i ' 
 
Epochs of English History 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 REV. M. CREIGHTON. M.A. 
 
 i 
 
 The ' 
 
 STRUGGLE against ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 
 
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MUUt ic do/B (Ebutational ScricB 
 
 UPOOHS OF ENGLISH HISTOBT. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 ABSOLUTE MONARCHY. 
 
 1603— 1688. 
 
 BY 
 
 BERTHA MERITON CORDERY, 
 
 AUTHOR or ' KINO AND COMMONWKALTH,' 
 
 WfTH ITWO MAPS. 
 
 Authonzed by the Minister of Education. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 Adam Miller & Co. 
 1877. 
 

 t < 
 
 Entered according to Act of Parliament uf Canada, in the Office of the 
 Minister of Agriculture, by Adam Millbr & Co., in the year 1877. 
 
/ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 -♦- 
 
 
 IntroducUon .1 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 Causes op Quarrel between the King and the 
 
 Parliament (1603-1633). 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Puritans and Roman Catholics 3 
 
 II. Th** Spanish Marriage Treaty 6 
 
 III. The King and the Parliament 9 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 The Rule of the Duke of Buckingham (1633-1638). 
 
 I. A War Policy la 
 
 II. The Petition of Right 15 
 
 . BOOK III. 
 
 Government without Parliaments (1639-1640). 
 
 I. Dissolution of Parliament in 1639 19 
 
 n. Laud and the Puritans aa 
 
 III. Sir Thomas Wentworth ....... 35 
 
 IV. Ship Money and the Trial of Hampden . . • . 87 
 
Contents. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 The Long Parliament and the Civil War (id4a-i64|r». 
 
 CHAP. ^ fASB 
 
 I. The Trial of Strafford ' . .30 
 
 n. The Grand Remonstrance and Impeachment of the five 
 Members J3 
 
 III. The Civil War 37 
 
 IV. The Army and the Parliament 44 
 
 BOOK V. 
 The Commonwealth and the Protectorate (1649-1600). 
 
 I. The Commonwealth * • 47 
 
 II. The Protectorate S*- 
 
 !II. War and Commerce 54 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 The Reign op Charles II. (1660-1685). 
 
 I. The Restoration , . . 5$ 
 
 II. Opposition between King and Parliament . . • ^ 
 
 III. Exclusion Bills and the Popish Plot 69 
 
 IV. Reaction against the Whigs fi 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 The Reign op Jambs II. (1685-1668; 
 
 I. Catholics and Protestants 74 
 
 II. The Revolution 77 
 
 Conclusion ,••••79 
 
 Index op Persons • • • • , • • • •Si 
 Index of Places 83 
 
 MAPS, 
 
 England and Wales during the Civil War . . . • JB 
 Puritan Settlements in New England . * . • • 55 
 
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THE 
 
 STRUGGLE AGAINST ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 
 
 INTRODUCTION, , 
 
 A GREAT question was fought out in England while the 
 Stuarts reigned. It was this : was the chief power in the 
 country to be the power of the king or the power of the 
 Parliament ; in other words, were the English to be a self- 
 governed people or were they to be governed according to 
 the will of one man ? 
 
 The Tudors had ruled during a century of change and 
 danger, when it was needful that the king should have 
 much power in his hand, so that order might prevail at 
 home and foreign princes be kept from meddling in Eng- 
 lish affairs. But when the fear of foreign foes was past, and 
 the king did things which the people did not want to see 
 done, they were not willing to let him have so much power 
 as the Tudor kings had had. The points which we shall 
 have especially to notice in reading this book are — 
 
 (i) How the Stuarts made use of the powers which 
 the Tudors had left them to act against the wishes of the 
 people. 
 
 (2) How the Parliament tried to force the Stuarts to 
 carry out the wishes of the people. 
 
 (3) How the Stuarts tried to free themselves from the 
 control of Parliament. 
 
 71. H, B 
 
2 Struggle against Absolute MonarcJiy. 1603. 
 
 (4) How the struggle between king and Parliament 
 was at last brought to an end by the gift of the crown to 
 a prince who was willing to do the things which the Par- 
 liament wished to be done. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 1603-1623. 
 
 CAUSES OF QUARREL BETWEEN THE 
 KING AND THE PARLIAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PURITANS AND ROMAN CATHOLICS. 
 
 1. Great changes have come over England since 1603, 
 when James 1. became king. Ideas which are now nearly 
 Mtn not free as common as the air we breathe were then 
 as they *** "^^ ^"^ rare, or even unknown. Thus people 
 please. now think that each man must be left to wor- 
 
 ship God after his own fashion. Then people thought 
 that all men, who obeyed the same king, must worship God 
 after the same fashion. The Act of Uniformity, passed 
 by Parliament in 1559, had ordered that the services laid 
 down in the Prayer Book should be held in eveiy church 
 in England. No other services might be held even in a 
 room with closed doors. 
 
 2. Though all Protestants had separated from the old 
 Church, they had not all taken up the same religious beliefs. 
 The I^ England there were men called Puritans, who 
 
 Puritans. wished to make the service of the Church of 
 England more unlike the service of the Church of Rome 
 than the reformers of the reign of Edward VI. had left it. 
 They complained that forms «^nd ceremonies were still in 
 
i6o^ James and the Puritans. ; ' v j 
 
 use which were not according to the Bible. Thus there 
 were many clergymen who did not like to make the sign of 
 the cross when they baptized a child, or to wear a surplice 
 during the church services. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth did not wish for any more changes, 
 and so chose archbishops and bishops to govern the 
 Church of England who were no friends to the Puritans. 
 They thought that the Church services needed no change 
 and that the Puritans were making an outcry about trifles. 
 So they turned out of their livings ministers who did not 
 use the ceremonies laid down in the Prayer Book. 
 
 The people, as a body, liked the services of their 
 Church. Still they wished that something should be done 
 to content the Puritans. It was not easy to find enough 
 good and able men to be parish ministers, and as the 
 ministers who held with the Puritans were usually very 
 able and zealous, it seemed a great pity that they should 
 lose their livings because they did not like to wear a sur- 
 plice. So when James came to the throne men hoped 
 that he would let laws be made by Parliament ordering 
 (i) that ministers should not be turned out of their livings 
 for not using all the ceremonies laid down in the Prayer 
 Book, and (2) that every parish should have a good and 
 able man as minister. 
 
 3. James was already king of Scotland when he came 
 to the English throne. He was son of Mary Stuart, Queen 
 of Scots, whom Ehzabeth beheaded, and great- 
 grandson of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII. *'"*'' 
 Scotland and England were thus brought together under 
 the rule of one king, but each country still had its own 
 Parliament, its own Church, and its own laws. 
 
 4. James was thirty-six years old. He had read a good 
 deal, could talk well, and often said witty james and 
 things much to the point. But he had two the Puritan* 
 great faults which prevented his being a wise king. He 
 
 B 3 
 
4 Struggle against A bsohite Monarchy, 1603- 
 
 was cowardly and he was selfish. He always thought, 
 not of what was best for his people, but of what was best 
 for himself, and so he often made great mistakes and did 
 a great deal of harm. This was the case in his dealings 
 with the Puritan clergy, of whom, as it happened, he was 
 afraid. The reformers in Scotland had done away with 
 those ceremonies with which the English Puritans found 
 fault. They had done more. They had also done away 
 with bishops, and set up a Church which was governed 
 by assemblies of ministers and elders. These elders were 
 sometimes called presbyters, from a Greek word meaning 
 elder, and hence the Church they helped to govern was 
 called the Presbyterian Church. Now the archbishops 
 and bishops, who governed the English Church, were 
 appointed by the king, and so were men whom the king 
 could trust to carry out his wishes. But the elders and 
 ministers, who governed the Church of Scotland, had their 
 power from the people, and had often gone against the 
 king's wishes. James, therefore, now fancied that the 
 Puritan ministers in England were wishing to do away 
 with bishops and to get power into their own hands. So 
 although he let the questions in dispute between the 
 bishops and the Puritans be talked over in his presence 
 at Hampton Court, at the end he made no such changes 
 as would satisfy the Puritans, and even told the bishops 
 to be stricter with them than before. Nor when Parlia- 
 ment met, in 1604, would he let the members meddle in 
 any way in Church matters. But Parliament was not 
 content with what the king had done, and this question of 
 the treatment of Puritans became one of the questions 
 about which the king and his Parliaments could not agree. 
 5. Though the Parliament wished to do something for 
 the Puritans, it had no mercy on men who still clung to 
 the old Church. Not only was the Catholic faith held to 
 be harmful to the minds of men, but Catholics themselves 
 
1605. Gunpowder Plot. | 
 
 were looked upon as bad subjects. Some had plotted 
 against Elizabeth's life and government ; others had joined 
 the new Catholic order of Jesuits and gone 
 about the country in disguise, stirring up against 
 Catholics to keep firm to their faith. These Catholics. 
 Jesuits were much feared, for they were thought to be the 
 friends of the Pope and of the Catholic king Spam. 
 So it had come about that, while Elizabeth reigned, one 
 law after another had been made against Catholics. 
 Catholics who stayed away from church were heavily 
 fined ; those who hid priests in their houses were cast into 
 I prison. Many Jesuits and priests were put to death as 
 
 traitors because they would not deny that the Pope had a 
 right to meddle in England in matters which concerned 
 religion. • 
 
 6. Whether these laws were always fully carried out 
 depended much on the will of the king. The Parliament 
 and the king together made laws, but it was Gunpowder 
 the king and his officers who put them in ^^o^- 
 force. When James became king he did not wish to deal 
 harshly with Catholics. He knew that though some had 
 plotted against Elizabeth, yet that the greater number had 
 been true to her, and he thought that, if he showed 
 them mercy. Catholics would be obedient subjects to him- 
 self. But he had not reigned long when a plot was dis- 
 covered >\hich made the Parliament wish more than before 
 to see the king always put the laws in force. A band of 
 desperate men formed a plan of blowing up Parliament 
 House on November 5, 1605, when Parliament was to be 
 opened in state by the king. With this purpose they 
 hired a cellar under the Houses of Parliament, which they 
 filled with barrels of gunpowder hidden under bundles 
 of faggots. James' ministers found out something about 
 the plot, and on the evening of November 4, Guido, or 
 Guy, FawkQs was tak^n with a Intern in his hand, 
 
6 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1614- 
 
 keeping watch and ward amongst the faggots. Though 
 there were only some fifteen conspirators, yet all English 
 Catholics suffered because of their crime. For harsher 
 laws were passed against Catholics, and James for some 
 years to come put the laws in force. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE TREAlT. 
 
 I. James was not always a wise king, but in one thing he 
 was wiser than his neighbours. He was not fond of war, 
 and wished that Catholic and Protestant States could 
 learn to live in peace. England and Spain were at war 
 vvhvjn he came to the throne, but he very soon made 
 peace between them. Afterwards, in the year 1614, he 
 wanted to marry the Prince of Wales to the Infanta 
 The Span- Maria, a daughter of Philip III., the king of 
 ish Match. Spain. He thought that England and Spain, 
 if they acted together as friends, would be able to prevent 
 wars from breaking out on the Continent between Catho- 
 lics and Protestants. This scheme seemed to James very 
 clever, but it was really a great mistake. For PhiHp III., 
 king of Spain, was the head of the Catholic princes, and 
 he only cared to let the marriage be talked about in the 
 hope of getting James to agree not to put the laws in 
 force against Enghsh Catholics. Still, as time went on, 
 James did not find this out, but only set his heart more 
 and more on bringing this match about. 
 
 2. Rather than run the chance of quarrelling with the 
 king of Spain, James did an act which brought on him 
 Sir Walter ^^ scorn of his subjects. While Elizabeth 
 Raleigh. reigned Sir Walter Raleigh had won himself 
 a great name as courtier, traveller, coloniser, and historian. 
 But shortly after her death, he was mixed up in some 
 
I 
 
 1617. Sir Walter Raleigh. f 
 
 plot against James, and though there was little to show 
 that he had done anything wrong, he was sentenced to die 
 as a traitor (1603). James, however, did not cause Ra- 
 leigh to be put to death, but kept him a prisoner in the 
 Tower. 
 
 3. After thirteen yearL, had gone by Rale'j^, who was 
 weary of his long imprisonment, let it come to the king's 
 ear that near the river Orinoco in Guiana Raleigh's 
 there was a mine which, if worked, might " Q^iaiia 
 yield rich store of gold. James was poor 16x7. 
 and much in debt, and the thought of being the owner 
 of a gold-mine was very pleasant to him. So he let 
 Raleigh sail in command of a fleet of thirteen vessels to 
 seek the mine, but told him that he was on no account to 
 tight the Spaniards. But it was not easy to avoid fighting 
 the Spaniards, for they claimed the West India Islands 
 and all the continent of South America as their own, 
 and whenever the vessels of other nations came to make 
 discoveries or trade with the Indians, they attacked them 
 and murdered their crews. Raleigh knew this, but he knew 
 James too, and he thought that if only he brought back 
 gold he should be forgiven, even though he had fought the 
 Spaniards. When his fleet reached the Orinoco, Raleigh 
 sent a party of explorers up the country to seek for the 
 mine. He could not go himself, for he had fallen very ill, 
 but, along with others, he placed in command his son 
 Walter, and Keymis, a trusted friend, and he bade them 
 not to fight the Spaniards unless in self-defence. Now 
 the Spaniards had built a village, called St. Thomas, 
 on the Orinoco, made of stakes covered with leaves of 
 trees. They knew the English were coming, so they laid 
 an ambush and fell upon their camp by night. The 
 English fought bravely, and drove the Spaniards back, 
 and took possession of their village. But young Walter 
 Raleigh was killed in the fight. Then Keymis led a 
 
8 
 
 6 truggle against A bsolute Monarchy. 1 6 1 8. 
 
 party yet farther up the Orinoco in search for the mine. 
 But the Spaniards and Indians waylaid them and killed 
 
 ^ many. So Keymis' heart failed him, and he went back 
 
 to St. Thomas, and all the English returned to their 
 commander and their fleet. But first they set fire to the 
 vill«,ge, for they wished to be revenged on the Spaniards. 
 When this tale was told to Raleigh, he reproached 
 Keymis with bitter words, because he had not found out 
 the mine and brought back gold to shov/ the king. Then 
 Keymis, in despair, for he saw that ruin had befallen 
 both himself and his master, went into his cabin and 
 stabbed himself to the heart. But Raleigh came back to 
 England, and the sentence of death which had been 
 
 * passed against him fifteen years ago was carried out and 
 
 he was beheaded on the scaffold. And this James did to 
 please the king of Sgain. (i6i8). 
 
 4. Soon a war broke out between the Catholics and 
 Protestants on the Continent, and the worth of this 
 Thirty alliance with Spain, for which the king had 
 
 Years' War. jyg^ given Raleigh's head, was put to the test. 
 The war was called the Thirty Years' War from the length 
 of time which it lasted (16 18-1648). James's daughter, 
 Ehzabeth, had married, in 161 3, Frederic, the Prince of 
 the Palatinate, one of the states of the Empire, lying 
 along the Upper Rhine. This prince was the Protestant 
 leader who was most concerned in the war. For the 
 people of Bohemia, wishing a Protestant to reign over 
 them, had chosen him for their king instead of their 
 former king, Ferdinand, who was a Catholic. But Fer- 
 dinand, who was also Archduke of Austria and Emperor, 
 raised large armies and drove Frederic first out of 
 Bohemia and afterwards out of the Palatinate also. 
 Philip of Spain was related to Ferdinand. James, there- 
 fore, wished Philip to get Ferdinand to make peace 
 with the Protestants and give the Palatinate back to 
 
i()i8. The King aud the Parliament. _ 9 
 
 Frederic. Philip made fair promises, but all the time 
 his own armies were fighting on the side of the 
 Catholics. Meanwhile men in England complained 
 bitterly of their king's fondness for Spain. They would 
 have liked James to fight Spain and marry the Prince 
 to a Protestant lady, for they thought that a marriage 
 with a Catholic and a Spaniard would bring their country 
 into many dangers. The Parliament, therefore, through 
 dislike of the match, became very eager that James should 
 put the laws in force against Catholics, whilst James, lest 
 he should make Philip angry, would not do so. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE KING AND THE PARLIAMENT. 
 
 I. We have found the king and the Parliament holding 
 different opinions on three important questions : (i) the 
 treatment of Puritans, (2) the treatment of Powers of 
 Catholics, (3) the Spanish Marriage Treaty, the king. 
 When the king and the Parliament disagreed one or the 
 other must give way. It was a question which would be 
 stronger. Let us see what powers each held. 
 
 The power of the king was then much greater than it is 
 now. Queen Victoria only chooses as her ministers men 
 whom the Parliament is willing to support. The minis- 
 ters, thus chosen, carry on the government as the House 
 of Commons wishes, though in the name of the queen. 
 Parliament meets every year, and every year the minis- 
 ters have to explain what they have done to the rcpre« 
 sentatives of the people, and have to get their consent to 
 their acts. 
 
 James I. chose his ministers solely to please himself. 
 He expected them to carry out his wishes without heed- 
 ing the wishes of the Parliament. He never thought of 
 
lO Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1603- 
 
 explaining his acts to his Parliament, nor did he call 
 together a Parliament every year, but only when it 
 seemed good to himself. 
 
 2. But though James had a great deal of power, the 
 nation had rights and liberties to set against the powers 
 Rights of of the crown, (i) The king could make no 
 ihe people. j^^g without Consent of Parliament. (2) He 
 could take no taxes without consent of Parliament. (3) 
 He was bound to act according to the law ; for instance, 
 he could not put a subject into prison except according 
 to due course of law. From this right of the people not 
 to be taxed without their own consent it followed that 
 the House of Commons was able to control the king's 
 actions. The king had not money enough of his own to 
 pay for the expenses of his court and government ; so 
 when he wanted more money, as was often the case, he 
 had to call a Parliament and ask for a grant. Then the 
 Parliament, before giving him money, could ask him to do 
 something which they wanted to have done. 
 
 3. In the times of the Plantagenets the House of Lords 
 had far more power than the House of Commons. But 
 Position of it was the House of Commons which now took 
 the Com^'* the first place. For the members, who were 
 mons. generally merchants and country gentlemen, 
 now more than equalled the nobles in wealth, know- 
 ledge and influence. It was quite natural, therefore, that 
 the gentlemen who sat in the House of Commons should 
 form opinions of their own on affairs of state, and like to tell 
 the king if they though t he was going wrong. But it was also 
 natural that the king should think himself wiser than the 
 Commons, and dislike to have his actions talked about. 
 If the king and the Commons, therefore, were to work 
 together, it was needful that they should trust one another, 
 and have the same ideas of what were the right things to 
 do in dealing with the great questions of their day. 
 
1623. James Favourites. ^ ■ • n 
 
 But we have seen that James did not do what his 
 people wanted him to do. He thus began a struggle 
 which was to last for more than eighty years. The Stuart 
 kings, one after another, all tried to free themselves froni 
 the control of Parliament. Parliament, on its side, strove 
 to maintain its position, and force the king to submit his 
 wishes to its wishes. It is the course of this struggle 
 between king and Parliament which we shall have to follow. 
 
 4. The Commons used to beg James to set right what 
 they thought amiss in his government, and when they did 
 not get an answer they liked, gave him no ja„,„ ^^^ 
 money. James thought them very rude for h»s Pariia- 
 meddling. He wished to have as few meet- 
 ings of Parliament as possible ; so he began in one way 
 and another to take his subjects' money without first 
 asking their consent. Though in defence of his conduct 
 he could say that Elizabeth had sometimes done the same 
 thing, yet the people were not willing that he should do 
 as she had done. For they had trusted Elizabeth, and 
 knew that she spent their money well. They did not, 
 however, trust James, and each time Parliament met, it 
 became more than ever discontented with him. 
 
 5. Sir Francis Bacon, who was a ver>- learned man, 
 was one of James' ministers. He often gave the king good 
 advice. But James did not follow good advice; james* 
 
 he believed in his own wisdom and went his lavoumes. 
 own way, or else chose unworthy men to help him by 
 their counsel. The one of these favourites who got most 
 power was George Villiers, a young man whose handsome 
 face and pleasant manner first caught the king's fancy 
 (1615). Very soon James could refuse him nothing. Many 
 offices and honours were given him, as well as the title of 
 Duke of Buckingham. 
 
 6. Under the rule of these favourites, drunkenness, 
 l?riber)', and vice of all kinds was common at James* 
 
12 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1621-- 
 
 couft. Bacon himself, in spite of his learning, gave way 
 to the same ill deeds as those around him. He was Lord 
 Chancellor, and sat as judge in the Court of 
 inent of Chancery. In 162 1 the House of Commons 
 Bacon. impeached him, that is, accused him before 
 
 the House of Lords for having taken gifts from persons 
 over whose cases he had to sit as judge. The House of 
 Lords found him guilty of bribery and corruption, and 
 sentenced him to pay a large fine and never to hold office 
 again. Very likely Bacon did not look on these presents 
 as bribes, and did not give sentences in favour of those 
 who made him gifts. But it was a wrong thing for a 
 judge to take gifts at all. Bacon's own remark was : * I 
 was the justest judge that was in England these fifty 
 years, but it was the justest sentence in Parliament that 
 was these two hundred years.' 
 
 In the trial of Bacon the House of Commons acted the 
 part of accuser, the House of Lords the part of judge. 
 Two hundred years ago there had been like cases of im- 
 peachment. It was a great thing that this old practice 
 was again brought into use, for it opened a way by 
 which the Commons were able to force the king's minis- 
 ters to answer to Parliament for what they did. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 1623-1628. 
 
 THE RULE OF THE DUKE OF 
 BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1623-1626. A WAR POLICY. 
 
 I. The Duke of Buckingham lived with the king, and 
 with Charles, the Prince of Wales, as with familiar friends. 
 
1623. " Plans of Buckingham. 13 
 
 They called one nnother by nicknames, Buckingham 
 being ' Steenie,' the Prince of Wales * Baby g ^.^^ 
 Charles/ the king himself their * dear Dad and match 
 Gossip.' In i623,whenthe terms of the Spanish 
 marriage treaty were nearly agreed on, ' Steenie ' and 
 * Baby Charles' got James' leave and went to Spain in 
 disguise, meaning to bring back with them the bride 
 about whom there had been so much talk for the past eight 
 years. Philip IV., at that time king of Spain, received 
 them very graciously; but the wooing did not turn out 
 well in the end. The Infanta did not like Charles be- 
 cause he was a Protestant. Once when he jumped over 
 a wall into a garden where she was walking, the young 
 lady screamed and ran away. Moreover the Spanish 
 ministers did not care to bring the match about, unless 
 England was to be made a Catholic country. So now 
 they angered Charles by saying that the Infanta must 
 stay in Spain a year after the marriage, as a pledge 
 that James would get rid of the laws against English 
 Catholics. At the same time they would not do what 
 Charles wanted of them, and fight the Emperor in order 
 to win bacTc the Palatinate for Frederic, James' Pro- 
 testant son-in-law. So Charles and Buckingham came 
 back to England in an angry temper, forced James, to 
 his sorrow, to break off the treaty, and threatened Spain 
 with war. 
 
 2. Buckingham was bold, ambitious, and very sure 
 that he could do all he wished to do ; but he was ignorant, 
 headstrong, and not very clever. He was pjansof 
 now really the ruler of England. Charles was Bucking- 
 ready to follow him wherever he led the way, 
 and if James went against his wishes he scolded until the 
 old man yielded. So Buckingham thought he could do 
 what he chose, and he made many great plans. He 
 wanted to form alliances with France, Denmark, and 
 
14 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1624 
 
 Holland, punish Spain, send armies into Germany, and 
 get back the Palatinate for James' son-in-law. 
 
 3. Parliament met in February 1624, The Commons 
 wished the king to make war on Spain by sea ; so they 
 l.ast Parlia- Z^^^ him a grant of money. But it was under- 
 raent of stood that the money was not to be used for 
 
 sending armies into Germany, but for fitting 
 out a fleet. They also got a solemn promise from James 
 and Charles that if the Prince should marry a Catholic, 
 nothing should be said in the marriage treaty about the 
 English Catholics. These promises were not kept. An 
 army was raised and sent across the Channel to march 
 through Holland into Germany. About the same time 
 James and Charles agreed that the laws against the Eng- 
 lish Catholics should not be put into force, and on these 
 terms Charles in 1625 married Henrietta Maria, sister of 
 Lewis XI H., king of France. 
 
 4. In March 1625 James I. died, and Charles I. came 
 to the throne. Charles very speedily dissolved his two first 
 First parlia- Parliaments, for he found that the Commons 
 raents of would not givc him money. The Commons 
 
 refused because they had no trust in Buck- 
 ingham. Not only had he led the king to break his 
 word, but all his undertakings turned out ill. The 
 soldiers sent to Holland died of cold and hunger. A 
 fleet sent against Spain sailed into the harbour of Cadiz, 
 but afterwards came back without having fought an 
 enemy; on the voyage home the soldiers and sailors died 
 by hundreds through the bad food which had been given 
 them (1625). 
 
 5. In spite of this ill success, Buckingham was very sure 
 that he should win in the end, and Charles gave way to 
 War with ^im, SO neither of them thought of making 
 France. peace because the Parliament would not give 
 money. They had not broken their word to the Com- 
 
1 626. The Writ of Habeas Corpus, ' 15 
 
 mons without a reason. When they promised Lewis XIII. 
 not to put the laws in force against Catholics, they had 
 thought that he would aid them in the war in Germany ; 
 but now, as Lewis had not given them the aid they hoped 
 for, they were bold enough to find causes of quarrel with 
 him and to go to war with France (1626). 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THK PETITION OF RIGHT. 1627, 1628. 
 
 I. That he might be able to carry on this new war, 
 Charles tried to raise large sums of money without con- 
 sent of Parliament. He did so under pretence jj^^ ^^ 
 of a loan, though there was no chance that of Habeat 
 the lenders would ever get their money back 
 again. The tax was called a forced loan, for men 
 who refused to lend the king money were thrown into 
 prison. Now as there were Acts of Parliament forbidding 
 the king to take his subjects' money at his pleasure, so 
 there were Acts of Parliament forbidding him to shut 
 his subjects up in prison at his pleasure. The Great 
 Charter, granted by King John, had said that no free- 
 man should be sent to prison save by the law of 
 the land. When, therefore, any person was sent to 
 prison, a warrant stating his offence was given to his 
 gaoler. The prisoner or his friends could then ask the 
 judges of the Court of King's Bench for a writ of Habeas 
 Corpus. These words, meaning ' produce the body/ 
 were ihe first words of the writ, which was simply an 
 order to the gaoler bidding him bring his prisoner and 
 the warrant before the Court. Then the judges, after they 
 had seen what offence was named in the warrant, would 
 either send the prisoner back to prison, there to await the 
 
1 6 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1627- 
 
 time of his trial, or set him at liberty, if he promised to 
 come and answer to his charge at the time of trial. If 
 the prisoner was sent back to prison, he could ask the 
 judges to name a day for his trial, so that he could not 
 be kept shut up for a very long time. 
 
 2. Five gentlemen whom Charles sent to prison for re- 
 fusing to pay the loan money got a writ of Habeas Corpus^ 
 Imprison- ^nd JO Came before the Court of King's Bench. 
 ment with- fhe judsres looked at the warrant brought by 
 
 out cause jo o j 
 
 siven. the gaolcr, and found that they were sent to 
 
 prison by the king's order, but that no cause was given. 
 What then were the judges to do ? As no reason was set 
 iown on the warrant, they could not tell whether they 
 ought to set the prisoners at liberty or send them back 
 to prison. What was even worse, the prisoners could 
 not get any day named for their trial. 
 
 The lawyers who pleaded for the prisoners said that, 
 since no cause of imprisonment was given, they ought to 
 be set at liberty ; otherwise the king might keep them 
 shut up in prison till the day of their death. This, they 
 said, was contrary to the Great Charter, and did away 
 with the liberties of Englishmen. The court was crowded 
 with listeners, who clapped their hands and shouted ap- 
 plause when they heard the lawyers say things like this. 
 
 But the lawyers who pleaded on Charles' side said 
 that kings of England had often sent men to prison with- 
 out giving any reason, and that what former kings had 
 done, Charles might also do. It was true that former 
 kings had done so, and in times of danger when there 
 were fears of plots, as at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, 
 it might be needful to imprison m*-*" without giving a 
 reason. But this now seemed an unlawful thing for 
 Charles to do, because it was not men who were plotting 
 against him whom he shut up, but good subjects wW* 
 refused to give him money to which he had no rieht 
 
■«»" 
 
 .1628. The Petition of Right, jy 
 
 The Judges, however, did not set the five gentlemen 
 at liberty, but sent them back to prison ; for they were 
 afraid of angering the King. 
 
 3. Buckingham sailed with a large fleet in 1627 to the 
 west coast of France, and landed on the island of Rh^ ; 
 but after staying a few months on the island Expedition 
 he had to sail home again, because he was to the isle 
 short of supplies, and had lost many of his 
 
 men. 
 
 4. Buckingham had persuaded the Protestant town of 
 La Rochelle, lying on the mainland opposite the Island 
 of Rh^, to take part with the English. Charles Charles' 
 felt in honour bound to help this town, which [iameiur 
 was now being closely besieged by Lewis. So, 1628. 
 
 in hope of getting a grant of money, he first let out of 
 prison the refusers of the loan money, and afterwards 
 called his third Parliament (1628). The Commons had 
 many things to complain of, but these three things above 
 all others : — the forced loan ; the imprisonments without 
 cause given ; the refusal of the judges to set the prisoners 
 at liberty. One of the chief men in the house was Sir 
 John Eliot, and he spoke out like a man for the liberties 
 of Englishmen. * Upon this dispute,' he said, * not alone 
 our lands and goods are engaged, but all that we call 
 ours. These rights^ these privileges, which made our 
 fathers freemen, are in question. If they be not the more 
 carefully preserved, they will, I fear, render us less free, 
 less worthy than our fathers.' Sir Thomas Wentworth 
 was also a chief man in the house, and a good speaker. 
 He wanted, however, to get a great name and power for 
 himself, and he cared less about tho liberties of England 
 than Eliot. As he did not hke the wars with France and 
 Spain, he now spoke against ^he unlawful means by 
 which Charles had got together money to carry them on. 
 * What is it,' he said, * that we have to make sure .'' New 
 
i8 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1628. 
 
 things ? No ; our ancient, sober, and vital liberties, by 
 strengthening the laws of our ancestors, by setting such 
 a stamp upon them that no lawless spirit shall dare 
 hereafter to invade them.' 
 
 5. The Commons after hstening to words like these 
 drew up a new law. It was called a Petition of Right, 
 ■niePetition a^^d was meant not to get them new liberties, 
 of Right. but to be a guard round the old. This peti- 
 tion asked the king to say : — 
 
 (i.) That no freeman should have to pay any loan, tax, 
 or such-like charge without common consent by Act of 
 Parliament. • , ii.,... ,;??► 
 
 (2.) That no freeman should be sent to prison without 
 a cause being shown. : r*. , , 
 
 The House of Lords agreed to the petition, and 
 Charles gave it the royal assent. In return the Parlia- 
 ment gave him a grant of money, and the Session was 
 afterwards brought to an end. .. y^' 
 
 6. In August, 1628, Buckingham was about to sail 
 with a fleet to Rochelle, when a man named Felton 
 
 stabbed him to the heart. For this murder 
 Bucking- Fclton was tried and hanged ; but the people 
 
 ™" rejoiced at the duke's death, and looked on 
 
 Felton as a martyr. 
 
 The fleet sailed, but could not make its way into the 
 harbour of Rochelle ; so, after thousands had died of 
 hunger, the city surrendered to Lewis. Nor was this the 
 only place which had looked to Charles and Buckingham 
 for help, and had found that they could do nothing. The 
 King of Denmark had been promised a large sum of 
 money to help him in making war against the Catholics 
 in Germany ; but no money was sent, and he was beaten 
 in war. ' . 
 
 After Buckingham's ^eath Charles made peace, first 
 with France in 1629, and then with Spain in 1630. 
 
1629. Dissolution of Parliament in \t2<), 19 
 
 -i 
 
 .,^ BOOK III. 
 
 ■ 1629-1640. 
 
 GOVERNMENT WITHOUT PARLIA- 
 MENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT IN 1 629. 
 
 I. Though the Petition of Right had been passed, and 
 though Buckingham was dead, yet the king and the 
 Commons could not agree better than they Customs 
 had done before. They disputed about the duties. 
 meaning of the Petition of Right. The Commons said 
 that the king henceforth could take no taxes without 
 consent of Parliament. But it happened that the customs 
 duties, that is, taxes laid on goods sent out of or brought 
 into the country, had not been mentioned by name in 
 the petition. So Charles said that he still had a right to 
 take these duties without consent of Parliament. 
 
 2. There was a second question about which the king 
 and the Commons could not agree. It was a very important 
 one. We saw that when James came to tho High 
 throne he persecuted Puritans, and would not am? CaMn- 
 let the Parliament make laws to set right what »sts. 
 they thought amiss in the Church. Since that time new 
 differences had arisen between the bishops and the Com- 
 mons. At first they had only disagreed about the treat- 
 ment of Puritans. Afterwards they began to disagree 
 about matters of religious belief. The English prayer- 
 book had much in it which was the same as the service 
 book of the old Church ; it had also many things which 
 
 C 2 
 
3b Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1629. 
 
 were put in it at the time of the Reformation. During 
 the last thirty years new teachers had arisen in England, 
 who seemed to wish to look only at those things in the 
 prayer-book which were like the old service book, and so 
 were like the beliefs held by the Church of Rome. They 
 seemed to wish to pass over all the changes that had 
 been made and hold them to be but small. Most Eng- 
 lishmen thought that the changes made at the Reforma- 
 tion were great and important changes, and they did not 
 like these new teachers. But the king listened to them 
 gladly, and made some of them bishops, so that they had 
 great power over the Church. These new teachers we 
 should now call High-churchmen. Those who were 
 against them were then called Calvinists, because they 
 held the beliefs of the reformer Calvin, who in the last 
 century had set up a Protestant Church at Geneva. 
 
 It was thought to be part of the duty of the Govern- 
 ment to put down all false doctrine. No books might 
 be published except such as got the leave of the king's 
 ministers. The High- churchmen, therefore, wished that 
 the king should forbid the Calvinists to teach and preach, 
 while the Calvinists wished that the king should forbid 
 the High-churchmen to teach and preach. 
 
 Charles would have done well if he had not taken the 
 side of either of these two parties ; but he was drawn to 
 the side of the High-churchmen. In all the disputes 
 which had arisen between 'himself and the Commons they 
 had taken his part, trying to set up the royal power, and 
 pull down the power of Parliaments. Kings, they said, 
 were given their power by God ; subjects, therefore, 
 ought to obey their prince's commands, even though they 
 were contrary to Acts of Parliament. It was partly be- 
 cause the High-churchmen said things like this in books 
 and sermons that the Commons wished so much to put 
 them to silence, for they believed that those men were 
 
1629. 'V The King's Declaration, ii 
 
 most true to their king who obeyed the laws and would 
 not pay unlawful taxes. 
 
 3. Shortly before Parliament met again in 1629, Charles 
 published a declaration which still stands in the Prayer- 
 book, in front of the Articles. In this he The King's 
 said that henceforth no man, whether High- declaration, 
 churchman or Calvinist, was to preach or write on doc- 
 trines about which men did not agree. Perhaps Charles 
 thought this was fair to both parties, but it was not really 
 so. The men who would judge what was right to preach 
 and what was not were the bishops. These were High- 
 churchmen who would be on the side of those who 
 preached what they themselves believed. 
 
 4. So, when Parliament met again, the discord was 
 greater than ever. The Commons called on the king to 
 forbid the High-churchmen to preach and Dissolution 
 write, and leave their own friends, the Calvin- of Parlia- 
 ists, at liberty to preach and write what they 
 pleased. They also said that the Petition of Right had 
 been broken because the customs-duties were taken with- 
 out consent of Parliament. One day the Speaker, who 
 was the king's friend, wanted to leave the house rather than 
 let the members pass a vote against the taking of customs- 
 duties not granted by Parliament. Two members held 
 him down by force in his chair, while a third called out, 
 * that they were traitors who should bring in changes in 
 religion, or who should take or pay customs-duties not 
 granted by Parliament.' 'Aye, aye,' members shouted 
 on all sides, and then left the House amidst noise and 
 confusion. After this Charles dissolved the Parliament, 
 and made up his mind not to call another for a long time 
 to come. 
 
 •> i 
 
32 Struggle agatvst Absolute Monarchy. 1629- 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LAUD AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 I. Charles I. was a loving husband and father, and lived 
 very happily with his wife and children. He was fond ot 
 collecting pictures, statues, and other works of art. Of 
 Character books he knew quite as much as most gentle- 
 of Charles L xci&Ci of his time. He was very attentive to 
 business. But though Charles was neither ignorant, nor 
 lazy, nor stupid, he would never make a good king. He 
 kept too much to his own opinions, and would not 
 listen to others nor trust them. He did not care about 
 being liked by his subjects. His chief care was to make 
 himself obeyed. He knew that Elizabeth had ruled very 
 much as she liked and he meant to do the same. He 
 quite forgot that Elizabeth had sought the good-will of 
 her subjects, who obeyed her because she did what they 
 wanted to be done. 
 
 2. The minister whom Charles trusted to govern the 
 Church was Laud, Bishop of London, who, in 1633, was 
 The views made Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud was 
 of Laud. tj^g leader of the High-church party, whom the 
 Commons had wished to put to silence. He was a Httle 
 man, very active, and very earnest, but without pity for 
 those who did not think as he did or do as he told them. 
 He had a good deal of learning, and was willing to let 
 learned men hold opinions of their own ; but he despised 
 the people too much to think that they could judge for 
 themselves what was true or false in religion. Laud 
 also was in favour of forms and ceremonies. He did 
 not like that each man should do what was right in his 
 own eyes. All must do alike. Each minister must bow his 
 head when he read the name of Jesus. None must take 
 the sacrament sitting, as many men then did, but each 
 
t640. ' -. Land and the Puritans. 23 
 
 man on his knees. Ministers and congregations must be 
 encouraged to adorn their churches with painted windows, 
 images, and crosses, to set up ahars and perform cere- 
 monies for long unknown in Protestant England. 
 
 3. The Calvinists thought very differently from Laud. 
 It did not seem to them that the meanest man, woman, 
 or child was too ignorant to understand all xhe views 
 that had to do with his happiness or misery of the 
 
 in another world. They disliked ceremonies, 
 and would as soon have worshipped in a barn as in a 
 cathedral. God, they said, did not live in temples made 
 with hands. His temple was the heart of the worshipper. 
 They did not care about order, nor could the service be 
 too simple to please them. 
 
 4. It became common to call all persons Puritans who 
 did not like the changes which Laud and his friends were 
 bringing in. Many more people, therefore, caivinists 
 were nov/ called Puritans than in the time of cai'ed I'uri- 
 James I. They were of all classes —gentlemen, 
 farmers, and artisans. They were remarkable for living 
 a serious and quiet life, setting their faces against the 
 fashionable vices of their day — ^drinking, swearing, and 
 gambling. Amongst the Puritans were found men who 
 held very strict notions of the kind of life they ought to 
 lead. They saw sin and vice mixed up with the amuse- 
 ments and pleasures of the world, so they called all 
 pleasures and amusements sinful. They dressed in plain 
 black clothes, and cut their hair short, to mark them- 
 selves distinct from the men of the world, who dressed 
 gaily in velvets, and lace, and satin. They went too far 
 in what they thought they ought to do, and judged other 
 men too hardly ; but they were quite honest, and ready to 
 suffer much rather than do anything which they thought 
 wrong. 
 
 We have seen what different -opinions Laud and the 
 
24 Struggle against A hsolnte Monarchy. 1629^ 
 
 Puritans held. The Puritans looked on Laud as little 
 else than a Papisi: in disguise. Laud looked on the Puri- 
 tans as men who disturbed the peace of the Church. 
 Now that the Parliament was gone he was master, and 
 he set to work to model churches, services, ministers and 
 worshippers all after his own plan. 
 
 5. Laud had means by which he was able to force the 
 Puritans to do as he wished. The Act of Supremacy, 
 Courts of passed in 1558, made Queen Elizabeth chief 
 High Com- ruler of the Church of England in place of the 
 
 mission x^ T 1 t 
 
 and Star Popc. It also gave her power to set up corn- 
 Chamber, missioners for the punishment of those who 
 separated from the Church. These commissioners formed 
 what was called the Court of High Commission. They 
 now turned out of his living the minister who did not 
 bow when he read the name of Jesus, or preached on for- 
 bidden doctrines. The layman who kept his hat on in 
 church, or would not take the sacrament on his knees, 
 they fined, or perhaps put in prison. A second court 
 punished more severely than the High Commission. It 
 was called the Star Chamber, because the walls of the 
 room at Westminster in which it sat were painted with 
 stars. This court had been set up in the reign of Henry 
 VIL to try men who were too powerful to be brought to 
 trial in the other courts. Its powers were now turned 
 against the Puritans or any others who, by anything they 
 said, or did, or wrote, displeased the king and his 
 ministers. The judges were the king's ministers, Laud 
 himself being one of them. Men were fined by the Star 
 Chamber, or put in prison, or whipped through the 
 streets, or branded with hot irons, or their ears were cut 
 off. When these sentences were carried out, the people, 
 who thought the sufferers were in the right, and felt great 
 pity for them, would stain handkerchiefs in their blood as 
 in the blood of martyrs. 
 
1640. Sir Thomas VVentivorth. '"'" 25 
 
 6. When the Puritans saw how strange ceremonies 
 were brought into the services of the EngHsh Church, and 
 how the king no longer called together Parlia puritans in 
 ments, they thought that the Catholic faith New Eng- 
 would be set up in England, and that the old 
 liberties of Englishmen would be taken away by the 
 king. So many thousands sailed across the Atlantic to 
 the coast of North America. There they settled in a land 
 which they called * New England,' where they governed 
 themselves and worshipped God in their own way. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH. 
 
 I. Besides Laud, Charles had another councillor whom 
 he trusted. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, now Lord 
 Wentworth, and afterwards Earl of Strafford, sir Thomas 
 Wentworth was a tall, dark man, with a com- Wentworth. 
 manding voice and manner. In 1628 he had joined with 
 Eliot in getting the king to give his consent to the Peti- 
 tion of Right, because he thought Buckingham ruled very 
 badly. But since Buckingham's death he had himself 
 become a minister of the king, and now his chief desire 
 was to make Charles powerful in all things, and free him 
 from his subjects' control. Wentworth had a great belief 
 in himself and in his own wisdom, and looked down upon 
 the members of the House of Commons, thinking that if 
 the king always had to follow their wishes, the country 
 would never be well or wisely ruled. As to Parliaments, 
 Wentworth did not wish to do away with them ; they 
 might in an humble manner lay their wishes before the 
 king, but they were not to make their grants of money 
 depend on getting what they wanted. Until the gentle- 
 
$6 Struggle against ^bsohite Monarchy, 1633. 
 
 men of England should have learned to obey, Wentworth 
 did not counsel Charles to call a Parliament together. 
 
 2. Now Wentworth was proud and would have his own 
 way ; and he did many harsh and unjust acts in carrying 
 Wentworth out his ends. So he was soon much hated by 
 111 Ireland, j^g people. Neither was he liked by his fellow 
 ministers and men atthe king^s court. For he set his face 
 against those who wasted the king's money, and left the 
 king poor while they themselves grew rich. Wentworth, 
 however, did not stay long in England. In 1633 he went 
 to Ireland to rule that country as Lord Deputy. There 
 it was more easy for him to get men to yield to him than 
 in England; for the native population of Irish Catholics 
 and the English and Scottish Protestants, who had settled 
 in Ireland, hated one another, and did not wish for the 
 same things, so that they could not act together as Eng- 
 lishmen did. Moreover in Ireland Wentworth acted as 
 king in place of Charles, and thus he had more power in 
 his hands than in England. He did not let his officers 
 take the king's money. He kept strict order throughout 
 the country, and did not let the rich man wrong the poor 
 man. He even called a Parliament and got a grant of 
 money. But the people, though they could not resist the 
 deputy, yet hated him. For he broke his faith with the 
 Parliament, ill-treated those who offended him, and cared 
 not how unjustly or harshly he acted, so long as he made 
 all men obey his will. 
 
 3. While Wentworth was trying to make the power of 
 the king greater than it had ever been before, Eliot was 
 Eliot in standing up in the cause of the Parliament, 
 tke Tower. j|g ^nd some of his friends were accused by 
 Charles of having caused a riot in the House of Commons 
 on the day when the Speaker was held down in his chair. 
 The judges said that they must pay fines and stay in prison 
 so long as it should please the king. One by one, as they 
 
i634- ^^^P Money Trial of Hampden. 2f 
 
 owned their fault and prayed for pardon, Charles let them 
 be set at liberty. But Eliot would not give way. A future 
 Parliament alone, he said, could judge whether anything 
 he had said or done had been to blame. The judges had 
 no right to meddle in the matter ; for if members could 
 be brought to punishment by the king for what they said 
 or did within Parliament House they would be afraid to 
 say what they really thought. Then Parliaments would 
 soon cease to be free, and would be no longer able to 
 stand against the king, if he ruled contrary to the laws 
 and liberties of the country. 
 
 After Eliot had been a prisoner in the Tower about 
 three years (1629-1632) he fell very ill, and sent to the 
 king asking that he might be set at liberty until he got 
 back his health. But Charles chose that the man who 
 would not give way should die, and not long afterwards 
 Eliot died in the Tower (1632). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SHIP MONEY AND THE TRIAL OF HAMPDEN, 1634-1640. 
 
 I. Charles had no money with which to build ships to 
 protect the coasts. So pirates did much harm to trade, 
 while the Turks, from Algiers in Africa, used yearly to 
 carry off hundreds of fishermen as slaves. Charles 
 wished to put an end to this state of things. He was 
 also thinking of joining Spain in making war on France. 
 His difficulty was to get money for raising a 
 navy, without calling a parliament. In times 'P»"on«y- 
 of danger, as for instance when the Armada sailed against 
 Englf.nd, the king had called on the port towns to send 
 him vessels for defence of the ki?igdom. Charles thought 
 he could not do better than follow this example (1634). 
 
28 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1635- 
 
 Afterwards he went farther and did what former kingtt 
 had not done. Every year he made every county 0/ 
 England and Wales give him money, called ship-money, 
 for raising a navy, for guard of the seas. 
 
 2. Men paid the new tax very unwillingly, because 
 there was no real or sudden danger which made it needful 
 for the king to take money without first asking leave of 
 Parliament. One of those who would not pay was John 
 Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire. The case 
 Trial of between him and the king was tried before the 
 Hampden. twelve judges at Westminster. Two of them 
 said boldly that many Acts of Parliament, and, above all, 
 the Petition of Right, had taken aAray from the king the 
 
 > power of raising taxes without consent of Parliament. 
 But others said that Acts of Parliament could not bind 
 the king, and that, therefore, when he thought it needful, 
 he might take taxes at his pleasure. As seven judges 
 were for the king and only five for Hampden, ship money 
 was thus declared to be a lawful tax (1638). 
 
 3. The king had always had rights and powers of his 
 own, which lawyers called his royal prerogative. But 
 The prero- Until now the right to set aside Acts of Par- 
 aboveth'e liament, whenever he thought it needful to 
 law. do so, had not been counted one of them. 
 No one would have said so in the days of Elizabeth. 
 The notion had grown up by degrees, under the rule 
 of James and Charles. The High-churchmen said that 
 
 r kings had their power from God, and that their power 
 was above Acts of Parliament, just as divine things are 
 above human things. Lawyers, who looked to the king 
 to give them places, said the same kind of things in 
 courts of law, and thus at last the judges laid it down as 
 part of the law that no Acts of Parliament could bind the 
 king. Henceforth, therefore, Charles could set aside the 
 laws if he thought it necdkil. 
 
 \: 
 
1640. Rebellion in Scotland 2^ 
 
 The people saw clearly that this view of the judges 
 put an end to their liberties, and they would not pay it any 
 respect. The judges, they said, had explained the law 
 wrongly, and given false judgment to please the king. 
 There was much reason in what the people said. Charles 
 had the power of placing judges in office and turning them 
 out of office at his pleasure. He had set up as judges 
 men who thought as he did himself, and the people did 
 not trust them. 
 
 4. We have seen that England was discontented ; we 
 have seen also that Ireland was discontented. We must 
 now look at Scotland and see what was passing there. 
 Laud wished to change the Church of Scotland and 
 make it like the Church of England. He did not heed 
 that the Scots did not like the Church to be Rebellion in 
 ruled by bishops and looked on many of the Scotland, 
 ceremonies in use in the English Church as superstitions. 
 On the day when a pr.iyer-book, like the Knglish prayer- 
 book, was ordered to be read in all churches in Scotland, 
 a riot broke out in Edinburgh (1637). Soon the whole 
 country rose against the changes, and the people began 
 to arm to force the king to give way to their wishes. If 
 Charles had had plenty of money, and even a small stand- 
 ing army, he might have put down the Scots. But he had 
 no money, while his soldiers were only peasants and 
 artisans who were pressed into his service. These 
 looked on the Scots as friends, for, like them, they hated 
 Laud. They killed their officers if they thought them to 
 be Catholics, and ran away by hundreds. In the spring 
 of 1640, Charles called a Parliament, and dissolved it 
 in three weeks, because it would not give him money at 
 once. The same year the Scots crossed the border and 
 marched into Yorkshire. Charles was there with an 
 army ; but it was an army of unwilling soldiers who did 
 not care to fight. The Scots and the English knew that 
 
30 Struggle against Absolute Mo ft arc hy. 1640. 
 
 their cause was one, so they both began to call on the 
 king to summon a Parliament in England. Charles liad 
 to give way, and in November, 1640, the Long Parlia- 
 ment met. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 1 640- 1 649. 
 
 THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND THE 
 
 CIVIL WAR. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD, 1640-164I. 
 
 I. The Long Parliament is one of the most celebrated 
 of all Parliaments which have ever met in England. It 
 The Long ^^^ ^^ turning point of Charles' reign. Up 
 Parliament, to this time he had been growing stronger ; 
 but this Parliament broke the king's power, so that it 
 was never again what it had been before, and from this 
 time forward no king could set aside the laws as Charles 
 had done. 
 
 2. After the rebellion broke out in Scotland, Went- 
 worth came back to England, and Charles made him 
 , ^ ^ Earl ot Strafford. Strafford knew that his 
 inent of friends were few and his foes many, so he 
 Strafford. thought that it would be better if he stayed 
 away from London at the opening of Parliament. But 
 Charles did not like to be without his minister's help. He 
 therefore bade Strafford come, saying that * as he was king 
 of England, the Parliament should not touch a hair of his 
 head.' So Strafford came to stand by his master and help 
 him to keep the members of the Parliament in due awe. 
 
1 64 1. The Trial of Strafford. 31 
 
 But the members very well knew that they had no enemy 
 so able and so dangerous as Strafford. On the day after he 
 came to London the House of Commons went in a body to 
 the House of Lords, and there impeached him of high 
 treason. His trial in Westminster Hall lasted many 
 days. The members of the House of Lords were there as 
 judges, and the members of the Commons as accusers. 
 The king and queen sat apart in a little gallery with a 
 curtain in front of it, but the king with his own hand tore 
 down the curtain, that he might the better hear and see 
 what passed beneath. 
 
 Strafford was accused of having tried to destroy the 
 laws and liberties of his countiy, and of having been an 
 enemy to Parliaments, and having done many things con- 
 trary to the law both in Ireland and in England, and for 
 these offences he was charged with high treason. Straf- 
 ford defended himself very ably, but it was not possible 
 that he should defend himself so as to satisfy his accusers. 
 They had no pity for him. For he had been Charles' 
 chief adviser while Charles ruled without Parliaments, 
 and while many cruel and unjust acts were done in 
 Charles' name. For this the Commons wished to put 
 him to death, that others might learn not to do like him. 
 
 3. The Commons were fearful lest Charles should find 
 some way of getting Strafford out of the Tower, and saving 
 his life. So, to hasten on his death, they passed pjj, ^^ 
 a bill through their House which condemned Attainder, 
 him to die as a traitor. Such bills, condemning men to 
 die, were called Bills of Attaitider^ because every traitor 
 or felon, against whom sentence of death is pronounced, 
 is said to be attainted, or stained. The bill which 
 attainted Strafford was sent to the House of Lords, 
 where it was passed also ; for it was easier to pass a biU 
 declaring Strafford to be a traitor than to go on sitting 
 as judges over his acts one by one. The king's consent 
 
3fc Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1641. 
 
 was still needful to make the bill law. Charles felt that 
 he would be doing an evil deed if he took part in 
 Strafford's death, for he believed that in all things Straf- 
 ford had served him well and faithfully. But he was in 
 great fear and misery, and knew not what to do. An 
 angry crowd gathered round the palace at Whitehall, 
 shouting for justice on traitors. His wife, frightened at 
 the noise, pressed him to pass the bill. His councillors 
 told him it was his duty to please his Parliament. There 
 came a letter to him from Strafford himself, bidding him 
 no longer delay to make his peace with his people. 
 * Sire,' it said, * my consent shall more acquit you herein 
 to God than all the world can do beside. To a willing 
 man there is no injury done.' So Charles gave his con- 
 sent to the bill ; but when this was told to Strafford he 
 exclaimed, * Put not your trust in princes nor in the sons 
 of men, for in them there is no salvation.' He was be- 
 headed the next day (1641). 
 
 4 The Parliament wished to take from Charles the 
 
 means of ever ruling again as he had ruled 
 
 while Strafford was his minister. So they got 
 
 him to consent to many new laws, of which these were 
 
 the chief : — 
 
 (i). The Triennial Act, requiring that a new Parha- 
 ment should meet at least once every three years, and 
 that if the king did not call a Parliament together, still 
 the members should be elected, and the Parhament 
 meet all the same. 
 
 (2). An act forbidding the king to take customs duties 
 without consent of Parliament. 
 
 (3). An act saying that the raising of ship money was 
 contrary to the laws and liberties of the kingdom and the 
 Petition of Right, and that the judgment given in Hamp- 
 den's case was against the law. 
 
 ^4). An act doing away with the Court of Star Chamber. 
 
1 64 1. The Plans of Charles. 33 
 
 (5). An act doing away with the Court of High Com- 
 mission. • ' 
 
 5. Laud, like Strafford, was impeached of high treason, 
 and, though not brought to trial, was kept a prisoner 
 in the Tower. His work was undone, as far as puntans in 
 might be. Forms and ceremonies in public power, 
 worship were again neglected ; crucifixes, images, and 
 other ornaments were torn down from churches and 
 often broken to pieces. Nor did the desire of change stop 
 merely at undoing what Laud had done. The bishops 
 had made such a harsh use of their power, that many 
 Puritans now wished to do away with bishops altogether^ 
 and to set up in their stead assemblies of ministers and 
 elders to rule the Church. These Presbyterians were very 
 numerous in London and other towns, and many mem- 
 bers of Parliament were on their side. Still it was very 
 doubtful whether they would be able to get what they 
 wanted, for there were many who thought that enough had 
 been done, and did not wish for further change. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE, AND IMPEACHMENT OF 
 THE FIVE MEMBERS. ( 1 64 1- 1 642.) 
 
 I. If Charles kept the new laws faithfully, he could never 
 rule again as he had ruled before. He would have to 
 meet Parliament regularly. He would have to ^j^^ lansof 
 get money only with the consent of the House Charles. 
 of Commons. There would be no High Commission and 
 no Star Chamber to put down men who found fault with 
 what he did. In short Charles would have to rule as the 
 House of Commons wished. 
 
 Charles, though he had passed the new laws, did not 
 E,H. D 
 
34 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1641. 
 
 mean to follow the wishes of the House of Commons. He 
 might perhaps keep the laws until they stood in his way; 
 then he would find some means of setting them aside, 
 just as he had set aside the Petition of Right. His wish in 
 the first place was to get rid of the present Parliament. 
 He could not dissolve it at his own will. At the time of 
 Strafford's trial he had agreed to a plan to bring up 
 armed men to London, who would set Strafford free and 
 keep the Parliament in order. This plan had become 
 known to the Parliament, which got Charles to consent to 
 a law, saying that this Parhament should not be dissolved 
 without its own consent. Charles was now at a loss how 
 to get the Parliament to dissolve itself Sometimes he 
 thought of making the leaders of the Commons his minis- 
 ters, in the hope that they would help him to bring about 
 a dissolution ; but when he found that, even if he made 
 them his ministers, they yet would never obey his will, he 
 made up his mind to accuse them of treason. For when 
 its leaders were in prison, or dead, he hoped to be able 
 easily to rid himself of the Parliament, and get again all 
 the power which he had lost. 
 
 2. John Pym Was looked up to as the chief leader of 
 the House of Commons. He had sat in many Parlia- 
 ^ ments, and was now more than fifty years old. 
 
 He had a strong head and a strong body, and 
 could work, if needful, all the day and half the night as 
 well. He spoke well, so that men listened eagerly to his 
 words and believed in them. In time of danger he was 
 never frightened, but always saw the best course to take 
 and how best to calm the fears of others. 
 
 Pym knew well that dangers were soon to come, for, 
 though he could not tell exactly what the king's plans 
 were, he felt sure that by force or fraud Charles would 
 undo all that Parliament had done, unless some way were 
 tound to prevent him. So Pym wished that councillors, 
 
1 64 1. T^he Grand Remonstrance. • 35 
 
 judges, and all officers of state should be set up by the 
 Parliament and not by the king. Then these would be 
 men whom the Parliament could trust, and though they 
 would still rule in the name of the king they would follow 
 the wishes of the House of Commons. 
 
 3. A party friendly to the king was forming both in the 
 Parliament and amongst the people. Some men thought 
 that Charles would keep faithfully the laws ^ Royalist 
 which he had passed, whilst others were party, 
 against the changes which the Presbyterians wanted to 
 make in the Church. So all these stood together in op- 
 posing Pym^ 
 
 4. In the summer of 1641 Charles went to Scotland 
 and gave the Scots all they asked for, thinking that when 
 Scotland was quiet and content he should Rebellion 
 better be able to carry out his plans in Eng- in Ireland, 
 land. While he was still away, terrible tidings came from 
 Ireland. The Irish Catholics had risen in arms and killed 
 the Protestant settlers men, women, and children. Many 
 men in England thought that Charles had been seeking 
 friends in Ireland amongst the Catholics, and had had 
 a hand in this rising, so now they were more fearful of 
 trusting him than before. 
 
 5. Pym sought a way of telling the nation that no faith 
 could b<- placed in Charles. A long remonstrance, called 
 the Grand Remonstrance, was brought into the ^. p . 
 House of Commons. This drew a black picture Remon- 
 
 of Charles' government since he first came to s**^-*- 
 the throne. Then it told of the good laws which the 
 Parliament had made, and said that henceforth the king's 
 ministers must be men in whom the Parliament could 
 trust. There was much talk in the House of Commons 
 between the friends of Charles and the followers of Pym 
 about the passing of this remonstrance. Parliament used 
 then to sit only in the day-time ; but they talked about 
 
 U 2 
 
.f- 
 
 36 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1641. 
 
 the remonstrance till past midnight. When at last the 
 remonstrance was passed, a member asked that it should 
 be printed, and thus put into the hands of the people. 
 When the king's friends answered him angrily, words 
 ran very high, and sword hilts were handled. Hampden 
 spoke a few words which calmed the tumult, and the 
 House broke up for that time (November, T641); but after- 
 wards the remonstrance was printed, and the people 
 were thus told that the Commons had no trust in the 
 king. 
 
 6. When Charles came back to London, there gathered 
 round him at Whitehall some five hundred gentlemen as 
 Impeach- a guard to his person The Parliament had a 
 five"m«n^^ guard of London citizens, which the king took 
 bers. away. The Commons felt fearful of danger, 
 
 so they asked the king to let them have their guard back 
 again. Charles would not do this, but told them that 
 their safety was as much his care as the safety of his 
 children. The same day the king's law officer, the 
 Attorney-General, came into the House of Lords, and im- 
 peached of high treason one member of the Lords and 
 five members of the Commons, including Pym and 
 Hampden. Lords and Commons alike refused to give 
 up the accused members. The next morning there was 
 a stir and bustle at Whitehall, where the king's guard 
 were arming and collecting together, for the king was 
 about to march to the House of Commons and take the 
 five members out by force. The queen urged him on. 
 * Go, coward,' said she, * pull those rogues out by the 
 ears ! ' A friend brought the tidings in haste to the Com- 
 mons, and the five members left their seats and fled to 
 the city of London, just a few minutes before Charles 
 came. Charles left his guard at the door, walked up 
 the House, and asked Lenthall, the Speaker of the House, 
 where the accused members were. Lenthall fell on his 
 
 
 ^ 
 
1042. The Civil War. 37 
 
 knees, and said, * May it please your Majesty, I have 
 neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but 
 as the House is pleased to command me.' The king first 
 looked round the House, and then said, * Well, since I see 
 all the birds are flown, I expect from you that you shall 
 send them unto me as soon as they return hither, other- 
 wise I must take my own course Co find them.* He 
 then left the House, and went back to Whitehall witli his 
 guard (January, 1642). 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. ( 1 642- 1 646.) 
 
 I. After the failure of his attempt to seize the five mem- 
 bers Charles left London, meaning to get rid of the Parlia- 
 ment by force of arms. Though there was no Royalists 
 standing army in England, every county had and Parlia- 
 its mihtia, which could be called out in times *"*" 
 of danger. The officers of this force were set up by the 
 king. Pym and his friends had no longer any faith what- 
 ever in Charles, so, to take from him the means of doing 
 harm, they asked that Parliament should henceforth set 
 up the officers of the militia and all ministers of state. 
 Charles refused, and war began between the king and 
 the Parhament in the summer of 1642. Those joined 
 the king who thought that the Parliament was unfairly 
 trying to get power into its hands. Those joined the Par- 
 liament who would no longer trust Charles. Friends of 
 the bishops were on the king's side ; Presbyterians on the 
 side of the Parliament. The citizens of London were 
 Presbyterians, and firm friends to the Parliament. This 
 was very important, because London was by fer the 
 largest and wealtiiiest city in England, and 50 was able tQ 
 
38 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 164a. 
 
 find plenty of money with which to pay the Parliament's 
 armies. Noblemen generally fought for the king, farmers 
 and artisans for the Parliament. The king made Oxford 
 
 his head-quarters. In the west of England men were 
 mostly on the king^s side ; in the east, they were mostly 
 on the side of the Parliament. 
 
 The line across the map divides the country wbidi 
 
1643- Solemn League and Covetiant. 39 
 
 was lor the king from the country which was for the Par- 
 liament. In those counties through which the Une runs 
 there was a great deal of fighting, as well as in Devon, 
 Somerset, and Wiltshire, where the ParUament had garri- 
 sons in many towns. The first pitched battle was fought 
 at Edgehill, in Warwickshire (October, 1642). Both sides 
 claimed a victory. In 1643 the Royalists gained many 
 successes. This was in great part owing to the dash and 
 daring of their horsemen. These were country gentlemen 
 and their sons, who took a pride in their horses, their arms, 
 and the cause for which they fought. The people called 
 them 'Cavaliers.' Their leader was Prince Rupert, Charles* 
 nephew, the son of that Prince Frederic of the Palatinate, 
 for whom men wanted James to fight when he was 
 driven from his lands. The Parliament's horse-soldiers 
 were not so good, for they were mostly shopkeepers who 
 were not used to riding, or farmers mounted on horses 
 fresh from the plough, which took fright at the sound of a 
 pistol shot. The Parliament's troops were nicknamed 
 * Roundheads,' perhaps because they wore their hair 
 short, while the Cavaliers wore theirs long. 
 
 2. In the spring of 1643 ^^^ Parliament held all the 
 towns in the west of England which have a line under 
 them in the map. But during the summer and Solemn 
 autunm Charles took most of these, besides League and 
 Newark and other places on the Parhament's 
 side of the line, so that men thought that he would be able 
 to march on London. Gloucester, however, still held out 
 bravely, and while Charles was besieging it, the Parliament 
 got an army together and sent it into the west under the Earl 
 of Essex. Essex raised the siege of Gloucester, and after- 
 wards met and fought Charles at Newbury, in Berkshire, 
 and so stopped his way to London. Meanwhile Pym was 
 persuadmg the Scots to join the side of the Parliament, 
 

 40 Strtiggk against Absolute Monarchy. 1643. 
 
 The Scots wished to see a Presbyterian Church hke their 
 own set up in England. They therefore agreed to send 
 an army to fight against the king, on condition that the 
 three Churches in England, Ireland, and Scotland, should 
 have the same prayer-book, and be governed in the 
 same way. This treaty was called the Solemn League 
 and Covenant. 
 
 3. Pym died in December, 1643, a little before the 
 Scottibh army came into England. Hampden, who was a 
 Death of coloncl in the I'arliamentary army, had died 
 ^m and a few months earlier of a wound received in 
 
 amp en. ^ skirmish fought at Chalgrove, not far from 
 his own home at the village of Hampden, in Buckingham- 
 shire. 
 
 4. When the war first broke out those members of 
 Parliament who did not wish to do away with bishops 
 Aims of ^^oV. the king's side and left London. After 
 the Presby- they were gone the Presbyterians had much 
 
 more power in Parliament than before. They 
 wanted to set up assemblies of ministers and elders in 
 place of bishops. They wanted further to force everyone 
 to think as they did about religion, to worship as they did, 
 and to obey their Church Assemblies. If they could have 
 had their own way, they would have shown themselves 
 quite as much bent on making others do as they did as 
 Laud had been, and perhaps a*> cruel. The old arch- 
 bishop got no mercy from them. After being kept a pri- 
 soner for four years he was put to death as a traitor. 
 
 5. As it happened, however, it was not easy for the 
 Presbyterians to have everything their own way. For 
 Aims of the there was a party amongst their own friends 
 Sectarians. ^}^q (jj^j -^qA. care about setting up a Presby- 
 terian Church in England, and the longer the war lasted 
 the stronger this party grew. They were called Inde- 
 pendents. They said that each separate congregation 
 
i644- Aims of the Sectarians. 41 
 
 ought to be left to worship as it pleased, and to settie its 
 own affairs by itself, without being meddled with either 
 by bishops, or assemblies of elders, or any other power 
 whatever. The Independents were often called ^Vt/rtrr'rtwj 
 because they were divided into sects^ each sect holding 
 .some special doctrine of its own. Thus there were the 
 Anabaptists who did not baptize infants, and the Quakers 
 who thought it wrong to take oaths. Now, what we have 
 to notice more especially about these Independents and 
 Sectarians is that they had got a real idea of toleration^ 
 that is, of letting other men hold their own opinions 
 instead of trying to force everyone else to think and do 
 as they thought and did themselves. Thus they said to 
 the Presbyterians : have your Presbyterian Church if you 
 will, only keep it to yourselves, and leave us free to wor- 
 ship as we will and teach our own doctrines. 
 
 As far back as the time of Elizabeth Sectarians had 
 been heard of. But then they had been few in number, 
 poor, and looked down upon. Nov/, in these times of war 
 and change, many men became Sectarians. Artisans in 
 those towns where wool — then the chief article of manu- 
 facture in England — was woven into cloth were Sectarians. 
 So, too, were small iarmers, who owned land of their 
 own, of whom there were then many in England. These 
 Sectarians were not like other folk; they were more 
 earnest men, and lived even more . rious lives than did 
 the Puritans, whom we have spoken about before. They 
 knew their Bibles almost by heart, and often preached 
 themselves, for they made no difference between ministers 
 and laymen. 
 
 6. The leader of the Indef>endents in the House of 
 Commons was Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman of Cam- 
 bridgeshire. Cromwell always had his heart set on what 
 he was about, and wished to do his work as well as possi- 
 ble. Pym's plan of bringing the war to an end was to call 
 

 42 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1644. 
 
 in the Scots ; but Cromwell had another plan of his own. 
 *Yi ir troops,' he said one day to hi. cousin, John Hamp- 
 Cromwell den, 'are most of them old, decayed serving- 
 and the men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows ; 
 
 do you think that the spirits of such base and 
 mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen 
 that have honour and courage in them ? You must get 
 men of a sphit, and take it not ill what I say — 1 know 
 you will not — of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gen- 
 tlemen will go, or else you will be beaten still.' Crom- 
 well's home was in the eastern counties, where there were 
 many manufacturing towns, and where small farmers 
 were more in number than in other parts of England. 
 So he set about to find the men he wanted amongst Sec- 
 tarians, and his horse-soldiers were soon known as the 
 best troops in the army. They were called the Ironsides. 
 At first Cromwell was only a captain ; but in 1644 he was 
 made lieutenant-general of a new army, which he had 
 mainly raised himself in the eastern counties. We have 
 next to see what this army did. 
 
 7. There was a great battle fought late one J uly evening, 
 in the year 1644, on Marston Moor, a few miles west of 
 Battle of York. The Scottish army was there, and 
 Marston Cromwell's army, besides other forces of the 
 Parliament . The Royalist right wing was led 
 by Prince Rupert. On every battle-field up to this time 
 his Cavaliers had scattered the Parliament's horse before 
 them. Opposite to Rupert was set the army from the 
 eastern counties and a body of Scottish horse. It was 
 seven o'clock before the armies joined battle. Rupert at 
 the head of a body of Cavaliers charged Cromwell's own 
 troop of three hundred horse. A shot grazed Cromwell's 
 neck. ' A miss is as good as a mile,' he cried, and press- 
 ing on broke through the ranks of the enemy. Soon 
 Rupert's whole wing, horse and foot, was in full llight. 
 
i64S- ^^^ Battle of Naseby, 43 
 
 and the Ironsides hard in chase of the CavaHers. After 
 a space Cromwell called his men together, turned back, 
 and fell on the Royalist centre and left wing in the rear. 
 These had been beating back the centre and right wing 
 of the Parliament's army, but now, with foes in front 
 and behind, they were broken, routed, and cut down 
 in their flight all the way 10 York. This was a great 
 victory, for it destroyed a large army of the kir.^j's, and 
 brought all the north country under the power of the 
 Parliament. 
 
 8. A few months after this battle was fought a great 
 thing was done at London. Parliament now thought it 
 good that the Earl of Essex and other Presby- ^-^^ ^^^ 
 terian generals should make way for more able Model 
 and active men. Henceforth there was to be *™*^* 
 
 but one army. Sir Thomas Fairfax, a friend of Crom- 
 well, was made by Parliament commander-in-chief. He 
 was a spirited and honourable gentleman, loved by his 
 soldiers. Cromwell himself was lieutenant-general. So 
 from this time the army became the army of the Inde- 
 pendents. All drunken, lazy, plundering soldiers were 
 turned away, and the ranks were filled with Sectarians, 
 who fought to win for themselves the right to worship in 
 their own way. 
 
 9. In June, 1645, this New Model army, as it was 
 called, met the Royalists, led by Charles, near Naseby, a 
 village in Northamptonshire. In both armies Battle of 
 the horse were on the wings and the foot Naseby. 
 soldiers drawn up in the centre. Prince Rupert and the 
 Cavaliers, who w ere on the right of Charles' army, beat 
 back the enemy's horse that was set against them, and 
 then, as was their wont, rode off the field, chasing the fugi- 
 tives or looking after plunder. Meanwhile, on the other 
 side of the battle-field, Cromwell and the Ironsides, having 
 first routed Charles' left wing of horse, turned and fell upon 
 
I 
 
 44 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1646- 
 
 the flank of his centre. Up to this time the foot soldiers 
 on neither side had given way. But now the king's men, 
 charged by the enemy in front and flank, were at last 
 broken and turned to flight. Rupert came back only to see 
 his friends beaten. * Face about once/ Charles cried ; 
 * give one charge more and recover tiie day;' but he could 
 no longer get his men to rally, and so had to join the flight. 
 After this battle the war was soon brought to an end, for 
 many Royalists were killed and many taken prisoners, 
 and Charles could never again get a large army together. 
 Fairfax led his troops into the west, and forced one 
 Royalist garrison to surrender after another. Charles, 
 rather than give himself up to the Parliament, sought a 
 refuge with the Scottish army (April, 1646). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ARMY AND THE PARLIAMENT. (1646-1649.) 
 
 I. Charles had been fairly beaten, still he had no 
 thought of giving way and consenting to rule on his 
 The aims of enemies' terms. He would not agree to let 
 Charles. j-j^g Parliament set up officers of the militia 
 and ministers of state. He would not promise the Pres- 
 byterians to set up a Presbyterian Church in England ; 
 he would not promise the soldiers to let Sectarians have 
 freedom to worship in their own way. His plan was to 
 spend time talking over terms ; meanwhile to stir up 
 the dislike which the Presbyterians felt to the Indepen- 
 dents, to get them to fight one another, and while 
 they fought he hoped that he should get back all he had 
 lost. 
 
 2. When the Scots found that Charles would not agree 
 to set up a Presbyterian Church in England, they gave hin$ 
 
i649- T^^^ Second Civil War, 4$ 
 
 up to the English Parhament, and went back to their 
 own country (January, 1647). Many months went by, 
 while the Parliament and the army officers Second civil 
 and the king talked over terms. Possibly, if ^^'^• 
 Charles had been honest, some agreement might have 
 been come to. But all the time he was really wishing to 
 get the two parties to fight one another. More than once 
 the citizens of London and the soldiers nearly came to 
 blows. At last Charles managed to call in the Scots. 
 The Scots were angry because the Independents had got 
 so much power in England. So they agreed to bring an 
 army into England to fight for Charles, and Charles in 
 return promised them that he would set up a Presby- 
 terian Church in England for three years, and would not 
 let Sectarians worship in their own way. 
 
 The Scots marched into England in the spring of 
 1648, and the English Royalists rose at the same time. 
 But ♦^his new war did not last many months. Cromwell 
 gave the Scots two great defeats at Preston and Warring- 
 ton in Lancashire (August, 1648). Fairfax put down the 
 Royalists. 
 
 The soldiers came back to London bent on putting 
 Charles to death, for they thought that he was a bad, 
 deceitful man, and that so long as he lived he would be 
 always plotting to get back his lost pov/er and stirring up 
 new wars. Kings, they said, had their power from the 
 people ; if they used it ill the people could take it away 
 from them, and punish them for their evil deeds. 
 
 3. In the Parliament the Presbyterians were more in 
 number than the Independents and other friends of the 
 army. They still looked on Charles as their pride's 
 lawful king, whose throne and life were sacred, pi'i'g* 
 So they were horrified at the thought of putting him to 
 death. The soldiers, however, meant to put out of the 
 House of C(Mnmons those who would not do as the)' 
 
46 Strus^gle against Ahsnlute Monarchy. 1649- 
 
 wanted, for they desired to act not in their own name, 
 but in the name of the Parliament. An officer, Colonci 
 Pride, set soldiers at the door of the Commons House, 
 and roughly turned away more than a hundred Presby- 
 terians. These days were henceforth known asthe days 
 of Pride's purge. Some fifty-three members only were 
 left, who named 135 persons to form a high court of jus- 
 tice and try the king as guilty of treason. 
 
 4. The trial from first to last had only a form of justice, 
 by which the soldiers hid from themselves the violence 
 The king's ^^ what they were doing. -They might just as 
 trial and well have shot Charles without giving him 
 any trial, as have turned a hundred members 
 out of the House of Commons. When Charles came 
 before the court, Westminster Hall was thronged with 
 peeple weeping and praying for him. He would not 
 speak a word in his own defence, saying truly enough 
 that the court had no right to try him in the name of the 
 people of England, because the people of England had 
 not set it up. Some of the friends of the army would 
 sooner have seen Charles put away from being king, 
 than put to death. Of the 135 members of the court, 
 only sixty-three were there. Cromwell was one of them, 
 but Fairfax stayed away. When his name was called, 
 a woman's voice — it was his wife's — called out, * He is 
 not here and never will be ; you do wrong to name him.' 
 Charles was beheaded on a scaffold built in the open 
 street, outside the palace of Whitehall (Jan. 1649.) ^^ 
 met his death very calmly and quietly, for he believed 
 that he died in a good cause, and that he had been right 
 even in practising deceit to get back his crown. It was 
 just that practice of deceit, however, which made the 
 soldiers put him to death. The people pitied the fate of 
 their king, and from the moment of his death forgave the 
 things that he had done which once had angered them. 
 
1650. The Commonwealth 4T 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 1 649- 1 660. 
 
 TffJS COMMONWEALTH AND THE 
 PROTECTORATE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH. (1649-1653.) 
 
 I. The fifty or sixty members who still sat in the House 
 of Commons now did away with the House of Lords, 
 and called the government a Commonwealth. ^ 
 
 Conquest of 
 
 They had many enemies. In England, as Ireland and 
 well as in Ireland and Scotland, men grieved *^°^*" ' 
 that the king had been put to death, and would now 
 have liked to place on the throne his eldest son, a 
 second Charles, who had fled to the Continent for safety. 
 He could not be set up in England as king, for the army 
 would have no king. But in Ireland Protestants and 
 Catholics joined together in sending for Prince Charles 
 to come amongst them. While he was still on his way, 
 Cromwell went to Ireland with an army. He took by 
 storm the two towns of Drogheda and Wexford, and slew 
 all the fighting men who were in them. After this he got 
 the greater part of Ireland under his power and then came 
 back to England (May, 1650). Charles had changed his 
 mind when he heard what was being done in Ireland, 
 and had gone instead to Scotland, where the Scots took 
 him to be their king. Fairfax did not care to fight 
 the Scots, so Cromwell was made general in his place. 
 He marched into Scotland, and in the autumn gained 
 a great victory near Dunbar (September, 1650). The 
 next year Charles march<^d into England, leaving Crom- 
 
48 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1649- 
 
 well behind him in Scotland. He hoped that the people 
 would rise in arms to fight for him. But they did not 
 do so because they were weary of civil war, and did not 
 believe that he would be able to beat Cromwell. Mean- 
 while Cromwell followed him close, and surrounded him 
 in Worcester by double his numbers. The battle raged 
 on two sides of the town at once. The Scots fought 
 bravely, but in the end the English forced their way into 
 the streets, cut down the Scots by hundreds, and utterly 
 defeated them (September, 165 1). Charles had to ride 
 hard for his life. He reached the house of a Catholic 
 gentleman, cut off his long hair, put on peasant's clothes, 
 and hid himself for a whole day amid the branches of a 
 large oak, whence he saw the soldiers pass by who were 
 searching about for himself Aftei' running man> risks he 
 reached the coast of Sussex, and found a vessel which 
 bore him in safety to France. 
 
 Standing armies were now kept up both in Ireland 
 and Scotland, so that these two countries had to submit 
 in all things to the will of their conquerors. 
 
 2. The officers of the army and the members of the 
 Commons both wished to set up a just and good govern- 
 The officers ment,in which the people should share by elect- 
 Commons ^"^S members of Parliament at stated times, 
 disagree. But they could not agree what was the right 
 thing to be done. The Commons said that they must go 
 on ruling until the people had got to be wiser than to wish 
 for a Stuart king. Cromwell and his fellov/- officers said 
 that this House ought to dissolve itself, and make way for 
 an entirely new assembly. They thought that it had sat 
 too long already, and had too much power in its hands. 
 The members ruled free of all control, for there was none 
 who had a right to call them to answer for what they did ; 
 and though many of them acted honourably and justly, 
 yet the House as a body did not use its power* well. 
 
1 6 53- Barebone's Parliament. 49 
 
 Heavy taxes were raised and the money was wasted, and 
 many harsh and unjust acts were done. 
 
 3. As the Commons would not dissolve themselves, 
 Cromwell took a guard of soldiers and went to Parlia- 
 ment House one day in A.pnl, 1653. He left the soldiers 
 outside, but came himself into '.he House. At first he 
 praised the members, but as he spoke he got -^^^ -^ 
 angry and excited, and soon began charging Parliament 
 them with injustice, s'^lf-seeking, and other 
 
 faults. The members angrily interrupted him. 'The 
 Lord hath done with you,' he cried ; * I tell you, you are 
 no Parliament, you must give place to better men.' Then 
 he called in the soldiers to turn the members out by force, 
 if they would not go of themselves. ' What shall we do 
 with this bauble ? * he said, taking up the mace which lay 
 on the table of the House of Cr^mmons; and then handing 
 it to a soldier said, ' Take it away.' After this the mem- 
 bers left the House, reproaching Cromwell as they went. 
 
 4. The same year Cromwell and the officers called to- 
 gether an assembly of 165 persons, which was nicknamed 
 Barebone's Parliament, from the name of one Barebone's 
 of the members, Praise God Barebone, a Parliament, 
 leather-seller in Fleet Street. Most of the members were 
 Sectarians. They wanted, as did many of the soldiers, 
 to make changes in the laws and customs of the country. 
 Their fault was that they tried to do more than then 
 could be done, and to destroy rather than to mend. 
 Some of the members themselves were against the 
 changes which their companions were making, and after 
 a short time the House gave back its powers into the 
 hands of Cromwell (December, 1653). 
 
 ML a. 
 
|a Struggle against A bsolute Monarchy. 1653^ 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PROTECTORATE. ( 1 65 3- 1 658.) 
 
 I. Independents, officers, and other late friends of the 
 Commonwealth, npw agreed in thinking that the only 
 Cromwell Way to Set up a good and settled government 
 Protector. ^^g ^q make Cromwell ruler. So, in December, 
 1653, Cromwell, already general of the army, became 
 head of the State also, with the title of Protector. He 
 agieed to keep the laws and to call Parliaments regu- 
 larly. 
 
 2. Cromwell was of middle height, his features were 
 rough, and his skin tanned brown by wind and weather. 
 Cromwell's ^^ ^^^ ^ roATv of Strong feelings, very loving 
 character to his wife and children, easily made angry at 
 the sight of wrong or injustice, believing all 
 that he believed down to the very bottom of his soul. 
 He seemed by nature born to rule. He knew how to 
 make himself obeyed and feared ; he knew also how to 
 win men's trust and love. He was not easily deceived 
 for he quickly read the minds of others. Though eager 
 to set right what he thought to be amiss, he was never 
 carried away by his zeal, for he saw that changes could 
 not last unless the people themselves wished for them. 
 As a ruler, Cromwell set before him two chief aims ; the 
 one was to guard for Sectarians the right to worship in 
 their own way and teach their own beliefs ; the other was 
 to set up a good and free government which should win 
 the good-will of all men, even if possible of Royalists. 
 
 The Protector had not many friends. Not only were 
 the old Royalists, and the new Royalists, the Presby- 
 terians, against him, but he found enemies amongst 
 men who were on the same side as himself. Thus there 
 
1658. The Protectorate. igf^l • 
 
 were members of the Long Parliament wno could not 
 forgive him for having turned them out, but looked on 
 him as a bad man who sought power for himself. 
 
 3. When Cromwell met his first l^irliahicnt, there was 
 ^nly one House, a House of Commons. He and it could 
 
 not agree together, and he dissolved it with- ^ 
 
 , . .11 • • » • Cromwell's 
 
 out Its makmg a smgle law or givmg hnn any first i'arli.i- 
 money (January, 1655). '"^"'• 
 
 4. After this Cromwell paid no heed to the laws, but 
 took taxes of his own will, and set officers of the army to 
 keep order in place of the ordinary magis- Cromwdi 
 trates. And, as there were many plots and o"t'^J,eed ^^ 
 conspiracies against both his life and govern- law. 
 ment, he often put persons in prison without giving any 
 reason. Indeed the Petition of Right was broken every 
 day. 
 
 5. But this was not the way in which Cromwell wished 
 to rule. The desire of his heart was to set up a free govern- 
 ment, in which the people should take part. So (jrom^eirs 
 he called a second Parliament in December, second Par- 
 1656. To make sure that it should agree with 
 
 him, he turned out of the House a hundred members, who 
 were his enemies. Then the Parliament voted taxes and 
 made laws. It even wished to give the Protector the title 
 of king. Left to himself Cromwell might have taken it, 
 for he thought the people would sooner have a king, as in 
 old times, than a protector to reign over them. But the 
 officers and soldiers would not hear of his doing so. They 
 had they said fought against one king, and they would 
 not have another. Cromwell told them that the title was 
 a mere feather in a man's hat, and that there was no 
 good reason for their objections ; but he had to refuse 
 the title of King, for he dared not anger his soldiers. 
 
 At the next meeting of this Parliament, in 1658, 
 Cromwell let the hundred members who were before 
 
 B 2 
 
52 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy . 1653 
 
 shut out take their seats. Then he and the Parhament 
 disagreed, and he dissolved it before it had sat three 
 weeks. 
 
 6. Cromwell could not get the nation to support him 
 in Ms place. Still as a ruler he was very successful. His 
 Success of hand and eye were everywhere. He crushed 
 Kovem-*^^ plots, and kept good order throughout the 
 ment. land. He picked out able men for his com- 
 manders, judges, and other officers. He planned wise 
 measures for putting right what was wrong in the law 
 and in the Church, also for setting forward education, 
 and increasing trade. Amongst other things, he called 
 to sit in each of his Parliaments members from Ireland 
 and Scotland, so that England, Scotland, and Ireland 
 were all brought together under one rule as they are to- 
 day. The Protector's rule besides being wise was also 
 just, and in the main merciful ; for, though his temper 
 was hasty, Cromwell was also generous and forgiving. 
 His wish always was to win his enemies over to his 
 side. 
 
 7. The Puritans, who had now been ruling in England 
 for some twelve years, had made use of power to try and 
 Changes force Other people to live the same serious, 
 made by the quiet life they liked to live themselves. The 
 
 Long Parliament had shut up the theatres, 
 and ordered actors to be whipped. Laws had been made 
 punishing the country folk who held wrestling matches 
 on their village green, or raised May-poles and danced 
 round them, as had been the fashion of their fathers for 
 centuries. No kind of game might be played on Sunday. 
 Even Christmas-day was changed fi-om a feast into a 
 solemn fast. Gamblers, swearers, and drunkards were 
 fined heavily. 
 
 The Puritans had made great changes, too, in the go- 
 vernment and services of the Church. The office of bishop 
 
1658. Rule of the Pnriians. 53 
 
 had been done away with. The use of the common 
 prayer-book had been made a crime. Ministers who were 
 against these changes had been forced to leave their 
 Hvings. Their places had been taken by Presbyterians 
 and Independents, who carried on the services in a plain 
 and simple manner. Though a true idea of letting others 
 think and act for themselves had sprung up amongst 
 Puritans, it was only partly carried out. Quakers and 
 other Sectarians might set up meeting-houses of their 
 own, but neither Episcopalians nor Catholics were free 
 to worship as they pleased. Cromwell, while he was 
 protector, let Episcopalians and Catholics hold services 
 of their own in private, but few of his party were willing 
 to do so. 
 
 8. Thus we see that the Puritans, like Laud, could 
 not leave others to do what they thought best for them- 
 selves. Hence they too were now much dis- The Puri- 
 liked by the people. Hundreds^ who had tansdishked 
 disliked the changes made by Laud, disliked quite as 
 much the changes made by them. Young folks, who had 
 grown up since the war began, did not see why they 
 should not choose their own kind of life. The people 
 generally were wishing for the old form of Church service 
 back again. 
 
 9. Still, whatever were the faults of the Puritans, they 
 had done really good work. They had hated vice, and 
 called on all men to do their duty, and had 
 
 . , , . , , ce • John Milton 
 
 Striven to act rightly in the every-day affairs 
 of life. And if we would think of a Puritan such as he 
 was at his best, we may think of John Milton. Milton 
 was the poet of the Puritans. He was bom in 1608, just 
 eight years before Shakespeare died. From his earliest 
 childhood he was a lover of learning, and he was a lover 
 also of all that was beautiful in nature and in art, but 
 most of all he loved truth and purity. He thought that 
 
54 Struggle against Absolute M Of mrchy. 1649- 
 
 the most beautiful thing there was was a human soul kept 
 free from sin, and that the greatest victory a man could 
 gain was a victory over his own evil desires. When the 
 civil war broke out Milton took part with the Long Par- 
 liament against the king. Then instead of poetry he 
 wrote books in prose, in which he treated of the govern- 
 ment of the Church, and other questions of that time. 
 He found great fault with the bishops and with the Pres- 
 byterians because they would have men do as they did, 
 and think as they thought. He also called on the Parlia- 
 ment to let men write and publish what they pleased. 
 The Parliament, he said, ought not to fear because men 
 thought new thoughts and held new beliefs, for this did 
 but show that England, * like a strong man after sleep,' 
 was rousing herself .) do great deeds. After Cromwell's 
 death, when a Stuart was on the throne, Milton could no 
 more write on questions which had to do with the govern- 
 ment of Church or State. Then he again wrote poems. 
 But his later poems are graver in spirit than his earlier 
 ones, for the times he had hved through had made him a 
 graver man, and he wrote while his friends were dying 
 on the scaffold, and the work which they had done was 
 being undone. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WAR AND COMMERCE 
 
 I. During the first ten years of the reign of James I., 
 English merchants made use of the new route by the 
 North Cape of Good Hope to trade with India and 
 
 American the East India islands. It was also during 
 the reign of James I. that colonies were first 
 planted on the coast of North America. The New Eng- 
 land States were colonised by Puritans. The first comers 
 
i66o. 
 
 IVar and Commerce. 
 
 55 
 
 were a little band of persecuted Sectarians, who sailed in 
 the * May Flower ' to the coast of what is now Massa- 
 chusetts. They there founded a town which they 
 called Plymouth, after the name of the last English port 
 at which they touched (1620). After these * Pilgrim 
 Fathers ' had cleared the way, there soon came to New 
 England a stream of Puritan emigrants. Between the 
 years 1629 and 1640, while Charles was ruling without 
 Parliaments, 20,000 Englishmen sought new homes in 
 the West. 
 
 PURZTJJf 
 
 KSGLANIj 
 
 u 
 
 
 dA^ 
 
 2. The Dutch, who were a nation of seamen and 
 traders, grew jealous at the spread of English commerce, 
 which took place after the founding of these war with 
 colonies and the opening of the trade with Holland, 
 India. Soon after the king's deatii a war broke out 
 between England and Holland, which lasted two years 
 (1652- 1653). In the end the Dutch were beaten. Crom- 
 well, as soon as he became protector, made peace with 
 them. 
 
56 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1651-, 
 
 3. Foreign princes would not at first look on the men 
 who put their king to death as lawful rulers. But after the 
 Cromwell Dutch .vcrc beaten, they began to dread the 
 and foreign powcr of the English navy, and eagerly sought 
 princes. ^^^ friendship of England. When Cromwell 
 was protector, he was much feared, for he had a large 
 fleet, and a standing army, and had given proof of his 
 wisdom and valour. In ajl his dealings with foreign 
 princes Cromwell set before him the aim of doing all he 
 could for the good of Protestants, and sometimes he was 
 able to do a great deal. The Duke of Savoy tried by 
 means of a cruel persecution to force the Vaudois, his 
 Protestant subjects living in the Alpine valleys, to become 
 Catholics. Lewis XIV., the king of France, wanted to 
 make an alliance with England, but Cromwell would sign 
 no treaty unless Lewis first got the duke to stop the 
 persecution. So the duke had to give way and let his 
 subjects worship God as they chose (1655). 
 
 4. France and Spain were rival powers and often at 
 war with one another. Cromwell took the side of France 
 War with against Spain. For when he wanted the king 
 Spain. Qf Spain to give Englishmen leave to trade to 
 the West Indies and use their Bibles in his dominions, 
 the Spanish ambassador said, that to ask these things 
 * was to ask his master's two eyes.' In the war which 
 followed, the island of Jamaica was taken from Spain 
 and turned into an English colony (1655). I^i 1657 
 Cromwell sent 6,000 troops to help Lewis XIV. in making 
 war in the Netherlands against the king of Spain. In 
 return Lewis besieged Dunkirk, which was held by a 
 Spanish garrison, and when the town surrendered made 
 it over to England (1658). 
 
 5. Though most men would still have liked to set 
 Prince Charles on the throne, yet they were content to 
 submit to the Protector, because they found that he ruled 
 
i66o. Charles called to England. , 57 
 
 well at home, and got for their country a great name 
 abroad. But it was now that Cromwell's rule was brought 
 to an end by death. Soon after Dunkirk was Death of 
 made over by Lewis, Cromwell's health broke ^''v*"^- 
 dow n. On his death-bed his thoughts ran on what would 
 be the future of England after he was gone. * I would 
 be willing,' he said, * to live to be further serviceable to 
 God and His people, but my work is done. But God 
 will be with His people.' He died in September, 1658, 
 at the age of 59. 
 
 6. Richard Cromwell, Oliver's eldest son, became pro- 
 tector on his father's death. He was a good-natured 
 young man, who meant well, but did not know Kichard 
 how to make himself obeyed. The officers Cromwdl 
 did not care for him because he was no soldier. 
 
 After a few months they took power into their own hinds, 
 and called together those members of the Long Parha- 
 ment who had put the king to death, and whom Oliver 
 had turned out in 1653. The people in scorn nicknamed 
 them the Rump. The members of the Rump soon quar- 
 relled with the officers, and for a time the country seemed 
 to be without any proper government at all. 
 
 7. When the people saw all these changes taking 
 place, and the soldiers doing as they would, pulling down 
 one government and setting up another, they charles 
 became more eager than before to have called to 
 Charles Stuart to reign over them. And, as "^ 
 
 it happened. General Monk, who commanded the army 
 in Scotland, was willing to carry out their wishes, for he 
 saw that there was no one who could rule as Oliver had 
 ruled, and that it was not well for the soldiers to be 
 masters in England. Monk marched from Scotland 
 at the head of such troops as he thought he could trust. 
 When he got to London he sent unto the House of 
 Commons, to take their seats by the side of the members 
 
58 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1660- 
 
 of the Rump, those Presbyterians whom Colonel Pride 
 had turned out in December 1648. These dissolved the 
 Parhament, thus at last bringing it to an end by its own 
 act (March, 1660). A new Parliament met, which asked 
 Charles Stuart to come to England. The soldiers had 
 no leader in whom they could trust, so they submitted 
 sullenly to see Charles brought back. * It is my own 
 fault,' said the new king, ' that I have not come back 
 sooner, for I find nobodf who does not tell me he has 
 always wished for my return' (May, 1660). 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 1 660- 1 685. 
 
 THE REIGN OF CHARLES II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RESTORATION. (1660-1667.) 
 
 I. Old Royalists, Presbyterians, as well as many of 
 Oliver's supporters, had all joined together in making 
 The soldiers Charles II. king. Only the soldiers, the 
 sent to their members of the Rump, and a few other men 
 had stood aloof. These were not very many 
 in number. The soldiers, however, were dangerous be- 
 cause they had arms in their hands and knew how to 
 fight. So the Parliament voted a grant of money, and 
 the whole army, excepting three regiments, was at once 
 paid off and the soldiers were sent to their homes. Men 
 who had taken any part in the trial and execution of 
 Charles I. were imprisoned for life or put to death. 
 
 2. While the Puritans ruled, a sober and quiet manner 
 
i66;. The Cavalier Parliament. 59 
 
 of life had been the fashion. When Charles came back 
 a gay and careless life came into fashion, change in 
 This was especially the case in London. The "tanners, 
 new king, who was fond of pleasure, led openly a bad life, 
 and his ministers and courtiers followed his example. 
 
 3. Other changes, too, took place after the return of 
 Charles. Only those laws to which Charles I. had given 
 his consent were any longer held to be bind- j^aws 
 ing. So all the laws made by the Long Parlia- against 
 ment by itself, or by Cromwell and his Parlia- 
 ments, came to an end. England, Scotland, and Ireland 
 again had their separate Parliaments ; the bishops were 
 again the governors of the Church, and it was again a 
 crime to be present at any service where the common 
 prayer-book was not used. In the Parliament which 
 called Charles to England many Presbyterians had 
 seats. Charles soon dissolved this Parliament and called 
 a second. It met in 1661, and, as we shall see, was not 
 dissolved for many years. It is called the Cavalier Parlia- 
 ment, because nearly all the members belonged to families 
 who had from the first breaking out of the civil war taken 
 the side of the king. All Puritans were hateful to them 
 as the destroyers of their Church. So now they passed 
 harsh laws to keep down the Puritans, and prevent them 
 from ever again getting power into their hands. They 
 shut Puritans out from holding offices in towns ; they 
 fined, put in prison, and even transported those who met 
 to worship together in their own way. Ministers who 
 would not give * their assent and consent ' to everything 
 that was in '^he prayer-book, lost their livings, nor might 
 they keep schools, or live in towns sending members 
 to Parliament, unless they would say it was unlawful lo 
 act like the Long Parliament and take up arms against 
 a king. 
 
 Though a dark day had come for the Puritans, thQir 
 
6o Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1660- 
 
 enemies could not undo all that they had done. Their 
 teaching, their ideas of right and wrong, were still 
 cherished even by many who were content with the ser- 
 vices of the established Church. Of all the writers of 
 the Restoration, two Puritans have had the largest num- 
 ber of readers. It was during these years of persecution 
 that John Bunyan, a Sectarian in prison in Bedford Gaol, 
 wrote the'Pilgrim's Progress ' ; and that Milton, now blind 
 and old, wrote his great poems of ' Paradise Lost ' and 
 * Paradise Regained.' 
 
 4. From this time Puritans had to give up all hope of 
 making the Church of England their Church, as they 
 Puritans ^^*^ donc Under the Long Parliament and 
 tallied Div Oliver. So now Presbyterians as well as Sec- 
 
 scntcrs 
 
 tarians asked for liberty to go their own way, 
 and leave the established Church alone. Henceforth, 
 therefore, they were no longer called Puritans but Dis- 
 senters^ because they wished to dissent from the worship 
 of the established Church, and have chapels of their 
 own. Though the Dissenters now were persecuted, we 
 shall see in the end how they got what they asked for. 
 
 5. Government by a king and Parliament seemed to 
 the members of the Cavalier Parliament the best form ot 
 Views of government possible. All the changes and 
 the Pariia- sufferings which the country had gone through 
 
 since 1641 they laid to the score of the Long 
 Parliament, which ha taken up arms against Charles L 
 But though the members were very fond of their king, 
 they thought a great deal of themselves besides, and 
 meant that Parliaments should have just as much power 
 as they ever had before. So they were not willing to let 
 Charles have a large standing army like Oliver, nor did 
 they give him money enough of his own to set him free 
 from the need of asking Parliament for more. 
 • 6. We must see what Charles was like, and what were 
 
1667. Charles II. 61 
 
 the aims which he set before him. Charles was thirty 
 years old when he came to the throne. He character 
 liked to take hfe easily, and to enjoy himself, and aims of 
 He was a clever and witty talker ; his man- 
 ners were pleasant, and he was always liked by the 
 people in London, who were glad to see him sauntering in 
 St. James' Park, feeding the ducks and playing with his 
 spaniels. Charles was, however, a thoroughly selfish man. 
 He did not care what means he took to gain his ends. 
 He often deceived his ministers as to what he really 
 meant to do, for he was a clever deceiver. He thought 
 that everyone was either a dupe or a hypocrite. 
 
 Charles could not hope to rule without Parliaments. 
 Still he wished to be free of the control of Parliament 
 and to be able to spend money, and have his own way, 
 without being called to answer for what he did by the 
 Commons. He wished also to have a standing army 
 like his cousin, Lewis XIV., the king of France. 
 
 About religion Charles cared little, but, in his heart, 
 he seems to have thought that the Roman Catholic 
 form of religion was the best. If he could get tolera 
 tion for Catholics by giving tc deration to Dissenters also 
 he was willing to do so. Still Charles II. was not a man 
 who runs into danger. Plenty of money, toleration for 
 Catholics, a standing army — these were the three things 
 which he thought most worth getting, but he would not 
 risk his crown for them or for anything else. As he was 
 once heard to say, he did not mean to go on his travels 
 again. It was always well to give way and wait until the 
 right time came. 
 
 7. In the course of a very few years the Parliament 
 began to go against the king. In 1664 Warwith 
 Charles went to war with the Dutch. At first the Dutch, 
 Hhe Enghsh gained the advantage, but after- ^ 4-1667. 
 wards they were less successful. This displeased the 
 
62 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1660- 
 
 Commons, who had voted large sums for carrying on the 
 war. They thought, and thought truly, that the king spent 
 the money on his own amusements at Whitehall, instead 
 of fitting out ships and paying his soldiers and sailors ; 
 so they made Charles let them look through his account 
 books to see how the money which they gave him was 
 spent. In 1667, while Charlos' fleet was laid up for want 
 of repairs, the Dutch sailed up the Medway as far as 
 Chatham and burned three English men-of-war. After 
 this, peace had to be made with the Dutch upon their 
 own terms. 
 
 8. While the Dutch war lasted, two great calamities 
 befell London. Owing to the neglected state of the streets, 
 The Pla ue ^^^ ^^^^ dirty habits of the people, towns and 
 and the villages were often visited with plagues. None, 
 
 however, within man's memory was so fatal 
 to life as the Great Plague of 1665. It was reckoned that 
 one out of every ten of the inhabitants of London died. 
 The Great Plague was followed by a great fire. For three 
 days and three nights the flames l)urned on without 
 stopping, and at the end of that time two-thirds of London 
 was in ashes. The old houses had. been of timber ; the 
 new houses were built of brick. The present domed 
 church of St. Paul was built on the site of the old 
 cathedral, which stood in the middle of the part where 
 the fire raged (1666). 
 
 9. Heavy taxes, the Dutch war, the plague and the 
 fire all came together, bringing much distress after them. 
 Fall of '^^^ king's chief minister had to answer. This 
 Clarendon. was the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, Earl 
 of Clarendon. In his youth Hyde had sat in the Long 
 Parliament, and had taken part in the impeachment of 
 Strafford. He had afterwards become a Royalist, and was 
 with Charles II. in his exile. He was now much disliked, 
 both because he had got Charles to sell Dunkirk to Lewis 
 
 r 
 
1667. The Treaty of Dover. 63 
 
 XIV., and because he had gone against the enquiry made 
 by the Commons into the king's accounts. Charles him- 
 self was tired of his minister; for though Clarendon did 
 not wish that the king should have to give way to the 
 wishes of the Commons, his notions were too old-faallioned 
 to let him like the thought of keeping up a standing army, 
 or of letting Catholics or Dissenters worship as they 
 chose. Being impeached by the Commons of high treason 
 (1667), he fled to France, where he soon afterwards died. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OPPOSITION BETWEEN KING AND PARLIAMENT. 
 
 (1668-1678.) 
 
 I. To understand what took place in England, we must 
 see what was passing on the other side of the Channel. 
 A hundred years ago Spain had been the The Triple 
 most powerful country on the Continent. But Tre^"f"^ 
 since that time France had risen to hold the Dover, 
 place once held by Spain. Lewis XIV. was very power- 
 ful and very ambitious. He wanted to conquer the 
 Netherlands, which belonged to Spain, as well as other 
 territories bordering France on the east and north-east, 
 and thus to make his kingdom reach to the banks of the 
 Rhine. Men in England greatly feared the power of 
 Lewis. They were therefore glad when in 1668 Charles 
 made an alliance, called the Triple Alliance, between 
 England, Holland, and Sweden, to force Lewis to make 
 peace with Spain. Charles, however, did not really care 
 about standing against Lewis nearly so much as about 
 having plenty of money, and being free of the control of 
 Parliament. Lewis soon found this out, and he and 
 Charles made an agreement together. Lewis agreed to 
 
64 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1668^ 
 
 give Charles money, and Charles agreed to join Lewis in 
 making war on Holland by land and sea, and to declare 
 himself a Catholic. This treaty, which was made at 
 Dover, was of course kept secret ; only two of the king's 
 ministeflB, who themselves were Catholics, knew of it 
 (1670). 
 
 2. Charles never dared call himself a Catholic. Still 
 he thought he might do something for Catholics. So he 
 
 published what was called a Declaration of 
 of Indul- Indulgence, saying that both Catholics and 
 gence. Disscnters might worship in their own way. 
 
 People at once asked what right the king had to set aside 
 or suspend all the Acts of Parliament which forbade 
 Dissenters and Catholics to worship in their own way. 
 The next time Parliament met, the Commons called the 
 Declaration unlawful, and would not give Charles any 
 money until he withdrew it (1673). 
 
 3. At the same time that Charles pubhshed the Declar- 
 ation of Indulgence he went to war with Holland (1672). 
 The Test Though the secret treaty was not known of, 
 Act. everybody thought that some league had been 
 made between Charles, Lewis, and the Catholics to let 
 Charles rule by means of a standing army, and overthrow 
 the Protestant religion. Charles was getting together an 
 army to invade Holland. It was said that the officers 
 were all Catholics. The Commons wished to drive them 
 out of office. So they got Charles to give his consent to 
 a law, which said that all persons holding office in the 
 state were to take the sacrament according to the rites of 
 the Church of England, and swear that they did not be- 
 lieve the Romish doctrine of the presence of our Lord's 
 body and blood in the bread and wine (1673). This new 
 law went by the name of the Test Act, for it tested who 
 were Catholics. James, the Duke of York, th** king's 
 brother, was a Catholic. So he had to give up his post of 
 
i674- Opposition in Parliammt. 65 
 
 Lord Admiral. Many other ofiicers had to give up their 
 posts. When it was seen how many Catholics had been 
 in office Protestants became more frightened than before. 
 The Commons would no longer give money for making 
 war on the Dutch, a Protestant people, manfully fighting 
 Lewis in spite of great odds. So to content them Charles 
 had to make peace with Holland, and turn two of his 
 ministers out of office (1674). 
 
 4. The king's attempt to give Catholics liberty of 
 worship had failed, and had only made Protestants dishke 
 and fear them more than before. For men c\ 
 
 Upposition 
 
 thought that Charles was a Catholic, and that »" Pariia- 
 his aim was to govern by the aid of Catholics 
 without heeding the wishes of Parliament. The more 
 eager, therefore, he showed himself to do something for 
 Catholics, the more eager the Parliament became to keep 
 the laws in force. On the other hand, Dissenters were 
 not feared so much as they had been fourteen years ago. 
 It was seen that Charles was trying to get their aid against 
 the Parliament by setting aside the laws against them. 
 Many Churchmen, therefore, had come round to think 
 that it would be well for Protestants to overlook differ- 
 ences between themselves and stand together as friends, 
 for the sake of the Protestant faith and the power of 
 Parliament. Even in the Cavalier Parliament the Dis- 
 senters found friends, willing to pass an Act of Parlia- 
 ment in their favour. There were also other signs of 
 change. People were so afraid of what Charles might 
 do, that they again began to say that it was lawful to take 
 up arms in defence of the Protestant religion, of laws 
 and liberties. So the Cavalier Parliament split into two 
 parties. The larger party still held that it was unlawful 
 to take up arms against a king; but the smaller party, 
 which was also friendly to the Dissenters, held that it 
 was lawful to go against a king, if he used his power ill* 
 E. //. F 
 
66 Slruggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1675 
 
 The leader of this smaller party was Antony Ashley 
 Cooper. He was a little man, of a restless spirit, very 
 clever, very ambitious, and, like other statesmen of his 
 time, very heedless what he did to gain his ends. Once 
 he had served Cromwell, but after the Restoratiou he had 
 become Charles' minister, and had been made Earl of 
 Shaftesbury. Charles kept secret from him that he had 
 promised Lewis to declare himself a Catholic, for he 
 knew that, although Shaftesbury wanted to do somethmg 
 for Dissenters, he did not like Catholics. Perhaps 
 Shaftesbury found out what the king had done, but at 
 any rate he suddenly took part against him, speaking in 
 Parliament against the Declaration of Indulgence and 
 the war with Holland. Charles turned him out of office, 
 and then he became the leader of Charles' opponents in 
 Parliament. 
 
 5. There was now a great thing which Shaftesbury 
 wished to do. Charles had no children by his wife 
 The aims of Catherine of Braganza, a princess of Portugal. 
 Shaftes- The heir to the throne was the king's brother, 
 
 ""^^ James, the Duke of York, who had declared 
 
 himself a Catholic. Shaftesbury made up his mind that, 
 if he could help it, no Catholic should sit on the Enghsh 
 throne. But it was hard to shut James out. The mem- 
 bers of the Commons were, it was true, in a very ill- 
 temper with Charles, because they thought him a bad 
 Protestant. Still, most of them believed that kings had 
 their power from God, and that it was wrong to take it 
 away from them. However much afraid of Catholics, 
 therefore, they would never pass an Act of Parliament 
 to shut James, the next heir, out from the throne. So 
 Shaftesbury set to work to force Charles to dissolve this 
 Parliament and call a new one, for he thought that, when 
 new elections were held, the electors would choose mem- 
 bers who would do the things which he wished done. 
 
1678. Charles and Leivis. 6y 
 
 6. We must see what Charles and Lewis were about. 
 Charles had money given him by Lewis every year, on 
 condition that he did not go to war with ch^ries 
 France. After a time, however, he began to quarrels 
 draw further away from Lewis and nearer to 
 
 his own Parliament. His brother James had married 
 Anne Hyde, the daughter of that Earl of Clarendon who 
 was impeached in 1667. Their children, Mary and Anne, 
 had been brought up Protestants. Charles now agreed 
 to a marriage between Mary and William, the Prince of 
 Orange, his nephew (1677), who had lately become Stadt- 
 holder, or President of the Dutch Republic, and who was 
 Lewis' ablest and most bitter enemy. Charles after- 
 wards told the Commons that he was ready to go to war 
 with Lewis, if needful, to force him to make peace with 
 Spain. The Commons were glad at the thought of a war 
 with France, and voted the king a large sum of money. 
 It is hard to say whether Charles really meant to go to 
 war with France. But he got a grant of money, and an 
 excuse for raising an army to use against the Parliament, 
 if need were. 
 
 7. When Lewis §aw Charles making up to the Parlia- 
 ment, and talking of war with France, he became angry 
 and alarmed. The Earl of Danby, at this Lewis and 
 time Charles' chief minister, often bribed theOpposi- 
 members of Parliament not to act against the 
 
 king's wishes. So, to ward off danger, Lewis did the same 
 thing, giving money to the followers of Shaftesbury, and 
 promising to try and get Charles to dissolve the Parlia- 
 ment, if they would stop his going to war with France. 
 
 8. As soon as Charles had got together an army, men 
 were frightened lest he should use it against the Parlia- 
 ment, and would gladly have seen the soldiers The Popish 
 sent home again. But when the Commons p^°* 
 wanted Charles to do this he refused, saying he needed 
 
 F a 
 
6S Struggle against Absolute Mouarchy. 1678 - 
 
 the army to keep the country in a state of defence. While 
 people were in this uneasy and suspicious state of mind, 
 a man, named Titus Gates, came forward with a long 
 story about a Popish plot (1678). The king, he said, was 
 going to be murdered and the Catholics to make them- 
 selves rulers. Now this story was most likely untrue from 
 beginning to end. But it was believed, because it fell in 
 v/ith what everybody was thinking at the time, that there 
 was some plot against the Parliament and the Protestant 
 faith. Gates had only to say here is the plot, and all were 
 ready to join in the cry. 
 
 9. When Parliament met again, Shaftesbury made use 
 of the terror the members were in to get a new Test Act 
 Cattiolics passed, which would shut Catholics out of the 
 the Hois°/ House of Lords. While Elizabeth was queen, 
 o< Lords. an Act of Parliament had been made ordering 
 members of the House of Commons to take the oath of 
 Supremacy, which said that the queen was supreme 
 governor of the realm, and that the pope had no power 
 in it. But members of the House of Lords had not had 
 to take this oath. So now, by the new Act, all members 
 of Parliament had to take the oath, and to say besides that 
 the worship of Saints was idolatrous, and that they did not 
 believe the doctrine of the presence of Christ's body and 
 blood in the bread and wine. The Lords, while the bill 
 was passing through their House, put in some words to say 
 that the Duke of York need not say this, but other Catho- 
 lic Peers had henceforth to deny their religion or stay 
 away from Parliament. 
 
 10. Lewis now took his revenge on Charles for 
 threatening France with war. The Earl of Danby had 
 Dissolution written very unwillingly, by Charles' command, 
 of Parlia- a letter asking Lewis to give Charles money. 
 
 Lewis now had this letter laid before the 
 Commons, who at once impeached Danby. Charles, to 
 
1679. Exclusion Bills. 69 
 
 save his minister, did the thing which Shaftesbury wished 
 him to do, and dissolved the Parhament (December, 
 1678). 
 
 II. About this time two words came into use, which 
 long lasted as the names of two parties in England. Those 
 who said that James, though a Catholic, ought whigs and 
 to reign were nicknamed Tories^ after some ^o""- 
 bands of wild Irish Catholics, called Tories. Those who 
 wished to shut James out from the throne, because he 
 was not a Protestant, were nicknamed WhigSy after some 
 bands of Presbyterians called Whiggamores, who were in 
 arms in Scotland. The Tories, or people who wished 
 James to reign, were the clergy of the established Church, 
 and all others who said that kings had their power 
 from God, and might not be withstood by force of arms. 
 The Whigs, or people who wished James not to reign, were 
 the Dissenters, and all others who held that kings might 
 be withstood by force of arms, if laws and liberties were 
 in danger. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EXCLUSION BILLS AND THE POPISH PLOT. ( 1 679- 1 68 1.) 
 
 I. Charles called another Parliament in 1679. The peo- 
 ple were so afraid of Catholics that every- Exclusioi 
 where the electors chose Whigs to sit in the Bills. 
 House of Commons. Charles tried to gain the good-will 
 of the Parliament by turning Danby out of office, and 
 sending his soldiers home again. But nothing would 
 satisfy the Commons but the passing of an Act of Parlia- 
 ment to shut James out from the throne. Charles dissolved 
 the Parliament and called a second, which proved of just 
 the same temper as the first. He dissolved the second 
 and called a third. It was to meet at Oxford instead of 
 
\ 
 
 70 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1679- 
 
 London, where the Whig party was very strong. When 
 it was opened, bands of London citizens came up to 
 Oxford wearing ribands, on which were the words * No 
 Popery, no Slavery ! ' The great Whig lords brought up 
 their tenants in arms. The king on his side came at- 
 tended by his guards. It seemed as if a civil war v/as on 
 the point of breaking out, and Charles dissolved the Par- 
 liament before it had sat three weeks (1681). 
 
 2. No exclusion bill had passed the House of^ Lords 
 in any of these three Parliaments, and already the Whigs 
 Shaftesbury ^^^ ^°^ ^° many friends as before. For, be- 
 and Mon- sides iho shutting out of James, men had to 
 
 think of whom they were to make king in 
 James' stead. Shaftesbury put forward as future king 
 the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth was Charles' son, 
 but his mother had never been married to Charles, so 
 that he had no claim to the throne. The country people 
 were, it was true, fond of him, and when he travelled would 
 gather in crowds to welcome him. But Shaftesbury was 
 not wise in wishing to make Monmouth king. Mary, the 
 wife of the Prince of Orange, was the heir next after her 
 father James. She was a Protestant, and many of the 
 Whigs were unwilling to pass her by. Then, again, there 
 were many people who when they were very much afraid 
 of Catholics took the part of the Whigs, but when they 
 were very much afraid of Dissenters took the part of 
 the Tories. These now went over to the Tories, for they 
 feared lest the Dissenters should get too much power, and 
 thought that of the two they would sooner have James 
 than Monmouth to reign over them. 
 
 3. When it was found that Oates was honoured and 
 rewarded for having found out a dangerous plot, more 
 The Popish "^^^ Came forward with stories against the 
 plot. CathoHcs. All the time that the Exclusion 
 Bills were being fought over numbers of Catholics were 
 
io8i. The Popish Plot. 71 
 
 being tried and put to death for treason. It did not 
 matter how unHkely the stories brought against them 
 were, for the jurymen beheved them guilty before they 
 were tried, and the judges took the part of their accusers. 
 Shaftesbury, though he knew that Gates was a liar, did 
 all he could to keep alive the fear of the people. Charles, 
 like Shaftesbury, did not believe in Gates' stories. But he 
 did not try to save the Catholics. For he thought the 
 more innocent blood the Whigs shed, the more surely 
 would people come round in time to take his side. He 
 judged quite rightly. The cruelty and violence with 
 which Shaftesbury acted in the end told against him. 
 Men were getting ashamed of ever having trusted in the 
 word of Gates and his fellows. Juries began to say that 
 the prisoners were innocent, and the crowd, which used to 
 shout with joy when a Catholic was sent to the scaffold, 
 now shouted with joy when one was set at liberty. When 
 Lord Stafford, an old man of upwards of seventy, told 
 the people from the scaffold that he was innocent, they 
 answered him with shouts of * God bless you, my lord ! ' 
 * We believe you, my lord ! ' 
 
 4. Though the Whigs did not get James shut out from 
 reigning, they got Charles' consent to one very important 
 law, called the Habeas Corpus Act. The Peti- ^.j^^ Habeas 
 tion of Right had said that no man was to be Corpus Act. 
 put in prison without a cause being given, in order that 
 he might not be kept in prison and never brought to triaL 
 But the king's ministers had still found ways of doing this. 
 So the Habeas Corpus Act now said that the judges were 
 to give writs oi Habeas Corpus \.o prisoners who asked for 
 them, and to set them at liberty if they could be trusted 
 to come at the proper time and answer to the crimes laid 
 to their charge. Gaolers were always, on receiving writs 
 of Habeas Corpus^ to bring their prisoners before the 
 judges, except those accused of treason, murder, and 
 
72 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy, 1681- 
 
 other crimes called felonies. But in order that such might 
 not be kept in prison for long, their trial was to take place 
 within a certain time or else they too were to be set at 
 liberty. The Habeas Corpus Act did not lay down anything 
 new, for it was an old right of Englishmen not to be kept 
 in prison at the pleasure of the king. But it laid down the 
 law in such clear and plain words that henceforth the 
 king and his ministers could not claim the right to set it 
 aside in any case (1679). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 REACTION AGAINST THE WHIGS. (1681-1685.) 
 
 I. Charles now again had money every year from Lewis 
 on condition that he did not go to war with France. He 
 Charles was thus able to rule for foiT years without 
 
 out^Parlia- Calling another Parliament together. Mean- 
 ments. while he tried to make his own power stronger, 
 
 and to put down the Whigs. 
 
 2. Many towns had got charters from former kings 
 giving them privileges, such as the right of setting up 
 Charters their owi: mayors and magistrates. The 
 taken away, whigs had much powcr in these places. So 
 now London and other towns were accused of having 
 made a wrong use of their privileges, and their charters 
 were taken away from them. Charles indeed gave them 
 back new charters, but he took care that the mayors, 
 aldermen, and other officers should all be Tories. He also 
 took care that only the chief people, whom he could 
 easily influence, should be let vote at the election of 
 members of Parliament. After making these changes he 
 might hope at a future day to meet a House of Commons 
 from which the Whig party should he almost quite shut 
 
1685. Reaction against the Wliigs. 73 
 
 out, Mear> . le, Whigs were brought to trial on various 
 charges. rvl«ny were fined, imprisoned, and put to 
 death. Shaftesbury fled to Holland, where he died soon 
 afterwards. 
 
 3. The Whigs grieved over the failure of their plans. 
 James was not shut out from reigning. The king, though 
 not doing anything that wasexactly unlawful whigcon- 
 for it was the judges who said he had a right sinracies. 
 to take away the charters — was yet robbing the towns of 
 any real liberty either in the choice of their own officers, 
 or of members of Parliament. Lord William Russell was 
 one of the chief leaders of the Whig party. He used to 
 meet with some of his friends and talk over plans of 
 rising in arms. Shaftesbury had amongst his followers 
 old soldiers of Cromwell's army. These knew of the 
 meetings of the Whig leaders, and thought that they would 
 help on their plans by making a plot of their own, to 
 waylay Charles and his brother, perhaps to shoot them, as 
 they passed from Newmarket to London by a lonely 
 farm-house, called the Rye House, in Hertfordshire. The 
 plans of these conspirators, as well as the meetings of 
 the Whig leaders, were betrayed to the king's ministers. 
 Russell was tried for treason. Though he had known 
 nothing of the Rye House Plot, and though the fact that 
 he had ever thought of rebellion was not clearly proved 
 against him, the jury still found him guilty. Russell 
 would not own that he had done anything wrong. The 
 people, he thought, had a right to stand up for their 
 religion and liberties when these were taken from them 
 on any pretence. Charles held that the man who thought 
 thus was too dangerous to let live. * If I do not take his 
 life,' he said, ' he will soon take mine.' So Russell was 
 put to death in 1683. 
 
 Charles died in February, 1685, and was succeeded 
 by his brother James. 
 
74 Struggle against -Absolute Monarchy, 1685- 
 
 BOOK Nil. 
 1685-1688. 
 
 THE REIGN OF JAMES II, 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS. (1685-1687.) 
 
 I. James II. had barely reigned four months when a re- 
 bellion broke out in the west. Many Whigs had fled to 
 Invasion of Holland, after the dissolution of the short 
 Monmouth. Parliament at Oxford in 1681. These now 
 set sail with Monmouth at their head, and landed at 
 Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire. Peasants, small farmers, and 
 shopkeepers gathered together to fight for Monmouth ; 
 but as no Whig noblemen or gentlemen took part with 
 him, he had no chance of winning. His brave little army 
 of peasants was routed by the royal troops on Sedgemoor, 
 in Somersetshire. He himself was taken prisoner, hiding 
 in a ditch in peasant's clothes. He was brought to Lon- 
 don and there beheaded. A brutal judge, called Jeffreys, 
 was sent by James into the west to try the rebels, and did 
 so with so much harshness and cruelty, that his name was 
 hated by all men. The country was covered with gibbets. 
 Even girls at school, who had given Monmouth banners, 
 were cast into prison. A suppliant came to Whitehall to 
 beg mercy for her brother. * Do not flatter yourself with 
 hopes,' said one of the officers of James' army, John 
 Churchill, afterwards the Duke of Marlborough ; ' this 
 marble,' and x^e laid his hand on the chimney-piece, ' is 
 not harder than the king.' 
 
 2. James was neither a good nor a clever man. He 
 had a hard, cruel nature. He also set his mind on making 
 ev(jryone think like himself. He called a Parliament 
 
168;. The DUpensiug Power. 75 
 
 soon after he came to the throne. He hoped that it 
 would grant him plenty of money to keep up a The aims of 
 large standing army, and also do away with the J''"»«s- 
 laws against Catholics. The House of Commons was 
 filled with Tories. They were willing to do a great deal 
 for James, but not the two things which he wanted them 
 to do. They dreaded a standing army as much as the 
 Whigs. They were ^uite as unwilling to do away with 
 the laws against Catholics as the Whigs. So James, find- 
 ing that the Parliament would not help him to carry out 
 his wishes, brought the session to an end, and never 
 called the members together again (1685). 
 
 3. James next set to work to carry out his plans by 
 means of his royal power. The king claimed in certain 
 cases to set aside, or dispense with, a law in ,| [^^ j^j^ 
 favour of an individual. For instance, he pensing 
 
 Power 
 
 could grant a pardon to a murderer. James, 
 therefore, first set four men to be judges who would ex- 
 plain the law as he wished it to be explained, and then 
 caused one of his servants to accuse a Catholic, who was 
 in command of a regiment, of not having taken the sacra- 
 ment as the Test Act required. A trial was held, and the 
 judges said that James had the right to set aside the 
 Test Act in favour of an individual. Now, of course, what 
 the judges said that it was lawful for James to do in the 
 case of one man, it was also lawful for him to do in the 
 case of other men. So, after this trial, James paid no heed 
 whatever to the laws, but put very m.any Catholics in 
 office, and even made them members of the universities 
 and members of his council (1686). 
 
 4. James knew that all Churchmen were very angry 
 with him for thus putting Catholics on an equal Declaration 
 footing with members of the Church of Erg- of indul- 
 /and. So he thought it wise to try and make 
 
 the Dissenters his friends. With this end he published a 
 
y6 Struggle against Absolute Monarchy, 1687. 
 
 Declaration of Indulgence, giving leave both to Catholics 
 and to Dissenters to worship in public and private ac- 
 cording to their own forms (1687). This Declaration of 
 Indulgence was looked on by all men as a breach of the 
 law. For, though the judges had told James that he might 
 set aside a law in favour of one man at a time, they had 
 never said that he might, in this general way, set aside a 
 large number of laws at once. 
 
 5. James still wanted to get the laws done away with 
 by an Act of Parliament. He was now an old man, and he 
 Dissenters could not hide from himself that, as soon as he 
 go against was dead, the laws would be put in force again. 
 So in hopes of presently meeting a Parlia- 
 ment which should carry out his wishes, he undid his 
 brother's work, turning out of office Tory magistrates both 
 in town and country, and setting in their places Catholics 
 and Dissenters. This was a very bold thing f6r James 
 to do. He made bitter enemies of the Tories, who 
 hitherto had said that the king's commands must always 
 be obeyed, and who had placed him on the throne. Nor 
 could he after all win the Dissenters to promise to stand 
 by him. Though they were given freedom to worship in 
 their own way, they could not bring themselves to act 
 with Catholics, or uphold the Declaration of Indulgence, 
 which they looked on as unlawful. Besides more tempt- 
 ing offers were being made them by others. The clergy 
 of the Church of England and other Tories were now in 
 such great fear of Catholics, that they began to feel, like 
 those Churchmen who were Whigs, that after all the Dis- 
 senters were Protestants, and, as such, friends. So Tories 
 and Whigs agreed in telling the Dissenters, that if instead 
 of taking part with the king and the Catholics, they would 
 stand fast to the cause of the laws and the Church of Eng- 
 land, they should presently have an Act of Parliament 
 giving them leave to worship in their own way. 
 
1688. The Reiwlution. J J 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION. (1688.) 
 
 1. James would not give way in spite of all warnings. He 
 published a second Declaration of Indulgence, and or- 
 dered it to be read by all ministers on two fol- r^-j^^ ^^^^^ 
 lowing Sundays at the time of service. Epis- fps' Peii- 
 copalians and Dissenters agreed to disobey 
 this command. Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 and six bishops drew up a petition, in which they told the 
 king that they could not with a safe conscience read his 
 Declaration, because it was unlawful. Tories, like Whigs, 
 had come to think that they were most loyal to their 
 king when they obeyed the laws. 
 
 2. On the appointed day the Declaration was read in 
 only four London churches. In the country the clergy 
 were equally disobedient. James wished to 'jhe trial of 
 punish the bishops for having set the example tl^e Bishops. 
 of resistance. Their petition had been printed and sold 
 by thousands of copies. So he brought them before the 
 Court of King's Bench on the charge of having published 
 a false, seditious, and malicious libel. The court was so 
 full that there was hardly standing room. Thirty-five peers 
 were seen in the crowd. It was proved that the bishops 
 were the authors of the petition ; the next question was, 
 whether it was a libel .'' That was a point which the 
 lawyers and judges had to explain to the jury. The 
 judges knew that Jamc^ nild be angry with them if they 
 did not say the petitiv.,i was a libel. But on that day 
 they were very careful of their words. They felt that 
 James would soon have done all he could, and they 
 feared the anger of a future Parliament more than the 
 loss of office. The Chief Justice, one who was there 
 said, looked as if all the peers present had halters in 
 
'J?^ Struggle against Absolute Monarchy. 1688. 
 
 their pockets. There were four judges in the court. 
 Only two said that the petition was a hbel. Not one 
 said that the Declaration of Indulgence was lawful. 
 When the jury gave a verdict of ' Not Guilty/ such a 
 shout was raised by the crowd within the court and the 
 crowd standing outside, that it was heard for a mile off. 
 Never had the bishops been so dear to the people. Every 
 Protestant, were he Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Sec- 
 tarian, was on their side. As they left the court men 
 dropped on their knees, begging a blessing of them. 
 Bonfires were lighted in the streets, and the church bells 
 set ringing as at times of great rejoicing (June, 1688). 
 
 Men were now tired of James' rule, and looked for 
 some other to set in his place as king. 
 
 3. William of Orange was the son of Mary, a daughter 
 of Charles I. He was, therefore, both nephew and son- 
 William of i^-law of James. On the same day on which 
 Orange the bishops were found '■ not guilty,' a letter 
 
 was sent to William, asking him to come to 
 England at the head of an army. It was signed by seven 
 leaders of the Whig and Tory parties. Men who had 
 once stood against one another had joined together against 
 James II., who had made enemies of his friends. 
 
 James wished to be independent of Parliament. So, 
 although he was a proud man and felt ashamed of the act, 
 like Charles before him he took money of Lewis, know 
 ing that in return he must do as Lewis told him in foreign 
 affairs. Foreign princes, therefore, who were Lewis' 
 enemies, and hoped to get England to join an alliance 
 against him, wished success to William's expedition. 
 
 William landed at Torbay in November, 1688, with a 
 small army of Dutch and English troops. Both Whig and 
 Tory noblemen and gentlemen soon came in numbers to 
 welcome him. James, finding the very officers of his 
 army desert him, after a little hesitation fled to France. 
 
1689. Declaration of Rights. 79 
 
 He hoped by the aid of Lewis to be set again on his 
 throne. 
 
 4. The Tories did not wish to put James off the throne, 
 but to call him back and let him rule if he agreed to rule 
 in th*^ manner they wished. But they could r^y^^ j-,^ 
 not have their way, because they no longer daration of 
 had the favour of the people. A Parliament 
 met, in which the Whigs were the stronger party. The 
 throne was declared vacant, and the crown was given to 
 William and Mary as joint rulers. Parliament at the same 
 time drew up a Declaration of Rights. This laid down the 
 terms on which the Lords and Commons gave the crown 
 away. Those means by which the Stuarts had tried to rule 
 without asking the advice of Parliament were declared 
 unlawful. Parliaments, the Declaration of Rights said, 
 ought to be often held ; the king might not raise taxes or 
 keep a standing army without consent of Parliament ; he 
 might not set aside laws or fail to put laws in force with- 
 out consent of Parliament (February, 1689). This De- 
 claration afterwards was given the royal consent in the 
 form of a law which was called the Bill of Rights. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The revolution which set William and Mary on the 
 throne brought to an end the long struggle between the 
 king and the Parliament. William took the crown know- 
 ing that he must give way to the wishes of the House of 
 Commons. He could not claim any right to the throne, 
 save the right given him by Act of Parliament. The king 
 who claimed powers from God that were above the laws 
 was his rival James, If William had made like claims he 
 must have lost his throne at once. 
 
 The closer union between king and Parliament that 
 followed the Revolution brought about, amongst other 
 
So Struggle against Absointt' Monarchy, 1688. 
 
 things, that England was able to take a more active and 
 successful part in foreign affairs. The Stuarts could not 
 carry on wars successfully JDCcause they would not give 
 way to the wishes of Parliament, and could not tax their 
 subjects without consent of Parliament. The secret 
 of Cromwell's strength lay in the fact that he had a 
 standing army, and so could take taxes of his own will if 
 Parliament refused to grant them. Had the Stuarts been 
 able, like him, to force men to obey them by means of a 
 standing army. Parliaments must have ceased to have any 
 real power, and the king would have been able to rule ac- 
 cording to his own will, in whatever way he thought best. 
 
 After the Revolution monarchy above the law was no 
 longer possible in England. This victory had not been 
 gained without a heavy price. There had been many 
 years of revolution, and many acts of violence had been 
 done. In the midst of change and danger men had grown 
 up false and self-seeking. The leaders of the Parliaments 
 which stood against James I. and Charles I. thought a great 
 deal of their country, little of themselves and their own for 
 tunes. The statesmen of the time of Charles II. and 
 James II. were greedy after power and riches, and thought 
 little of the rights of the people. 
 
 William had not reigned many months when an Act 
 of Parliament was passed giving leave to Dissenters to 
 worship in their own way. It was also during the reign of 
 William that the press was set free, so that men could 
 write and publish books and newspapers without first 
 getting leave of the king's ministers. 
 
 We thus see that we have travelled a long way since 
 1603. Then it would have been held folly, if not treason, 
 to say that Parliament was to be first, the king second ; 
 or to say that Protestants, who did not think as their 
 neighbours thought, were to be free to worship in their 
 own way, and to teach their own beliefs. 
 
8i 
 
 INDEX OF PERSONS. 
 
 — ♦ 
 
 ANN 
 
 A NNE, daughter uf James 11., 67 
 
 "DACON, Sir Francis, 11, 12 
 ■*-' Barebone, Praise God, 49 
 Buckingham, Georj;e Villiers, i)uke of, 
 
 II, 13, 14, 17, 18 
 Bunyaa, John, Co 
 
 pALVIN, 20 
 
 ^-' Catherine of Kraganza, 6< 
 
 Charles I., 13-46 
 
 II., 47, 48, 58-73 
 
 Churchill, John, 74 
 
 Clarendon, IMward Hyde, Earl of, 
 
 62, 67 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 41-52, 55-57, 80 
 , Richard, 57 
 
 ■pvANBY, Thomas Osborne, Earl of, 
 ^^ 67,68,69 
 
 Lj' LIOT, Sir John, 17, 26, 27 
 ■'-' Elizabeth, Queen, 3, 5, 11, 22, 
 24, 41 
 -, daughter of James I., 8 
 
 PYM 
 
 Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 40, 
 43 
 
 pAlRFAX, Sir Thomas, 43, 45, 46, 
 
 •*■ 47 
 
 Fawkes, Guy, 5 
 
 Felton, i8 
 
 Ferdinand, Emperor, 8, 13 
 
 Frederic, Prince of the Palatinate, 8, 39 
 
 LJ AMPDEN, John. 28, 32. 36. 40. 4a 
 ■*• *■ Henrietta Maria, 14, 32, 3O 
 
 Henry VIII., 3. 24 
 Hyde, Anne, 67 
 
 JAMES I, 1-14, 54 
 II., 64, 68. 69. 74 7Q 
 
 Jeffreyf, Judge, 74 
 John, King, 15 
 
 J^EYMIS, 7. 8 
 
 LAUD, Archbishop, 22-24. 29. 33. 40 
 Lenthall, 36 
 Lewis XIII., 14, 15, 17 
 XIV.,56,6t, 63, 67. 68. 7^.78 
 
 IVTARGARET, sister of Henry 
 ^^^ VIII.,3 
 Maria, Infanta, 6, 13 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 3 
 
 , daughter of James II., 67, 70, 79 
 
 , daughter of Charles I., 7 j 
 
 Milton, John, 53, 54. 60 
 
 Monmouth, James, Duke of, 70, 74, 75 
 
 QATES, Titus, 68, 71 
 
 PHILIP III., 6. 8 
 A —IV.. 13 
 Pride, Colonel, 46, 58 
 Pym, John, 34-36, 40 
 
S2 
 
 Index of Persons, 
 
 RAL 
 
 1? ALEICTI, Sir Walter, d-8 
 
 ^ .Walter, 7 
 
 Rupert, Pnnce, 30, 42-44 
 Russell, Lord WiUiani, 73 
 
 CANCROFT, Archbishop, 77 
 ^ Savoy, Duke of, 56 
 Shaftesbury, Antony Ashley Cooper, 
 
 Earl of, 66, 69, 70, 73 
 bnakespere, 53 
 
 WIL 
 
 Stafford, William Howard, Viscount, 71 
 Strafford, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Eail 
 of. »7. 25. 26, 30-32. 34 
 
 yiCTORIA, Queen,9 
 
 "YyiLLIAM, Prince of Orange, 67, 
 
 78-80 
 
83 
 
 INDEX OF PLACES. 
 
 ALG 
 
 A LGIERS, 29 
 '**■ Am-ri«a, 7, 25, 54 
 
 gOHEMIA, 8 
 
 pADIZ 4 
 
 ^^ Chalgrove, 40 
 
 Chatham, 62 
 
 DENMARK, 13, 18 
 
 ■*-^ Dover. 64 
 Drogheda, 47 
 Dunbar, 47 
 Dunkirk, 56, 62 
 
 pDGEHILL. 39 
 Edinburgh, 29 
 
 P RANGE, IS, 18, 56. 63, 67 
 
 QENEVA, 20 
 
 ^-^ Germany, 14, 18 
 
 Gloucester, 39 
 
 Good Hope, Cape of, 54 
 
 Guiana, 7 
 
 IJAMPDEN, 40 
 
 •'• '■ Hampton Court, 4 
 
 Holland, 14, 55, 61, 63-65 
 
 RYE 
 
 INDIA, 54 
 
 ^ Indies, East, 54 
 
 7—. West, 7, 56 
 
 Ireland, 26, 35, 40, 47, 52, 59 
 
 J 
 
 AMAICA, 56 
 
 T ONDON, 37, 39, 45, 62, 70, 7a 
 ■■^ Lyme Regis, 74 
 
 TV/TARSTON Moor, 43 
 •'•''■• Massachusetts, 54 
 
 TSJASERY, 43 
 
 •^ ^ Netherlands, 56 
 
 Newark, 39 
 
 Newbury, 40 
 
 New England, 25, 55 
 
 QXFORD, 39, 69 
 
 p A LATIN ATE, 8, ij 
 Plymouth, 55 
 
 P H^, Island of, 17 
 ^^ Rochelle, 17, 1 8 
 Rye Houf.e, 73 
 
 G 7 
 
«4 
 
 Index of Places. 
 
 SCO 
 
 SCOTLAND. 3, 4. n, 35. 40. 47. 52. 
 
 «. 59 
 
 Sed^emoor, 74 
 
 Spain, 13, 14, 18, 56. 63 
 
 St. Thomas, 7 
 
 Sweden, 63 
 
 'pORBAY. 78 
 
 YOR 
 
 Whitehall, 36. 46 
 Worcester, 48 
 
 Y0RK.4* 
 
 LONDON: PRINTRD BY 
 
 IH»OTTISWOODH AN-D CO., NEW-STKKHT SQVABi^ 
 
 AND PARLIAMKNT STRBKT 
 
 .4,, \ 
 

 ittiUer & Ca/a (Kiucatiottal SietuB. 
 
 LANGUAGE LESSONS 
 
 R. DAWSON, B.A., T. C. D., Head Master High School. fielleriUe. 
 
 1 have been very much pleased by the introduction of " Swinton'i 
 Language Lesson's," into the lint of Canadian School Books. It ii 
 ilmple, comprehensive, and reliable; and shovrs very clearly how easily 
 the study of grammar may be made to g^ hand in hand with the prao* 
 kice of Composition, the great end for which grammar ought to be 
 taught. We have at last an elementary text book which may be en* 
 trusted into the hands of the most inexperienced teacher without any 
 fear of its being abused. 
 
 JOHN JOHNSTON, P. 8. L, South Hastings. 
 
 I bave carefully examined " Swinton's Language Lessons," and am 
 convinced from what I have seen of it, and from what I have heard from 
 some of my most experienced teachers, that it is by far the best 
 Elementary text book on the subject that has yet been placed within 
 reach of our Canadian children. The simultaneous exercises in com- 
 position are an admirable feature. I shall recommend the book for use 
 In all the schools in my district. 
 
 J. M. PLATT, M.D., P.* S. Inspector, Plcton. 
 
 I am greatly pleased with this little work. Our best and most ex* 
 perienced teachers teach grammar to Junior classes orally, after the 
 same fashion. Young and inexperienced teachers can do a-i well with 
 " Language Lessons " as the oldest and best can do without it. Foi 
 pupils JuHt entering upon this important branch, this little book iu 
 question has no superior in the market. 
 
 W. S. CLKNDENINO, Inspector East Bruce, Walkerton. 
 
 . . . With its valuable aid the teacher will find it no difficult 
 task to make the study of language agreeable to even Junior pupils. I 
 esteem it so highly that I will use my influence to get it int<c the handf 
 of every teacher in mj district, and, if authorised, into every school 
 likewise. 
 
 ROBERT MATHESON, MA., H. M. High School, Walkerton. 
 
 . . . Language Lessons will assuredly prove a boon to teachers 
 of composition. I find that for teaching English Grammar it issuperiot 
 to the usual treatises, as it treats of Grammar in a practical manner. 
 
 C. MOSES, P. S. I., Oounty Haldimand, Caledonia. 
 I have carefully examined Swinton's Language Lessons for junior 
 dasBes and consider it one of the liesk yet pubilsksd, bslng admirablj 
 adapted for use in our public schools. 
 
HOW TO READ; 
 
 A DRILL BOOK 
 
 FOR CORRECT AND EXPRESSIVE READING 
 
 ADAPTED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. 
 
 By Richard Lewis, Teacher of Elocution, Author of "Domin- 
 ion Elocutionist," dc. 
 
 PRICE 76 CENTS. 
 
 J. M. PLATT, M.D., P. S. Inspector, Picton, Ont. 
 
 . . . Lewis' " How to Read," is one of the finest little booki 
 ever introduced into our Canadian Schools. No efficient teacher will 
 fail to have his senior claAsew supplied with the work at once. 
 
 J. MORRISON, M.A., M.D., H. M. High School, Newmarket. 
 
 Such a book wa.s wanted and I am glad that the want has been sup- 
 plied by an Elocutionist of some note. I have adopted it for our junior 
 classes. 
 
 JOHN SHAW, Head Master High School, Omemee. 
 
 ... I am pleased with it and shall certainly introduce it at the 
 earliest opportunity. The publication cannot but be profitable to 
 teacher and pupil alike. 
 
 R. N. RO DOERS, Inspector of P. Schools, Collingwood. 
 
 . . . We hope this book will be brought to every teacher, ailQ 
 introduced into every school. We firmly believe, that no time could be 
 better spent, than in learning the simple principles it lays down and 
 practising the .suggestions it gives for attaiu&ug a style of reading both 
 pleasUig and effective. 
 
 E. M. BIGG. M.A. 
 . . . I wish it could be introduced into every school Notbino 
 
 M so MUCH NBBD&D IN OUR SCHOOLS AS SUCH A WORK. 
 
 JOlfl^ MACOUN, M.A., Head Ma.ster of Albert College Grammar 
 
 School, Prof, of Botany, Sw. 
 
 . . . I most unhesitatingly recommend Lbwis' How to Rkad to 
 be immediately introduced into all our schools and that teachers compel 
 pupilH in the higher classes to obtain it, and instruct them in the use 
 of It every day. 
 
 J. MILLER. B.A., H. M. High School, St. ThomM. 
 
 ... It will create greater interest in a subject that should re- 
 oeivc more attention. 
 
BEATTY & CLARE'S 
 
 BOOK-KEEPING; 
 
 A Trbatisb on Sinolb and Doublb EntrV Book-Kiipino, 
 
 FOR USE IN HIGH AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 By S. G. Beatty, Principal Ontario Commercial College, Belle- 
 
 Tille, and Samuel Clare, Book Keeping and Writing 
 
 Master, Normal School, Toronto. 
 
 PRICE 70 CENTS. 
 
 T. O. STEEL, Inspector, P. S. Co., Prescott. 
 
 ... I consider "Beatty & Clare's Book-keeping" plain and 
 simple, yet sufficiently comprehensive for all practical purpoieit, and 
 especially fitted for a school text book. ^ 
 
 WM. TASSEE, LL.D., H. M., Gait Col. Institute. 
 
 . . . Simple, clear, devoid of confusing definitions and rery 
 practical throughout. 
 
 J. W. CONNOR, B.A., H. M., H. S., Berlin. 
 
 ... I consider it the best elementary work on the subject that 
 I bare yet seen. 
 
 D. C. McHENRT, M.A., Principal Cobourg Collegiate Institute. 
 I consider Beatty & Clare's Book-keeping an excellent text book. 
 
 A; YOUNG, Principal of Berlin, C. 8. 
 
 The work on Book-keeping by Beatty & Clare is the best that I 
 ever saw. 
 
 JOHN WILSON, Math. Master, Port Hope H. S. 
 
 . . . 1 feel safe in recommending the work to my fellow 
 teachers throughout the Province, as one well adapted to euaure 
 thoroughness in the art of Book-keeping. 
 
 HUGH J. STRANG, B.A., H. M., H. S., Goderich. 
 
 . . . Its elucidation of the subject being clear and adequate, the 
 work will prove a valuable aid to all who may wish to make themselvee 
 thoroughly acquainted with the principles of Book-keeping. 
 
 J. S. CARSON, Inspector, Middlesex. 
 
 ... I am assured from an examination that It Is euperior to 
 MIT other work for our Canadian ichoola 
 
ENGLISH GRAMMAR 
 
 BY C. P. MASON, B.A., F.C.P.. 
 
 Foncw of University College, Lon<lon 
 
 With Examination Papers by W. Houston, M.A. 
 
 PRICE 75 CENTS. 
 
 ALEX. SIM, M.A., H. M., H. S., Oakville. 
 
 Upwards of three years ago I asked a grammar sshool ItitpectorMn 
 the old country to send me the best grammar published there. He im- 
 mediately sent me Mason. 
 
 A. P. KNIGHT, M.A., H.M., Kingston Collegiate Institute. 
 
 Incomparably the best text book for the senior classes of our high 
 schools that has yet been offered to the Canadian public. 
 
 J. KINO, M.A., LL.D., Principal, Caledonia, H. S. 
 
 Mason's gvammar will be found a most valuable class-hooks es 
 pecially for the instruction of advanced classes in English. The chapter 
 on the Analysis of difficult sentences is of itself sufficient to place the 
 work far beyond any English grammar hitherto before the Canadian 
 public. 
 
 RICHARD LEWIS, H. M., Dufferin School Toronto. 
 
 As a philosophical treatise its discussion of doubtful points and its 
 excellent methods and definitions cannot fail to give it a hi^ rank in 
 the estimation of the best judges of such works— the school teachers of 
 the country. It has readied a twenty-first edition in England and I 
 have no doubt it will lueet with the same high appreciation In this 
 Province. 
 
 JOHN SHAW, H. M., H. S., Omemee. 
 
 . . . Mason's Grammar is just such a book as many teachers have 
 been hoping to see intrcxluced into our schools, Its method being to 
 tf ach the subject by explanation, definition and abundant illUHtrations 
 without stereotyped rules thereby making the study even attraetiTe. 
 
 D. C. MacHENRY, B.A , H. M. Cobourg Col. Institute. 
 
 It is an excellent and reliable work. It will be well received hf 
 terchers and advanced pupils. 
 
 JOHN JOHNSTON, P. S. I., Belleville and South Hasting*. 
 Of all the grammars that I have seen, I consider Mason's the beet 
 
 J. MORRISON, M.A.. M.D., Head Master, High School, Newmarket. 
 
 I have ordered it to be used in this school. I consider it by far the 
 best English grammar for high school purposes that has yet appeared. 
 VWth " Mason " and " Fleming" Dothintr more sewm* ♦o b* H#«*-«<1