12. =The Question of Sovereignty. 1628.=--Charles was anxious to come to terms with his Parliament on the question of Tonnage and Poundage, and would probably have consented to accept the compromise proposed in =1610= (see p. 486). Neither party, indeed, could afford to surrender completely to the other. The customs duties were already more than a third of the revenue, and, if Charles could levy what he pleased, he might so increase his income as to have no further need of parliaments; whereas, if the Commons refused to make the grant, the king would soon be in a state of bankruptcy. The financial question, in short, involved the further question whether Charles or the Parliament was to have the sovereignty. Dangerous as it would be for both parties to enter upon a quarrel which led up to such issues, it was the more difficult to avoid it because the king and the Commons were already at variance on another subject of pre-eminent importance. 13. =Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628.=--That subject was the subject of religion. The country gentlemen, who almost entirely filled the benches of the House of Commons, were not Puritan in the sense in which Cartwright had been Puritan in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 446). They did not wish to abolish episcopacy or the Prayer Book; but they were strongly Protestant, and their Protestantism had been strengthened by a sense of danger from the engagements in favour of the English Catholics into which James and Charles had entered. Lately, too, the power of the Catholic States on the Continent had been growing. In =1626= the King of Denmark had been defeated at Lutter. In =1628= the French Huguenots had been defeated at Rochelle. It was probably in consequence of these events that there was in England a revival of that attachment to Calvinistic doctrines which had accompanied the Elizabethan struggle against Spain and the Pope.