Did they entertain the thought of sweeping away the English Parliament altogether, or at least of not calling it together again? This is not likely. King Charles affirmed on more than one occasion that it lay with him to summon or not to summon Parliament, and a resolution had been formed to issue no fresh summons as long as the royal authority was not firmly established on its own foundation. The Archbishop once said at a later time, that Parliament was intended to maintain the power and greatness of the crown, but that nothing in the world was more lamentable than the corruption of what was good: that Parliament had once ventured to depose a king, but that it never ought to be allowed to proceed to this length again: that for his part he had never thought of setting aside Parliamentary government; though he had perhaps thought it right, in cases of urgent necessity, to collect taxes which had not been granted by Parliament. We become still more accurately acquainted with the direction in which affairs were moving, through a letter from Wentworth to the King. After the miscarriage of Arundel’s mission, much was said of the expediency of again forming a connexion between England and France and the States-General, of imposing certain conditions on the Spaniards, and then exacting their performance even by force of arms. Wentworth declared himself most decidedly opposed to the scheme, and that not only because he preferred the alliance of Spain to that of France on [A.D. 1636.] general grounds, but most of all, as he states at full length, because the power of the King was not sufficiently confirmed in Ireland, much less in England, to allow him to interfere decisively in European affairs. Whatever weight might attach to the declaration of the courts of justice that the King was entitled to levy ship-money, yet he considered this decision far from sufficient. If a war were to break out, he thought that the tax would be refused, and that the government would have less power to exact it: what would happen then if any disaster occurred? It would certainly be necessary in that case to summon Parliament, and to claim its assistance--a course which under the present circumstances no one could wish to adopt. So long as it had not been decided that the King had the same right to raise an army which he now enjoyed with regard to the navy, Wentworth thought that his authority had only one foot, and that he must be put in a position to raise forces for service on land, which he could lead into foreign countries according to his own judgment, like the old kings of England; that this state of things must be brought about first in England, and then step by step in Scotland; and that till then the goal could not be reached, and no great undertaking could be hazarded[71].