Anonymous

REIGN OF CHARLES I.

Accession of Charles—His Marriage—Meeting of Parliament—Loan of Ships to Richelieu—Dissolution of Parliament—Failure of the Spanish Expedition—Persecution of the Catholics—The Second Parliament—It appoints three Committees—Impeachment of Buckingham—Parliament dissolved to save him—Illegal Government—High Church Doctrines—Rupture with France—Disastrous Expedition to RhÉ—The Third Parliament—The Petition of Right—Resistance and Final Surrender of Charles—Parliament Prorogued—Assassination of Buckingham—Fall of La Rochelle—Parliament Reassembles and is dissolved—Imprisonment of Offending Members—Government without Parliament—Peace with France and Spain—Gustavus Adolphus in Germany—Despotic Proceedings of Charles and Laud.

Within a quarter of an hour after the decease of James, Charles was proclaimed by the Knight-Marshal, Sir Edward Zouch, at the court-gate at Theobalds. He was in his twenty-fifth year, and so far as the admission of his title and the substantial prosperity of the kingdom were concerned, few monarchs have mounted the throne with more favourable auspices. But though there was entire submission to his right to reign, and the state of parties was such that no immediate change of executive was needed, yet there were at work feelings and principles which required the nicest wisdom to estimate their nature and their force, and the most able policy to deal with them. The battle between prerogative and popular rights had to be fought out, and it depended on the capacity of the monarch to perceive what was capable of modulation, and what was immovable, whether the result should be success or ruin. Charles was equally prepared by his father's maxims, his father's practice, and his habit of favouritism, to convert one of the grandest opportunities in history into one of the most terrible of its catastrophes. The first thing which augured ill for him was his continuing in the post of chief favourite and chief counsellor, the vain, incapable, and licentious Buckingham. The next matter to which Charles turned his attention was his marriage with the Princess Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. of France, the contract for which was already signed. The third day after his accession, he ratified the treaty as king which he had signed as prince. The Pope Urban, as we have stated, seeing that he could not prevail on the royal family of France to give up the marriage with the heretic prince of England, at length had, through his nuncio, delivered the breve of dispensation.

Louis of France, the queen-mother, the bride, Gaston Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Chevreuse, Charles's proxy, signed the document with the English ambassadors, on the 8th of May, 1625, and the marriage took place on a platform in front of the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame on the 11th. The Duke of Buckingham arrived to conduct the young queen to England, attended by a numerous and splendid retinue of English nobility. The showy and extravagant upstart appeared at the French Court in a style which threw even the monarch into the shade. He wore "a rich white satin uncut velvet suit, set all over, suit and cloak, with diamonds, the value whereof," say the Hardwicke Papers, "is thought to be worth fourscore thousand pounds; besides a feather made with great diamonds, with sword, girdle, hatband, and spurs with diamonds, and he had twenty-seven other suits, all rich as invention could frame or art fashion." His conduct was as devoid of modesty as his dress, and threw discredit on the king who could entrust his honour and his counsels to such a man.

The king, queen, and queen-mother, accompanied by the whole Court, set out to conduct the young fiancÉe to the port where she should embark for England. The procession was made as gorgeous and imposing as possible, and at each halting place the Court was amused by a variety of pageants and entertainments drawn from a past age. One alone of these deserves remark, being afterwards deemed ominous—a representation of all the French princesses who had become queens of England. They presented a group distinguished by their misfortunes, the only one necessary to complete the number being herself yet a spectator, the girlish Henrietta, little more than fifteen years of age, who was destined to exceed them all in calamity. The king was, however, seized with an illness, which compelled him to discontinue the journey, and at CompiÈgne the queen-mother was also taken so ill as to detain the procession a fortnight at Amiens. There the queen and queen-mother took leave of Henrietta. Charles, during the delay at Amiens, had been awaiting his Buckingham. No sooner did that most impudent of libertines reach the French Court than he had the audacity to fall in love with the Queen of France, the beautiful Anne of Austria. He lost no opportunity of pressing his insolent suit on the way in the absence of the king, and had the presumption to imagine that his daring passion was returned. No sooner did he reach Boulogne, than pretending that he had received some despatches of the utmost importance, he hurried back to Amiens, where the French procession yet remained, and rushing into the bed-chamber of the queen, threw himself on his knees before her, and, regardless of the presence of two maids of honour, poured out the infamous protestations of his polluted passion. The queen repulsed him with an air of deep anger, and bade him begone in a tone of cutting severity, the reality of which, however, was doubted by Madame de Motteville, who recorded the occurrence.

GREAT SEAL OF CHARLES I.

The sensation excited by this unparalleled circumstance in the French Court was intense. The king ordered the arrest of a number of the queen's attendants, and dismissed several of them. Yet Buckingham, on reaching England, does not appear to have received any serious censure from his infatuated master, for this breach of all ambassadorial decency and etiquette; and in spite of the resentment of the French king and Court, continued to maintain all the character of a devoted lover of the French queen.

On the 23rd of June the report of ordnance wafted over from Boulogne announced the embarkation; and on Sunday evening the queen landed at Dover, after a stormy passage. Mr. Tyrwhitt, a gentleman of the household, rode post haste to Canterbury to inform Charles, who was at Dover Castle by ten o'clock the next morning to greet his bride. Henrietta Maria was at breakfast when the king was announced, and instantly rose, and hastened downstairs to meet him. On seeing him, she attempted to kneel and kiss his hand, but he prevented her, by folding her in his arms and kissing her. She had studied a little set speech to address him with, but could only get out so much of it as, "Sire, je suis venue en ce pays de votre majestÉ, pour Être commandÉe de vous"—"Sire, I am come into your majesty's country to be at your command"—but at that point she burst into tears.

Charles was delighted with the beauty and vivacity of the young queen. They set out for Canterbury, and on their way thither were met on Barham Downs by the English nobility; pavilions being pitched there for the purpose of the refreshment of the royal pair, and the introduction of the queen to her court. After the wedding, at which the celebrated English composer, Orlando Gibbons, performed on the organ, the royal cavalcade took its way to Gravesend, and thence ascended the Thames, so as to avoid the city, in which the plague was then raging.

On the 28th of June, the day after the arrival of the queen in London, Charles met his first Parliament. The king had not yet been crowned, but he appeared on the throne with his crown on his head. He ordered one of the bishops to read prayers before proceeding to business, and this was done so adroitly, that the Catholic members were compelled to remain during the heretical service. They betrayed great uneasiness, some kneeling, some standing upright, and one unhappy individual continuing to cross himself the whole time.

Charles was not an eloquent speaker, and, moreover, was afflicted with stammering; but he plunged boldly into a statement which it was very easy for the two Houses to understand. He informed them that his father had left debts to the amount of seven hundred thousand pounds; that the money voted for the war against Spain and Austria was expended, and he therefore called upon them for liberal supplies. He declared his resolution to prosecute the wars which they had so loudly called for with vigour, but it was for them to furnish the means.

As he was beginning his reign, and had not plunged himself into very heavy debt, or preached up, like his father, the claims of the prerogative, he had a right to expect a more generous treatment than James. But, notwithstanding the Éclat of a new reign, and the usual desire on such occasions to stand well with the throne, the Commons displayed no enthusiasm in voting their money. There were many causes, even under a new king, to produce this coolness. Charles had won their popularity by abandoning the Spanish match, but he had now neutralised that merit by taking a Catholic queen from France. To please the Commons and the public generally, he should have selected a wife from one of the Protestant houses of Germany or the Netherlands; but for this he had displayed no desire. In the second place, he had retained the hated Buckingham in all his former eminence, both as a minister of the Crown, and as his own associate. Besides, they had no faith in his abilities, either as a commander or a statesman, and beheld with disgust his reckless extravagance and the unconcealed infamy of his life at home. No talent whatever had been shown in the war in Germany for the restoration of the Palatinate; and, therefore, the Commons, instead of voting money to defray the late king's debts and to carry on the war efficiently, restricted their advances to two subsidies, amounting to about one hundred and forty thousand pounds, and to the grant of tonnage and poundage, not for life as aforetime, but merely for the space of one year.

But still more apprehensive were they on the subject of religion. The breach with Spain had naturally removed any delicacy on the part of the Spaniards to conceal the treacherous concessions, in perfect contradiction to the public professions of both the late and the present king, which had been made on that head. It was now freely whispered that the like had been made to France, and the sight of the crowd of priests and Catholic courtiers who had flocked over with the queen, and the performance of the Mass in the king's own house, led the zealous Reformers to believe that there was a tacit intention on the part of the king to restore the Catholic religion.

What rendered the Commons more sensitive on this point were the writings of Dr. Montague, one of the king's chaplains and editor of his father's works. In a controversy with a Catholic missionary, he had disowned the Calvinistic doctrines of the Puritans with which his church was charged, and declared for the Arminian tenets of which Laud was the great champion. This gave much offence; he was accused of being a concealed Papist, and two Puritan ministers, Yates and Ward, prepared a charge against him and laid it before Parliament. Montague denied that he was amenable to Parliament and "appealed unto CÆsar." Charles informed the Commons that the cognisance of his chaplains belonged to him, and not to them. But they asserted their right to deal with all such cases, and summoned him to appear at the bar of the House, where they bound him in a bond of two thousand pounds to appear when called for.

Charles endeavoured to direct their attention to the state of the finances, showing them the inadequacy of their votes, the fitting out of the navy amounting alone to three hundred thousand pounds. He was beyond all indignant at the grant of tonnage and poundage for only one year, seeing that his predecessors from the time of Henry VI. had enjoyed it for life; and the Lords threw out that part of the vote for this reason, so that he had no Parliamentary right to collect it at all. To make matters worse, instead of attending to the pleading of Lord Conway, the Chief Secretary, for further grants, they presented to the king, after listening to four sermons one day and taking the Sacrament the next, a "pious petition" praying him—as he valued the maintenance of true religion and would discourage superstition and idolatry—to put in force the penal Statutes against Catholics.

To this demand Charles could only return an evasive answer. He had recently bound himself by the most solemn oaths to do nothing of the kind; and under the sanction of the marriage treaty with France, the Mass was every day celebrated under his own roof, and his palace and its immediate vicinity swarmed with Catholics and their priests. Nay, he had, just before summoning Parliament, been called on by France to send a fleet in virtue of this treaty to assist in putting down the Huguenots. Soubise, the General of the Huguenots, still retained possession of La Rochelle and the island of RhÉ, and their fleet scoured the coasts in such force that the French fleet dared not attempt to cope with it. Richelieu, therefore, requested Charles to give Louis assistance. Charles delayed until he received news, which proved to be premature, that peace had been concluded with the Huguenots. Thereupon he concluded that the ships might be sent without danger. Accordingly, though the affairs of the English fleet had been wofully misconducted ever since Buckingham had been Lord Admiral, he mustered seven merchant vessels, and sent them with the Vanguard, the only ship of the line that was fit for sea, under the command of Admiral Pennington, to La Rochelle. The destination of the fleet was declared to be Genoa, but on reaching Dieppe, the officers and crew were astonished to receive orders to take on board French soldiers and sailors, and proceed to La Rochelle to fight against the Protestants. They refused to a man, and notwithstanding the imperative commands of the Duke of Montmorency the Lord Admiral of France, they compelled their own admiral to put back to the Downs.

On this ignominious return, Pennington requested to be permitted to decline this service, and his desire was much favoured by the remonstrances of the Huguenots, who sent over an envoy, entreating the king not to give such a triumph to Popery as to fight against the Protestants. Charles, with that fatal duplicity which he had learned so early under his father, sent fair words to Soubise, the Duke of Rohan, and the other leaders of the Huguenots; but Buckingham, by speaking out more plainly, exposed the hollowness of his master. He assured the navy that they were bound by treaty, and fight they must for the king of France. Both officers and owners of the ships declared that as they were chartered for the service of the king of England, they should not be handed over to the French without an order from the king himself. Thereupon Buckingham hastened down to Rochester, accompanied by the French ambassador, who offered to charter the vessels for his Government. Men, owners, and officers, refused positively any such service.

Disappointed by this display of true English spirit, Charles ordered Secretary Conway to write to Vice-Admiral Pennington in his name, commanding him that he should proceed to Dieppe and take on board as many men as the French Government desired, for which this letter was his warrant. At the same time Pennington received an autographic letter from Charles, commanding him to make over the Vanguard to the French admiral at Dieppe, and to order the commanders of the seven merchant ships to do the same, and in case of refusal to compel them by force. All this appears to have been imposed on Pennington as a matter of strict secrecy; and that officer had not the virtue to refuse so degrading a service. The fleet again sailed to Dieppe: the men must have more than suspected the object; and when Pennington made over the Vanguard, and delivered the royal order to the captains of the seven merchant vessels, they declined to obey, and weighed anchor to return home. On this Pennington, who proved himself the fitting tool of such a king, fired into them, and overawed all of them except Sir Ferdinand Gore, in the Neptune, who kept on his way, disdaining to disgrace himself by such a deed. The French were taken on board and conveyed to La Rochelle. But that was all that was accomplished; for the English seamen instantly deserted on reaching land, and many of them hastened to join the ranks of the Huguenots, the rest returning home overflowing with indignation and spreading everywhere the disgrace of the royal conduct.

In the whole of this transaction the headstrong fatality of Charles was conspicuous, and foreboded the miseries that were to follow. In the midst of the public excitement from this cause, the Parliament met at Oxford on the 1st of August. The result was as might have been expected. On the king demanding the restoration of the vote of tonnage and poundage, negatived by the Lords, or that other subsidies should be granted in lieu of it, the Commons refused both. In reply to the king's inquiry how the war was to be carried on, they replied that they must first be satisfied against whom the war was really to be directed. They complained that the penal statutes against the Papists were not enforced as promised, and proceeded to their favourite avocation of attacking public grievances. On this topic Coke came forward with an eloquence and a boldness which astonished the Court. With an unsparing vigour worthy of his earlier years—but in a much better cause than that in which his abilities were then often exercised—he denounced the new offices created, the monopolies granted, and the lavish waste of the public money, all for the benefit of Buckingham and his relations. He insisted that the useless pensions which had been recently granted should be stopped till the late king's debts were paid, and that a system of strict economy should be substituted for the now extravagant expenditure of the royal household. Others followed in the same strain, denouncing the odious practice of selling offices, of which Buckingham and his mother were the chief vendors.

CHARLES WELCOMING HIS QUEEN TO ENGLAND. (See p. 509.)

A third party showed that they were armed with dangerous matter by the still disgraced and restrained Earl of Bristol. They charged Buckingham with his mal-administration of affairs, with his incompetency as Lord High Admiral, and with having involved this country in an unnecessary war with Spain, merely in revenge of a private quarrel with the Spanish minister, Olivarez. They demanded an inquiry into that affair. One of the members of the House venturing to defend the Government, and condemning the licence of speech against the Crown, was speedily brought upon his knees and compelled to implore pardon at the Bar. Sir Robert Cotton, the founder of the Cottonian Library, applauded the wisdom and spirit of the House in thus summarily dealing with this unworthy member; and after giving a description of the conduct of the late favourite, Somerset, and of the follies and crimes of favourites of former reigns, as the Spencers, the Gavestons, the Poles, and others, pronounced Buckingham as far more insolent, mischievous, and incompetent than any of them.

The favourite, thus rudely handled, was quietly enjoying himself at Woodstock; but the king made him aware of the necessity of defending himself. He hastened to town, and delivered in his place in the Peers, a statement of the accounts of the navy, and a stout denial of any personal motives in the quarrel with Spain. He clearly showed that he felt whence the danger came, and alluding to the Earl of Bristol, said, "I am minded to leave that business asleep, but if it should awake, it will prove a lion to devour him who co-operated with Olivarez."

From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum. Reproduced by AndrÉ & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts.

ILLUMINATED PAGE, WITH BORDERING.

THE ILLUMINATION SHOWS THE EMPEROR OF GERMANY, WENCESLAUS, AND CHARLES VI OF FRANCE SITTING IN COUNCIL (PROBABLY IN THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS) TO DEVISE MEANS FOR TERMINATING THE SCHISM IN THE ROMAN CHURCH IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

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CHARLES I.

To cut short these awkward debates, the king sent word to the Commons that as the plague was already in Oxford, it was necessary to make quick work, and that they should finish the grant of supplies. He offered to accept for the present forty thousand pounds; but the House refused even this, saying that if that was all that was necessary, it might readily be raised by a loan to the Crown. This put the king beyond his patience, and he menaced them with a speedy dissolution; adding if they were not afraid of their health, he would take care of it for them, by releasing them from the plague-invaded city, and find some means of helping himself. The Commons were not in a temper to be intimidated; on the contrary, they went into a most warm and spirited debate on the king's message, and appointed a committee to prepare a reply. In this they thanked him for his care of their health, and of the religion of the nation, and promised supplies when the abuses of the Government were redressed; and they called upon him not to suffer himself to be prejudiced against the greatest safeguard that a king could have—the faithful and dutiful Commons—by interested persons. Before they had time, however, to present this address, Charles dissolved the Parliament, which had only sat in this Oxford Session twelve days.

Thus deprived of all the necessary funds for a war, none but so infatuated a monarch as Charles would have persisted in plunging into it. War had not yet been proclaimed against Spain; it was neither necessary nor expedient; on the contrary, every motive of political wisdom warned him to peace in that quarter, if he really wished to be at liberty to prosecute the interests of the Elector and the Protestant cause. But led by the splenetic imbecility of Buckingham, so far was he from seeing the folly of a war with Spain, that he was soon pushed into one with France. In fact, he took every step which would have been avoided by a wise prince, and speedily involved himself in a labyrinth of inextricable difficulties. Spain quieted and even soothed; France cultivated with the object of obtaining its influence and aid in the recovery of the Palatinate; and the Protestants of Germany sympathised with, if not aided substantially in their severe struggle against Austrian bigotry, Charles might have eventually restored his sister and her husband to their old estate, and have won a place in the European world superior to any king of his time. Instead of this, he took the surest means to exasperate his own people and his most powerful neighbour that his worst enemies could have suggested.

To raise money for the prosecution of the war against Spain, he ordered the duties of tonnage and poundage to be levied, notwithstanding they were not voted by the Peers. He issued writs of Privy Seal to the nobility, gentry, and clergy, for loans of money, and menaced vengeance if they were not complied with. All salaries and fees were suspended, and to such a strait was he reduced by his efforts to man and supply the fleet, that he was obliged to borrow three thousand pounds from the corporations of Southampton and Salisbury to enable him to meet the expenses of his own table.

At length the fleet was ready to sail with a force of ten thousand men; the English fleet consisted of eighty sail, and the Dutch sent an addition of sixteen sail. In weight and armament of ships such a force had scarcely ever before left an English port. But formidable as was this naval power, it was rendered perfectly inert by the same utter want of judgment and genius which marked all the measures of Buckingham. Its destination was to have been kept secret, so that it might take the Spaniards by surprise; but it was well known, not only to that nation, but to the whole Continent. In spite of this, such a force, in the hands of a Drake or a Nottingham, might have struck a ruinous blow at the Spanish navy and seaports; but Buckingham, for his own selfish purposes, appointed to the command Sir Edward Cecil, now created Viscount Wimbledon, a man who had, indeed, grown grey in the service of the States of Holland, but only to make himself known as most incompetent to such an enterprise. He was, moreover, a land officer, whilst the admiral to whom the command regularly fell, in case the Lord High Admiral himself did not take it—Sir Robert Mansell, Vice-Admiral of England—had a high reputation and the confidence of the men as an experienced officer.

On the 3rd of October this noble but ill-used fleet sailed from Plymouth, and took its way across the Bay of Biscay, where it encountered one of its storms, and received considerable damage, one vessel foundering with a hundred and seventy men. The admiral had instructions to intercept the treasure ships from America, to scour the coasts of Spain, and destroy the shipping in its harbours. But instead of doing that first which must be done then if at all—attack the ships in the ports—he called a council, and was completely bewildered by the conflicting opinions given. The conclusion was to make for Cadiz and seize its ships, but the Spaniards were already aware of and prepared for them. Instead of keeping, moreover, a sharp watch for the Plate ships, Wimbledon let several of them escape into port, which of themselves were thought, says Howell, rich enough to have paid all the expenses of the expedition. There was still nothing to prevent a brave admiral from attacking the vessels in harbour; but more accustomed to land service, the commander landed his forces, and took the Fort of Puntal. Making next a rapid march towards the bridge of Suazzo, in order to cut off the communication between the Isle de Leon and the mainland, his soldiers discovered some wine cellars by the way and became intoxicated and incapable of preserving order. Alarmed at this circumstance, their incapable leader conducted them back to the ships. Not daring to attack the port, he determined to look out for the treasure ships. But while cruising for this purpose, a fever broke out on board the vessel of Lord Delaware; and as if it were his intention to diffuse the contagion through the whole fleet, the admiral had the sick men distributed among the healthy ships. A dreadful mortality accordingly raged through the whole fleet. No Plate ships could be seen, for they appear to have been aware of their enemies and held away towards the Barbary coast; and after waiting fruitlessly for eighteen days, Wimbledon made sail again for England. No sooner did this imbecile quit the coast than fifty richly laden vessels entered the port of Lisbon. On landing at Plymouth, with the loss of a thousand men in this most ignominious voyage, the people received the admiral with hisses and execrations.

Meanwhile Charles, who was in straits with his Parliament and subjects, was compelled to try again the more than dubious resort to Parliament for money. To prepare the way for any success with the Commons, he was obliged to do that which must certainly embroil him with his French allies, and add fresh fuel to the fire of domestic discord which consumed him. Certainly never had any man a more arduous part to play, and the king had rendered his position all the harder by the imprudence of his measures; for nothing is easier than for men, by their folly or absurd resentments, to knit themselves up into a web of difficulties. He now resolved to break his marriage oath to France, and persecute the Catholics to conciliate the Protestants. Orders were accordingly issued to all magistrates to put the penal laws in force, and a commission was appointed to levy the fines on the recusants. All Catholic priests and missionaries were warned to quit the kingdom immediately, and all parents and guardians to recall their children from Catholic schools, and young men from Catholic colleges on the Continent. But worse than all, because personally insulting and irritating to the higher classes, who constituted the House of Peers, and who hitherto had exhibited much forbearance, he accepted the advice of his Council that the Catholic aristocracy should be disarmed.

Certainly no proceedings could indispose the House of Peers to the king more than such as these; but meanwhile Charles was active in endeavouring by other measures to win a party there. The Earl of Pembroke had for some time made himself head of the Opposition, and on great occasions brought with him on a vote no less than ten proxies, Buckingham himself being only able to command thirteen. He prevailed on Pembroke to be reconciled to the favourite; and at the same time in order to punish the Lord Keeper Williams who had quarrelled with Buckingham and had told him that he should go over to Pembroke, and labour for the redress of the grievances of the people—he dismissed him and gave the Great Seal to Sir Thomas Coventry, the Attorney-General.

To manage the Commons, and to prevent the threatened impeachment of Buckingham, when the judges presented to him the lists of sheriffs Charles struck out seven names and wrote in their places seven of the most able and active of the leaders of Opposition in the Commons, the most determined enemies of the favourite:—Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Robert Philips, Sir Grey Palmer, Sir William Fleetwood, and Edward Alford. As this office disqualified them from sitting in Parliament, the king thus got rid of them for that year; but Coke contended that though a sheriff could not sit for his own county he could for another, and got himself elected for the county of Norfolk, but did not venture to take his seat.

All these measures, it will be seen, were dictated not by a desire to conciliate, but to override the Parliament, and therefore could not promise much good to a mind of any depth of penetration. Parliament was summoned for the 6th of February, 1626, and the 2nd was appointed for the coronation. With the knowledge of a discontented people, Charles went to meet his Parliament, and this consciousness would, in a monarch capable of taking a solemn warning, have operated to produce conciliation, at least of tone; but Charles was one of that class of men who illustrated the striking words of the Latin fatalist "Whom God intends to destroy He first drives mad." Accordingly, he opened the sitting with a curt speech, referring them to that of the new Lord Keeper Coventry, which was in the worst possible taste. He said, "If we consider aright, and think of the incomparable distance between the supreme height and majesty of a mighty monarch, and the submissive awe and lowliness of loyal subjects, we cannot but receive exceeding comfort and contentment in the frame and constitution of this highest Court, wherein not only prelates, nobles, and grandees, but the commons of all degrees have their part; and wherein that high majesty doth descend to admit, or rather to invite, the humblest of his subjects to conference and council with him."

Of all language this was, in the temper of the Commons, the most adapted to incense them. Such talk of the condescension of the Crown, at the moment when they were entering on a desperate conflict against its abuse of the prerogative, only the more stimulated their resolution to their task. They immediately formed themselves into three committees: one of religion, a second of grievances, and a third of evils. They again, by the Committee of Religion, canvassed the subject of Popery; resolving to enact still severer laws against it, as the origin of many of the worst evils that afflicted the nation. They summoned schoolmasters from various and remote parts of the kingdom, and put searching questions to them, as to the doctrines which they held and taught to their scholars; and every member of the House was called upon in turn to denounce all persons in authority or office, known to them as holding the tenets of the ancient faith. In fact, in their vehement zeal for religious liberty, the zealots of the House were on the highway to extinguish every spark of toleration, and to convert the House of Commons into an inquisition, instead of the bulwark of popular right.

RECEPTION OF VISCOUNT WIMBLEDON AT PLYMOUTH. (See p. 515.)

They again summoned Dr. Montague to redeem his bail, and receive punishment on account of his book, in which they charged him with having admitted that the Church of Rome was the true Church, and that the articles on which the two churches did not agree were of minor importance. Laud advocated the cause of Montague at Court, for he was of precisely the same opinions, and urged the king and Buckingham to protect him. But both Charles and the favourite saw too many difficulties in their own way to care to interfere in defence of the chaplain. They left him to his fate, and he would have been no doubt severely dealt with, had not higher matters seized the attention of the House, and caused the offending Churchman to be overlooked.

This was the impeachment of Buckingham. The Committee of Grievances had drawn up, after a tedious investigation, a list of sixteen grievances, consisting of such as had so often been warmly debated in the last reign. Of these the most prominent, in their opinion, were the practice of purveyance, by which the officers of the household still collected provisions at a fixed price for sixty miles round the Court, and the illegal conduct of the Lord Treasurer, who went on collecting tonnage and poundage though unsanctioned by Parliament. They charged the maintenance of these evils to the advice and influence of a "great delinquent" at Court; who had, moreover, occasioned all the disgraces to the national flag, both by land and sea, which had for some years occurred, and who ought to be punished accordingly.

The time was now actually arriving of which James had warned his son and Buckingham, when they urged the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, but choosing to forget all that, Charles sent down word to the House that he did not allow any of his servants to be called in question by them, especially such as were of eminence and near unto his person. He remarked that of old the desire of subjects had been to know what they should do with him whom the king delighted to honour, but their desire now appeared to be to do what they could against him whom the king honoured. That they aimed at the Duke of Buckingham, he said, he saw clearly, and he wondered much what had produced such a change since the former Parliament; assuring them that the duke had taken no step but by his order and consent; and he concluded by requesting them to hasten the question of Supply, "or it would be worse for them."

YORK HOUSE (THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM'S MANSION).

On the 29th of March he repeated the menace; but the Commons went on preparing their charges against Buckingham, declaring that it was the undoubted right of Parliament to inquire into the proceedings of persons of any estate whatever, who had been found dangerous to the Commonwealth, and had abused the confidence reposed in them by the Crown.

Seeing them bent on proceeding, Charles sent down to the House the Lord Keeper to acquaint them with his majesty's express command that they should cease this inquiry, or that he would dissolve them; and Sir Dudley Carleton, who had been much employed as ambassador to foreign states, and had recently returned from France, warned them not to make the king out of love with parliaments, and then drew a most deplorable picture of the state of those countries where such had come to be the case. In all Christian countries, he said, there were formerly parliaments; but the monarchs, weary of their turbulence, had broken them up, except in this kingdom; and now he represented the miserable subjects as resembling spectres rather than men, miserably clad, meagre of body, and wearing wooden shoes.

This caricature of foreigners, had it been true, was the very thing to make the Commons cling to their freedom, and keep their affairs in their own hands; and as such arguments had no effect. Charles summoned the House to the bar of the Lords, and there addressed to them a most royal reproof, letting them know that it depended entirely on him whether he would call and when he would dismiss Parliament, and, therefore, as they conducted themselves so should he act. Their very existence depended, he assured them, on his will.

This was language which might have done in the mouth of Henry VIII., who by the possession of the vast plunder of the Church had made himself independent of parliaments and trod on them at his pleasure; but the times and circumstances were entirely changed. The Commons had learned their power and the king's weakness, and would no longer tolerate the insolence of despotism. They returned to their own House, and, to show that they were about to discuss the king's speech in a spirit which admitted of no interruption or interference, they locked the door and put the key in the hands of Sir John Finch, their Speaker. This ominous proceeding struck terror into the king, and a conference with the Upper House was proposed and accepted. There Buckingham endeavoured to smooth down the royal speeches and messages into something like a bearable and constitutional shape, and to defend his own conduct. But by this time the Committee of Evils, Causes and Remedies, had come to the conclusion that the only mode of preventing the recurrence of such mal-administration as Buckingham had been guilty of was to impeach and punish him. The House accordingly passed a resolution to that effect on the 8th of May.

As if Charles were actually inspired by madness, at this moment, when he needed all the assistance of the Peers to screen his favourite from the impeachment of the Commons, he made a direct attack on their privileges. Lord Arundel, the Earl Marshal, had given some offence to Buckingham, and was well known to be decidedly hostile to him. As he possessed six proxies, it was thought a grand stroke of policy to get him out of the House at the approaching impeachment; and a plea was not long wanting. Arundel's son, Lord Maltravers, had married a daughter of the Duke of Lennox without consent of the king, and as Lennox was of blood-royal, this was deemed offence enough to involve Arundel himself. He was charged with not having prevented it, but he replied that the match had been made unknown to him; that it had been secretly planned between the mothers of the young people. This was not admitted, and Arundel was arrested by a royal warrant and lodged in the Tower. The real offender, if real offence there were, was Maltravers, but it was Arundel's absence which was wanted. The Lords, however, took up the matter as an infringement of their privileges; they passed a resolution that "no lord of Parliament, the Parliament sitting, or within the usual times of privilege of Parliament, is to be imprisoned or restrained, without sentence or order of the House, unless it be for treason or felony, or for refusing to give surety for the peace."

They sent an address to Charles demanding Arundel's immediate liberation; he returned an evasive answer: they sent a second address; Charles then ordered the Attorney-General to plead the royal prerogative, and to declare the Earl Marshal as personally offensive to the king and as dangerous to the State. The Peers would not admit the plea, but passed a resolution to suspend business till their colleague was set at large; and after a contest of three months the king was forced to yield, and the Earl Marshal resumed his seat in the House amid cheers and acclamations.

But this most imprudent conflict with the Peers had another and still more damaging result. The Earl of Bristol, who had been so unjustly and ungraciously received, or rather, not received, on his return from his Spanish embassy, to enable Buckingham and Charles to maintain their charge against Spain, had remained an exile from Court and Parliament, but not without keeping a watchful eye on the progress of events. He was not a man to sit down quietly under misrepresentation and injury; and now, seeing that the Peers had roused themselves from their subserviency, and were prepared to take vengeance on the common enemy, he complained to the House of Peers that, as one of their order and possessed of all their privileges, his writ of summons to Parliament had been wrongfully withheld. To have withstood this demand at this moment might have led to a dangerous excitement. The writ was therefore immediately issued, but Bristol at the same time received a private letter, charging him on pain of the king's high displeasure not to attempt to take his place. The earl at once forwarded the letter to the Peers, requesting their advice upon it, on the ground that it affected their rights, being a case which might reach any other of them, and demanding that he might be permitted to take his seat in order to accuse the man who, to screen his own high crimes and misdemeanours, had for years deprived a peer of the realm of his liberty and right.

This alarming claim of the earl's struck both the king and Buckingham with terror; and to prevent, if possible, the menaced charge, the Attorney-General was instantly despatched to the Lords to prefer a plea of high treason against Bristol. But the Peers were not thus to be circumvented. They replied that Bristol's accusation was first laid and must be first heard; and that without the counter-charge being held to prejudice his testimony. Bristol, thus at liberty to speak out, proceeded to town and to the House of Peers in triumph, his coach drawn by eight horses, caparisoned in cloth of gold or tissue; and Buckingham, as if to present a contrast of modesty, a quality wholly alien to his nature, drove thither in an old carriage with only three footmen and no retinue.

Bristol charged him with having concerted with Gondomar to inveigle the Prince of Wales into Spain, in order to procure his conversion to Popery prior to his marriage with the Infanta; with having complied with Popish ceremonies himself; with having, whilst at Madrid, disgraced the king, his country, and himself, by his contempt of all decency and the vileness of his profligacy. He stated that "As for the scandal given by his behaviour, as also his employing his power with the King of Spain for the procuring of favours and offices, which he conferred on base and unworthy persons, for the recompense and hire of his lust—these things, as neither fit for the Earl of Bristol to speak, nor, indeed, for the House to hear, he leaveth to your lordships' wisdoms how far it will please you to have them examined." He went on to charge him with breaking off the treaty of marriage solely through resentment, because the Spanish ministers, disgusted with his conduct, refused any negotiation with so infamous a person; and declared that, on his return, he had deceived both king and Parliament by a most false statement. All this the earl pledged himself to prove by written documents and other most undeniable evidence.

Instead of Buckingham attempting to clear himself as an innocent man so blackened by terrible charges would, it was sought to deprive the testimony of Bristol of all value by making him a criminal and a traitor to the king whilst his representative in Spain. Charles went so far as to send the Lord Keeper Coventry, a most pliant courtier, to inform the Lords that he would of his own knowledge clear the duke, the duke himself reserving his defence till after the impeachment by the Commons. Charles not only guaranteed to vindicate Buckingham, but accused Bristol of making a direct charge against himself, inasmuch as he himself had been with Buckingham all the time in Spain, and had verified his narrative on his return. The Peers passed this royal charge courageously by; and Charles then ordered the cause between Bristol and Buckingham to be removed from the Peers to the court of King's Bench; but the Lords would not permit such an infringement of their privileges. They put these questions themselves to the judges—"Whether the king could be a witness in a case of treason? And whether, in Bristol's case, he could be a witness at all, admitting the treason done with his privity?" The king sent the judges an order not to answer these questions, and in the midst of these proceedings the charges against Bristol were heard, and answered by him with a spirit and clearness which were perfectly satisfactory to the House. The charges against him amounted to this:—That he had falsely assured James of the sincerity of the Spanish Cabinet; had concurred in a plan for inducing the prince to change his religion; that he had endeavoured to force the marriage on Charles by delivering the procuration; and had given the lie to his present sovereign by declaring false what he had vouched in Buckingham's statement to be true. These were so palpably untenable positions that the House ordered Bristol's answer to be entered on the journals, and there left the matter.

But now the impeachment of Buckingham by the Commons was brought up to the Lords. It consisted of thirteen articles; the principal of which were that he had not only enriched himself with several of the highest offices of the State which had never before been held by one and the same person, but had purchased for money those of High Admiral and Warden of the Cinque Ports; that he had in those offices neglected the trade and the security of the coasts of the country; that he had perverted to his own use the revenues of the Crown; had filled the Court and dignities of the land with his poor relations; had put a squadron of English ships into the hands of the French, and on the other hand, by detaining for his own use a vessel belonging to the King of France, had provoked him to make reprisals on British merchants; that he had extorted ten thousand pounds from the East India Company; and even charged him with being accessory to the late king's death, by administering medicine contrary to the advice of the royal physicians.

Eight Managers were appointed by the Commons to conduct the impeachment—Sir Dudley Digges, Sir John Eliot, Serjeant Glanville, Selden, Whitelock, Pym, Herbert, and Wandsford. Digges opened the case, and was followed by Glanville, Selden, and Pym. While these gentlemen were speaking and detailing the main charges against him, Buckingham, confident in the power and will of the king to protect him, displayed the most impudent recklessness, laughing and jesting at the orators and their arguments. Serjeant Glanville, on one occasion, turned brusquely on him, and exclaimed, "My lord, do you jeer at me? Are these things to be jeered at? My lord, I can show you when a man of a greater blood than your lordship, as high in place and power, and as deep in the favour of the king as you, hath been hanged for as small a crime as the least of these articles contain."

Sir John Eliot wound up the charge, and compared Buckingham to Sejanus; as proud, insolent, rapacious, an accuser of others, a base adulator and tyrant by turns, and one who conferred commands and offices on his dependants. "Ask England, Scotland, and Ireland," exclaimed Sir John, "and they will tell you whether this man doth not the like. Sejanus's pride was so excessive, as Tacitus saith, that he neglected all counsel, mixed his business and service with the prince, and was often styled Imperatoris laborum socius. My lords," he said, "I have done. You see the man: by him came all evils; in him we find the cause; on him we expect the remedies."

The direct inference that if Buckingham was a Sejanus the king was a Tiberius, and a rumour that Eliot and Digges had hinted that in the death of the late king there was a greater than Buckingham behind, transported Charles with rage, and urged him on to another of those acts of aggression which ultimately brought him to actual battle with his Parliament. He had the two offending members called out of the House as if the king required their presence, when they were seized and sent to the Tower. This outrage on the persons of their fellow members and delegated prosecutors came like a thunder-clap on the House. There was instantly a vehement cry of "Rise! rise! rise!" The House was in a state of the highest ferment.

Charles hurried to the House of Lords to denounce the imputations cast upon him, and to defend Buckingham; and Buckingham stood by his side whilst he spoke. He declared that he had punished some insolent speeches, and that it was high time, for that he had been too lenient. He would give his evidence to clear Buckingham, he said, in every one of the articles, and he would suffer no one with impunity to charge himself with having any concern in the death of his father. But all this bravado was wasted on the Commons: again with closed doors they discussed the violation of their privileges, and resolved to proceed with no further business till their members should be discharged. In a few days this was done, and the House passed a resolution that the two members had only fulfilled their bounden duty.

On the 8th of June, Buckingham opened his defence in the House of Lords. In this he had been assisted by Sir Nicholas Hyde. He divided the charges against him into three classes: such as were unfounded in fact; such as might be true, but did not affect him; and lastly, those in which he had merely been the servant of the king or of the Executive. In all the circumstances which could be proved, he simply acted in obedience to the late or the present king, with one exception, the purchase of the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, which he admitted that he had bought, but which he thought might be excused on the ground of public utility. As to the grave charge of the delivery of the king's ships to the French admiral, he did not mean to go into it, not but that he could prove his own innocence in the affair, but that he was bound not to reveal the secrets of the State; and he pleaded a pardon which had been granted by the king on the 10th of February, that is, four days after the opening of the present Parliament.

Thus Charles had kept his word: he had allowed the duke to throw the total responsibility of his deeds on himself, and he had granted him a pardon by anticipation to forestall the conclusions of Parliament. This defence by no means satisfied the Commons, and they proceeded to reply; but in this they were stopped short by the king, who the very next day sent a message to the Speaker, desiring the House to hasten and come at once to the subject of Supply, or that he would "take other resolutions." The Commons set themselves, without loss of time, to prepare a remonstrance in strong terms, praying for the dismissal of the favourite; but whilst employed upon it, they were suddenly summoned to the Upper House, where they found Commissioners appointed to pronounce the dissolution of Parliament. Anticipating this movement, the Speaker had carried the resolutions of remonstrance in his hand, and before the Commissioners could declare Parliament dissolved, the Speaker held up the paper and declared its contents. The Lords, on this, apprehending unpleasant consequences, sent to implore Charles to a short delay, but received the king's energetic answer—"No, not for one minute!"

TRIAL OF BUCKINGHAM. (See p. 520.)

Charles was left by his own wild devices to try how his fancied right divine would furnish him funds to discharge his debts at home and his obligations abroad. That he was not insensible to his danger, or to the price which he had paid for the support of his favourite, is made plain to us by Meade, the careful chronicler of the time. "The duke," he says, "being in the bed-chamber private with the king, his majesty was overheard, as they say, to use these words: 'What can I do more? I have engaged mine honour to mine uncle of Denmark and other princes. I have, in a manner, lost the love of my subjects, and what wouldst thou have me do?' Whence some think the duke meant the king to dissolve the Parliament." But however he might feel this, he was in no disposition to take warning; the spirit and the inculcations of his father worked in him victorious over any better instincts. No sooner had he dismissed Parliament, than he seized the Earl of Bristol, and Arundel, the Earl Marshal, and thrust Bristol into the Tower. This bit of petty spite enacted, he set about boldly to do everything that the Commons had been striving against. The Commons had published their remonstrance; he published a counter-declaration, and commanded all persons having that of the Commons to burn it, or expect his resentment. He then issued a warrant, levying duties on all exports and imports; ordered the fines from the Catholics to be rigorously enforced, but offering to compound with rich recusants for an annual sum, so as to procure a fixed income from that source. A Commission was issued to inquire into the proceeds of the Crown lands, and to grant leases, remit feudal services, and convert copyholds into freeholds, on certain charges. Privy seals were again issued to noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants, for the advance of loans, and London was called on to furnish one hundred and twenty thousand pounds; and as if the king already feared that his arbitrary acts might produce disturbance, he ordered the different seaports, under the plea of protecting the coasts, to provide and maintain during three months a certain number of armed vessels, and the lord-lieutenants of counties to muster the people, and train troops to arms to prevent internal riot or foreign invasion.

At the moment that the king was thus daringly setting both Parliament and the country at defiance, came the news that a terrible battle had been fought at Lutter between the Austrians under Tilly, and the Protestant allies under Charles's uncle, the King of Denmark; that the allies were defeated and driven across the Elbe; all their baggage and ammunition lost, and the whole circle of Lower Saxony left exposed to the soldiers of Ferdinand. This was the death-blow to the cause of the Elector Palatine. But Charles seized the occasion to raise money by a fresh forced loan on a large scale, on pretence of the necessity of aiding Protestantism, and as if to make the lawless demand the more intolerable, the Commissioners were armed with the most arbitrary powers. All who refused to comply with this illegal demand, this body was authorised to interrogate on oath, as to their reasons, and who were their advisers, and they were bound by oath never to divulge what passed between them and the Commissioners.

Charles issued a proclamation, excusing his conduct by alleging that the necessities of the State did not admit of waiting for the reassembling of Parliament, and assuring his loving subjects that whatever was now paid would be remitted in the collection of the next subsidy. He also addressed a letter to the clergy, calling on them to exhort their parishioners from the pulpit to obedience and liberality. But such were the relative positions of king and Parliament, that people were not very confident of any speedy grant from that body, and the good faith of both Charles and his favourite had become so dubious, that many refused to pay. The names of these were transmitted to the Council, and the vengeance of the Court was let loose upon them. The rich were fined and imprisoned, the poor were forcibly enrolled in the army or navy, that "they might serve with their bodies, since they refused to serve with their purses." In vain were appeals made to the king against this intolerable tyranny; he would listen to no one. Amongst the names of those who suffered on this occasion, stand those of Sir John Eliot and John Hampden, as well as of Wentworth, soon to become the staunch upholder of Absolutism.

In towns the people did not conceal their indignation at these proceedings. "Six poor tradesmen at Chelmsford stood out stiffly, notwithstanding the many threats and promises made them;" and the Londoners loudly shouted, "A Parliament! a Parliament! No Parliament no money!" Still Charles went on in his mad course; no voice, mortal or immortal, could even for a moment break the spell of his delusion. Those judges and magistrates who were averse from enforcing the detestable orders were summarily dismissed. Sir Randolph Carew, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, must give way to the more pliant Sir Nicholas Hyde, the adviser of Buckingham. But the lawyers in general were ready enough to break the laws by order of the Court, and the clergy were still more so. Laud was now advanced, for his Absolutist and Popish predilections, to the see of Bath and Wells, and sent forth a circular to the clergy enjoining them to preach up zealously the advance of money to the Crown, as a work meriting salvation. He openly advocated a strict league and confederacy between the Church and State, by which they might trample upon all schism, heresy, and disloyalty. There was no lack of time-servers to second his efforts. Roger Mainwaring, one of the king's chaplains, a true high-priest to the golden calf, with the most shameless prostitution of the pulpit, declared before the king and Court at Whitehall, that the power of the king was above all courts and parliaments; that parliament was but an inferior kind of council, entirely at the king's will; that the king's order was sufficient authority for the raising of money, and that all who refused it were guilty of unutterable sin and liable to damnation. He insulted the Scriptures by dragging them in to prove all this, and would have sold, not his own soul only, but the souls of the whole nation to obtain a bishopric. He had his desire; and the success of such religious toadyism inflamed the clergy in the country with a like abjectness. One Robert Sibthorpe, vicar of Brackley, in an assize sermon preached at Northampton, declared that even if the king commanded people to resist the Law of God, they were to obey him, to show no resistance, no railing, no reviling, to be all passive obedience. To demonstrate the Scriptural soundness of his doctrine, he quoted this verse of the Book of Ecclesiastes (viii. 4.): "Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?"

Abbot, the Archbishop, was applied to, to license the printing of this sermon; but the old man, who had always had a Puritan leaning, which his high post alone prevented him from more fully demonstrating, declined to do it. In vain the king insisted: the archbishop was suspended and sent to his country house; and Laud, who was hankering earnestly after the Primacy, licensed the sermon. Sibthorpe did not fail of his reward; he was appointed chaplain in ordinary, and received a prebend in Peterborough, and the goodly living of Burton Latimer. Andrew Marvell designated these model Churchmen as "exceedingly pragmatical, intolerably ambitious, and so desperately proud that scarcely any gentleman might come near the tails of their mules." The subserviency of the clergy was not one of the least evils which a tyrannic court fostered. The people saw more clearly than ever that the Church under such circumstances would become the staunch ally of despotism; and many even of its own honourable members, in the higher walks of life, shrank away from it and joined the ranks of the Puritans, for no other reason than that they were resolute for the liberty of the subject.

The state of feeling on both sides of the Channel meanwhile hastened an open rupture. The French were highly incensed at the treatment of the queen's retinue, who, having become an intense nuisance, were packed off to Paris. Thereupon the most sinister reports were spread among the people, who eagerly imbibed the idea that their princess was a victim in the hands of her heretic husband; and they were ready to avenge themselves on England or on the Protestants of their own country. On the other hand, Charles ascribed his disasters, the defeat of his brother-in-law's allies in Germany, and his consequent unpopularity at home, to the failure of Louis of France in giving the aid which he had promised. Through this default Charles considered that he had sunk a million of money, ten thousand soldiers, and lost the favour of his people. In these ideas he was strengthened by the emissaries of the French Protestants; and very soon Devic and Montague were despatched by Charles to concert measures with the Huguenots, and Soubise and Brancard were received at London as their envoys. It was finally determined that Charles should send a fleet and army to La Rochelle, which the Duke de Rohan should join with four thousand men. It was rumoured that it was planned for a Protestant state to be established between the Loire and Garonne, at the head of which Buckingham should be placed. That there was some great scheme of the kind is certain, for Charles, in dismissing ambassadors from his uncle the King of Denmark, said that he kept his full design from them; "for," he remarked, "I think it needless, or rather hurtful, to discover my main intent in this business, because divulging it, in my mind, must needs hazard it."

Meanwhile France, on its side, had not been inactive. Richelieu had listened not only to the discontent of the French at the concessions made by Bassompierre, the French ambassador, in the matter of the number of the queen's religious advisers, but to the urgent entreaties of the Pope's nuncio, who had never ceased, since the expulsion of Henrietta's priests, to call on Louis to avenge that insult to the Church, and had concluded a treaty with Spain, for mutual defence and for the punishment of England. They regarded the fleet preparing in the English ports, on the pretence of chastising the Algerines and giving aid to the Palsgrave, as really destined against France and Spain, and they planned not only a defence of their own coasts but a descent on the shores of England. It was agreed that Spanish ships should be received in French ports and French ones in those of Spain.

The English, on their part, swept the ships of all nations from the sea, on the plea that they might contain Spanish goods. Letters of mark were issued, and no nations were spared by the cruisers, not even those in alliance with England. The Hanse Towns, the Dutch States, and even the King of Denmark, had to make zealous remonstrances. Louis of France had not confined himself to remonstrances even before signing the treaty with Spain, but had laid an embargo on all English ships in French harbours. But now orders were issued by both the French and English Courts for the suspension of commercial intercourse between the two nations.

On the 27th of June, 1627, the English fleet sailed out of Portsmouth. It consisted of forty-two ships of war, thirty-four transports, and carried seven regiments of infantry, of nine hundred men each, a squadron of cavalry, and a numerous body of French Protestants, altogether about seven or eight thousand men. That it might this time succeed, the Duke of Buckingham took command of it, for in his self-conceit he attributed former failures to his not being on the spot in person, to give the troops the advantage of his consummate genius and experience; the whole of his military genius, if he had any, being yet to be discovered, and the whole of his experience amounting to having seen soldiers on parade. His plans were kept so secret—even from the friends with whom he was to co-operate—that arriving on the 11th of July before La Rochelle, the inhabitants refused to permit him to land. It was in vain that Sir William Beecher and their own envoy Soubise entreated them to receive those who were come as their allies and defenders: the people distrusted Buckingham, and declared that they would make no hostile demonstration against Louis till they had consulted the other churches and got in their harvest. This displayed a dreadful want of management on the part of the English; and Buckingham, thus shut out by those whom he came to support, turned his attention to the neighbouring isles of RhÉ and OlÉron, which the Huguenots had some time ago surrendered to their king. He decided to invade RhÉ, and made his descent the very next day, on the 12th of July. His sudden diversion in this direction took Toyras, the governor of the island, by surprise; the small force with which he attempted to prevent their landing was defeated; but Buckingham, loitering on the shore for four or five days, in landing the remainder of his troops, allowed Toyras to convey the provisions, wine, and ammunition on the island into the strong citadel of the town of St. Martin. A small fort called La PrÉe lay in Buckingham's path, but he did not stay to take that, but pushed on to St. Martin. The castle stood on a rock overlooking the town and bay, and experienced officers were struck with great misgivings at the sight of it. Buckingham talked of taking it by a coup de main, but Sir John Burroughs, an officer who had acquired a real knowledge of war and sieges in the Netherlands, shook his head and pronounced the place next to impregnable, and that an attempt to storm it would be a useless waste of lives. It was then determined to invest the place in force; but Burroughs was equally dissatisfied with the unscientific construction of the trenches and batteries which were prepared. Buckingham, instead of benefiting by the counsels of this experienced officer, reprimanded him with a sternness which silenced more compliant men. In a few days a shot silenced altogether the honestly officious Burroughs, and the duke went on with his siege only to find that, as that officer had predicted, the fort defied all his efforts.

The news of this attack on France spread consternation amongst the allies of the Palsgrave; the prince himself, the States of Holland, and the King of Denmark, all hastened to express their astonishment and dismay at this rupture between the two great powers who should have enabled them by their united efforts to re-conquer the Palatinate. They would not admit Charles's representation of his obligation to support the French Protestants as of sufficient moment to induce him to destroy the hopes of Protestantism in Germany, and of his own sister and brother-in-law. They begged to be permitted to mediate between the two crowns: Denmark sent ambassadors instantly to Paris, to use its influence for that purpose with the French Court; and the Dutch deprived of their commissions all English officers in their service, who had joined the expedition to La Rochelle.

INTERIOR OF THE BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL.

But they could not move Charles. He wrote to Buckingham, congratulating him on the success of his attempt on RhÉ, which was yet no success at all; promising him fresh reinforcements and provisions, and exhorting him to prosecute the war with vigour and to listen to no proposals of peace. He applauded a proclamation which Buckingham had prepared, to assure the French Protestants that the King of England had no intention of conquest, his sole object being to compel the King of France to fulfil his engagements towards the French Protestants into which he had entered with them; that, despite these engagements, he had not dismantled Fort Louis, in the vicinity of La Rochelle; but, on the contrary, had endeavoured to surprise the town and reduce it by force to comply with his own religious demands. Charles, however, ordered Buckingham to make an alteration in the manifesto, so that instead of the defence of the Protestants being the sole cause of his coming, it should be the chief cause, and allow him to put forward other reasons for his hostilities as occasion might require.

With this proclamation in his hand, the Duke de Rohan made a tour amongst the Huguenot churches in the south of France, where the people listened to him with enthusiasm, and all who dissented from the vow to live and die with the English liberators were denounced as traitors. Rohan was empowered to raise forces and advance to the support of La Rochelle; but La Rochelle was in no haste to declare itself, for Richelieu had marched an army into the neighbourhood, and kept it in check. It was the last to hoist the flag of revolt, and it was for the last time.

But all this time Buckingham was experiencing the truth of the warnings of Burroughs: no impression whatever was made on the citadel of St. Martin. Charles's promised reinforcements did not arrive. He wrote to explain the causes of the delay—being the difficulty of obtaining mariners, and the slowness of the Commissioners of the Navy; but he assured him that the Earl of Holland was preparing to bring out fresh forces. On the 12th of August there was a rumour of an attempt to assassinate Buckingham by a Jesuit, with a thick three-edged knife; but a real wound was inflicted on his reputation by a French flotilla bursting the boom which he had drawn across the harbour, despite his fleet, and throwing provisions into Fort St. Martin, in spite of himself. This disaster produced violent altercations between his ill-managed army and fleet. The army charged the misfortune to the sheer negligence of the fleet, and the fleet only answered by loud clamours for pay, having, it appeared, received nothing the whole time.

Under these circumstances Buckingham displayed all the wavering confusion of mind which characterises an inefficient commander. One day he was ready to comply with the written requisition of the officers of the army to abandon the siege; the next, he determined to stay and assault the place. This miserable vacillation was ended by the arrival of the Earl of Holland on the 27th of October, with fifteen hundred men; and the La Rochelle folk sending eight hundred more, it was resolved to make a general assault on the place. On the 6th of November this assault began, but the cannonade produced no effect on the adamantine works and solid walls of the fort; the slaughter of the troops on all sides was terrible, and the attempt was abandoned. Buckingham then wished himself safe on board his fleet; but unfortunately for him and his army, Marshal Schomberg had now posted himself with a strong force on the island between him and his vessels. He had occupied and garrisoned Fort la PrÉe, which Buckingham had so imprudently left in his rear, and compelled him now to defile his army along a narrow causeway across the marshes, connecting the small island of Oie with that of RhÉ. Nothing could demonstrate more forcibly the utter incompetence of Buckingham for military command than thus suffering the enemy to land and lodge in the line of his retreat. Schomberg now attacked the defiling troops in the rear with his ordnance, and the cavalry. The cavalry was thrown into confusion, and the pressure and disorder on the causeway became frightful; the artillery played upon them with dreadful effect, and numbers were pushed off into the bordering bogs and salt pits and suffocated. The destruction soon amounted to twelve hundred men, and twenty pairs of colours were taken. There was no want of bravery exhibited by either Buckingham or his men. Courage, it has been well said, was the sole qualification for a general which he possessed; he was the last to leave the beach; and the men once off the causeway, turned resolutely and offered battle to Schomberg. But that prudent general was satisfied to let them go away, which they prepared to do, to the consternation of the people of La Rochelle, who had risen on the strength of their promises, and were now exposed to a formidable army under the command of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, and Schomberg.

A really good general, though he had suffered serious loss, would still have thrown himself into La Rochelle and, with the sea kept open by his fleet for supplies, might have done signal service in defence of the place. But Buckingham was no such general. He determined to withdraw, contemplating another enterprise equally impossible to him as the taking of the citadel of St. Martin. He had an idea of the glory and popularity of recovering Calais, and communicated this notable project to the king. Charles was charmed with the project, and as he had assured Buckingham that he had done wonders, and almost impossibilities on the island of RhÉ, so he anticipated an equally splendid result: this in any other man, except Charles, would have looked like bitter irony. In the eyes of the more sensible officers of the fleet and army, the notion of attempting the surprise of Calais with a reduced and defeated force, and under such a general, was scouted as madness. Buckingham turned the prows of his fleet homewards, and arrived towards the end of November. The fleet and army were indignant at the disgraceful management of the campaign; the people at home were equally so at the waste of public money, and the ruin of national honour; but Charles received Buckingham with undiminished affection, and took to himself the blame of the failure of the expedition, because he had not been able to send sufficient reinforcements and provisions. But he speedily received an impressive reminder of the consequences of this scandalously managed attempt. The people of La Rochelle sent over envoys to represent to him their condition, in consequence of listening to his promises; the French were beleaguering their town, and the most terrible fate awaited them if they were thus deceived and abandoned. Charles gave them comfortable words, and entered into a solemn engagement to stand by them so long as their forts could resist the enemy, and to make no peace without the guarantee of all their ancient liberties.

But how were these grandiloquent words to be redeemed? He had exhausted all the resources of his arbitrary exactions, and had incurred an additional amount of unpopularity by seizing and imprisoning numbers of those who refused to submit to a forced loan; and when they demanded a fair hearing through the exercise of the Habeas corpus, they were told that the king's command superseded that. The Crown lawyers, in fact, vaunted the royal will as the supreme law, whilst Selden, Coke, and the constitutional lawyers referred them to Magna Charta, which had been thirty times confirmed by the kings, and thus aroused a wonderful feeling of popular right in the kingdom.

Whilst such was the state of public feeling, the usual pressure for money rendered it necessary to adopt some means of raising it. Besides the requirements of the home government, the proposed aid to the people of La Rochelle made immediate funds necessary. To attempt extorting supplies by the modes which had so exasperated the public, was a course which all reasonable men regarded with repugnance and apprehension. Charles himself would have braved any danger rather than that of meeting Parliament, with all its remonstrances and demands of redress of public grievances; but his Council urged him to make another trial of the Commons, and he consented. The writs were issued on the 29th of January, 1628, for the assembling of Parliament on the 17th of March. Yet in the course of that very week the king proceeded to repeat the conduct which Parliament had so strongly condemned, and which must render its meeting the more formidable. He required one hundred and seventy-three thousand four hundred and eleven pounds for the outfit of the expedition to La Rochelle, and instead of waiting for a grant from Parliament, he ordered the money to be raised by a Commission from the counties, and that within three weeks. With that irritating habit which he had inherited from his father, he added a menace, saying that if they paid this tax cheerfully, he would meet his Parliament; if not, "he would think of some more speedy way."

Conduct so restless and insulting on the very eve of the opening of Parliament raised the wildest ferment in the public: the Commissioners shrank in terror from their task, and Charles hastened to revoke the Commission, saying that "he would rely on the love of his people in Parliament." This was on the 16th of February, but like Pharaoh, Charles repented himself of his momentary concession, and on the 28th he issued an order to raise the money which the counties had refused, by a duty on merchandise. The merchants were, however, not a whit more willing to submit to an illegal imposition, nor more timid than the counties. The ministers trembled before the storm, and anticipated certain impeachment; the judges pronounced the duty illegal, and once more Charles recalled his order.

What rendered the public more sensitive to these acts of royal licence was, that a number of foreign troops were about to be brought into the kingdom, on the plea of employing them against France, but which the people saw might be turned against themselves or their representatives. They were, therefore, worked up to a pitch of extreme excitement, and bestirred themselves to send up to the House of Commons a body of such men as should not be readily intimidated. Never before had Parliament assembled under such favourable circumstances. Daring as had been the king's assaults on the public liberties, this had only served to rouse the nation to a resolute resolve to withstand his contempt of Magna Charta at all hazards. Westminster elected one Bradshaw, a brewer, and Maurice, a grocer. Huntingdon sent up a far more remarkable man, one Oliver Cromwell, the first time that he had been returned to Parliament by any place. There was a general enthusiasm to turn out all such members as had been inert, indifferent, or ready to betray their trusts out of terror or a leaning towards the Court. When the members assembled the House was crowded; there were four hundred such men as had rarely sat in any English Parliament before. Both county and town had selected such brave, patriotic, and substantial freeholders, merchants, and traders, as made sycophants and time-servers tremble. They were no longer the timid Commons who had formerly scarcely dared to look the lords or even the knights in the face; they were well aware of their power, and in wealth itself they were said to be three times superior to the House of Peers. In running his eye over them, a spectator would see such men as Cromwell, Hampden, Selden, Pym, Hollis, Eliot, Dudley Digges, Coke, Wentworth (soon to apostatise), and others, with intellects illumined by the study of the orators, lawgivers, and philosophers of republican Greece, animated with the great principles of Christianity, and with resolutions like iron. Many of these men had been attended to London by trains of their neighbours, sturdy freeholders and substantial shopkeepers, more numerous than the retinues of any lords, such was the intense expectation of what might ensue, and the prompt resolve to stand by their representatives. And they were not deceived, for this third Parliament of Charles I. marked itself out as one of the grand land-marks of English history.

The king was conscious that if he hoped to gain his chief object from them—money—he must curb his haughty temper and assume a conciliating manner. He therefore, just before the opening of the Session, liberated seventy-eight gentlemen who had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the forced loan; he let the Earl of Bristol out of the Tower, though he lay under an impeachment for high treason; accorded the same favour to Bishop Williams, whom Buckingham had caused to be lodged there; and restored Archbishop Abbot, who had been suspended for refusing to license Sibthorpe's base sermon. But when he had made these concessions to popular opinion, Charles could not command his inveterate habit of threatening, and so spoilt all. In his opening speech he said:—"I have called you together, judging a Parliament to be the ancient, speediest, and best way to give such supply as to secure ourselves and save our friends from imminent ruin. Every man must now do according to his conscience; wherefore, if you, which God forbid, should not do your duties in contributing what this State at this time needs, I must, in discharge of my conscience, use those other means which God hath put into my hands, to save that which the follies of other men may otherwise hazard to lose. Take not this as threatening—I scorn to threaten any but my equals—but as an admonition from him that, both out of nature and duty, hath most care of your preservation and properties."

This was followed by an equally impolitic speech from the Lord Keeper Coventry, who informed the Commons that the king had come to Parliament, not because it was at all necessary, not because he was destitute of other means, but because it was more agreeable to the goodness of his most gracious disposition. And then he unwisely enough added, "If this be deferred, necessity and the sword may make way for others. Remember his majesty's admonition; I say, remember it."

Surely if the veriest novices in government had been set to talk to Parliament, they could not have done it in a more insane, blundering style. If the Commons had had as little tact as the king and his minister, there would have been hard words hurled back again, and the Parliament would have not been many days ere it ceased to exist. But the Commons had men as profound as these were shallow. They took all patiently, and set about quietly to determine on the question of Supplies. They came to the resolution to offer ample ones—no less than five subsidies, the whole to be paid within one year—but they tagged this simple condition to them, that the king should give them a guarantee against any further invasion of their rights.

As we have already stated, during the past year many gentlemen had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the demands of the king made without sanction of Parliament. Five of them had been, at their own request, brought before the King's Bench by writ of Habeas corpus, and their counsel demanded that, as they were charged with no particular offence, but merely committed at the particular command of the king, they should be discharged or admitted to bail; but both were refused. The question was now discussed by the House, and it was resolved that no subsidy should pass without a remedy granted against this royal licence. "It will in us be wrong done to ourselves," said Sir Francis Seymour, "to our posterity, to our consciences, if we forego this just claim and pretension."

"We must vindicate what?" demanded Wentworth; "new things? No; our ancient, legal, and vital liberties, by enforcing the laws enacted by our ancestors; by setting such a stamp upon them that no licentious spirit shall dare henceforth to invade them." In the repeated debates which followed, Sir Edward Coke particularly distinguished himself, old as he was, by his powerful and undaunted speeches. He called upon the members to stand by the ancient laws, and was seconded by other members, who narrated the breaking of those laws by the abuses of raising money by loans, by benevolences, and privy seals; by billeting soldiers, by imprisonment of men for refusing these illegal demands, and by withholding from them the benefit of Habeas corpus. In vain were the speakers warned by the Court party to beware of distrusting the king, who had been driven to these measures by necessity, and by others, who declared that such was the king's goodness that it was next only to that of God. But Coke cried out, "Let us work whilst we have time! I am absolutely for giving supply to his majesty, but yet with some caution. Let us not flatter ourselves. Who will give subsidies if the king may impose what he will? I know he is a religious king, free from personal vices, but he deals with other men's hands, and sees with other men's eyes."

SIR JOHN ELIOT. (From the Port Eliot Portrait.)

This was approaching the subject of the favourite, which even the boldest were afraid of touching, but which Coke soon after entered upon plainly, and with all courage.

On the 8th of May the House passed the four following resolutions, without a dissentient voice even from the courtiers—1st, That no freeman ought to be restrained or imprisoned, unless some lawful cause of such restraint or imprisonment be expressed; 2nd, That the writ of Habeas Corpus ought to be granted to every man imprisoned or restrained, though it be at the command of the king or Privy Council, if he pray for the same; 3rd, That when the return expresses no cause of commitment or restraint, the party ought to be delivered or bailed; 4th, That it is the ancient and undoubted right of every free man, that he hath a full and absolute property in his goods and estates, and that no tax, loan, or benevolence ought to be levied by the king or his ministers, without common consent by Act of Parliament.

It was clear, from these resolutions, that unless Charles chose to forego his illegal practices of raising money without consent of Parliament, and of imprisoning subjects without any warrant but his own will, he must abandon all idea of the five subsidies; but his necessities were too great, and the difficulties in the way of continuing to plunder people at his pleasure too formidable to allow him lightly to give up the tempting offer. The Lords were less determined than the Commons, and this gave him some encouragement. The matter was argued in the Commons on his behalf by the Attorney-General and the King's Counsel, but they found the leading members of the House too strong in their knowledge of constitutional law to be moved from their grand propositions. In the course of the debate the interference of Buckingham was felt, and the brave Sir John Eliot did not let that pass without criticism. "I know not," he said, "by what fatality or importunity it has crept in, but I observe in the close of Mr. Secretary's relation, mention made of another in addition to his majesty, and that which hath been formerly a matter of complaint, I find here still—a mixture with his majesty, not only in business, but in name. Let me beseech you, sir, let no man hereafter within these walls take this boldness to introduce it."

On the 28th of May the Commons presented to his majesty their celebrated Petition of Right; a document destined to become celebrated, a confirmation of Magna Charta, and the origin of the Bill of Rights secured in 1688, on which rests all the fabric of our present liberties. This Petition was based on the four resolutions. It commenced by reminding the monarch of the great statutes passed by some of the most illustrious of his ancestors, which he had been so long and pertinaciously outraging; that the statute De Tallagio non concedendo, made in the reign of Edward I., provided that no tallage nor aid could be levied by the king without consent of Parliament; that by another statute of the 25th year of Edward III., no person could be compelled to make any loan to the king without such sanction; such loans being against reason and the charters of the land. There could be no dispute here—the king stood palpably convicted, and had he acted in ignorance, could do so no longer. It then went on: "And by other laws of this realm, it is provided that none shall be charged by any charge or imposition called a benevolence, nor by such like charge; by which statutes before mentioned, and the other good laws and statutes of the realm, your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in Parliament: yet, nevertheless, of late, divers commissions, directed to sundry commissioners, in several counties, with instructions, have issued, by pretext whereof your people have been in divers places assembled, and required to lend certain sums of money unto your majesty; and many of them, upon their refusal to do so, have had an unlawful oath administered unto them, not warrantable by the laws and statutes of this realm, and have been constrained to become bound to make appearance and give attendance before your Privy Council in other places; and others of them have therefore been imprisoned, confined, and sundry other ways molested and disquieted; and divers other charges have been laid and levied upon your people in several counties, by lords-lieutenant, commissioners for musters, justices of peace, and others, by command or direction from your majesty or your Privy Council, against the laws and free customs of this realm."

The Petition next set forth that divers persons refusing to pay these impositions had been imprisoned without cause shown, and on being brought up by Habeas Corpus to have their cause examined, had been sent back to prison without such fair trial and examination. From this it proceeded to the fact that numbers of soldiers had been billeted in private houses, contrary to the law, and persons tried by martial law in cases where they were only amenable to the common law of the land; and moreover, officers and ministers of the king had screened soldiers and sailors who had committed robberies, murders, and other felonies, on the plea that they were only responsible to military tribunals. All these breaches of the statutes, the Petition prayed the king to cause to cease, as being contrary to the rights and liberties of the subject, as secured by the laws of the land.

The Petition was so clear, and the statutes quoted were so undeniable, that Charles was puzzled what to do. To refuse the prayer of the Commons was to forfeit the five tempting subsidies; to admit it simply and fully was to confess that he had hitherto been altogether wrong, and to leave himself no loop-hole of excuse for the future. Instead, therefore, of adopting the established form of saying, in the old Norman words, "Soit droit fait comme il est dÉsirÉ," he wrote at the foot of the petition this loose and most absurd assent—"The king willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm; and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrongs or oppressions, contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged as of his own prerogative."

This left the matter precisely where it was, for the king had always contended that he did nothing but what was warranted by his prerogative. The House felt this, and at once expressed their grievous disappointment. To add to their chagrin, Charles sent a message to them, informing them that he should dissolve Parliament on the 11th of June, it now being the 5th. A deep and melancholy silence pervaded the House, which locked the doors to prevent interruption, and debated the matter in all earnestness. A second message from his majesty, commanding them not to cast or lay aspersions on any minister of his majesty, added greatly to the concern of the House. On the day but one before Sir John Eliot had urged the necessity of a "declaration" to his majesty, showing the decay and contempt of religion, and the insufficiency of his ministers, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had styled Sir John's speech "strange language," and had declared that if Sir John went on, he would go out; upon which the House told him plainly to take himself off. This had brought down the king's second message. The debate went on amid tears and deep emotion from strong and long-practised men; as if they perceived that the great crisis of the nation was come, and foresaw the bloodshed and misery which were to follow if they stood firm to their knowledge of the right; the slavery and degradation of England if they did not.

Sir Robert Philips, interrupted by sobs and weeping, said:—"I perceive that towards God and towards man there is little hope, after our humble and careful endeavours, seeing our sins are many and so great. I consider my own infirmities, and if ever my passions were wrought upon, it is now. This message stirs me up, especially when I remember with what moderation we have proceeded." These earnest and religious men feared that God was hardening the heart of the king as he had done that of Pharaoh, in order to punish the nation for its backslidings and wickedness. "Our sins," said Sir John Eliot, "are so exceeding great, that unless we speedily turn to God, God will remove Himself farther from us. You know with what affection and integrity we have proceeded hitherto, to gain his majesty's heart; and, out of the necessity of our duty, were brought to that course we were in: I doubt a misrepresentation to his majesty hath drawn this mark of his displeasure upon us. I observe in the message, amongst other sad particulars, it is conceived that we were about to lay some aspersions upon the Government. Give me leave to protest that so clear were our intentions, that we desire only to vindicate these dishonours to our king and country. It is said also as if we cast some aspersions on his majesty's ministers; I am confident no minister, how dear soever, can——"

Eliot was interrupted by Sir John Finch, the Speaker, who had for some time been more and more sidling away to the favour of the king, starting up and exclaiming, "There is a command laid upon me, to interrupt any that shall go about to lay an aspersion on the ministers of State." This was a clear infringement of the privilege of Parliament, which the House was not disposed to pass by. Sir John, thus snubbed, sat down, and there remained a significant silence for some minutes. Then Sir Dudley Digges rose and said, "Unless we may speak of these things, let us arise, and begone, or sit still and do nothing." There was another deep silence, at length broken by Sir Nathaniel Rich, who said, "We must now speak, or for ever hold our peace. For us to be silent when king and kingdom are in this calamity, is not fit. The question is, whether we shall secure ourselves by our silence—yea or no? Let us go to the Lords and show our dangers, that we may then go to the king together with our representation thereof." Prynne, Coke, and others, spoke to the same effect, and Coke was so overwhelmed with his feelings, grown old as he was, at the Bar, on the Bench and in the House, that he was obliged to resume his seat.

The House resolved itself into a committee for more freedom of discussion, and put Mr. Whitly into the chair. Finch, the Speaker, begged leave, as he was quitting the chair, for half an hour's absence. The House knew very well that he only wanted to run off and tell the king what was going on, but they let him go, and away he bustled to Whitehall. The House then passed an order, declaring that no man should leave the House under penalty of being committed to the Tower. Then Mr. Kirton rose, and declaring that the king in himself was as good a prince as ever reigned, said "it was high time to find out the enemies of the Commonwealth, who had so prevailed with him, and then he doubted not but God would send them hearts, hands, and swords, to cut all their throats." He added that the Speaker to desire to leave the House as he had done, was unprecedented, and to his mind ominous. Sir Edward Coke once more endeavoured to say what he had not been able to say before, but which must be said, and none so proper as this veteran statesman to say it. "I now see," he observed, "that God has not accepted our humble and moderate carriages and fair proceedings; and I fear the reason is that we have not dealt sincerely with the king, and made a true representation of the causes of all these miseries. Let us take this to heart. In the time of Edward III. had Parliament any doubt as to naming men that misled the king? They accused John of Gaunt, the king's son, Lord Latimer, and Lord Neville, for misadvising the king; and they went to the Tower for it. And now, when there is such a downfall of the State, shall we hold our tongues? Why," continued he, "may we not name those who are the cause of all our evils?" And he added, "Let us palliate no longer; if we do, God will not prosper us. I think the Duke of Buckingham is the cause, and till the duke be informed thereof, we shall never go out with honour, nor sit with honour here. That man is the grievance of grievances! Let us set down the causes of all our disasters, and they will all reflect upon him. As to going to the Lords, that is not via regia; our liberties are now impeached; we are deeply concerned; it is not via regia, for the Lords are not participant with our liberties. It is not the king but the duke that saith, 'We require you not to meddle with state affairs, or the ministers thereof.' Did not his majesty, when prince, attend the Upper House in our prosecution of Lord Chancellor Bacon and the Lord Treasurer Middlesex?"

The secret was out; the word was spoken! The name at which Charles and the duke had trembled, lest it should come into discussion, was, in spite of threats and messages, named; and the naming, and the charging with all the disgraces and miseries of the nation, were received with sudden and general acclamation of "Yea! yea! 'Tis he! 'tis he!" The day was come that James had so solemnly warned both Charles and Buckingham of—when they should have their bellyful of impeachments; having, as Coke now reminded them, themselves set the ball rolling. Aldred, in the letter just quoted, says:—"As when one good hound recovers the scent, the rest come in with full cry, so one pursued it, and every one came home and laid the blame where he thought the fault was, on the Duke of Buckingham, to wit." The duke was speedily accused of treachery and incapacity, both as High Admiral and Commander-in-Chief. All the disgraceful failures, at Cadiz, at La Rochelle, on the Isle of RhÉ, and even in Germany, were charged upon his evil counsels or worse management.

Selden proposed a declaration to his majesty under four heads, expressive of the dutiful devotion of the House, of the violation of the nation's liberties, of the intentions of the House, and of the interference of the duke to prevent inquiry. He declared that all this time they had been casting a mantle over the accusation made against Buckingham, and that it was time to revert to that. "At this moment," says Aldred, "as we were putting the question, the Speaker, having been, not half an hour, but three hours absent, and with the king, returned, bringing this message—that the House should then rise—being about eleven o'clock—adjourn till the morrow morning, and no committees to sit, or other business to go on in the interim."

The next day the House met, when Finch apologised for his absence, and his going to the king, declaring that he had communicated nothing but what was to the honour of the House; and wishing that his tongue might cleave to the roof of his mouth before he spoke a word to the disparagement of any member. He informed them that his majesty had no desire to fetter their deliberations, so that they did not interfere with his ministers, and added words of courtesy from the king. The Commons observed that they had no intention of charging anything on the king, but must insist on inquiring when necessary into the conduct of his ministers; and the words of Mr. Kirton being found fault with, which intimated a hope that all those found guilty might have their throats cut, the House resolved that "he had said nothing beyond the bounds of duty and allegiance, and that they all concurred with him therein."

On the following day they went into committee, and commenced their labours of inquiry into the proceedings of the executive. They examined Burlemachi, a foreign speculator, as to a commission which he was alleged to have, for engaging and bringing into this kingdom troops of German horse. He confessed to such warrant, and to having received thirty thousand pounds for this purpose; one thousand of these horse being, as he admitted, already raised and armed, and waiting their passage in Holland. "And the intention of bringing over these mercenaries," said one of the members, "is to cut our throats, or to keep us in obedience!" Another member declared that twelve of the commanders were already arrived, and had been seen in St. Paul's. The House next fell upon a new scheme of excise, which it was proposed to levy without consent of Parliament, and voted that any member who had any information regarding this new imposition and did not disclose it, was an enemy to the State, and no true Englishman.

The danger which was obviously approaching Buckingham in the proceedings of this Committee alarmed the king; and the same day, the 7th of June, he commanded the Commons to meet him in the House of Lords, and then observing that he thought he had given a full and specific answer to their Petition of Right, but as they were not satisfied, he desired them to read the Petition again, and he would give them an answer which should satisfy them. Taking his seat on the throne, this was done, and he then ordered the former answer to be cut off, and the following, in the established form, to be inscribed—"Let right be done as is desired." "Now," he added, "I have performed my part; wherefore, if this Parliament have not a happy issue, the sin is yours. I am free of it."

Thus was passed the Petition of Right, the most important document since the acquirement of Magna Charta. The rejoicing for this conquest, this assurance of quieter days and secure firesides, sped through the City, and thence over the kingdom, and was everywhere demonstrated by acclamations, ringing of bells, and bonfires. On the 10th of June, three days afterwards, the king, as if pleased with this public expression of satisfaction, sent Sir Humphrey May to inform the House of Commons that he was graciously pleased that their Petition of Right, with his answer, should be recorded not only on the journals of Parliament, but in those of the courts of Westminster, and should, moreover, be printed for his honour and the content of the people. On the 12th the Commons showed their content by voting the king the five subsidies, and hastening to pass the Bill for five other subsidies granted by the clergy.

But the exultation over this great triumph did not prevent the Commons from pursuing their labours of inquiry into abuses. They obtained a judgment from the Lords against Dr. Mainwaring for his encouragement of kingly absolutism in his sermons, and censured Laud and Neale of Winchester, for licensing similar sermons; they then came to Buckingham himself, and voted a strong remonstrance against his undue influence and unconstitutional doings, which was presented by the Speaker to the king. The House felt itself highly aggrieved by a speech which the favourite was reported to have made at his own table—"Tush! it makes no matter what the Commons or Parliament doth; for without my leave and authority, they shall not be able to touch the hair of a dog." Buckingham protested that he had never uttered such words, and called upon the House of Lords to demand that the members of the Commons who had thus reported it should be called in to prove it; but the duke was forced to content himself with entering his protest on the journals of the Lords.

The Commons not having voted the tonnage and poundage, calculated that the king would not hastily dissolve the House, and therefore prayed him to remove Buckingham from his counsels, as the author of so many calamities; and they took the opportunity to remind him that tonnage and poundage could not be collected without their consent, as the king's concession of the Petition of Right testified. This called forth Charles again as hotly as ever. Though he had admitted, in granting this Petition, that no kind of duty could be imposed without consent of Parliament, he now sought to except the tonnage and poundage from this condition. He therefore, on the 26th of June, suddenly went to the House of Lords, and summoned the attendance of the Commons. The action had been so impromptu, that the Lords had no notice of it, and neither he nor they had time to robe themselves, when the Commons at nine o'clock in the morning made their appearance. All unrobed as he was, Charles seated himself on the throne, and lectured the Commons on their already beginning to put false constructions on his passing the Petition of Right. "As for the tonnage and poundage, it is a thing I cannot want, and was never intended by you to ask, nor meant by me, I am sure, to grant." And he called on them, but more especially the Lords, who were the judges, to take notice of what he declared his meaning to be when he granted the Petition.

The mischief had been done by former Parliaments granting this impost, now called customs duties, for life; and though Parliament had never altogether surrendered the power of voting it, nor had voted it for life to Charles, he had come to consider it as merged into a matter of prerogative, and not to be affected by his general concession just made. The Commons, however, meant nothing less than that this, as well as every other grant of taxes on the subject, should be void without their assent. Here, therefore, as so often afterwards, they found themselves just where they were with the king as matter of dispute, though they had settled the question as matter of right. No man was ever so hard as Charles I. to be made to see what he did not like. He therefore gave his assent to the subsidies, and prorogued the Parliament till October; and, as if to mark how far he was from intending to submit to what he had thus so solemnly in the face of the whole nation bound himself to, he proceeded to reward the men who had so shamefully advocated absolute power in him. He made bishops of both Montague and Mainwaring, and promoted Sibthorpe to coveted livings.

The king's attention was soon drawn from the battle with the Commons to the demands of the unfortunate people of La Rochelle upon him. He had solemnly pledged his honour to assist them, and they now sorely needed it. Since Buckingham left them to their fate, La Rochelle had been invested by the French army under the king and Richelieu, and the besieged loudly called on the King of England to succour them according to his promise. The Earl of Denbigh was despatched thither with a numerous fleet, yet had done nothing; but having shown himself before the town for seven days, returned, to the great mortification of the Rochellais. Denbigh had been raised to his rank and title simply for marrying a sister of Buckingham's, and the people murmured loudly at the fleet being put into such incompetent hands. The hatred of the duke rose higher and higher, and on the same day that he was pronounced by the Commons the cause of all these national calamities, his physician, Dr. Lambe, was murdered by a mob in London, and a placard was affixed on the walls in these words:—"Who rules the kingdom?—The king. Who rules the king?—The duke. Who rules the duke?—The devil. Let the duke look to it, or he will be served as his doctor was served." A doggerel rhyme was in the mouths of the common people:—

The king was extremely concerned when the placard was shown him, and added double guard at night; but the duke treated the whole with contempt, and prepared to proceed himself with the fleet to relieve La Rochelle. Charles went with him to Deptford to see the ships, and is reported to have said to Buckingham on beholding them, "George, there are those who wish that both these and thou may perish; but we will both perish together, if thou dost." Buckingham proceeded to Portsmouth, where he was to embark. Clarendon relates that the ghost of Buckingham's father had appeared to an officer of the king's wardrobe three times, urging him to go to his son and warn him to do something to abate the hatred of the people, or that he would not be allowed to live long. Since the demonstrations in London, it needed no ghost to show his danger. But he was never gayer than on the eve of the verification of the omens and the menaces.

The duke, on the 23rd of August, rose in high spirits, even dancing in his gaiety, and went to breakfast with a great number of his officers. Whilst he was at breakfast, M. Soubise, the envoy of the people of La Rochelle, went to him, and was seen in earnest private conversation. It is supposed that Soubise had come to the knowledge of certain negotiations between England and France, in which, though both monarchs showed every tendency to listen to an accommodation, neither had yet ventured to propose it; but that it was the object of Buckingham rather to treat than to fight when he got to La Rochelle. At that very moment Mr. Secretary Carleton had arrived from the king with instructions to Buckingham to open by some means a communication with Richelieu, and thus, as it were, accidentally to bring about a treaty. Probably Soubise had acquired hints of these things, for both he and many other Frenchmen about Buckingham appeared greatly discontented, and vociferated and gesticulated energetically. The duke, it is said, had been endeavouring to persuade Soubise that La Rochelle was already relieved, which he was too well informed to credit.

The duke now prepared to go out to his carriage, which was waiting at the door, and as he went through the hall, still followed by the French gentlemen, Colonel Friar whispered something in his ear. He turned to listen, and at the same moment a knife was plunged into his heart, and there left sticking. Plucking it out, with the word "Villain!" he fell, covered with blood. His servants, who caught him as he was falling, thought it was a stroke of apoplexy, but the blood, both from the wound and his mouth, quickly undeceived them. Then an alarm was raised; some ran to close the gates, and others rushed forth to spread the news. The Duchess of Buckingham and her sister, the Countess of Anglesea, heard the noise in their chamber, and ran into the gallery of the lobby, where they saw the duke lying in his gore. He was only in his six-and-thirtieth year.

The first suspicion fell upon the French, and they were in great danger from the duke's people; but when a number of officers came rushing in, crying out, "Where is the villain? Where is the butcher?" a man stepped calmly forward, saying, "I am the man—here I am!" He had quietly withdrawn into the kitchen as soon as he had done the deed, and might have escaped had he so willed. On hearing him avow the murder the officers drew their swords, and would have despatched him, but were prevented by the Secretary Carleton, Sir Thomas Morton, and others, who stood guard over him till a detachment of soldiers arrived and conveyed him to the Governor's house.

The assassin turned out to be John Felton, a gentleman by birth and education, who had been a lieutenant in the army during the expedition to the Isle of RhÉ. He had thrown up his commission because he could not obtain the arrears of his pay, and had seen another at the same time promoted over his head. He had, therefore, most likely, a personal grudge against the duke, but had also been led on by religious fanaticism. He was a stout, dark, military-looking man, from Suffolk; but according to his own account, was first excited to the deed by reading the remonstrance of the Parliament against the duke, when it seemed to him that that remonstrance was a sufficient warrant for the act, and that by ridding the country of him he should render a real service to it. He described himself as walking in London on Tower Hill, when he saw a broad hunting-knife on a cutler's stall, and that it was suggested to him instantly to buy it for this purpose.

At Portsmouth one of the royal chaplains was sent to him in his dungeon, where he lay heavily ironed; but Felton, supposing the chaplain sent to draw something from him, rather than for his consolation, said, "Sir, I shall be brief with you; I killed him for the cause of God and my country!" The chaplain, to mislead him, told him what was not true, that the surgeons gave hopes of his life; but Felton promptly replied, "That is impossible! I had the power of forty men, assisted by Him who guided my hand." On being removed to London, the people crowded to see him, showering blessings on him as the deliverer of his country; and one old woman at Kingston said, "Now, God bless thee, little David!" meaning that he had killed Goliath. Felton was lodged in the Tower, and threatened with the rack to make him confess his accomplices, but he steadfastly replied that he had no accomplices or abettors but the remonstrance of the Commons. The Earl of Dorset went to see him, accompanied, as reported, by Laud, and menaced him with the rack if he would not reveal his colleagues. Felton replied, "I am ready, but I must tell you that I will then accuse you my lord of Dorset, and no one but you." Charles urged his being racked, but the judges, who saw better than he did the spirit that was abroad, refused to sanction it, declaring that torture, however used, had always been contrary to the law of England. Felton gloried in his deed, but at length, through the exertions of the clergy, came to confess that he had been misled by a bad spirit; yet it has been doubted whether he ever really abandoned inwardly the persuasion of having done a great and patriotic deed. When the Attorney-General on the trial lauded the virtues, the abilities, wisdom, and public services of Buckingham to the skies, Felton, on being asked what he had to say why judgment should not be passed on him, replied that if he had deprived his majesty of so faithful a servant as Mr. Attorney-General described, he was sorry, and extending his arm exclaimed, "This is the instrument that did the deed, let it be cut off for it!" He was hanged at Tyburn, and then gibbeted at Portsmouth, the scene of his crime.

In place of the duke, the Earl of Lindsay was ordered to take command of the expedition for the relief of La Rochelle, and he was accompanied by Walter Montague, the second son of the Earl of Manchester, who was to open a negotiation with Richelieu. Montague was already a Catholic at heart, and afterwards became so avowedly, and was made commendatory Abbot of Pontoise, and a member of the Council of Anne of Austria. No doubt it was from this known tendency that he had been chosen for this mission. For five days the fleet manoeuvred before La Rochelle, and after two ineffectual, and probably rather pretended than actual, endeavours to force an entrance, returned to Spithead. Montague, meanwhile, had been introduced to Louis, had hurried back to London, and was on the point of returning, when the news came of the surrender of La Rochelle. This event put an end to the dreams of a Protestant State in France, and greatly consolidated the power of that country. To the Rochellais it was a terrible lesson against putting faith in English kings. When they were prevailed upon to surrender their peace and prosperity to the promises of protection and religious liberty, the town contained fifteen thousand souls; when they opened their gates to their own sovereign, they were reduced to four thousand. All this misery was the work of Charles and Buckingham.

Popery and Arminianism were the things which the Puritans held in almost equal horror. In reference to Popery they inquired what was the reason that the laws regarding it were relaxed? and why out of ten individuals who had been arraigned for receiving ordination in the Church of Rome, only one had been condemned, and the execution of that one respited? Two Committees were appointed to inquire of the judges on what grounds they had refused to receive evidence tendered against the recusants at their trial, and of the Attorney-General by what authority he had discharged the persons in question, on their giving bail for their re-appearance. Every member was bound to give all the information to the House in his power regarding the relaxation of the penal laws, and all attempts or warrants to stay proceedings against the Papists.

But the growth and favour of Arminianism in high places was the most absorbing subject of animadversion. Laud, now Bishop of London, was bent not only on introducing Arminianism to its fullest extent, but ceremonies and rites merging fast into Catholicism. Therefore the Puritans declared the heresy of Arminianism to be the spawn of Popery. Laud had notions of Church government as absolute as Charles had of civil government. All the promotions by him were of Arminian clergymen. Montague was become Bishop of Chichester, Mainwaring was a bishop, and all those who meant to get preferment saw plainly that they must profess Arminianism, and the love of gorgeous ceremonies and plenty of surplices.

There were difficulties, however, for the Articles drawn up in 1562, under Elizabeth, stated:—"The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and hath authority in matters of faith." Mr. Pym called upon the House to take a covenant for the maintenance of their religious rites, which were in danger; and both he and others denounced the introduction of idolatrous ceremonies into the Church by Charles and others. Sir John Eliot protested vehemently against the introduction of the new clause into the Articles. He called on the House to enter not a mere resolution but a "vow" on its Journals against it, which was done; namely, "that the Commons of England claimed, professed, and avowed for truth, that sense of the Articles of Religion which were established in Parliament in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, which by the public acts of the Church of England, and by the general and current exposition of the writers of that Church, had been declared unto them, and that they rejected the sense of the Jesuits, Arminians, and all others wherein they differed from it."

The king sent the House a message, desiring them to leave matters of religion, and proceed to pass the vote for tonnage and poundage. This led to a sharp debate between the Court party and the Opposition. The courtiers lauded the goodness of the king, and the enlargement of their liberties which he had granted; but Mr. Coriton replied bluntly, "When men speak here of neglect of duty towards his majesty, let them know we know no such thing, nor what they mean. I see not how we neglect the same. I see it is all our heart's desire to expedite the Bill of tonnage and poundage in due time. Our business is still put back by their messages, and the business in hand is God's. And his majesty's things are certainly amiss, and every one sees it; but woe be unto us if we present not the same to his majesty!" On the 2nd of February the House, instead of the vote of tonnage and poundage, presented to the king "an apology" for delaying that Bill, and containing a complaint of his majesty's encroaching on the orders and privileges of their House by three messages in two days, urging them to change inconveniently the orders of their proceedings. Charles replied by a message through Secretary Coke that he was as zealous for the faith as they were, but must again think it strange that the business of religion should be an obstruction to his business. He once more desired them to pass the vote for the tonnage and poundage, adding one of his mischievous and most impolitic threats, of quickening them by other means if they did not.

The House, resenting this ill-advised message, went on discussing the affairs of the Church. Mr. Kirton, who had in the last Session talked of cutting the throats of all traitorous Ministers, now declared Laud and Neale, Bishop of Winchester, to be at the bottom of all the troubles that were now come upon them and their religion. On the 11th of February, in the Committee on Religion, Oliver Cromwell made his first appearance as a speaker in that House, a circumstance of great mark, seeing what the honourable member afterwards grew into. He said, "He had heard by relation from one Dr. Beard that Dr. Alabaster had preached flat Popery at Paul's Cross, and that the Bishop of Winchester had commanded him, as his diocesan, that he should preach nothing to the contrary. Mainwaring, so justly censured in this House for his sermons, was by the same bishop's means preferred to a rich living. If these are the steps to Church preferment, what are we to expect?" Whereupon the Committee ordered Dr. Beard to be written to by Mr. Speaker, to come up and testify against the bishop; "the order for Dr. Beard to be delivered to Mr. Cromwell." After severe animadversions on Neale, who, Mr. Kirton said, had leaped through many bishoprics, but always left Popery behind him, the House passed to the consideration of the Petition of Right.

Selden called the attention of the House to this subject, and showed that though Charles had promised that the Petition of Right should be printed, and that the king's printer had struck off fifteen hundred copies of that document, the king had sent for and destroyed them, and had then had printed and circulated another copy, from which the king's assent was removed, his first evasive answer restored, and his sophistical explanation at the close of the Session, that it did not apply to tonnage and poundage, introduced. This flagrant violation of his word and of all the forms of Parliament, struck the House with ominous doubts of ever binding the king by any law or by any principle. They summoned the king's printer to their bar, and demanded by what authority he had thus substituted a false for the true Petition. He replied that the day after the Session the Attorney-General had sent for him, and forbade him to publish the copy printed, as did also the Earl of Worcester, Lord Privy Seal; and that he was sent for again to Court, furnished with the new copy, and ordered to print and publish it in that form.

The House was in the highest state of indignation and astonishment. Such a deliberate falsification of a document passed by the House and ratified by himself, branded the king as capable of any act of duplicity, and went to destroy all confidence in not merely his word but his most solemn legislative act. The chief speakers of the Commons expressed their horror and disgust at the deed in no measured terms. Selden exclaimed, "For this Petition of Right, we see how it has been invaded since our last meeting. Our liberties of life, person, and freehold have been invaded; men have been committed contrary to that Petition. No man ought to lose life or limb but by the law, and hath not one lately lost his ears by order of the Star Chamber? Next, they will take away our arms, and then our legs, and so our lives. Let all see we are sensible of this. Evil customs creep in upon us: let us make a just representation thereof to his majesty."

The case of a merchant and member of the House, Mr. Rolles, was then related. His goods had been seized by the officers of the Customs for refusing to pay the rates demanded, though he told them that whatever was declared due by law, he would discharge. This case, amongst a multitude of others, threw the House into a great ferment. "They knew the party was a Parliament man," said Sir Robert Philips; "nay, they said if all the Parliament was with him, or concerned in the goods, they would seize them just the same."

The king, perceiving the storm he had raised, sent word by Secretary Coke to stay further debate on that case till three o'clock the next day, when he would speak with both Houses at Whitehall. Accordingly, meeting them there, Charles, after complimenting the Lords at the expense of the Commons, then said, addressing the members of the Lower House, "The complaint of staying men's goods for tonnage and poundage may have a short and easy conclusion. By passing the Bill as my ancestors have had it, my past actions will be concluded, and my future proceedings authorised. I take not these duties as appertaining to my hereditary prerogative. It ever was, and still is, my meaning, by the gift of my subjects to enjoy the same. In my speech of last Session I did not challenge them as right, but showed you the necessity by which I was to take them, till you had granted them, assuring myself that you wanted only time, and not good will. So make good your professions, and put an end to all questions arising from the subject."

These assertions were in direct contradiction to his declaration in that very speech which we have already quoted, that the tonnage and poundage was a thing that Parliament had nothing to do with. But the concession gratified the Commons; still they did not grant the Customs duties, but employed themselves strenuously in calling to account those who had been concerned in furthering or executing the king's illegal orders. They summoned to their bar Acton, the Sheriff of London, who had seized the goods of Rolles and other merchants, and sent him to the Tower. They summoned also the officers of the Customs who made the seizure, who pleaded the king's warrant, and also his own express command; and the king declared, through Secretary Coke, that he would defend them. This caused loud outcries in the House, but did not check their proceedings, for they sent messages to the Chancellor and Barons of the Exchequer, who excused themselves by saying all those aggrieved had their remedy at law. Thus they did not attempt to justify their proceedings.

On the 25th of February, two days later than these determined inquisitions, showing that the Commons were assuming high and most ominous ground, the Committee of Religion presented to the House a report, entitled "Heads of Articles agreed upon, and to be insisted on by the House." In these they complained that the bishops licensed books in favour of Popery, and suppressed books opposed to Popery; that such books as those of Mainwaring and Montague should be burnt, and some better order taken for the licensing of books. They demanded that candlesticks should be removed from the communion-tables, which were now impiously styled high altars; that pictures, lights, images, should be taken away; and crossing and praying towards the East forbidden; that more learned, pious, and orthodox men should be put into livings, and that better provision should be made for a good minister in every parish.

Again Charles sent them an order to adjourn to the 2nd of March, which they did, but only to assemble on that day in the same resolute and unbending spirit. Sir John Eliot immediately denounced Neale of Winchester, as a rank abettor of Arminianism, and thence passed on to the Lord Treasurer Weston, whom he declared to be his grand supporter in it. This Sir Richard Weston had been seeking his fortune at Court many years, and had nearly spent a private fortune of his own before he obtained any promotion. At last he got employed as ambassador to Archduke Albert in Flanders, and afterwards to the court of Germany, in which he discharged his trust so well that on his return he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a few months before the death of Buckingham, Charles had removed the Earl of Marlborough from the office of Lord Treasurer, and given it to him. Weston was highly elated, and devoted himself with all his ardour to succeed to the place of favourite which Buckingham had held. But though Charles showed him much favour, and eventually made him Earl of Portland, he allowed Weston to succeed to the arbitrary offices and public odium of the duke, but not to the ascendency which Buckingham had possessed over him.

Sir John Eliot now pointed out Weston's criminal subservience to the worst designs of the king. "In his person," he said, "all evil is concentrated, both for the innovation of religion, and the invasion of our liberties. He is now the great enemy of the Commonwealth. I have traced him in all his actions, and I find him building on those grounds laid by his master, the great duke. He secretly is moving for this interruption; and from this fear they go about to break Parliament, lest Parliament should break them."

This was tender ground, and Sir John Finch the Speaker, who was a regular courtier, immediately said he had a command from his majesty to adjourn the House till the following Tuesday week. Several members declared the message to be vexatious and out of order, for that adjournment was a function of their own; but since the Speaker had delivered the message and that was sufficient, they would settle a few matters, and do as his majesty desired. Sir John Eliot produced a remonstrance addressed to the king against levying tonnage and poundage, and desired the Speaker to read it; but he refused, saying the House was adjourned by the king. Eliot then desired the Clerk of the House to read it, but he also refused, and so Sir John read it himself; but the Speaker refused to put it to the vote. Selden then told the Speaker that if he would not put the question to the vote, they would all continue sitting still. The Speaker, however, declared that he had his majesty's command immediately to rise when he had delivered the message; whereupon he was rising, but Holles, the son of the Earl of Clare, and Valentine, who had placed themselves on each side of him for the purpose, held him down in his chair. He made a great outcry and resistance: several of the courtiers rushed to his assistance, but Holles swore that he should sit as long as they pleased. The doors were locked, and there was a scuffle and blows, but the Opposition members compelled the Speaker to continue sitting, notwithstanding his struggles, tears, and entreaties.

JOHN SELDEN. (From the Portrait by the Elder Mytens.)

Selden delivered an address to the imprisoned Speaker on his duties and his obedience owed to the House which sat under the Great Seal, and had power of adjournment as the king had that of prorogation. Sir Peter Hayman told him that he blushed at being his kinsman, that he was a blot on his family, and would be held in scorn and contempt by posterity; and concluded by recommending that if he would not do his duty, he should be brought to the bar of the House, dismissed, and another chosen at once in his place. Mr. Holles proceeded to read the following set of resolutions, which were loudly cheered, and assented to by the House, namely:—1, That whoever shall seek to bring in Popery, Arminianism, or other opinions, disagreeing from the true and orthodox Church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and Commonwealth; 2, Whoever shall advise the taking of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by Parliament, or shall be an actor or instrument therein, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and Parliament; 3, Whatever merchant or other person shall pay tonnage and poundage, not being granted by Parliament, shall be reputed a betrayer of the liberties of England, and an enemy to the same.

Whilst these extraordinary scenes were acting, the king had come down to the House of Lords, but not finding the Speaker there as he expected, sent a messenger to bring away the sergeant with his mace, without which there could be no House. The doors were locked, and the messenger could get no admittance. Charles then sent the Usher of the Black Rod to summon the Commons to his presence, but he could no more obtain an entrance than the messenger. On hearing this, in a transport of rage, the king ordered the Captain of the Guard to break open the door; but this catastrophe was prevented by the House just then adjourning to the 10th of March, according to the king's message.

On the 10th of March the king went to the House of Lords, and, without summoning the Commons, proceeded to dissolve Parliament. He then addressed the Lords, complaining grievously of the conduct of the Commons, which compelled him at that time to dissolve Parliament. He expressed much comfort in the Lords, and conceded that there were in the Commons many who were as dutiful and loyal subjects as any in the world, but that they had some "vipers" amongst them that created all this trouble. He intimated that these evil-disposed persons would meet with their rewards, and bade the Lord Keeper do as he had commanded. Then the Lord Keeper said, "My lords, and gentlemen of the Commons, the king's majesty doth dissolve this Parliament;" though the Commons, with the exception of a few individuals, were not there, nor represented by their Speaker.

This question of the right of the Commons to determine their own adjournment, and to deny to the king the right of preventing the Speaker from putting any question from the Chair, was a vital one, and hitherto undetermined. If the king could at any moment adjourn the Commons as well as prorogue Parliament altogether, and could decide what topics should be entertained by the House, there was an end of the existence of the Commons as an independent branch of the Legislature: it sunk at once into the mere creature of the Crown. There was a great battle for this as for other popular rights, and the determined conduct of the members showed that things were coming fast to a crisis. But at this moment Charles was as resolved to conquer the Parliament, as Parliament was not to be conquered.

No sooner did this unprecedented scene with the Speaker take place, than he adopted measures to punish those most prominently concerned in it. The compulsory detention of the Speaker took place on the 2nd of March; on the 5th he issued warrants to arrest the "vipers"—Eliot, Selden, Holles, Valentine, Hobart, Hayman, Coriton, Long, and Stroud—and commit them to the Tower or other prisons. Stroud and Long were not immediately caught, but on the issue of a proclamation for their apprehension they surrendered. The houses of Eliot, Holles, Selden, Long, and Valentine were forcibly entered, their desks broken open, and their papers seized. On the first day of Michaelmas term they were brought into court, and ordered to find bail, and also to give security for their good behaviour. They were all ready to give bail, but all positively refused to give security for good behaviour, as that implied the commission of some crime, which they denied. They were then put upon their trial, but excepted to the jurisdiction of the court, being amenable only to their own high court of Parliament for what was done therein. But they were told that their conduct had not been parliamentary, and that the common law could deal with all offences there by word or deed, as well as anywhere else. This was another attack on the privileges of Parliament, which, if allowed, would have finished its independence; and these were not the men to surrender any of the outworks and defences of Parliament. They were then sentenced as follows:—Sir John Eliot to be imprisoned in the Tower, the others in other prisons at the king's pleasure. None of them were to be delivered out of prison till they had given security for their good behaviour, acknowledged their offence, and paid the following fines:—Sir John Eliot, as the ring-leader and chief offender, two thousand pounds; Holles, one thousand marks; Valentine, five hundred pounds. Long was not included in this trial, but was prosecuted in the Star Chamber, on the plea that he had no business in Parliament, being pricked for sheriff of his county, and by his oath was bound to have been there. He was fined one thousand marks. This, however, deceived nobody: every one knew that the offence for which he suffered was for his conduct in Parliament. The prisoners lay in gaol for eighteen months. Sir John Eliot never came out again. His noble conduct had made deadly enemies of the king and his courtiers, and even when he was dying, in 1632, after three years' confinement, they rejoiced in his melancholy fate and refused all petitions for his release.

Charles called no more Parliaments till 1640, but went on for eleven years fighting his way towards the block, through the most maniacal attempts on the constitution and temper of the nation. Laud was in the ascendant, and Wentworth, lately a member of the Opposition, who had now changed sides from motives that it would be absurd not to call conscientious, gave his great talents to the Court party. Laud was as much a stickler for the power of the Church as Charles was of the State; their views coincided, and Charles, Laud, and Wentworth, worked shoulder to shoulder in governing without a Parliament. They invented a cant term between them to express what they aimed at, and the means by which they pursued it. It was "Thorough."

Laud had introduced a passage into the ceremonial even of the coronation, which astonished the hearers, and showed even then that he aimed at an ecclesiastical despotism: "Stand and hold fast from henceforth the place to which you have been heir by the succession of your forefathers, being now delivered to you by the authority of God Almighty, and by the hands of us all, and all the bishops and servants of God. And as you see the clergy to come nearer the altar than others, so remember that, in all places convenient, you give them greater honour," etc. This haughty prelate now promulgated such absolute doctrines of divine right of king and priest, and began to run in ceremonies and Church splendour so fast towards actual Popery, that the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire being asked by him why she had turned Catholic replied, "Because I hate to travel in a crowd. I perceive your Grace and many others are making haste to Rome, and therefore, in order to prevent being crowded, I have gone before you."

Under this undaunted leader, the pulpits now resounded with the most flaming advocacy of divine right. A pamphlet was discovered by the Reformers, which had been written for King James, and was now printed, urging the king to do as Louis XI. of France had done—dispense with Parliaments altogether, and secure his predominance by a standing army. The queen's advice was precisely of this character: often crying up the infinite superiority of the kings of her own country and family, whom she styled real kings, while the English were only sham ones. But though Charles was greatly soothed by these doctrines, and strengthened in his resolve to trouble himself no more with Parliaments, he was careful to strengthen his Government by inducing as many of the ablest men of the Opposition as he could to join him. The first with whom he succeeded were Wentworth and Sir John Savile. They were both from Yorkshire, and both men of considerable property. Savile had been persuaded by Cottington the Lord Chancellor, to desert his patriotic friends and professions at the close of the second Parliament for a place in the Privy Council and the office of Comptroller of the Household.

Sir Thomas Wentworth was a much more considerable man. He claimed to be descended from the royal line of the Plantagenets, and had no superior in ability in the House. The position which he had assumed in the Parliamentary resistance to the royal encroachments had been uncompromising and most effective. So much were his eloquence and influence dreaded, that he had been, amongst others, appointed sheriff to keep him out of the House. For his continual opposition he was deprived of the office of Custos Rotulorum and thrown into prison. Yet, when tempted by the offer of rank and power, he fell suddenly, utterly, and hopelessly, and became one of the most unflinching advocates and actors of absolutism that ever lived. On the 21st of July, 1628, Savile was created a baron, and on the morrow Wentworth was raised to the same dignity, as Baron Wentworth; and before the end of the year he was made a viscount and Lord President of the Council of the North. From the moment that Wentworth put his hand to the plough of despotism he never looked back. He became as prominent and as resolute in the destruction of liberty and the prosecution of his former colleagues as he had been for its advancement and for their friendship.

The contagion of this conversion spread. Sir Dudley Digges had taken a conspicuous part in the contests which we have described, and had distinguished himself by his abilities in debate, sufficient to render him worth purchasing. His colleagues had long felt, notwithstanding his zeal, that he would not be proof to temptation. He was offered the post of Master of the Rolls, and he at once accepted it. Noye and Littleton, both lawyers, were as ready to advocate despotism as liberty, and the offer of the Attorney-Generalship to Noye, and the Solicitor-Generalship to Littleton, convinced them instantly that the Court was right, and their old cause and companions were wrong. They testified their capacity for seeing both sides of an argument, by persecuting their old opinions and associates with the red hot zeal of proselytes.

The rest of Charles's ministers were the Lord Keeper Coventry, who, though he appeared on several occasions as the instrument of Charles's arbitrary measures, was thought not to approve very much of them, and who therefore kept himself as much as possible from mixing in political matters. The Earls of Holland and Carlisle, the pusillanimous Earl of Montgomery, his brother the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Dorset were rather men of pleasure than of business, and attended the Council without caring for office. The Earl of Arundel was Earl Marshal, a proud and empty man, whom Clarendon the historian describes as living much abroad, because the manners of foreign nations suited him better than his own, and who "resorted sometimes to Court, because there only was a greater man than himself, and went thither the seldomer because there was a greater man than himself." He was careless of pleasing favourites, and was therefore almost always in disgrace. Lord Weston, already mentioned, was Lord Treasurer, and the Earl of Manchester Privy Seal. Weston was an able lawyer, who succeeded Coke as Lord Chief Justice, and then purchased the office of Lord Treasurer for twenty thousand pounds, only to have it wrested from him again by Buckingham in about twelve months; but he was courtier enough to suppress his resentment, and had now again ascended to his present office, in which he was a very pliant servant of the king. Besides these, Sir John Coke or Cooke, and Sir Dudley Carleton, were Secretaries of State. Carleton had spent too much time in foreign embassies to understand well the state of parties at home, but he understood the will of the king, and took good care to obey and promote it. Coke was "of narrow education, and narrower nature," says Clarendon, who adds that "his cardinal perfection was industry, his most eminent infirmity covetousness." He knew as little of foreign relations as Carleton did of domestic ones; but their office was one of far less rank and importance than such office is now, their real business being to enter the minutes and write the despatches of the Council, not to participate in its discussions. Such were the instruments by which Charles trusted to render Parliaments superfluous. By their aid, but far more so by that of Laud and Wentworth, he soon raised the nation to a state of exasperation, which was only appeased by the blood of all three.

During the violent transactions with his Parliament at home, Charles had made peace with France. In fact, neither France nor Spain had shown a disposition to prosecute the disputes which the King of England had entered into with them. Louis sent home the prisoners he had taken in the La Rochelle expedition, under the name of a present to his sister, and Philip also released those who had been captured at Cadiz. Buckingham had been at the bottom of both wars, and now that he was gone all differences were soon arranged. Louis of France made a demand for the restoration of a man-of-war, the St. Esprit, which had been illegally captured by Sir Sackville Trevor; but he gave up the claim, and Charles was not very importunate in his demands of protection for the French Protestants. Richelieu, however, treated them far better than Charles treated the Puritans in England. He took measures to prevent the possibility of another coalition, by destroying the castles of the nobles and the fortifications of the towns, prohibited the convention of deputies from the churches, and abolished the military organisation of the Huguenots in the South of France; but he left them the exercise of their worship, and attached no disability to a profession of it. This peace was concluded in the spring of 1629, and in the following year that with Spain was also accomplished. The Queen Henrietta was violently opposed to this peace with Spain, because France was still at war with that country and the kindred House of Austria. When she found that she could not prevail on Charles, she is said to have shed tears of vexation.

It is curious that the first overtures to this peace were made through two Flemish painters; the celebrated Sir Peter Paul Rubens, and Gerbier, a native of Antwerp, who had been Master of the Horse to Buckingham. Cottington was despatched to Spain, in spite of the strenuous endeavours of the queen and the French ambassador; and in November, 1630, Coloma arrived as ambassador from Madrid. Philip accepted the same terms as were proposed in 1604, pledging himself to restore such parts of the Palsgrave's territory as were occupied by the troops of Spain—no very important extent—and never to cease his endeavours to procure from the Emperor the restitution of the whole. In consideration of this, Charles once more agreed to that mysterious treaty against Holland which had been in negotiation during the visit of Charles and Buckingham to Spain. This was no other than to assist Philip to regain possession of the seven United States of the Netherlands, which had cost Elizabeth so much to aid in the establishment of their independence, and which had always been, as Protestant States, so much regarded by the English public; with which a great trade was, moreover, carried on. The knowledge of such a piece of treachery on the part of Charles would have excited a terrible commotion amongst the people. For his share of the booty he was to receive a certain portion of the provinces, including the Island of Zealand. Luckily for the king, his treason to Protestantism remained a profound secret, and at length himself perceiving the difficulties and dilemmas in which it would involve him, after Olivarez and Cottington had signed the treaty he withheld his ratification. By this prudent act, however, he forfeited all right to demand from Philip aid in regaining the patrimony of the Prince Palatine.

Whether prudence, a rare virtue in Charles, or other more congenial motives, determined him in withdrawing from the compact with Spain regarding Holland is doubtful, for in the very next year he was found busily engaged with the Catholic States of Flanders and Brabant in a project to drive thence his new ally Philip of Spain. France and Holland were equally eager to assist in this design; but the people of Flanders were suspicious of them, dreading to find in such powerful allies only fresh masters. They therefore applied to the King of England, and a correspondence took place in which Secretary Coke was at great pains to show how much more to the advantage of the people of Flanders and Brabant would be the alliance of England, than that of the ambitious French, or of the Calvinistic farmers of Holland. In religion Coke was zealous to prove that the Catholic and Anglican Churches were almost identical; but his efforts ended, not in offering support in the coming struggle, but in promising to protect them against everyone except the King of Spain. Charles having recently made peace with the Spanish sovereign, "it would be against honour and conscience to debauch his subjects from their allegiance." But if what Coke proposed were not that very fact of tampering with them, it would be difficult to imagine what could be; and, moreover, it was just the King of Spain against whom they required protection. Coke advised them to declare their independence, and then the King of England, he told them, could help them as an independent State; and Philip would not then have cause of offence from Charles, but ought rather to be obliged to him for endeavouring to prevent the States from falling into the hands of France, or some other of his powerful enemies. This duplicity, however, was not by any means encouraging to revolt, and in the meantime Philip, learning what was going on, settled the question by sending into the Provinces an overwhelming force of soldiers.

But the war which ought to have excited the deepest interest in Charles as a Protestant prince, and as the brother-in-law of the Protestant Prince Palatine, was the great war—since called the Thirty Years' War—which was raging in Germany. It was a war expressly of Catholicism for the utter extirpation of Protestantism. The resistance had begun in Bohemia: the Protestants had invited Frederick of the Palatinate to become their king and defend them against the power of Austria and the exterminating Catholic emperor. We have seen that Frederick had, without weighing the hazards of the enterprise sufficiently, accepted the crown, lost it immediately, together with his hereditary dominions; and that all the efforts of England, Denmark, and of an allied host in Germany, had failed to make head against Austria, Spain, and Bavaria. Germany was overrun with the victorious troops of Austria, led on by the ruthless and victorious Generals Wallenstein, Piccolomini, Tilly, and Pappenheim. Horrible desolation had followed the march of their armies all over Germany; the most important of its cities were sacked or plundered; its fields were laid waste; its cultivation was stopped; its people were destroyed or starving; and, with the exception of Saxony and Bavaria, the power of the princes was prostrated, and they were thoroughly divided amongst themselves, and therefore the more readily trodden upon by their oppressors.

But at this moment relief came out of an unexpected quarter. Christian IV. of Denmark had attempted a diversion in favour of the German Protestant princes, and had not only been repulsed, but had drawn the Austrian generals into his own kingdom with fire and sword. But in Sweden had risen up a king, able, pious, earnestly desirous of the restoration of Protestantism, and qualified by long military experience, though yet a young man, to cope with any general of the age. Gustavus Adolphus had mounted the Swedish throne at the age of eighteen, and was now only seven-and-thirty; yet he had already maintained a seventeen years' war against Poland, backed by the power of Austria. But now an armistice of six years was settled with Poland. Wallenstein, the ablest general of Austria, had been removed from the command, in consequence of the universal outcry of the German princes, in an Imperial Council at Ratisbon, against his cruelties and exactions; and the far-seeing Richelieu, who was attacking the Spaniards in Italy and the Netherlands, perceiving the immense advantage of such division in Germany, had offered to make an alliance with the Swede.

On the 23rd of June, 1630, Gustavus embarked fifteen thousand of his veteran troops, and crossed into Pomerania. On the 17th of September the Swedish king gave battle to Tilly and Pappenheim before Leipsic, and routed them with great slaughter. This turned the scale of war: the cowed German princes once more raised their heads and entered into league with Gustavus, who soon drove the Austrians from the larger part of the country, took Hanau and Frankfort-on-the-Main, when Frederick the Palsgrave joined him, hoping to be established by Gustavus in his patrimony. But the brave Swedish king, who was highly incensed against Charles for not joining at his earnest entreaty in this enterprise, in which he himself was hazarding life, crown, and everything, of putting down the Catholic intolerance, and placing a Protestant emperor on the throne, though he received the Palsgrave kindly, gave him no immediate hope of restoration. The English ambassador was there, pressing this vehemently on Gustavus; but the Swede told him he regarded him only as a Spaniard in disguise, and said bluntly, "Let the King of England make a league with me against Spain. Let him send me twelve thousand men, to be maintained at his own cost, and which shall be placed entirely at my command, and I will engage to compel from both Spain and Bavaria full restoration of the Palsgrave's rights."

Gustavus was perfectly right. Had Charles dealt honourably and wisely with his Parliament and people, and husbanded his resources, here was the great opportunity to have re-established his sister and brother-in-law, and have had a glorious share in the victory of Protestantism on the Continent. Gustavus recovered Darmstadt, Oppenheim, and Mainz, and then took up his winter quarters. Meanwhile, the Saxon field-marshal, Von Arnim, invaded Bohemia and took Prague; whilst the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and Duke Bernhard of Weimar, defeated several bodies of Tilly's troops in Westphalia and the Upper Rhine lands.

This sweeping reverse compelled the Emperor to recall Wallenstein to the chief command. Assembling forty thousand men at Znaim in Bohemia, he marched on Prague, and drove the Saxons not only thence but out of Bohemia altogether. Meanwhile Gustavus, issuing from his winter quarters on the Rhine, directed his course to Nuremberg, and so to DonauwÖrth, and at Rain on the Lech fought with Tilly and the Duke of Bavaria. Tilly was killed (April 30, 1632); and Gustavus advanced and took Augsburg in April, Munich on the 27th of May, and after in vain attacking Wallenstein before Nuremberg, he encountered him at LÜtzen, in Saxony, and beat him, but fell himself in the hour of victory (November 16, 1632). He had, however, saved Protestantism. Wallenstein lost favour after his defeat, was suspected by the emperor, and finally assassinated by his own officers (February 25, 1634). The generals of Gustavus, under the orders of Gustavus's great Minister Oxenstierna, continued the contest, and enabled the German Protestant princes to establish their power and the exercise of their religion, at the peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Charles, shamed into some degree of co-operation, had despatched the Marquis of Hamilton with six thousand men to the assistance of Gustavus; but the whole affair was so badly managed, the commissariat and general care of the men were so miserable, that the little army speedily became decimated by disease and was of no service. Hamilton returned home, and the remains of his forces under the command of the Prince Charles Louis, son of the Elector Frederick, were routed in Westphalia. Frederick himself, deprived of all hope by the fall of Gustavus, only survived him about a fortnight; and thus ended the dream of the restoration of the Palatinate.

At home Charles had determined to rule without a Parliament, but this necessarily drove him upon all those means of raising an income which Parliament had protested against, and which must, therefore, continue to exasperate the people. Between the dissolution of the Parliament in 1629, and the summons of another in 1640, these proceedings had apparently advanced the cause of despotism, but in reality they promoted the cause of liberty; the nation had been scourged into a temper which left no means but the sword of appeasing it. The first unceremonious violation of his pledge to the public conveyed in the granting of the Petition of Right was levying as unscrupulously as ever the duties of tonnage and poundage; and the goods of all such as refused the illegal payment were immediately distrained upon and sold.

The king next appointed a Committee to inquire into the encroachments on the royal forests, a legitimate and laudable object if conducted in a spirit of fairness and liberality. In every age gross encroachments have been made on these Crown lands, and especially in the reckless reign of James. But it would seem that the Commissioners proceeded in an arbitrary spirit, and, relying on the power of the Crown, often ruined those who resisted their decisions by the costs of law. The Earl of Holland—a noted creature of the king's—was made head of this Commission, and presided in a court established for the purpose. Under its operations vast tracts were recovered to the Crown, and heavy fines for trespasses levied. Rockingham Forest was enlarged from a circuit of six miles to one of sixty, and the Earl of Southampton was nearly ruined by the king's resumption of a large estate adjoining the New Forest. Even where these recoveries were made with right, they exasperated the aristocracy, who had been the chief encroachers, and injured the king in their goodwill. Clarendon says, "To recompense the damage the Crown sustained by the sale of old lands, and by the grant of new pensions, the old laws of the forest are revived; by which not only great fines are imposed, but great annual rents intended, and like to be settled by way of contract, which burden lighted most upon persons of quality and honour, who thought themselves above ordinary oppressions, and therefore like to remember it with more sharpness."

Besides the tonnage and poundage, obsolete laws were revived, and other duties imposed on merchants' goods; and all who resisted were prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned. But a still more plausible scheme was hit upon for extorting money. The old feudal practice, introduced by Henry III. and Edward I., of compelling persons holding lands under the Crown worth twenty pounds per annum, to receive knighthood, or to compound by a fine, had been enforced by Elizabeth and James, and was not likely to be passed over in this general inquisition after the means of income independent of Parliament. All landed proprietors worth forty pounds a year were called on to accept the title of knight and pay the fees, or were fined, and in default of payment thrown into prison. "By this ill-husbandry," says Clarendon, "which, though it was founded in right, was most grievous from the mode of proceeding, vast sums were drawn from the subject. And no less unjust projects of all kinds—many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous—were set on foot, the damage and reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men; inasmuch as of twenty thousand pounds a year, scarcely one thousand five hundred pounds came to the king's use or account."

A great commotion was raised by the king depriving many freeholders arbitrarily of their lands to enlarge Richmond Park, and he saw the necessity of making some compensation.

Another mode of raising money was by undoing in a great measure what the Parliament had done by abolishing monopolies. True, Charles took care not to grant these monopolies to individuals, but to companies; but this, whilst it arrested the odium of seeing them in the hands of courtiers and favourites, increased their mischief by augmenting the number and power of the oppressors. These companies were enabled to dictate to the public the price of the articles included in their patent, and restrain at their pleasure their manufacture or sale. One of the most flagrant cases was that of the Company of Soap-boilers, who purchased a monopoly of the manufacture of soap for ten thousand pounds, and a duty of eight pounds per ton on all the soap they made. The scheme was that of the renegade Noye; and all who presumed to make soap for themselves, regardless of the monopoly, were fined, the company being authorised to search the premises of all soap-boilers, seize any made without a licence, and prosecute the offender in the Star Chamber. There was a similar monopoly granted to starch-makers.

King James had formed the idea that London was become too large, and that its size was the cause of the prevalence of the plague and contagious fevers. He had not penetrated the fact that the real cause lay in the want of drainage and cleanliness, and he issued repeated proclamations forbidding any more building of houses in the Metropolis. The judges declared the proclamations illegal, and building went on as fast as ever. Here was a splendid opportunity for putting on the screw. Charles therefore appointed a Commission to inquire into the extent of building done in defiance of his father's orders. Such persons who were willing to compound for their offences, got off by paying a fine amounting to three years' rental of the premises. Those who refused, pleaded in vain the decision of the judges, for Charles had a court independent of all judges but himself, namely, the Star Chamber; and those who escaped this fell into another inquisition as detestable—the Court of the Earl Marshal. Sturdy resisters, therefore, had their houses actually demolished, and were then fleeced in those infamous courts to complete their ruin. A Mr. Moore had erected forty-two houses of an expensive class, with coach-houses and stables, near St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He was fined one thousand pounds, and ordered to pull them down before Easter, under penalty of another thousand pounds, but refusing, the sheriffs demolished the houses, and levied the money by distress. This terrified others, who submitted to a composition, and by these iniquitous means one hundred thousand pounds were brought into the Treasury.

Simultaneously with these proceedings, Laud, Bishop of London, pursued the same course in the Church. He had long been the most abject flatterer of the royal power, and now, supported by Wentworth, went on boldly to reduce all England to the most complete slavery to Church and State. He was supposed to have the intention of restoring the Papal power; but such was far from his design. Neither Laud nor Charles dreamt for a moment of returning to the union with Rome, for the simple reason that they loved too well themselves the enjoyment of absolute power. Like Henry VIII., they could tolerate no Pope but one disguised under the name of an English king. Never did the Church more egregiously deceive itself than by suspecting Laud or Charles of any design to put on again the yoke of the Roman Pontiff. That spiritual potentate, deluded by such empty imagination, offered Laud a cardinal's hat, which was rejected with scorn.

On the 29th of May, 1630, the queen gave birth to a son, afterwards Charles II., who was baptised on the 2nd of July, the ceremony being performed by Laud, who composed a prayer for the occasion.

Charles had issued a proclamation forbidding any one to introduce into the pulpit any remarks bearing on the great Arminian controversy which was raging in the kingdom—Laud and his party in the Church on one side, the zealous Puritans on the other. Both sides were summoned with an air of impartiality into the Star Chamber or High Commission Court, but came out with this difference—that the orthodox divines generally confessed their fault, and were dismissed with a reprimand; but the Puritan ministers could not bend in that manner and sacrifice conscience to fear, so they were fined, imprisoned, and deprived without mercy. Davenant (Bishop of Salisbury), Dr. Burgess, Dr. Prideaux, Dr. Hall (Bishop of Norwich, whose poetry and liberality of spirit will long be held in honourable remembrance), and many others, were harassed because they did not preach exactly to the mind of Charles and Laud; but the treatment of Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scottish Puritan preacher, was brutality itself. He had published a pamphlet called "An Appeal to Parliament, or Zion's Plea against Prelacy." It attracted the notice of the Government, which in June, 1630, had him dragged before the Star Chamber, where he was condemned to the following horrible punishment, than which the records of the Inquisition preserve nothing more infernal:—That he should be imprisoned for life, should pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, be degraded from his ministry, whipped, set in the pillory, have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded on the forehead with a double S.S., as a "sower of sedition." He was then to be carried back to prison, and after a few days to be pilloried again, whipped, have the other side of his nose slit, the other ear cut off, and shut up in his dungeon, to be released only by death.