Anonymous

THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. (continued).

Visit of Charles to Scotland—Laud and the Papal See—His Ecclesiastical Measures—Punishment of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton—Disgrace of Williams—Ship-money—Resistance of John Hampden—Wentworth in the North—Recall of Falkland from Ireland—Wentworth's Measures—Inquiry into Titles—Prelacy Riots in Edinburgh—Jenny Geddes's Stool—The Tables—Renewal of the Covenant—Charles makes Concessions—The General Assembly—Preparations for War—Charles at York—Leslie at Dunse Hill—A Conference held—Treaty of Berwick—Arrest of Loudon—Insult from the Dutch—Wentworth in England—The Short Parliament—Riots in London—Preparations of the Scots—Mutiny in the English Army—Invasion of England—Treaty of Ripon—Meeting of the Long Parliament—Impeachment of Strafford—His Trial—He is Abandoned by Charles—His Execution—The King's Visit to Scotland.

Having reduced the refractory members of the Church and of Parliament in England to silence for the present, Charles determined to make a journey into Scotland, there to be crowned, to raise revenue, and to establish the Anglican hierarchy in that part of his dominions. For the latter purpose he took Laud with him. He reached Edinburgh on the 12th of June, 1633, where he was received by the inhabitants with demonstrations of lively rejoicing, as if they were neither aware of the character and views of the monarch, nor remembered the consequences of the visit of his father. On the 18th he was crowned in Edinburgh by the Archbishop of St. Andrews; but Laud did not let that opportunity pass without giving them a foretaste of what was coming. "It was observed," says Rushworth, "that Dr. Laud was high in his carriage, taking upon him the order and managing of the ceremonies; and, for instance, Spotswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, being placed at the king's right hand, and Lindsey, Archbishop of Glasgow, at his left, Bishop Laud took Glasgow and thrust him from the king with these words:—'Are you a Churchman, and want the coat of your order?'—which was an embroidered coat, which he scrupled to wear, being a moderate Churchman—and in place of him put in the Bishop of Ross at the king's right hand."

This question of the embroidered robes of the Roman hierarchy, with the high altar, the tapers, chalices, genuflections, and oil of unction, was introduced into Parliament, and forced on the reluctant Scots. They had voted supplies with a most liberal spirit, and laid on a land tax of four hundred thousand pounds Scots for six years; but when the king proposed to pass a Bill authorising the robes, ceremonies, and rites just mentioned, there was a stout opposition. Lord Melville said plainly to Charles, "I have sworn with your father and the whole kingdom to the confession of faith in which the innovations intended by these Articles were solemnly abjured." And the Bishop of the Isles told him at dinner that it was said amongst the people that his entrance into the city had been with hosannas, but that it would be changed, like that of the Jews to our Saviour, into, "Away with him, crucify him!" Charles is said to have turned thoughtful, and eaten no more. Yet the next day he as positively as ever insisted on the Parliament passing the Articles, and, pointing to a paper in his hand, said, "Your names are here; I shall know to-day who will do me service and who will not."

Notwithstanding this, the House voted against it by a considerable majority, there being opposed to it fifteen Peers and forty-five Commoners; yet the Lord Register, under influence of the Court, audaciously declared that the Articles were accepted by Parliament. The Earl of Rothes had the boldness to deny this and to demand a scrutiny of the votes; but Charles intimidated both him and all dissentients by refusing any scrutiny unless Rothes would arraign the Lord Register of the capital crime of falsifying the votes. This was a course too perilous for any individual under the circumstances. Rothes was silent, the Articles were ratified by the Crown, and Parliament was forthwith dissolved on the 28th of June.

Having thus carried his point with the Parliament, Charles took every means, except that which had brought upon him so much odium in England—namely, imprisoning and prosecuting the members who opposed him—to express his dissatisfaction with them. He distributed lands and honours upon those who had fallen in with his wishes, and treated the dissentients with sullen looks, and even severe words, when they came in his way. They were openly ridiculed by his courtiers, and dubbed schismatics and seditious. Lord Balmerino was even condemned to death for a pamphlet being found in his possession complaining of the king's arbitrary conduct in these concerns; but the sentence was too atrocious to be executed.

Charles and Laud erected Edinburgh into a bishopric, with a diocese extending even to Berwick, and richly endowed with old Church lands, which were obtained from the noblemen who held them. A set of singing men was also appointed for Holyrood Chapel; and Laud, who had been made a Privy Councillor, preached there in full pontificals, to the great scandal of the Presbyterians. Thence Charles and his apostle made a tour to St. Andrews, Dundee, Falkland, Dunblane, etc., to the singular discomfort of Laud amongst the rough fastnesses of the Highlands.

Immediately after this, Charles posted to London in four days, leaving Laud to travel more at leisure. No doubt both master and man thought they had made a very fine piece of work in this forcing of the Scottish consciences: they were destined in a while to feel what it actually was, in rebellion and the sharp edge of the axe.

Scarcely had they reached London, when they heard the news of the death of Archbishop Abbot, and Charles was thus enabled to reward Laud for all his services in building up despotism and superstition by making him Primate, which he did on the 6th of August, 1633. It was a curious coincidence that about the same time Laud received a second offer of a cardinal's hat, and he seems to have been greatly tempted by it. He says that he acquainted his majesty with the offer, and that the king rescued him from the trouble and danger; for, he adds, there was something dwelling in him which would not suffer him to accept the offer till Rome was other than she was. To have accepted a cardinal's hat was to have gone over to the Church of Rome, and the Church of England was for him a much better thing now he was Primate.

There undoubtedly did at this precise time take place an active private negotiation between the courts of Rome and England on this topic. The queen was anxious to have the dignity of cardinal conferred on a British subject. Probably she thought that the residence of the English cardinal at London would be a stepping-stone to the full restoration of Catholicism. Towards the end of August, immediately after Laud's elevation to the Primacy, Sir Robert Douglas was sent to Rome as envoy from the queen, with a letter of credence, signed by the Earl of Stirling, Secretary of State for Scotland. His mission was this proposal of an English cardinal, as a measure which would contribute greatly to the conversion of the king. To carry out this negotiation, Leander, an English Benedictine monk, was despatched to England, followed soon after by Panzani an Italian priest.

From the despatches of Panzani we find that there existed a strong party at the English court for the return to the allegiance of Rome, amongst whom were Secretary Windebank; Lord Chancellor Cottington; Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester; and Montague, Bishop of Chichester. He was informed that none of the bishops except three—those of Durham, Salisbury, and Exeter—would object to a purely spiritual supremacy of the Pope, and very few of the clergy.

Douglas was followed to Rome by Sir William Hamilton, to prosecute this secret business, but it all came to nothing, for the king, who was sincere in his attachment to the English Church, was not likely to listen to any proposal for submitting again to the yoke of Rome; and the Pope, on his part, would not comply with Charles's request to exert his influence with Catholic Austria for the restoration of his sister and her son in the Palatinate so long as they continued Protestants. Laud was therefore relieved from his temptation to receive the cardinal's hat by the resolve of the king to yield not one jot of his spiritual or political power; and a Scottish Catholic named Conn being at Rome, was mentioned as candidate for the purple instead. He came to England and was graciously received, not only by the queen, but the king too. He resided in England three years, but without the cardinal's hat, and was succeeded by Count Rossetti as the Pope's envoy. The rumours of the offers of the scarlet hat to Laud, and the residence of these Papal envoys in London, excited the jealousy of the people and added immensely to Charles's unpopularity; for no one felt sure of his real faith.

As Laud, however, could not array himself in scarlet as a cardinal, he determined to make the Anglican Church as Popish, and himself as much of a Pope, as possible. Before reaching the Primacy he had gone a good way. The spoliation of the Church by Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and their greedy nobility, had deprived it of the means of keeping the ecclesiastical buildings in repair. The Catholic Church in England had devoted the property of the Establishment to three objects: one, to the maintenance of the clergy and religious orders; the second, to the maintenance of the buildings of the churches and cathedrals; and the third to the support of the poor. Thus the patrimony of the poor was swallowed up by the aristocracy, and the maintenance of the poor thrown upon the country; and fixed there by the 43rd of Elizabeth. The patrimony of the public for the maintenance of Church buildings being equally shared by the Russells, Villierses, Seymours, Dudleys, and a thousand other Court leeches, neither Charles nor Laud, with all their stickling for the Church, dared to call upon them to disgorge their prey; but a proclamation was issued to the bishops for the repairs of all the churches and chapels, and they were to levy the necessary rates on the parishioners at large, and to exert the powers of the ecclesiastical courts against all such as resisted.

DUNBLANE IN THE 17TH CENTURY.

This excited a serious ferment amongst the people, which was greatly increased by the general opinion that these repairs should be done out of the tithes which they paid either to lay or clerical personages. Laud carried matters with far too high a hand to pay the slightest regard to these complaints, and he proceeded to consecrate such churches as were thus repaired, with all the splendid ceremony of Catholicism, as if they had been desecrated by their neglect.

He obtained a commission under the Great Seal for the repair of St. Paul's Cathedral. The judges of the prerogative courts, and their officials throughout England and Wales, were ordered to pay into the chamber in London all moneys derived from persons dying intestate, to be applied to the restoration of this church. The clergy were called on by the bishops in their several dioceses to furnish an annual subsidy for this object. The king contributed at various times ten thousand pounds, Sir Paul Pindar four thousand pounds, and Laud gave one hundred pounds a year. He was bent on making St. Paul's a rival of St. Peter's; and as more money became necessary, he summoned wealthy people into the High Commission Court on all possible pleas, and fined them heavily; so that there was a plentiful crop of money and of murmurs against the Primate, who was said to be building the church out of the sins of the people.

Laud had obtained for his devoted adherents Windebank and Juxon, Dean of Westminster, the posts of Secretary of State and of Clerk of the King's Closet respectively; thus, as Heylin observes, the king was so well watched by his staunch friends that it was not easy for any one to insinuate anything to Laud's disadvantage; and the Primate went on most sweepingly in his own way. He put down all evening lecturing, evening meetings, and extemporary praying. He re-introduced in the churches painted glass, pictures, and surplices, lawn-sleeves, and embroidered caps; had the communion-tables removed, and altars placed instead, and railed in; and he carried his innovations with such an arbitrary hand that many who might have approved of them in themselves were set against them. The stricter reformers complained of the looseness with which the Sabbath was kept, and the Lord Chief Justice Richardson and Baron Denham issued an order in the western circuit to put an end to the disorders attending church-ales, bid-ales, clerk-ales, and the like. But no sooner did Laud hear of it than he had the Lord Chief Justice summoned before the Council and severely reprimanded as interfering with the commands of King James for the practice of such Sunday sports, as recommended in his Book of Sports, and since confirmed by Charles.

ARCHBISHOP LAUD.

The country magistrates, who had seen the demoralisation consequent on these sports and Sunday gatherings at the ale-houses, petitioned the king to put them down; and the petition was signed by Lord Paulet, Sir William Portman, Sir Ralph Hopeton, and many other gentlemen of distinction. But they were forestalled by the agility of Laud, who procured from the king a declaration sanctioning all the Sunday amusements to be found in the Book of Sports, and commanding all judges on circuit, and all justices of the peace, to see that no man was molested on that account. This declaration was ordered to be read in all parish churches by the clergy. Many conscientious clergy, who had seen too much of the dissolute riots resulting from these rude gatherings on Sundays, refused to read the declaration, and were suspended from their duties, and prosecuted to such a degree that they had no alternative but to emigrate to America.

This dictation of Laud extended over the whole kingdom, into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Charles was urged to issue proclamation after proclamation interfering in things entirely beyond the range of his episcopal jurisdiction, such as regulating the price of poultry and the retailing of tobacco. In Ireland, Wentworth, now made Lord Deputy, went hand-in-hand with him. That he might the better interfere in all kinds of matters Laud was appointed in 1634 Chief of the Board of Commissioners of the Exchequer, and—on the death of Weston, Lord Portland—the Lord High Treasurer. He then got his friend Juxon made Bishop of London, and in about a year surrendered to him the Treasurership, to the surprise and murmuring of many, for Juxon, till the primate brought him forward, was a man of no mark whatever. Lord Chancellor Cottington, who had been a fast friend of Laud's, and calculated on the white staff of the Treasurer, now fell away from Laud, and many noblemen who had had an eye to it began to prophesy what the end of his career would be. But the University of Oxford, going the whole way with him in his advances towards Popery, styled him "His Holiness Summus Pontifex, Spiritu Sancto effusissime plenus, Archangelus et nequid minus!" And Laud accepted all this base adulation, and declared that these revolting titles were quite proper, because they had been applied to the popes and fathers of the Romish Church. In fact, he desired to be the pope of England.

And in this great Papal authority he was fain to stretch his coercing hand over the churches wherever they were. He procured an order in Council to shut the English factories in Holland, and compel the troops serving there to conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Most of the merchants and many of these soldiers had gone thither expressly to enjoy their own forms of religion; but no matter, they must conform. And says Heylin, "The like course was prescribed for our factories in Hamburg, and those farther off, that is to say in Turkey, in the Mogul's dominions, the Indian islands, the plantations in Virginia, the Barbadoes, and all other places where the English had any standing residence in the way of trade." This order was to be carried into the houses and establishments of all ambassadors and consuls abroad.

William Prynne was a young graduate of Oxford, originally from Painswick, near Bath, but now an outer barrister of Lincoln's Inn. He was a thorough Puritan, grave, stern in his ideas, and rigid in his morals, a man who was ready to sacrifice reputation, life, and everything, for his high ideal of religious truth. He was persuaded that much of the dissoluteness of the young men around him arose from the debasing effect of frequenting the theatres; and in that he was probably correct, for the theatres were not in that age, nor for long after, fitting schools for youth. He therefore wrote (1632) a volume of a thousand pages against the stage, called "Histriomastix." He stated that forty thousand copies of plays had been exposed for sale within two years, and were eagerly bought up; that the theatres were the chapels of Satan, the players his ministers, and their frequenters were rushing headlong into hell. Dancing was, in his opinion, an equally diabolical amusement, and every pace was a step nearer to Tophet. Dancing made the ladies of England "frizzled madams," polluted their modesty, and would destroy them as it had done Nero, and led three Romans to assassinate Gallienus. He went on to attack everything that Laud had been supporting—Maypoles, public festivals, church-ales, music, and Christmas carols: the cringings and duckings at the altar which Laud had so much fostered, and all the silk and satin divines, their pluralities, and their bellowing chants in the Church.

Laud had made two vain attempts to lay hold on this pestilent satirist, but the lawyers had defeated him by injunctions from Westminster Hall. But the third time, by accusing him more exclusively of reflecting on the king and queen by his strictures on dancing, he obtained an order for the Attorney-General Noye to indict him in the Star Chamber. There he was condemned to be excluded from the bar and from Lincoln's Inn, to be deprived of his University degree, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, to have his book burnt before his face by the hangman, to stand in the pillory at Westminster and in Cheapside, at each place to lose an ear, and afterwards to be imprisoned for life. This most detestable sentence was carried into effect in May, 1634, with brutal ferocity, although the queen interceded earnestly in his favour, and the nation denounced the barbarity in no equivocal language.

Prynne, undaunted, nay, exasperated to greater daring by this cruelty, resumed the subject in his prison, whence he issued a tract (1637) styled "News from Ipswich," in which he charged the prelates with being the bishops of Lucifer, devouring wolves, and execrable traitors, who had overthrown the simplicity of the Gospel to introduce the superstitions of Popery. He had found in prison a congenial soul, Dr. Bastwick, a physician, who had written a treatise against the bishops, called "Elenchus papismi et flagellum episcoporum Latialium," for which he had been condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds to the king, to be imprisoned two years, and to make recantation. He now, that is in 1636, wrote a fresh tract: "Apologeticus ad prÆsules Anglicanos," and (in 1637) the "Litanie of John Bastwick, doctor of physic, lying in Limbo patrum," in which he attacked both the bishops' and Laud's service books.

A third person was Henry Burton, who had been chaplain to Charles when on his journey to Spain; but being now incumbent of St. Matthew's, in London, he had preached against the bishops as "blind watchmen, dumb dogs, ravening wolves, anti-Christian mushrooms, robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of antichrist."

These zealous religionists, whom the cruelties and follies of Laud and his bishops had driven almost beside themselves, were condemned in the Star Chamber to be each fined five thousand pounds, to stand two hours in the pillory, where they were to have their ears cut off, to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S.L., for "seditious libeller," and then imprisoned for life.

This sentence, than which the Spanish Inquisition has nothing worse to show, was fully executed in Old Palace Yard, on the 30th of June, 1637. Prynne from the pillory defied all Lambeth, with the Pope at its back, to prove to him that such doings were according to the law of England; and if he failed to prove them violators of that law and the law of God, they were at liberty to hang him at the door of the Gate House prison. On hearing this the people gave a great shout; but the executioner, as if incited to more cruelty, cut off their ears as barbarously as possible, rather sawing than cutting them. Prynne, who is said to have had his ears sewed on again on the former occasion, had them now gouged out, as it were; yet as the hangman sawed at them he cried out, "Cut me, tear me, I fear thee not. I fear the fire of hell, but not thee!" Burton, too, harangued the people for a long time most eloquently; but the sun blazing hotly in their faces all the time, he was near fainting, when he was carried into a house in King Street, saying, "It is too hot! Too hot, indeed!"

This most disgraceful exhibition made a terrible impression on the spectators, of whom the king was informed that there were one hundred thousand; whilst the executioner sawed at the ears of the prisoners they assailed him with curses, hisses, and groans. Both Charles and Laud were unpleasantly surprised at the effect produced; and to remove the sufferers from public sympathy, they determined to send them to distant and solitary prisons, far separate from each other—to Launceston, Carnarvon, and Lancaster. But the king and his high priest were still more amazed and alarmed when they found on the removal of the prisoners the crowds were equally immense, and that they went along from place to place in a kind of triumph. To attend Burton from Smithfield to two miles beyond Highgate, there were again at least one hundred thousand people, who testified their deep sympathy, and threw money into the coach to his wife as she drove along. Money and presents were also offered to Prynne, but he refused them. Gentlemen of wealth and station pressed to see and condole with the prisoners, whom they honoured and applauded as martyrs. When Prynne reached Chester, on his way to Carnarvon, one of the sheriffs, attended by a number of gentle men, met him, invited him to a good dinner, discharged the cost, and gave him some hangings to furnish his dungeon with in Carnarvon Castle.

This popular demonstration still more startled Laud, who summoned the sheriff, as well as the other gentlemen, before the High Commission Court at York, where they were fined in sums varying from two hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds, and condemned to acknowledge their offence before the congregation in the cathedral and the Corporation in the town hall of Chester. The prisoners themselves were ordered to be removed farther still, and accordingly Bastwick was sent to the Isle of Scilly, Burton to the Castle of Cornet in Guernsey, and Prynne to that of Mount Orgueil in Jersey. But the king and archbishop had now roused a spirit, by their cutting off of ears, which would be satisfied ere long with nothing less than their whole heads.

To stop the outcry against their cruelties, they next determined to gag the press. An order was therefore issued by the Star Chamber, forbidding all importation of foreign books, and the printing of any at home without licence. All books on religion, physic, literature, and poetry must be licensed by the bishops, so that all truths unpleasant to the Church would thus be suppressed. There were to be allowed only twenty master printers in the kingdom, except those of his majesty and the universities; no printer was to have more than two presses nor two apprentices, except the warden of the Company. There were to be only four letter-founders; and whoever presumed to print without licence was to be whipped through London and set in the pillory. All this time the High Commission Court kept pace with the Star Chamber in its prosecutions and arbitrary fines, under pretence of protecting public morals.

Laud soon had delinquents against the atrocious order for gagging the press. In about six months after the infliction of the sentence on Prynne and his associates, he cited into the Star Chamber John Lilburne and John Warton, for printing Prynne's "News from Ipswich" and other books called libellous (1638). The accused refused to take the oath proposed to them, protesting against the lawfulness of the court. Being called up several times, and still obstinately refusing, they were condemned to be fined five hundred pounds apiece, Lilburne to be whipped from the Fleet to the pillory, and both to be bound to their good behaviour. Lilburne was one of the most determined of men. He continued to declaim violently against the tyranny of Laud and his bishops whilst he was standing in the pillory and undergoing his whipping. He drew from his pockets a number of the very pamphlets he was punished for printing, and scattered them from the pillory amongst the crowd. The court of Star Chamber being informed of his conduct, sent and had him gagged; but he then stamped with his feet to intimate that he would still speak if he could. He was then thrown into the Fleet, heavily ironed and in solitude.

To complete Laud's attacks on all persons and parties, there lacked only an onslaught on the episcopal bench, and there he found Williams, formerly Lord Keeper, and still Bishop of Lincoln, for a victim. Williams, with all his faults, had been a true friend of Laud's at a time when he had very few, and the wily upstart had declared that his very life would be too short to demonstrate his gratitude: but he took full occasion to display towards him his ingratitude. From the moment that Laud was introduced to the king, Williams could ill conceal his disgust at the clerical adventurer's base adulation. But Laud continued to ascend and Williams to descend. Williams having lost the seals, retired to his diocese, where he made himself very popular by his talents, his agreeable manners, his hospitality, and still more by his being regarded as a victim of the arbitrary spirit of the king and of Laud. Williams, who had a stinging wit, launched a tract at the head of the Primate, called the "Holy Table," in which he unmercifully satirised Laud's parade of high altars and Popish ceremonies. The Primate very speedily had him in the Star Chamber, where he received private information that if he would give up to Laud his deanery of Westminster, that disinterested prelate would let the prosecution slip. Williams refused, and then commenced one of the most disgraceful scenes in history. Laud, Windebank, and the king were determined to force the deanery and a heavy fine from him. They browbeat his witnesses; threw them into prison to compel them to swear falsely; removed Chief Justice Heath to put in a more pliant man; and at length, through the medium of Lord Cottington, induced Williams, from terror of worse, to give up the deanery and pay a fine of ten thousand pounds. His servants and agents, Walker, Catlin, and Lunn, were fined three hundred pounds apiece, and Powell two hundred pounds.

This being done, Laud uttered a most hypocritical speech, professing high admiration of the talents, wisdom, learning, and various endowments of Williams, and his sorrow to see him thus punished, declaring that he had gone five times on his knees to the king to sue for his pardon. But even so Williams was not destined to escape. The officers who went to take possession of his effects, found amongst his papers two letters from Osbaldeston, master of Westminster School, in one of which he said that the great leviathan—the late Lord Treasurer, Portland—and the little urchin—Laud—were in a storm; and in the other, that "there was great jealousy between the leviathan and the little meddling hocus-pocus."

This, which was no crime of Williams, but of Osbaldeston, was, however, made a crime of both. Williams was condemned on the charge of concealing a libel on a public officer, and fined eight thousand pounds more, and to suffer imprisonment during the king's pleasure. The chief offender, Osbaldeston, could not be found; he had left a note saying he was "gone beyond Canterbury;" but he was sentenced to deprivation of his office, to be branded, and stand opposite to his own school in the pillory, with his ears nailed to it. He took good care, however, not to fall into such merciless hands.

JOHN LILBURNE ON THE PILLORY. (See p. 556.)

Besides those means of raising a permanent revenue for the Crown, independent of Parliament, which we have already detailed—as tonnage and poundage, the fees on compulsory knighthood, and the resumption of forest lands,—there was discovered another which was owing to the ingenuity of Attorney-General Noye. The landed proprietors had been much alarmed by the rumours that the king would lay claim to the greater part of every county in England except Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, but the whole public was struck with consternation at the additional project of the Attorney-General. As he had been always of a surly and morose disposition, he carried this ungracious manner with him into his apostacy. Formerly he had acted like a rude ill-tempered patriot, now he was the more odious from being at once obsequious to the Crown, and coarsely insolent to those whose rights he had invaded.

In the Records of the Tower he discovered writs compelling the ports and maritime counties to provide a certain number of ships during war, or for protecting the coasts from pirates. It was now declared that the seas were greatly infested with Turkish corsairs, who not only intercepted our merchantmen at sea, but made descents on the coast of Ireland and carried off the inhabitants into slavery. The French and Dutch mariners, it was added, were continually interrupting our trade, and making prizes of our trading vessels. It was necessary to assert our right to the sovereignty of the narrow seas, which, it was contended, "our progenitors, Kings of England, had always possessed, and that it would be very irksome to us if that princely honour in our time should be lost, or in anything diminished."

But the real cause was that Charles was at that time, 1634, engaged in the treaty with Spain to assist it against the United Provinces of Holland, on condition that Philip engaged to restore the Palsgrave. Noye's scheme was highly approved and supported by the Lord Keeper Coventry. On the 20th of October, 1634, a writ was issued by the Lords of the Council, signed by the king, to the city of London, commanding it to furnish before the 1st of March next, seven ships, with all the requisite arms, stores, and tackling, and wages for the men for twenty-six weeks. One ship was to be of nine hundred tons, and to carry three hundred and fifty men; another of eight hundred tons, with two hundred and sixty men; four ships of five hundred tons, with two hundred men each; and one of three hundred tons, with one hundred and fifty men. The Common Council and citizens humbly remonstrated against the demand as one from which they were exempt by their charters, but the Council treated their objections with contempt, and compelled them to submit.

In the spring of 1635 similar writs were issued to the maritime counties, and even sent into the interior, a most unheard-of demand; and instructions were forwarded to all parts, signed by Laud, Coventry, Juxon, Cottington, and the rest of the Privy Council, ordering the sheriffs to collect the money which was to be levied instead of ships, at the rate of three thousand three hundred pounds for every ship. They were to distrain on all who refused, and take care that no arrears were left to their successors. The demand occasioned both murmuring and resistance. The deputy-lieutenants of some inland counties wrote to the Council, begging that the inhabitants might be excused this unprecedented tax; but they were speedily called before the Council, and severely reprimanded. The people on the coasts of Sussex absolutely refused to pay, but they were soon forced by the sheriffs to submit. Noye died before this took place, and squibs regarding him were publicly placarded, saying that his body being opened, a bundle of proclamations was found in his head, worm-eaten records were discovered in his stomach, and a barrel of soap, alluding to the enforcement of the monopoly on that article, was found in his paunch.

To put an end to all murmurs or resistance, Charles determined to have the sanction of the judges, knowing that he could not have that of Parliament. He therefore removed Chief Justice Heath on this and other accounts, and put in his place the supple Sir John Finch, lately conspicuous as Speaker of the Commons. The questions submitted to the judges were whether, when the good and safety of the realm demanded it, the king could not levy this ship-money, and whether he was not the proper and sole judge of the danger and the necessity. Finch canvassed his brethren of the Bench individually and privately. The judges met in Serjeant's Inn on the 12th of February, 1636, when they were all perfectly unanimous except Croke and Hutton, who, however, subscribed, on the ground that the opinion of a majority settled the matter.

To obtain this opinion, Charles had let the judges know through Finch, that he only required their decision for his private satisfaction; but they were startled to find their sanction immediately proclaimed by the Lord Keeper Coventry in the Star Chamber, order given that it should be enrolled in all the courts at Westminster, and themselves required to make it known from the Bench on their circuits through the country. Nor was this all, for Wentworth, now become a full-fledged agent of despotism, contended that "since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax towards the equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army; and the same reason which authorises him to levy an army to resist, will authorise him to carry that army abroad, that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law in England is also law in Ireland and Scotland. This decision of the judges will, therefore, make the king absolute at home, and formidable abroad. Let him," he observed, "only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to the payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors."

Such were the principles of Wentworth, ready on the smallest concession to grant a dozen other assumptions upon it, and such the counsellors, himself and Laud, who encouraged the already too fatally despotic king to his destruction. The judges were, for the most part, equally traitorous to the nation, and preached the most absolute doctrines and passed the most absolute sentences. Richard Chambers, the London merchant, who had already suffered so severely for resisting the king's illegal demands, also refused payment of this, and brought an action against the Lord Mayor for imprisoning him for his refusal. But Judge Berkeley would not hear the counsel of Chambers in his defence; and afterwards, in his charge to the grand jury at York, described ship-money as the inseparable flower of the Crown. But they were not so easily to override the rights of the people of England. There were numbers of stout hearts only waiting a fitting opportunity to unite and crush the spirit of despotism now growing so rampant. One of the most distinguished of these patriots was John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, whose name has become a world-wide synonym for sturdy constitutional independence. He determined not only to resist the payment of ship-money, but to try the question, so as to make known far and wide its illegality. He consulted his legal friends, Holborne, St. John, Whitelock, and others, on the best means of dealing with it, and encouraged by his example, thirty freeholders of his parish of Great Kimble, in Buckinghamshire, also refused payment. No sooner, therefore, had Charles obtained the opinion of the judges, than he determined to proceed against Hampden in the Court of Exchequer. The case was conducted for the Crown by the Attorney-General, Sir John Banks, and the Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Littleton. The sum at which Hampden was assessed was only twenty shillings: the trial lasted for twelve days before the twelve judges, that is, from the 6th to the 18th of December, 1637.

It was argued on the part of the Crown that the practice was sanctioned by the annual tax of Dane-gelt, imposed by the Saxons; by former monarchs having pressed ships into their service, and compelled the maritime counties to equip them; and that the claim on the part of the king was reasonable and patriotic, for if he did not exercise this right of the Crown, in cases of danger, before the Parliament could be assembled serious damage might accrue. The Crown lawyers ridiculed the refusal of a man of Mr. Hampden's great estates to pay so paltry a sum as twenty shillings; and declared that the sheriffs of Bucks ought to be fined for not putting upon him twenty pounds. But it was replied upon the part of Hampden, that the amount of the assessment was not in question, it was the principle of it. Nor could the Dane-gelt give evidence in the case, the imperfect accounts to be drawn on the subject from our ancient writers being too vague and uncertain. Moreover, the practice of monarchs before or after Magna Charta could not establish any law on the subject, for Magna Charta abrogated any arbitrary customs that had gone before, and strictly and clearly forbade them afterwards. No breach of that great Charter could be pleaded against it, for it was paramount and perpetual in its authority. Again, various statutes since, and last of all the Petition of Right, assented to by the king himself, made any such taxation without consent of Parliament illegal and void; while the very asking of loans and benevolences by different monarchs was sufficient proof of this, for if they had the right to tax, they would have taxed, and not borrowed. The most arbitrary prince that ever sat on the English throne—Henry VIII.,—when he had borrowed, and was not disposed to repay, did not consider his own fiat sufficient to cancel the debt, but called in Parliament to release him from the obligation. They reminded the judges of Edward I.'s confirmation of the charters, and of the statute De Tallagio non concedendo. As to the plea of imminent danger from foreign invasion, as in the case of the great Armada, as the Crown lawyers had mentioned, such cases, they argued, were next to impossible; notices of danger, as in the instance of the Armada itself, being obtained in ample time to call together Parliament. In this case there was no urgency whatever to forestall the measures of Parliament; for neither the insolence of a few Turkish pirates, nor even the threats of neighbouring States, were of consequence enough to warrant the forestalling of the constitutional functions of Parliament.

The Crown lawyers, baffled by this unanswerable statement, then unblushingly took their stand on the doctrine that the king was bound by no laws, but all laws proceeded from the grace of the king, and that this was a right which all monarchs had reserved from time immemorial. Justice Crawley declared that the right of such impositions resided ipso facto in the king as king, that you could not have a king without these rights—no, not by Act of Parliament. "The law," said Judge Berkeley, "knows no such king-yoking policy. The law is an old and trusty servant of the king's; it is his instrument or means which he useth to govern his people by. I never read or heard that Lex was Rex, but it is common and most true that Rex is Lex." The pliable Finch said, "Acts of Parliament are void to bind the king not to command the subjects, their persons, and goods, and, I say, their money, too, for no Acts of Parliament make any difference." Certainly they made no difference to him; and if these base lawyers could have talked away the rights of the people of England, they would have done it for their own selfish interests. When Holborne contended that it was not only for themselves, but for posterity, that they were bound to preserve the constitution intact, Finch testily exclaimed, "It belongs not to the Bar to talk of future governments; it is not agreeable to duty to have you bandy what is the hope of succeeding princes, when the king hath a blessed issue so hopeful to succeed him in his crown and virtues." But Holborne replied, "My lord, for that whereof I speak, I look far off—many ages off; five hundred years hence!"

But all the judges were not of like stamp. Hutton and Croke, who had dissented when the opinion of the judges was first taken, now made a bold stand against the illegal practice. As the ruin of a judge who thus dared to act in upright independence was pretty certain at that time, we may estimate the degree of virtue necessary to such decision, and the noble self-sacrifice of Lady Croke, who bade her husband give no thought to the consequences of discharging his duty, for that she would be content to suffer want, or any misery with him, rather than he should do or say anything against his judgment and conscience.

The case was not decided till the Trinity Term, the third term from the commencement of the trial, when, on the 12th of June, 1638, judgment was entered against Hampden in the Court of Exchequer. But even then five of the judges had the courage to decide for Hampden, though three of them did this only on technical grounds, conceding the main and vital question. The decision of this most important trial was apparently in favour of the king, and there was, accordingly, much triumphing at Court; but in reality, it was in favour of the people, for it had been so long before the public, and the arguments of Hampden's counsel were so undeniable, those of the Crown so absolutely untenable, and opposed to all the history of the nation, that the matter was everywhere discussed, and men's opinions made up that, without a positive resistance to such claims and such doctrines as had here been advanced, the country was a place of serfdom, and the bloodshed and the labour of all past patriots had been in vain. It was accordingly found that people were more averse than ever from paying these demands; and even the courtly Clarendon confesses that "the pressure was borne with much more cheerfulness before the judgment for the king than ever it was after." Lord Say made a determined stand against it in Warwickshire, and would fain have brought on another trial like that of John Hampden; but the king would not allow another damaging experiment; and events came crowding after it of such a nature, as showed how deep the matter had sunk into the public mind.

The course which matters were taking was exceedingly disgusting to the ministers of King Charles—Laud and Wentworth. The latter had been appointed Lord President of the North, where he had ruled with all the overbearing self-will of a king. The Council of the North had been appointed by Henry VIII., to try and punish the insurgents concerned in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and it had been continued ever since on as lawless a basis as that of the Star Chamber itself. In fact, it was the Star Chamber of the five most northern counties of England, summoning and judging the subjects without any jury, but at the will of the Council itself. Wentworth had risen from a simple baronet to be Privy Councillor, baron and viscount, and President of the North, with more rapidity than Buckingham himself had done. On accepting this last office, his power and jurisdiction were enlarged, and he displayed such an unflinching spirit in exercising the most despotic will, that on difficulties arising in Ireland, he was, without resigning his Presidency of the North, transferred thither, where Charles had resolved to introduce the same subjection to his sole will as in England and Scotland.

When the unfortunate expedition to Cadiz had been made, and the king feared the Spaniards would retaliate by making a descent on Ireland, he ordered the Lord-Deputy, Lord Falkland, to raise the Irish army to five thousand foot and five hundred horse. There was no great difficulty in that, but the question how they were to be maintained was not so easy. Lord Falkland, who was one of the most honourable and conscientious of men, called together the great landed proprietors, and submitted the matter to their judgment. These, who were chiefly Catholics, offered to advance the necessary funds on condition that certain concessions should be made to the people of Ireland. These were, that, besides the removal of many minor grievances, the recusants should be allowed to practise in the courts of law, and to sue the livery of their lands out of the court of wards on their taking the oath of Allegiance without that of Supremacy; that the Undertakers on the several plantations should have time to fulfil the conditions of their leases; that the claims of the Crown should be confined to the last sixty years, the inhabitants of Connaught being allowed a new enrolment of their estates; and finally, that a parliament should be held to confirm these graces, as they were called.

Delegates were sent to London to lay these proposals before the king, and on the agreement to pay one hundred and twenty thousand pounds by instalments in three years, Charles readily granted these articles of grace, amounting to fifty-one. But meanwhile, a rumour of these concessions having got out, the Irish Established Church had made a great opposition, and though the parliament was called, nothing was done, nor did Charles intend to do more than get the money. As Lord Falkland was the last man in the world to be a party to anything so dishonourable, he was recalled, and Wentworth was sent over, in the July of 1632, to do the work.

THE BIRMINGHAM TOWER, DUBLIN CASTLE.

Wentworth's arrival in Ireland was tantamount to a revolution there. He introduced all the regulations of the English Court at the Castle, assumed a guard like the king, which no Deputy before him had done, and carried himself with a haughty demeanour which made the Irish lords stand amazed. The only good which he effected was in putting down the multitude of minor tyrants, but then he combined all their tyranny and oppressions in himself. He was ready to bear any amount of odium, because he trusted to the king's support. His object was to raise a large permanent revenue, and Wentworth soon informed Charles that if this was to be done, there must be an end to making grants to needy English nobles, who absorbed what should flow to the Crown. Charles had promised such grants to the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Arundel, and others; but on learning Wentworth's views, Secretary Windebank wrote, at the king's command, that Wentworth was at liberty to refuse them these grants, provided that he took "the refusing part" on himself.

As a first measure to raise money, he informed Charles that it would be necessary to call a Parliament. The king, who had found Parliaments too much for him, and was endeavouring to live without them, heard the proposal with consternation, and warned Wentworth against such an attempt; but the Lord Deputy informed him that he had a plan by which he could manage them, and Charles wrote to him, consenting, but still warning. "As for that hydra, take good heed, for you know that here I have found it as well cunning as malicious. It is true that your grounds are well laid, and I assure you that I have a great trust in your care and judgment; yet my opinion is, that it will not be the worse for my service though their obstinacy make you to break them, for I fear they have some ground to demand more than it is fit for me to give."

Wentworth knew that very well, but meant to grant nothing of the kind. He sent out a hundred letters of recommendation in favour of the return of candidates on whom he could rely, and procured a royal order for the absent peers to send blank proxies, which he might fill up as he pleased. These were considerable in number, and consisted chiefly of Englishmen who had obtained their estates or titles from Charles or his father. Thus he secured a majority; and on opening Parliament he informed the members that he meant to hold two Sessions—one for the benefit of the king, the other for redressing the grievances of the people. Had the Irish noticed what had been going forward in England, they would have augured no good from such an arrangement, and might have followed the example of the English Commons, who would always insist on stating their grievances before parting with their money. But the unfortunate Irish listened to the dulcet tones of the Lord-Deputy, who assured them that if they put their trust in him and the king they would have the happiest Parliament that had ever sat in that kingdom. He talked of the misfortunes which had happened to the English Parliament through distrusting the king—he himself having been one of the chief actors in these distrusts—and on his assuring them that he was anxious to hasten to the second Session and the removal of all their grievances they voted him out of the fulness of their confidence six subsidies of larger amount than had ever been granted before.

But when they came to the second Session, awful was the astonishment, and terrible the consternation, of the liberal granters of subsidies. The shameless trickster coolly informed them that of the fifty-one graces promised them by the king, very few were of a kind which he, who knew the circumstances of the country, could grant. In vain they reminded him of his promises, and called on him to fulfil them. He gave them menaces instead of promises, launched at them the most biting sarcasms, and made them appear a set of criminals rather than deceived and insulted legislators. His majority carried everything as he pleased, and after passing a few insignificant graces, he negatived the bulk of them, including all the important ones, and dismissed the Parliament.

He had been equally successful with the Convocation. He obtained from it eight subsidies of three thousand pounds each, but he then refused to grant the conditions promised. It was the settled plan of the king, supported by Laud, to conform both the Scottish and Irish Churches to the English, and Wentworth was the most unscrupulous agent in such a work that they could have. The Irish prelates informed him that their Church was wholly independent of that of England, had its own Articles, of the Calvinistic class, and owed no obedience to the See of Canterbury. He insisted, however, that they must admit the Thirty-nine Articles of England; it was not necessary to parade them before the people, but they must be admitted, and the old Irish Articles might quietly die out. The prelates set about to frame a new code of ecclesiastical discipline; but to his surprise, he learned that they had rejected the English Articles and retained their own. He sent for the Archbishop and the Committee, upbraided the Chairman with suffering such a proceeding, took possession of the minutes, and ordered Archbishop Ussher himself to frame a canon authorising the English Articles. Ussher's production, however, did not satisfy him; he therefore drew up a form himself, and sent it to the Convocation, commanding that no debate should take place, but the Articles should be at once adopted, and informing them that every one's vote should be reported to him. Only one member of the whole Convocation dared to vote against his will; the rest submitted, but with the utmost indignation.

Having thus with a high hand carried his measures—refused the confirmation of the graces, conformed the Irish to the English Church in one Session, and obtained such an amount of money as would not only pay off the debts of the Crown, but would supply for some years the extraordinary demands of the Government, he wrote exultingly to England, declaring that the king was as absolute in Ireland as any king in the world, and might be the same in England if they did their duty there. He boldly demanded an earl's coronet, on account of these services, which, however, Charles deferred for awhile, thinking that he should hold such a man to his work rather by the hope than the possession of high preferment. Wentworth was so delighted with his overruling the Irish Parliament, that he proposed to the king to merely prorogue and not dissolve it, as being the most convenient instrument for effecting his further designs on the country. But Charles would not listen to it, remarking that parliaments were like cats, they ever grew cursed with age, and it was better to put an end to them early, young ones being most tractable. He thanked him for what he had done, and especially for saving him from the odium of breaking his promise about the graces.

How little did this bold bad man see that, whilst he was serving the king's worst purposes, he was preparing his own destruction. In fact, though he had stunned the Irish for a moment by the audacity of his bearing, he had struck deep into their souls a resentment that no man, however powerful or subtle, could withstand. He was, however, only on the threshold of the sweeping changes which he contemplated in that country, for he was resolved to reduce it to a condition of absolute dependence on the Crown. He was not content with forcing the English Articles on the Irish Church, but he refused to the Catholics every relief that Charles had pledged himself to in order to get their money. Instead of abolishing, as promised, the oppressive power of the court of wards, he gave them a more virulent activity. The Catholic heir was still obliged to sue out the livery of his lands, and before he could obtain them, to take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. To obtain his rightful property, he was thus compelled to abjure his religion. But he entertained a still more gigantic design, which was to seize on the fee simple of the greater part of Ireland, on pretence of defective title.

We have seen that in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the titles of the great landed proprietors both in Connaught and Ulster had been called in question, and those monarchs had pretended to renew them on condition of certain payments. These conditions had been repeatedly fulfilled by the proprietors, but not by the Crown. Charles, in 1628, amongst the other benefits promised, had engaged to ratify these titles; but Wentworth showed him the folly of doing that while by alarming them on the point he might draw immense sums from them, or get possession of the lands. To this proposal Charles consented, and the experiment was begun with Connaught. Wentworth proceeded (1635) at the head of a commission, to hold an inquisition in every county of Connaught. He opened his proceedings at Roscommon, where he summoned a jury of "gentlemen of the best estates and understandings," that more weight might attach to their decisions if favourable, or that, if adverse, he might levy heavy fines upon them. He assured the jury that his majesty merely meant to ascertain the condition of all titles, in order that if defective he might render them legal. It was on this plea that the freeholders had been wheedled into the surrender of their deeds and patents by Elizabeth and James; but Wentworth added another alarming fiction. He contended that Henry III., reserving only five cantreds to himself, had given the remainder to Richard de Burgh, to be holden of him and his heirs of the Crown, and that those tenures had now descended to the present king, by the marriage of the heirs of De Burgh with the royal line. According to this the king was the rightful owner of every acre of land in Ireland. He assured the jury, therefore, that it was their best interest to give a general verdict for the king, as he could without their consent establish his right, and if compelled to do that in opposition to them, the result might be much worse for them. By these means he induced the juries in Roscommon, Sligo, Mayo, Clare, and Limerick, to return a verdict in favour of the Crown, but the people of Galway stoutly resisted. They declared that the title of the king, through Edward IV., from Richard de Burgh, could not be proved; there was a hiatus in the genealogy. They were all Catholics, and were the more resolute from having been so shamefully deluded in the matter of wardship. Wentworth was rather glad to be able to make an example of them, and he therefore fined the sheriff one thousand pounds for returning so obstinate and perverse a jury, and dragged the jury into his Star Chamber, the chamber of the Castle, and fined them four thousand pounds apiece. He fell with especial vindictiveness on the old Earl of Clanricarde, and other great landowners of Galway, and set about to seize the fort of Galway, march a body of troops into the country, and compel it to submit to the king's will. The proprietors, disbelieving that the king could know of or sanction such infamous breaches of faith and acts of oppression, sent over a deputation to Charles to lay the matter before him. But the king received them with reproaches, declared his full approval of the proceedings of the Lord-Deputy, and sent them back to Ireland as State prisoners. The old Earl of Clanricarde, whose son had been the head of the deputation, died soon after receiving the news of this conduct of the monarch, and Wentworth wrote to Charles that he was accused of being the cause of his death. "They might as well," he remarked haughtily, "impute to me the crime of his being threescore and ten." He was still busily pursuing other noblemen with the same rancour—the Earl of Cork, Lord Wilmot, and others—when the Catholic party in England, who had a friend in Queen Henrietta, made their complaints heard at Whitehall. Laud, who was acting as outrageously himself in England, informed Wentworth of it, and even hinted more caution, observing that if he could find a way to do all those great services without raising so many storms, it would be excellently well thought of. But Wentworth was as little disposed to avoid storms as his adviser himself. He proceeded in the same autocratic style both towards the public and individuals. It had been the original intention to return to the proprietors three-fourths of their lands, and retain one-fourth for the Crown, amounting to about one hundred and twenty thousand acres, which were to be planted with Englishmen, on condition of yielding a large annual income to the Crown. But now it was resolved to retain a full half of Galway as a punishment of its obstinacy, and Wentworth was proceeding with the necessary measurements, when his career proved at an end.

SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH (EARL OF STRAFFORD).

(After the Portrait by Vandyke.)

The individual acts of injustice which he perpetrated were done at the suggestion of his profligate desires or personal revenge, with the most unabashed hardihood. He had seduced the daughter of Loftus, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, wife of Sir John Gifford, and wanted to confer a good post on her relative Sir Adam Loftus. Such an opportunity soon occurred by an inadvertent expression of Lord Mountnorris, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. It happened one day that Annesley, a lieutenant in the army, accidentally set a stool on the foot of the Lord-Deputy, when he was suffering from the gout. This Lieutenant Annesley had some time before been caned by Wentworth in a paroxysm of passion, and Mountnorris hearing the incident of the stool mentioned at the table of Chancellor Loftus, said, "Perhaps Annesley did it as his revenge, but he has a brother who would not have taken such a revenge." This being repeated to Wentworth, he treated the observation as a suggestion to Annesley to perpetrate a more bloody revenge; and though he dissembled his resentment for some time, he then accused Mountnorris, who was also an officer in the army, of mutiny, founded on this expression. Wentworth attended the court-martial to overawe its proceedings, and obtained a sentence of death against Mountnorris. The sentence was too atrocious to be carried into execution, but it served Wentworth's purpose, for he cashiered Mountnorris and gave his office to Loftus. Much as the Irish had suffered before, this most lawless act excited a loud murmur of indignation throughout the land; but Wentworth had secured himself from any censure from the king by handing him six thousand pounds as the price of the transfer of Mountnorris's treasurership to Sir Adam Loftus.

The resentment of the Irish was becoming so strong against Wentworth, that the king thought it safest for him to come to England for a time; but he soon returned thither, with the additional favour of the monarch, where he remained till summoned by Charles to assist him by his counsels against the Scots. But the fatal and memorable year 1640 was at hand, to close the story of his tyrannies. We must now retrace our steps, and bring up the conflicts of Scotland with the same blind and determined despots to that period.

The storm against the despotism of Charles had broken out in that country. From the moment of his visit to Edinburgh with his great apostle Laud, he had never ceased pushing forward his scheme of conforming the Presbyterian Church to Anglican episcopacy. He had restored the bishops on that occasion, given them lands, erected deans and chapters, and Laud had consecrated St. Giles's Church as a Cathedral. As he could not persuade the Scottish Peers to submit to the liturgy as used in England, which his father had attempted in vain before him, he consented that a liturgy should be drawn up by four Scottish bishops, who were also to form a code of ecclesiastical canons. They were to introduce into the latter some of the acts of the Scottish assemblies, and some more ancient canons, to make the whole more palatable. These laws and the liturgy were afterwards revised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Norwich, and Charles ordered the amended copies to be published and preserved.

None but a monarch so foolhardy as Charles would have dared such an experiment on the Scots who had resisted so stoutly his father, and had driven his grandmother from the country for her adhesion to Popery. The people received the publication of the canon with unequivocal indications of their temper; and when, therefore, the first introduction, of the liturgy was fixed for the 23rd of July, 1637, in St. Giles's Church, they went thither in crowds, to give a characteristic reception. The archbishops and bishops, the Lords of Session, and the magistrates went in procession, and appeared there in all their official splendour. This display, however, so far from imposing on the people of Edinburgh, only excited their wrath and contempt, as the trumpery finery of the woman of Babylon. A considerable riot ensued, during which a woman named Jenny Geddes is said to have thrown a stool at the bishop's head. The story is, however, supported by indifferent evidence.

But it was not merely the base multitude, the nobility were as violent against the new Liturgy as the people, and came to high words with the bishops and their favourers amongst the clergy. Four ministers—Alexander Henderson, of Leuchars; John Hamilton, of Newburn; James Bruce, of Kingsbarns, and another—petitioned the Council on the 23rd of August, to give them time to show the anti-Christian and idolatrous nature of this ritual, and how near it came to the Popish mass, reminding them that the people of Scotland had established the independence of their own Church at the Reformation, which had been confirmed by Parliament and General Assemblies, and that the people, instructed in their religion from the pulpit, were not likely to adopt what their fathers had rejected as contrary to the simplicity of the Gospel. But the Bishop of Ross, Laud's right-hand man, replied for the Council that the liturgy was neither superstitious nor idolatrous, but according to the formula of the ancient Churches, and they must submit to that or to "horning," that is, banishment. Still the Council delayed, and the people were pretty quiet during the harvest time, but that over, the news having arrived of a peremptory message from the king, commanding the enforcement of the liturgy, and the removal of the Council from Edinburgh to Linlithgow, thence in the following term to Stirling, and for the next to Dundee, the people flocked into Edinburgh, and, incensed at the idea of their ancient capital being deprived of its honours as the seat of government, they became extremely irritated, attacked the bishops when they could see them, and nearly tore the clothes from the back of the Bishop of Galway. He escaped into the Council House, and the members of the Council in their turn sent to demand protection from the magistrates, who could not even protect themselves.

For greater security the Council removed to Dalkeith, and the Marquis of Hamilton recommended to Charles to make some concessions; but far from giving way, a more positive order for the enforcement of the obnoxious liturgy arrived from the king. But it was found impossible to enforce it: the Earl of Traquair was summoned up to London, sharply questioned as to the causes of the delay, and was sent back with more arbitrary commands. On the 18th of October these were made known, and fresh riots took place, Traquair and two of the bishops nearly losing their lives. The king then consented to the petitioners above mentioned being represented by a deputation personally resident in Edinburgh. The object was to induce the crowds of strangers to withdraw to their homes, when it was thought the people of Edinburgh alone might be better dealt with; but the advocates of the people seized on the plan, and converted it into one of the most powerful engines of opposition imaginable.

At the head of these able politicians, and the contrivers of this profoundly sagacious scheme, were the Lords Rothes, Balmerino, Lindsay, Lothian, Loudon, Yester, and Cranstoun. Balmerino had been severely treated by Charles, and had thus become hardened into the most positive opponent of the episcopal movement. In his possession in 1634 was a copy of a petition to the Scottish Parliament, too strong in its language even for the Scottish dissentients to present. He had, under pledge of strictest secrecy, lent this to a friend. For this he was committed to prison, and at the instigation of Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, it was resolved to prosecute him for high treason, and a verdict was procured against him. But the people were so enraged that they assembled in vast crowds, vowing to murder both the jurors who had given the verdict and the judges who had accepted it. Government was alarmed, and the king was reluctantly induced to grant Balmerino a pardon. From that moment he became the champion of the people.

He and his colleagues the nobles, the gentry, the Presbyterian clergy, and the inhabitants of the burghs, formed themselves into four "Tables" or Committees, each of four persons, and each Table sent a representative to a fifth Table, a Committee of superintendence and government. Thus in the capital there were sitting five Tables or Committees, to receive complaints and information from the people, and decide on all these matters. Throughout the country were speedily established similar Tables, with whom they corresponded. Thus, instead of that mere representation of the petitioners which the king contemplated as an expedient for getting rid of the immediate pressure of the people, one of the most perfect and most powerful systems of popular agitation was organised that the world had ever seen. There was the most instant attention to the suggestions of the people by the provincial Tables, and the most prompt and respectful consideration of their reports by the Tables in the capital. A permanent government of the people was, in fact, erected, to which the public looked with the utmost confidence, and by which step its whole weight was brought to bear on the unpopular government of the king.

The formidable nature of this novel engine of the popular will was quickly perceived by the Court; and Traquair was ordered to issue a proclamation declaring the Tables to be unlawful, commanding all people to withdraw to their own homes, and menacing the penalties of treason against all who disobeyed. This proclamation was made by Traquair at Stirling, on the 19th of February, 1638; but it was disregarded. The Tables had procured early information of the forthcoming proclamation, and had summoned the provincial Tables from all parts to assemble in Edinburgh and Stirling. These cities were thus crowded with the very life and soul of the whole agitation. They had already risen in their demands as they perceived their strength, and had ceased to petition for time and some trifling alterations in "the buke." They demanded the formal revocation of the liturgy, the canons, and the Court of High Commission. Now, no sooner had the herald read the royal proclamation than the Lords Hume and Lindsay read a counter proclamation, saw it affixed to the market cross, and copies sent to Edinburgh and Linlithgow, to be read and publicly placarded there.

Traquair, who had clearly foreseen these consequences, and in vain warned the king to avoid them by timely concession, wrote to Hamilton, informing him of what had taken place, and that there was no power in the kingdom capable of forcing the liturgy down the people's throats; that they would receive the Mass as soon. His words received a speedy confirmation. The Tables determined to publish a Solemn Covenant between the people and the Almighty to stand by their religion to the death. Their fathers, at the time of the Reformation, had adopted such an instrument. The great nobles of the time had sworn to maintain the principles of Wishart and Knox, and to defend the preachers of those doctrines against the powers of Antichrist and the monarchy. James had sworn to adhere to this confession of faith, with all their households and all classes of people, in the years 1580, 1581, and 1590. The name of Covenant was thus become a watchword to the whole nation, which roused them like a trumpet. This document had been composed by Alexander Henderson, one of the four ministers who had petitioned, and Archibald Johnstone, an advocate, the legal adviser of the party; and had been revised by Balmerino, Loudon, and Rothes.

This famous document began by a clear exposition of the tenets of the Reformed Scottish Church, and as solemn an abjuration of all the errors and doctrines of the Pope, with his "vain allegories, rites, signs, and traditions." It enumerated the anti-Christian tenets of Popery—the denial of salvation to infants dying without baptism; the receiving the Sacrament from men of scandalous lives; the devilish Mass; the canonisation of men; the invocation of saints; the worshipping of imaginary relics and crosses; the speaking and praying in a strange language; auricular confession; the shaveling monks; bloody persecutions; and a hundred other abominations. All these were made as great offences against the Anglican hierarchy, which was fast running back into those "days of bygone idolatry." The various classes—"noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and commons"—bound themselves by the Covenant to defend and maintain the reformed faith before God, His angels, and the world, till it was again established by free Assemblies and Parliaments, in the same full purity and liberty of the Gospel as it had been heretofore.

On the 1st of March, 1638, the church of St. Giles, which had witnessed so lately the hasty flight of the bishops, was thronged with the Covenanters of all ranks and from all parts of the country. The business was opened by a fervent prayer from Henderson, and then the people were addressed in a stirring harangue by the Earl of Loudon, the most eloquent man in Scotland. The effect was such that the whole assembly rose simultaneously, and with outstretched arms, amid torrents of tears, swore to the contents of the Covenant. That done, they turned and embraced each other, wept, and shouted aloud their exultation over this great victory, for such they felt it, in the united energy and religious dedication of the nation.

Dispersing to their various homes, the delegates carried the fire of this grand enthusiasm with them. Over moor and mountain it flew, across the green pastoral hills of the South, through the dark defiles of the Highlands, and to the sea-swept isles. Thousands continued to pour into the capital to add their signatures to the Covenant; and in every parish on the Sunday the people streamed to listen to the fiery harangues from the pulpits, and to give in their names, with the same tears, emotions, and embraces as in Edinburgh. It was soon found that, except in the county of Aberdeen, the Covenanters outnumbered their opponents in the proportion of one hundred to one.

Nor did these determined reformers readily admit of any dissent or lukewarmness. Where they found any opposed or inert, they roused them by threats, and often by blows and coercion. Some they threw into prison, and some they set in the stocks for refusing to sign. The Catholics were those who principally stood aloof; but these were not calculated at a thousand in all Scotland. Of such they entered the names in a list, and made calculations of their property, with a view to confiscation. In Lanark and other places the contending factions came to blows before the lists were filled up. Active subscriptions were levied for the maintenance of the Cause, and before the end of April there was scarcely a single Protestant who had not signed the Covenant. The bishops had fled to England, and all Scotland stood ready to fight for its faith.

THE PEOPLE SIGNING THE COVENANT IN ST. GILES'S CHURCH, EDINBURGH. (See p. 567.)

Here was a spectacle which would have shown the folly of his career to any other monarch; but all reason or representation was wasted on Charles. Traquair entreated him, before plunging into war, to listen to the counsels of his most experienced Scottish Ministers; but Charles seldom listened to anything except his own self-will, or any person except his fatal counsellors, Laud and Wentworth. He is said on this occasion to have consulted with a small council of Scotsmen living in England, which had been formed by James on his accession to the English throne, and in accordance with their advice and in opposition to that of the Council in Scotland, he resolved on suppressing the Covenant by force.

In May he sent the Marquis of Hamilton to Scotland, with orders to endeavour to soothe the people by assuring them that the liturgy and canons should only be exercised in a fair and gentle manner, and that the High Commission Court should be so remodelled as to be no grievance. If these promises did not satisfy them, as Hamilton must have known they would not, for Charles's promises were too notorious to be of any value, he was to resort to any exercise of force that he thought necessary.

On the 3rd of June he arrived at Berwick, and sent to the nobility to meet him at Haddington; but no one appeared except the Earl of Roxburgh, who assured him that anything but a full revocation of the canons and liturgy was hopeless. On reaching Dalkeith he was waited on by Lord Rothes, who, on the part of the Covenanters, invited him to take up his abode in Holyrood as more convenient for discussion.

Hamilton objected to enter a city swarming with Covenanters, where the castle was already invested by their guards. These, it was promised him, should be removed and the city kept quiet, on which he consented; and on the 8th of June he set forward. But he found the whole of the way, from Musselburgh to Leith and from Leith to Edinburgh, lined with Covenanters, fifty thousand in number. There were from five to seven hundred clergymen collected; and all the nobility and gentry assembled in the capital, amounting to five thousand, came out to meet and escort him in. All this he was informed was to do him honour, but he felt that its real design was to impress him with the strength of the Covenant party.

Hamilton saw that it was useless to publish Charles's proclamation, but wrote advising him to grant them their demands, or to lose no time in appearing with a powerful army. Charles replied desiring him to amuse the Covenanters with any promises that he pleased, so that he did not commit the king himself. He was to avoid granting an Assembly or Parliament, but he added, "Your chief end being now to win time, they may commit public follies until I be ready to suppress them." The marquis, therefore, endeavoured to spin out the time by coaxing and deluding the Covenanters. He promised to call a General Assembly and a Parliament, and redress all their grievances. When pressed too closely, he declared that he would go to London himself and endeavour to set all right with the king; but this was part only of the plan of gaining time whilst Charles was preparing a fleet and army. But the Scots were too wary to be thus deceived. They had information that troops were being raised in England, and they too made preparations. At the same time they waited on the marquis, professing the most unabated loyalty, but resolute to have free exercise of their religion. Hamilton promised to present their address to the king, and set out on the 4th of July for England. He informed Charles of the real state of the country, and that the very members of the Privy Council were so infected by the Covenant that he had not dared to call them together. But Charles was not to be induced to take any effective measures for pacifying the public mind of Scotland. His instructions to the marquis were to amuse the people with hopes, and to allow of the sitting of a General Assembly, but not before the 1st of November. He was even to publish the order for discharging the use of the Service Book, the canons, and the High Commission Court, but was to forbid the abolition of bishops, though the bishops were for the present not to intrude themselves into the Assembly. They were, however, to be privately held to be essentially members of the Assembly, and were to be one way or other provided for till better times.

These half measures were not likely to be accepted, but they would serve Charles's grand object of gaining time, and the marquis arrived with them in Edinburgh on the 10th of August. Three days after his arrival the Covenanters waited upon him to learn how the king had received their explanations, and the marquis assured them with much grace and goodness; but when they heard that the bishops were not to be abolished, they treated his other offers with contempt, and Hamilton once more proposed to journey to England to endeavour to obtain a full and free recall of all the offensive ordinances. Before taking his leave, as a proof of his earnestness, he joined with the Earls of Traquair, Roxburgh, and Southesk, in a written solicitation to his Majesty to remove all innovations in religion which had disturbed the peace of the country. By the 17th of September Hamilton was again at Holyrood. On the 21st he received the Covenanters and informed them that he had succeeded; that the king gave up everything; that an Assembly was to be called immediately, and a Parliament in the month of May next; and that the king revoked the Service Book, the Book of Canons, the five Articles of Perth, and the High Commission. The Covenanters were about to express their unbounded satisfaction and loyal gratitude, when the marquis added that his Majesty only required them to sign the old confession of faith as adopted by King James in 1580 and 1590. This single reservation broke the whole charm; their countenances fell, and they declared that they looked upon this as an artifice merely to set aside their new bond of the Covenant.

In all Charles's most solemn acts the cloven foot showed itself. Even when seeming most honest, there was something which awoke a distrust in him. He was not sincere, and he had not the art to look so. In any other monarch the positive assurance that the innovations on the religion of Scotland should be abandoned, would have settled the matter at once; but Charles had so utterly lost character for truth and good faith that it was believed throughout the country that he was still only deluding them, and seeking time ultimately to come down resistlessly upon them. And we know from his own correspondence preserved in the Strafford Papers that it was so. These words addressed to Hamilton, "Your chief end is to win time, that they may commit public follies, until I be ready to suppress them," are an everlasting proof of it. Besides, they had ample information from friends about the Court in England that this was the case, and that in a few months the king meant to visit them with an irresistible force. The people of England were suffering too much from the same species of oppression not to sympathise warmly with the Scottish patriots, and keep them well informed of what was going on there. We find it asserted in the Hardwicke State Papers that the Government was very jealous of the number of people who went about England selling Scottish linen, and it was recommended to open all letters going between the countries at Berwick.

The Covenanters therefore determined to hold together and be prepared. On the 22nd of September, 1638, the Marquis of Hamilton caused the royal proclamation to be read at the market-cross at Edinburgh, abandoning the Anglican Service and the High Commission Court; but as it required subscription to the old confession of faith, there was no rejoicing on the occasion. There were two particulars in this proclamation which fully justified the Scots in refusing to comply with it. It stated that the vow of the Covenant was unauthorised by Government, and therefore illegal; and it professed to grant a pardon for that act to all who signed the confession, which would have acknowledged that the nation had been guilty of a crime in accepting the Covenant, a thing they were not likely to admit, for in that case they could not have refused the re-admission of the very liturgy against which they were at war. They therefore published a protest against the proclamation, founded on these reasons.

The marquis having obtained the signature of the Lords of the Secret Council to the new bond, which Charles had previously signed, though it contained many clauses repugnant to Arminianism, issued the proclamation for the meeting of the Assembly in Glasgow on the 21st of November, 1638, and for that of the Parliament on the 17th of May, 1639. In a few days afterwards, the Council published an act discharging the Book of Common Prayer, the Book of Canons, etc., and called for the subscription of all his Majesty's subjects. The municipal bodies, the ministers, and the people hastened to thank the Council, and to express their joy at the revocation of the obnoxious orders, but they refused to sign the confession.

The marquis wrote to Charles, informing him of the determined spirit of the people, and advising him to hasten his military preparations. He also represented to him the protests of the bishops against the holding of the Assembly; but the king bade him persist in holding it, so that he might not appear to break faith with the public and thus precipitate matters, but to counteract the effect of the Assembly by sowing discord amongst the members, and protesting against their tumultuary proceedings.

But the Scots did not give Hamilton much time for such machinations before the meeting of the Assembly. They were warned by a trusty correspondent—notwithstanding the waylaying of the post was carried into effect—that vigorous preparations were being made to invade Scotland. There were arms for twenty thousand men, including forty pieces of ordnance and forty carriages; but the writer did not believe they would get two hundred men for the service, such was the desire of all parties—nobles, gentry, and people—for their success, which if obtained, he said, would lead many of all ranks to settle in Scotland for freedom of conscience. He added that Wentworth had made large offers of assistance to the king from Ireland, but that the Irish were themselves so injured that he doubted whether any considerable help would be had from Wentworth against them; yet if Charles could muster sufficient force, they might expect no terms from him but such as they would get at the cannon's mouth.

At the end of October the Earl of Rothes demanded from Hamilton a warrant citing the bishops as guilty of heresy, perjury, simony, and gross immorality, to appear before the approaching Assembly. The marquis refused, on which the Presbytery of Edinburgh cited them. Charles had ordered, as a sign of his favour, the restoration of the Lords of Session of Edinburgh, but on condition of their signing the confession of faith. Nine out of the fifteen were induced with much difficulty to sign, but from that moment they were in terror of their lives from the exasperation of the people.

When Hamilton arrived on the 17th of November in Glasgow to open the Assembly, he found the town thronged with people from all quarters, evidently in intense excitement. The Tables had secured the most popular elections of representatives to the Assembly, sending one lay elder and four lay assessors from every Presbytery. The marquis therefore found himself overruled on all points. In his opening speech he read them the king's letter, in which Charles complained of having been misrepresented, as though he desired innovations in laws and religion; and to prove how groundless this was, he had granted this free Assembly, for settling all such matters to the satisfaction of his good subjects. He then of himself protested against the foul and devilish calumnies against his sacred Majesty, purporting that even this grant of the Assembly was but to gain time whilst he was preparing arms to force on the nation the abhorred ritual. The marquis, whilst he was making these solemn asseverations, being well assured, as were most of his hearers, that the king was all the while casting cannon and ball, and mustering soldiers for this "foul and devilish purpose," the Assembly must have been perfectly satisfied that no good was to be expected but from their own firmness. They at once proceeded to elect Alexander Henderson as their Moderator, and Hamilton protested as vigorously against it, but in vain. They next elected as clerk-register Archibald Johnstone, the clerk of the Edinburgh Tables, against which Hamilton again protested with as little effect, Johnstone declaring that he would do his best to "defend the prerogative of the Son of God."

Defeated on these important points, the marquis the next day entered a protest against the return of lay members to the Assembly; and the proctor on behalf of the bishops added their protest, declining the authority of the Assembly, which he contended ought to be purely ecclesiastical. James had, in fact, put the lay members out of the Assembly, and the king therefore treated this original constitution of the Assembly, as settled at the Reformation, as an innovation, turning the charge of innovation on the Covenanters. The marquis would then have read the protests of the bishops with which he was furnished; but the Assembly declined to hear them, and repeated that they would pursue the charges against the bishops so long as they had lives and fortunes. On this Hamilton dissolved the Assembly, and the same day wrote a most remarkable letter to Charles, which appears to leave little ground for the suspicions of the royal party that he was secretly inclined to the Covenant. He informed the king that he had done his utmost, but to no purpose, with that rebellious nation. He seemed to apprehend danger to his life, and that this might be the last letter he should ever write to his Majesty. He blamed the bishops for persuading the king to bring in the English liturgy and canons in so abrupt and violent a manner; that their pride was great, their folly greater. He gives the king his opinion of the character and degrees of the trustworthiness of the different Ministers, and bids him beware of the Earl of Argyle, whom he declares to be the most dangerous man in the State; so far from favouring episcopacy, as had been supposed, that nobleman wished it abolished with all his soul. This was immediately afterwards, as we shall see, made clear by Argyle himself. Hamilton then proceeded to instruct the king how best to proceed to quell what he deemed not merely a contest for religion, but an incipient rebellion. It was to blockade the ports, and thus cut off all trade, by which the burghs, the chief seats of the agitation, lived. As fast as these burghs felt their folly and returned to their allegiance, they should be restored to favour, and their ports opened, which would make the rest anxious to follow. He said he had done his best to garrison the castle of Edinburgh, though it was in a precarious state, but that the castle of Dumbarton might be readily garrisoned by troops from Ireland. If he preserved his life, which he seemed to doubt, he would defend his post to the utmost, though "he hated the place like hell," and as soon as he was free of it would forswear the country. He recommended his brother to the king's favour and his children to his protection if they lived; and to these, if they did not prove loyal, he left his curse. His daughters, he desired, might never marry into Scotland.

The marquis clearly saw the dreadful conflict which was approaching, and his tears and emotion on dismissing the Assembly struck every one with that impression. But the Assembly had no intention of dispersing. Like the Commons of England, they entertained too high an estimate of their right, and of their duty in such a crisis. They therefore passed a resolution declaring the Kirk independent of the civil powers, and the dissolution of the Assembly by the Royal Commissioner illegal and void. They said that if the Commissioner should see fit to quit the country, and leave the Church and kingdom in that disorder, it was their duty to sit; and that they would continue to sit till they had settled all the evils which came within their lawful and undoubted jurisdiction.

Laud, in reply to Hamilton, lamented that fear of giving umbrage to the Covenanters too soon had too long delayed the means to crush them. He thanked him for having conveyed the bishops to Hamilton Castle to protect them, and trusted that his own life would yet be preserved from the diabolical fury of the Scots. What Hamilton had foreseen in the meantime had come to pass. The Earl of Argyle declared plainly in the Council that he would take the Covenant and sanction the Assembly. Accordingly, though not a member of it, he took his place in the Assembly as their chief director; and thus encouraged, they proceeded to abolish episcopacy for ever, to deprive all the bishops, and to excommunicate the greater part of them and all their abettors. Charles, and James before him, had completely conferred all the power of Parliament on the bishops, making eight of them the Lords of the Articles, with authority to choose eight of the nobles, and these sixteen having power to choose all the rest, so that all depended on the bishops, and they, again, on the king. This effectually ranged the nobles against them. The Marquis of Hamilton, notwithstanding his fears, was permitted quietly to withdraw to England, whence he was soon to return against them at the head of the fleet. The people received the news of the proceedings of the Assembly with transports of joy, and celebrated the downfall of episcopacy by a day of thanksgiving. Charles, on the other hand, issued a proclamation declaring all its acts void, and hastened his preparations for marching into Scotland.

But the Covenanters were not the less active on their part, and everything tended to a civil war, the result of Charles's incessant attacks on the liberties of the nation. They made collections of arms, and as early as December they received six thousand muskets from Holland. These had been stopped by the Government of that country, but Cardinal Richelieu had suddenly shown himself a friend, by ordering the muskets as if for his own use, receiving them into a French port, and thence forwarding them to Scotland. However impolitic it might appear for France to assist subjects against their prince, it must be remembered that Charles had managed to create nearly as strong a feeling against him in Louis and his minister Richelieu as in his own subjects. He had set the example by assisting the Huguenots against their prince, and had provoked France by defeating its plan of dividing the Spanish Netherlands between that country and Holland. The present opportunity, therefore, was eagerly seized to make Charles feel the error he had committed. Richelieu, moreover, ordered the French Ambassador in London to pay over to General Leslie, one of Gustavus Adolphus's old officers, who had been engaged by the Assembly, one hundred thousand crowns. This last transaction, however, was kept a profound secret, for the Scots, when advised to seek the assistance of France and Germany, had indignantly refused, saying the Lutherans of Germany were heretics, and the people of France Papistical idolaters; that it became them to seek support from God alone, and not from the broken reed of Egypt. The preachers thundered from the pulpits against the bishops, and the determination of the king still to force them on the country; and they refused the Communion to all who had not signed the Covenant. The Tables called on the young men in every quarter of the country to come forward and be trained to arms, and the Scottish officers who had been engaged in the wars in Germany flocked over and offered their services for the support of the popular cause. The nobles contributed plate to be melted down, the merchants in the towns sent in money, and an army of determined men was fast forming.

Charles, on his part, was not the less busy preparing for the campaign, and he was persuaded by many of the courtiers that he had only to appear, to pacify the Scots. If we are to believe Clarendon, the Treasury was in a flourishing condition, a most unlikely circumstance, considering the unpopular mode of raising funds without a Parliament; and we are assured of the contrary by a letter of the Earl of Northumberland, addressed to Wentworth in January, 1639. He says, "I assure your lordship, to my understanding, to my sorrow I speak it, we are altogether in as ill a posture to invade others or to defend ourselves as we were a twelve-month since, which is more than any one can imagine that is not an eye-witness of it. The discontents here at home do rather increase than lessen, there being no course taken to give any kind of satisfaction. The king's coffers were never emptier than at this time, and to us that have the honour to be near about him, no way is yet known how he will find means either to maintain or begin a war without the help of his people." Cottington wrote to Wentworth in the same strain.

So far from consulting Parliament, Charles had not even opened his difficulties to his Council. He was now compelled to do the latter, and on this occasion Laud was found entreating for peaceful measures. It is probable that he had taken a more rational view of the belligerent temper of the Scots, and saw more danger in the king's attempt to coerce them, than he generally discerned in pushing on arbitrary counsels. His advice was rejected, and the rest of the Council acquiesced in the determination of the king. By the beginning of the year 1639, Charles had named his generals and officers, had issued orders to the Lords-Lieutenant to muster the trained bands of their several counties, and the nobles to meet him at York on the 1st of April with such retinues as belonged to their rank and fortune. To procure money he suspended the payment of all pensions, borrowed where he could, and judges, lawyers, and the clergy were called upon to contribute from their salaries and livings in lieu of their personal service. The clergy were in general extremely liberal. They considered that the cause was their own, and that if the Presbyterians of Scotland became triumphant, the Puritans of England might deal in similar fashion with the Church of England. Laud, moreover, ordered the names of all clergymen who refused to be returned to him. The queen also lent her aid by calling on the Catholics to assist, reminding them that aid given to the king in this emergency was the most likely means to securing future advantages to themselves. When the knowledge of the queen's circular letter to the Catholics became known to the Puritans, they were greatly scandalised; and the Catholics responding readily to the call, and holding a meeting in London presided over by the Pope's Nuncio, tended to strengthen their opinion of the papistical bias of Charles and his Church.

The king, on his part, sought to take advantage of the ancient antipathies between the two kingdoms, and issued proclamations calling on all good subjects to resist the attempts of the Scots, who were contemplating, he asserted, the invasion and plunder of the kingdom and the destruction of the monarchy. But he found this was an empty alarm. The reformers of England knew too well that the cause of the Scots and their own were identical; that the purpose of the king was to destroy the constitutional rights and freedom of religion in both kingdoms alike. The Scottish nobles, as well as the English public, rejected all attempts to divide them in this Cause. There was a time when they could be bought by the money of England, which had been freely and successfully employed by the Tudors. But Charles had little money to give; and to the honour of the Scottish peers, when other temptations were tried, for the most part the sacred cause of their religion triumphed over them. They exhorted one another to stand fast by the Covenant. The most intimate communication between the Scottish and English reformers was maintained by pamphlets secretly circulated, by emissaries traversing all classes and all quarters. The earliest information of the movements of the Court was transmitted; and before Charles commenced his march towards York, General Leslie, the elected Commander-in-Chief, took the initiative, and surprised the castle of Edinburgh, on the 21st of March, at the head of a thousand musketeers, and without losing a single man. The next day, Saturday, the castle of Dalkeith was given over by Traquair, with all the regalia and a large quantity of ammunition and arms. It was thought that Traquair had shown great timidity, to surrender so strong a castle almost without a blow; but he complained of having been left alone, without countenance or advice. The Earls of Rothes and Balmerino took the castle, and conveyed the regalia safely to the castle of Edinburgh. The following day, Sunday, did not prevent even Scotsmen and Covenanters from seizing the castle of Dumbarton. The governor was surprised on his return from church, and threatened with instant death if he did not surrender the keys to the provost of the town, a zealous Covenanter. Stirling was in the hands of the Earl of Mar, who had taken the Covenant; and of all the royal fortresses, only Carlaverock, the least important, remained in the hands of the Crown. The Marquis of Huntly, who had undertaken to hold the Highlands for the king, was overpowered or entrapped by Leslie and Montrose, who at the head of seven thousand men compelled the reluctant professors of Aberdeen to accept the Covenant, when Leslie returned to Edinburgh, carrying Huntly with him. The Earl of Antrim, who was to have invaded the domains of Argyle from Ireland, was unable to fulfil his engagement, and thus every day brought the news of rapid disasters to Charles on his march towards York. Hamilton, who had been despatched with a fleet, appeared in the Forth on the 13th of April. He had five thousand troops on board, and was expected to secure Leith, the port of Edinburgh, and overawe if he could not take the capital; but he found the place strongly fortified, and twenty thousand men were posted on the shores to hinder his landing. All classes, from the noble to the peasant, had been labouring industriously to repair fortifications and throw up batteries, and ladies had carried materials for them. The marquis saw no chance of effecting a landing, and therefore disembarked his men on the islands in the Forth, to prevent them from perishing in the ships, for they were landsmen, and had been hastily pressed into the service, and were both sickly and mutinous. No prospect was ever more discouraging; even Wentworth could not send him the small aid of five hundred musketeers in time, and strongly advised Charles to avoid coming to an engagement with his raw levies against the enthusiastic Scots and their practical generals, but to garrison Berwick and Carlisle to prevent incursions, and wait till the next year if necessary.

Charles arrived at York on the 19th of April, and proceeded to administer to the lords who there awaited him with their followers, an oath of allegiance, binding them to oppose all conspiracies and seditions, even if they were veiled under the pretence of religion. The Lords Say and Brooke declined to take the oath, saying they were willing to accompany their sovereign from loyalty and affection; but that, as they were ignorant of the laws and customs of Scotland, they could not undertake to say that the Scots were rebels, or the war was just. Charles with indignation ordered them to be arrested, but the Attorney and Solicitor-Generals on being consulted declaring that there was no ground for their prosecution, they were dismissed with the royal displeasure and desired to return home. Nor had the king much more satisfaction with the lords who had taken the oath, for they qualified it by signing a paper stating in what sense they took it. To perform an act calculated to please the people whom he was leaving behind, at York he issued a proclamation, revoking no less than thirty-one monopolies and patents, pretending that he had not discovered before how grievous they were to his subjects; but the real fact was, that most of them had been granted to Scotsmen who had now forfeited his favour.

On leaving York he complimented the Recorder, who had paid him the most fulsome flattery, and the municipal authorities, by telling them that he had there experienced more love than he ever had in London on which he had showered so many benefits. At Durham by the bishop and clergy, and at Newcastle by the corporation, he was magnificently entertained, and at every halting-place fresh quotas of horse and foot came in. "But," remarks Clarendon, "if there had been none in the march but soldiers, it is most probable that a noble peace would have quickly ensued, even without fighting; but the progress was more illustrious than the march, and the soldiers were the least part of the army, and the least consulted with. For," he adds, "the king more intended the pomp of his preparations than the strength of them." The certain proof, he might have added, of a very foolish king, as Charles was. But the "ifs" which Clarendon summons up on this occasion to explain the want of success are amusing. "If the war had been vigorously pursued, it had been as soon ended as begun." "If he had been duly informed of what was going on in Scotland," of course he would have known. "If the whole nation of Scotchmen had been entirely united in the rebellion, and all who stayed in the Court had marched in their army, the king or kingdom could have sustained no damage by them; but the monument of their presumption and their shame would have been razed together, and no other memory preserved of their rebellion but in their memorable and infamous defeat." That is, there would have been no Scottish traitors about him to keep him misinformed. This is just as true as the treasury being well furnished, for we know that Hamilton and Traquair kept the king punctually informed of everything the whole time. "If," however, Charles had more wisely chosen his generals,—but Arundel, his general, was a man, says this veracious historian, "who had nothing martial about him but his presence and his looks, and therefore was thought to be made choice of for his negative qualities. He did not love the Scots; he did not love the Puritans; which good qualities were allayed by another negative—he did love nobody else." The lieutenant-general, the Earl of Essex, was too proud and uncompromising, and the Earl of Holland, general of the horse, was just no general at all, "a man fitter for a show than a field." Yet, says Clarendon, "If the king himself had stayed at London, or, which had been the next best, kept his court and resided at York, and sent the army on its proper errand, and left the matter of the war solely to them, in all human reason his enemies had been speedily subdued." With such generals as Arundel and Holland—for Essex was a brave commander, though, as afterwards appeared, no great tactician—it is not so easy to see that. But Clarendon might have safely reduced all his "ifs" into one—if Charles had been a wise king he would not have got into a quarrel with his subjects at all.

With such generals, and an army of raw levies, hastily dragged reluctantly from the plough and the mattock, to fight in a cause with which they had no sympathy, and encumbered by heaps of useless nobles and gentry, Charles marched on to Berwick, and encamped his forces on an open field called the Birks. He had besides the garrison of Berwick three thousand two hundred and sixty horse, and nineteen thousand six hundred and fourteen foot. But, on the other hand, Leslie, says Clarendon, had drawn up his forces on the side of a hill at Dunse, so as to make a great show. "The front only could be seen, but it was reported that Leslie and the whole army were there; and it was very true, they were all there indeed—but it was as true that all did not exceed the number of nine thousand men, very ill armed, and mostly country fellows, who were on the sudden got together to make that show." Leslie, he informs us, had so dispersed his knot of ragamuffins, with great herds of cattle on the hills around, that it was naturally supposed that there was a large army, the bulk of it concealed behind the hill; and he assures us that had the royal army pushed forward the whole illusion would have vanished.

This account is as thoroughly opposed to all the credible historians of the time, Rushworth, Nalson, Burnet, Baillie, and the letters of distinguished persons engaged, as the whole array of "ifs." We are assured that Leslie had pitched his camp at Dunglas, and twelve thousand volunteers had crowded to his standard. The preachers everywhere called on their hearers to advance the cause of God and the Kirk. Those in the camp wrote and disseminated letters to the same effect. One demanded that every true Scot should go forward to extort a reasonable peace from the king, or to do battle with his and their common enemies, the prelates and papists of England. Another denounced the curse of Meroz on all who did not come to the help of the Lord, and of His champions. Another ironically bade those who would not fight for God and their country to bring spades and bury the saints whom they had abandoned to the swords of the Amalekites. They had chosen for the motto on their banners the words, "For Christ's Crown and the Covenant," and over every captain's tent waved the arms of Scotland and these words. Soldiers therefore flocked in on all sides to the sacred standard, and by the time that Leslie marched for Dunse Hill his army numbered nearly twenty thousand men, many of them new to arms, but all enthusiastic patriots. Twice a day they were summoned by sound of drum to drill and to sermon; and when they were not listening to the exciting harangues of the ministers, they were solacing themselves with singing psalms and reading the Scriptures, or with extempore prayer. "Had you lent your ear," says one of them, "and heard in the tents the sounds of some singing psalms, some praying, some reading Scripture, you would have been refreshed. For myself, I never found my mind in better temper than it was. I was as a man who had taken leave from the world, and was resolved to die in that service without return. I found the favour of God shining upon me, and a sweet, meek, humble, yet strong and vehement spirit leading me all along."

Leslie was joined by the Earl of Montrose, who had been posted at Kelso, and the first of their proceedings was to issue proclamations, declaring that they had no intention to invade England if their reasonable demands were granted; and that their only object was to obtain from the king the confirmation of his promises for the free enjoyment of their religion. Whatever was done in the Scottish camp was freely circulated in the royal camp, for they had plenty of friends there, and the strength, the spirits, and resolution of their army were abundantly set forth daily.

It was the fortune of the Earl of Holland to lead the way first against them. He passed the Tweed near Twizel, where the English army had crossed to the battle of Flodden, and advanced towards the detachment of the army near Kelso. He had with him the bulk of the horse and about three thousand infantry. As if no enemy had been in the country, he trotted on with his horse, till he found himself on the hill of Maxwellhaugh, above Kelso, and not only saw the tents of the enemy, but his way barred by an advanced post of one hundred and fifty horse and five or six thousand foot. He then discovered that his foot and artillery were three or four miles behind. On this he sent a trumpet to the enemy, commanding them not to cross the Border, to which they replied by asking whose trumpet that was, and being told the Earl of Holland's, they said the earl had better take himself off; which it appears he lost no time in doing, and rode back to the general camp without striking a blow. The Scots, when they saw him retreating, sent after him a number of squibs and letters of ridicule, which were speedily circulated through the English army. The generals wrote letters to Essex, Holland, and Arundel, entreating them to intercede with the king that matters might be accommodated without bloodshed. Essex is said to have sent on their letters to the king without a word of reply to their messengers. Arundel and Holland were more gracious.

During this marching and countermarching it was that Leslie had posted his army on Dunse Hill, opposite Charles's camp, and the king, who had hitherto despised the Scottish force, now felt alarmed at their close proximity, and the hasty retreat of Holland. He blamed Lord Arundel for giving him no notice of the approach of the rebels, Arundel blamed the scout-master, and the scout-master blamed the scouts. There were earthworks suddenly thrown up to protect his camp and intimation given that overtures would be listened to. Accordingly, on the 6th of June, 1639, the Earl of Dunfermline, attended by a trumpet, arrived in the royal camp, bearing a humble petition to his majesty, entreating him to appoint a few suitable persons to confer with a deputation from the Scots, so that all misunderstandings might be removed, and the peace of the kingdom preserved. The petition was received, for besides the ill-success of Holland, the ill-success of Hamilton and his fleet was notorious; and it was, moreover, rumoured that the mother of Hamilton, a most zealous covenanter, had paid him a visit on board his vessel, and that he was much disinclined by her persuasions to press the Scots closely. There were daily rumours of a descent from Ireland, on the other hand and of a rising of the Royalists in the Highlands under Lord Aboyne, son of the Earl of Huntly, which rendered the Covenanters more desirous of an accommodation. On the part of the Crown the Earls of Essex, Holland, Salisbury, and Berkshire, Sir Henry Vane, and Mr. Secretary Coke, were appointed commissioners; on that of the Covenanters the Earls of Rothes and Dunfermline, the Lord Loudon, and Sir William Douglas, sheriff of Teviotdale. To these afterwards, much to the displeasure of the king, were added Alexander Henderson, late moderator of the assembly, and Johnstone, the clerk-register. They met in Arundel's tent; but before they could proceed to business, the king suddenly entered, and telling the Scottish commissioners that as he understood they complained that they could not be heard, he had determined to hear them himself, and he demanded what it was they wanted. The Earl of Rothes replied simply, to be secured in their religion and liberty. Loudon made some apology for the boldness of the proceedings of the Scots, but Charles cut him short, telling him that he could admit of no apologies for what was past, but that if they came to implore pardon, they must put down what they had to say in writing, and in writing he would answer them.

This was Charles's peculiar style, by which the negotiation appeared likely to come to a speedy end; but the Scots were firm, and adhered to their old sound principle, declaring that they had sought nothing but their own native rights, and the advancement of his majesty's service, and desired to have those severely punished who had misrepresented them to the king. Some historians assert that Hamilton at this juncture came into the camp from the Forth, and strongly advised the king to close with the Scots; though Clarendon affirms that he did not arrive till after the agreement was signed, and found much fault with it. However this may be, after much debate, and several attempts to overreach the Scots, which their caution defeated, it was agreed that the king should ratify all that had been done by his commissioner, which was next to nothing, though he would not recognise the acts of what he called the pretended General Assembly. But the main and only important concession was that all disputes should be settled by another Assembly, to be held on the 6th of August, and by a Parliament which should ratify its proceedings, to be held on the 20th of August, when an act of oblivion should be passed. Both parties were to disband their armies; the king's forts were to be restored, with all the ammunition; the fleet was to be withdrawn; Scottish merchant vessels and goods were to be returned; and the honours and privileges of the subjects replaced. The king resisted, however, any mention of episcopacy in the agreement; for he was as resolved as ever to reinstate the bishops. And indeed, that same duplicity guided him in this as in other actions of his life, being determined to break the whole agreement on the first possible opportunity. The Covenanters strongly suspected as much; and when Charles, before returning, invited fourteen of the leaders to meet him in Berwick, they had the fear of the Tower before their eyes, and declined the honour, and sent as their commissioners the Earls of Loudon, Lothian, and Montrose. Charles represented that it had been his intention to proceed to Edinburgh, and hold the Parliament in person, but that fresh instances of "the valyance of the godly females" deterred him; his chief officers not being able to show themselves in the streets of Berwick without insult from these good women.

What Charles had failed to do in the Convention at large, he managed to effect to a certain degree with the nobles. Loudon and Lothian were said to be greatly softened by the king's conversation, but Montrose was won over altogether.

The two armies were disbanded on the 24th of June, and the Earl of Traquair was appointed the king's commissioner in Scotland, Hamilton firmly declining to return thither. Charles reached London on the 1st of August, and one of the first things which he did was to write to the Scottish bishops, telling them that he would never abandon the idea of reinstating them, and would in the meantime provide for their support. He forbade them to present themselves at the approaching Assembly or Parliament, as that would ruin everything; but he advised them to send in a protest against the infringement of their rights, and get it presented by some mean person, so as to create not too much notice. Such was Charles's perfidious conduct, at the very moment that he was promising the Covenanters the contrary. Accordingly the bishops fixed themselves in the vicinity of the borders, some at Morpeth, some in Holy Island, some in Berwick itself, keeping up a correspondence with their adherents in the Scottish capital, and ready to rush in again on the first favourable chance.

If we are to believe Clarendon, however, "The king was very melancholy, and quickly discovered that he had lost reputation at home and abroad, and those counsellors who had been most faulty either through want of courage or wisdom—for at that time few of them wanted fidelity—never afterwards recovered spirit enough to do their duty, but gave themselves up to those who so much had outwitted them, every man shifting the fault from himself." On the contrary, he says, "The Scots got so much benefit and advantage by it, that they brought all their other mischievous devices to pass with ease, and a prosperous gale in all they went about." They declared that "they did not intend by anything contained in the treaty, to vacate any of the proceedings which had been in the late General Assembly at Glasgow, by which all the bishops were excommunicated, and renewed all their menaces against them by proclamation, and imposed grievous penalties on all who should presume to harbour any of them, so that by the time the king came to London, it appeared plainly that the army was disbanded without a peace being made, and the Scots in more reputation and equal inclination to affront his majesty than ever." The fact was, that whilst Charles was pretending to concede, meaning to revoke when he had the power, the Scots were conscious of their advantage and did not mean to allow him to do so. They were earnest and outspoken in their resolves, and therefore Charles seized a paper in which they published what had really been promised in the treaty, and had it burned by the common hangman.

The Assembly was opened on the 12th of August in Edinburgh, and in spite of what Charles had assured the bishops, they were given up in the instructions to Traquair, for he meant to resist the abolition of the bishops, and to restore them when he had the power, but endeavoured to make political capital out of this concession. Traquair was to obtain, if possible, the admission of fourteen ministers into Parliament instead of the bishops, or, if that were not possible, as many lay members whom the king was to appoint, and who were to choose the lords of the articles. By these perpetual finesses, Charles continually sought to withdraw the concessions that he made, as though those whom he tried to overreach were not as wide awake as himself. He thought, if he could select the Lords of the Articles, and fourteen others devoted to him, he could revoke in the Parliament what he gave up in the Assembly—the characteristic of short-sighted cunning.

The bishops presented their protest to the Commissioner, which, without being read, was to serve as a proof of their not having yielded up their claims; and the commissioner, finding the Covenanters firm to all their demands—for every member of the Assembly before entering it had sworn to support all the acts of the Assembly of Glasgow—gave the royal assent to all the proceedings, and the news of the overthrow of episcopacy was received with shouts of acclamation by the people.

The Parliament of Scotland met on the day appointed, the 20th of August. There the Covenanters displayed their determination not to stickle for small matters, but to destroy the scheme by which that body had been made dependent on the royal will. They would no longer admit the bishops nor the Lords of the Articles whom the bishops had chosen, and who selected the topics, under the direction of the Crown, which should or should not come before the House. They proposed that the lesser barons, the commissioners of the shires, should take the place of the bishops, and that the Lords of the Articles should be selected from men of each estate, by those estates themselves. In order not to appear obstinate, they permitted the Commissioner to name the Lords of the Articles for this once, not as an act of right, but of grace, from themselves. They then decreed that all acts in favour of episcopacy should be rescinded; that patents of peerage should for the future be granted to none but such as possessed a rental of ten thousand marks from land in Scotland; that proxies should never again be admitted; and that the fortresses of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton, should be entrusted to none but Scotsmen.

These measures would have completely enfranchised Scotland from the shackles of the Crown, and Traquair, unable to avoid the necessity of ratifying them, prorogued the Parliament to the 14th of November, so that he could receive the instructions of the king. Charles, to get rid of the demands of the Covenanters altogether, prorogued it for six months. The members, who saw the intention, protested against the prorogation under circumstances so vital to the country, but obeyed after naming a deputation to go to the king on the subject. This deputation, headed by the Lords Loudon and Dunfermline, on arriving at Whitehall were refused audience, because they had not come with the sanction of the royal Commissioner; and Traquair was immediately summoned to court to answer for having conceded so much to the Scots. He had, indeed, conceded nothing but what Charles himself had instructed him to do but the king was angry because he had not been able to recover in Parliament, as he had vainly hoped, what was lost in the Assembly.

Traquair, who was aware that having implicitly followed these instructions would avail him little with the king in his mortification, thought of an expedient to divert Charles's anger into another channel. He had discovered a letter addressed by the Covenanters to the King of France, complaining of the miserable condition of Scotland through the attempts of the king to root out the religion of the people; of his having violated the late treaty at Berwick, and dissolved Parliament contrary to the will of the states and to all national precedent, and entreating him to mediate in their favour. This letter was signed by seven lords, and addressed Au Roi. The letter had been publicly declined by Louis, but privately answered, though in very cautious terms.

The production of this letter had all the effect that Traquair hoped for. The wrath of the king was immediately turned on the Covenanters, and Traquair deepened the impression by assuring the king that nothing but war would pacify the Covenanters, and declaring this discovery to be a perfect justification.

The Scots demanded an opportunity of vindicating themselves, and requested leave to send up deputies for that purpose. It was granted, and Dunfermline and Loudon were sent up. No sooner did they arrive than Loudon, whose name was one of those appended to the intercepted letter, was instantly seized and brought before the Council. The letter being addressed simply Au Roi, which was the manner from subjects to their own sovereign, and not as from foreigners, it was deemed treasonable on that ground, if on no other. Loudon asserted that the letter had been written before the pacification at Berwick, and, not being approved, had never been sent, but the contents contradicted that statement; and, moreover, William Colvill, who had carried it to the French court, was in London, and was taken prisoner. Loudon thereupon insisted on his safe conduct, and demanded liberty to return, contending that, if he had done anything wrong, it was in Scotland and not there that he ought to be interrogated. But the king sent both him and Colvill to the Tower.

The Covenanters were greatly incensed at the seizure of their envoy, and demanded his release, but Charles signed a warrant for his execution and was prevented from putting him to death only by the solemn declaration that if he did Scotland was lost for ever. After this it became plain that nothing could avert a conflict between the infatuated king and the Scottish people. Charles's object was to obtain funds; that of the Scots to divide the king's attention by exciting discontent nearer home. England itself had abundant causes of dissatisfaction. The disuse of Parliaments, the continued illegal levying of taxes by the king's own will, the rigorous and ruinous prosecutions in the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court, the brandings, scourgings, and mutilations of such as dared to dispute the awful tyranny of the Government, portended a storm at home ere long, and the Scots found many well-wishers and friends amongst the English patriots. These were everyday drawing into their ranks men of the highest position and the most distinguished talents. The Earls of Essex, Bedford, and Holland were secretly connected with them; the Lord Say, Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, and other men of iron nerve and indomitable will, were watching with deep interest movements in the North so congenial to their own.

Whilst the king was pondering on the means of raising money, an event took place which for the moment promised to present him with a considerable sum. A Spanish fleet of seventy sail was discovered by the Dutch admiral, De Witt, off the Land's End. As it was bearing troops from Spain to Flanders, which were hard pressed by the Dutch, De Witt followed it up the Channel, firing guns to harass its rear, but still more to awake the attention of Van Tromp, who was lying off Dunkirk. The two celebrated Dutch admirals were soon in full chase of the Spaniards. Sixteen of the ships, having four thousand troops on board, bore away with all speed for the coast of Flanders, but the rest fled for shelter into the Downs. Charles sent the Earl of Arundel to inquire of Oquendo the Spanish admiral, what was his destination, being apprehensive lest the fleet might be intended for a descent on Ireland, or in aid of his disaffected subjects of Scotland.

Oquendo satisfied Arundel that they were really on their way to Flanders, and demanded the protection of Charles as a friendly king. Charles was willing to grant it for a consideration, and the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds was the price named in ready cash. For this Charles was to send the Spanish fleet under protection of his own to Flanders; but the two Dutch admirals, having now no less than one hundred sail, from continued fresh arrivals, attacked the Spaniards in the English roads, sank and burned five of the largest vessels, drove twenty-three more on shore, and pursued the rest across the Channel, suffering only ten of them to escape. All this time the English admiral lay near at hand, but made no movement in protection of the Spaniards. The English people on shore beheld the destruction of the Spanish fleet with the utmost exultation, the memory of the great Armada being yet so strong amongst them; but Charles had lost his much desired money, and with the loss had acquired an immense amount of foreign odium. To have suffered the vessels of a friendly Power, which had fled to him for shelter, to be attacked and chased from his own harbour, lowered him greatly in the estimation of Continental nations.

JOHN HAMPDEN. (From an Engraving by Houbraken.)

At the time of this untoward occurrence Charles had sent for Wentworth from Ireland, to assist him by his counsels as to the best mode of dealing with his difficulties at home, and the Scots in the North. Wentworth had overridden all obstacles in Ireland, and had forced an income out of the reluctant people there; he was thought, therefore, by Charles the only man whose wisdom and resolution were equal to the crisis. Wentworth had strongly advised Charles not to march against the Scots, knowing that the king's raw levies would have no chance against them; and he had gone on actively drilling ten thousand men, to prepare them for the campaign, which he felt must come, even after all seemed settled at Berwick.

Clarendon, who is a regular Royalist and inclined to see more virtues in Wentworth than other historians of the time, is yet obliged to sketch this picture of the enmities which he justly provoked:—"He was a man of too high and severe deportment, and too great a contemner of ceremony, to have many friends at court, and therefore could not but have enemies enough. He had two that professed it, the Earl of Holland and Sir Henry Vane." Besides having said that "the king would do well to cut off Holland's head," he had insulted the Earl in various ways. He had done all he could to prevent Sir Henry Vane from being made secretary in place of Sir John Coke, whom the king removed on his return from Scotland; but, worse still, Charles now creating him Earl of Strafford, nothing would satisfy him but that he must be also made Baron of Proby, Vane's own estate, from which he himself hoped to derive that title. "That," continues Clarendon, "was an act of the most unnecessary provocation that I have known, and though he contemned the man with marvellous scorn, I believe it was the loss of his head. To these a third adversary, like to be more pertinacious than the other two, was the Earl of Essex, naturally enough disinclined to his person, his power, and his parts." This enmity in Essex, we are told, was increased by Wentworth's insolent conduct to Lord Bacon, for whom Essex had a friendship; and he openly vowed vengeance. "Lastly, he had an enemy more terrible than all the others, and like to be more fatal, the whole Scottish nation, provoked by the declaration he had procured of Ireland, and some high carriage and expressions of his against them in that kingdom." Moreover, Wentworth had no friend in the queen, from his persecution of the Catholics in Ireland, and was continually thwarted by her.

But all these councillors could devise no way to raise funds but by the old and irritating mode of ship-money, for which writs to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds were immediately issued, and this bearing no proportion to the requirements of a campaign against the Scots, they advised Charles to call together a Parliament. To this he demurred; but when they persisted in that advice, he ordered a full Council to be called, and put to it this question:—"If this Parliament should prove as untoward as some have lately been, will you then assist me in such extraordinary ways as in that extremity should be thought fit?"

Charles was thus bent on extraordinary ways, and the Council promised him its support. Wentworth returned to Ireland, being not only created Earl of Strafford, but made Lord-lieutenant of that country. He promised to obtain a liberal vote from the Irish Parliament, which it was thought might act as a salutary example for England. Accordingly, no one daring to oppose his wishes, he obtained four subsidies, with a promise of more if found necessary. The English Parliament was delayed till this was effected, and was then summoned for the 13th of April. To assist the king and council in what was felt to be a critical emergency, Wentworth, now Strafford, returned, though suffering from a painful complaint. He left orders for the immediate levy of an army of eight thousand men, and Charles took measures for the raising in England of fifteen thousand foot and four thousand horse, which he thought would serve to overawe Parliament; and, what is singular, the order for the raising of these troops and providing artillery and ammunition was signed by Laud, so little had he an idea of an archbishop being a minister of the Prince of Peace. Before the arrival of Strafford, Charles read to the Council the account of the liberal subsidies and the loyal expressions which Strafford had put into the mouths of the enslaved Irish Commons. This he did at the request of Strafford himself, to prove not only the loyalty of the Irish, but his own popularity there, in spite of the assertions of his being hated in that country.

When the king met the Parliament on the 13th of April he had not abated one jot of his high-flown notions of his divine right, and of the slavish obedience due from Parliament. The Lord Keeper Finch formerly Speaker of the House but now more truly in his element as a courtier, made a most fulsome speech, describing the king as "the most just, the most pious, the most gracious king that ever was." He informed them that for many years in his piety towards them he had taken all the annoyances of government from them, and raised the condition and reputation of the country to a wonderful splendour; that, notwithstanding such exemplary virtues and exhibitions of goodness, some sons of Belial had blown the trumpet of rebellion in Scotland, and that it was now necessary to chastise that stiff-necked people; that they must therefore lay aside all other subjects, and imitate the loyal Parliament of Ireland in furnishing liberal supplies; that had not the king, upon the credit of his servants and out of his own estate, raised three hundred thousand pounds, he could not have made the preparations already in progress; and that they must therefore grant him tonnage and poundage from the beginning of his reign, and vote the subsidies at once, when his Majesty would pledge his royal word that he would take into his gracious consideration their grievances. And all this attempt to get the supplies before the discussion of grievances, from sturdy commoners who had never yet given way to force or flattery!

Charles then produced the intercepted letters of the Scottish lords to the King of France, to show the treason of the Scots and the necessity of taking decisive measures with them. But the Commons were not likely to be moved from their settled purpose by any such arguments. They elected Serjeant Glanvil as Speaker, and proceeded first and foremost to the discussion of the grievances of the nation. Amongst their old members—though the brave Sir John Eliot had perished in prison, and Sir Edward Coke, who by his later years of patriotism had effaced the memory of the arbitrary spirit of his earlier ones, was also dead—there were Oliver Cromwell, now sitting for Cambridge, Pym, Hampden, Denzil Holles, Maynard, Oliver St. John, Strode, Corriton, Hayman, and Haselrig. There were amongst the new ones, Harbottle Grimston, Edmund Waller, the poet, Lord George Digby, the son of the Earl of Bristol, a young man of eminent talent, and other men destined to become prominent. Sir Benjamin Rudyard and Grimston delivered speeches recommending at once courtesy and respect towards the Crown, but unflinching support of the rights of the people. Harbottle Grimston described the commonwealth as miserably torn and massacred, all property and liberty shaken, the Church distracted, the Gospel and professors of it persecuted, Parliament suspended, and the laws made void. Sir Benjamin Rudyard protested that he desired nothing so much as that they might proceed with moderation, but that if Parliaments were gone, they were lost. A remarkable feature of this Parliament was the number of petitions sent in by the people. These were poured in against ship-money and other abuses, as the Star Chamber and High Commission Court, from the counties of Hertford, Essex, and Sussex. After these matters had been warmly debated for four days, for the king had many advocates in the House, on the 17th Mr. Pym delivered a most eloquent and impressive speech, in which he narrated the many attacks on the privileges of Parliament and the liberty of the subject, and laid down the constitutional doctrine "that the king can do no wrong," thus bringing the conduct and counsels of his ministers under the direct censure of the House, and loading them with the solemn responsibility—an awful foreshadowing of the judgments to come on Laud and Wentworth. From that point the debate turned on the arbitrary treatment of the members of the Commons, and orders were issued for a report of the proceedings of the Star Chamber and the Court of King's Bench against Sir John Eliot, Mr. Holles, and Mr. Hampden, to be laid on the table of the House. The conduct of the late Speaker Finch, in adjourning the House at the command of the king, was declared unconstitutional.

The king could no longer restrain his impatience, and summoned both Houses before him in the Banqueting Hall. There the Lord Keeper Finch, in the presence of Charles, recalled their attention to the necessity of voting the supplies, and repeated the king's promises. He endeavoured to excuse the raising of ship-money as a necessity for chastising the Algerine pirates who infested the seas, and again recommended the liberal example of the Irish Parliament. The only effect produced by this was a most vivid and trenchant speech the next day by Waller, in which he told the House that the king was personally beloved, but that his mode of extorting his subjects' money was detested; and that neither the admiration of his majesty's natural disposition, nor the pretended consent of the judges, could ever induce them to consent to such unconstitutional demands. He then severely castigated the conduct of the bishops and clergy who preached the divine right of monarchs to plunder the public at their own pleasure. "But," said he, "they gain preferment by it, and then it is no matter, though they neither believe themselves nor are believed by others. But since they are so ready to let loose the consciences of their kings, we are bound the more carefully to provide against this pulpit law, by declaring and enforcing the municipal laws of this kingdom."

This again roused the king, who went down to the Lords, and read them a sharp lesson on their not supporting him in his just demands of supplies from the Commons. Thereupon the Lords sent for the Commons to a conference on the 29th of April, and recommended them to pass the votes and take the king's word for the redress of grievances; but the Commons resented their intruding their advice about money matters as an infringement of the privileges of the House; and on the 1st of May, the Lords, through the Lord Keeper, disclaimed any intention of encroaching on any of the well-known rights of the Commons, but that the Lords had felt bound to comply with the request of the king. The Commons returned to their debate on ship-money, and on Saturday, the 2nd of May, Charles sent a message by Sir Henry Vane, now Secretary of State and Treasurer of the Household, desiring an immediate answer regarding the supplies. Lord Digby reminded the House that the demand was that of a hasty and immediate answer to a call for funds to involve the nation in a civil war with the Scots, a people holding the same religion and subjects of the same king as themselves. The debate was continued for two days, Clarendon accusing Vane of deliberately keeping from the House the fact entrusted to him, that the king, though asking for twelve subsidies, would consent to take eight.

But it was not so much the amount as the principle involved in the subsidies which was the question; for, on the 4th of May, Charles sent Vane again with the remarkable offer to abolish ship-money for ever, and by any means that they should think fit, on condition that they granted him twelve subsidies, valued at eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to be paid in three years, with an assurance that the House should not be prorogued till next Michaelmas. This was a mighty temptation: here was the direct offer of at once getting rid of one of the monster grievances for ever; but it did not escape the attention of the more sagacious that, by accepting the bargain, they were conceding the king's right to set aside the most established laws, to force his own notions of religion on his subjects, and to make war on them if they refused. They rejected the snare, and maintained the debate for some hours against all the arguments of the Court party. On rising, they informed Vane that they would resume the debate the next morning at eight o'clock; but Sir Henry, seeing very well how it would terminate, assured the king in Council that he was certain that the House would not grant him a penny for the war against the Scots.

On this Charles adopted one of his stratagems. Early in the morning he sent for Glanvil the Speaker, before the Commons had assembled, and detained him at Whitehall, so that the Commons without him could not vote against the supplies, nor protest against the war; and suddenly hastening to the House of Lords, he sent for the Commons and dismissed them. In doing this, he praised the peers at the expense of the Commons, and declared that as to the liberties of the people which the Commons made so much talk of, they had not more regard for them than he had.

This was the last Parliament which Charles was ever to dissolve, and the folly of his conduct became speedily palpable. The Parliament had only sat about three weeks, having met on the 13th of April, and being now dissolved on May 5th. By this hasty act the king had put himself wholly on the army. Had he allowed the Commons to vote against the supplies, many would have sympathised with him; now he had only himself to blame. His enemies rejoiced, exceedingly, and his friends deplored the deed with gloomy auguries.

The king was made to feel his mistake, on applying to the City of London for a loan and receiving a cool and evasive answer. The Scots were greatly elated. They had their agents in close though secret communication with the leaders of the opposition, and now saw the king deprived of the means of effectually contending with them, and felt that they had numerous friends of their cause in England. The passion of the king only increased their advantages. He issued a proclamation declaring why he had dismissed the Parliament, charging the Commons with malice and disaffection to the State, and with designing to bring government and magistracy into contempt; and he gave fresh proofs of his vindictive feeling by arresting a number of the members the day after the dissolution. The public had not forgotten the cruelty practised on their faithful servant Sir John Eliot, and they now saw Sir John Hotham and Mr. Bellasis committed to the Fleet, Mr. Crew, afterwards Lord Crew, to the Tower, and the house of Lord Brooke forced, and his study and cabinets broken open in a search for papers.

To add to the general exasperation, Laud, who had summoned Convocation previous to the meeting of Parliament, continued its sessions after the dissolution, contrary to all custom; and its sitting was employed to pass a series of seventeen new canons of the most offensive and slavish kind. The public excitement was so great against the innovation that the Lord Keeper Finch and some of the judges had to furnish a written opinion declaring the right of Convocation to sit after the close of Parliament, and a new commission was issued with the usual words, "during the Parliament," altered to "during our pleasure." But a guard of soldiers was deemed necessary to protect the sittings, in which the clergy first voted six subsidies to the king, and then passed to the canons, one of which ordered that every clergyman once a quarter should instruct his parishioners in the divine right of kings, and the damnable sin of resisting authority. Others fulminated the most flaming intolerance of Catholics, Socinians, and Separatists. All clergymen and graduates of the universities were called on to take an oath declaring the sufficiency of the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England, in opposition to Presbyterianism and Popery.

On the publication of these canons, great was the ferment in the country, and petitions and remonstrances from Northampton, Kent, Devon, and other counties, were sent up against them. The code was most ungracious as regarded the Catholics, who had just presented to the king, at the suggestion of the queen, fourteen thousand pounds. The queen remonstrated against it, and the king gave orders to Laud to desist from further annoyance in that direction. But anger and discontent were spreading throughout the country, from the outrageous measures to raise money. Fresh writs of ship-money were issued, and many victims were dragged into the Star Chamber for refusal to pay, and fined, so that their money was obtained by one process or the other. The names of the richest citizens were picked out in order to demand loans from them. Bullion, the property of foreign merchants, was seized at the Mint, and forty thousand pounds were extorted for its release; and bags of pepper on the Exchange were sold at whatever they would fetch. It was next proposed to coin four hundred thousand pounds' worth of bad money; but the merchants and other intelligent men came forward and drew such a picture of the ruin and confusion that such an act would produce, that the king was alarmed, and gave the project up. The Council, however, hit upon the scheme of purchasing goods at long credit, and selling them at a low price for ready money. All this time large sums of money were levied throughout the land by violence, for the support of the troops collected for the campaign against the Scots. Carts, horses, and forage were seized at the sword's point; and whoever dared to represent these outrages to the king was branded as an enemy to the Government. The Corporation of London was dealt with severely, because it showed no fondness for enforcing the king's arbitrary demands. The Lord Mayor and sheriffs were cited into the Star Chamber for remissness in levying the ship-money; and several of the aldermen were committed to prison for refusing to furnish the names of such persons in their wards as were able to contribute to Charles's forced loans. Strafford said things would never go right till a few fat London aldermen were hanged.

These desperate measures inflamed the public mind beyond expression, and greatly strengthened the league of the discontented with the Scots. All except the insane tyrants who were thus forcing the nation to rebellion, could see tempests ahead; and the Earl of Northumberland, writing to a friend, said, "It is impossible that all things can long remain in the condition they are now in: so general a defection in this kingdom hath not been known in the memory of man." The disaffection began to find expression, and, according to Clarendon, inflammatory placards were scattered about the City and affixed on gates and public places, denouncing the king's chief advisers. Laud, Strafford, and Hamilton, were the marks of the most intense hatred, and the London apprentices were invited, by a bill posted on the Royal Exchange, to demolish the episcopal palace at Lambeth and "haul out William the fox."

The train-bands assembled and kept the peace by day, but at night a mob of five hundred assembled and attacked Lambeth Palace, and demolished the windows, vowing that they would tear the archbishop to pieces. In a couple of hours the train-bands arrived, fired on them, and dispersed the multitude. Laud got away to Whitehall, where he remained some days, till the damages were repaired and the house was fortified with cannon. Another crowd, said to be two thousand in number, entered St. Paul's, where the High Commission Court sat, tore down the benches, and cried out, "No bishop! no High Commission!" A number of rioters were seized by the train-bands and lodged in the White Lion Prison; but the prison was forced open by the insurgents, and their associates released all but two, a sailor and a drummer, who were executed, according to some authorities; according to others, only one was thus disposed of.

The king was greatly alarmed at this outbreak. He removed the queen to Greenwich, as she was near her confinement, and placed a strong guard over the palace with sixteen pieces of cannon; nor was he easy till he saw a force of six thousand men at hand.

The time for the meeting of the Scottish Parliament had now arrived, and Charles sought to prevent it by another prorogation; but the Scots were not to be put off in any such manner. The king had for some time been treating them like a nation at war; he had prohibited all trade with Scotland, and his men-of-war had been ordered to seize its merchantmen, wherever found. The Scots therefore met on the 2nd of January, set aside the king's warrant of prorogation on the plea of informality, and the members took their seats, elected a president, an officer hitherto unknown, and passed the new Acts. They then voted a tax of ten per cent. on all rents, and five per cent. on interest of money to open the inevitable campaign; and, before rising, appointed a Committee of Estates for the government of the kingdom till the next meeting of Parliament. This Committee was to sit either at Edinburgh or at the place where the headquarters of the army should be, and a bond was entered into to support the authority of Parliament, and to give to the statutes which it had passed or should pass the same force as if they had received the royal assent.

But they had not waited for Parliament to take the necessary steps for organisation of the army. They had retained in full pay the experienced officers whom they had invited from Germany, and the soldiers who had disbanded at the pacification of Berwick returned with alacrity to their colours in March and April. Leslie was still commander-in-chief, and determined to reduce the castle of Edinburgh before marching south. It was in vain that Charles issued his proclamations, warning them of the treasonable nature of their proceedings; they went on as if animated by one spirit, and determined not only to strike the first blow, but to advance into England instead of waiting to be attacked at home.

Charles, on his part, was far from being so early ready or so well served. His plans for the campaign were grand. He proposed to attack Scotland on three sides at once—with twenty thousand men from England, with ten thousand from the Highlands under the Marquis of Hamilton, and with the same number from Ireland under Strafford. But his total want of funds prevented his progress, and the resort to the lawless practices which we have related for raising them, was alienating the hearts of his English subjects from him in an equal degree. It was not till the month of July, and the loan of three hundred thousand pounds by the Lords, that he dared to issue writs for the number of forces. Thus the Scots were ready for action when the king was only mobilising an army.

In the appointment of commanders gross blunders were committed. The Earls of Essex, Holland, and Arundel were set aside, and this, with personal affronts to Essex, tended to throw these officers into the interest of the opposition. Essex and Holland were at undisguised hostility with Strafford, and as he was to take a leading part in the campaign, they were kept out of it to oblige him. The Earl of Northumberland was appointed commander-in-chief instead of Arundel, but was prevented by a severe illness from acting; and Strafford was desired to leave Ireland in the charge of the Earl of Ormond, and take the chief command, which he consented to do, but nominally only as lieutenant to Northumberland. Lord Conway was made general of the horse, partly because he had been born a soldier in his father's garrison of Brell, and had held several subordinate commands; but still more from the causes which put incompetent generals at the head of our armies in later times—Court influence.

On the 29th of June Leslie collected his army at Chouseley Wood, near Dunse, his former camp, and drilled them there three weeks. He had entrusted the siege of the castle of Edinburgh to a select party, and had the pleasure soon after this period to hear of its surrender to his officers. Meanwhile, Conway was advancing northward, and soon gave evidence of his gross incapacity, by writing in all his despatches to Windebank, the Secretary of State, "that the Scotch had not advanced their preparations to that degree, that they would be able to march that year." But the king, Clarendon says, had much better information, and ought to have distrusted the vigilance of such a commander. Moreover, his soldiers displayed a most decided aversion to the service. They were evidently leavened with the same leaven of reform as the Parliament. They wanted to know whether their officers were Papists, and would not be satisfied till they saw them take the Sacrament. "They laid violent hands," says May, "on divers of their commanders, and killed some, uttering in bold speeches their distaste to the cause, to the astonishment of many, that common people should be sensible of public interest and religion, when lords and gentlemen seemed not to be."

Strafford was so well aware of the readiness of the Scots, and the unreadiness and disaffection of the English soldiery, that he issued strict injunctions to Conway not to attempt to cross the Tyne, and expose his raw and wavering recruits in the open country between that river and the Trent, but to fortify the passage of the Tyne at Newburn, and prevent the Scots from crossing. The Scots, however, did not leave him time for his defences. On the 20th of August, Leslie crossed the Tweed with twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. He had been strongly advised to this step by the leaders of the English opposition themselves, and "the Earls of Essex, Bedford, Holland, the Lord Say, Hampden, and Pym," says Whitelock, "were deeply in with them." No sooner were the Scots on English ground, than the preachers advanced to the front of the army with their Bibles in their hands, and led the way. The soldiers followed with reversed arms, and a proclamation was issued by Leslie that the Scots had undertaken this expedition at the call of Divine Providence, not against the people of England, but against the "Canterbury faction of Papists, Atheists, Arminians, and Prelates." God and their consciences bore them witness that they sought only the peace of both kingdoms by putting down the "troublers of Israel, the fire-brands of hell, the Korahs, the Balaams, the Doegs, the Rhabshakehs, the Hamans, the Tobiahs, the Sanballats of the times," and that done, they would return with satisfaction to their own country.

On the 27th of August they arrived at Heddon-law, near Newburn, on the left bank of the Tyne, and found Conway posted on the opposite side, between Newburnhaugh and Stellahaugh. The Scots kindled that night great fires round their camp, thus giving the English an imposing idea of its great extent; and we are told that numbers of the English soldiers went over during the night amongst them, and were well received by them, for they assured them that they only came to demand justice from the king against the men who were the pest of both nations. The next day the Scots attempted to ford the river, but were driven back by a charge of six troops of horse; these horse were, however, in their turn repulsed by the discharge of artillery, and a second attempt of the Scots succeeded. "As for Conway," says Clarendon, "he soon afterwards turned his face towards the army, nor did anything like a commander, though his troops were quickly brought together again, without the loss of a dozen men [the real loss was about sixty], and were so ashamed of their flight, that they were very willing, as well as able, to have taken what revenge they could upon the enemy."

This was not true, for though "our whole army made the most shameful and confounding flight that was ever heard of," they had no chance of taking revenge with such a commander, being only about four thousand five hundred altogether, horse and foot, while the Scots were twenty-six thousand strong. Moreover, the English had no heart for the work, while the Scots were resolute as one man, and commanded by officers who had grown grey in the service of the victorious Swede, the great Gustavus Adolphus. When the English forces reached Newcastle, they did not feel able to defend it against such an army, and they fled on to Durham. The Scots could scarcely believe their eyes when they found Newcastle evacuated.

The retreating English army, under the panic-stricken Conway, meantime dared not even stop at Durham, but continued their flight to Darlington, where they met Strafford coming up with reinforcements. He was suffering from gout and stone, and in a marvellously bad humour at the late scandalous disaster; and he must have seen enough of the demoralisation of Conway's troops, for he turned back with him to Northallerton, where Charles was lying with the bulk of his army. Altogether, Charles had now twenty thousand men and sixty pieces of cannon wherewith to face the Scots; but the disaffection became so manifest, the desertions so frequent, and the whole condition of the force so unsatisfactory, that though Strafford professed to speak with contempt of the Scots, he assured Charles that it would require two months to put his army into fighting order. They therefore fell back upon York, intending to entrench a camp under its walls, and to send the cavalry to Richmond or Cleveland to guard the passes of the Tees.

The Scots had meanwhile taken unopposed possession of Newcastle, Durham, Shields, Tynemouth, and other towns, and were masters of the four northern counties of England, without having lost twenty men. In this position it has been matter of wonder that they did not still advance, and drive the king before them; but those writers who have thus imagined have greatly mistaken the whole business. The object of the Scots was not, as of old, to annoy and devastate, much less to conquer England; it was simply to force from the king and his evil ministers the recognition and the guarantee of their just national rights. They had advanced into England with this plain declaration; they had attempted not to fight except so far as to force their way to the king's presence. To this they were, in fact, now come. They had achieved a vantage-ground from which to treat, and, though strongly posted, and possessed of the whole country north of the Tees, they had refrained from all ravages and impositions on the people with whom they had no quarrel, paying for whatever they needed. To have done otherwise, would have broken faith with the people of England, who were seeking the same redress of grievances as themselves, and have at once roused the jealousy of the English public, who would have regarded them as invaders instead of friends, and thus strengthened the hands of the king. The Scots knew perfectly well what they were about, and how best to obtain their just demands. They now therefore sent Lord Lanark, Secretary of State for Scotland, and brother of the Marquis of Hamilton, to present the petition of the Covenanters to the king, who was plainly in a strait and therefore compelled to listen to it. They respectfully repeated their pacific designs, and implored the king to assemble a Parliament, and by its wisdom to settle peace between the two kingdoms. This was precisely what the people of England were earnestly seeking, and demonstrates the perfect concert between the leaders of the two nations. To assemble a Parliament was of all things the last which Charles was disposed to consent to, but he was in no condition to refuse altogether. He therefore took three days to consider their request, and on the 5th of September returned to Lord Lanark the answer, that he would assemble a great council of English Peers in York to settle the matters in dispute between them, and that he had already summoned this Assembly for the 24th of that month. By this means Charles endeavoured to escape the necessity of calling a Parliament, but his hesitation did not avail him. All parties were too much interested to let this opportunity slip. Twelve peers—Bedford, Essex, Hertford, Warwick, Bristol, Mulgrave, Say and Sele, Howard, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Brooke, and Paget—presented a petition, urgently representing the necessity of a Parliament, and describing the sufferings of the nation from the lawlessness of the soldiers, the damage done to trade by the arbitrary levies on merchants, and the danger of bringing in wild Irish troops. The citizens of London prepared a similar one, which Laud endeavoured to quash, but in vain; they obtained ten thousand signatures, and despatched some of the Aldermen and members of the Common Council to present it at York. The gentry of Yorkshire presented another, detailing their sufferings from the support of the army, and their cry, too, was for a Parliament. Strafford, who was desired to present it, endeavoured to persuade them to leave the prayer for a Parliament out, on pretence that he knew the king meant to call one; but they would on no account omit it. Thus pressed on all sides, Charles was reluctantly compelled to promise, and on the meeting of the great council of Peers on the 24th, announced to them that he had issued the writs for the meeting of a Parliament on the 3rd of November.

The Scots had comprised their demands under seven heads, the chief of which were the full and free exercise of their religion; the total abolition of episcopacy; the restoration of their ships and goods; the recall of the offensive epithet of traitors; and the punishment of the evil counsellors who had created all these troubles. The Lords, delighted at the prospect of a Parliament, saw no difficulty in coming to terms with the Scots. They named sixteen of their own body to meet with eight Commissioners of the Covenanters at Ripon, to negotiate the terms of a peace, and sent a deputation of six other lords to London, to raise for the king a loan of two hundred thousand pounds, on their own securities. Charles would have drawn the Conference from Ripon to York, where his army lay, but the Scots were too cautious to be caught in such a snare. They represented the danger of their putting their Commissioners into the power of an army commanded by Strafford, one of the very incendiaries against whom they were complaining, and who termed them rebels and traitors in the Parliament in Ireland, and had recommended the king to subdue and destroy them. The Conference was opened at Ripon, but got no further from the 1st to the 16th of October, than the settlement of the question of the maintenance of the Scottish army till all was concluded. Charles offered to leave them at liberty to make assessments for themselves, but this they declined, as looking too much like plundering; and it was finally agreed that they should retain their position in the four northern counties, and receive eight hundred and eighty pounds for two months, binding themselves to commit no depredations on any party; and the time for the meeting of Parliament approaching, the Conference was adjourned to London on the 24th.

The last Parliament had been called the Short Parliament; this was destined to acquire the name of the Long Parliament, never to be dissolved till it had dissolved the monarchy—the most memorable Parliament that ever sat. "The Parliament," says Clarendon, "met on the 3rd of November, 1640. It had a sad and a melancholie aspect upon the first entrance, which presaged some unusual and unnatural events. The king himself did not ride with his accustomed equipages, nor in his usual majesty to Westminster, but went privately in his barge to the Parliament stairs, and so to the church, as if it had been a return of a prorogued or adjourned Parliament. There was likewise an untoward, and, in truth, an unheard of accident, which broke many of the king's measures, and infinitely disordered his service beyond a capacity of reparation."

This was the defeat in the City of the man on whom he had fixed as Speaker of the Commons, Sir Thomas Gardiner, the Recorder of London, a lawyer on whom Charles greatly calculated for managing the House. But that very morning he learned that Gardiner had been thrown out as one of the four members, and he was so confounded that it was afternoon before he could go to the House. There Lenthall, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, was immediately elected Speaker, and Charles, believing him well affected to the Church and State, when two days afterwards he was, according to custom, presented to him, confirmed the choice, which he afterwards most bitterly repented. But it was not only in the case of the Speaker that the king was doomed to see himself disappointed. The whole body of the House was of a new character and spirit. "There was," says Clarendon, "observed a marvellous elated countenance in most of the members of Parliament before they met together in the House. The same men, who six months before were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied without opening the wound too wide and exposing it to the air, and rather to excuse what was amiss than too strictly make inquisition into the causes and origin of the malady, talked now in another dialect both of things and persons. Mr. Hyde, who was returned to serve for a borough in Cornwall, met Mr. Pym in Westminster Hall some days before the Parliament, and conferring together on the state of affairs, Pym told Hyde that 'they now must be of another temper than they were the last Parliament; that they must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down the cobwebs which hung on the tops and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter. That they had now an opportunity to make their country happy by removing all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their duties;' and used much other sharp discourse to the same purpose, by which it was discerned that the warmest and boldest counsels and overtures would find a much better reception than those of a more temperate allay, which fell out accordingly."

Charles opened Parliament, as usual, by promising freely redress of grievances on the granting of the necessary subsidies, and called on the two Houses to abandon all suspicions, and put confidence in him; but, after fifteen years of constant struggle and constant breaches of faith, this was impossible. The Commons saw the certainty at length of achieving their objects, not from any goodwill towards constitutional freedom in the king, but from the stringent necessity in which he had placed himself. His creeping into Parliament, as it were, by the back door, instead of coming there in the usual state, showed that he was anxious and depressed, and his advisers were in an equal state of terror. His latest hope—the selection of the Speaker—had failed him, and he saw the Commons commence their work by passing altogether over the question of supplies, and falling in ominous earnestness on the grievances.

On the fourth day of their session they proceeded from acts to deeds. They passed an order that those victims of the Star Chamber, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, whose horrible mutilations had revolted the whole civilised world, putting the Reformed Church of England on a par with persecuting and murdering Rome in her worst days, should be sent for from their distant prisons, and called on to state by whose authority they had been thus mutilated, branded, and imprisoned. This order spread a wonderful joy amongst the Reformers everywhere. The three lopped and tortured men were welcomed with acclamations at all places on their journey, and on the 28th of November they entered London attended by hundreds of carriages, and by five thousand people on horseback, both men and women, all wearing in their hats and caps bays and rosemary, and followed by great multitudes, with boughs and flowers, and strewing flowers and herbs as they passed. This was a change from the day when Laud pulled off his cap at the passing of Prynne's horrible sentence, and thanked God for it. The House of Commons, after hearing their statement, voted them damages to the amount of six thousand pounds to Burton, and five thousand pounds each to Prynne and Bastwick, which was to be paid by Archbishop Laud and his associates in the High Commission and Star Chamber.

But they did not stop there; from compensating the sufferers they passed on to the punishment of the oppressors. The Committee of Religion proceeded to inquire into the loose lives of the clergy, their cruelties towards the Puritans, and their introduction of papistical ceremonies. "Their first care," says May in his "History of Parliament," "was to vindicate distressed ministers, who had been imprisoned or deprived by the bishops, and all others who in the cause of religion had been persecuted by them. Many of those ministers were released from durance and restored to their livings, with damages from their oppressors. Many doctors and divines that had been most busy in promoting the late church innovations about altars and other ceremonies, and therefore most gracious and flourishing in the State, were then questioned and committed, inasmuch as the change, and the suddenness of it, seemed wonderful to own, and may serve worthily as a document to all posterity, quam fragili loco starent superbi—how insecure are the proud." On the 18th of December, Denzil Holles was sent to the Upper House to demand the impeachment of Laud. On hearing this the Archbishop rose, and, with his usual warmth declaring his own innocence, was proceeding to charge his accusers with various offences, when he was promptly called to order by the Earl of Essex and the Lord Say, and was stopped by the House and consigned to the Usher of the Black Rod. He apologised, and obtained leave, under surveillance of the gentleman usher, to fetch some papers from his house, necessary to his defence; and after remaining in the custody of the Black Rod for ten weeks he was committed to the Tower (February 24, 1641).

But the Commons had been all this time more deeply engaged in securing the most daring and dangerous offender of all, the Earl of Strafford. Laud, who was generally in London, was more safely within their power at any moment; but Strafford was left in the North, where he was lieutenant-general of the army, Lord President of the Council of the North, and could at any instant slip away to Ireland, where he had still more authority, and a considerable army. Laud, once caged, could wait; but Strafford must be both secured and promptly dealt with. His own friends in London, and his own sagacity, sufficiently apprised Strafford of the danger which awaited him if he came to town. He represented to the king that it were much better on all accounts that he should remain where he was; that in London he should by his presence remind the opposition of their enmity towards him; and that he would only further embarrass the king's affairs if he came, whilst he could be of service with the army, and, if necessary, escape to Ireland, where he might do the king real service. But Charles, who felt his weakness without Strafford, in whose judgment and power of overruling men he had the highest faith, would not hear of it, but insisted on his coming to London: and pledged himself to guarantee his safety, reminding him that he was King of England, and that Parliament should not touch a hair of his head. Strafford was rather bound to obey as a subject and servant of the Crown, than assured of his safety by those solemn pledges. He went to town, and on the third day after his arrival he was arrested, and placed in the custody of the Keeper of the Black Rod.

This, then, was the marvellous state of affairs at this moment. "Within less than six weeks," says Clarendon, "these terrible Reformers had caused the two greatest councillors of the kingdom—Laud and Strafford, whom they most feared, and so hated—to be removed from the king, and imprisoned under an accusation of high treason; and frightened away the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and one of the principal Secretaries of State into foreign kingdoms for fear of the like, besides preparing all the Lords of the Council, and very many of the principal gentlemen throughout England, who had been sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants, to expect such measure of punishment from their general votes and resolutions as their future demeanour should draw upon them for their past offences." And thus ended the ever memorable year 1640, in which the Parliament had secured the ascendency after fifteen years' determined struggle with the present king, and many more with his father; had humbled the proud and obstinate monarch; imprisoned his two arch-counsellors; impressed a salutary terror on the whole royal party; and initiated changes of the most stupendous kind.

The House of Commons commenced the year 1641 with an endeavour to secure annual Parliaments, and succeeded in obtaining triennial ones. They proposed that the issuing of the writs should take place at a fixed time, and to prevent the Crown from defeating this intention, they demanded, in case the king did not order the writs at the regular time, it should be imperative on the Lord Keeper or Lord Chancellor to do it; in case they neglected it, it should become the duty of the House of Lords to do so; if the Lords failed, then the sheriffs, and if the sheriffs neglected or refused, the people should proceed to elect their own representatives without any writs at all. To frustrate in future any hasty prorogations, by which the House of Commons was liable at any moment to be stopped by the Crown, they proposed that the king should not have power to prorogue or dissolve Parliament within fifty days of its meeting without its own consent.

At one time Charles would have resented so bold a measure most indignantly, and would have dissolved the audacious body at once; but now he condescended to reason with them in a far different tone. He protested against the measure as a direct encroachment on his prerogative, by which sheriffs and constables were to be endowed with powers that hitherto had been only kingly; but he was fain at last to give way, and the Bill, so far as regarded triennial Parliaments, was passed, and a Bill securing the Houses from hasty prorogation followed in May. By that act Charles tied up his hands from dissolving Parliament at all without its own consent, so that he could no longer defeat its measures as he had done. Thus a real and most momentous infringement on the prerogative was made, being brought about by the king's resistance to the cession of just rights. In obstinately claiming the people's privileges, he was driven to forfeit his own. He was now in a dilemma. The army of the Scots still lay in the North, and both the English Commons and the Scottish Commissioners in London were in no hurry to have it disbanded. Whilst it lay there well supported by Parliamentary allowance, the king and his friends were overawed and powerless, and both parties, the Commons of England and the Covenanters of Scotland, were the better able to press their claims and support each other. Both parties were bent on abolishing or reducing episcopacy.

The Scottish Commissioners exerted themselves with the leaders of the English Commons to move for the total abolition of episcopacy in England, and the establishment of Presbyterianism; but this led only to the development of a variety of views in the Commons. Some of the members favoured the Scottish proposal, and of these were the supporters of the petition with fifteen thousand signatures, brought in from London by Alderman Pennington, called the "root and branch petition." Others, as the Lords Wharton, Say, and Brooke, preferred the still more levelling system of the Independents. On the other hand, some of the most prominent Reformers—the Lords Digby and Falkland, and Selden and Rudyard—were opposed to the extinction of the bishops. Digby compared the London petition to a comet portending nothing but anarchy, and with its tail pointing to the North, meaning that it was a Scottish comet; and Lord Falkland was for relieving the bishops of their temporal cares, but not removing them from the Church altogether. The question was warmly debated for two days, but the fate of the bishops was deferred awhile by that of Strafford.

All being prepared, Strafford was brought from the Tower on the 22nd of March, 1641, and placed before the tribunal appointed to try him in Westminster Hall. He had been about three months in prison, and meanwhile a deputation had arrived from Ireland. They brought a petition, calling on the Commons of England to join them in obtaining his condign punishment. They enumerated their grievances and sufferings from his lawless violence under sixteen heads. The Commons welcomed the deputation, as may be supposed, and to obtain full evidence of Strafford's doings in Ireland, not only accused his most active instrument—Sir George Ratcliffe—of high treason, too, but almost every one of his willing subordinates, and secured all of them that they could, and kept them in readiness to be questioned, by which means they also prevented them from doing mischief with the army. The Scottish Commissioners were equally vehement in demanding justice against him for having counselled the king to put down their religion and government by force, and for offering to supply an army of Irish for the purpose. Thus all three kingdoms were arrayed against the common enemy.

After much debate, it had been concluded that the trial should take place in Westminster Hall, before the Lords and Commons. The Earl of Arundel was appointed to preside as Lord High Steward. On each side of the throne was erected a cabinet, where the king, queen, and Prince of Wales could sit without being seen, these cabinets having trellis work in front, and being hung with arras. Before the throne ran lines of seats for the peers, and woolsacks for the judges, and on each side of the peers were ranged seats for the Commons, who consented to sit uncovered there. Near them were the Scottish and Irish deputies, and there was a desk or dock enclosed for the prisoner and his counsel. One-third of the Hall was left open to the public, the rest being defended by a bar; and there was a gallery near for ladies, which was crowded by those of highest rank. There was an intense interest, indeed, felt by all classes, and the hall was daily so crowded, that Mr. Principal Baillie, minister of Kilwinning, whom we have already mentioned, says in the quaint manner of his time, "We always behoved to be there before five in the morning: the house was full before seven."

Strafford was brought from the Tower guarded by a hundred soldiers, who filled, with the officers, six barges; and on landing at Westminster he was received and conducted forward by two hundred of the train-band. All cross streets and entries were occupied by a strong force of constables and watchmen, placed there as early as four in the morning. The king, queen, and prince arrived about nine o'clock, and about the same time the prisoner was conducted into the Hall. On his appearance the porter demanded of the Usher of the Black Rod whether the axe should be borne before him; but the Usher said no, the king had expressly forbidden it.

The bishops did not appear amongst the lords, for their presence had been strongly objected to by the House of Commons, on the plea that the canons forbade their taking part in any trial which involved bloodshed—"clericus non debet interesse sanguini." But the real fact was that they were supporters of Laud, and Williams, of Lincoln, very adroitly volunteered a motion as from the prelates themselves, that they should be excused. The Commons had objected to those who had been made peers since Strafford had been impeached, as they were his avowed friends. All, except Lord Lyttelton, who had been made a baron and Lord Keeper in the place of the fugitive Finch, refused to comply and took their seats; and so says Clarendon, might the bishops, too, had they had the same spirit.

All being ready, the impeachment was read, consisting of twenty-eight capital articles, and then Strafford's reply to it, which filled two hundred sheets of paper. This occupied the first day. The court rose about two o'clock, and the prisoner was reconducted to the Tower. This was the routine of each day during the trial, which lasted eighteen days. On entering the court at nine o'clock, Strafford made three obeisances to the Earl of Arundel, the High Steward, two of which might be interpreted as intended for the king and queen, though they were not at first visible, nor during the whole time were supposed to be so; but the interest of the proceedings quickly made the king impatient of the trellis work, and, according to Baillie, he pulled it down with his own hands. "It was daily the most glorious assembly," continues Baillie, "that the isle could afford; yet the gravity was not such as I expected. After ten, much public eating, not only of confections, but of flesh and bread; bottles of beer and wine going thick from mouth to mouth without cups, and all this in the king's eye.... There was no outgoing to return, and often the sitting was till two, three, or four o'clock at night."

As Strafford went and came, the crowd conducted themselves towards him with forbearance and courtesy, and he returned their greetings with humility and politeness. Few of the lords at first returned his obeisances, and the managers, thirteen in number, showed him no favour. When the Lord Steward ordered the Committee of Management to proceed on the second morning, Pym opened the case with an eloquent charge, commencing with these words:—"My lords, we stand here by the commandment of the knights, citizens, and burgesses, now assembled for the Commons in Parliament, and we are ready to make good that impeachment whereby Thomas, Earl of Strafford, stands charged in their name, and in the name of all the Commons of England, with high treason. This, my lords, is a great cause, and we might sink under the weight of it, and be astonished with the lustre of this noble assembly, if there were not in the cause strength and vigour to support itself, and to encourage us. It is the cause of the king; it concerns his majesty in the honour of his government, in the safety of his person, in the stability of his crown. It is the cause of the kingdom: it concerns not only the peace and prosperity, but even the being of the kingdom. We have that piercing eloquence, the cries, and groans, and tears of all the subjects assisting us. We have the three kingdoms, England, and Scotland, and Ireland, in travail and agitation with us, bowing themselves, like the hinds spoken of in Job, to cast out their sorrows. Truth and goodness, my lords, they are the beauty of the soul, they are the perfection of all created natures, they are the image and character of God upon the creatures. This beauty, evil spirits and evil men have lost; but yet there are none so wicked, but they desire to march under the show and shadow of it, though they hate the reality of it. This unhappy earl, now the object of your lordships' justice, hath taken as much care, hath used as much cunning, to set a face and countenance of honesty in the performance of all these actions. My lords, it is the greatest baseness of wickedness, that it dares not look in its own colours, nor be seen in its natural countenance. But virtue, as it is amiable in all aspects, so the least is not this, that it puts a nobleness, it puts a bravery upon the mind, and lifts it above hopes and fears, above favour and displeasure: it makes it always uniform and constant to itself. The service commanded to me and my colleagues, is to take off those vizards of truth and uprightness, which hath been sought to be put upon this cause, and to show you his actions and intentions in their own natural blackness and deformity."

Pym, after this passage, went one by one through the pleas of Strafford in his reply, and rent away ruthlessly the arguments by which he endeavoured to veil the flagrancy of his actions; but he dwelt for this time more especially on his conduct in Ireland, representing him there as treading on all the rights, privileges, and property of the people in a manner utterly regardless of any constitution or compacts. He then produced as witnesses Sir Pierce Crosby, Sir John Clotworthy, Lord Ranelagh, Lord Mountnorris, and Mr. Barnwell, who had suffered insult, loss of office and honour from the Lord-Lieutenant's overbearing despotism. To this Strafford replied in a long and able speech. The subject of Ireland was resumed the next day, and then from day to day.

After the Managers had gone through some particular charge, and produced their witnesses, the court adjourned for half an hour, when Strafford made his defence and produced his witnesses; the Managers then commented on the evidence, and the court closed for the day. Thus it went on for thirteen days. "All the hasty and proud expressions that he had uttered at any time," says Clarendon, "since he was first made a privy councillor; all the acts of passion or power that he had exercised in Yorkshire, from the time that he was first President there; his engaging himself in projects in Ireland, as the sole making of flax and selling tobacco in that kingdom; his extraordinary proceedings against Lord Mountnorris and the Lord Chancellor Loftus; his assuming a power of judicature at the Council table to determine private interest, and matter of inheritance; some rigorous and extrajudicial determinations in cases of Plantations; some high discourses at the Council table in Ireland; and some casual and light discourses at his own table and at public meetings; and, lastly, some words spoken in secret Council in this kingdom, after the dissolution of the last Parliament, were urged and pressed against him to make good the general charge of an endeavour to overthrow the fundamental government of the kingdom, and to introduce an arbitrary power." "In his defence," continues the same historian, "the earl behaved himself with great show of humility and submission, but yet with such a kind of courage, as would lose no advantage; and, in truth, made his defence with all imaginable dexterity, answering this and evading that with all possible skill and eloquence; and though he knew not till he came to the bar upon what parts of his charge they would proceed against him, or what evidence they would produce, he took very little time to recollect himself, and left nothing unsaid that might make for his own justification."

Though this is the language of the royalist historian, it is borne out by all accounts of this extraordinary trial. Strafford was one of the most eloquent, able, and imposing men of any age. His commanding person, and persuasive and impressive manner, had made his influence paramount wherever he had appeared. He had the faculty vastly developed of making the worse appear the better reason; and never had his splendid talents been so successfully displayed as on this great occasion, when all the ability, the patriotism, and the elocution of the time were arrayed against him. The very weight and vastness of the opposition bearing upon him acted in his favour. There he stood, alone, as it were, against the three kingdoms, dauntless, and unsubdued; laden with growing infirmities, and the deadly hatred of innumerable hosts, yet disdaining to succumb to them; and with a readiness of wit, a promptness of reply, an adroitness of application or of evasion, a keenness of ridicule, a weight of reason, and a rich eloquence, that raised admiration even in those who most loathed him. The sympathies of the ladies were every day more and more enlisted in his cause. They were seen—those of the highest rank—taking notes, discussing the proceedings, and discovering their vivid interest in him by a thousand signs. The courtiers were enraptured; the lords, even the sternest, rapidly relaxed, and at length were almost all on his side. The clergy were unanimous in their plaudits of him, and the Managers saw with dismay a change which threatened their defeat.

WESTMINSTER HALL AND PALACE YARD, IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I.

Maynard and Glynne, two acute lawyers, were the Managers who chiefly brought forward the accusations, and directed the evidence against him; but they appeared no match for Strafford's intellect and address. They endeavoured to establish a charge of constructive treason, that is, of treason not founded on one clear and palpable act, but on accumulated evidence, the aggregate of many offences; but the prisoner's answer to this was triumphant. They had not his letters, which we have; and though they could point to a long course of arbitrary and unconstitutional conduct, amounting to high misdemeanours, they could not lay their fingers on the damning proofs of his avowed intentions under his own hand, as we now can in the Strafford Papers. But even had they possessed these, it would still have been technically impossible to establish a charge of high treason according to any definition of law, or idea of treason then existing. All the statutes of high treason had heretofore been directed against designs or attempts to injure or remove the king, or any of his family; to subvert the Government, or change the possession of the Crown. That there might be such a thing as treason against the people and their rights had never entered into governing heads.

In vain would Pym or Selden then search Coke upon Littleton, or the statutes at large, for any definition of a treason that would serve them. The statute of 25 Edward III. c. 2 was the great landmark of English history in those matters, and amongst the seven distinct declarations of treasonable offences, they would look in vain for one to fit Wentworth, for most assuredly against none of them had Strafford offended. He was working with the king and his officers; his acts and intentions pointed in a totally different direction. His object was to strengthen the king's government beyond all precedent; to make him, as we now have it under his own hand, the most absolute and independent monarch that ever lived. True, from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Queen Mary, many other species of high treason had been created by the Crown, and especially by Henry VIII. But in none of these reigns, when almost every imaginable or unimaginable thing affecting kingship was made treason, had it ever entered the royal or legal head to conceive of the possibility of treason against the people. Therefore, had all these descriptions of treason been yet existent, none of them would have availed against Strafford, who was most loyal to the king and his government.

The matter was too palpable to be denied, but at this crisis an event occurred which gave fresh hope to the accusers. The younger Sir Henry Vane communicated to Pym a paper which he had discovered in the cabinet of his father, the Secretary of State. The account which he gave of the occurrence, according to Whitelock, was this:—His father being out of town, had sent him the key of his study, desiring him to search for some papers which he wanted. In this search he came upon one paper of such extraordinary contents, that he held himself bound in duty to secure it. The paper was a minute of what had passed in the Privy Council on the morning of the day on which the last Parliament had been dissolved. The question before the Council was offensive or defensive war with the Scots. The king said, "How can I undertake a war without money?" And Strafford was made to reply, "Borrow one hundred thousand pounds of the City. Go rigorously on to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loosed from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Having tried all ways, you shall be acquitted before God and man. You have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience, for I am confident the Scots cannot hold out five months." Laud and Cottington declared with similar vehemence that the king was absolved from all law.

Pym, having obtained from young Vane a copy of this paper, on the 10th of April informed the Commons of the fact. After hearing it read, Vane the younger rose and confirmed the relation, excusing himself on the ground that it had appeared his bounden duty to make the matter known, and that Mr. Pym had confirmed him in this opinion. After giving Mr. Pym the copy, he had returned the original paper to its proper place in the cabinet. Sir Henry Vane, the father, here rose, and remarked, with much sign of resentment against his son, that he now saw whence all this mischief came, and that he could give no further particulars of the matter but found himself in an ill condition from its testimony.

On the 12th, charge was made against Strafford in court, who replied that old Vane was his most inveterate enemy; that, as was most probable, if he had delivered this paper to his son, he had been guilty of an unpardonable breach of his oath as a Privy Councillor, to preserve the king's secrets, and was therefore totally unworthy of credit; that he had been strictly examined on what passed at that Council, and at first denied all memory of any such words spoken by him, Strafford, on that occasion; and even on his third examination, after having been shown this paper, he had only recollected he had spoken these words, or some like them; that such words and such counsel were not likely to be soon forgotten; yet, of eight Privy Councillors then present, none of those whose evidence could be obtained could remember any such words, except the Earl of Northumberland, who thought he recollected such words as those—"of being absolved from all rules of government." The Archbishop of Canterbury and Windebank were not present to give their evidence; but the Marquis of Hamilton, Bishop Juxon, and Lord Cottington, could remember no such words. Even had he used the words, it depended much on whether the phrase "this kingdom" meant England or Scotland; that the country under debate was Scotland, and he had demanded of Vane, whether the word used was really "this" or "that." And further, could the authority of this paper be established, it would not establish a charge of treason, for the law demanded the evidence of two witnesses, and this was but the evidence of one.

Pym therefore put in the verified copy of the paper, for the paper itself having been laid on the table of the Committee of Commons, had been purloined, and was never afterwards recovered. That in the possession of Charles was in the handwriting of Digby, which brought him under suspicion. Pym contended that the evidence of the minute itself, and that of Sir Henry Vane, amounted to the required proofs of the law, being two witnesses against the earl. The Lord Steward, Arundel, then called on Strafford to say whether he had any observations to make on this additional proof, and he replied most eloquently:—

"Where has this species of guilt lain so long concealed? Where has this fire been so long buried during so many centuries, that no smoke should appear till it burst out at once, to consume me and my children? Better it were to live under no law at all, than to fancy we have a law on which we can rely, and find at last that this law preceded its promulgation, and try us by maxims unheard of till the moment of the prosecution. If I sail on the Thames, and split my vessel on an anchor, in case there be no buoy to give warning, the party shall pay me damages; but if the anchor be marked out, then is the striking on it at my own peril. But where is the mark set upon this crime? Where the token by which I should discover it?

"It is now full two hundred and forty years since treasons were defined, and so long has it been since any man was touched to this extent upon this crime before myself. We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves at home; we have lived gloriously abroad in the world; let us be content with what our fathers have left us; let not an ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive acts. My lords, be pleased to give that regard to the peerage of England, as never to expose yourselves to such moot points, such constructive interpretations of law. If there must be a trial of wits, let the subject matter be of somewhat else than the lives and honours of peers. It will be wisdom for yourselves, for your posterity, and for the whole kingdom, to cast into the fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of constructive and arbitrary treason, as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts, and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the statute, which tells you where the crime is, and points out the path by which you may avoid it....

"My lords, I have now troubled your lordships a great deal longer than I should have done, were it not for the interest of these pledges which a saint in heaven left me. I should be loth——" here he pointed to his children, and his weeping stopped him. "What I forfeit for myself is nothing, but that my indiscretion should extend to my posterity, I confess, wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my importunity. Something I should have said, but I see I shall not be able, and therefore I shall leave it. And now, my lords, I thank God that I have been by His blessing sufficiently instructed in the vanity of all temporary enjoyments, compared to the importance of an eternal duration. And so, my lords, even so with all tranquillity of mind, I submit clearly and freely to your judgment; and whether that righteous doom shall be life or death, I shall repose myself, full of gratitude and confidence, in the arms of the great Author of my existence—'In te Domine confido: non confundar in Æternum.'"

What the effect of this address must have been, may be inferred from the observations of Whitelock, the chairman of the Committee which was conducting the prosecution:—"Certainly, never any man acted such a part on such a theatre, with more wisdom, constancy, and eloquence; with greater reason, judgment, and temper; and with a better grace in all his words and actions, than did this great and excellent person, so that he moved the hearts of all his auditors, some few excepted, to remorse and pity."

The Commons were alarmed at the effect of the trial. The production of Vane's paper had been a blow enough to have sunk another man, but the extraordinary eloquence and address of Strafford seemed to have effaced even that; they had little faith in procuring a verdict from the Lords in their present course, and they resolved to change their plan, and proceed against the offender by a Bill of Attainder. They have been accused of adopting the arbitrary measures of Henry VIII. in so doing, and of depriving Strafford of the fair influence of his trial; but we, who enjoy the benefit of their deed, ought not to join in that cry. Strafford was guilty, if ever man was, of the most atrocious attempt that a man can entertain—that of destroying the liberties of his country. The laws had been so framed, from royal bias, as not duly to designate his crime; but not for that, nor for any temporary feeling of pity raised by his admirable defence, did these patriots mean to allow of his escape. But in the House of Commons the Bill of Attainder met with unexpected opposition from one of the most zealous of the Reformers, Lord Digby. He saw, like the rest, that technically they could not condemn Strafford for high treason as the law then stood, and he feared the precedent of condemning men under a show of law that did not exist. It was, in fact, too much imitating the king. It was a real difficulty, which the patriots had not sufficiently foreseen. Instead of charging him with treason, as it was then defined, they should first have remodelled the law, or have charged Strafford with the violation of the national guarantee of Magna Charta, on which there could be no doubt, and for which he was well worthy of death; but it was too late to retrace their steps, and they were obliged to condemn him for the unquestionable crime of treason against the nation, making the act of the Legislature in all its branches an extension of the law. Digby himself did not question his guilt. He said "he believed him still that grand apostate to the commonwealth, who must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be despatched to the other;" but he pleaded that on the ground of law he should have his life spared. But the Commons knew that while he lived there was no security. On the first occasion the king would pardon and restore him, and all their labour would be thrown away. They sought, therefore, to erect Parliament in so great an emergency into a court of equity as well as of law, believing that what was decreed by both Houses, and had the sanction of the Crown, was and would be a law of itself. They did not, like the Tudors and the Stuarts, seek to condemn him by setting aside the established courts and trial by jury; they gave him the highest court in the realm, and a full trial by his peers, and by their Bill they now called for a verdict.

But that verdict was not obtained without a great struggle. In the Commons it was warmly debated, and it was not till the eleventh day, the 21st of April, that it was carried by a vast majority. Only fifty-four, or, according to Whitelock, fifty-nine members voted against the Bill, and the next morning the names of these were placarded in the streets as "Straffordians," who, to allow a traitor to escape, would betray their country. The Lords, who had been greatly influenced by Strafford's speeches, and his confident exposition of the law, displayed no alacrity to pass the Bill of Attainder through their House; but they soon found themselves exposed to the pressure from without. The nation had made up its mind to the punishment of the man who had advised the king to reduce them to the condition of serfs; and the Lords could not appear anywhere without being pursued by cries of "Justice! justice on the traitor!" Vast crowds surrounded the Parliament House, uttering the same demands, and a petition was carried up from the City, signed by many thousands. The country was terrified by rumours of insurrections and invasions, which were made plausible by the lately discovered plot for marching the army of York on London, and the Court preparations for rescuing and getting away Strafford. There is also clear evidence from the despatches of Rosetti, who was in the confidence of the queen, that the king had ordered the fortifications of Portsmouth to be strengthened; and the command of the fortress was given to Goring, that Charles might have a place of retreat if he was obliged to quit London, and an opening for the landing of troops from France or Holland, whom he might prevail on to come to his assistance.

In carrying up the Bill to the Lords, the Attorney-General, St. John, had endeavoured to get rid of the legal objections to the death of Strafford, by saying that laws were made for the protection of the peaceable and the innocent, not for those who broke all law for the destruction of the people. This was a dangerous doctrine, and did not at all mend the matter; he did not see that the real strength and justification of the case lay in the three branches of the Legislature interpreting the law as extending to the State and Constitution altogether, and by their united act rendering it law.

In the meantime, the anxiety and perplexity of the king became excruciating. He had clearly, by his confident assertions of protection, drawn Strafford into the snare, and if the Lords passed the Bill, how was he, by his own decayed authority, to defend him? He had previously sought the aid of the Earl of Bedford, who was the most influential of the peers, and promised him the disposal of all the great offices of State, on condition that Strafford's life should be spared. Bedford had accepted it, but just at this crisis he fell sick and died. Clarendon says, of his own knowledge, that it was the plan of Bedford to give the king the excise as a settled source of income, and thus extricate him out of all his troubles,—the very thing which was afterwards granted to his son, Charles II. On Bedford's death, Lord Say accepted the same position on the same terms; and it is asserted by Clarendon that it was by his advice that Charles now took a step that proved very fatal. He proceeded to the House of Lords on the 1st of May, whilst the Bill of Attainder was still before it, and calling for the Commons, informed them that having, as they knew, been constantly present at the trial of Strafford, he was perfectly familiar with all that had been advanced on both sides, and that the serious conclusion at which he had arrived was that he was not guilty of treason, and, therefore, in his conscience, he could not condemn him if the Bill were passed and came to him. "It was not," he said, "for him to argue the matter with them; his place was to utter a single decision. But," he continued, "I must tell you three great truths:—First, I never had any intention of bringing over the Irish army into England, nor ever was advised by any one to do so. Second, there never was any debate before me, either in public council or private committee, of the disloyalty or disaffection of my English subjects. Third, I was never counselled by any to alter the least of any of the laws of England, much less alter all the laws."

After the long breach of the law that the king shall not levy taxes without consent of Parliament; after the long exercise of the arbitrary power of the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court, where Magna Charta was utterly set aside; after the brandings, the lopping off of ears, the slitting of noses, and the fining and imprisonment of the subject at the king's pleasure, these assertions show how utterly regardless of truth this king was. He then admitted that Strafford was guilty of great misdemeanours. "Therefore," he said, "I hope you may find some middle way to satisfy justice and your own fears, and not to press upon my conscience. My lords, I hope you know what a tender thing conscience is. To satisfy my people I would do great matters, but in this of conscience, no fear, no respect whatever, shall ever make me go against it. Certainly, I have not so ill-deserved of the Parliament this time that they should press me on this tender point." He proposed that Strafford should be rendered incapable hereafter of holding any place of trust or honour under the Crown.

But the very declarations which he had made in this address were so untrue, that every one must have felt that as long as Strafford lived there was no security against his return to power. The Commons, however, took up the matter in another manner. On their return to their own House—the king had not recognised their presence by a single observation in the other—they instantly passed a resolution, declaring the king's interference with any bill before either House of Parliament, a most flagrant abuse of their privileges. This was Saturday, and the next day the ministers, Scottish and Puritan, took up the subject in their pulpits, and roused their hearers to a sense of their danger, only to be averted by the death of the arch-traitor. On Monday the population poured out in a vast concourse, and directed their steps towards Westminster. Six thousand infuriated people surrounded the Houses of Parliament, armed with clubs and staves, crying out for justice on the prisoner.

At this moment Pym was haranguing the House of Commons on the discovery of the plot to debauch the army, and informing them, moreover, that there was already a strong body of French troops assembled on the opposite coast, and that it was declared to be their intention to take possession of Jersey and Guernsey, and to land at Portsmouth. This was so far true that Montague, a favourite of the queen's, had been despatched to the French court, a fleet had assembled on the coast of Brittany, and an army in Flanders. Montreuil had endeavoured to convince the popular leaders, through the Earl of Holland, that the army was destined for the war in the Netherlands, and the fleet to protect the coasts of Portugal. Their being so near this country, however, was sufficient to justify the popular suspicion, and the public excitement continued to increase. Montague was advised to seek his safety by flight, and the queen was so terrified that she ordered her carriages to Whitehall to flee to Portsmouth. The Lords, however, prevented this by a remonstrance to the king, and thereby probably saved the queen's life from the enraged mob; for it was now that the disclosures of Colonel Goring of the Army Plot became public.

Pym seized the opportunity of this occurrence to press on the Commons a resolution to the effect that the seaports should be closed, and that the king should command that neither the queen, the prince, nor any person attending upon his majesty, should leave London without the permission of the king, acting on the advice of his Parliament. This was passed, and Pym then called on them to make a solemn Protestation, after the manner of the Scottish Covenant, which should be taken by the whole House, binding them by a vow, in the presence of God, to maintain and defend his majesty's royal person and estate, as well as the power and privileges of Parliament, the lawful rights and liberties of the subject, the peace and union of the three kingdoms against all plots, conspiracies, and evil practices, and that neither hope, fear, nor any other respect, should induce them to relinquish this promise, vow, and protestation. It was instantly signed by the Speaker, and by every member present.

The Commons next addressed a letter to the army in the North, assuring them that, notwithstanding the attempts to corrupt them, Parliament relied on their fidelity, and would take care to furnish their pay. They ordered the forces in Wiltshire and Hampshire to advance nearer to Portsmouth, and those in Kent and Sussex to draw towards Dover, and declared any man advising the introduction of foreign troops to be an enemy to his country. These resolutions they despatched with the Protestation to the Upper House by Denzil Holles, calling on the whole House to subscribe to the Protestation. The next morning, being the 4th of May, the Lords desired a conference with the Commons, and informed them of a message from the king, desiring that the intimidation of the mobs might be withdrawn, that the deliberation of the Parliament might be free; and as the peers proposed to take the Protestation unanimously, Dr. Burgess, a popular preacher, was sent out to inform the people of this, and to desire that they would peaceably withdraw to their own homes. The crowds, on this assurance, melted rapidly away. The Protestation was then sent out to be subscribed by the whole nation, as the Covenant had been in Scotland, and with the intimation that any one declining to adopt it should be looked upon as an enemy to his country. To complete their security, the Commons passed a Bill that Parliament should on no account be dissolved without the consent of both Houses.

The next day, on a false alarm that the House of Commons was in danger, the train-bands, headed by Colonel Mainwaring, marched with beat of drum to Westminster; it proved an unnecessary caution, but one that convinced the peers and the king that any resistance to the Commons, backed by the public, was useless. The very next day the news was circulated in Parliament that six or eight dangerous conspirators had fled, amongst them Jermyn, the queen's favourite, and Percy, both members of the Commons, and that the queen was still bent, if opportunity could be found, of escaping too. On the following day, May 7th, the peers voted by a majority that the fifteenth and nineteenth charges against Strafford were proved, namely, that he had quartered soldiers on the peaceable inhabitants of Ireland contrary to law, and had imposed on his own authority an illegal oath on all Scotsmen living in that country. Thereupon they consulted the judges, who unanimously decided that Strafford deserved to suffer the pains and penalties of treason. The Catholics kept away from the House because they would not take the Protestation, and therefore bore no part in Strafford's condemnation. The Bill was passed by a majority of twenty-six to nineteen. The following morning, May 8th, the Bill of Attainder was read a third time and passed; and, at the same time, the Lords also passed the Bill of the Commons against the dissolution of Parliament.

Charles was now reduced to a pitiable condition. On the one hand, he had solemnly pledged himself, both to Strafford and to Parliament, never to consent to the earl's death; but, on the other hand, the two Houses had pronounced against him, and the public was waiting with impatience for his ratification of the sentence. He had lately seen the ominous assemblage of the people, and the march of the City bands to support Parliament; the Scots still lay in the North, waiting with fierce desire for the fall of their enemy; one signal, and the whole country would be in a blaze. The Bill was passed on Saturday, and perhaps never was a Sunday spent by any man, or any house, in so dreadful a state as that passed by Charles and his family. The only alternative left him was to summon his Privy Council, and submit to them his difficulty. But from them he derived very little comfort. The members in general urged on him the necessity of complying with the demand of both Houses of Parliament, and the manifest desire of the public, who were again loudly declaring that they would have either the head of Strafford or the king's. The bishops strongly urged the same arguments; the terror of the Parliament and the people was upon them.

Williams, the old bishop of Lincoln, who had been treated with stern severity by both Strafford and Laud, told the king, when he talked of his conscience, that there was a public as well as a private conscience; that he had discharged his private conscience by doing all in his power to save the earl, and he might now exercise his public conscience by conceding to the decision of his Parliament; that the question now was not about saving Strafford, but about saving himself, his queen, and family. Juxon, Bishop of London, alone had the courage to tell him boldly not to consent to the shedding of the blood of a man whom in his conscience he felt to be innocent. Ussher of Armagh, Morton of Durham, and another bishop, advised him to be guided by the opinion of the judges. The judges being then asked, repeated their judgment that the case, as put to them by the Lords, amounted to treason. Thus borne down by all parties, Charles reluctantly gave way, and late in the evening, though he would not directly sign his assent to the Bill, he signed a commission to several lords to give the assent. Even in this last act his friends endeavoured to console him with the assurance that "his own hand was not in it." It was a miserable subterfuge, for the deed was equally valid, and he executed it with tears, declaring the condition of Strafford happier than his own.

The day of execution was fixed for Wednesday, the 12th of May, and on Monday, the 10th, the commission to this effect passed the Great Seal. But still Charles could not give up the hope of saving the unhappy man. He sent to the two Houses to inform them that he would instantly disband the Irish army; and the next morning, having appeared to have made a favourable impression on the Commons, who had returned a very flattering message, he sent the Prince of Wales to the Lords with a letter once more imploring them to consult with the Commons, and grant him "the unspeakable contentment" of changing the sentence of the earl to perpetual imprisonment, with a pledge never to interfere in his behalf; and if the earl should ever seek his liberty, especially by any application to himself, his life should be forfeited. If, however, it could not be done with satisfaction to the people, he said "Fiat justitia." In a postscript, stated to have been added at the suggestion of the queen, he appended the fatal words, "If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday;" words which seemed to imply that, though he asked, he really did not hope to save him. Nothing, however, could have saved him. The House, after reading the letter twice, and after "sad and serious consideration," sent a deputation to inform him that neither of the requests could be complied with.

Laud, however, was on the watch, and putting forth his hands from his window, bestowed his blessing. That was all that his weakness and his emotion permitted. He sank, overcome with his grief, to the floor. Strafford made a profound obeisance, and the procession moved on. But after a few steps the earl turned round again, bowed to the ground once more, saying, "Farewell, my lord! God protect your innocence!" Then proceeding again, he assumed a lofty and dignified air, more even than was usual to him. At the Tower gate the lieutenant requested him to enter a coach, lest the people should wreak their hatred upon him; but he declined, saying, "No, Master lieutenant, I dare look death in the face, and I hope the people, too. Have you a care that I do not escape, and I care not how I die, whether by the executioner, or the madness of the people. If that give them better satisfaction, it is all one to me." He was accompanied to the scaffold by Archbishop Ussher, the Earl of Cleveland, and his brother, Sir George Wentworth, and others of his friends were there to take their leave of him. The crowd assembled to see their great enemy depart was immense, and he made a speech from notes which he had prepared, still protesting his innocence; declaring that so far from wishing to put an end to Parliaments, he had always regarded them, under God, as the best means to make the king and his people happy. His head fell at a single blow, and the astonished people could scarcely believe that they had seen the last of their foe. They retired in quietness, as if overcome by the greatness of the satisfaction; but they testified their joy in the evening by bonfires in the streets (May 12, 1641).

The fall of Strafford carried terror through the Court. Many began to think of flying. Cottington had given up his office of Master of the Wards, and Lord Say and other noblemen of the popular party were introduced into the Ministry. The Marquis of Hertford was made Governor to the Prince, the Earl of Essex Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Leicester the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The king was wholly averse from the new ministers, but hoped to win upon them as he had done upon Strafford, Loudon, and Montrose; and indeed, after their appointment, a bolder and more independent spirit seemed to awaken in the Lords. They threw out several Bills sent up from the Commons, amongst others, one for excluding the bishops from their House. Essex, though a reformer, was by no means hostile to the hierarchy, and always obliged his servants to accompany him to church, and kept a chaplain who was a thorough conformist. The Lords did not object to the bishops and clergy in general being excluded from the Star Chamber, the Privy Council, and the Commissions of the Peace; but they contended that bishops had always formed a part of their body, and that the Commons might next take it into their heads to exclude barons.

The Commons, however, pressed on the Lords Bills for the abolition of the two greatest engines of tyranny in the country, the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court. These, with another for a poll-tax for the maintenance of the armies, the Lords passed; but Charles hesitated. He had given up much this Session: the right of prorogation without consent of Parliament, thus making Parliament perpetual if it pleased; the right to demand tonnage and poundage without the same consent; he had limited the forest laws; granted to the judges their places during good behaviour; and withdrawn the commission for the Presidency of the North as illegal. But to give up the civil and ecclesiastical inquisitions, those ready and terrible torture houses of the Crown, went hard with him. The poll-tax he passed at once, because he thought it would be unpopular, but he refused to sanction the others. The Commons came to a resolution that he should pass all three or none; and the tone of both Parliament and the people was so menacing, that on the 5th of July he gave his consent, and put an end to those un-English abominations.

The Commons having granted the king six subsidies, and tonnage and poundage for the year, he now proposed to proceed to Scotland to hold a Parliament. He was aware that a reaction had taken place there. The Marquis of Montrose had exerted himself to form a party amongst such noblemen and gentlemen as had grown to regard the popular leaders both in Scotland and England as bearing too insolently on the prerogatives of the Crown. He had prevailed on nineteen noblemen to subscribe a bond, pledging themselves "to oppose the particular and indirect practices of a few, and to study all public ends which might tend to the safety of religion, laws, and liberty." They were careful that the language of this bond should not clash openly with that of the Covenant; but the real design did not escape the vigilance of the Committee of Estates. They called on Montrose and his associates to clear themselves, and obtaining the bond, burn it publicly. Notwithstanding this, the confederates opened a secret correspondence with the king, and assured him of their confidence of victory over the Covenanters, if he would honour the Parliament with his presence, confirm his former concessions, and delay the distribution of offices and honours to the end of the session. But this correspondence also was discovered. Walter Stuart, the messenger of Montrose to the king, was seized near Haddington, and the letter of the marquis to the king, with various other suspicious papers, was found concealed in the pommel of his saddle. Montrose, Lord Napier, Sir George Stirling, and Sir Archibald Stuart, were arrested, examined, and sent to the castle of Edinburgh.

These events rendered Charles still more impatient for his northern journey. Not only Traquair, and the other four of his officers who had been excepted from pardon as incendiaries, but these, his new allies, demanded his assistance. By the beginning of August the treaty of pacification was signed by the Scots. They had received an engagement from the English Parliament for the payment of a balance of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds of "the brotherly assistance." Charles had granted an amnesty and an act of oblivion of all that was past, having cost the kingdom about one million one hundred thousand pounds, and both armies were ordered to be disbanded. The Parliament, however, looked on this journey with no friendly eye. Even amongst his own friends, the wily old Bishop of Lincoln, Williams, whom the king, in the absence of Laud, and the loss of Strafford, had taken into favour, and who was soon to be Archbishop of York, advised Charles to keep away from the Scots. He assured him that they would ferret out any secret negotiations that might pass between himself and the royal party, and make the English Commons acquainted with them; and that he would do much better to remain, and employ himself in corrupting and winning over as many as he could of the Parliamentary leaders. The Commons insisted on his appointing a Regency, if he should go, to act during his absence; but he consented only to the naming of a Commission. It was not till the 10th of August that he got permission for his journey, and he was not destined to depart without having another proof of the animus of the House of Commons. On the 4th, Serjeant Wild presented to the Lords a Bill of Impeachment against thirteen of the bishops—Laud's name being put among them—for their recent manufacturing of canons and constitutions contrary to law. Their grant of a benevolence to the king was made an offence under the name of a bribe, and by this means, though they had not been able to exclude all the bishops from the Upper House for ever, they excluded these thirteen for a time.

At length Charles was enabled to set out. He had made the Earl of Holland commander-in-chief of the Forces, much to the disgust of the friends of Essex, who was appointed commander only of those south of the Trent. He was attended in his coach by his nephew, Charles Louis, the nominal Elector Palatine, the Duke of Lennox, now Duke of Richmond, and the Marquis of Hamilton—rather ominous associates. The king had not been gone a week, however, when Holland having quarrelled with the queen, and the king having refused to make a baron at his suggestion, by which he would have got ten thousand pounds, sent a letter to the House of Lords, obscurely intimating some new practices and designs against Parliament. The Lords communicated to the Commons this letter, and the two Houses immediately appointed a commission to proceed to Scotland, ostensibly to procure the ratification of the late treaty, but really to keep watch over the king and his partisans. To this duty were named the Earl of Bedford, Lord Edward Howard, Sir William Almayne, Sir Philip Stapleton, Mr. Hampden, and Nathaniel Fiennes. The king endeavoured to get rid of this unwelcome commission, declaring it needless, and refused to sign the commission when sent to him; but the Parliament still pressing it, he allowed the commissioners to proceed to Scotland to attend him; all of whom did so except the Earl of Bedford.

Charles had set out with the resolve to win over as many of his enemies as possible, and to please the Scots at large, thereby to raise up a counter influence to that at home. At the northern camp, which was not yet broken up, he did all that he could to corrupt the officers, went to dine with old Leslie, the Scottish general, and soon after ennobled him. At Edinburgh he flattered the Covenanters by attending their preachings, and went so far as to appoint Alexander Henderson, the stout champion of the Covenant, his chaplain, appearing to take especial delight in his conversation, and having him constantly about him. He ratified all the acts of the last Session of the Scottish Parliament. As regarded the incendiaries, as they were called—that is, Charles's former ministers—who had been imprisoned for executing his commands, he promised on their release to give their offices to such persons as had pleased the Parliament. He submitted to them a list of forty-two councillors, and nine great officers of State. The Parliament conceded so far as to release all the incendiaries but five, and these were to be referred to a committee for trial, and their sentence to be pronounced by the king. So far, all promised well, but the Covenanters were desirous to have the Earl of Argyll, who had so openly espoused their cause in the General Assembly, appointed to the chief post in the ministry, that of Chancellor; but Charles conferred it on Loudon. Argyll strove for the next, that of Treasurer, a post of great emolument, but Charles gave it to Lord Ormond; but the Parliament would not consent, and the contest for this appointment had gone on ten days, when the feud thus commenced was rent still wider by what is known in Scottish history as the "Incident."

Since Charles had come to Edinburgh, he had continued to keep up his correspondence with the Marquis of Montrose, who was still prisoner in the castle, and who, notwithstanding his known intrigue with the king, had by concert with him kept up a pretence of being a zealous Covenanter. A letter from Montrose, revealing the progress of this correspondence, had been found by some traitorous person about the king, supposed, indeed, to have been taken from his pocket, and had been sent by the Marquis of Hamilton to the Covenanters. Montrose found means to convey to the king his ideas about it, and to warn him especially of the treasonable proceedings and intentions of Hamilton and Argyll. Hamilton, since his having, at Charles's request, assumed the part of a favourer of the Covenanters, had become suspected of being more really of that party than he pretended. The king had grown cool in his manner to him: the letters of Montrose, conveyed through William Murray, a groom of the bed-chamber, urged the king to make away with the traitors Hamilton and Argyll. At this juncture young Lord Kerr sent by the Earl of Crawford a challenge of treason to Hamilton, who appealed to Parliament in his justification, and Kerr was compelled to make an apology. But if we are to believe Hamilton himself, this did not prevent the prosecution of the plot to assassinate or carry them off to some place of concealment. He says, in a letter to his brother, Lord Lanark, that he was sent for suddenly by his brother and Argyll, as he was engaged with some company, desiring him to go to them on matters of the utmost consequence. When he went he was told by them that they had been desired to go to General Leslie, at his house, who informed them of a plot to kill or carry them away. On this being confirmed to Hamilton by Colonel Hurrie and Captain Stuart, the three lost no time in escaping from the city to Hamilton House, at Kinneil; whilst the rumour of the plot spreading, the burghers of Edinburgh had closed their gates, and armed themselves for the defence of the Parliament.

As this was a direct charge of a most black and murderous design on the part of the king, he lost no time, on receiving letters from the fugitive noblemen stating why they had fled, in marching to the Parliament House at the head of five hundred soldiers, to demand an explanation. The Parliament was justly alarmed at this menacing movement, and insisted that a commission should immediately be given to Leslie to guard Parliament with all the city bands, the regiments of foot near at hand, and some troops of horse.

Charles was loud in his complaints of the scandal cast upon him by the needless flight of the three noblemen and the arming of the citizens, and demanded an instant examination before Parliament for his clearance. The Parliament would not consent to a trial before the whole House; but in spite of the king's remonstrances, referred it to a committee, and ordered the immediate arrest of the Earl of Crawford, Colonel Cochrane, William Murray, and others. What the committee discovered is not known, for its proceedings were conducted with the profoundest secrecy; and they finally came to the conclusion that there was nothing which touched the king personally; and yet that the noblemen did not flee without sufficient cause, and were falsely accused by Montrose. Montrose himself, when examined regarding the letter to the king, declared that he meant to accuse nobody in particular; and Crawford, Murray, and the rest, gave confused and disordered answers. All was involved in mystery, and this was no little increased by Hamilton and Argyll returning to Edinburgh in the course of a few weeks, and Hamilton declaring that there was nothing in the affair which reflected any dishonour on the king. Still more to confound all reasoning on the matter, the plotters not only were liberated on bail, but Argyll was placed at the head of the Treasury, was created a marquis, Hamilton a duke, and Leslie an earl, with the title of Leven.

The news of the plot had been despatched with all speed to the Parliament in England, and had created great alarm in London, many being of opinion that a conspiracy was on foot to get rid of all the king's opponents. Parliament, which had adjourned to the 20th of October, had just met again, and the Council sent urgent requests for the return of the king to the capital.

The king, however, appeared in no haste. He remained entertaining all parties in great festivity, distributing the forfeited church lands amongst influential persons, not excepting his covenanting chaplain, Henderson. Honours were as freely bestowed. It was found that Charles had carried the Crown jewels with him: it was now well known that the great collar of rubies was pawned in Holland, and it was believed that Charles was buying up his enemies with others of the jewels, afterwards to be exchanged for money. These unpleasant suspicions were greatly increased by the fact that five companies of foot had, by the king's especial command, been detained at Berwick, notwithstanding the order for disbandment. The Council sent six ships to fetch away the artillery and ammunition from Berwick and Holy Isle, and again represented to Charles the necessity of his presence in London.

His departure, however, was at length determined by startling news out of another quarter, namely, of rebellion in Ireland.