lishmen seemed to require that the false and headstrong king, and some of the foremost of his incorrigible accomplices, should be severely dealt with. The king, through the Lord Keeper, one of his most hated tools, communicated his wants, and made gracious promises. The patriotic party knew the extent of the embarrassments, and the worth of the professions. Following a precedent which they affirmed to be of immemorial au 1641. May 12. thority, the House of Commons took up the Nov. 9. subject of grievances before that of grants. They impeached of high-treason the Archbishop of Canterbury; Wren, Bishop of Norwich; Finch, Lord Keeper; and the Earl of Strafford. Finch fled to Holland; Wren lay twenty years in the Tower; Laud went from it, after four years, to execution; Strafford, condemned by a bill of attainder, was presently beheaded, under a warrant from his faithless master. Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, discharged from prison, and reimbursed for their fines by a fine laid on the Lords who had condemned them in the Star Chamber, were escorted into London by an exulting cavalcade of five thousand men and women decked with rosemary and bays,' followed by a vast throng on foot. Numbers of less conspicuous sufferers from the abuses of recent times were released and indemnified. Its first measures of reform. The assessment of ship-money and compositions for knighthood were condemned by Parliament, as contrary to law and justice. The patents of monopoly and the judgment against Hampden were cancelled. The absolute control of the Commons over tonnage and poundage was affirmed in peremptory terms. The Council of York and the Courts of StarChamber and High-Commission were abolished by unanimous votes of both Houses; and with the Star-Chamber 1 Clarendon, Book III.; May, 79. fell the authority of royal proclamations, the function of enforcing them belonging to that court. Patents of judicial office were to run henceforward during good behavior, and not, as had been the practice, during the royal pleasure. Parliament assumed the payment of the armies of both England and Scotland, while they should be continued on foot. Officers professing the Catholic religion were discharged. "Scandalous" ministers were censured and displaced. Deprived and imprisoned clergymen were released, and restored to their cures. The forest laws were revised and expurgated. Provision was made for triennial Parliaments, with curiously elaborate securities for their convocation, and with the unprecedented privilege of exemption from being adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, except by their own consent. It was enacted that no Privy Counsellor, officer of state, or judge, should be appointed without the Parliament's approbation. tion. At the adjournment of this eventful session, a committee was raised to sit during the recess, clothed with almost sovereign powers. Its proroga Sept. 8. Aug. 10. Irish re Oct. 20. Before its close, the king set off for Scotland, ostensibly to superintend the measures, to which he had been brought to consent, for the settlement of that kingdom and the disbanding of the armies. The Lords and Commons reassembled but three days before the breaking out of that sanguinary Po- bellion. pish rebellion in Ireland, which the king, in the exasperation of the time, did not escape the charge of having contrived or favored. Parliament assumed the conduct of the war, which in a letter from Scotland he had "whelly committed to their care and wisdom";1 and they proceeded to levy money for its prosecution, and to take arms from the royal magazines. The committee, raised at the close of the preceding session, reported 1 Clarendon, Book IV. Grand Remonstrance. Nov. 22. what was called a Remonstrance, reviewing with severe animadversion the administration of public affairs through the fifteen years from the beginning of the reign to the existing Parliament.1 All the influence of the Court, and all parliamentary devices, were employed to prevent its approval by the House of Commons. But it was adopted, presented by a committee to the king, and then printed for effect upon the people.2 In this course of measures, if the Commons had taken the lead, they had for the most part carried the concurrence of the Lords, and, with their help, had obtained the hard wrung consent of the sorely embarloyal senti- rassed king. Reaction is always to be expected from such excitements of the public mind; and the king, had he been wiser, might have taken the flood of a loyal sympathy at the turn of tide. When he came from the north, the city, which had of late abounded in expressions of resentment, welcomed him with a magnificent feast at Guildhall, with a numerous Revival of ments. Nov. 25. 1 A flood of light has just now been thrown on the character and relations of this great measure, in the "Essay on the Grand Remonstrance," in the first volume of Mr. John Forster's "Historical and Biographical Essays." The materials for this new illustration have been drawn by Mr. Forster, with great industry, from notes which were taken from day to day by Sir Simonds d'Ewes, a member of the Parliament, and which are preserved in manuscript in the British Museum. In mental structure and tastes Sir Simonds bore some resemblance to the best and most absurd of biographers; and by force of qualities which they had in common, he drew almost as life-like an image of the Long Parliament, as Boswell produced of his hero. While this sheet is in the compositor's hands, I obtain my first sight of Mr. John Langton Sanford's "Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion." A glance at its contents makes me regret that I was not earlier acquainted with a work so promising of instruction. 2 The measure was carried, at the end of a session of fourteen hours, by only 159 votes against 148. After the division Cromwell told Lord Falkland, as they passed together from the House, that, if it had been lost, "he would have sold all he had the next morning, and never have seen England more. (Clarendon, Book IV.) From a sentence in the Remonstrance, it appears that the value of a subsidy (see above, p. 247, note 1) was at this time fifty thousand pounds. "Six subsidies have been granted, and a bill of poll-money, which, if it be duly levied, may equal six subsidies more, in all six hundred thousand pounds." (Parliamentary History, II. 956.) attendance on his way to Westminster, and with other unwonted tokens of respect. Many, who had been acting against him, now thought, and some said freely and angrily, that he had been dealt with rigorously enough for punishment, and had been sufficiently disarmed of power to do further mischief; and that the Remonstrance was an unnecessary and vindictive measure. He chose this time to do an act to confound his friends, and prove to doubters that they who most severely judged him knew him best. The king's attempt to arrest memHouse of bers of the Commons. 1642. Singling out Lord Kimbolton, afterwards Earl of Manchester, and five commoners, Hollis, Hazelrigg, Hampden, Pym, and Strode, as objects of his special vengeance for the part taken by them in the recent measures, he sent the Attorney-General to the House of Lords to arraign them for hightreason, and a sergeant-at-arms to demand the five members of the House of Commons. Instead of surrendering them, the House resolved that the attempt to apprehend them was a breach of its privileges, and passed a vote for the security of their persons and property. Transported beyond all bounds of prudence, the king undertook their arrest in person. He came the next day to the House of Commons with two or three hundred armed attendants. The Countess of Carlisle, a lady about the court, had sent intelligence of his purpose to the persons accused, just in time for them to escape by one door as the king reached the other. Leaving his guard outside, he passed up the hall, while the members stood uncovered. The Speaker came down from his chair, and the king, standing before it, inquired whether any of the members whom he had impeached were present. The Speaker, dropping on his knee, asked pardon for saying that in that place he had no eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, except as the House, whose servant he was; should direct. Glancing Jan. 4. around the room, the king said in a short speech, that he had come to serve the process which yesterday, in the hands of his officers, had been evaded; but that, since he saw "the birds were flown," he should expect them to be sent to him by the House as soon as they should return. As he passed from the hall, there was a cry from the members of "Privilege! privilege!" The House immediately adjourned to the next day, and the five members withdrew to the city, which had its train-bands under arms all night. Procession of Commons Nothing could have more exasperated and at the same time emboldened the Commons, than this display of passionate impotence. When they met again, they raised a committee to report on the recent transaction, then adjourned, and repeated their adjournments from day to day. At length, at the end of a week, they entered St. Stephen's Chapel in procession, having been esof the House corted thither, partly on the river by armed vesto Westmin- sels and city barges, partly along the thoroughfares of London and Westminster by the city train-bands under Philip Skippon, whom they had appointed Major-General. The king had withdrawn from Whitehall to Hampton Court the night before, at once to escape so disagreeable a neighborhood, and to digest his intense mortification for the issue of his folly. He had departed alive from his metropolitan palace for the last time. ster. Jan. 11. The vexation and discouragement of the king's friends facilitated the measures of opposition. Acts passed the Houses for the exclusion of the Bishops from the House of Peers, and for the pressing of troops, both which received the royal sanction. At length the decisive Parliament step was taken of passing a bill for nominatthe militia. ing the commanding officers of the militia in the February. several counties, and making them responsible to Parliament and not to the king. This was seizing Bill to give the control of |