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Wentworth, argued that it would be worse than useless to grant new moneys to the king if he refused to reduce his expenditure. He asked, ‘To what purpose is it to draw a silver stream into the royal cistern, if it shall daily run out thence by private cocks?’ Salisbury was not impressed. It was his understanding that the Commons had a duty to supply the needs of the king, after which their grievances might be addressed. The members, on the other hand, demanded that their complaints be answered before turning to the demands of the king.
    A conference was called in which Salisbury put forward a long-meditated plan that became known as the ‘great contract’. The king would give up his feudal dues and tenures in exchange for a guaranteed annual sum; the Commons offered £100,000, only half of the amount James required. Parliament still seemed to believe that he should and could be as economical, or as parsimonious, as his predecessor. The negotiations were suspended.
    On 21 May the king summoned both houses of parliament into his presence and upbraided them for sitting fourteen weeks without relieving his necessities. He would listen to what they had to say about increased taxation, but he would not be bound by their opinions. They must not question the royal prerogative in such matters. The members answered that, if this were the case, then the king might lawfully claim all that they owned. A deputation, armed with a petition of right, met James at his palace in Greenwich. Realizing that he had perhaps gone too far, he welcomed them and explained that he had been misunderstood. He always knew when to draw back from confrontation, a lesson never learned by his two more earnest sons.
    The debate on the great contract resumed on 11 June, with the concomitant issues of supplies, revenues, grievances and impositions. When the grievances were presented to the king on a long roll of parchment, he remarked that it might make a pretty piece of tapestry. Concessions were yielded on both sides, but there was no end in sight. On 23 July James prorogued the parliament, and the members dispersed to their constituencies where the details of the great contract would further be discussed. Naturally enough the towns and counties were more concerned with their injuries than with the poverty of the king. The whole debate had served only to demonstrate the gulf between king and country, between court and realm.
    The king was irate at the lack of progress. He resolved that he would never again endure ‘such taunts and disgraces as have been uttered of him’. If they came back and offered him all he wished, he would not listen to them. James had in any case already made a speech which rendered the political situation infinitely worse. In March 1610 he had assembled at Whitehall the Lords and the Commons. ‘The estate of monarchy’, he proclaimed, ‘is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.’ He went on to claim that kings ‘exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power on earth’. The sovereigns of the world can ‘make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising and casting down; of life and death; judges over all their subjects and in all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only’. He admonished them that ‘you cannot so clip the wing of greatness. If a king be resolute to be a tyrant, all you can do will not hinder him.’ Did they really want him to be a mere doge of Venice?
    James’s sentiments were not necessarily very welcome to the members of parliament. A contemporary news-writer, John Chamberlain, noted that they were ‘so little to their satisfaction that I hear it bred generally much discomfort’. If the parliament acquiesced in this bravura statement of kingship, ‘we are not like to leave to our successors the freedom we received from our forefathers’.
    James did not