 May to decide the arrangements for the forthcoming adjournment, he was prevented by his appointed role from expressing his own views, and remained evasive as the Lords probed for firm details about the current state of the Commons’ business. When it finally emerged on the second day that the Lower House planned to reject the king’s offer to pass some bills, the Members present were asked whether the Lords should believe Digges’s statement, or a contradictory one from Sir Edward Coke in favour of completing legislation; the reply came back ‘una voce, Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Dudley Digges’.
Despite the tribulations of the sitting’s final phase, John Chamberlain reported to Carleton on 23 June that in the closing ten or 12 days, Digges had ‘so pleased all sides in the greatest difficulty that he had the general applause and approbation’. Consequently, he was now ‘in a fair way to some preferment, being greatly favoured by the lord of Buckingham and the prince’. Nothing immediately materialized, and within a month he had gone home, ‘weary of Court holy-water’. However, he was appointed as a trade commissioner shortly before Parliament met again in November.
During the second sitting Digges remained relatively vocal, with 26 recorded speeches, but he received just two committee nominations. On 22 Nov. he attempted to revive interest in his proposal for reforming the commission of the peace, and cautiously welcomed a bill designed to boost English exports, though two days later he again warned against reducing the privileges of the Merchant Adventurers too quickly. He was highly critical on 23 Nov. of the bill against scandalous clergy, which he believed cast doubt on the efficacy of High Commission, on which he himself served. As he observed, the only recent complaint to the Commons against this court was that it was too severe; the bill was therefore unnecessary.
Digges welcomed the king’s apparent invitation to discuss the Palatinate crisis, and attempted on 23 Nov. to dismiss Edward Alford’s fears that the Commons was walking into a trap in which Members could be accused of debating matters of state. He also questioned whether his cousin Sandys’s imprisonment during the recess was in fact connected to the latter’s actions in the House. With the international situation demanding urgent action, he was even more keen to avoid stirring up distrust between king and Parliament.
Over the next few days, Digges became worried that other Members did not share his commitment to rapid action. On 27 Nov. he pressed the House for a firm decision on how much supply to offer, and the next day called for private bills to be put on hold in order to clear the decks. Shortly afterwards he declined to chair the grand committee debate on religion and supply, stating that ‘he took it as reprehension of his too much speaking, that they would put him into a place of silence’.
Early in 1622 Digges was appointed to the commission of inquiry into the civil and ecclesiastical government of Ireland. Although his selection for this task has been interpreted as a punishment for his behaviour in Parliament, Digges himself more likely perceived it as an opportunity to demonstrate his fitness for office. While he still believed that some of his recent speeches had been misreported to the king, he sailed for Ireland with Prince Charles’s assurance ‘that I should be accounted one of your men’. Before leaving, having ‘grown bare ... with building and other devices’, he procured a royal letter to the East India Company ordering the return of his investment, but all in vain. Once in Ireland he drafted most of the report on the Crown’s revenues there, which carefully obscured Buckingham’s own considerable financial interests. Such discretion naturally met with the royal favourite’s approval. Digges was the only commissioner to be appointed to the Irish Privy Council, and also the first of them to secure his recall, in September 1622. Nevertheless, although he once again set himself to follow the Court, he proved too independent-minded for Buckingham’s liking, and found himself sowing in the sand, as Chamberlain colourfully put it. As a deputy lieutenant in Kent he helped to welcome the Spanish ambassador in the summer of 1623, though the task was doubtless uncongenial.
In the elections for the last Jacobean Parliament, Digges stood for one of the Kent county seats, only to be defeated by Sandys, whose supporters denounced him as a ‘royalist’. He was, nevertheless, returned as usual at Tewkesbury.
On 5 Mar. Digges defended the Lords’ request for the Commons to offer supply as an inducement to the king to embrace the drive to war. While recognizing that this proposal breached the convention that grants of supply were initiated by the Lower House, he argued that no offence had been intended, and called for a declaration that the Commons would back the Lords’ advice on the treaties ‘in a due parliamentary course’. As a member of the delegation sent to James to convey Parliament’s views, he witnessed the king’s uncooperative response, but rallied on 11 Mar., urging the Commons to stick to the line already agreed with the Lords.
Following the supply vote of 20 Mar., Digges fell silent on the question of war, apparently not addressing the subject again until 20 Apr., when he complained that the lack of progress on the subsidy bill was hampering military preparations. He also took little part in the Buckingham-inspired attack on lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield), his kinsman and sometime colleague. Named on 9 Apr. to help investigate the new imposition on wines, an issue which had emerged during the Commons’ inquiry into the lord treasurer, Digges commented three days later that he took the introduction of this levy far more seriously than the allegations of corruption collected against Middlesex, otherwise he would not support pressing charges against him in the Lords. Nevertheless, he was appointed to help prepare for the impeachment proceedings (12 April).
On commercial matters at least, Digges could still expect to command respect. He drew Members’ attention on 18 Mar. to recent discussions in the commission on trade, to which he himself belonged, offering the encouraging news that England’s economy had been recovering for the past two years. That was not to say that further reforms were not needed. During the usury bill debate on 8 Mar., he denounced foreign merchants who refused to deal in English commodities, exchanging their own goods only for money which could then earn them interest; in his opinion, this practice was both draining the country of coin and hurting the cloth trade.
Digges’s interest in reform was not restricted to economic matters, since he was named to committees to view petitions on abuses in the courts of justice, and also to prepare the Commons’ collected grievances for presentation to the king (19 and 28 April). As ever, he approached such issues pragmatically. When some Members complained on 23 Mar. that the bill to prevent the procuring of writs of the peace did not cover areas like the Welsh Marches or County Durham, he observed that it was not possible to accomplish more at present; all regions should receive some benefit by the bill, ‘and if with the Good Samaritan you have not oil and wine both to pour into the wounds, yet pour at least wine alone’.
In October 1624 Digges fully expected to become Buckingham’s deputy and lieutenant at Dover, but the appointment went instead to Sir John Hippisley*. Early in 1625, however, he and Sir John Wolstenholme* successfully approached the duke for assistance with another North-West Passage venture.
During the course of the Parliament Digges was nominated to 12 committees, a respectable number which included the committee for privileges, but he made just five recorded speeches. In the previous parliaments of which he had been a Member, Digges had shown an interest in a wide range of topics, but during the Westminster sitting of June-July 1625 a good half of his business related to religion. The main reason for this departure was the renewed inquiry into Richard Montagu’s publications. Appointed on 29 June to find out from Archbishop Abbot what had been done about the New Gagg since the previous year, he reported on 1 July that the primate had been unable to rein in the offending author. On the same day Digges was nominated to help examine Montagu’s latest book, Appello Caesarem. He agreed on 7 July that Montagu’s efforts to avoid examination by the Commons rendered him guilty of contempt, and was promptly named to the committee to compile an account of Members’ proceedings in this matter.
Religious matters did not, however, entirely dominate Digges’s time at Westminster. On 30 June he was instructed to help draft the subsidy bill’s preamble. He was also nominated to consider a petition against the new imposition on wine imports (29 June). During the inquiry into the Yorkshire election dispute, he acted as teller to deny Sir Thomas Wentworth’s* request to be heard by counsel (5 July).
Sometime during the first ten months of Charles’s reign, Digges composed a letter of advice to the king. It was probably never sent, but a copy was found among Digges’s papers when they were seized by the government in May 1626, and it offers striking insights into his thinking. He still believed that the international situation could be transformed if England provided a strong enough lead, but recognized that the Crown’s financial weakness was a serious obstacle. To remedy this defect he recommended that the king’s ordinary revenues be reformed. Among those changes he suggested was a revised book of rates, the implementation of Digges’s own 1621 scheme for allowing ports to farm their own customs, the more efficient exploitation of the royal demesnes, and a clampdown on wasteful grants and pensions. Nevertheless, some recourse to parliamentary supply would also be necessary, and he accordingly offered his own recipe for success in this sphere. Acknowledging that the Commons, ‘a body much above 400 men (too much enlarged), that never did nor will want humours’, required careful management, he stressed the benefits of straight dealing between king and Members. ‘Plain, open, and old ways are best without these fancies of offering bills of grace, or this or that good bill beforehand, or choosing this or that man Speaker; ... and if you please to take no notice of particular follies, but think the Commons only speak what passes as a question in the House, it will avoid much loss of time and trouble.’ A willingness to listen to Parliament’s own reform proposals, and to adopt at least some of them, would also be advantageous: ‘if you please to hear all these petitions, the hurt is little, seeing [as] what you please may in conclusion be denied’. Digges’s vision was at once naïve and practical. ‘If Your Majesty’s grave counsellors, such as are reverenced there for their worth, shall make known your great occasions, your engagements, and your wants, the honest country knights and burgesses will soon show their affections, and your servants are ever ready to advance intimated desires, which I make no doubt the great men that are near about your royal person now will further by their friends and followers, and not infuse jealousies to raise factions, as some have done to my late great master’s disservice.’ Restoring the ranks of magistrates and deputy lieutenants to their Elizabethan levels and character would also help: ‘those places would be better served than they are, and better valued, which would help in parliament where little obligation is now left, but your ordinary household service’. He also threw in a general plea for the nobility and gentry to be more fully employed in public service, especially those of most ability. While he clearly aimed in this to promote his own talents, there was also a sense in his argument that a resource exploited to great effect under Elizabeth was now being wasted.
If Digges’s letter was composed ahead of the 1626 parliamentary elections, then his comments on faction were a less than honest reflection of his own immediate intentions. Years of fruitless searching after office had doubtless soured his attitude towards the Court. Now, as (Sir) James Bagg II informed Buckingham, Digges’s devotion to Archbishop Abbot drew him into alliance with the francophile followers of the 3rd earl of Pembroke, whose objective was the duke’s removal from power. In keeping with this new stance, Digges backed Edward Scott’s successful campaign for a Kent shire seat, thereby helping to ensure the defeat of Buckingham’s candidate, Sir Edwin Sandys. However, it is clear that Digges, who was himself re-elected at Tewkesbury, was also seeking revenge on Sandys for his defeat in the 1624 Kent election.
The 1626 Parliament saw Digges return to prominence, as he was nominated to 48 committees and made over 100 recorded speeches. Although not initially named to the committee for privileges, he was added to its ranks on 11 February. He apparently also chaired all the meetings of the committee established on 3 Mar. to consider the best method of selecting committees.
Digges fully understood that no attack on Buckingham could succeed unless Charles was offered substantial benefits in return. When William Coryton moved on 17 Feb. to consider the Crown’s ordinary revenues, Digges quickly linked this subject to the question of national defence, thereby giving the former issue a greater significance. He pursued the same line a week later, when he secured a discussion of the whole subject in grand committee. On 25 Feb., borrowing the old Athenian metaphor of ‘wooden walls’ to describe the navy, he relayed Kentish concerns about the inadequacies of coastal patrols, and then proposed that an imposition be levied on foreign merchants to provide additional funds for this task. Named on 7 Mar. to the committee for the bill to preserve the king’s revenues, he continued to labour the point about the inadequacy of the Crown’s ordinary resources (16 Mar.), and on 10 Mar. even suggested that remedies should be found before the House proceeded to consider supply.
Meanwhile, having already hinted at Buckingham’s failure as lord admiral to protect domestic waters, Digges sought to attach blame to him for the failure of the Cadiz expedition. On 28 Feb. he absolved both Charles and the ordinary soldiers of responsibility for this debâcle, and ascribed the disaster to a failure of leadership. The difficulty now was in finding evidence to back this claim. Later that day he was nominated to prepare questions to be put to the Council of War, but all efforts during the next ten days to establish whether its military advice had been followed foundered in the face of the councillors’ refusal to supply definite answers. Digges was even sent to interview Lord Conway (Sir Edward Conway I*), who claimed to be ill, but all to no avail.
Digges remained conscious of the need to demonstrate that the Commons could offer the king positive initiatives, and he was the first Member named on 14 Mar. to help draft a bill for finding arms. On the same day he unveiled a project for a defensive and offensive naval war, funded by a joint-stock Company. Strategically his objective was much the same as the one he had outlined in 1621, this being a concerted bid to disrupt the fleets bringing bullion from America, though he also initially envisaged patrols in the Channel. By promoting what would be in effect a privateering venture backed by Parliament, he aimed to boost the war effort without placing a fresh burden either on the Crown or on ordinary taxpayers, while simultaneously encouraging the wealthier classes to rediscover their former military prowess. However, by implication, this venture would also be outside the control of the lord admiral. A select committee was immediately established to explore the idea further, under Digges’s own chairmanship. By 14 Apr., when he reported back, many of the details had been worked out, including a calculation that around £200,000 p.a. would be needed for three or four years in order to break Spain’s hold on the Caribbean. This money would be entrusted to 200 local treasurers, who would also choose a Council of War. In the event of peace with Spain, the organization would become a mercantile body trading with the West Indies. Digges’s project remained under discussion until late May, but then vanished from the Commons’ agenda. One minor by-product was his nomination on 15 Apr. to help draft a bill on shipping laws.
Meanwhile, a new front had opened up in the attack on Buckingham. On 11 Mar. Samuel Turner suggested that the duke be charged with a variety of offences on the basis of common fame. At first Digges made no comment, instead focusing his attention on Clement Coke’s earlier outburst about tyrannical government. In the face of the king’s demands that Coke be punished by the Commons, Digges combined with Eliot on 15 Mar. to secure a vote that the offender had been misreported. However, their political alliance remained fragile, and the next day Digges blocked an attempt by Eliot to resurrect the St. Peter affair during a debate on the French embargo. On 17 Mar. he finally addressed Turner’s charges, specifically backing those which concerned the sale of honours and Buckingham’ accumulation of offices.
As tension mounted, tempers became frayed. On 20 Apr., with Charles demanding progress on supply within the next five days, Sir Dudley Carleton attempted to explain the urgency of the international situation. Carleton was back in the House for the first time since 1610, and Digges rounded on his old friend, dismissing him as ‘a stranger in Israel’ who did not understand the Commons’ concerns; England and Ireland faced their own crisis, and the root of the problem was a single overmighty subject. He then secured agreement for Members to focus all their efforts on the inquiry into Buckingham, so that they were free to discuss supply by the king’s deadline. On 21 Apr. Digges moved for a committee of 12 to finalize the charges against the duke, and then assumed its chair. By 3 May he was ready to report the finished outline of the intended impeachment case, and the next day was appointed to help present it to the Lords. As one of the few non-lawyers among the impeachment managers, he was entrusted with the preamble, which provided an overview of the entire case.
The impeachment conference got underway on 8 May. Drawing on the language of his astronomer father, Digges opened the proceedings by comparing the different ranks of society to the earth and the heavenly spheres, a harmonious whole into which Buckingham had appeared like a meteor, an omen of ill fortune. He then touched on the detailed charges to follow, before ending with further astronomical allusions. The conference had been intended to continue the following day, but Digges was obliged to inform the Lords that there would have to be a pause, as one of the speakers, Edward Whitby had been taken ill. This gave the Commons time to voice its discomfort that the duke himself was attending the conference to hear the charges, and Digges, having agreed with the general view that the Lords should be requested to imprison Buckingham, was named to help devise an appropriate message.
By now Digges was starting to recover his nerve. He was appointed on 6 June to review the text of the Commons’ letter complaining about Cambridge University’s election of Buckingham as its new chancellor. Two days later he was named to help frame the heads of the Remonstrance against the collection of Tunnage and Poundage, which had still not yet been granted by Parliament to the king. On 9 June he gave evidence in the Lords as a Crown witness against the earl of Bristol (Sir John Digby*), over the latter’s conduct as ambassador to Spain during the Spanish Match negotiations. Doubtless contrary to the government’s expectations, Digges affirmed that Bristol had disliked the treaty, and had always carefully followed James I’s instructions. By now the Remonstrance against his own imprisonment had evolved into a much lengthier document directed against Buckingham. On 12 June Digges defended its contents, and insisted that the king’s reaction to it should dictate whether or not supply was finally granted. Two days later he headed the list of nominees to draft the Speaker’s address to Charles when the Remonstrance was presented.
In July 1626 the government punished Digges by removing him from the Kent commission of the peace, but in the following month he was appointed one of the county’s collectors for the final batch of Privy Seal loans, presumably to test his loyalty. That autumn he also became a Forced Loan commissioner. Far from proving reluctant to collect the Loan, Digges was reported by Nathaniel Tomkins* to be one of ‘the foremost in advancing the service’. Consequently, by late November he was reconciled with the Court through the favour of Sir Richard Weston*. Nevertheless, in December he was summoned before the Privy Council after it was alleged, apparently by Lord (Sir Nicholas) Tufton*, that he himself had refused to pay the Loan. On 2 Jan. 1627 he lost his temper at the Council table, using ‘injurious and scandalous speeches’ of Tufton, and was committed to the Fleet. There he was questioned in a bid to prove that his attacks on Buckingham during the 1626 Parliament had been instigated by Archbishop Abbot. He was pardoned in early February, and on his release he ‘bestowed £30 to free debtors, poor men, who were in for small sums, or only for the fees; by whose example, others of the gentlemen imprisoned for the refusal of the Loan, have resolved to do the like’. Whether Digges did eventually contribute to the Loan has never been established. Although he is generally presumed to have complied, his assessment of £20 was still listed by the Kent commissioners in mid 1627 as ‘unpaid, if not paid above’.
The suspicion that Digges was a Loan refuser did his local standing no harm at all, and in 1628 he finally achieved his ambition of representing Kent in Parliament, although not without a contest.
This episode was, however, a mere sideshow to the main business of combating arbitrary government. During the session’s opening weeks, Digges said comparatively little about this, perhaps because he was disadvantaged by his lack of a formal legal training. Nevertheless he made his personal attitudes clear enough. As he explained on 25 Mar., ‘foreign writers by way of wonder have described this our kingdom, and admiring the prosperities of it, have ascribed all to the liberty that the subject ever hath enjoyed; and good cause they have, for we ourselves brag of it as the best part of our inheritance’. It was in the king’s best interests, he asserted on 22 Mar., to maintain these freedoms. ‘It is said he is no great monarch that hath not whatsoever he will, but rather he is a greater monarch in observing the laws of the kingdom. That king that is not tied to the laws is a king of slaves.’ The guarantee of propriety of goods bound the subject to serve his monarch (26 Mar.), and if the king did but uphold his people in ‘that glorious fundamental right whereby we have power to give’, then he would surely receive whatever supply he needed (24 March).
Observe the nature of these insolencies. ... They are soldiers without officers,officers without justice, for there is no justice of the peace who is not scorned by them. ... They will come in late at night, and if the master of the house like it not, they beat him. ... They make the farmers to run away, and many an honest man that lived well to hide his head.
Ibid. ii. 129, 156, 197-8, 260, 264, 365, 420, 574.
Digges was appointed on 28 Mar. to help examine a report of the abuse of billeting powers in Surrey, and subsequently also to draft a bill on impressment, and to consider the Commons’ next moves to secure the liberties of the subject (3 April). Although he remained reluctant to pronounce on the legal complexities underlying these issues, he opened the conference with the Lords on 7 Apr. at which the Commons laid out its resolutions on the question of liberties, likening the task before them to King Josiah’s cleansing of the Jerusalem Temple, and citing several medieval precedents to show that these liberties were the Englishman’s birthright. He was subsequently instructed to provide a copy of his text for the benefit of other Members, though as late as 23 Apr. he had still not complied.
Digges’s natural instinct was to come to terms with the king, and following Charles’s offer to confirm the subjects’ liberties providing he received supply, he enthusiastically gave his voice on 4 Apr. for a grant of five subsidies. However, when the king sent a further message demanding a more urgent response, Digges complained that such interventions were counter-productive, and insisted that supply must go hand in hand with the redress of grievances (12 April). He was promptly nominated to help draft the Commons’ reply. Two days later he was appointed to help investigate the slandering of John Selden* by his old friend Theophilus Howard, now 2nd earl of Suffolk. Although his views on this incident went unrecorded, he apparently took it seriously, attending two out of the committee’s three meetings.
Despite this snub, on 28 Apr. Digges seconded Wentworth’s motion for a bill of liberties, and he was appointed to its drafting committee. Even so, he was dissatisfied with the resulting text, on the one hand concerned that it departed too far from the Commons’ original resolutions, and on the other that it went beyond previous laws in limiting the king’s actions (29 April). As he put it on 1 May: ‘I say the king ought not to do this, but I like not to put it in a law, that the king ought not. Never Act spoke in such language’.
The king’s initial reluctance to accept the Petition unconditionally prompted the Commons to begin work on a new Remonstrance of the nation’s ills. Ostensibly, Digges showed no interest in the early debates on this provocative document, though he reacted badly on 5 June when Charles intervened to ban attacks on his ministers. Denouncing this message as an attack on the Commons’ ‘fundamental liberties’, he may have then left the chamber. A scurrilous verse about the ensuing debate, in which Buckingham was specifically named as the root problem, asserts that ‘wily Digges’ was absent through sickness, as ‘his peaceful mind could not abide that fray’.
Digges’s pursuit of the shipping problem dated back even earlier. On 11 Apr. he expressed concern that the needs of trade should not be completely subsumed beneath the problems of subjects’ rights:
the fundamental liberty which we have been upon ... may well be compared to the heart. And matters of navigation the next, and may be likened to the liver, which though it do not decay so fast nor appear to do so, yet in little time will, and be as dangerous to the life as the hurt of the heart.
After the grand committee on trade had considered a petition from Trinity House on the decay of shipping, he moved on 25 Apr. for a select committee to explore possible solutions, and was naturally appointed to this body. Despite poor attendances at the trade committee, by 17 May Digges had prepared reports on a number of different topics. However, the Commons’ agenda left no space for these to be aired, and thus it was the general wish to include trade concerns in the Remonstrance that finally presented him with his opportunity. On 4 June he delivered a lengthy report on shipping problems, which recommended incentives for shipbuilders, and a rapid end to the three-year-old stand-off between Parliament and the Crown over the granting of Tunnage and Poundage. Much of this report was absorbed into the Remonstrance two days later.
During the session’s final weeks Digges was busy on several different fronts. On 7 June he was appointed both to help draft the subsidy bill’s preamble, and to attend the conference at which the Lords announced their intention to press the king for a more satisfactory answer to the Petition of Right. His relief at the success of this initiative was evident three days later, when he moved a vote of thanks to Charles for agreeing to enter the Petition and its second answer on the Parliament roll and in Westminster’s courts of record. On 24 June Digges called for a petition to be sent to the king containing his proposals to encourage shipbuilding. Appointed to its drafting committee, he reappeared the next day with the finished document.
In November 1628 it was said at Court that Digges was to be employed ‘for certain’ as an ambassador, but he had received no such appointment when Parliament reconvened in the following January.
On the issue of religion, Digges remained broadly in line with the mood of the House. During the debate on 3 Feb. on how to enforce an unambiguously Protestant interpretation of the Church of England’s teachings, he attacked the Arminians for redefining the Thirty-Nine Articles to agree with their own views, though his proposal that the bishops should impose orthodoxy lacked credibility. Two days later he was appointed to compare the different printed versions of the Articles, after an inaccurate edition sparked fears of a surreptitious attempt to modify the official teachings on church ceremonies. On 13 Feb. he again complained about the increase of popery in Ireland. He also followed closely the inquiry into the reprieve of some Catholic priests arrested in Clerkenwell, Middlesex during the previous year, calling on 16 Feb. for a committee to prepare questions for the judges who presided over the trial, and the next day suggesting that evidence had been withheld from the jury.
Fundamentally, however, Digges wished to see the Tunnage and Poundage question resolved, for on 12 Feb. he lamented ‘all the miseries that have fallen upon us ... since the dispute in this business’. Accordingly, he sought to avoid further disputes with the Crown. On 21 Jan. he opposed the establishment of a select committee to inquire into how the Petition of Right had been entered in the official records, agreeing with Secretary Coke that any concerns could be referred to the grand committee of grievances in the usual way. Although nominated to the committee to consider the confiscation of John Rolle’s* merchandise for non-payment of Tunnage and Poundage (22 Jan.), he was content to accept the bill offered by the government on 26 Jan. for granting these levies. When John Selden asserted that such a measure should only be initiated by the Commons, Digges expressed surprise, but promptly moved for a drafting committee to be established. Two days later, with the king demanding that this bill be given priority, he was named to help prepare the Commons’ account of their progress on this front.
Digges’s customs annuity had been paid only intermittently during the 1620s, and in February 1630 he commuted it for £2,625. Almost simultaneously, acting through Sir Edward Hales*, he bought the manor and hundred of Faversham from the Crown for £3,129. Although still on close terms with the now imprisoned Eliot, who appointed him one of his executors later that year, Digges remained determined to secure a major office. In November 1630 he purchased the reversion to the mastership of the Rolls, then worth about £1,600 a year, but declining in value; he allegedly offered £10,000, half in cash and half to be paid later, when he had entered on the office.