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The present volume is a companion to the one on the ' Thirty Years' War,' and it has therefore been unnecessary to break the course of the narrative by constant references to events passing on the Conti- nent, which will be easily brought before the reader who consults the chronological contents at the begin- ning of the two books. In England, happier than France or Germany, the problem of religious liberty was worked out in close connexion with the problem of parliamentary govern- ment. England did not, even temporarily, cease to be a nation, as Germany did ; nor did it, like France, surrender its power to control events into the hands of a single man. The interest of its history in the seventeenth century lies in the efforts made to secure a double object — the control of the nation over its own destinies, and the liberty of the public expression of thought, without which parliamentary government is only a refined form of tyranny. vi Preface The present volume only professes to recount a part of this struggle. The epoch comes to its proper end in the volume which is to follow it in the series. Even of this first part, too, I can only profess to tell a portion from the results of personal investigation. After the year 1634 I have to depend upon the researches of others, and I have very little doubt that in many cases the opinions expressed would be modified by fuller know- ledge, and that even the facts would turn out not to be altogether in accordance with my statements. Those who wish to consult histories on a larger scale, will find by far the best general history of the period in Ranke's ' History of England principally in the Seventeenth Century,' which has recently been translated. In even greater detail are Mr. Spedding's ' Letters and Life of Lord Bacon,' Mr. Forster's 'Life of Sir John Eliot,' his essays on ' The Grand Remon- strance ' and the ' Arrest of the Five Members,' Professor Masson's ' Life of Milton,' Mr. Sanford's ' Studies of the Great Rebellion,' and Mr. Carlyle's * Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell.' Those who care to see what I may have to say on the earlier part of the period will find in three books — ' A History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke ; ' ' Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage ; ' and ' A History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I.' — a connected history from 1603 to 1628, Preface. vii which will, I hope, be carried on further, before any unreasonably long time elapses. The maps have been constructed from Clarendon and other familiar sources, and, though they may be incorrect in some points, I hope they will give a clearer idea of the course of the war than is to be gathered from any written narrative. The first will show how far the statement is true that the wealthiest portion of England attached itself to the Parliament, and brings out distinctly the enormous comparative wealth of London. The calculations on which it is founded are derived from a statement in Rushworth, corrected, in the instance of the county of Durham, from the ori.ginal entry in the Privy Council Register. The second map may be said to express the natural strength of the King's party ; for, though Oxford was not held by him at the actual commencement of the war, it took his side too vigorously to be counted as a mere enforced accession of strength. The third map shows the King's fortunes at their highest point, just before the Scottish army invaded England, and the fourth gives the position just before the New Model army set out to combat the King. The dates, unlike those in the volume on ' The Thirty Years' War,' are given according to the old styles CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE PURITANS AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. Section I. — Reformers and Puritans. PAGB The English Reformation the work of two classes of men, who may be called Reformers and Puritans . . i The former were favoured by Elizabeth 2 Especially LlS Puritanism tended to Presbyterianism . 3 General desire for compromise at the close of Elizabeth's reign 4 Tolerant character of the literature of the time — Hooker, Bacon, Shakespeare 6 Why was there, after all, a Puritan Revolution ? . . . 6 Section H. — The Tudor Monarchy. Causes of revolutions 6 Modern constitutional arrangements aim at preventing revo- lutions 7 Circumstances which had modified the mediaeval constitution in favour of the Royal power 8 Instruments of the Royal power— the Court of Star Chamlier, the Court of High Commission ro Elizabeth the centre of the national life , . . .11 Her dependence on popular support 12 Contents. Section III. — The Hampton Court Conference and the proposed Union with Scotland. PAGE 1603 Accession of James 1 13 1604 The Hampton Court Conference 13 The House of Commons for concession to the Puri- tans 15 The canons of 1604 • 15 1611 Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, relaxes their strictness in execution ........ r6 1607 The Commons receive coolly the King's proposal for a union with Scotland ....... 16 The Judges declare all Scotchmen bom since the King's accession to the English throne to be naturalised in England 17 Section IV. — The Neiu Impositions and the Great Contract. 1606 James's revenue does not meet his expenditure . . 17 The judgment on Bate's case ..... 18 1608 The New Impositions 18 [610 The Great Contract 18 Breach between the King and his first Parliament . . 19 1614 The Addled Parliament 20 CHAPTER II. THE SPANISH ALLIANCE. Section I. — Gunpowder Plot. Z603 Condition of the Roman Catholics . . . .20 James promises to relieve them, but does not keep his word 21 1604 Formation ol the Gunpowder Plot . . . .21 1605 The plot betrayed 22 Seizure and execution of the conspirators . . -23 Contents. xf Section II. — James I. and Spain. PAGE 1606 Spaniards unpopular in England 23 t6ii James proposes to marry tiis son to a Spanish Infanta . 23 1617 Raleigh's voyage to Guiana ...... 24 1613 The Earl of Somerset becomes James's favourite . . 25 1615 He is convicted of murder, and succeeded by George Villiers in the King's favour 25 1616 View taken by James of his authority . . . .27 1617 His contempt of popularity leads him to overlook the dangers of a Spanish marriage . . . . .28 Section III. — The Spaniards in the Palatinate. 1618 Outbreak of a revolution in Bohemia . . . .29 1619 James's son-in-law Frederick is chosen King of Bohemia 30 1620 In spite of the arrival of English volunteers, the Palatinate is invaded by the Spaniards, and Frederick is ejected from Bohemia ........ 31 1621 Meeting of the third Parliament of the reign . . • 31 The Commons attack the monopolies . . . -32 And proceed to accuse Lord Chancellor Bacon of cor- ruption 33 His sentence 33 Revival, though in an incomplete form, of the practice of impeachment 35 Section IV. — The Loss 0/ the Palatinate. 1621 The Commons declare their resolution to support the King in defending the Palatinate . . , -36 Digby, sent to Vienna to negotiate a peace, fails to stop the progress of hostilities, and the King calls upon Parliament to supply him with money to carry on the war. The Commons, however, wish him to break with Spain ......... 37 They also ask that he shall marry his son to a Protestant princess. James takes umbrage at this, and dissolves Parliament 38 1622 rhrough want of money James is unable to support his son-in-law, and the Palatinate is lost . . . .39 xii Contents, Section V. — The 'Journey to Madrid. PACK 1623 Prince Charles, together with Buckingham, goes to Madrid to conclude his marriage with the Infanta Maria, and to urge the Spaniards to procure the restitution of the Palatinate 39 The Spaniards throw difficulties in his way . . '41 The marriage treaty is, however, signed ; but when Chai-les finds that he will not be allowed to bring his bride home at once, and that the Spaniards will not go to war to recover the Palatinate for his brother- in-law, he returns to England 43 CHAPTER III. THE ASCENDENCY OF BUCKINGHAM. Section I. — The last Parliament of James I. 1624 James summon. Parliament, and agrees to break with Spain 45 But the declaration of war is postponed, in order to g^ve time for negotiation with France and the German Pro- testants 46 Lord-Treasurer Middlesex is impeached . . .46 A marriage treaty is agreed to between Prince Charles and the French Princess Henrietta Maria . . -47 1625 Mansfield's expedition sent to recover the Palatinate ends in failure 47 Death of James 1 48 Section W.—The fij-st Parliament of Charles I. Charles, in order to carry on the war for the recovery of the Palatinate, summons Parliament, which fails to support him through distrust of Buckingham . . 48 He adjourns Parliament to Oxford, and then dissolves it 50 Sends a fleet to Cadiz, which fails to do anything , . 51 Buckingham's diplomatic mission to Holland , . 52 Co7itents. xiii Section III. — The Impeachment of Buckingham, and the Expedi- tion to Rhi. PAGE Revolt of Rochelle against Louis XIII., who borrows English ships to overpower it 52 1626 Ciiarles's second Parliament meets, and impeaches Buck- ingham 53 Charles dissolves it, and demands a free gift, ^nd then a forced loan 54 War breaks out between England and France . . 55 1627 Buckingham leads an army to Rh^ and fails . . 56 SkctioN IV. — The Petition of Right and the Assassination of Buckitigham. 1628 Charles summons a third Parliament . , .57 The Petition of Right . . .... 58 After the Parliament is prorogued Buckingham takes the command of an expedition for the relief of Rochelle . 60 But is assassinated at Portsmouth . ... 61 CHAPTER IV. THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES L Section I. — Taxation and Religion. Dispute about tonnage and poundage referred to Parlia- ment 61 Religious difficulties 63 The King's declaration on the Articles . , . .65 Section II. — The Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629 The Commons postpone the subject of tonnage a-.^d poundage 65 They take firm ground against religious innovations . 66 Summon the custom-house officers to answer for seizing a member's goods 67 Tumult in the House 68 Parliament dissolved 69 Punishment of Chambers, and imp\isonment and death of Eliot 69 xiv Contents. Section III. — The beginnings of Unparliamenfary Government. PAGE 1629 Constitutional question raised 71 Charles's ministers — Weston, Laud, and Wentworth . 74 Section IV. — Ecclesiastical Parties. 1630 Star Chamber sentences ...... jj Laud enforces conformity to the Prayer Book . . 78 1632 Contrast between George Herbert and Richard Sibbes . 79 1633 The feoffees for impropriations 81 The estrangement between the two parties not yet complete 82 Section V. — New England. 1608 Emigration of a Separatist congregation to Holland . 82 The colony of Virginia 83 1620 The voyage of the 'Mayflower' 83 1633 Religious character of the New England settlers . . 84 CHAPTER V. the reign of thorough. Section I. — General Enforcement of Conformity, 1633 Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury . . -85 Gives offence by the issue of the Declaration of Sports, and by removing the Communion tables to the east end of the churches 86 1634 Prynne punished by the Star Chamber for the publica- tion of ' Histriomastix' 87 The Inns of Court Masque, and Milton's ' Comus ' . 88 1634-6 The metropolitical visitations 8g Section II. — Ship-money. 1634 Forest courts held .90 The first ship-money writ issued to the port towns . 91 1635 The second ship-money writ issued to the whole of Eng- land 92 1637 The judges declare it to be legal, but Hampden resists the payment 93 1638 Judgment given against him 94 Contents. xv Section III. — Pryiuie, Bastwick, and Durtjn. v^r.v. (637 Change of feeling since 1634 ...... 94 Sentences on Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton . . -94 General sympathy with the sufferers . . . -95 1638 Milton's 'Lycidas' ....... 96 Section IV. — Wentworth in Ireland. 1603 State of Ireland at the accession of James I. 1610 The plantation of Ulster 1633 Arrival of Wentworth to be Lord-Deputy 1634 He holds a Parliament .... His activity 1635 He proposes to colonise Connaught 97 98 59 99 100 lOI CHAPTER VI. RESISTANCE IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND. Section I. — The Dorvnfall of Episcopacy in Scotland. Episcopacy in Scotland 102 1637 Introduction of the new Prayer Book followed by a riot . 103 1638 The Covenant is taken, and the General Assembly meets at Glasgow . 104 It throws off the authority of the King, and abolishes episcopacy ......... 105 Section II. — The Bishops' Wars and the Short Parlianicni. 1639 Probability that the resistance in Scotland would be fol- lowed by resistance in England 106 The first war with Scotland followed by an agree- ment 107 1640 The Short Parliament summoned and dissolved . . 108 Position taken by Wentworth at Court .... 109 The second war with Scotland ends in the King's defeat and necessitates the calling of :i Parliament . .110 M. Ji. a xvi Contents. Section 111. — The Meeting oj the Long Parliament and the Execution of Strafford. PACE 1640 The Long Parliament meets 110 Impeachment of Strafford m 1641 The impeachment is turned into an attainder . . 112 His execution 11:; Section IV. — Demands of the Commons. 1641 The struggle for supremacy bcAveen the King and the House of Commons leads to a diminution of the powers of the Crown . . . . The Scots return home ..... Church questions remain to be solved . The Moderates led by Falkland and Hyde . Their weakness 113 114 IIS 116 117 Section V. — The Grand Remonstrance and the Rupttire with tlie King. 1641 Whilst the King is in Scotland news arrives of an Irish insurrection 119 Excitement in England 1 20 The Grand Remonstrance drawn up and voted . .121 1642 Impeachment of members of the House by the King . 122 The King attempts to seize them 123 The Commons take refuge in the City, and demand the control of the mihtia 124 CHAPTER VII. THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY. Section I. — The Beginning of the Civil War. 1642 The Commons conservative in feeling . Various elements of the King's army The King sets up his standard at Nottingham Indecisive battle fought at Edgehill The King turns back from Brentford • 125 . 126 . 127 . 127 . .23 Contents. xvii I'AGB Rise of Cromwell ........ 128 1643 The King gains ground, but fails to take Gloucester . 130 Death of Falkland at the first battle of Newbury . , 130 Section II. — Presbyterians and Independents. Meeting of the Westminster Assembly. The Scots in- \'ited to join their forces to those of the English Par- liament 131 The Covenant taken, and Presbyterianism adopted in England 132 Death of Pym 133 16 J4 Execution of Laud 133 Rising strife between Presbyterians and Independents . 134 Death of Chillingworth . 134 Spread of ideas favourable to liberty of conscience and speech 136 Section III. — Marston Moor and Nasehy. 1643 Cromwell's successes 137 The Scotch cross the border, and, in conjunction with Cromwell and Fairfax, defeat the Royalists at Marston Moor 138 Essex's infantry surrender to the King in Cornwall . 139 The second battle of Newbury leads to a quarrel be- tween Cromwell and the Earl of Manchester . . 140 1645 The Self-denying Ordinance ...... 140 Argument in favour of liberty in Milton's 'Areopagitica' 141 Formation of the New Model 142 Montrose in Scotland ....... 142 Defeat of the King at Naseby, and of Montrose at Philiphaugh ........ 143 Section IV. — The Army and the Parliament. 1646 The King takes refuge with the Scots .... 144 In spite of the feeling of tco army in favour of toleration, Parliament makes proposals to the King which offer no guarantees for liberty of opinion .... 145 C647 Charles, being surrendered by the Scots to the Parlia- liament, is lodged at Holmby Hoii':c .... 146 a 2 xviii Contents. PAGR He is carried off to the army, which overpowers the opposition of Parliament, excluding eleven members by force 147 The army makes proposals to the King .... 148 Charles flies to the Isle of Wight, and is lodged at Caris- brooke Castle 149 Section V. — The Second Civil War and the Executioii of the King. 1647 Dissatisfaction of the Scots at the predominance of the army 149 1648 The news that a Scottish invasion is {tending exasperates the English army 150 The Scots are defeated by Cromwell at Preston . • 151 The army secures the person of the King, bringing him to Hurst Castle ; they also overpower the House of Com- mons by Pride's Purge 152 1649 Trial and execution of the King 153 CHAPTER Vni. THE COMMONWEALTH. Section I. — Cromwell'i Last Victories. Nature of the proceedings against the King . . , 154 Establishment of a Commonwealth .... 155 CromweU subdues Ireland 156 1650 Montrose lands in Scotland, is taken and executed . 157 Charlesll. proclaimed in Scotland 157 Cromwell defeats the Scots at Dunbar .... 158 1651 He again defeats them at Worcester .... 159 Charles II. escapes to France 159 Section II. — The Dissolution of the Long Parliament. The negative work of the Revolution accomplished . 159 Ideas of the leaders of the Commonwealth . , . 160 1652 Their scheme for a new Parliament objected to by Crom- well i6i Contciiis. 'J he Navigation Act is followed by a war with the Dutch 162 Corruption in Parliament 162 1653 The Long Parliament dissolved by Cromwell . . 163 Section III. — The Assembly of Nominees. 1653 Meeting of the Assembly of Nominees .... 164 It resigns its powers into Cromwell's hands . . . 165 CHAPTER IX. OLIVER'S PROTECTORATE. Section I. — Oliver s First Parliament. Constitutional difficulties of the situation . . . 166 Oliver Cromwell declared Protector by the Instrument of Government 167 1654 Character of Oliver's Government 168 Meeting of Parliament, which begins by questioning the Protector's authority 169 1655 Oliver dissolves the Parliament 170 Section II. — The Major-Generals. 1655 Limits of the toleration granted by Oliver . . . 171 After a Royalist rising, major-generals are appointed to place England under military control . . . 172 Suppression of Episcopalian worship .... 173 Oliver allies himself with France against Spain . . 174 Milton's sonnet on the ' Massacre of the Vaudois ' . 175 War with Spain 175 Section III. — Oliver s Second Parliament. 1656 Oliver summons his second Parliament Begins by excluding members whom he distrusts 1657 The Petition and Advice .... Ohver refuses the title of King i6;8 Dissolution of the second Parliament 176 177 178 179 179 Section IV.— Death of Oliver. 1658 Oliver's system could not last 180 Military and naval successes 181 His death i8i XX Contents. CHAPTER X. END OF THE REVOLUTION. Section I. — Anarchy. PAGk [658 The Puritan revolution drawirig to a close . . .183 Richard Cromwell assumes the Protectorate and sum- mons a new Parliament 184 1659 The Parliament is dissolved, and the Protector ejected by the army . 185 The Rump, or survivors of the Long Parliament, restored by the army 185 The army quarrels with the Rump and drives it out, afterwards again restoring it 186 Section II. — The Restoratioji. 1660 Monk crosses the border with the army from Scotland, and is joined by Fairfax at York , . • . ib> He reaches London, and declares for a free Parliament 188 The Long Parliament comes to an end, a new Parlia- ment meets, and restores Charles II i8g Section III. — The Ecclesiastical Settlement of the Restoration. 1660 Principles of the Restoration 190 1660-5 Acts passed against the Nonconformists, who begin to be called Dissenters 191 1 661 The Corporation Act 192 The doctrine of non-resistance adopted by Parliament . 192 1667-71 Milton's ' Paradise Lost ■ ' Paradise Regained,' and 193 ' Samson Agonistes ' 195 Section IV. — The Revival of Parliamentary Opposition. 1661 The ParHamentary view of the Constitution . . . 196 1664 Charles's financial difficulties, and war with the Dutch . 197 1667 Fall of Lord Chancellor Clarendon .... 198 Section V. — Revivalof the Idea of Toleration. 1667 The policy of Toleration adopted by the King . • 199 He wishes to include Roman Catholics .... 200 •1668 The Triple Alliance 201 Contents. xxi PAGF 1670 The treaty of Dover 201 1672 The Declaration of Indulgence 201 1673 The declaration withdrawn ...... 201 The Test Act followed by a Bill for the relief of Dis- senters, which fails to pass the Lords . . . 202 Progress of Toleration 202 Section VI. — The Revolution 0/ itZi. i683 Political results of the Revolution 203 Future prospects . 204 MAPS. i:. England and Wales — showing the incidence of Ship-money in 1636 To face title-page 2. England and Wales — showing the districts held by the King and the Parhament on January i, 1643 , To face page 128 3. England and Wales — showing the districts held by the King and the Parliament on January i, 1644 . To face page 138 4. England and Wales — showing the districts held by the King and the Parliament on May i, 1645 . . To face page 143 THE FIRST TWO STUARTS AND THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. THE PURITANS AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. Section I. — Reformers arid Puritans. The English Reformation was brought about, as every other great change is brought about, by the co-operation of two classes of men: the men who are, on the « , -j-^.q p^. whole, content with the principles by which ^^^}° ''^^ they have hitherto guided their lives, though tion. they think that some changes ought to be made in mat- ters of detail ; and those who start upon an entirely new principle, and who strive to realise an ideal society which commends itself to their own minds. They answer, in short, to the Whigs and Radicals of modern political life, whilst the Conservatives are represented by a third class averse from all change whatever. The first class — the Reformers, as we may call them who, on the whole, controlled the movement, . -r- t> ' _ ' ' S 2. J ne Ke- were content with gradual and slow change, formers. They were ready to examine every practice and doc- .-> M.il. B 2 Puritans and Hoitse of Commons. 1558-1603. trine by the test of Scripture and the custom of the early Church, but they were willing to retain all that could not be so shown to be worthy of rejection. In this way they held that the white vestment of the minister, the kneeling attitude of the congregation at the administration of the Communion, the observation of days set apart for fast and festival, were commendable observances reaching the heart through the medium of the senses, and encouraging a habit of devotion by the use of bodily actions. Alongside of these men were others who cared nothing for ancient tradition or outward observances, and § 3. The who regarded those which had been retained Puritans. as rags and relics of Popery. During their exile in the reign of Mary, the Puritans, as they afterwards came to be called, learned from the disciples of Calvin, the great French teacher of Geneva, a special system of doctrine and discipline, a system in which the heart and soul were sustained by the intellectual appreciation of theological truths, rather than by the outward actions of tlie body. The Puritans were not likely to find a friend in Elizabeth, when, after her sister's death, she mounted §4. Eliza- the throne to take up the conflict which her fnfaglinrt ^^thcr had waged before her. She herself the Puritans, loved the old forms, and scandalised her bishops by retaining the crucifix in her private chapel. But she had another reason for bearing hardly on the Puritans. Her strength lay in her headship of the national cause. She detested the Pope, not so much because he taught the doctrine of transubstantiation and worshipped images, as because he claimed to meddle with the rules and laws to be observed by Englishmen. She was anxious to win over as many as possible ot those whose belief was still the same as that of their 155S-1603. Reformers and Puritans. 3 fathers, and she therefore was glad to retain such cere- monies as might be welcome to this numerous class of her subjects. If Elizabeth had reasons of her own for maintain ing the ceremonial forms of the Church, she had also reasons of her own for maintaining its episcopal organi- sation. The existence of bishops has been 55. Eliza- defended by ecclesiastical writers on various port o/iEms- grounds ; but it was not by ecclesiastical copacy. reasoning that Elizabeth was convinced. She cared very little whether bishops were or were not the successors of the Apostles. She cared very much that they were appointed by herself. They were her instruments for keeping the clergy in order. Not that they were mere servile tools. Many of them were high-minded, devoted men, serving the queen all the better because they be- lieved that they were serving God at the same time. To the thoroughgoing Puritan such a system was doubly obnoxious. With Calvin's aid he looked into his Bible, and he found nothing there of the rule § g. Puritan of the queen over the beliefs and worship of ppp°s;tion ^ . '^^ to iipisco- Christians. Presbyterianism, so at least the pacy. most energetic Puritans held, was the divinely ap- pointed model of church government for all time. The clergy, assisted by lay elders chosen out of the con- gregation, were to be supreme over all ecclesiastical matters. Proud of her ancient crown, proud of her advocacy of the rights of the laity against Presbyter and Pope alike, Elizabeth sternly resisted the Puritan . Growth flood. Year after year the tide, in spite of all ?f Puritan- her efforts, seemed to mount. As long as the struggle with Rome was hot, as long as plots for the assassination of the queen were matters of daily talk, and the presence of a Spanish fleet in English har- 4 Puritans and House of Commons. 1558- 1603. bours, and of Spanish veterans upon English soil, was regarded as within the limits of possibility, so long large numbers of men who were in earnest in the quarrel attached themselves to that form of Protestantism which was most opposed to the system which they com- bated. During the last years of Elizabeth's reign the waves of external conflict lulled themselves to sleep. p .^ When once the Armada had been shattered tendencies by English cannon-shot and by the winds of in England, heaven, a calmer, milder spirit prevailed amongst the conquerors. To combat Spain and the Pope ceased to be the first thought of EngUshmen. The thought of internal reforms, of wise guidance of the nation which had been saved, came into the foremost place. Each party had learned something from the other. If the bishops continued to oppose Calvin's system of church government, they gave their warm ad- herence to his theology. Large numbers of Puritans abandoned their Presbyterian theories, and were ready to submit to the Episcopal constitution, if only they could be allowed to omit certain ceremonies which they re- garded as superstitious, of which the use of the surplice was the most important. These prognostics of peace with which Elizabeth's reign closed were not confined to England. An observer §9. Pacific of the course of continental politics might have M"ti^e"con- ^^^"^ excused for thinking that the days of tinent. religious wars were drawing to an end. In 1598 Spain, by the peace of Vervins, had withdrawn from its attempt to meddle in the affairs of France and had acknowledged the legitimacy of the tolerant mon- archy of Henry IV. The Dutch Netherlands were still holding out in their noble struggle against Spanish op- pression, and it seemed likely that here too Spain would 1 558- 1 603. Reformers and Puritans . 5 retire exhausted from the contest. In Germany the existing settlement which assigned certain territories to one religion or the other had not been seriously con- tested. On the whole the prospects of the approach of peace after the long religious wars were brighter than they had been for many a weary year. In England, a broad and tolerant disposition made itself conspicuous in the highest literature of the day. No theological controversialist ever had so wise §io. Tole- a horror of strife as Hooker, the author ^"e"^^"*" of the Ecclesiastical Polity, or was so ready Hooker. to teach that truth and wisdom must be sought in a reve- rent study of spiritual and moral laws, rather than in any form of words which might be upheld as a standard of party. He strikes up the swords of the combatants as the herald of peace. 'This unhappy controversy,' are the very first words which he utters, ' about the received ceremonies and discipline of the Church of England, which hath so long time withdrawn so many of her ministers from their principal work, and employed their studies in contentious oppositions ; hath by the unnatural growth and dangerous fruits thereof, made known to the world, that it never received blessing from the Father of peace.' The voice of Hooker was echoed by the voice of Bacon, statesman, philosopher, essay writer, all in one. Looking with eyes of pity on the lot of men, striving,if so it might be, to make them happier " ^'^°°" and wiser by act or speech of his, he had his word of warning to utter on this point too : ' Therefore,' he writes, ' it is good we return unto the ancient bands of unity in the Church of God, which was, one faith, one baptism, and not, one hierarchy, one discipline, and that we ob- serve the league of Christians, as it is penned by our Saviour Christ ; which is in substance of doctrine this. 6 Puritans and House of Commons. 1558-1603. All that is not with us is against us ; but in things in- different, and but of circumstance this, He that is not against us is with us ... as it is excellently alluded by that father that noted that Christ's garment was without seam, and yet the Church's garment was of divers colours, and thereupon set down for a rule. Let there be variety in the vesture but not a rent.' Hooker's object is diffe- rent from Bacon's object. Hooker counselled the Puritan to give way to the arrangements of the Church. Bacon coimselled that the arrangements of the Church should be modified to suit the wishes of the Puritan. But the spirit of moderation was the same in both. One too there was, who kept himself aloof from the immediate questions of the hour, who had nothing § 12. Shake- directly to say about church worship or church speare. ceremonies, who was teaching men the infinite value of truth and righteousness. When Elizabeth died Shakespeare had yet to do his highest work, to sink into the depths and rise to the heights of the soul of man, till he produced those perfect flowers of chastened calm for- giveness, Prospero and Hermione. Who that looked around them in the opening years of the 17th century would predict aught but the jj growth of peace and toleration ? Why it was live forecast that the forecast was deceptive : why there of thefuture. ^^^ ^ Puritan Revolution at all, it is the object of these pages to tell. Section II. — The Tjidor Monarchy. Political institutions, kings, parliaments, or law-courts 5 1 What is ^^ ^'^^ come into existence by accident, a revolution? They are there because they have been able to do some good to the nation in previous stages of its 1485-1603. The Ttidor Monarchy. 7 histor)'. As each generation is sure to want something done which the last generation did not want, there is ahvays a possibihty that the persons set in authority may resist the change, or may not be competent to carry it out. Then some alteration has to be made in the institu- tions under which government is carried on ; and if this alteration is very great, and is effected by force, it is called a Revolution. In every government which does not either main- tain itself, like an ancient Greek despotism, by the sole possession of arms amidst an unarmed popula- ^ tion, or like a modern Asiatic despotism, by nors and the absolute indifference of governors and government, governed alike to any change at all, two things are requisite, if it is to maintain its existence. In the first place there must be some way in which the people who are governed make their rulers understand what sort of changes they want and what sort of changes they refuse to admit. In the second place there must be some man or some select body of men who have wis- dom and practical skill to effect the changes desired in a right way. AU the popular applause in the world will not save from ruin a foolish governor who disregards the laws of nature, and the most consummate wisdom will not save from ruin a governor who tries to force a people to changes which they detest. This is true even if there be no constitutional sys- tem in existence at all. In Russian history the Czar who does not satisfy his subjects is assassinated. , . . , -' •' . §3. Modern The object of our modern constitutional ar- constitution- rangements is that the influence of the popular ^ ^^' wishes and the influence of practical ability in the gover- nors should be brought to bear upon one another by argument and discussion and not by violence. 8 Puritans and House of Commons. 1485-1603-. In the Middle Ages violence was often appealed to. Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI. were dethroned and , ,, ,. murdered. Still the rule was not violence but § 4. Medie- val consti- agreement. In every department of the state tudonaiism. ^^ co-opcration of the king and his officials with the popular voice was regarded as the essential condition of what our ancestors well called the common- wealth, the word wealth then signifying general wellbeing, and not mere riches. King and Parliament must join in the making of new laws and in the raising of new taxes. A judge appointed by the king must join with a popular jury in the condemnation of a criminal or in the settle- ment of a quarrel about the rights of property. The king and officers appointed by the king commanded the armed force of the nation. But the armed force was not a standing army separate from the people, but a force composed of the able-bodied inhabitants of the country who would refuse to march on an unpopular service. Such in the main was the government of England till towards the end of the fifteenth century. Then special circumstances occurred which made sion 0/ theT it necessary that the crown should be clothed nobility. £qj. ^ \\xa.& with extraordinary powers. Under the feeble government of Henry VI. the great and powerful nobility preyed upon the weakness of their neighbours. Juries were bribed or bullied by the rich landowner to give verdicts according to his pleasure. Men were murdered in the public roads, and justice was not to be had. Peaceful homes were besieged and sacked by rival claimants to property. Legislation was decided not by the free vote of an elected Parliament, but by the victory or defeat of armies. The strong government of the Yorkist kings, succeeded by the far stronger government of the Tudors, was the answer to the national demand that the lawless nobility should be 1485-1603. The Tudor Monarchy. 9 incapacitated from doing further mischief. Henry VIII., whatever his moral character may have been, did the work thoroughly, and left but little in this way to be accomplished by his daughter. Before the depression of the nobility was com- pletely effected, the struggle with Rome was begun. Fresh powers were needed by the crown, if it § 6. The was to avert the risk of foreign invasion, to wk'if Rome, detect plots at home, and to maintain order amongst a people large numbers of which were disaffected. Thus a second reason was added for allowing the sovereign to act independently of those constitutional restraints which had hitherto counted for so much. In almost every department of government the crown was thus enabled to arrogate to itself powers un- known in earlier times. In taxation, though 5 y_ increas- it was still understood to be a constitutional '"s powers of the prmciple that Parliament alone could grant crown. those direct payments of money which were called sub- sidies, means had been found by which the crown could evade the control of Parliament. People were asked some- times to give money, sometimes to lend it, and sometimes the money thus lent was not repaid. Impositions were also laid without the consent of Parliament on a few arti- cles of commerce imported, though this was not done to any great extent. On the whole, however, Elizabeth was much more careful to avoid giving offence to her subjects by irregular demands of money than her father and grand- father had been. The chief field in which the crown en croached upon the nation was in matters of judicature. The struggle against the nobles and the struggle against the papacy each left its mark on the judicial system in a court which judged without the intervention of a jury. The first produced the Court of Star Chamber. The second produced the Court of High Commission. 10 Puritans and House of Commons. 1485-1603, The Court of Star Chamber was in Elizabeth's time composed of the whole of the Privy Council, toge- §8. The ther with the two Chief Justices. Its right to Star'^Cham- i^^E^ '^^^ founded partly on old claims of ber. the Privy Council, partly on an Act of Parlia- ment made in the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. It could not adjudge any man to lose his life ; but it might fine and imprison, and in case of libels and other offences of the like kind, it asserted a right to put a man in the pillory and to cut off his ears. The court had done good service in punishing rich and powerful offen- ders whom juries would have been afraid to convict, and long after Elizabeth's reign, when it was no longer needed to keep down the nobility, it was much resorted to by persons whose cases were too intricate for an ordinary jury to unravel. There were those, too, who held it to be a good thing that there should be a court able to do justice against criminals who might not have sinned against the letter of the law, and who might consequently escape if they were brought before the •ordinary courts. It may fairly be said to have served a useful purpose as long as the crown and the nation walked in harmony. But if the crown were to go one way, and the nation to go another, a court completely under the influence of the crown might easily be used against the nation which it was intended to serve. The Court of High Commission was a kind of Ecclesiastical Star Chamber. It was founded by Eliza- § 9. The beth, partly on the strength of an Act of Parlia- H°"h C*^ - "^^"* empowering her to correct abuses in the mission. Church, partly on the strength of her claim to have reasserted for the royal authority the su- preme governorship over the Church. It was composed of clergy and laymen appointed by the queen, and was able to fine and imprison as well as to degrade and sus- 145^5-1603. The Ttidor Monarchy. 11 pend clergymen from their functions. Here too, as in the case of the Star Chamber, much would depend on the way in which the court exercised its powers. Parliament had intended that they should be used mainly against the spread of Roman Catholic doctrines. Elizabeth, however, used them chiefly against the Puritans, and if Puritanism came to be really accepted by the people and to be opposed by the crown, it would find the Court of High ■Commission a real hindrance to its development. During the i6th century therefore, all the changes which had taken place in the institutions of the country had all been in favour of the crown. But the rise of the ~~~~-^^ , , , 1 § lo- The royal power cannot be measured merely by the roj-al prero- change of courts and laws. Royalty had come g=^"'^^- to be regarded as the centre of the national life, as the vin- dicator of the national rights against the injustice of the nobility at home and the aggression of the Pope and his allies from abroad. The personal flattery with which Elizabeth was surrounded was but the extravagant echo of the wiser judgment of her contemporaries. Nothing is more instructive on this head than the infinitely small part played by Parliament in Shakespeare's historical dramas written during the closing years of Elizabeth's life. He narrates the fortunes of King John without the slightest allusion to Magna Charta. What interests him is the personal struggle of men of various qualities and powers. In Richard II. and Henry IV. he shows what misery and turmoil follows if once the legal ground of hereditary succession is abandoned. He makes his Richard say that : — Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king. But Shakespeare's loyalty is to England first, to the king only secondarily, for England's sake. He sees the mis- 12 Puritans and House of Commons. 1485-1603, chief which Richard's fall had caused. But his sympa- thies go with Henry IV., the self-sustained practical ruler. Can we doubt that if he had lived half a century later, he would have mourned for Charles, but that his intelligence would have decided for Cromwell ? As long as EHzabeth lived she was the represen- tative of the nation in the highest sense. With all her §11. Anec- taults, and she had many, she sympathised Elizabeth, with the people which she ruled. One day, we are told, she asked a lady how she contrived to retain the affection of her husband. The lady replied that ' she had confidence in her husband's understanding and courage, well founded on her own steadfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey, whereby she did persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did command his.' ' Go to, go to, mistress,' answered the queen ; * you are wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the goodwill of all my husbands, my good people ; for if they did not rest assured of some special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience.' Would Elizabeth's successor be able to do the same ? If he could not, the House of Commons was there § 12. The t^ ^^^ voice to the national desires, and to new reign, claim that power which is the inevitable result of services rendered to the nation. Such a change could hardly be effected without a contest. The strength which had been imparted to the crown that it might accomplish the objects aimed at by the nation would, ii their paths diverged, be an obstacle in the course of the nation which only force could overcome. i6o4. The Hampton Court Conference. 1 3 Section III. — The Hampton Court Conference and the proposed Union with Scotland. The mere fact that Elizabeth's successor was a Scotchman was against him. James I. was lineally descended from Henry VII., but he had not ^ ' A.D. 1003. grown up in England, had not been surrounded § i. The by Englishmen and habituated to English ways "^^ "^^' of thinking. His own mental powers were by no means inconsiderable. He usually knew better than other people what sort of thing it was desirable to do. But he had a great aversion to taking trouble of any kind, and he shrunk from the constant supervision of details which is abso- lutely necessary if the most promising plans are to ripen into fruit. At the same time he was most impatient of opposition. He believed himself to be authorised to rule England, partly by his birth, partly by some divine right connected with his birth ; but infinitely more by his own superiority in wisdom. He liked to see questions brought to the test of argument, but was apt to insult those who refused to see things in the light in which he saw them. His Scotch experience was especially likely to bias him in any questions in which Puritanism was concerned. Puritan ascendancy, which was an object of fear in Eng- land, had been a fact in Scotland, and James was not likely to forget the day when a Puritan minister had plucked him by the sleeve and had addressed him in public as ' God's silly vassal.' On January 14, 1604, nearly ten months after his ac- cession, James summoned the leading Puritan ministers to meet him at Hampton Court in the presence §2. The of the principal bishops, in order that he might co^rCon- leam what ecclesiastical changes were desired ference. by the Puritans. Some of these changes proposed by them 14 Puritans and House of Commons. 1604. were so far adopted that they were referred to commis- sioners to put into shape for legislation in the coming- Parliament. But on the main question James was obdu- rate. The rules and orders of the Church were to be observed without relaxation. It was not to be left open to any clergyman to decide whether he would wear a surplice or a black gown, whether he would make the sign of the cross in baptism, whether he would give the ring in marriage. It cannot be said that James's decision was entirely unreasonable. If every minister is to be allowed to take 5 3. impor- his own course, he may possibly give offence Tames's ^^ ^^^ Congregation by omitting some ceremony decision. to which they are accustomed, as well as by adopting some ceremony to which they are unaccustomed. But an argument which would deserve considerable weight where any dissatisfied members of a congregation are at liberty to withdraw from it, and to establish their own worship apart, is much less valid when it is applied to a state of things in which but one form of worship is allowed for a whole nation. The idea of separate reli- gious bodies each worshipping as they think right would have been repelled by all parties in James's reign, and the only question was whether an iron rule was to be laid down by which all preachers, however persuasive they may have been in the cause of religion, were to be condemned to silence if they refused to conform to it. Unhappily James was not content with announcing his decision. Taking fire at the mention of the word ' pres- byter ' he blazed up into anger. ' A Scottish titlentlan- presbytery,' he said, * agreeth as well with a guage. monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. . . Stay, I pray you, for one seven years, before you demand 1604. Proposed Union with Scotland. 15, that from me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you ; for let that government be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath ; then shall we all of us have work enough. . . . Until you find that I grow lazy, let that alone.' If the Puritans were irritated by the king's lan- guage, the bishops were too well satisfied with the sub- stance of his reply to quarrel with its form. §5. Effect of One of their number went so far as to declare ^'^ language, that his Majesty spoke by the inspiration of the Spirit of God ! The Puritans left his presence bitterly dis- appointed. The House of Commons which met on March 19 was no assembly of Puritans. But it wished that the concessions refused by James should be jg -phe granted to the Puritans, in order that every Parliament possible Christian influence might be brought cession. to bear on the sin and vice around. The Church question was not the only seed of division between the King and the Commons. He was anxious to bring about a close union between England and Scotland, and he was deeply annoyed when Union with he found that the House was so prejudiced and Scotland, ignorant as to see all kinds of imaginary dangers in his beneficent design. A state of feeling grew up in which agreement on lesser matters was impossible, and when Parliament was prorogued the schism between King and Commons had already begun. If the king had not Parliament on his side, he had Convocation. That clerical body was capable of making canons, that is to say, laws binding on the ^g -pj^^ clergy though not on the laity, and it now Canons of enforced upon the clergy that uniformity of ' "■*' ceremonies syhich the king desired. After the prorogation 1 6 Puritans and House of Coimnons. 1610. the new canons were put in force. About three hundred clergymen were expelled from their livings for refusing to conform, and a compulsory peace was imposed on the English Church. James had no immediate danger to fear. The Puritans formed but a minority amongst the clergy and laity, and the ease with which so harsh a measure was §9. The . , . . , ... Puritans in camcd out IS Strong evidence that the exist- opposition. jj^g ceremonies were at least tacitly accepted by the mass of the people. But there was a feeling abroad that the expulsion of these men was injurious to the cause of religion, and if events came to make the crown otherwise unpopular, Puritanism would be a force added to the side of its adversaries. For six years the work of enforcing conformity went on. In 1610 Abbot was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He himself conformed to the Church ceremo- archblshop-^ nial, but he was a lax disciplinarian, and he "'^- sympathised to some extent with the feelings of the Puritans. Under his management the rule of the Church was less strictly exercised. Here and there the surplice was dropped, and portions of the service omitted at the discretion of the minister. But it was one thing to allow liberty within certain hmits by a fixed law : it was another thing to allow liberty by the mere remiss- ness of one who ought to have been the guardian of the law. What one archbishop allowed might easily be forbidden by another. Meanwhile the question of the union with Scotland dragged slowly on, and it was only in 1607 that the Com- jg^ mons made one or two unimportant conces- §11. Settle- sions. Though they professcd their rcadiness mentofthe , . . ^- ^ t ^ ^- i Union ques- to examme the question at a future time, James '•'°"- preferred cutting the knot as far as he was able to do so. The Judges were either less amenable than i6o6. TJie New Impositions. 17 the Commons to popular prejudice, or were ready, under any circumstances, to give effect to the doctrine of their law-books. They decided that all Scotchmen born since his accession to the English throne were naturalised Englishmen. All hopes of obtaining any closer union between the two nations were abandoned for the present. Section IV. — The New hnpositiotis and the Great Contract. Besides the great questions of conformity in the Church and of union with Scotland, others had been raised which might have been settled with- ^.d. 1606. out difficulty if the crown and the House 5i. James's ■' money dirn- of Commons had been agreed on more culties. important matters. A feeling of irritation was daily growing, and there was one way in which the irritation of the Commons could easily find expression. The king was in want of a permanent supply of money, and unless all the traditions of the English constitution were to be reversed, he could not have it without a grant from the House of Commons. It was not wholly his fault. Elizabeth had carried on an expensive war upon a miserably insufficient revenue, and even if James had been as parsimonious ^, condi- as she had been, he could hardly have avoided tio" of the a large deficit. As a married man, his household expenses were certain to be more than those of an unmarried queen. At his first coming he had no notion that he had any reason to be parsimonious at all. After his experience of Scottish poverty, the resources of the English exchequer seemed to be boundless, and he flung pensions and gifts with an unsparing hand amongst his favourites. The result was that before he had been on the throne four years an expenditure of about 500,000/. M.n. C 1 8 The Puritans ajid House of Commons. 1606. a year had to be provided for out of a revenue of about 320,000/. a year. Under these circumstances it was difficult to resist the temptation of getting money in any way which would not §3. Judg- involve immediate risk. Just at this time ment on the temptation was offered. At the beginning rj3,t€ S C3.SG. f. . ... - of every reign customs duties upon goods imported and exported were granted to the crown by Parliament under the name of tonnage and poundage. But besides these Mary and Elizabeth had demanded certain small payments called impositions without any Parliamentary grant. James had added further imposi- tions on currants and tobacco. In 1606 a merchant named Bate refused to pay the imposition on currants. The case was brought before the Court of Exchequer, and the Judges decided that the king had a right by law to set impositions on merchandise without any grant from Parliament. It is generally allowed now that the Judges were wrong. But the fact that they had so decided was of the utmost importance. The king could always say that he might raise as much money in this way as he pleased, and would still be keeping witliin the law. In 1608 advantage was taken of this decision. New impositions were laid on merchandise to the amount of 70,000/. But even this would not fill §4. The new up a yearly deficit of 180,000/., and in 1610 impositions. Parliament was asked to come to the aid of the crown. A bargain was accordingly entered into — the Great Contract, as it was called — by which the king was to sur- . The Great I'^nder certain harsh and antiquated rights. Contract. and was to receive in return a revenue equal to 200,000/. a year. But before the bargain was actually completed, the question of the new impositions was dis- cussed, and the House of Commons had no difficulty in i6io. The New Ivipositions. 19 deciding them to be illegal. But a resolution of the Commons, without the assent of the king and the House of Lords, could not make that illegal which the Judges had pronounced to be legal. James voluntarily remitted some of the impositions to the value of 20,000/., and a little later he offered to surrender his right to raise any more, if Parliament would confirm his hold upon what he had already got. Before this agreement could be embodied in an Act of Parliament, the time for the summer vacation had arrived. It was resolved that there should , g Breach be another session in the winter to carry out between the , ,,j, , . , king and the arrangement. When the wmter came, the his first Par- temper of the two parties had altered for the ■'^'"^n'- worse. The members of Parliament had talked over the matter with their constituents, and had come to the con- clusion that they were asked to give too much. The king had talked over the matter with his ministers, and had come to the conclusion that he would receive too little. Under these circumstances no agreement was possible. The king dissolved his first Parliament in dis- gust. He retained a heavy debt and a large deficit. He retained, too, the right acknowledged to be his by the Judges, of levying any customs duties he chose by his sole will and pleasure. Good advice was not wanting to James. Bacon, who had told him plainly what he ought to do with the Puritans, told him plainly what he ought to do with his financial difficulties. It was a §'7. Bacon's mistake, Bacon argued, to bargain with the ^'*'^"^^- House of Commons. If they were asked to take part in a bargain, they would naturally try to get as much as they could for themselves, and to give as little as they could to the king. The thing to be remembered was that the king and the Parliament were members of one body with com- 20 TJie Puritans and House of Commojis. 1612. mon interests and common work. It was for the king to rule well and wisely, without bargaining for anything in re- turn. If he did this, if he secured the love and esteem of his subjects, he would have no difficulty in obtaining from tl^em all the money for which he could fitly wish. Bacon's advice was not taken. In 1614 another Parliament was summoned, and another bargain was opened. The king did not offer to surrender ss'tHc Par- ^^ Hiuch as he had offered before, and he did Hament of not ask for so much money in return. But his principle of action was the same, and the result was the same. The House took the question of impositions into consideration before they would grant a penny, and again declared that the king had no right tO' levy them. James at once dissolved Parliament after a sitting of a few weeks. It produced no statute, andl was consequently known in history as the Addled Par- liament. CHAPTER II. THE SPANISH ALLIANCE. Section I. — Gunpowder Plot. The relations between James and the Puritans were to some extent modified after the appointment of Abbot to the archbishopric. Some conni- § I. Relations vancc was extended to those of the noncon- between formists who did not make themselves too James and the Catho- obtrusivc. The relations between James and the Catholics, on the other hand, had some time before Abbot's appointment become harsher than they were at the beginning of the reign. By the Elizabethan legislation, the Recusants, as 1603. Gunpowder Plot. 21 the Catholics who refused to go to church were called, were in evil case. The richest amongst them ^ ^ ^-^^ j^g_ were liable to a fine of 20/. a month. Land- cusancyiaws. owners who could not afford to pay this were deprived of two-thirds of their estates. Persons who had no lands might have the furniture of their houses seized and sold for the benefit of the exchequer. Any one of these men was liable to excommunication, and an excommunicated man could be sent to prison without any further for- mality. To say mass as a priest, or to assist a priest in doing so, was punishable with death. Of course these harsh penalties were considerably modified in practice. But every man who did not come to church knew that they were suspended over his head, perhaps to fall with- out a moment's warning. Before his accession, James, being anxious to secure adherents, had given hopes of lightening the burthens which pressed upon the Catholics. Not long §3. james's after his arrival in England he informed the promises, to , the Catho- prmcipal Catholics that, as long as they be- lies. haved as loyal subjects, the fines would no longer be exacted. But he still had reason for disquietude. There had been plots and rumours of plots, and the number of the recusants had largely increased as soon as the legal penalties had been suspended. In February 1604 James banished all priests from England, though as yet he took no active measures against the laity. There were Catholics in England who were ready to dare anything for the triumph of their Church. As soon as the proclamation for the banishment of ^^ ^^ the priests appeared, Robert Catesby, a man §4. Forma- steeped in plots and conspiracies, proposed to gunpowder one or two friends to blow up King, Lords, p'°'- and Commons with gunpowder. Guy Fawkes, a cool and daring soldier, was sent for from Flanders to assist in the ■22 The Spanish Alliance. 1604, execution of the scheme. Others were by degrees admitted to the secret, and there can be httle doubt that two or three priests were of the number. They took a house adjoining the House of Lords, and proceeded to dig through the wall, in order that they might place their barrels of powder under the floor before the opening of the next session. The wall was nine feet thick, and after some weeks' work they had made but little way. Water flowed in and hindered their operations. Superstitious fancies gathered thickly round them, and they imagined that they were accompanied in their labours by unearthly sounds. In the spring of 1605 James, frightened at the increase in the number of recusants, put the laws again in force A.D. 1605. against the Roman Catholic laity. The § 5. inforce- conspirators felt a fresh spur to their enter- ment of the . ^ . ^ penal laws. prise. At the Same time an accident relieved them from further trouble. An adjoining cellar, reaching vmder the House of Lords without any intervening wall, was found to be for hire. It was taken in the name of one of the conspirators. The powder which they needed was safely lodged in it, and was covered with faggots in order to conceal it from any chance visitant. All that remained was to prepare for the insurrection which was to follow after the fatal deed had been accomplished. To hire a cellar and to buy a few barrels of powder, was an exploit within the means of the conspirators. 5 6 The plot More money than they could command was betrayed. needed to prepare for an insurrection. Three rich Catholics were informed of the project, and their purses were laid under contribution. One of them, anxious for the safety of a relative who was a member of the House of Lords, contrived that information should be given to the government in such a way that the con- spirators might be themselves warned in time to fly. 1605. James I. and Spain. 23 The conspirators, received the warning, but they refused to believe it to be true. Parliament 57. Failure of was to be opened on November 5. On the the plot. night of the 4th Fawkes was seized watching over the powder barrels. The next morning the other plotters were flying for their lives. Some were killed before they could be taken. Others were captured and died a traitor's death. The detected conspiracy was fatal to the hopes of the Catholics. The laws against them were .g Res„itof made harsher than ever, and the fines were the conspi- more unremittingly exacted. The door of ""^^^ mercy seemed closed against them for many a year. Section II. — James I. and Spain. The detection of the Gunpowder Plot rekindled the old feelings of antipathy against Spain as well as against the Catholics at home. James, if carried a.d. 1606. away for a moment, did not fully share in these laVity 0?°^"" feelings. If only he could be assured that Spain, his authority in England was in no danger, his natural aversion to cruelty would make him shrink from perse- cution, and he was inclined to look with favour upon a Spanish alliance which might help him to prevent a fresh outbreak of war in Europe. But he was not content with offering to join Spain in keeping the peace. In 161 1 he proposed to marry his son to a Spanish infanta. In 1614, after a.d. 1611. the dissolution of Parliament, the proposal ^ ^' Spanish ' '^ " marriage was repeated. Money he must have, and if proposed. he could not get money from Parliament he would get it from the King of Spain as a daughter's portion. He imagined that he would not be pressed to give more to the English Catholics in return than a connivance at 24 The Spanish Alliance. 1617. their worship in private houses, a concession which might be withdrawn at his pleasure if it became dan- gerous. In 161 7 the negotiation was formally opened, the Spaniards all the while intending to refuse the hand of their princess in the end unless they could obtain the conditions which they thought sufficient to secure the conversion of England. James's want of money led to another act which has weighed upon his memory even more deeply than his Spanish alliance. Sir Walter Raleigh, A.D. 1617. , . .... §3. Raleigh's sea-rover, statesman, coloniser, and historian, °"°^' had entangled himself in an inexplicable way in a plot soon after James's accession, and had been condemned to death. Reprieved upon the scaffold, he had been left in the Tower for many years, where he had solaced himself by writing the History of the World. But his thoughts were far away across the Atlantic waves amidst the forests of America, and he had to tell of a golden mine on the banks of the Orinoco rich enough to make the fortune of a king. James listened half incre- dulously. But there were those about him who wished him to give ear to the tale, — men to whom the friend- ship of Spain was hateful, and who wished to cut loose the ties which were binding England to the Catholic king, and to see once more the rovers of Plymouth and Barn- staple bringing home rich prizes taken in Spanish seas. James had no wish to break with Spain ; but he had an eye to the gold. He made Raleigh promise not „, to go near Spanish territory, and explained §4.Theex- ,° , .^, , , ' . ,, pedition to to him that if he touched a Spaniard he must Guiana. answer for it with his head. Raleigh, freed from prison, hastened to the Orinoco. He firmly believed that if he could only get the gold, he would not be held to his engagements. He sent his men up the river without distinct orders to avoid fighting. They seized and plun- t6i7- James I. and Spain. 25 dered a Spanish town. The golden mine eluded their search. Raleigh's eldest son was killed in the attack. Heartbroken at the failure, he proposed to his captains to lie in wait for the Spanish treasure ships, which would furnish gold enough to a bold assailant. His cap- tains refused to follow him, and he had to come back to England with nothing in his hands. James sent him to the scaffold for a fault which he ought never to have given him the chance of committing. Everything to which James put his hand was marred in the execution. His own life was virtuous and upright. But he contrived to surround him- ^ ° A.D. 1613. self with those who were neither virtuous nor § 5. Rise of upright. Placed amongst men who were overset, anxious to drag him in ways in which he did not think fit to go, he hit upon the plan of educating some young man who would be his companion in amusements and his private secretary in business, who would be the dis- penser of his patronage, and would, above all, save him the thankless task of saying No, when favours were asked. The first whom he chose was Robert Carr, a young Scotchman, who seemed to possess the needful qualities, and who finally became Earl of Somerset. Somerset assisted James in the negotiations with Spain which preceded the open avowal of the negotiations for the Spanish marriage. But Somerset's head was turned by his advancement. He fell in love with the wife of the Earl of Essex, and married her, after procuring a divorce under circumstances which called down upon her the re- probation of honest men. Not long afterwards a murder which had been committed was traced to her contrivance, and her husband was vehemently suspected of assisting her. Both were brought to trial, and sentenced to death. Both received pardon from the king, though their posi- tion at court was ruined. 26 The Spanish Alliance. 1615. Somerset was succeeded by George Villiers, soon after- wards created Earl, and then Marquis of Buckingham. A D 161S ^^ natural ability and gentleness of disposi- § 6. Advance- tlon Buckingham was far superior to Somer- Bucking- Set. It is possible that if he had risen by ^^^- slow degrees he might have done good ser- vice to the commonwealth. But so sudden a rise was enough to spoil anyone. It is true that for many a year James kept the decision of political questions in his- own hands. But anyone who wanted advancement at court must come to Buckingham. Gentlemen who wished to be made barons, and barons who wished to- be made earls ; lawyers who aspired to be judges, and judges who aspired to a more lucrative employment in the administration of the finances or in the actual government of the state, must bow down to Buckingham and propiti- ate his favour. Wealth poured in to support his dignity, and in a year or two the youth who could at one time scarcely afford to buy himself a new suit of clothes, was with one exception the richest peer in England. No- wonder his head was turned. No wonder he expected sub- mission full and complete to every fancy which might pass through his brain. He had kinsmen, too, to be remem- bered as well as himself, a mother to be made much of at court, brothers to be made peers, portionless nieces and cousins to be married to men who were aspirants for office. Foolishly compliant as James was in this, there was- a method in it all. He wanted to shake himself loose from the trammels of the House of Lords, as he wanted to shake himself loose from the trammels of the House of Commons, and he hoped that the new peers who owed their exaltation to the good word of Buckingham, and sometimes to the sums of money which they paid over to Buckingham or to the king himself, would steadily give him their votes for ever after. »6i6 James I. and Spain. 27 James's internal government in these years was better in intention than in its result. He wished to do- right to all men. Case after case arose in which . a 7' JS-ITieS S some high officer of state was found guilty internal go- of wrongdoing, and James made no attempt '^s''-"™^"'- to shelter anyone from the consequences of his fault. But there were not a few who naturally thought that the remedy was as bad as the disease, and that the system which compelled the officers of state to hang upon the favour or the smile of an inexperienced youth was itself the hotbed of corruption. James's conception of the limits of his own autho- rity was in the main the same as that of Elizabeth. He had sworn, he said, in a speech which he deli- a.d. 1616. vered on a solemn occasion in 1616, to do §8. His view ' of nis own justice and to maintain the law, ' the common authority. law of the land, according to which the king governs, and by which the people are governed.' He had, he added, ' as far as human frailty might permit him, or his knowledge inform him,' kept his oath. If the law was uncertain, uncertainties must be removed by Parliament. But it was his business to see that the Judges did not in- troduce novelties out of their own heads. The preroga- tive of the crown was in this respect regarded by James as giving him authority to control the self-will of the Judges. * This,' he said, ' is a thing regal and proper to a king, to keep every court within its true bounds.' Then, waxing warm, he added words which seem rather startling at present : ' As for the absolute prerogative of the crown, that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be disputed. It is atheism and blas- phemy to dispute what God can do ; good Christians, content themselves with His will revealed in His word ; so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot 28 Tlie Spanish Alliance. 1617. do this or that; but rest in that which is the king's will revealed in his law.' It is easy to look upon these words as a mere absur- dity. Yet not only are they worthy of consideration, but they will be found to furnish the key to much was he in of the Subsequent history. The fact is that the right ? ^^ nation can be governed by general rules. Those rules being the work of fallible human creatures, cannot possibly embrace all points of difficulty that may arise. When new difficulties come up for settle- ment there must be some living intelligence to meet them, to frame new rules, to enlarge the old ones, and to see that persons entrusted with carrying them out do not misuse their authority. With us this living intelligence is looked for in Parliament, or in ministers acting in respon- sibility to Parhament. Under the Tudor constitution new rules could only be laid down by the combined ope- ration of king and Parliament. But it was considered to be the king's business to keep the machine of govern- ment in working order, and to make special provision for temporary emergencies, without responsibility to anyone. James's vague language doubtless implied assumptions of a dangerous kind, but in the main he meant no more than that the limits to the exercise of this special power were in themselves indefinable. The power must be used when occasion called it out, and no one could say beforehand hov/ it would be right for him to act in any given circumstances. So far, then, James was but carrying out the system •of his predecessors. But he forgot that the success of A D 161 every system depends upon the spirit in which § 10. Would it is worked. The Tudor sovereigns were lie be able to, ^ ,. ,, iir keep his hungry for popularity, and drew back trom •authority? attempting to realise their dearest wishes if they ran counter to the settled desire of the nation. i6i7. The Spattiards in the Palatmate. 29. James fancied himself above popularity. Puritanism, it is true, had for a time ceased to be dangerous. But James's foreign policy was such as to try the patience of Enghshmen. It would be bad enough to throw the force of England into the scale against Protestantism abroad. But a nearer and more appalling danger was imminent. A Spanish marriage for the Prince of Wales meant privileges for the English Catholics at home, it meant the chance of seeing their numbers so increase through the connivance of the court, that they would be able to force their will upon the consciences of Pro- testant Englishmen. It possibly might mean that the future children of the Prince of Wales would be brought up as opponents of the belief of Englishmen, and would some day be able to use the royal authority in favour of the Church of their mother. If Puritanism awoke again from its slumbers, and arrayed its powers in oppo- sition to this royal authority which James valued so highly, the cause must primarily be sought in this un- happy Spanish marriage upon which he had set his heart. Section III. — The Spaniards iti the Palatinate. In 1 61 8, that which James had long striven to avert came to pass. The flames of war broke out in Bohemia, and there was every probability that they would spread far before they were quenched, t^'^^' The German States were divided by political Bohemian differences; still more widely by religious differences. Whatever form any dispute took in Ger- many was sure to settle down ultimately into a quarrel between Catholics and Protestants. This was precisely what James disliked, and he did his best to persuade the combatants that they had better not fight about religion. 30 The Spanish Alliance. 1620. He gave plenty of good advice, which those who received it never thought of taking. Yet, after all, it must be remembered that James's advice was good in itself. Nothing better could have hap- §2. James's pencd for Europe, then on the verge ofthehor- advace good j-j^jg ^j^j^.^^ ^^^^.g, ^^^^ ^j^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ different whole. powers should have allowed a well-meaning, disinterested man like James to settle what their rights were. But as there was not the least chance of this, all that he had really to decide on was whether he would keep entirely aloof, or whether he ought to interfere on one side or the other. This was precisely what he could not do. He wavered from hour to hour. At one moment some violent and un- § 3. His inac- I'casonable action on the Catholic side would tion. m.ake him think that he ought to undertake the defence of the German Protestants. At another mioment some violent and unreasonable action on the Protestant side would make him think that he ought to leave the German Protestants to their fate. In 1619 his difficulties became still more distracting. His son-in-law Frederick ruled, as Elector Palatine, over A.D. 1619. the pleasant lands which stretched in a strag- uviaw Kbg' g^'^to course from the Moselle to the frontier of ■of Bohemia. Bohemia. Frederick, though incapacitated by his weakness of character from taking a leading part in a great political struggle, was marked out by his high dignity as the natural leader of those German princes who believed a struggle with the Roman Catholic powers to be unavoidable. He was now chosen King of Bohemia by the Bohemian revolutionists in opposition to the Arch- duke Ferdinand, who was already legally in possession of that crown. Two days later Ferdinand was chosen Emperor, and in both capacities he called upon the f62o. The Spaniards in the Palatinate. 31 Catholic states to assist him against Frederick, whom he naturally stigmatised as a mere usurper. With little hesitation James came to the conclusion that Frederick had no^ right to Bohemia, and that he could give him no assistance there. But what ^.d. 1620. was he tu do if the Spanish forces, setting out feers^orXe from the Netherlands, were to swoop down Palatinate. on the Palatinate and to keep it as a pledge for the surrender of Bohemia 1 On the one hand, if his son-in- law had no right to Bohemia, all means were lawful to make him let go his hold. If, on the other hand, the Spaniards once established themselves in the Palatinate, it would be difficult to get them out again. The solution which called for the least action was always preferred by James, and he contented himself with allowing a regi- ment of English volunteers to go to the Palatinate under Sir Horace Vere, to be supported by such means as Frederick had it in his power to give. In the summer of 1620 the blow fell. Whilst Bava- rians and Saxons and Imperialists were pouring into Bohemia, a well-appointed Spanish force 55. The marched up the Rhine and seized the Western ^'^fhrplk- Palatinate. James was for the moment stung tinate. to resolution by the news. He summoned Parliament to enable him to defend the inheritance of his daughter and her children. Before Parliament had time to meet, that daughter and her husband were flying from Bohe- mia after a crushing defeat on the White Hill, outside the walls of Prague. When Parliament met, James called upon it for sup- plies in order that he might be able to ne- a.d. 1621. gotiate with a sword in his hand. But he did i^- The " i^arliament not propose to send troops immediately into of 1621. Germany, and the House of Commons contented itself with voting a small supply, without binding itself for 32 The Spanish Alliance. i62i» the future. James talked of negotiating, and of fight- ing if negotiation proved useless. The Germans whO' were nearest the danger thought he ought to send an army first and negotiate afterwards. The princes allied with Frederick were discouraged and submitted to the Emperor. The King of Denmark, Christian IV., who was preparing to come to their aid, was terrified when he heard of James's procrastination. 'By God,' he said to the English ambassador, ' this business is gone too far to think it can be redressed with words only. I thank God we hope, with the help of his Majesty of Great Britain and the rest of our friends, to give unto the Count Palatine good conditions. If ever we do any good, for the liberty of Germany and religion it is now time.' James had but words to give, and Christian retired from the conflict to wait for better days. The House of Commons was out of humour. Its members had the feeling that they were being of the badly led, and yet they were powerless to se- ommons. ^^^^ another leader. They turned fiercely upon domestic grievances. Foremost of these were the monopolies. Partly through a wish to encourage home manufactures, partly ^ The through a fondness for over-regulation of monopolies, commerce, private persons were allowed by the government to possess the sole right of selling various articles of trade. One set of persons, for instance, was privileged to make all the glass used in England, because these persons entered into a compact not to use wood in their furnaces, and it was held that the consumption of wood would shorten the supply of timber for the navy. Another set of persons was allowed to make all the gold and silver thread used in England, because they promised to employ only foreign gold and silver in the manufacture, and as gold and silver were in those days believed exclusively 1 62 1. The Spaniards in the Palatinate. 33 to constitute wealth, it was thought to be desirable that English wealth should not go into the melting-pot. Besides these monopolies there were regulations for the licensing of inns, and fees to be paid to the licen- sers. As these licensers and other persons engaged in keeping up the monopolies were always friends or de- pendants of Buckingham, there was a general impression that the courtiers and even the king himself made vast sums of money by these proceedings. In reality the amount obtained by the courtiers was grossly exaggerated, and the king obtained little or nothing. Still there can be no doubt that, even according to the theories of the day, many of these monopolies ought never to have been granted, and that, especially in the case of the gold and silver thread, very harsh means were taken of enforcing the provisions of the grant, some of which were undoubt- edly in contradiction to the spirit, if not to the letter of the law. James yielded to the storm, and abandoned the mo- nopolies. But behind the feeling against the monopolies was an indignation at the traffic in place and ^ ^^ Genera) power which was being carried on under the corruption. shadow of Buckingham's protection. The Chief Justice of England had recently retired from the bench, and had received a more lucrative office as Lord Treasurer. * Take care, my Lord,' said Bacon to him, drily, as he was going down to Newmarket, to receive the staff which was the symbol of his new office ; * wood is dearer at Newmarket than in any other place in England.' He had in fact to pay 20,000/. for the office. The price of a peerage was as well known as the price of a commission in the army was known a few years ago. To the indignation thus aroused Bacon was the first victim. Raised to the highest dignity of the law, he was now Lord Chancellor of England. But the hope which M.I I. D 34 The Spanish Alliance. 1621. had been his when he had devoted himself to poli- § II. Bacon's *'^^' ^^ '*• remained at all, flickered with but a position. feeble ray. Once he had believed that he might do good service to the State. He lived to find his advice.taken on legal details, but rejected on high matters of .policy. In the building up of the royal authority he was of infinite service, and it was with his goodwill, if not under his direct action, that a series of retrench- ments, with the help of the growing commercial prosperity of the kingdom, had filled up the deficit, and had freed the king from the necessity of seeking aid in time of peace from the Commons, except so far as he needed money for the payment of debts incurred in the past days of extravagance. But in the direction of the policy of England his word was of slight avail. The blow which struck him down reached him from an unexpected quarter. If there was one thing upon § 12 His which he prided himself more than another accusation. it was upou the justicc of his decisions as a judge. Charge after charge was brought before the Commons accusing him of bribery, and these charges were by them sent up to the Lords. At first he fancied that the charges were invented to serve a political pur- pose. ' If this be to be a Chancellor,' he said, mourn- fully, ' I think if the great seal lay upon Hounslow Heath, nobody would take it up.' But it soon became plain, even to him, that there was real ground for the accusation. In those days a judge received a merely nominal salary from the government, and was paid by suitors' fees. In Chancery a looser system prevailed, and the Lord Chancellor was in the habit of receiving pre- sents from the winning party after a suit had been decided. As far as it is possible to ascertain the truth, it does not seem that Bacon's judgments were affected by the money which he received. But there is no doubt that »62i. TJie Spaniards in the Palatinate. 35 he took money when suits were still undecided, and under circumstances which deprived him of any valid excuse for the action. His own opinion of the case is probably, in the main, the true one. His sentence was 'just, and for reformation sake fit,' yet he was * the justest Chancellor ' that had been since his father's time. His sentence was heavy. Stripped of his offices, fined and imprisoned, he owed the alleviation of his penalty to the favour of the king. He acknow- . jj;^ ledged his fault. * My Lords,' he said, ' it is sentence, my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships, be merciful unto a broken reed.' Never again was any judge accused of corruption. The revival of impeachments — for, though Bacon's trial differed from an ordinary impeachment in some details, it may well be reckoned amongst them — was an event of the highest constitutional impor- vaVof im-'' tance. In an impeachment the House of pe^chments. Commons, acting as the grand jury of the whole country, presented offenders against the commonwealth to be judged by the House of Lords, sitting as judge and jury combined. In English history impeachments are found in two distinct periods; the first reaching from the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VI., the other reaching from the reign of James I. to that of William III. This chronology^ speaks for itself. When the predominance either of King or Parliament was secured, it was felt to be better that political opponents should be dealt with by mere dismissal from office, and that criminal offences excepting during the reign of terror which marked the later times of Henry VIII., should be tried before pro- fessional judges. But when Parliament was engaged in a struggle with the kingly power, and had not the acknow- ledged right to dismiss the ministers of the crown, it seemed the best way to give a legal colour to the charge. 36 The Spanish Alliance. 1621. whilst the accused were sent before a tribunal which was strongly swayed by political feeling. In Bacon's case there can be no doubt that the indignation was genuine and well-founded. But when once the system was re- called to life, it would be easy to exaggerate faults com- mitted, and to demand punishment for a crime, when dismissal for political wrong-doing could not otherwise be obtained. Section IV. — The Loss of the Palatinate. Time was passing rapidly, and nothing serious had beei. done for the Palatinate. Before the House of Commons adjourned for the summer, it voted a ration of the declaration of sympathy with the German Commons. Protcstants, and protested that if his Majesty failed to secure peace by negotiation, they would be ready to the uttermost of their powers, * both with their lives and fortunes, to assist him.' This declaration, said one who was present, ' comes from heaven. It will do^ more for us than if we had ten thousand soldiers on the march.' It was put and carried by acclamation. ' It was entertained with much joy and a general consent of the whole House, and sounded forth with the voices of them all, withal lifting up their hats in their hands as high as they could hold them, as a visible testimony of their unanimous consent, in such sort that the like had scarce ever been seen in Parliament.' The mediation in Germany was entrusted to Lord Digby, a wise and experienced diplomatist who had before ^ J.- , . represented the King of England at Madrid, mission to When he reached Vienna it was too late ta lenna. interposc. On the one hand Frederick's allies had fallen rapidly from him and had made their peace with the Emperor. On the other hand he had entrusted the defence of the Upper Palatinate to Count Mansfeld, 1 • ... § 10. Its Un- with powerful fleets and armies at its back, popularity The change was to be effected not because it '" England. was a good change, but because it was desirable to please the master of those fleets and armies. The marriage itself was an offence to England. The English kingship had been the centre of resistance to a foreign Church and a foreign enemy. Who could tell whether James's grandchildren would not be on the side of that foreign Church and of that foreign enemy ? It was no mere ques- tion of this theology or that theology. It was the whole framework of life, present and to come, which was threatened. The Spanish marriage treaty, it may fairly be said, threw back the cause of toleration for half a 44 '^^'^^ SpanisJi Alliance, 1623- century. It awoke again the old Protestant resistance, and gave new life to Puritanism. James had dra^vn nearer to Spain, but had opened a gap between himself and England. At Madrid Charles promised all that his father had promised, and a little more. He hoped that his compli- ance would extract permission for the Infanta Charles's to accompany him. But it could not be. return. T\\& theologians were resolute to the con- trary, and their decision was final. Charles learned, too, how little hope there was of recovering the Palatinate. In high dudgeon he left Madrid. As he was travelling, he was asked by a Spaniard who was accompanying him whether he wished the carriage to be opened. ' I should not dare,' he replied ironically, ' to give my assent with- out sending post to Madrid to consult the theologians.' At Santander he found an English fleet awaiting him. On board he felt himself free at last. He landed at Portsmouth with a resolute determination never to marry the Infanta. CHAPTER III. THE ASCENDANCY OF BUCKINGHAM. Section I. — The last Parliament of James I. With Buckingham and Charles exasperated against Spain, it would have been hard for James, under any cir- § I. James cumstances, to remain on friendly terms with breXwith" that nation. But even if the influence of his Spain . son and his favourite had been removed, he ■could hardly have gone on much longer in his old course. 1623. The last Parliament of James I. 4S It was quite plain that Spain would not help him to^ regain the Palatinate with the sword, and it was also quite plain that without the sword he was not likely to regain the Palatinate at all. He hesitated, doubted, changed his mind from day to day ; but unless he meant to give up his daughter and her children, there was nothing for it but to prepare for war. Parliament was accordingly summoned. It met on February 19, 1624. Lashed to anger against Spain by the events of the past years, the Com- a.^. 1624. mons were ready to join in Buckingham's of^ti^'^^^j!,"^^ vociferous cry for war. But the attempt of Parliament, the King of Spain to make his daughter Queen of England exasperated them more than his attempt to place his ally in possession of Heidelberg. The very fact that the Spanish marriage treaty was at an end made them somewhat cooler about the Palatinate. No doubt they still cared about the fortunes of the German Protestants, but they no longer felt that their own for- tunes were so directly involved in the ruin of their neighbours. Nor were they well acquainted with German affairs, and when the king talked to them of the great expense of the war, they fancied that he was leading them into unnecessary and extravagant operations. But they voted only just enough money to strengthen the defences of England and Ireland, to set out a fleet, and to send help to the Dutch in their struggle against Spain. They were not ready to engage in war in Germany without further information. James knew that nothing but a great Continental alliance would win back the Palatinate. But he did not like to give up his plan of working together §3. The with some Catholic power. If he could not l"ng'sideas. marry his son to the sister of the King of Spain, he would marry him to the sister of the King of France 46 The Ascendancy of BnckingJiam. 1624. England and France combined would settle the affairs of Germany. The plan did not please the Commons. They did not wish to have a Roman Catholic queen at all. They § 4 Deck- '^^'^^ afraid that the marriage treaty would ration of war contain some fresh promise of toleration for postpone . ^^ English Catholics. But Charles and James solemnly declared that they would make no such promise. James accepted the supplies which had been already voted, on the understanding that the Houses were to meet again in the winter to vote more if it was needed. The king would have time to send ambassadors about Europe to see who would help him before he made any further demand upon the Commons. In the meantime work was found for Parliament, Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, was Lord High § s. Fall of Treasurer. He had done more than any Middlesex. other man to rescue the finances from dis- order. He was a careful guardian of the public purse. But he disliked war with Spain because it would be expensive, and had done his best to keep the king's mind in a peaceable mood. Such conduct drew down upon him the displeasure of Buckingham and the Prince, as well as the displeasure of the House of Commons. It was easy to find an excuse for attacking him. In providing for the king's necessities he had not forgotten to heap up a fortune for himself The Commons im- peached him for corruption, Buckingham and Charles hounding them on. Middlesex was stripped of his office and heavily fined. The shrewd old king warned his favourite and his son of the danger they were incurring by encouraging such attacks upon ministers of the crown. * You will live,' he said, ' to have your bellyful of im- peachments.' The French were not so easily won as the English •62^. The last Parliaineiit of James I. 47 government supposed. Lewis XIII. hated Spain and the Emperor, and was ready to encourage anybody who proposed to fight against his French enemies. But he was a devoted Catholic, ^"'ance. and had no idea of giving his sister in marriage un- less something were done for the English Catholics. Buckingham, eager for war, young and sanguine as he was, fancied that it was worth while for the king to break his promise to secure the help of France. Buck- ingham persuaded Charles, and Charles persuaded his father. The treaty was signed by the end of the year. The Princess Henrietta Maria was to be Queen of England. Buckingham dared not suffer James to meet Parlia- ment to vote money for the war, when Parliament was sure to upbraid the king with breach of pro- mise. But neither could he give up his mill- tionsfor tary designs. Money was promised freely in ^^■'• all directions. There was to be money for the Dutch Republic, money for the King of Denmark, money for an English fleet to sail against Spain, money for a joint expedition to be undertaken by France and England for the recovery of the Palatinate. The joint expedition was entrusted to Mansfeld. But the moment it was proposed to send him into German)( the French began to raise objections. They . „ ,, J , , J r r 5 8. Mans- wanted the men to be used for purposes of feid's expe- their own, and insisted that Mansfeld should '^'"°"- go, at least at first, to' help the Dutch in their struggle with Spain. Twelve thousand Englishmen, torn from their homes by the king^s command, were entrusted to Mansfeld They gathered at Dover and passed over into Holland. James managed to give them a §9. its little money to begin with. But without a *^"'"''^" Parliament to vote supplies, he soon came to the bottom 48 The Ascendancy of Buckingham. 1625. of his treasury. The men arrived in Holland without pro- visions and without money to buy any. Frost set in, and disease broke out. In a few weeks nine thousand out of the whole number were counted amongst the dead or dying. Such was Buckingham's first experience of making war without national support. In spite of all ingham"s'^ he pushcd blindly on. New schemes of fight- schemes, jj^g filled his imagination, each one in suc- cession more extensive and more costly than the last. Before any fresh disaster occurred, James died. With ,, , hesitation and reluctance he had followed March 27- ^ , . , . , , . , , § II. Death Buckmgham m almost everythmg that he of James. proposed. The new king was ready to follow him without either hesitation or reluctance. Section II. — The first Parliament of Charles I. In many respects Charles was the opposite of his father. He was stately and dignified, fond of outward form and ceremony. In dealing with the world James was apt to leave much to chance, believing and his that things would come right in the end if ^' ^^' he left them alone. Charles had no such belief. If he thought that things ought to be done in a certain way, he could not endure that they should be done in any other way. But he had neither the energy nor the ca- pacity required for the wise conduct of affairs, and he lived too much in a world of his own ideas to influence men whose thoughts he was unable to comprehend. In early life at least this confidence in his own judgment was accompanied by shyness. He did not like to be opposed, and fell back upon silence. Hence doubtless his attach- ment to Buckingham. Buckingham's fault was the very opposite to shyness. He took ud C'harles's notions and i625- The first Parliament of Charles I. 49 translated them into action before Charles knew what he was about. Charles wanted to get back the Palatinate for his sister, but he did not know how to do it. Before he could solve the riddle for himself, Buckingham had engaged him in half a dozen plans for getting what he wanted. He clung to his favourite as a dumb man clings to him who understands his signs and interprets them to the bystanders. As soon as the new queen was safely in England and it was too late to forbid the banns, Parliament was sum- moned. Money was sorely needed. But how rn i ■' was Charles to ask for it .'' The last Parlia- first Parlia- ment had separated on the understanding ™^"'* that it should meet again in the winter to arrange for the further prosecution of the war, and that no concessions should be made to the English Catholics. The Parlia- ment which now met found that war had been under- taken without asking its advice, and that it had resulted in a terrible disaster. Though the concessions to the Catholics had been kept secret, it was shrewdly suspected that Charles had broken his promises. Charles accor- dingly simply asked for money to support the war, without naming any sum in particular. The Commons, after petitioning him to execute the laws against the Catholics, voted him a small sum of 140,000/. His engage- ments could not be covered by 1,000,000/. That the opposition of the Commons should have taken such a form is remarkable. It may be that they cared less for the war now that they were § 3. The well rid of Spanish influence over the Eng- °^^he''°" lish government. But it was not their fault if Commons. they were fairly puzzled. They had not been told how much money was wanted or why it was wanted. All they knew was that the one expedition which had actually M.H. E 50 The Ascendancy of Buckingham, 1625. been sent out had ended in an utter failure, and that no excuse or explanation had been offered. They had no confidence in Buckingham, and when the king at last sent a message explaining for what purposes he wanted the money, they doubted the sincerity of all that was said to them. They declined to give a farthing more. The king could not understand the meaning of con- duct so strange. He ordered the Houses to meet again ^ . ,. at Oxford, and directed his secretaries to §4. Adjourn- . ' ment to give all neccssary explanations. The Com- mons replied by expressing complete want of confidence in Buckingham. If they could be sure that the money would be spent under advice better than his they would give it, but not otherwise. Charles had made so many promises that he could not keep them all. He had promised the King of France § 5. The that he would not persecute the Catholics, eet^o^" He had promised his own Parliament that he money. would not tolerate them. He now made up his mind to do as his own subjects wished. But the Commons were not to be led astray. They believed that they might as well throw money into the sea as en- trust it to Buckingham, and they let Charles know as much, Charles felt instinctively that to abandon Buckingham was to put himself under the tutelage of the Commons. ^. , If they were to settle who were to be the 5 6. Dissolu- . . ■' 11111 tionofPar- mmisters of the crown, they would be able to hament. control ministers, who could only keep their places at the good pleasure of Parliament. The two Houses would thus become practically the sovereigns of England. Rather than submit to this Charles dissolved the Parliament. He hoped to be able before many months were past 1625. The Fleet for Cadiz. 51 to meet a new Parliament with all the prestige of a great victory. All the money on which he could lay his hands was spent in fitting out a fleet with fleet for a large land force on board. Lord Wimbledon ^' who commanded it was ordered to take some Spanish town, and then to lie in wait for the fleet which annually brought to Spain the produce of the mines of America. To the end of his life it was always Charles's mistake to fancy that if he brought together a large fleet or a nume- rous army he might do anything he liked. It could not be so. The greater part of the fleet was made up of merchant vessels pressed into the king^s ser- vice with their crews. The landsmen had , „ „. „ ... , ^ . § 8. The fleet been torn from their homes by force. A in Cadiz few officers in the king's service wished to ^^' succeed. But the greater part of the force only cared to escape with a whole skin. When Wimbledon sailed into Cadiz Bay and ordered an attack upon a fort which defended the harbour, the chief efforts of the masters of the pressed vessels were directed to keeping out of the way of the shot. If there was a want of devotion in the lower ranks there was a want of intelligence in the officers. When the fort at last surrendered, Wimbledon led his men away from the town many miles in pursuit of an imaginary enemy. He forgot to take food with him, and after a long march on a hot summer's day the men were starving. Then he allowed them to drink wine, and as it turned out that there was plenty of wine to be had, the whole army, with the exception of a handful of officers, soon became helplessly drunk. A Spanish detachment might have slaughtered them all. When Wimbledon marched back the next day there was nothing to be done. Cadiz was too strong to be taken. Putting to sea, he began to look out for the treasure ships. But the treasure ships sailed into Cadiz Bay two 52 The Ascendancy of Bnckinghani. 1625. days after Wimbledon left it, and after keeping watch in vain off the coast of Portugal, the English vessels hurried home with tattered sails and starving crews. Charles would not be able to appear before Parliament in the guise of a conqueror. Whilst Wimbledon was at Cadiz, Buckingham had gone to Holland to raise up a great confederacy against Spain and the allies of Spain. He had promised ingham in 30,ooo/. a month to the King of Denmark, and Holland. j£ Wimbledon had returned victorious he would probably have found little difficulty in persuading the Com- mons to grant the supplies he needed. But Wimbledon had done nothing, and there was little hope that a second Parliament would prove more compliant than the first. Section III. — The Impeachvient of Buckingham, ajid the Expedition to Rhe. Charles's position was the more dangerous as he was on the brink of a contest with France. Lewis XIII. had taken umbrage at Charles's renewed persecu- shi'ps lent to tion of the English Catholics in defiance of the French. -j^jg promises, and Charles had been insensibly drawn on to interfere in the internal affairs of France. Before James died the Protestants of Rochelle had re- volted against the French king, and James had hastily consented to lend an English squadron to assist Lewis to put down rebellion. In the spring of 1625 Charles and Buckingham wished to draw back, and not daring openly to break their engagements, sent secret orders to the commander of the fleet to get up a mutiny on board his own ships, that they might be brought back to England apparently against the wish of the king. The plan suc- ceeded for a time. But news arrived that Lewis and his subjects were at peace, and Charles fancied that he might curry favour with him by sending the ships now that they would be of no real service. The news of 1 625- The Impeachment of Buckingham. 53 peace turned out to be untrue, and Lewis kept Charles's ships without owing him any thanks, whilst English- men who knew nothing of all these mancEuvres blamed Charles for lending the ships at all, to be used against Protestants abroad. Other causes of dissatisfaction arose. Charles held that French ships had no right to carry the goods of his enemies the Spaniards, seized the vessels and sold the goods. Even Charles s efforts to §2. Funher avert a breach were imprudent. In order disputes. that he might obtain the co-operation of France in the German war, he mediated a peace between Lewis and his subjects, and made himself morally responsible for the execution of its conditions, a responsibility which was sure to lead him sooner or later to give offence to Lewis. When Parliament met, many of the leaders of the last session were absent. Charles had been clever enough to make them sheriffs, and as sheriffs . ,, . .... . , , , §3- Meeting were wanted m their own counties, they could of Parlia- not be at Westminster at the same time. His ™^°'' cleverness about the sheriffs met with as little success as his cleverness about the ships. The House found in Sir John Eliot a leaaer even abler and far more vehement than those who had been kept away. Eliot had already made himself a name as the first orator of the day. But he had not cared to lift up his voice much in the last Parliament. Person- . sir John ally attached to Buckingham, he had been Eliot. loth to admit the conviction to his mind that Bucking- ham was an incumbrance to his country. That thought once admitted, there were no bounds to Eliot's abhor- rence. He loved England with all the passionate enthu- siasm which Pericles felt for Athens, and he trusted in the House of Commons as no man ever trusted before or since. It was for him in a very real sense the col- lective wisdom of the nation. Kings and rulers had but 54 The Ascendancy of Buckingham. 1626. to consult the House of Commons, and they would find wisdom there. With this confidence in men whom he knew to be in earnest was joined a faith in all pure and noble deeds, and a contemptuous abhorrence of all things mean and base. In the follies of the splendid favourite he saw greed and selfishness, and deliberate treason to his beloved country. What wonder if Eliot called for inquiry into the mis- management which had led to so many disasters by sea and land. What wonder if he traced the ingham's im- cause of all evil to the traitorous wickedness peachment. ^f Buckingham. Before long the Commons impeached the minister. The tale of crime, real and imaginary, was unrolled in the ears of men, and the Lords were called upon to visit with the severest penal- ties the man who had made himself all-powerful in order that he might ruin the state for selfish ends. Charles was deeply vexed. One day he heard that Eliot had branded Buckingham as Sejanus. tionofPar- ' If he is Scjanus,' he muttered, 'I must be hament. Tiberius.' If the Commons exaggerated the worst traits of Buckingham's character, Charles dwelt exclusively on his better qualities, his frank and open bearing, his undaunted courage, his devotion to his master's interests. Rather than abandon his minister he dissolved Parliament before it had voted a single sixpence. Charles's first hope was that the nation would give him what the Commons had refused. A demand for , The free ^ ^^^^ ^ift to Support the war was made in gift. every county. But with few exceptions the inhabitants of the counties turned a deaf ear to the demand. Some one suggested that if men could not be forced to give money to the king, they had often been made to 1627. The Expedition to Rh^. 55 lend. The King of Denmark suffered a grievous de- feat at Lutter, mainly from want of the sue- ^ g -[.[^^ cours which Charles had promised him. In forced loan. order that help might be sent him, Charles ordered the collection of a forced loan. Before the money came in it was evident that but little of it would be spent in sending aid to the King of Denmark. The ill-feeling between France § 9. Dispute and England was increasing. Lewis, now p^^g^^j under the guidance of Richelieu, the great England. French statesman of the age, had made peace with his Protestant subjects in the hope that Charles would enter into active operations in Germany. Charles, who had no money to employ in fighting, haggled over the terms of the alliance, and put himself ostentatiously forward as the protector of the French Protestants. Lewis, who dared not embark in a war in Germany if there was a chance of Charles's coming to the assistance of any of his subjects who might choose to revolt, prepared to lay siege to the great Protestant seaport of Rochelle, which was entirely independent of his authority. Charles felt himself in honour bound to come to its defence. Other causes of dispute were not wanting. The French attendants of the queen taught her to regard her- self as injured because Charles had broken his 5 io_ xhe promises in favour of the English Catholics, dismissal of T T ,1 1 -1 1 • • r 1 • '*^^ French He could not, he said, count his wife his owti household. as long as they were there, and, without thought of the en- gagements which pledged him to keep the queen's house- hold as it was, he drove her attendants out of England. The natural result was war between France and England. The forced loan was driven on to supply the means. Chief Justice Crewe, §11'. Vi refusing to acknowledge its legality, was dis- '^^'"^ France, missed. Poor men who refused to pay were sent as $6 The Ascendancy of BuckingJiam. 1627. soldiers into foreign service. Rich men were summoned before the council and committed to prison. By these harsh measures a considerable sum was scraped toge- ther. A handful of men was despatched to help the King of Denmark in Germany, and a stately fleet of a hundred sail, carrying a large force on board, was pre- pared to go under Buckingham's command to the relief of Rochelle. On July 1 2 the English troops, after a sharp contest with the enemy, landed on the Isle of Rhd, which, if it came into Buckingham's hands, would be an admirable expedition point of vantage for the defence of the neigh- to Rhe. bouring Rochelle. On July 17 Buckingham commenced the siege of St. Martin's, its principal fortress. The ground was rocky, and the siege was soon con- verted into a blockade. On September 27 the garrison had but three days' provisions left, and opened nego- tiations for a surrender. In the night thirty-five boats, favoured by a stiff breeze, dashed through the English blockading squadron, and revictualled the place. The besieged had respite for two months longer. If reinforcements could reach Buckingham to enable him to keep up the numbers which were thinned by dis- § 13. The ease, all might yet go well. Charles at home retreat. urged his ministers to the uttermost. But money and men were hard to find. Buckingham's rise had been too sudden, and his monopoly of the king's favour too complete, to give him much chance of a favourable judgment from the higher classes, and now no man who was not a creature of the court trusted Bucking- ham any longer. Before the reinforcements could reach him the end had come. A French force had landed on the island, and Buckingham, after one hopeless attempt to storm the fort, gave orders for a retreat. Mismanage- ment completed the ruin which an evil poHcy had begun. 1 628. The Petition of Right. 57 The French fell upon the invaders as they struggled to regain their ships, and of 6,800 English troops less than 3,000, worn with hunger and sickness, were landed in England. Section IV. — The Petition of Right and the Assassi- nation of Btickingham. After the failure at Rh€ Buckingham's unpopularity reached its highest pitch. ' Since England a.d. 1627. was England,' we find in a letter of the time, f,°unpopu. 'it received not so dishonourable a blow.' lanty of The fault that had occurred was laid upon ham. Buckingham. Five of the prisoners who were suffering for tlieir refusal to pay the loan were inspirited to appeal to the Judges for a writ of habeas corpus, which . „ , , § 2. Habeas would enable them to be fairly tried upon corpus A^:- any charge which the king had to bring "^^ded. against them. But the king had named no charge, and the Judges were of opinion that within some undefined limits it was for the king to decide whether prisoners should be tried or not. Neither Buckingham nor Charles had any thought of stopping the war. A fleet was got ready under Bucking- ham's brother-in-law, the Earl of Denbigh, to a.d. 1628. carry provisions to Rochelle, which was tWrdParHa-^ now besieged by the French, and a Parlia- ment. ment was summoned to grant supplies for the payment of the fleet. The leader who gave the tone to the opening debates was Sir Thomas Wentworth. Sprung from a wealthy and ancient house in Yorkshire, he Thomas was inspired by a lofty consciousness of his own Wentwonh. consummate abilities as a speaker and a statesman. In €ver)^ point he was the very opposite of Eliot. He disbe- 58 The Ascendancy of Buckingham. 1628, lieved entirely in the wisdom of the House of Commons^ and thought it very unhkely that a large and heteroge- neous body could ever undertake the government of a great kingdom with advantage. Believing that important reforms and wise government were absolutely necessary for the well-being of England, and knowing that such a rule as he wished to see could only be evolved from the intellect of the few, he was apt to forget that without the support of the many, the few who were wise would be unable to get their wishes carried out, and that even if they succeeded for a time, it would only be by crushing that life and vigour in the body of the nation out of which alone any permanent order could be evolved. The contrast between Eliot and Wentworth, in shorty may be best illustrated by an imaginary conflict between the heart and the brain to be considered the pared with chief Organs of the human body. Eliot was Eliot. f-Qj. j.j^g heart, Wentworth for the brain. Eliot was right in saying that government could not be carried on except in agreement with the representatives of the nation, Wentworth was right in saying that it could not be carried on except by men possessing qualities above those of the average member of the House of Commons. Around this conflict of opinion the course of the coming revolution, so far at least as it was a political §6. Both revolution, was to turn. For the present, BuSt-** the two great men could work together. The ham. rule of Buckingham was detestable, both to- the intellect and to the feeling of the nation. Went- worth and Eliot could join in putting a stop to that. After much discussion, a Petition of Right, that is to say, a declaration that certain rights of the Petition of nation which had been violated must be ac- Right. knowledged for the future, was presented to the king. To some of its demands Charles raised no ob- 1628. Tlie Petition of Right. 59 jection. He was ready to promise never again to raise a forced loan, or to compel householders to receive soldiers against their will, or to give a commission to military- officers to execute martial law in time of peace. But he shrunk from promising that he would never send anyone to prison without showing the cause for which he had done so. The concession, in fact, was of the utmost im- portance. Whatever the law may have been, the king had been in the habit of sending men to prison when he thought fit, and had sometimes left them there untried. If a cause was shown, the Judges could at once be ap- pealed to by the prisoner to appoint a day for the trial, that it might be known whether the charge was true or not. The final decision on state offences would then be in the hands of a judicial court, and not in the hands of the king. Charles struggled long against this conclusion. But he needed money. Denbigh had come back from Rochelle,. having completely failed to carry in the pro- ^ g Royai visions with which he was charged. A more assent to it. powerful fleet must be fitted out. Yet, unless Charles assented to the Petition, the Commons would grant no supplies. He tried hard to get over the difficulty by an evasive answer. The Commons stood firm, and on June 7 the great Petition became the law of the land. The Petition of Right is memorable as the first Act which circumscribed the exuberant powers which the Tudors had bequeathed to the Stuarts. But ,,,..- , § 9. Further It was but the begmnmg of a great change, changes It decided that every prisoner should have a ^^''^'^^■ trial before the Judges, if he asked for it ; but it took no precautions that the trial should be a fair one. Unless a capital offence had been committed the case might be brought before the Star Chamber, or the High Commis- sion, both of them under the immediate influence of the ■6o The Ascendancy of Buckingham. 1628. king, and punishing without the intei-vention of a jury. Even the ordinary Judges wei-e much under the king's control. They were appointed to their places by him, and they might be dismissed by him. Without being con- sciously hypocritical, they were likely to take the same view of things which was taken at court. The alteration made by the petition could not be fully felt till the Judges became independent of the crov/n, as they did after the Revolution of 1688, It was not in this direction that the Commons imme- diately turned their attention. They wanted many things § 10. Proro- ^*^ ^^ changed in Church and State. Above gation. all, they wanted to be rid of Buckingham. Sooner than listen to the language which was uttered, Charles, having by this time got the money he needed, prorogued the Houses. Buckingham was to command the fleet which was going once more to Rochelle, and if Buckingham won a victory, the Commons would, perhaps, not take so harsh a view of his character when they re- assembled. In August Buckingham was at Portsmouth, making ready for embarkation. He knew how widely dissatis-, „ , faction at his conduct had kindled into bitter 5 II. Buck- 1 , • T-. r • • inghamat hatred to his person. But for assassmation Portsmouth. -^Q was not prepared. A friend had begged him to wear a shirt of mail beneath his clothes. ' A shirt of mail,' he answei'ed, 'would be but a silly defence against any popular fury. As for a single man's assault, I take myself to be in no danger. There are no Roman spirits left.' He little knew that one gloomy fanatic was dogging his steps. John Felton had served as an officer in the expedition to Rh^. He had been refused promo- tion, and when he returned, he was left, like most men in the king's service were, with his salary unpaid. In his misery, he caught eagerly at the tales of which the air 1 6255. Taxation and Religion. 6i was full, and fed his mind upon a declaration, proceeding from the Commons, that the Duke was a public enemy. He bought a knife, in order, as he said, to avenge him- self, his country, and his God. On the morning of August 23, Felton stationed him- self at the entrance of the room in which Buckingham was breakfasting. As the Duke stepped out, , § 12. INlur- the murderer struck him heavily in the breast, der of Buck- saying, ' God have mercy upon thy soul!' as '"gham. he dealt the blow. The man who till now had been the ruler of England fell dead to the ground. His wife, warned that something terrible had happened, rushed out with shrieks of agony in her night-dress from her bed- room into a gallery which overlooked the scene. Felton was seized, and after due trial met the fate which he deserved. The fleet was sent out under an- other commander. But there was no heart in , ., 1 . ■ ■ 1 n § 13. Surren- the sailors, no resolution in the commanders, der of England was weary of the war which had Ro^^helle. been entered on so recklessly and conducted with so little capacity. Rochelle surrendered to the French go- vernment. Charles was left alone to bear the weight of unpopularity which failure had caused. CHAPTER IV. THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES L Section I. — Taxation and Religion. The feeling of antagonism which had sprung up between Charles and the Commons boded ill for the a.d. 1628. re-establishment of a good understanding 5 1- Tonnage- ^ . ° and pound- between them, even after the immediate stone age. ot offence had been removed by Buckingham's death. One point of extreme delicacy had been touched during the 62 The Personal Government of CJiarles I. 1628. final debates of the last session. For many reigns the habitual practice of the Commons had been to vote to each king, for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain duties on exports and imports, known as tonnage and poundage. Partly through the desire of the Commons to obtain a settlement in their favour of the vexed ques- tion of the impositions, partly through the interruption caused by their dispute with the crown, tonnage and poundage had not yet been voted when Parliament was prorogued in June 1628. At the last moment the House had prepared a remonstrance stating that the levy of these duties without its consent was illegal by the Peti- tion of Right, a statement which an impartial tribunal would doubtless fail to justify by the wording of the Petition ; whilst Charles fell back upon the decision of the Judges in the case of the impositions in his father's reign, which gave him the weight of their authority in levying any customs duties he pleased. Almost immediately after the prorogation some Lon- don merchants refused to pay the duties on their goods. ■? 2. The These goods were at once seized. The Court ferred'to'^^' ^^ Exchequer decided that the question of Parliament. legality must be argued before it, and that in the meanwhile the goods were to remain in the king's storehouses. But the government was not anxious to rest upon legal arguments. Charles made up his mind to waive for the present his claim under the former judg- ment in the case of impositions, and to hope that in the next session he might come to an understanding with the Commons which would remove all difficulties. Whatever the legal merits of the case may have been, the question of tonnage and poundage was § 3. Impor- , . - , . ^ _, , tance of the the question of the sovereignty of England question. Charles could not govern the country without this money, and if the claim of the Commons was ad- 1 628. Taxation and Religion. 63 mitted, they might demand anything they liked as the price of their grant. The Commons would become supreme, and the king would have to surrender all those special powers which had been bequeathed to him by the Tudors. Men seldom fight for power unless they have some special use to which they wish to put it. It is therefore improbable that, unless the Commons had 5 ^. Rgii- had some important object in view, there s'ous diffi- would have been much difficulty in coming to Strong Pro- an arrangement. Unhappily there was still a lheCom^° cause of division which was likely to give as "o^s- much trouble as had been given by the revolt of the na- tion against the administrative blunders of Buckingham. The fear of danger to Protestantism from the engage- ments of James with Spain, and from the engagements of Charles with France, had produced its effect upon the temper of the upper classes of the nation which were mainly represented in the House of Commons. Puri- tanism in the sense of a rejection of the Prayer Book as a whole, or of a general disposition to change the existing ecclesiastical arrangements, had no existence except with a very small minority. But there was a general dis- position to lay stress upon the special Calvinistic doctrine on the subject of predestination,which most Englishmen of that generation had been brought up to believe, and to regard any deviation from it as a surrender to the Papal Church. Every year the fear of papal aggression grew stronger. On the Continent the Catholic powers had been winning their way to a supremacy of which there had been no example since the great victories of the Reformation. In 1622 the Palatinate had been lost to Protestantism. In 1626 the Danish resistance had been broken at Lutter, and now the whole of North Germany, with the excep- tion of two or three seaport towns, lay helpless at the feet of Wallenstein and Tilly. In France Rochelle had 64 TJie Persofial Government of Charles I. 1628. succumbed to Richelieu, and men could hardly believe as yet that the statesmanship of the Cardinal was in earnest in granting liberty of religion to the conquered. Whilst the mass of thinking men was thus lashed into indignation against anything which savoured of § s. Partial faithlessness to Protestantism, there was a against" Small but growing minority amongst the Calvinism. clergy which cared very little for the tyranny of the Emperor and the Pope in Germany, and very much for the tyranny of the dominant Calvinists at home. They questioned the received theology in scornful terms. In 1625 the Commons took up the challenge by sum- moning to their bar Richard Montague, who had written a book denying the popular doctrine to be the doctrine of the Church of England. In 1626 they impeached him as a disturber of the peace of the church and com- monwealth. Unity of belief was to be the corner-stone of national unity. No opinions at variance with those which had prevailed in the last generation were to be promulgated in England, if the Commons could have their way. The zeal of the Commons for unity of belief was not merely theological. Montague and those who agreed with him had thrown themselves into the appoint- arms of the king. In 1627 they were foremost ments. -^^ Urging the duty of paying the forced loan, and one of their number, Roger Manwaring, preached sermons which spoke of parliaments as mere cyphers in the state. Charles, in his irritation against the Com- mons, showed favour to the men who had stood by him in his difficulties. Immediately after the proroga- tion in 1628 he made Montague a bishop, and gave a good living to Manwaring. Men who held opinions thus widely distasteful were, it seemed, to use the position which they owed to the favour of their sovereign in order to incul- cate doctrines of arbitrary power in the State, as well as 1628. Breach between tJic King a7id Commons. 6$ to be set to govern the Church, and to treat with derision the belief of masses of earnest men. Before the end of the year Charles, with the assent of the bishops, promulgated a form of agreement which he undoubtedly intended to be conciliatory. The king's declaration, which is to this day king's de- prefixed to the Articles in the Common ^laration. Prayer Book, is the key to Charles's ecclesiastical policy. It was his duty, he asserted, not to suffer unnecessary questions to be raised, which might nourish faction both in the church and commonwealth. The Articles were therefore to be taken in their literal sense, and no one was hereafter to venture to put his own sense or comment on their meaning. Men were, in short, to hold their tongues on the controversy of the day. Such a settlement was undoubtedly better than the refusal of all liberty of speech which the Commons wished to esta- blish, because it avoided the infliction of any penalty upon opinion. But it was necessarily a settlement which would be one-sided in operation. To the Calvinist the doc- trine of predestination was part of his creed which could not be buried in silence without hazarding the rest. His opponent simply held that it was a question which no one could possibly understand, and which therefore ought not to be discussed in the pulpit. Section II. T/ie Breach between the King and the Co7n7nons. When the Commons met, they first turned their attention to the question of tonnage and poundage. On the one hand they waived their appeal to the ^.d. 1629. Petition of Right. On the other hand the §/• Meeting ° of the kmg waived his claim to demand payment Houses. under the judgment in the case of impositions. He M. II. F ^ The Personal Governmetit of Charles I. 1629. asked them to vote him the duties and leave the ques- tion of legality unsettled. Unluckily, this question, difficult in itself, vi^as com- plicated by another, Rolle, one of the merchants whose . RoUe's goods had been seized, was a member of the privilege. House of Commons, and the Commons ar- gued that whatever might have been done to the other merchants, the custom-house officers had no right to touch the property of a member of their House. The whole subject was, however, postponed till the state of religion had been taken into consideration. The vehemence of the Commons rose at once to fever pitch. New ideas had been broached, new ceremonies introduced. It would have been hard enough gious inno- for them to swallow the notion that all men N-ations. could not believe as they did on the subject of predestination. But it seemed intolerable that clergy- men should be found to speak of priests and altars. In Durham cathedral especially, there had been great changes, and the services had been made very much what they are in cathedrals at the present day. Parts of the service were sung which had not been sung before, and the communion table, which had formerly stood at the north door, and had been moved into the middle of the choir when required for the communion, had been permanently fixed at the east end of the chancel. The Commons flung themselves first upon the doc- trinal difference. They declared that their interpretation of the Articles was true, and that every other 5 4. Position . . . , of the Com- mterpretation was false. They could not bear raons. ^Q hear that the belief of the nation was to be settled by the clergy apart from the laity. Then they proceeded to deal with the ceremonial changes. They summoned the authors of these innovations to answer as culprits at the bar. Before the delinquents could arrive in London some 1629. Breach between the King and Commons. 67 time must elapse, and the House turned back to the question of tonnage and poundage. They apphed them- selves to it with minds inflamed by the eccle- ^ ^ privilege siastical debates. To give the king these again, duties was, as they believed, to place means in his hands to lay the English Church captive at the feet of the Pope. And yet it was difficult to meet the king on any broad ground. Charles was strong in his reference to the Judges, and though it might be a political necessity that the House of Commons should set aside a doctrine maintained by the Judges, it involved a breach of consti- tutional arrangements which would completely alter the balance of power in the state. It seemed easier to make their attack upon the point of privilege, and they summoned the custom-house officers who had seized RoUe's goods to answer for their insolence. So far, under Ehot's leadership, the House had gone. Yet this particular claim to privilege, whether technically right or not, was outrageous. RoUe's goods ^ g £i;qj had been seized when Parliament was not sit- and Py"- ting. The House of Commons was not thereby deprived of his services for an instant, and if special aid was to be given to RoUe, it would follow that means might be found to enable a merchant who was a member of the House to escape payment when nothing could be done for another merchant who was in a less fortunate position. Of all members in the House there was none, not even Eliot, whose patriotism was under less suspicion than John Pym. In opposition to the ecclesiastical policy ot the government he went as far as any man, and he had taken his full share in the discussions which led to the Petition of Right. Yet now he distinctly refused to follow Eliot. ' The liberties of this House,' he said, ' are in- ferior to the liberties of this kingdom. To determine the privileges of this House is but a mean matter, and the 68 The Personal Governmetit of Cliarles I. 1629. main end is to establish possession of the subjects/ Pym's advice, in short, was to meet the difficulty in the face, to claim for all men the right of refusing to pay the duty till it had been voted by Parliament. Pym's advice had the merit of founding the inevit- able quarrel on broad grounds in which all men were March 2. equally concerned. The House chose to fol- 57^ Adjourn- 1q^ yXxoX.. Charles refused to allow his House. officers to be called to the bar. They had but obeyed his orders, and they must not suffer for their obedience. He commanded an adjournment of the House to March 2, and entered into private negotiations with the leading members, in the hope that means of escaping the difficulty might yet be discovered. The negotiations came to nothing, and on the ap- pointed day the Commons met, only to receive a fresh order for adjournment. There were those amongst in the them who, believing that a dissolution was House. imminent, determined to make a declaration which should serve as an appeal to the people. As the Speaker was preparing to leave the chair, two members, Holies and Valentine, stepped rapidly forward, and held him down by force, whilst Eliot stood up to put to the- vote a motion which he had drawn up in concert with his friends. Amidst tumult and confusion, the stormy debate, if debate it can be called, proceeded. A rush, was made to set the Speaker free. Another rush was made to keep him in durance. The doors were locked, and one of the members put the key in his pocket. When order was at last restored, and Eliot proposed to put his resolutions to the vote, neither Speaker nor clerk would take the responsibility of reading them. At last, just as the king was approaching the door with an armed force. Holies, who had a copy of the resolutions in his pocket, read them amidst shouts of assent. 1629. Breach bctzveen the King and Commons. 69 The resolutions were plain enough to be understood of all men. Whoever brought in innovations in religion, or introduced opinions disagreeing from those of the true and orthodox Church ; whoever three reso- advised the levy of tonnage and poundage ^""°"^- without a grant from Parliament ; whoever voluntarily paid those duties ; was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer of its liberties. As the shouts of Aye, aye, rung out on every side, the doors were flung open, and the members ^ poured forth in a throng. For more than eleven end of the years no Parliament met again in England. Parhament. Those who had led the opposition by which Charles's hopes were frustrated were marked out for vengeance. The Petition of Right needed additional § u. Punish- buttresses before it could form a barrier chambers against the sovereign's will. Chambers, one and Eliot. of the merchants who had refused payment of the duties, was brought before the Star Chamber for the utterance of a few rash words in contempt of the privy council, and was sentenced to a fine of 2,000/., and to an imprisonment which lasted for many years. Eliot, with those who had supported him on the day of the adjourn- ment, was thrown into prison, and brought before the Court of King's Bench. The cause of commitment was signified, and the provisions of the Petition were com- plied with. But the Petition had omitted to state under what conditions a prisoner ought to be admitted to bail, and Charles, by a mixture of violence and persuasion, procured from the Judges an offer of bail upon terms which the prisoners declined to accept. When the case came on for trial the prisoners were charged with riot and sedition. True to Eliot's principles, they refused to acknowledge that any court had a right to meddle with actions done in Parliament. The Judges acknowledged 70 The Personal Governmejit of Charles I. 1629, that they had no authority to interfere with regular parha- mentary proceedings. But the charge was that these mem- bers had taken part in a riot and sedition, and the judges held that riot and sedition could never be held to be a parliamentary proceeding. As Eliot and the others still refused to answer, fine and imprisonment were imposed upon them. Eliot's comrades made their submission actually or tacitly one by one, and were allowed again to mingle in ^,. , the world. Eliot alone remained honourably § 12. Ehots , T ^^. , , ,. .,, political obdurate. His was the one unbendmg will views. which never could be broken. Not one word would he speak which could be tortured into an acknow- ledgment that any power on earth could interfere with the supremacy of Parliament over the words and actions of its members. There was to be one spot on earth which the king's authority could not reach. To claim such an independence was to claim more than independence. If Parliament was not subject to the king, it would soon be- come his master. That was the issue which before long was to be fought out in England. Eliot was in his gene- ration the first, the greatest champion of the doctrine that Parliament was the controlling power of the con- stitution, the doctrine which had been in abeyance during the Tudor reigns, but which had been acknowledged fitfully but effectually in earlier days. No doubt there was a difference between the parliamentary supremacy of the fifteenth century and the parliamentary supremacy claimed in the seventeenth. In the mediyeval Parlia- ments the Lords had led and the Commons had followed. Eliot would have had the Commons to lead and the Lords to follow. The Upper House in the days of Charles I. was but a shadow of its former self. It had suffered from the proscriptions of the Tudors ; had suffered still 1629. Unparliamentary Government. 71 more from the numerous and sometimes unworthy crea- tions of the Stuarts. The Lower House had become the main depository of the national dignity and of the national will. Of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy Eliot was now to become the martyr. Cooped up in the Tower without air or exercise, his health gave way. From his pitiless gaolers no relaxation was to be hoped. His weakened form and sunken cheek soon §13. Death gave evidence of the consumption which was °'E"o'- wasting his strength within. In December 1632, after an imprisonment of three years and a half, the soul of the patriotic orator passed away. Charles, vindictive to the end, refused him even the privilege of a burial in his Cornish home. ' Let the body of Sir John Eliot,' he answered to a request from the dead man's children, ' be buried in the place where he died.' Section IIL The Beginnings of Unparliamentary Government. If Charles had been asked whether he intended to tread the law and constitution underfoot, he would have shrunk back with horror at the thought. He would § i. Consti- have replied that he was in truth the sup- tron°of'thr'* porter of the law. Always, in theory. Commons, and, since the accession of the House of Tudor, in practice as well, Parliament had been but the great council of the king. The king had been the centre of government, the acting power round which all else re- volved. What the Commons now demanded was to take his place, to keep him short of money till he would comply with their wishes, and to render him powerless by calling his ministers to account when they did what the Commons considered to be illegal. Not only the 72 The Personal Government of Charles L 1629. authority of the king but the decision of the Judges was to be swept aside. And all this was to be done in order that freedom of thought, except so far as it found favour in the eyes of the dominant majority, might be stamped out in England : that no one might print a book or preach a sermon without the leave of the House of Com- mons. Charles was not wrong in dissolving such a Parlia- ment. It had done its work in preparing the great § 2 Charles's Petition ; and if Charles could have rallied position. England round him by a wiser policy than he was, unfortunately, capable of conceiving, he might well have waited a few years for its ratification by anothei Parliament. Unluckily, he was incapable of taking such a step. He did not know that there was truth in the midst of his opponents' errors. He did not know that his own policy was liable to the gravest exception. Above all, he did not know that, even if he were possessed of all wisdom, he could not govern permanently without the goodwill of that nation which Parliament represented. He did not acknowledge to himself that he meant to rule permanently without Parliament. But he ordered that no man should petition him to summon another, and as years rolled on his mind grew more and more accustomed to think of Parliament as a mere excrescence on the con- stitution, and of the public opinion on which it rested as a wild beast to be kept down. He fancied that he was copying his Tudor predecessors. In reality he was most false to the great principles of Henry and Elizabeth. The lonely silent man, keeping at a distance all who were not of the immediate circle of his privileged attendants could never play the part of the frank and hearty sove- reigns who had courted popularity as the very life-blood of their government. A time must have come when the supremacy of public 1629. Unparliamentary Government. 73 opinion which had been tacitly recognised by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth would exercise an 53. Condi- avowed control through the House of Com- H°[Jie°[a?y''" mons as the representative body of the government, nation. It is easy to see that the blunders of Charles's reign had done much to hasten the change. But it is cer- tain that to transfer supremacy to the House of Commons on the terms on which Eliot wished to transfer it, would have been to establish a gross tyranny. It is notorious that Henry and Elizabeth were always ready to hear ad- vice from all sides. Whatever there was elsewhere, in their council chamber there was liberty of speech. If the House of Commons was to step into their place, there must be liberty of speech outside as well as inside the walls of Parliament. A Parliament stereotyping upon the country a particular form of religious or political belief which happened to be popular at the time would degenerate into the most odious of despotisms. The mouths of the counsellors whose work it is insensibly to change public opinion would be closed. The establish- ment of Parliamentary supremacy in 1688 was a noble work. But it would not have been a noble work if it had stood alone. It came accompanied by the abolition of the censorship of the press, and by the Toleration Act. A free press and a free pulpit were limitations on the par- liamentary despotism as effectual as the tacitly acknow- ledged right of insurrection had been upon the kingly despotism of the middle ages. Such ideas are universally accepted in the present day. In the seventeenth century they were but struggling into existence. Charles and his ministers saw , ^, , , . r ■ ■ 1 , • ■ 1 § 4- Charles the necessity of resistmg the ecclesiastical and his tyranny of the House of Commons. But they ™"'='^'"^- fancied they could resist by refurbishing the weapons of old authority, and by establishing a system of equal des- 74 l^fi-^ Personal Governviciit of CJiarlcs I. 1629. potism. As far as possible they would act according to law. But if the law failed them they could always fall back on the prerogative, which they interpreted as giving power to the king to provide for the safety of the nation,, when he was not expressly forbidden by law to do any special act which he wished to do. As the Judges were appointed and dismissed by the crown ; as the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission could fine and imprison at discretion, and as Parliament was not there to complain, Charles was practically absolute in all matters in which he cared to be absolute. But there can be no doubt that he believed his to be a legal government, and that he prided himself particularly on his respect for the law. § 5. Three For somo years, three statesmen, Weston, statesmen. Laud, and Wcntworth governed England in Charles's name. Of the three, Weston was of the least importance. As Lord Treasurer his first thought, like the first thought of his predecessor, Middlesex, was for eco- §6. Weston -r. , • , , / , Lord Trea- nomy. Buckmgham s wasteful expenditure ^"'^^''' had left him a large legacy of debt, and he did all that he could to clear it off. The subsidies voted in 1628 did much, and in 1630 he discovered that all men holding lands worth 40/. a year ought to have been knighted at the coronation, if they were not knights already. Fines imposed on hundreds of men who had neglected this duty brought money into the exchequer. The act was unquestionably within the letter of the law, and it received the express sanction of the Court of Exchequer, though it was not likely to increase the popu- larity of the government. By this and similar contri- vances Weston paid off much of the debt, and brought the revenue and expenditure nearly on a level. He knew well that to save himself from fresh debt he must keep 1629. Unparliamentary Government. 75 the king at peace. Peace was made at once witli France in 1629 ; but peace with Spain was not brought about till the end of 1630. The king was greatly distressed at aban- doning the cause of his sister, and was every year enter- ing, after the manner of his father, into fresh negotiations for the restitution of the Palatinate. Weston humoured Charles, joined in forwarding the negotiations, and was always ready with some good reason why they should not end in war. For the moral and spiritual interests of Protestantism on the Continent he cared nothing. He was suspected, probably with truth, of being a Roman Catholic at heart. His policy was exclusively devoted to en- riching the country. If commerce flourished and men were making money, they would not be likely, he thought, to grumble against the king. If Weston was the king's oracle so far as the material wants of the nation were concerned. Laud, now Bishop of London, was his spiritual adviser. He had grown up to regard with horror the dogmatism of Cal- \j- Laud • • ,1 ,1- 1 1 T , Bishop of vmism, and he believed that disputes about London. religious questions were likely to overthrow the common- wealth. He, like his contemporaries, never rose into the conception of liberty of thought as the only possible remedy for the evil which he dreaded. When Eliot cried out for the enforcement of unity of belief, Laud cried out for the enforcement of uniformity of ceremonial. ' I laboured nothing more,' he afterwards said, in defence of his pro- ceedings, 'than that the external public worship of God — too much slighted in most parts of this kingdom — might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uni- formity as might be ; being still of opinion that unity cannot long continue in the Church, when uniformity is shut out at the church door.' In all the complex varieties of Puritanism the heart of man is addressed through the intellect. Laud addressed it through the eye. External 'j6 The Perso7ial Government of Charles 1. 1629. order and discipline, the authority of existing law and of existing governors, were the tests to which he appealed. Genius he had none, no power of sympathy with charac- ters opposed to his own, no attractive force whatever. Men were to obey for their own good, and to hold their tongues. If Laud was greater than Weston, Wentworth was greater than Laud. When the Petition of Right was § 8. Went- granted he passed easily and naturally into dent'^oflhe'' the king's service as President of the Coun- North. cil of the North, a special tribunal exercising almost unlimited authority beyond the Humber. As long as Buckingham lived, and for a year after his death, he had no place in the general government of England. Only in November 1629, did he enter the privy council. It is easy to see that the events of the session of that year must have exercised a decisive influence on his mind. In the session of 1628 he had taken the lead in resistance to the violent measures which had been called forth by the prosecution of a war which he regarded as impolitic and unwise. But he must have regarded with the utmost detestation the claim of the Commons to force the king to establish an ecclesiastical inquisition into the holding of opinions which he himself shared. If Eliot wished to found authority on public opinion, Wentworth contemned public opinion altogether. Authority must be founded on intellect, not on opinion, and of all living intellects he believed his own to be the first. Nor was it simply to the maintenance of power that he looked. ' Justice without respect of persons,' might have been the motto of his life. Nothing called forth his bitter indignation like the claims of the rich to special consideration or favour. The rule of the House of Commons meant for him — not altogether without truth — the rule of the landowner and the lawyer at the expense of the poor. His entry into the council 1630. Ecclesiastical Parties. jy was marked by a series of efforts to make life more toler- able for those who were in distress. Justices of the peace were ordered to make a yearly report on the execution of the poor law, to say whether those who had no means of subsistence were relieved, and whether idle vagabonds were punished. The measure was accompanied by many others, not always very wise, but always well intentioned, as far as can now be judged, for the relief of commerce, and for the general improvement of the condition of the population. Where Wentworth failed was in his con- tempt of popularity, and in his contempt for law as a safeguard of justice. Everything was to be done for the people, nothing by them. They must learn to take the good things which the government chose to send them as they took the rain from heaven. There was to be no strengthening of the consciousness of right in the popular heart ; no drawing out of the love and sympathy of the governed. The blessings which the stern, isolated man was longing to spread around him came back to him in curses. Section IV. — Ecclesiastical Parties. The first five years of unparliamentary government were on the whole years of peace and quiet. There were Star Chamber prosecutions and penalties for a.d. 1630. those who openly resisted the authority of Chamber the king. In 1630 Alexander Leighton, sentences, having written a virulent libel upon the bishops, was flogged and mutilated with merciless severity. In 1633 Henry Sherfield was fined for taking the law into his own hands, and breaking a church window which he held to be superstitious. But though the government was un- doubtedly unpopular in many quarters, there is no sign of any general bitterness of feeling against it. There was no distinct breach of constitutional forms. yS The PcTsojtal Government of Charles /. 1630. Years were passing away without a Parliament, just as 5 2. General years had passed away in the preceding submission. reign. But no one had said that Parhament was never to meet again. Nor was the bearing of the op- position in the last session such as to secure universal acquiescence. Pym had openly denounced Eliot's course as, at least, ill timed, and many of the foremost men of former sessions had stood aloof from the uproar of the final scene. There was much, too, in the course of foreign affairs to soothe men's minds in England. The peace had restored commercial activity, and merchants who were making money rapidly had no time to agitate against the payment of tonnage and poundage. In 1630 the flood of Roman Catholic aggression was checked in Germany by the landing of Gustavus Adolphus, and good Protestants in England ceased to dread lest they should be faced by a triumphant papal league, mustering its forces from the shores of the Baltic to the Straits of Gibraltar. After all, too, the ecclesiastical changes introduced by Laud in these early years of his domination were not so § 3. Laud's "^^^y alarming. His power extended directly changes. only over his own diocese of London, and though he was able to do much elsewhere with the king's aid, his suggestions were often evaded by reluctant or sluggish bishops. Even when he was most vigorous, though words likely to cause alarm frequently escaped his lips, he confined his actual efforts to compelling the ob- servance of the Book of Common Prayer and to putting an end to that evasion of the rules of the Church which had frequently been practised since Abbot's archbishop- ric had begun. On the whole Puritans submitted with more or less reluctance. Those who refused to do so were deprived of their appointments in the Church. Laud did not stand alone in his reverence for the 1630. Ecclesiastical Parties. 79 Prayer Book. The respect for the calm sanctities of a hfe sustained and nourished by the spirit which . ceoree breathes in it found its chief expression in Herbert. George Herbert. Born of a noble house, he had aspired to lead a high and pure religious life, and to employ his talents in the service of the state. His ambition had acted as a disturbing influence on the current of his religious aspirations. His religious aspirations had held him back from devoting himself wholly to statesmanship. At last he recognised his true vocation. As parish priest at Bemerton, a little hamlet near Salisbury, almost under the shadow of the most graceful of English ca- thedrals, he taught men by his life to reverence whatso- ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. To Herbert the outward fomis of church worship, the repeated prayer, the pealing organ, the painted window, were loved and reverenced as teaching the struggling soul to offer up its own wandering fantasy and to restrain itself within limits appointed by external au- thority. That which was to sink into his heart must first pass through the eye or the ear. Even the pavement of a church could be made to read a lesson to him who stepped upon it. Mark you the floor? That square and speckled stone, Which looks so firm and strong, Is Patience : And th'other black and grave, wherewith each one Is checkered all alone, Humility. The gentle rising, which on either hand Leads to the Quire above. Is Confidence : But the sweet cement, which in one sure band Ties the whole frame, is Love And Charity. Among the simple peasants of the Wiltshire valley such teaching was not without its reward. The plough- 8o TTJie Personal Government of CJiarles I. 1633. man stopped in his daily toil and murmured a few words of prayer as he heard Herbert's bell sending forth its summons to common worship. From Herbert, and from such as Herbert, Laud had nothing to fear. To them it was a pleasure to be under authority, and to be bidden to submit to rules out of which their submissive minds might draw some hidden sweetness. It was the fault of the House of Commons that its system would have found no room in the Church for § S.Richard Herbert. But if the Church was to remain Sibbes. unrent, room must be found in it for those who were very unlike Herbert. Of all the Puritan preachers of the day no man stood higher than Richard Sibbes. Ever in the pulpit, amongst the lawyers of Gray's Inn, or at the University church at Cambridge, he did not shrink, as Herbert shrunk, from contact with the world. Wherever men were thickest, wherever the spirit of evil was the strongest, his voice was raised. It was the Puritan gospel which he preached. In his appeals Christ was speaking, not through outward ceremonies or holy rites, but straight to the heart and conscience of the hearer, bidding him sink at once into repentance, in order that he might rise up into sanctification. Just as for Herbert the outward form was but the incitement to holiness of life, so with Sibbes the form of doctrine, the argument about grace and predestination was but the mental framework in which the living spirit moved and worked. The element in the Puritan creed which stirred men's spirits most deeply was the doctrine of conversion, the firm conviction of an immediate divine action of the Holy Spirit upon the heart, and of His constant abiding presence in the midst of all trials and temptations. Like the other Puiitans, Sibbes is distinguished by his tri- umphant confidence in the issue of his activity. Her- bert's melody, in its happiest tones, has always some- i633- Ecclesiastical Parties. 8i thing sad and plaintive about it. Even Laud and Went- worth aclcnowledged to themselves that the chances were against them. Eliot in his prison, Sibbes in his pulpit, are jubilant with exultation. Church arrangements, state institutions have been shattered before and will be shat- tered again. But the sad consciousness of sin, the joyful sense of righteousness and purity, are unassailable by outward force. To place such men as Sibbes under such men as Laud is to reverse the natural order of things. The time will come when the strong man will burst his chains, and will make himself master of the house. As yet there seemed no likelihood of this. Sibbes and his fellow-workers were compelled sometimes, rather unwillingly, to use the whole of the Prayer Book. What was worse still, a jealous eye §6. Puritan was kept on all their movements. In 1627 conformists. Sibbes and four others were reprimanded for venturing to collect money for exiles from the Palatinate at a time when the king found such difficulty in raising the forced loan. In 1633 a heavier blow was dealt against him. With eleven others like-minded with himself he had bought up Church property, which had been impropria- ted by laymen in earlier times, and used it to supply the needs of Puritan ministers and schoolmasters. At Laud's , instance the whole scheme was referred to the Judges, who declared it to be illegal. A stop was put to this attempt to supply Puritan preachers. Yet Sibbes, though sorely grieved, never wavered for an instant in his devotion to the Church of which he was a minister. In a letter which he addressed to a friend who was thinking of separating himself from it, he protested against the very thought. The Church of England, he said, was a true Church. Even those who thought the ceremonies to be evil were not justified in making a rent in the Church for M.hr. G Sz The Personal Government cf CJiarlcs I. 1633. that reason. The remedy would be worse than the disease. Let his friend leave his extravagant courses, and return * to the sacred communion of this truly evan- gelical Church of England.' Such is the language of a leading Puritan teacher in §7. The 1633. Its meaning is evident. There is a estrange- sense of dissatisfaction, but no actual es- ment not ' complete. trangement. The gulf between Laud and the Puritans is not yet impassable. Section V. — New England So little chance did there seem to be of changing the existing system, that some to whom it was altogether § I. "She Se- intolerable sought a refuge elsewhere. Ever paratists. since the reign of Elizabeth there had been those who regarded the English Church not as some- thing to be altered and modified, but as something to be abandoned by all true Christians. Of the various names by which these men have been known, that of Separatists best describes their position. They believed that each congregation of faithful men should separate itself from nominal Christians, and should form a com- munity by itself, choosing its own ministers for conve- nience sake, but not acknowledging any strict line of distinction between the clergy and laity. Few in num- bers, and unpopular, from the contempt in which they held ordinary Christians, they were looked down upon by both parties in the Church. In 1608 a congregation of these men had emigrated to Holland, finally settling at Leyden. But they were ac- customed to country life, and town occupa- congregation tions pressed hardly on them. The busy at Leyden. •world, with its loose and often sinful ways, offered temptations from which they would gladly escape, i6::o. New England. 83 and many of them resolved to seek new homes in America, where they might be free to follow their ideal of a gospel life. On the coast of that which is now known as the United States, English settlers were already to be found The colony of Virginia had struggled through ^ ^ r^^^ terrible difficulties, and was now established colony of 1 • 11 n ■ Virginia. as a tobacco-plantmg, well-to-do community. But the Virginians did not trouble themselves about the ideal of a gospel life, and the new settlers had to seek in colder and more northern regions for a home. In 1620 the emigrants, a hundred in all, 'lifting up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country,' sailed across the Atlantic, in the ' Mayflower,' in search , .... , . , A.D. 1620. of a spot in which to pass the remainder § 4. The of their earthly pilgrimage. Coming to an ^he^May- anchor in the broad bay which lies inside flower.' Cape Cod, they explored the coast before them. November had come upon them with its cold snow-laden blasts. But they found a home at last — Plymouth, as they called it, after the last port which they had seen in England. Their troubles were not yet at an end. Disease, engendered by hardship, carried off half their numbers, and some fifty men, women, and children remained alone on that rugged and ironbound coast, to form a nucleus for the New England of the future. For ten years little addition was made to their num- ber. Some few came out to join them. Others occupied the most promising positions around, to fish, ^.d. 1630. to trade with the Indians, sometimes to plun- fh^jetf/^^" der and to cheat them. The reopening of settled. religious strife in England caused a fresh flow of emi- gration. In 1630 about a thousand Puritan men found their way across the Atlantic, with John Winthrop at 84 The Perso7ial Government of Charles I. 1630. tlieir head, and the Massachusetts settlements were firmly estabHshed. In all these settlements the principles of the Separa- tists were unquestioned. Outward forms and ceremonies 5 .6. Reli- were altogether thrust out from any place in racier ortiie worship. But it was not in search of liberty colonies. that these men had crossed the ocean. The Bible was to them a code of law, and they had made up their minds strongly as to the interpretation to be placed on doubtful passages. He who would not accept their interpretation was to be banished from the colony. He who accepted it, but had sinned against the precepts which he acknowledged, was punished. One day Win- throp, who had been elected governor, came to a place named Hue's Cross. He ordered it at once to be named Hue's Folly, lest men should think that Jesuits had been there. We can fancy how he would have dealt with a living Jesuit. Within their own circle the colonists were upright, forbearing, kindly men, fearing God and tenderly loving one another. In 1633 no sane man would have predicted that men like these would soon be the masters of England. In the end of that very year a noted Separa- tist, who had taken refuge in Holland, wrote a book with the suggestive title, ' A Fresh Suit against Human Cere- monies.' In the preface he argued that no danger could possibly come from the toleration of Separatists, on the ground that the great majority of the English people were well inclined towards the Prayer Book. 1633 General Enforcement of Conformity. 85 CHAPTER V. THE REIGN OF THOROUGH. Section I. — General E)forceme7it of Conformity. In August 1633 Archbishop Abbot died, and Laud was immediately appointed as his successor. He had so long influenced the king in Church matters, ^ ^ ^g, that the change in title seemed likelv to bring § i- Laud ■,., !-,• r i-'t-i • archbishop. him but little increase of authority. Practi- cally, however, the change was great. Out of his own diocese, he had before only noticed accidentally things which displeased him. He now held himself bound by duty to notice everything. Whatever powers an arch- bishop might claim by ancient, even if forgotten, usage, he would put in force till the order of the Prayer Book was accepted by all. If there was anything doubtful in his claims, Charles was ready to support him with all the weight of the royal authority. Laud had scarcely taken possession of the see when he gave deep offence to the Puritans. In Somersetshire, as in many other parts of the kingdom, it ^ ^ ^j^g was the custom to keep the anniversary of Declaration . 1^ of sports. the dedication of a parish church with a feast. These feasts had often degenerated into drunken revelry. The justices of the peace, supported by Chief Justice Richardson, attempted to put a stop to the custom. The attempt was resisted by Laud as an inter- ference with the right of the bishop to deal with eccle- siastical matters. Richardson was summoned before the council, and sharply reprimanded by the archbishop. * J have almost,' he said, as he came out, 'been choked with a pair of lawn sleeves.' Laud and the king thought, per- 86 TJie Reign of Thorough. 1633. haps wisely, that if the justices of the peace did their duty, the drunkenness might be repressed, and the social gatherings continued. They followed up their decision with a more questionable step. They not only reissued the Declaration of Sports which had been issued in the late reign, to authorise the use of pastimes on Sunday afternoons, but they ordered all the clergy to read it pub- licly in their churches. To the Puritan the Declaration seemed to be an incitation to sin, a breach of the fourth commandment. Laud cared nothing for such scruples. He demanded obedience. Scarcely less offensive was a decision taken on the position of the communion table. By the canons, the § 3 The table was to remain at the east end of the communion chancel, excepting when it was needed for table. , . ° . . . . . . the communion, at which time it was to be placed in that part of the church or chancel from which the minister could be most conveniently heard. In prac- tice it stood permanently at the east end in cathedrals and in some parish churches, whilst in most parish churches it stood permanently in the midst of the chancel, or even in the nave. Laud's indignation was roused when he heard of the unseemly uses to which it was often put. Men laid their hats on it in time of ser- vice, or used it as a writing-table, upon which to transact the business of the parish. In a case brought before the council, the king explained away the canons by the inter- pretation that the bishop, or other ordinary authority, could alone determine where the table could most conveniently be placed. The consequences of this decision were not immediately perceptible. But by degrees, at Laud's in- stigation, the bishops pressed on the removal of the table to the east end, and the surrounding of it with a railing. That which meets the eye impresses the mind more than that which meets the ear : and hundreds ifi34- General Enforcement of Conforviity. 8/ of persons who cared little about Arminianism, or about the news of a fresh ceremony introduced into some distant cathedral, were roused to indignation when their own parish church put on a new appearance, and the table was, as it seemed to them, transmuted into an altar. Laud, too, was ungentle in all his doings. Rarely did he fail to demand the heaviest penalty for offences. One of the sturdiest opponents of his system was ^ ^ ^g William Prynne, a learned barrister, who, §4- Prynne's in defiance of the archbishop, had poured forth book after book from his burning brain. His was a most unspiritual religion As unsympathising as Laud with the full life of human nature, he tried all things by the dry logic which was to him all-sufficient. Sometimes he would find a terrible sin in the wearing of long curls — love-locks as they were called — by men ; some- times in drinking healths ; sometimes in wrong opinions on the subject of predestination. He now turned his attention to theatres. There was much room for the scourge of the satirist. Vile indecency tainted the highest dramatic efforts of the time, and even the noblest characters could not be introduced upon the stage unless they were smothered in a foul morass of seething corrup- tion. Prynne's heavy work, Histriotnastix, or Scourge of Stageplayers, was likely to convince no one who was not convinced already. Bringing every charge under the sun against the players, he held them responsible for every sin which the pages of history revealed to have been committed by their predecessors in Greece or Rome. From the players he turned to the government which had permitted the abuse, and he inserted words which were held to reflect on the queen, who had announced her intention of taking part in a theatrical representation at court at the time when the book was published, and had already shared in the rehearsals. After the oublication 88 The Reign of Thorough. 163^ of the book Prynne was sentenced in the Star Chamber to stand in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to im- prisonment at the king's pleasure. He was also to be dismissed from the bar, and to be deprived of his univer- sity degrees. Prynne's sentence, outrageous as it was, was not re- ceived with that general indignation which it would have called forth two or three years later. The of Court Inns of Court had been roused by his whole- ™^'i"^' sale condemnation of the drama to spend thousands of pounds on a gorgeous masque, which they presented to the king, and some who afterwards took the foremost part in resistance to the court joined now in approval of its measures. But it is not the lawyers' masque which will be the memorial to all time of Prynne's fault and of his sufifer- ,g Milton's ^"S^- John Milton, the son of a London Penseroso scrivener, had grown up, his mind stamped with thoughtful seriousness, but with no feel- ings of opposition to the rites of the Church of England. He could join in the praise of a prelate like Andrewes, the bishop whom Laud revered as a master. He could be carried away by the charms of musical harmonies and glowing colour to ^vrite verses like these : — But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale. And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy-proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light, There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced quire below. In service high and anthems clear. As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. But he could not bow his hisrh and self-sustained mind 1634- General Enforcement of Conformity. 89 10 look upon these harmonies as more than mere adjuncts to the food of his spiritual nature. He could not regard anything that was outward and sensible as giving the law within which he was to restrain his worship. With this thought before him he \vrote the Comus. He would show that it was possible to be the author of a dramatic poem of which the action should revolve round the ennobling thought of purity. But though acted in the presence of one of the most royalist of the royalist peers, it was none the less a protest against Laud's admiration of mere external decency. The inward, the poet tells us, gives the law to the outward, not the outward to the inward. So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her. Driving far oft' each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape. The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the souls essence, Till all be made immortal. Meanwhile Laud was pursuing his course. Claiming the right as archbishop to enquire into the condition of every diocese of his province, he sent forth ^ r^^^ ^^^ his officials far and wide. Every clerg}'man tropolitical who failed in confonning to the Prayer Book, who protested by word or deed against the removal of tlie communion table, who objected to bow his head when the sacred name of Jesus was uttered, was called in ques- tion, suspended, deprived, perhaps fined or imprisoned. Unity of creed had been the idol of the Puritan. Unity of outward worship was the idol of Laud. As he told Wentworth, he was all for 'thorough,' the system of complete discipline on which his heart was set. The CjO The Reign of Thorough. 16^,4., clergy were to be drilled as a sergeant drills his soldiers. Human nature rebelled against the yoke. Moderate men began to suspect that all this was but part of a design to bring England again under the papal domination. It was known that an emissary from Rome attached to- the queen's court was frequently admitted to Charles's presence, and the effect of his pleadings was naturally exaggerated. There were some amongst Laud's followers who approached more nearly than he did to the Roman doctrine, and a few desertions from Protestantism startled England into a panic for which Laud's harsh and ill-advised proceedings were in the main responsible. Section XL — Ship-mofiey. Laud had alienated the thought of England. The king was busily alienating those who cared for its laws. A.D. 1634. His revenue almost equalled his expenditure. ci^prel"^"' 2"^ *^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^'^^ ^'^'^^ ^° ^^ P^^^' ^"^ sure. every now and then there were extraordi- nary expenses to be met. Extraordinary means were used to gain money. Whole districts of land were claimed as part of the royal forests, on the ground o*" old and long-forgotten records. Fines were imposed upon noblemen and gentlemen who were thoroughly loyal to the crown, as the price at which they were allowed to retain estates which had been in the hands of their ancestors for generations ; and though the larger fines were ulti- mately remitted, smaller sums were exacted from many persons who were sure to grumble at the burden. There were other fines too of various descriptions ; fines, for instance, for depopulating estates, and for building new houses to add to what was considered the already over- grown size of London. Weston, who had been created Earl of Portland in 1635, had levied very few addi- tional customs ; but after his death in 1635, fresh impo- 1634. Ship-money. 91 sitions were laid upon commerce without the shadow of Parliamentary right. Corporations were also established in ever increasing numbers to exercise trade or manu- facture under the safeguard of a monopoly. None of these burdens, however, caused such irri- tation as ship-money. Portland had always | ^ charles hankered after an alliance with Spain for wants a fleet, the purpose of overthrowing the Dutch commercial su- premacy. The commerce of the Dutch was far richer than that of the English, and their fisheries in the sea which divides England and Holland brought in an enor- mous revenue. The navy of France, too, was growing under Richelieu's fostering care, and Charles, jealous of the rivalry of France, claimed the right of dominion over the Channel, as well as over the North Sea. Charles suspected that a scheme was under consideration by the Governments of France and Holland for an attack upon Dunkirk to the profit of France. He had no mind to see the whole of the southern shore of the Straits of Dover in the hands of Lewis, and he felt much as all Englishmen would have felt a few years ago, if they had come upon the traces of a plot for handing over Antwerp to Napoleon HI. The Spanish diplomatists hastened to take advantage of his dissatisfaction, and an agreement was negotiated by which Spain engaged to meet part of the expenses of vindicating Charles's claim, on the understanding that it was eventually to lead to war with the Dutch, and perhaps with the French as well. How was money to be found for the fleet ? In 1626, and in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the „, , . , , , „ , §3. Thefirst maritime counties had been called upon to ship-money furnish ships for the defence of the realm. ^^'• That, however, had been in time of war, whilst England was now in the enjoyment of profound peace. Yet Noy, the attorney-general, declared that even as matters 92 The Reign of TJwroiigh. 1635. stood, such a course was in accordance with more ancient precedents. In 1634 writs were issued, commanding that the ships should be found by the coast towns. A few weeks later the towns were told that they might, if they chose, provide money instead of ships, which would in that case be furnished out of the royal navy. In the summer of 1635 the fleet thus obtained put out to sea. But there was no enemy to fight. The Spanish money had not come. The King of Spain, impoverished in the midst of wealth, could not find the sum which he had offered to provide, and bade his ambassador make what excuse he could. Charles had no mind to stand alone in a war against the French and the Dutch, and the fleet returned in the autumn without having fired a shot. The sense of power in possessing a fleet once more was too much for Charles's judgment. Portland was now dead, and Noy was dead. Rash counsels pre- A.D. 1635. -1 1 A 1 ■ • 1 • , • 1 § 4. The vaued. A second writ was issued, in which second writ, precedent was thrown to the winds. This time orders were sent, not to the maritime counties alone, but to every shire in England. ' As all,' the privy coun- cil declared, ' are concerned in the mutual defence of one another, so all might put to their helping hands.' Such an argument was undoubtedly not without its weight. No Chancellor of the Exchequer would think now-a-days of asking Hampshire and Yorkshire to provide for the ex- penses of the navy, whilst Worcestershire and Derbyshire went free. But how was the plea likely to be received by men who believed that the navy was not needed for any national object at all ? Behind these reasonable doubts there was an argument more irresistible still. The king claimed to decide alone when he might act, unfettered by ordinary restraints of law, for the good of the nation. Such a claim might readily be allowed if it was confined to some special emergency when there was no time to »o37- Ship-money. 93 summon Parliament. But this last resource known to the constitution as a desperate remedy in the extreniest danger, was now becoming the ordinary rule. If the king was to judge when he might take money for ships, he would soon want to judge when he might take money for an army. Whatever precedents might say, it was im- possible that a precedent could be admitted which would make Parliament for ever unnecessary, and which would reduce the right of parliamentary taxation, the object of so many struggles, to a dead letter. Once more, in 1636, a fleet was set out. But resist- ance had been raised on every side. In February 1637 Charles resolved to consult his Judges. He a.d. 1637. prided himself particularly on acting accord- jujeef con- ing to law, and in referring his rights to the suited, opinion of the Judges. Already in the course of his reign he had dismissed two Chief Justices, and had sus- pended a Chief Baron, for venturing to disagree with him. It was enough for him if he kept within the letter of the law, even whilst he was wholly disregarding its spirit. He now asked the Judges whether he might not raise ship-money when it was needed for the defence of the kingdom, and whether the king was not the sole judge, both of the danger, and when and how it was to be pre- vented and avoided ? Ten of the Judges answered in the affirmative at once, and the other two signed their reply on the ground that they were bound by the decision of the majority. This reply was published by the king in every county in England. Charles doubtless thought the opposition would come to an end. John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, thought otherwise. If the king might take what money he pleased, he might consequently den s resist- do as he pleased. If the House of Commons *""" could refuse to grant money needed for the necessities 94 The Reign of TJwrough. 1637. of government, they could mould the government after their pleasure. Only one view of the case was possible for Hampden. The king had alienated not merely the House of Commons, but the nation. Was the king to govern in opposition to the nation ? Hampden refused to support so mischievous a doctrine, and flatly refused to pay. Hampden's case was argued in the Exchequer Cham- ber. Of the twelve Judges two only pronounced decidedly A.D. 1638. in his favour. Three supported him on tech- men/"*^^' nical grounds alone. Seven declared in againsthim. favour of the king. If this was to be the law, there never need be an English Parliament again. Ship- money continued to be levied, but the opposition grew louder every day. The decision of the Judges was openly ascribed to timidity or obsequiousness. The arguments of Hampden's counsel were welcomed as the true reading of the law from one end of England to the other. Section HI. — Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. Three years had wrought a great change in England. In 1634 Prynne's ears had been lopped off without A.D. 1637. causing any extraordinary excitement, and o/feeHng In ^^^ ^""^ °f Court had signaUsed their detes- Engiand. tation of his principles by spontaneously offering a masque to the king. In 1637 Prynne received a fresh sentence, and this time he had no reason to com- plain of the want of popular sympathy. He did not now stand alone. A violent and scur- rilous attack upon the existing church government from § 2. Sen- ^^^ P^'^ might be compared with two other lencesof equally violent and scumlous attacks from Prynne, , ... Kastwick, the pens of a physician named Bastwick, and and Burton. ^ clergyman named Burton. The reply of the Star Chamber was to send them to the piUory, to i637- Prynne, Bashvick, and Burton. 95 sentence them to the loss of their ears, to condemn them to a fine of 5,000/. apiece, and to imprisonment for life. Rash and intemperate words were to be met by brutal deeds. But the spirit of opposition was already roused. As the three passed from the prison § 3. Their to the pillory in Palace Yard, the people execution, strewed herbs and flowers in their path. * They all three,' we are told by a contemporary, ' talked to the people. Bastwick said they had coUar-days in the king's court ' — days, that is to say, when the knights of the Garter wore their collars — ' and this was his collar-day in the king's palace. He was pleasant and witty all the time. Prynne protested his innocence to the people of what was laid to his charge. Mr. Burton said it was the happiest pulpit he ever preached in. After two hours the hangman began to cut off their ears. He began with Mr. Burton's. There were very many people. They •A'ept and grieved much for Mr. Burton, and at the cut- ting off each ear there was such a roaring as if everyone of them had at the same instant lost an ear.' Bastwick gave the hangman a knife, and making use of his sur- gical knowledge, taught him to cut off his ears quickly, and very' close, that he might come there no more. The hangman hewed off Prynne's ears, ' which had been roughly lopped off three years before,' which put him to much pain ; ' but after he stood long on the scaffold before his head could be got out, but that was a chance.' Popular sympathy was not confined to London. As the three passed through the country to their respective prisons, men flocked to greet them as mar- ^ General tyrs. ' The common people,' we are told, sympathy. ' are extremely compassionate towards them.' No ordi- nary prison was thought likely to remove them sufficiently far from friendly looks and hands, and Prynne was finally sent to Jersey, Burton to Guernsey, Bastwick to the Scilly Isles. 96 TJie Reign of TJioroiigh. 1637. Popular indignation found due expression in literature. In the Comns, written in 1634, Milton had contented himself with setting forth his own view of j^'s^Mnwii's spiritual life. In the Zj'ir/ifrt;^-, written in i637> Lycidas. j^g burst forth into a stirring protest against the evil system which was crushing out the vigour of re- ligion. Under the thin disguise of the terms of a shep- herd's life, he bemoans a young friend who had been lately drowned. But he has other passions in his soul than that of sorrow. The shepherds of the people, or, in plain English, the clergy, moved his indignation : — How well could I have spared for thee, young swain. Enow of such as for their bellies' sake, Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold ! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast And shove away the worthy bidden guest, Bhnd mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs. What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed. But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw. Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread. The wolf of Rome too was busy : — Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said. But it would not be for ever. From some quarter or othei the avenger would arise, executing justice with a weapon of which the strokes would be as unavoidable and as crushing as those of the flail of Talus in the Faerie Qjieen. But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to strike once and strike no more. The feeling of those days left its trace on political 1638. Wefitii'orth in Ireland. 97 phraseology. The EngHsh constitution, like all other constitutions of Western Europe, knew of , , „. estates of the realm gathered round the king. Lords, and In England, as all men knew in 1629, the Commons. three estates were the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, and the Commons. In 1640 men talked, as uninstructed men talk now, of King, Lords, and Commons, as the three estates of the realm. The blunder had a wisdom of its own. It meant that Englishmen would be ruled no longer by the clergy, and that they would only be ruled by the king if he acted in combination with the Lords and the Commons. They had not yet come to ask that the Lords and Commons should rule without the king. But they were weary of a system under which the king was everything and the nation nothing. Section IV. — Wentworth in Ireland. It was only at the close of Elizabeth's reign that Ire- land was brought under real subjection to the crown of England. Under James the process of reducing the various tribes under a settled §"i.'The' and orderly government was continually Insh tribes, advancing. But the task was a hard one. Each tribe in the wilder parts of Ireland possessed more lands than it could cultivate, if, indeed, it cared for anything more than to pasture cattle upon them. The chiefs, with their warhke followers, did as they pleased, made war when they liked, and took their subjects' property when they liked. The EngHsh government resolved to establish a better state of things. Peaceable cultivators §2. Plans of settled on their own property would be better I'jjv^f''^'^ off themselves, and would be likely to make ment. better subjects. The government therefore deliberately M.H. H 93 The Reign of Thorough. 1610. set itself to bring into existence a class of native proprietors. Yet change, though it be for the better, is always dangerous, and unless the government were strong as well as just, there was a risk that the chiefs and their armed followers would rise in insurrection before the change was accomplished. Now-a-days the government would ship off a few regiments to Dublin to maintain order. In James's reign A.D. 1610. the government had no regiments to send, planStion of ^'^'^ ^° money with which to raise them. An Ulster. excuse was furnished by the rebellion and flight of the two chiefs by whom the greater part of Ulster was ruled. The north of Ireland was declared to be forfeited to the crown, and was given over to English and Scottish colonists. Lands, it is true, were assigned to some of the natives. But they had no reason to trust the intruders, and the change in all the conditions of their life was too sudden to allow them to adapt themselves easily to it. Even if this had not been the case, there was the feeling rankling in their bosoms, that under the cover of legal forms which were unintelligible to them, they had been stripped of the lands of their fathers. The religious difference, too, was still a source of serious danger. The man who looked to the Pope for his creed was likely to look to the King of bion in " "' Spain for his politics. Yet it was impossible freland. ^^ compel a wholc nation to change its belief, and, with some intermitcent efforts at persecution, the government was obliged to trust in the main to per- suasion. It was to trust to a broken reed. The Pro- testant Church of Ireland was in utter confusion. Its lands and income had been scrambled for by self-seeking adventurers till there was scarcely a parish or even a bishopric in Ireland of which the incumbent was not reduced to poverty. It was only by heaping upon one i633- Wentworth in Ireland. 99 man offices so numerous that it was hopeless for him to dream of fulfilHng his nominal duties, that it was pos- sible to induce anyone to accept an Irish benefice at all. The natives gazed upon the spectacle without respect, and attended mass in secret. In the summer of 1633 Wentworth undertook the government of Ireland. He brought with him a perfectly fearless spirit, a rapid and clear intelligence, a.d. 1633. and a firm determination to establish orderly wonlTLord rule in that country, which had known less of Deputy. it than any other country in Europe. He brought with him, too, a contemptuous disregard for that sense of obedience to law which it is the first duty of every wise government to cultivate. It was enough for him if the right thing was done. How it was done he cared but little. Whatever the merits and defects of the new Lord Deputy may have been, it was unfortunate for him that he could not legislate without the Irish Par- a.d. 1634. liament. In England the voice of Parlia- iHsh'p'aHia- ment was coming to be more than ever the ^ent. voice of a united nation. In Ireland there was no na- tion to represent. There were members who were elected by the native population, and members who were elected by the English colonists. There was no common feeling, no possibility of combining for any national object. What Ireland wanted was a government like the govern- ment of India at the present day, supporting itself on an irresistible army, and guided by statesmanlike intelli- gence. Wentworth saw this with a glance. In 1634 he called a Parliament, threatened it, cajoled it, appealed to the interest of each set of men in it separately, till he got the money which he wanted. A well-paid, well-dis- ciplined army was the result. The thing was well done ICO The ReigJi of Thorough. 1634. The manner in which it was done was not so well. The evil was perhaps inevitable, as matters stood. As much cannot be said of Wentworth's mode of treating the popular demands. Before he came to Ireland the king had offered certain conditions in return for the expected grant of subsidies. Wentworth took upon himself the responsibility of breaking the king's promises by simply refusing to fulfil those which he did not think fit to keep. It is probable that he seriously believed that Ireland would be the better if those promises were not kept. But there is nothing to show that he had any conception, of the demoralising influence exercised by a government which openly evades its engagements. As far as material interests were concerned, Ireland had never been so prosperous as it became unde/went- Under Wcntworth. Wealth took the place of worth. poverty, trade and commerce sprang up where none had existed before. The flax industry of the North of Ireland owes its origin to Wentworth's protecting hand. His ecclesiastical system was the ecclesiastical system of Laud, though it was put in force with rather more dis- cretion. Roman Catholics and Puritans were repressed,, whilst a reforming hand was laid upon the Church itself. Churches and schools were built or repaired. The revenue of the clergy was snatched out of the hands of those who had filched it away, and a beginning was made of the establishment of a body of ministers who might represent the English ecclesiastical system with decency in the eyes of the natives. In the civil and military administration of the country, incompetent or self-seeking officials were weeded out of the service, and were replaced by others in whom the Deputy could place implicit confidence. That Wentworth should make many enemies in such. i634- Wcntzvorth in Ireland. lOi a process is quite intelligible. But he made far more enemies than was absolutely necessary. His , , ? 8. His harsh and overbearmg nature could not overbearing brook opposition, and the manner in which '^^per- he treated those whom he distrusted caused more angry feeling than the mere fact of his determination to dis- pense with their ser\'ices. The wrongs done to the English officials at Dublin caused a profound sensation in England. The charge which Irishmen mainly bring against Went- a.d. 163s. worth is that he urged on a plan for colo- 5 9- Proposed ° _ *^ plantation of nising Connaught after the king had solemnly Connaught. promised that it should not be colonised. The Irish, he considered, could be permanently held in obedience only by a strong force of English settlers, who would intro- duce order and industry into those wild regions. For this object the forms of law were converted into the instru- ments of arbitrary power. Juries were bullied to find verdicts according to Wentworth's mind. Legal quibbles were raised which gave him all that he wanted. Went- worth's system of government seemed liable to no rule, and broke in upon the ancient traditions and the fixed if disorderly habits of the population with all the caprice and violence of the powers of nature. Wentworth's rule of Ireland was, in fact, the fullest development of that system of government which was known to him and Laud by the expressive 5 10. Went- nickname of ' thorough.' The word meant, in worth'smodc 01 govem- the first place, a thorough contempt of all pri- ment. vate interests and personal ends. Office was to be held, not to enrich the holder but to benefit the state. The determi- nation to set the state above the individual led to an equally strong determination to set the state above classes and parties ; above prejudices however deeply rooted, above 102 The Reign of T/iorough. 16^7. interests however widely spread. Even with such a man as Wentworth to direct the action of the state, such a policy could hardly have attained the success for which he hoped. It grasped too much at once, and whilst improving the outward condition of men, it lowered their moral dignity by treating their modes of thinking, their sentiments and aspirations, as unworthy of a moment's consideration. It dealt with human beings as a flock of sheep is dealt with by the shepherd ; and human beings, faulty and corrupt though they may be, are capable of better things than a flock of sheep. Nor was it possible to separate the effects of Wentworth's system in Ire- land from the effects of his system in England. In Ireland, in intention at least, it aimed at raising the condition of the population to a higher stage of civi- lisation. In England it would have debased a high- spirited and united nation to a lower stage of civilisation In Ireland the genius of Wentworth had to fall back in the last resort upon the support of Charles. In England the weakness of Charles was undermining the edifice of government, and for good or for evil Wentworth's au- thority in Ireland must stand or fall with the authority of his master in England. CHAPTER VI. RESISTANCE IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND. Section I. — The Downfall of Episcopacy in Scotland. Episcopacy had been retained in England because the bishops had taken part in the English pacy in Reformation. Episcopacy had ceased in Scotland. Scotland because the bishops had not taken part in the Scottish Reformation. The bishops who were i6j7. Downfall of Episcopacy in Scotland. 103 to be found there in the beginning of the 17th century had been placed in office by James because he wanted instruments to keep the clergy in order, and he was able to do this because the nobles, far more powerful in Scot- land than in England, were jealous of the clergy. The clergy and the mass of religious people were Puritan with a strength of Puritanism unknown in England, and it had only been by threats and by the aid of the nobles that James had driven the clergy to accept some few English church forms, such as kneeling at the sacrament, and the keeping of Christmas and Easter. But even these were resisted by large numbers of the people, and any man of sense would have seen that the Scotch could not be compelled to accept further ceremonies without serious risk. Neither Laud nor Charles could be satisfied till a new Prayer Book was drawn up for Scotland, which, so far as it differed at all from the §'2. The new English service, differed in a sense adverse to PrayerBook. Puritanism. On July 23 an attempt was made to read the new service for the first time at Edinburgh. Scarcely were the first words uttered, when a wild uproar arose amongst the women who were present. Stools, it is said, were thrown at the officiating minister's head. A man ventured to say ' Amen ' at the conclusion of a prayer. ' Dost thou say rriass in my lug ? ' (in my ear), cried one of the viragos, and dashed her bible in his face. The voice of the rioters was the voice of Scotland. The whole nation, with slight exceptions, bristled into resistance. Doubtless other causes were mingled with religious zeal. The nobles, who had once been jealous of the clergy, were now jealous of the bishops, and suspected that Charles meant to take away from them the lands which had once been the property of the Church. The national feeling was offended by the introduction of a service- I04 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1637. book from England. But whatever were the motives at work, Scotland presented an almost united front in oppo- sition to the detested innovations. As Charles's unwiUingness to withdraw from his ill- advised position became known, the resistance grew more stubborn. In November four Commit- Tsi' The tees, known as the Tables, practically assumed Covenant. ^^ government of Scotland. In February almost all Scottish men were hurrying to sign the national Covenant, engaging to defend the reformed rehgion, and promising ' to labour by all means lawful to recover the purity and liberty of the gospel, as it was established and professed before the innovations.^ Charles felt the insult keenly. But he was obliged to enter into negotiations. The Marquis of Hamilton, a courtly, inefficient peer, was sent to wheedle ton in Scot- the Scots, if it might be, out of the Covenant, land. Charles had recourse to those subterfuges in which he delighted in times of difficulty. In order 'to win time,' Hamilton was to give ear to anything the Scots might choose to say. "What else could he do ? The English, it was known at court, were ' readier to join the Scots than to draw their swords in the king's service.' Hamilton was instructed to promise to the Scotch a General Assembly of the Church, to be followed by a Parliament; and on September 2 a proclamation was issued revoking the service-book and other obnoxious measures, and promising to limit the powers of the bishops. At the same time the Scotch were asked to abandon their Cove- nant for another of the king's inditing. On November 21 the promised Assembly met at Glasgow. A General Assembly was a far ofasgow better representation of the Scottish nation Assembly. ^f ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ jl^g Parliament. The clerical element was predominant in the Assembly as in the 1637. Downfall of Episcopacy in Scotland. 105 nation. But it did not stand alone. Together with 144 clergymen sat 96 lay elected members, chosen by the towns and country districts, and comprising the bulk of the nobility. Hamilton was there to represent the king. It was not long before Hamilton found himself at issue with the Assembly. The bishops refused to acknowledge the authority of an Assembly which had been J-, r . ^§6. AboH- composed without reference to them. The tion of Assembly insisted on its right to pass judg- ep'^copacy. ment on the bishops. Hamilton resisted to the uttermost. The king, he said, was supreme over all causes civil and ecclesiastic ; to him the bishops had appealed, and he alone was competent to be their judge. Finding his words of no avail, he left the Assembly and issued a proclamation dissolving it. The Assembly took no ac- count of the proclamation, deposed the bishops, an- nulled all the forms and ordinances of the Episcopal Church, and re-established the Presbyterian system in its entirety. Politically, the step thus taken was of the very highest importance. In opposition to the theory of kingship as the supreme authority in the state, the Scotch had virtually unfurled the banner of repub- repubilcan- licanism. They still called themselves sub- '^'"• jects of King Charles. But they decided the one important question of the day without consulting him, and without allowing him the right of rejecting or modi- fying their resolutions. They stretched out their hand and grasped the supremacy which Charles had used so unwisely. If all this meant republicanism, it did not mean liberty. Presbyterianism was with the Glas- §3. The gow Assembly a form of church order estab- movement ° •' not a libe- lishedby God himself, and announced to men ralone. in the Bible. Christians had no right to be governed in io6 Resistance m Scotland and England. 1639. ecclesiastical matters otherwise than by the clergy, with such association of the laity as the special church orders of any given country might direct. But there was to be no control by bishops, no control by the king, no liberty of speech or writing. For all that, the Scottish movement was a necessary preparation for liberty. Not till the majority of a nation § 9. Yet it is left undisturbed in its religious or political was a con- principles can it venture to accord freedom to dition of . . ^, , . ^ _, , liberty. a minority. The resolution of Charles and Laud, to compel a nation to worship God in a way which the mass of that nation believed to be displeasing to God, was rightly met by the assertion that to the mass which worships, and not to the few who direct, belongs the choice of the forms in which worship should be clothed. Whilst the conflict lasted it was no more possible to be tolerant of disaffection than it is possible for a general of an army in the field to be tolerant of disafTection. But the mere success of the majority of the nation would eventually bring toleration in its train. The strong can afford to allow things to be done and words to be spoken which the weak will be eager to suppress at all hazards. Section II. — The Bishops' Wars atid the Short Parliament. The commotion thus begun in Scotland was certain to spread to England. If the claim of the Scottish A.D. 1639. Assembly went further than the claims of the § I. England English Parliament, it was nevertheless of and scot- ° ' land. the same kind as that which had been ad- vanced by the Commons in 1629. Englishmen had not said that they could make laws without the king^ or that Presbyterianism was of divine right. But they had said that the king was morally bound to take their i639- The Bishops Waj's. 107 advice, and that the doctrines which they professed were so true that no others ought to be openly preached. Against this theory Charles and Laud, not without some thought of a divine right of kings and bishops in the background, had maintained the counter theory of the royal supremacy in church matters. If Scotland was allowed to throw off the yoke, it would not be long before England followed its example. If, therefore, the king was not to abdicate the power with which he believed himself to be entrusted for the good of both nations, war there must be with ^ ^ Prepara- Scotland. War, too, it must be without the tionsforwar. support of an English Parliament, which would be cer- tain to expect answers to awkward questions. Voluntary contributions were therefore first asked from the nobility^ and strong pressure was put by Laud upon the clergy to induce them to follow their example. The laity in gene- ral did not show any eagerness to favour the movement. The Scotch were thoroughly prepared. The kingdom swarmed with old soldiers who had served in Germany in the Thirty Years' War, and thus, though Scotland had not been engaged in war for many years, , -pj^^ g^^^ she had at her disposal a veteran force to Bishops' serve as a nucleus for her untrained levies. At the beginning of June some 20,000 men were gathered on Dunse Law, a hill not far from Berwick, on the road to- Edinburgh. Opposite to them was the king, with rather more than 22,000 Englishmen. But they were English- men who had no heart to fight. They knew that at the bottom the Scottish cause was the cause of England as well. Everything was in disorder in Charles's camp. The men had not food enough to eat. The officers themselves were grumbling at the tasks assigned to them. The recruits scarcely took the trouble to learn their duty as soldiers and one of them sent a shot io8 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1640. through the canvas of the king's tent. Charles was warned on every hand that, with such men at his back, fighting was impossible, and he reluctantly agreed to treat for peace. On June 24 an agreement was signed, in which the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly were passed over in silence, but a promise was given that all affairs, civil and ecclesiastical, should be settled in concurrence with an Assembly and a Parliament. Neither the Assembly nor the Parliament conducted itself to Charles's satisfaction, and he began to turn his A.D. 1640. thoughts towards a renewal of the war. Went- IhortParlia- worth, now raised to the earldom of Strafford, ment. came over from Ireland and stirred the fire. He had been long away from England, and was doubtless but little aware of the temper of the English people. He counselled the summoning of a Parliament. After eleven years' intermission. Parliament — the Short Parliament, as it was afterwards called — met at Westminster. Charles Iiadcome upon the traces of some communication between the Scotch insurgents and the French government, and he fancied that the spirits of Englishmen would be stirred when they heard of a treasonable connexion with their ancient enemy. But Englishmen had something else to think of, and the Commons at once made it plain that their own grievances must be redressed before they would give anything to the king. As the grievances could be re- dressed only by undoing the whole of Charles's ecclesias- tical system, he dissolved Parliament on May 5, after a session of only three-and-twenty days. To yield except to force would be to renounce every principle of his life. It was impossible that the dissolution of this Par- liament should leave men's tempers as they Kingandthe were before. English Puritanism and Scot- Commons, ^.jgj^ Presbyterianism were not yet quite the same thing. But they were rapidly approaching ooe 1640. The Bishops' Wars. 1 09. another. The Puritans had discovered that the king so detested their principles that he would rather engage in war with scarcely a prospect of success, than yield to their demands. They still shrunk from acknowledging that in so doing he was only acting in accordance with the conditions of his nature. With what remnant of loyalty still remained, they laid the blame on Laud and Strafford ; on Strafford more especially. The fact stood out clear as day before their eyes that he had once been the leader of the House of Commons, and that he was now the great enemy of that parliamentary preponderance which they now demanded as their right. He was to them the great apostate, terrible in his wrath, subtle in his machina- tions. Whatever allowances a fuller enquiry may enable us tO' make for Strafford's errors, there can be no doubt that he had thrown himself on the wrong side in the g g gj^f._ great struggle of his day. In the long run, ford's posL- in the course of years, Strafford's objections to the predominance of Parliament would have to be listened to, and it would be necessary to provide remedies against the evils which he foresaw. But the immediate danger lay in another direction. The orderly Elizabethan government, with its wise statesmen at the head, and its loyal Parliaments laying their advice at the foot of the throne, had no place in the real life of 1640. Things had come to such a pass that men must choose between the supremacy of Charles and the supremacy of Parliament, however much the members of the Houses might veil the issue by persuading themselves that they were contend- ing for King and Parliament against the obnoxious ad- visers of the King. Nicer distinctions must wait till that quarrel had been fought out. A few months were to pass before the great conten- 1 10 Resistance hi Scotland and Engla7id. 1640 tion was brought to an issue. Strafford was now witli 5 7. The Charles as he marched northwards. But even ^Uhots' Strafford could not infuse a particle of his war. spirit into that disaffected army. The Scotch invaded England. At Newborn, on August 28, they crossed the Tyne, driving before them an English force in headlong panic. Strafford did not venture to advise the prolongation of the war with the army in such a temper. Negotiations were opened, and Northumberland and Durham were left in the hands of the Scots as a pledge for the payment of their expenses, at the rate of 850/. a day, till a pennanent treaty could be agreed on. In such desperate circumstances another Parliament was unavoidable if the Scots were to be con- Great tented. The king had already called round Council. \i\m^ after an obsolete precedent, a Great Council of Peers. But the Peers had advised him to summon Parliament, and that advice there was no resisting. This time he would have to meet the oppo- sition of both Houses. Section \\\.— The Meeting of the Long Parliament^ and the Execution of St7-afford. On November 3, 1640, that great assembly, destined to be known in history as the Long Parliament, met at West- § I. The minster. Charles was anxious to obtain an im- Jh^Long"^ mediate vote of money. But Parliament had Parliament. work of its Own to do first, and every member knew that there were chances on the side of the Parlia- ment which might never be offered again. If Parliament were dissolved before the Scots were paid, there was noth- ing to prevent the Scottish army from marching to London without opposition. For once, Charles did not dare to •dissolve Parliament, and the Commons were naturally in no hurry to provide for the satisfaction of the Scots. ■J 640. TJie Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1 1 1 There were many men at court whom the Commons disliked. There was one man whom they both feared and hated. On the nth, the impeachment of ^ rr ■, II r 1 • 1 §2- Impeach- Strafford upon the charge of high treason ment of was moved by Pym, who at once took the lead Strafford. in the House. If his speech was an attack upon the man, it was also an arraignment of the system of which that man was the highest representative. It was an appeal to the rule of law from the rule of will. At once the charge was carried up to the Lords. Strafford was just entering the House as the message arrived. Shouts commanded him to forbear from pressing forward to his place. He left the House only as a prisoner. Others of the leading officials fled abroad to escape the storm. Laud was committed to the Tower, but at present there was no thought of touching the old man's life. On March 22, 1641, the trial of Strafford began in Westminster Hall. Day by day the king and ^ ^ ^g queen came down, concealed by a trellised §3- His trial, partition, to listen to the proceedings. Article after article was enforced by the arguments of the managers for the Commons. All Strafford's life was unrolled be- fore his eyes as a settled attempt to overthrow the con- stitution in England. But after the long list of his offences had been produced, the doubt was moved whether all these things together would constitute high treason. That crime was strictly defined by a statute of Edward III., and it was difficult to draw any one act of Strafford's within the wording of that statute. Young Sr Henry Vane, the son of the Secretary of State, rummag- ing amongst his father's papers, found a note of a speech'" delivered by Strafford in council at the time of the dis- solution of the Short Parliament, in which he had spoken of the king as ' absolved and loose from all rule of government. ' Your Majesty,' he had gone on to say, 112 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1641. ' having tried all ways and been refused, shall be ac- quitted before God and man ; and you have an army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience, for I am confident the Scots cannot hold out three months.' In order to urge that this constituted treason, it was necessary in the first place to show that the kingdom intended was England and not Scotland, an interpretation which, to say the least of it, was extremely doubtful, and then to show that an attack upon the insti- tutions of the country was equivalent to the crime of high treason. The Commons became aware that the Lords were wavering on the legality of the sentence which they were § 4. The im- asked to give. They dropped the impeach- wrn^cHmo ™^"* ^"^ substituted a bill of attainder. An an attainder, impeachment called upon the Lords to act as judges, and to decide in some sort after legal rules. A bill of attainder, passing both Houses and accepted by the king, was an act of power for which no reasons need be given. Pym, with his intense reverence for law, struggled against the conclusion. Treason, he held, was not an offence against the king's private person, but against the king as the head and representative of England, and an attack upon England must be held to be the worst attack upon the king. Such arguments could not break down the scruples of the Peers. The House of Commons voted to proceed by bill. The Lords, who were unwilling to vote as judges that high treason had been committed, had no objection to treat Strafford as a public enemy. On, May 8 the bill of attainder had passed both Houses. If Strafford was a public enemy, he was at least the friend of the king, and Charles had given him a special promise when he came to London, that not tion of Straf- a hair of his head should be touched. To *°'^'^' save him was well-nigh impossible. But it was not for Charles to set his hand to the sentence. 1641. ExcattioK of Strajford. 1 13 Charles hesitated, and was lost. That outer world of po- pular resolve, the very existence of which in his self-con- tained imagination he had absolutely ignored, confronted him with firm determination. Charles blenched before the unexpected foe and consigned his truest supporter to the scaffold, Strafford was to die as a public enemy. The old Tudor constitution was based upon the co-operation of king and Parliament. The king had isolated himself a.d. 1641. not merely from the House of Commons, but l/a^ubu'" from the nation which was behind it, and to enemy, his attempt to rule without reference to the nation Straf- ford had devoted all the strength of his intellect. He could not see that the foundations of order and of wise government could be laid far more firmly in the popular will than in the will of an individual. With his eyes open to the blunders and faults of representative as- semblies, he deliberately excluded from his calculations the blunders and errors of the king. It was too late to learn the lesson when he was abandoned by Charles. With the words ' Put not your trust in princes ' on his lips, he prepared for the scaffold. On May 12 the axe fell, and the great royalist statesman had ceased for ever to influence the course of this world's affairs. Section IV. — Demands of the Com7}io7is. It was well that Pym's voice should be raised for law. But it was not with law that the Commons were immediately concerned. Virtually, the civil war began with Strafford's execution. It struggle for was a struggle to ascertain whether the *"P''^'"^'=y- Crown or the House of Commons was the strongest power in the country. When that question should be answered, it would be possible to build anew on the old foundations. It is useless to watch the doings of this M.H. I 114 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1641. Parliament, and to ask how far its acts were in com- pliance with some constitutional standard of the 15th or the 19th century. It is useless to ask whether they might not have regulated the king's authority instead of shat- tering it. It was its business to shatter it because, with Charles upon the throne, it was impossible to regulate it. Thick and fast the blows succeeded one another. With the Scottish army in the background, the Com- 5 2. Diminu- mons had obtained the royal assent in tion of the February to a bill authorising the election powers of ^ ° the crown. of a Parliament at least once in three years, even if the king did not summon one. In May the king agreed that the existing Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent, a stipulation which, as it rendered the House of Commons independent of all power external to itself, gave into its hands a dictator- ship which would have been ruinous in an ordinary state of things, but which was absolutely necessary for the special work of establishing its own supremacy. One after another the instruments by which the king had been enabled to defy the nation were snatched from his hands. Ship-money was declared to be illegal, and tonnage and poundage were no more to be levied with- out parliamentary consent. An end was put to the Star Chamber and the High Commission. The king therefore could no longer pay his way without recourse to Parliament, nor could he send any of his subjects to prison without recourse to the ordinary legal autho- rities, a rule which, in most cases, implied recourse to a jury as well. In July the work was done, and in August a treaty 5 3 The ^^^^ signed with the Scots. The money due Scots return to the Scottish army was paid, and the men who had delivered England recrossed the border and disoersed to their northern homes. 1041. Deinands of tJic Commons. 1 15 \Vhy were not the Commons satisfied ? In the first place, because they could not trust the king. It was not in the nature of things that any man not ^ Distrust sufficiently clear-sighted to have avoided "f '•^^ '^'"g- falling into such difficulties should be sufficiently clear- sighted to act with prudence in the position into which he had now been driven. It was impossible to suppose that Charles would consent to see himself stripped for ever of that authority which he had been taught to con- sider his ov/n by right. He might not directly seek to annul the legislation to which he had assented. But there were hundreds of indirect ways in which he might gather up the fragments of authority which were left, and attempt once more to impress his will upon England. Such considerations would probably have been of little avail against the king if there had been no question practically in dispute between him and the Commons. But if the political arrangements had been settled, the ecclesiastical arrangen^ents were still unsettled. The king still believed that what Laud had done had been rightly done. The Commons be- church lieved that it had been wrongly done. Nor was ''"^^"on. this merely a theoretical difference. If Laud was in prison, the other bishops were not, and unless something were done to take power out of the bishops' hands, it would be difficult to prevent them from seizing an early opportunity of exercising their influence in a way which seemed very evil to the House of Commons. Laws might be made to abolish the late innovations, to compel the removal of the communion table from its new position, to abro- gate offensive rites and ceremonies ; but unless some way were found of hmiting the power of the bishops whose duty it was to see that the new laws were carried mto effect, it was to be feared that they would, to a great extent, remain a dead letter. The Church would be ii6 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1643. sure, under the guidance of the Commons, to assume a form more or less Puritan, and such a Church could not safely be entrusted to Laudian bishops. The first action taken was but a little part of that which was to follow. In March a bill was brought in to restrain bishops from meddling with secular against the affairs. If it passed, they could no longer sit bishops. jj^ |-j^g privy council, or in the House of Lords. In the House of Lords it met with opposition, and in June it was thrown out by a decided majority. The Commons warmed to the encounter. They replied by pushing on a root and branch bill, as it was then called, for the entire abolition of bishops in the Church. The opposition to these bills did not proceed alto- § 7. The gether from the friends of Laud's system. Moderates. There was a strong middle party forming in both Houses and in the nation, desirous of a compro- mise, in which episcopacy should be in some way modified by arranging that the bishops should share their authority with the ministers of their dioceses. Foremost among the new party of Moderates was the gentle and amiable Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland. In § 8. Falk- early life Falkland had tried and abandoned land. a soldier's life, and had retired ' to a country life and to his books.' His reputation for learning rapidly grew. ' He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds, and in all languages, that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant with books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing ; yet his huma- nity, courtesy, and affability was such that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good and communicating all he knew, exceeded that breedir^.' But it is neither for his learning nor for his benevolence that Falkland is best remembered. His house at Great i6di. Dcinands of the Couimojis. iiy Tew, a few miles from Oxford, was the gathering place for a company of wise or witty men, who would have been content to follow Laud in his opposition to the dog- matism of the Puritans, but who abhorred Laud's despotic enforcement of uniformity. Thither came Chillingworth, the herald of a wide and tolerant Christianity. Thither came others, such as Sheldon and Morley, who lived to be the pillars of the Church of the Restoration, after their generosity had been chilled by the icy wind of Puritan supremacy. There, too, came men who were but the verse-writers and the jest-makers of the day. Falkland had a kindly word and a helping hand for them all. When they visited Great Tew they ' found their lodgings there as ready as in the colleges ; nor did the lord of the house know of their coming or going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner or supper where all still met ; otherwise, there was no trouble, ceremony, or re- straint, to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there ; so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all the persons together whose society they could wish, and not find any other society.' Edward Hyde, the future Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and the author of that History of the Great Rebellion which was to teach four generations of Eng- 5 g_ Edward lishmen to look with admiration upon the Hyde, royalist cause, had a lawyer's dislike of the assumption of temporal authority by the bishops, but a mind far less liberal than that of Falkland. To those who look back from these times of peace upon those days of bitter strife, Falkland's policy of compromise seems at first sight very wise. i-> • r • 1 T 111 § '°- Weak- 13 it it may fairly be doubted whether com- ness of the promise was then possible. As things then Moderates. stood, bishops were the nominees of the crown. They Ii8 Resistance ill Scotland and England. 1641. had for the most part been appointed to maintain a state of things which it was thought desirable to sweep away. To surround such men with counsellors whose ideas were diametrically opposed to their own would be to constitute anarchy and to call it government. Unless the whole bench of bishops was to be deposed and a new one nominated in accordance with the prin- ciples of the Commons, the proposed compromise could not possibly be put into working order. The weakness of the Moderate party was that it had no practical plan to propose, and that even if such a plan could have been found, men's minds were too excited by past injustice to listen to anything which did not give the amplest assur- ance for the supremacy of Puritanism. For a little time the battle was postponed. The king announced his resolution to visit Scotland. The Houses took upon themselves to issue orders for the abolition of the late innovations in England. They then adjourned for six weeks, to October 20. It was in the king's power to convert the weakness of the Moderate party into strength. If he could once § II. The impress men with the notion that he had in'"his ^^" frankly accepted the new order of things all weakness. might yet go well. It was because he did not, could not, frankly accept it that distrust arose. The belief that Charles regarded the Moderate party simply as a lever to bring about the restoration of much of that which he had yielded strengthened the hands of Pym in his demand for further guarantees. It was in vain that Charles brought into his council men who sympathised with the Commons. It was in vain that he entrusted offices of state to Falkland and Hyde. Pym's eye was upon him, and Pym believed that he tvould be governed by his own wishes, and not by Falkland and Hyde. 1641. TJie Grand Reuionstrance. 1 19 Section V. — The Grand Remonstrance and the Rtipture with the King. The news from Scotland was every day growing more alarming. The dominant spirit in Scotland now was Argyle, a bad warrior but an able statesman. August. With patient skill he had woven firmly all the 1;^' J^* elements of dissatisfaction into a compact Scotland, national resistance. It was in vain that the fiery young Earl of Montrose had writhed under his supremacy, had entered into correspondence with the king, and had offered to denounce Argyle as a traitor. Before the king reached Scotland Montrose was in prison as a plotter. Before he had been there long, all Edinburgh was ringing with a further plot of Montrose's for kidnapping, if , . . , . . . . \.^ °' , October 12. not murdermg, Argyle and his leadmg fol- lowers, in which the king was strongly suspected of being involved. Nothing was proved, and the only result was that the king threw himself entirely into the hands of Argyle, filling every place in the government with his supporters. In return, they gave him their word ot honour that Scotland would never interfere in the reli- gious quarrels of the English. If some inkling of these Scottish arrangements had filtered through to the ears of Pym, the effect was as nothing compared with the effect of the tidings . „, from another quarter which spread over Lon- Irish insur- don on November i. The north of Ireland '■^"="°°- was aflame with insurrection. The strong hand of Straf- ford had been removed, and the Celtic population had turned savagely on the English and Scottish colony. Murder, and atrocities worse than murder — so at least rumour, doubtless not without large exaggeration, affirmed 120 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1641. — had ruled unchecked. All England believed that ten- der women had been stripped naked and turned out into the wintry waste, to die of cold and starvation ; that others had been driven into the river and drowned; that innocent children had been slaughtered as savagely as full-grown men ; and that those who escaped the sword or the club had wandered helplessly about till death brought forget- fulness of their sufferings. The lowest estimate of the destruction which was able to gain credit in England raised to 30,000 the number of the victims. One bitter cry for vengeance went up from England, as pitiless as that which in our own time arose when the § 3. Effect of news of the Indian Mutiny reached our the news. shorcs. But with anger mingled distrust of the king. He had been doing strange things in Scotland. Might he not have been doing strange things in Ireland as well? How was it possible to trust him with an army to put down the Irish rebellion ? It was but too likely that he would use it to put down the English Parliament first. To some extent no doubt there may have been exaggeration in these suspicions. But they were right in the main. Charles, with an army at his command, would undoubtedly not have tolerated Pym. It is hardly likely that he would have retained even Hyde and Falkland in his council. The time had come when it was absolutely necessary for England to have a government by which it could be guided. It was no longer within the limits of possibility that Charles should offer it such a government. He stood alone, separate from the feelings and wishes of his people, as completely without sympathy with the Moderate party as he was without sympathy with the most violent of his opponents. It was an absolute necessity to get rid of Charles, and to substitute some man or body of men in his room. It was not in the nature of things, however, that even 1 64 1. The G^-and Remonstrance. 121 those who were most resolved to go forwards should at once open their eyes to the distant point towards which they were surely treading. It Grand Re- was enough for the present for them to issue n>onstrance. a manifesto showing what Charles's errors had been, in order that all men might see why it was so difficult to trust him now. The Grand Remonstrance was the result. It was a long indictment of Charles's conduct from the beginning of his reign, exaggerated doubtless, and untrue in many particulars, but none the less representing the history of the past years as it mirrored itself in the minds of earnest Puritans. The inference, which no one per- haps had yet consciously drawn, was obviously that a king who had ruled so badly in the past was incapable of ruling at all in the future. Yet there were many in the House who had persuaded themselves that Charles had seen the error of his ways, and would now rule better than he had hitherto done. The vote on the Grand Remonstrance was strictly a vote of want of confidence in the king. The debate was long and stormy. From early morning all through the afternoon the torrent of argu- §5. a stormy ment and warning ran on. Night fell, and debate. candles were brought. It seemed as if at that crisis of England's history no man dared to leave unspoken the word which was burning on his tongue. At last, after midnight, the division came. A small majority of eleven declared against the king. At once a member rose to move that the Remonstrance should be printed ; in other words, that it should be spread abroad to rouse the nation to share the distrust of the majority of the House of Commons. The Moderates declared their resolution to protest against such an act. A protest was unprece- dented in the House of Commons. A wild uproar en- sued. Members snatched their swords from their belts, 1 2 2 Resistance in Scotland and England. 1 64 1 . and handled them with significant gestures. It needed all Hampden's authority to obtain the postponement of the discussion. Five days later the king returned to London. The large minority in the Commons was backed by an Nov. 25. enthusiastic body of supporters in the City, king^^^ Charles was feasted at Guildhall, and the return. populace shouted welcome in the streets. On the sole condition that he could show himself worthy of confidence, the vote of want of confidence would soon be reversed. It was the hardest condition of all. Charles restrained himself so far as to listen to the Remonstrance. But he Dec. I. gave no promise that he would act otherwise the Remon" ^^ ^^ future than he had acted in the past, strance. and his words from time to time gave reason to think that he had little idea of subsiding into a sub- ordinate position. On December 14 the Commons ordered the printing of the Remonstrance, and the order was followed by an answer from the king speaking dis- dainfully of those ecclesiastical reforms which the Puritan majority had most at heart. The necessity of conciliating popular opinion which he believed to be mistaken or corrupt had never been j^ ^g ^ understood by Charles. He was not likely to January 3. leam the lesson now. He had discovered a ment"o?The' technical offence in the leaders of the Oppo- members. sition. Lord Kimbolton in the Lords ; Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, Holies, and Strode in the Commons, had entered into communications with the Scots during the late troubles. Legally they were guilty of treason in so doing, and on January 3 Charles sent his Attorney- General to impeach them before the House of Lords. With its leaders safely lodged in the Tower, resistance on the part of so small a majority would be difficult, if not impossible. 1642. Ritptiwe ivith tJie King. 125; It has always been held that Charles was technically in the wrong in his method of procedure. If it was so, his offence was swallowed up in the greater January 4. offence which followed. As the Commons Ij^tg^'^^to^ returned an evasive answer to his demand seize them. of the immediate arrest of the members, he resolved to seize them himself on the morrow. When the morrow came the queen had some difficulty in encouraging her husband to the task which he had undertaken. ' Go along, you coward,' she said, * and pull those rascals out by the ears.' Followed by a troop of some five hundred armed men, the king betook himself to the House of Commons. Leaving his followers outside, he stepped quicldy up to the Speaker's chair. Standing in front of it, he told the House that he had come to fetch the traitors. In cases of treason privilege of Parliament was no defence against imprisonment. Looking hurriedly round, he was unable to see any of the five. Calling upon Lenthall, the Speaker, he asked whether they were there. Lenthall knelt before him with all outward show of reverence. ' May it please your Majesty,' he said, ' I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me.' ' Well, well ! ' answered Charles, ' 'tis no matter ; I think my eyes are as good as another's.' Then again, after fur- ther search had convinced him that he had come in vain, ' Since I see all my birds are flown, I do expect from you that you will send them unto me as soon as they return hither, otherwise I must take my own course to find them.' As he moved out of the House shouts of ' Privi- lege ! privilege !' followed him from every side. Charles doubtless imagined himself to be acting within his rights. The men, as he believed, had not only been technically guilty of treason, but §io.intention. had actually attempted to subvert the con- of the king, stitution by placing the Commons above the Crown. It 1 24 Resistance in Scotland and Englaiid. 1642. is useless to dwell upon the legal question thus raised. It is enough to say that Charles's long government without any reference to Parliament had made it necessary that Parliament should govern for a time without any refe- rence to him. It was now evident that Pym had judged Charles more truly than Falkland. He would only yield to the new order of things as long as he was oblige! to do so. The attempt of the king to coerce the House of Com- mons by an armed force struck deeply into the popular imagination. The accused members had Commons in been warned in time, and had taken refuge the City. jj^ ^^ City. The whole House followed, and sat daily as a Committee at Guildhall. The City, a few weeks before so enthusiastic in Charles's favour, gathered now stoutly round the Commons. Every man capable of bearing arms turned out in their defence. On January 10 the king gave way. He left Whitehall, never to see it again till the fatal day when he was to enter it as a prisoner. The Commons returned in triumph to Westminster, The struggle for supremacy was now to be put in a simple and intelligible form. If there was no standing army ^, in England, there was a militia composed of S 12. The power of the citizen soldicrs trained to defend their homes. mihtia. Hitherto the officers had been named by the king. The nomination was now claimed by Parliament. For months argument was carried on on both sides with vigour and ingenuity. But the real question was not what was constitutional, but who was to rule England. Neither side could give way without a co7nplete aban- ■donment of all that it believed to be right. 1042. The Beginning of the Civil War. 125 CHAPTER VII. THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY. Section I. — The Begitmmg of the Civil War. The immediate strength and ultimate weakness of the majority of the Commons lay in its conservatism. The king and the bishops were rejected because they were promoters of change, because they vatism "Fthe had attempted to impose by force a form of ^"o^i^ons. religion which was distasteful to large classes of the community. As long as the danger of a return of the Laudian innovations was unremoved, so long there would be no place for those reforms which men like Falkland had at heart. ' It is far from our purpose or design,' the majority had declared in the Grand Re- monstrance, ' to let loose the golden reins of disci- pline and government in the Church, to leave private persons or particular congregations to take up what form of divine service they please ; for we hold it requisite that there should be throughout the whole realm a con- formity to that order which the laws enjoin according to the Word of God ; and we desire to unburthen the consciences of men of needless and superstitious cere- monies, suppress innovations, and take away the monu- ments of idolatry.' For this purpose a general synod was to be called of ' the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, assisted by some from foreign parts, professing the same religion with us.' There was no word of liberty here, no sign that the frame rs of the Remonstrance had advanced a step since 126 The Dozvnf all of Royalty. 1642. 1629. What change there was to be was simply in order to avert change. Openness of mind to new ideas, desire to reconcile conflicting elements, were with Falkland and not with Pym. For the present, such rare qualifi- . cations were thrown away by Falkland's association with Charles. It was not, in fact, upon the more thoughtful elements of his party that, when once it came to war, Charles would have to rely. The dashing cross- §2. Elements . . ^ ,, . , , . , of Charles's Country rider, followed by his grooms and army. huntsmen, would count for more in a cavalry charge than all the eloquence of Falkland or all the legal arguments of Hyde. Nor was the superiority con- fined to the field alone. The unreasoning loyalty of the man who said, ' If the king's crown hung in a bush I would fight for it,' would blossom out into wiser counsel for the immediate present than would proceed from a states- man who had reason to distrust the projects of the king, though he had resolved, from very mingled motives, to support him. Sir Edmund Verney's may have been an extreme case. But he surely did not stand entirely alone. * You,' he said to Hyde, ' have satisfaction in your con- science that you are in the right, that the king ought not to grant what is required of him ; and so you do your duty and business together. But, for my part, I do not like the quarrel, and do heartily wish that the king would yield, and consent to what they desire, so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master. I have eaten his bread and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him, and choose rather to lose my life — which I am sure I shall do — to preserve and defend those things which are against my conscience to preserve and defend ; for I will deal freely with you — I have no reve- rence for bishops, for whom this quarrel subsists.' i042. The Bcgimimg of the Civil War. 127 The conservatism which loves to preserve ancient institutions was arrayed against the conservatism which loves to preserve spiritual and mental beliefs. On August 22 the king's standard was set § s.^rhe war up at Nottingham to summon all loyal ^^S'ns. subjects to his aid against a rebellious Parliament. A decided majority of the Lords, and a large minority of the Commons answered to his call. The civil war had begun. No exact line of demarcation can be drawn be- tween the portions of England which supported the two causes. But with an uncertain region be- § ^ choosin'^ tween, the north-west of England — in the ^''^^^• days when coal and iron combined formed no portion of the national wealth, the rudest and least thickly popu- lated part of the country — took the king's side, whilst the south-east, with its fertile lands, its commercial and manufacturing activity, and its superabundant wealth, was on the side of the Parliament. Parliament appointed the Earl of Essex as its com- mander-in-chief. A steady, honourable, sober-minded man, without a spark of genius, he would hardly be likely to know what to do with a victory, _ , ■ i- , ^ ,^ , / October 23 €ven if he got one. On September 22 the § 5. Edge- first skirmish was fought at Powick Bridge. '^'" ^^"'*- The king's troops were successful, and he pushed on for the south, -hoping to keep Christmas at Whitehall. At Edgehill the way was barred against him by Essex. On October 23 the first battle was fought, with no decisive results. Prince Rupert, the dashing horseman, the son of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, drove all resistance before him with his cavalry. But the royalist infantry could not stand against the foot of the Parliament, and Rupert returned from headlong pursuit, too late to secure a victory. The fruits of 128 T J le Downfall of -Royalty. 1642. victory were on the side of the king. The cautious Essex retreated slowly, Charles following closely at his heels. On the morning of November 12 the king was at Brentford. London was in imminent danger. But London had her heart in the great contest. The trained bands turned Nov. 13. out to a man, and marched with firm step to §6. The Turnham Green. Skippon, a veteran from deience of r r ^ London. the German wars, took the command of the City forces. ' Come, my brave boys,' he said, as he rode amongst them, ' let us pray heartily and fight heartily ; remember the cause is for God and for the defence of yourselves, your wives, and children.' All day long on the 13th the two armies stood facing one another. At last the king blenched and ordered a retreat. He was never to have such another chance again. No genius had as yet been displayed on the par- liamentary side. But there was one man, the member for Cambridge, who was there to supply well's cha- the need. Oliver Cromwell had lived for racter. many years in the strictest school of Puri- tan morality. To him the forms and ceremonies of the Church had come to be an abomination since the Laudian system had been enforced. He saw in them nothing but a human device set up as a wall of separation between him and heaven. To him God stood revealed in the Bible, and in the words of Christian men which were founded on the Bible. His special moral characteristic was an intense love of justice to the poor and the oppressed. If ever he is heard of in those years in which Puritan voices were mostly silent, it is in some effort to redress wrongs suffered by the weak. Into the work of the Long Parliament, when it met, he threw himself heart and soul. He was not a man to be led away by subtle distinctions or broad philosophical views of an ideal state of things which might possibly 1642. TJie Beginning of tJic Civil War. 129 be desirable in some other century or in some other land than that in which his lot was cast. All the iron force of his will was directed to the attainment of the one thing immediately needed, and he knew, what Falkland did not know, that that one thing was to deliver England from the king and such bishops as Charles had ap- pointed formerly, and was likely, if he regained power, to appoint again. If Cromwell's aims were all within compass, no man had a clearer insight into the condi- tions under which those aims were to be attained ; no man a more practical mind in the avoidance of routine and the choice of fit instruments for his work. Cromwell at once detected the weak point in the parliamentary army. ' Your troops,' he said to Hampden, * are most of them old decayed serving men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows, and vice to^ ^ their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger Hampden, sons, and persons of quality : do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and resolution in them ? You must get men of a spirit, and take it not ill what I say — I know you will not — of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go ; or else you will be beaten still.' Hampden shook his head, thought the notion good, but impracticable. At all events, it was the very essence of Puritanism. Milton held that the highest beauty of woman was the outward expression of the pure spirit within. Cromwell held that the highest bravery of man was the outward expression of a spirit set upon high and holy things. Undeterred by Hampden's doubts, Cromwell pro- ceeded to put his idea in execution. First as , r^^^. captain of a troop, then as colonel of a regi- well's regi- ment, he refused to be served except by men '"^" ' whose heart was in the cause. But they must be men who M.H. K ijO The Doivnfall of Royalty. 1643. were also ready to submit to discipline. He was soon master of the best soldiers in either army. ' My troops,' he wrote, ' increase. I have a lovely company. You would respect them did you know them.' Through 1643 the war dragged on without any decisive success on either side. The king took up his head quar- ters at Oxford. He lost Reading, but his campaign of troops gained a success at Roundway Down, '*'^' and before July the great city of Bristol was in his power. Devonshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and the north of Hampshire, fell almost com- pletely into his hands. Already Hampden had been slain by a chance shot in an obscure skirmish. The royalists, full of hope, laid siege to Gloucester, that they might no longer have the enemy established in their rear. At West- minster there was doubt and hesitation. It was only through stress put upon Parliament by a City mob that both Houses were prevented from agreeing to terms of peace which would have carried with them an abandon- ment of their main pretensions. If Gloucester had fallen, in all probability the civil war would have come to an end. But Essex marched boldly to its relief, and Charles broke up the siege. On Essex's return he found the royal army drawn up at Newbury to bar the way. But the battle, the first battle of Newbury as it was called, was again indecisive, and Essex was glad to be allowed to continue his march. But if Gloucester was saved, and Essex was undefeated, royalism was gaining ground in many other parts of the kingdom. The battle of Newbury, unimportant in other respects, was rendered memorable by the death of Falkland. He § II Death ^^^ ^'"'^o bccn weary of the war, weary above of Falkland, all of the uncongenial persons with whom he was obliged to act, and of the evil counsels which pre- vailed too often with Charles. ' His natural cheerfulness 1643- The Beginning of the Civil War. 131 and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him which he had never been used to.' His bodily health wasted away. He would go about murmuring ' Peace ! peace ! ' Weary of life, and fearing lest the rough swordsmen around him would fancy that his love of peace implied a want of per- sonal braver)', he exposed himself recklessly to ever)' hazard. At Newbury he went cheerfully into action, and fell mortally wounded. His wise, beautiful soul was nc longer to lift up its warnings on earth against evil to come. The distant future was his, the future of compromise and moderation. The present was Pym's and Cromwell's. Section II. — Presbyterians and Independents. Already, on July i, the synod known as the West- minster Assembly had commenced its sittings. Against the Laudian idea of uniformity of ceremony a.d. 1643. was to be set the Puritan idea of unity ot Westminster belief. And though the Assembly would Assembly. have enough to do with the discussion of theolo- gical dogmas for some time to come, there was a good practical reason why Parliament should understand unity of doctrine to mean unity of discipline as well, and why that discipline should be the discipline of Presbyterian ism. Things were not going well with the army, and the help of the Scots was much desired. But it was well known that the Scots would give no help , . , . §2. Invita- unless England was presbytenan, and the liontothe House of Commons felt itself inspired with '^'^°^ some alacrity to declare England presbyterian. Not that in so doing they were acting against their consciences. If England was not to be episcopal, it could hardly as yet be anything but presbyterian. The complaint against the bishops had been that they interfered with the parish clergy. It was only natural to try the experi- 132 The Dowji fall of Royalty. 1643. ment of leaving the parish clergy to organise themselves in order that they might manage the Church in their own way. If there was any difficulty at all, it was because, true to English traditions, the Commons wished to main- tain the supremacy of the lay power over the clerical, whilst the Scots held that the clerical power was subject to no superior on earth. Further, there was a small element, both in the Assembly and in Parliament, which was unwilling to bind England for ever to a complete agreement with Scotland. The Scots, however, were immovable. No Presbyte rianism, no Scottish army. In September the Solemn § 3 The League and Covenant was signed by the mem- Covenant, bers of Parliament, binding them to endeavour to bring the religion of England, Scotland, and Ireland to as much conformity as possible, and to reform religion ' according to the word of God, and the example of the best reformed churches.' The phrase ' according to the word of God ' is said to have been added at the suggestion of Sir Henry Vane, always anxious to preserve intellectual liberty, and who wished to be able to find in it a loop-hole^ if at any time he might be inclined to argue that any particular Scotch proposition was not in accordance with the word of God. In this form, the Covenant was offered on every side as a test of fidelity to the parliamentary ^cause. Wherever the power of Parliament could reach, all signs of the Laudian ceremonies which yet remained were driven from the face of the earth. Charing Cross and the Cross at Cheapside were torn down. Super- stitious images, crucifixes, and altars were taken away. Many a painted window rich with the glories of mediaeval art, many a quaint device and monument of earlier piety, paid the penalty for Laud's attempt to force the obser- vance of acts of outward reverence upon unwilling minds. Human opposition was not to be suffered to maintain i643- Presbyterians and Independents. 133 itself when the tacit protest of glass and stone had been overruled, and the Earl of Manchester (the Lord Kim- bolton who had been accused in company with the five members) was sent to Cambridge to drive out all who refused the Covenant. There were to be no diversities of opinion at that seat of learning. Oxford was as yet beyond the reach of Parliament. The guidance of the House of Commons had hither- to been in the hands of Pym. It would be hard to find in the course of English history another 1 1 • • , , . Rfcc. s. man so htted to this special task. A conser- § 4. Death vative by nature, and instinctively opposed to ^'^ ^^'"" the reception of new and unaccustomed ideas, he was the very man to head a revolutionary movement of which the object was to preserve as much as possible of the existing system in Church and State. To that task he brought untiring energy, great capacity for business and knowledge of finance, combined with a delicate tact which enabled him to guide a large and fluctuating body of men. The time had now come when the words of King Pym, as men called him admiringly or in derision, were no longer to be heard in the House of Commons. On December 8 he died, worn out by the labours which he had undergone. The league with Scotland was his last work. He did not live to see the northern army cross the border, but he had done all in his power to facilitate its arrival. It is not likely that Pym would have retained his authority if he had lived many years longer. In the Assembly itself a small minority of five raised its voice against the dominant Presbyterianism. § 5. presby- Many of the exiles to New England had come inde'en-""^ back in hope of better days, and had spread dents. the doctrines of the Separatists, or Independents as they now were called. In reality, it was the reluctance to submit T34 The Downfall of Royalty. 1643, to the iron rule of clerical orthodoxy which was at the bottom of the movement. Each congregation was to be independent of everj' other congregation, < capable of forming its own conclusions, with which no earthly power was to be permitted to interfere. Such a notion was re- garded with simple horror by the commonplace Presbyte- rian, to whom unity of doctrine had been so long the che- rished medicine for every ill which beset the land. Were men to arise from the very bosom of Puritanism to in- troduce innovations, distractions, wild fanaticisms ? Was every man to have a religion to himself? Nor was the danger purely theoretical. Baptist opinions, shocking to the orthodox mind, were spreading. Antinomianism, too, was beginning to be heard of, denying that Christians had any need to trouble themselves about the fulfilment of the moral law. Others, as a Scotch Presbyterian rather in- coherently said, taught things worse than that ; ' the mortality of the soul, the denial of angels and devils ; and cast off sacraments ; and many blasphemous things.' If the sects were dangerous, the Presbyterians were in- tolerably vexatious. Take such a scene as that which January. took place at Chillingworth's death. LikeFalk- Chili?n ^-''^ °^ land, he had taken refuge in the king's camp worth. rather than submit to Puritan domination. He was captured at Arundel by the parliamentary forces, but was too ill to be carried to London. As he lay sick at Chichester he was visited by Francis Cheynell, a mem- ber of the Westminster Assembly, a ' rigid, zealous Presbyterian, exactly orthodox, very unwilling that any should be suffered to go to heaven but in the right way.' Cheynell gave the dying man no rest. He plied him with questions about his opinions. He remembered, as lie himself tells us, the words of the Apostle, ' Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.' Chillingworth's charity was a sore stumbling-block to him. 1 644- Presbyterians ajid Independents. 135 * I desired him/ he says, * to tell me whether he conceived that a man, living or dying a Turk, Papist, or S'ocinian, could be saved ? All the answer I could gain from him was, that he did not absolve them and would not con- demn.' Cheynell could not endure such lukewarmness as this. ' Sir,' he said, ' it is confessed that you have been very excessive in your charity. You have lavished so much charity upon Turks, Socinians, Papists, that I am afraid you have very little to spare for a truly re- formed Protestant.' In January 1644 the soul of the great latitudinarian passed away into that peace under the bright rays of which he had lived upon earth. It was only with difficulty that he was allowed a burial under the shadow of Chichester cathedral. Cheynell attended the funeral, but only that he might throw into the open grave that book, 'The Religion of Protestants,' which is ChiUing- worth's chief title to the admiration of later generations. ' If they please,' so Cheynell tells the story of his insolence, ' to undertake the burial of his corpse, I shall undertake to bury his errors, which are published in this so much ad- mired yet unworthy book ; and happy would it be for the kingdom if this book and all its fellows could be so buried. Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which hast seduced so many precious souls ! Get thee gone, thou cornipt rotten book ! Earth to earth, and dust to dust ! Get thee out into this place of rottenness, that thou raayest rot with the author, and see corruption ! ' The tolerance of theological errors which did not threaten the bond of external unity was not entirely a new doctrine in England. Proclaimed by Sir Thomas More and the men of the new learning in the early days before the Reformation of con- struggle grew warm, it found a place in all the ^'='^""- highest writings of the opponents of Calvinistic Puri- tanism, A sense of the insufficiency of man to penetrate 136 Thr Downfall of Royalty. 1644. Divine mysteries sheds a warm glow of charity over the pages of the wise Hooker, and even Laud was animated by a sense of the impossibiUty of expressing the highest rehgious truths by verbal definitions. Still more lately the wider culture and deeper knowledge of Chillingworth and Hales had leant still further to the side of tolerance. But the doctrine of liberty of conscience now professed approached the great problem of the day from another side. Chillingworth had never contemplated the disrup- tion of the Church into minute fragments ; he thought it possible, as Sir Thomas More thought it possible, that men might join together in public worship whilst freely pursuing independent trains of thought. The new thinkers threw off the outward forms of unity as well as the inward agreement, and were content if men were striving to reach a common end through different methods. It is no wonder that ordinary Puritanism took alarm. And yet this new doctrine, hateful as it seemed, was the , 8 Liberty ^^^ thing needful. Parliamentary supremacy of speech. seemed likely to end in the rule of poli- tical commonplace. Presbyterian supremacy seemed likely to end in the rule of ecclesiastical commonplace. Government by king and council had at least been a tes- timony to the need of special knowledge and ability for the guidance of State affairs. Government by bishops had at least been a testimony to the need of special know- ledge and ability for the guidance of ecclesiastical affairs. If there was to be no freedom of speech for the press or in the pulpit, Church and State would soon sink to the dull level of existing popular opinion. In proscribing the new thoughts which were base or misleading, the new thoughts which were to be the life-blood of the coming generation would be proscribed as well. The wheat would be rooted out with the tares. i64'i. Presbyterians and Independents. 137 Section III. — Marsio?t Moor and Naseby, Parliament would have had little reason for immediate anxiety about the progress of ideas so new to the English people, if they had not found a congenial , ^ ^ f i" ' J ° §1. Indepen- home in that part of the army which was dencyinthe under Cromwell's influence. An Independent, ^"^^' in the sectarian sense of the word, Cromwell never was. But he was too fully inspired with the higher spiritual life of Puritanism to feel otherwise than indignant at any attempt to tie men down to fixed opinions. And though he was as yet far from occupying any very considerable place in the conduct of the war, he was slowly but steadily rising in men's opinions. In 1643 that part of England where Cromwell was had alone been the scene of a decided parliamentary success. The Eastern Association, in which a.d. 1613. Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Hert- tlu-fp^o; fordshire, and Huntingdonshire had bound gress. themselves together for mutual defence, was placed in August 1643 under Manchester's command. But Crom- well was the leading spirit of the forces thus raised, and not only had he thoroughly put down royalism within the district, but he had invaded Lincolnshire, beat the royalists at Winceby on October 1 1, and forced the Marquis of Newcastle, Charles's commander in the North, to raise the siege of Hull. If he had a chance of support, he would be ready, when the next campaign opened, to attack the royalists in Yorkshire. It was not an easy task. Newcastle had almost succeeded in establishing his domination over all the northern counties. Fairfax, a gallant, ho- . Fairfax nourable man, a good horseman, with a '" Yorkshire, huntsman's eye for country, had struggled on in defence 138 The Downfall of R oyalty. 1 644. of the clothing towns of Yorkshire. But he had been forced to give ground, and he wanted more help than Manchester and Cromwell could give. That help was at hand. The League and Covenant had been duly signed. A new authority, composed of A..D. 1644. Englishmen and Scotchmen, had been Scotdi^cross evoked under the name of the Committee the border. of both kingdoms, to take the guidance of the war. The Scotch army, under the command of Alex- ander Leslie, Earl of Leven, crossed the border. In June Leven joined Manchester and Fairfax, and was laying siege to the Marquis of Newcastle at York. At the head of 18,000 men, the fiery Rupert hurried to Newcastle's aid, and the assailants were compelled to raise the siege. But Rupert, bold and §5. Marston dashing in fight, thought little of a blood- '■ less success, and hurried Newcastle, half against his will, to a decisive battle. At Marston Moor the Scots gave way before the charge of the royalist cavalry. But Cromwell restored the fight. ' It had all the evidence,' he wrote, ' of an absolute victory, obtained by the Lord's blessing upon the godly party principally., We never charged but we routed the enemy. God; made them as stubble to our swords.' The North of England was at last in the hands of the parliamentary commanders. But Marston Moor , ^ . . ,had not been a Presbyterian victory. Crom- § o. A victory. ^ ■' for the inde- wcll's Ironsidcs, as they were well termed^ pendents. ^^^ decided the fight. Such a result was not likely to be favourable to the views of the domi- nant party at Westminster. A few months before, a complaint had been brought to Cromwell that one of his officers was an Anabaptist. ' Admit he be,' was the sturdy reply, 'shall that render him incapable to serve the public ? Take heed of being too sharp, or too easily i644- Marston Moor and Naseby. 1 39. sharpened by others, against those to whom you can object little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion/ It was not only at Marston Moor that Presbyterian ascendancy was threatened. Essex, the chosen parlia- mentary general, had marched westward , ^ . • / .u 1- . r T^ An 5 7- Capitu- agamst the royalists of Devon and Lorn- lation of wall. Charles in person followed him with Essex's foot. a superior force. Essex was surrounded. With his cavalry he cut his way through to safety ; but his foot was reduced to capitulate. The religious question of toleration or no toleration was naturally connected with a political question about the mode in which the war was to be con- , , _ . T-. • • 1 • 5 "• Wow IS ducted. Conservative Puritanism was longmg the war to be to obtain the king's assent to complete its or- conducted? ganisation under a presbyterian form. Those who were startled by the new idea of liberty of conscience were also startled by the new idea of doing without the king. They did not want to beat the king too much, and Cromwell, who had asserted that if he met the king in battle he would shoot him as soon as any other man, was regarded by them with horror. What they wanted was the old constitution as Eliot had understood it, in times when Eliot, if he had been still alive, would have been of a very different opinion. A new and untried state of things inspired them with terror. The quarrel came to a head in Manchester's army. As he marched southwards, Cromwell charged him with neglecting his opportunities. He was an „ ,, attable, good-natured man, much out of chaster and place at the head of an army, and there ^'■°'°'^^"- was doubtless more of constitutional indolence in his mistakes than of any deliberate intention to spare the enemy. To Cromwell, restless and energetic, prompt 140 TJie Downfall of Royalty. 1645. in action as in counsel, his superior officer's sluggish- ness seemed nothing less than treason to the cause. The dispute came to a head after the second battle of Newbury, fought on October 27, after which Manchester refrained from pushing home the advantage which he had gained. Cromwell brought the delinquencies of the general publicly before Parliament. Cromwell had, however, no wish to bear hardly upon Manchester. He was indignant with the system, not with the man. He soon substituted for the im- peachment of Manchester a Self-denying Ordinance by which every member of either House was §10'. The' declared incapable of military command. orfinanci"^ As a Satisfaction to the Presbyterians their and the es- system of church government was declared of Presby- universal in England, though the Indepen- tenamsm. dents reserved to themselves the right of proposing some modification which should provide liberty of conscience for Dissenters. In another matter the Presbyterians had their way. §ii.Execu- Ii^ ^^ preceding March Laud had been tionofLaud. dragged from prison and put on his trial before the House of Lords. The old man defended him- self with coolness and ability. He was as incapable as he had ever been of understanding the meaning of the opposition he had roused, and of the anger to which he had become a victim. As in Stafford's case the impeach- ment was turned into a bill of attainder, and on January 10, 1645, he was executed on Tower Hill. Cromwell's voice on behalf of liberty had already found an echo. To Cromwell liberty was chiefly valuable because ,,-, , it gave full play for the righteousness and §12. Milton's ^ . , r r^ ,«••■, • -, ■ r, Areopagi- moral worth of men. To Milton it was chiefly ^^'=<^- valuable because it gave full play to the intellectual vigour of men. He had been writing books 1 645- Marston Moor and Nascby. 141 which had been condemned by the official censors of the press. In the Arcopagitica he raises his contention far above the region of personal dispute. With somewhat of disdain for those who are weaker than himself, he calls upon all men to ' prove all things.' ' He that can appre- hend,' he says, 'and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain . . he is the true war- faring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' Excellence rested in the struggle which is the law of life, not in the self-satisfied contemplation of al- ready achieved attainments. ' Behold, now,' cried Milton, ' this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house ot liberty, encompassed with God's protection ; the shop ot war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present us, as with their homage and fealty, the approach- ing reformation ; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement.' There need be no fear that liberty would give birth to anarchy. * These are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, . . . there should be a sort of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissec- tions made in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid art- fully together it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in the world : neither can every piece of the building be of one form ; nay, rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many' moderate varieties and 142 The Downfall of Royalty. 1645. brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that com- mends the whole pile and structure.' There spoke the spirit of the new epoch. The theory of enforced orthodoxy which Laud had attempted to meet by his external uniformity received here its A.D. 1644. _ . ■' , § 13. The nttmg answer. Whether or not such prm- New Model, ^iples were to prosper in the state, they were soon to be put to the test in the field. The reorganised army, — the New Model, as it was called — was formed after the fashion of Cromwell's Ironsides. Men with a spirit in them who were ready to submit to discipline re- ceived a welcome there. Fairfax was placed at its head. The Self-denying Ordinance was suspended in favour of Cromwell, whose services could hardly be spared. He was named Lieutenant-General. There would be no hesitation now about beating the king too much. There was' the more reason for energy as a powerful diversion in favour of the king was threatening from Scot- land. Scarcely more than a month after the rose' in Scot- batde of Marston Moor, Montrose rode across land. ^Yie border northwards, with only two com- panions, to rouse the Highlanders in favour of the king. He was received with the utmost enthusiasm. If they did not care much for Charles they cared a great deal for plunder, and they bore a special hatred to the Camp- bells, the great clan which tyrannised over the lesser clans, and the head of which was the king's enemy, Argyle. Montrose was the first man who discovered the capacity of the Highlanders for sustained war. Dashing with lightning-like rapidity from one side of Scotland to the other, he crushed every army which was brought against him. Argyle's lands were harried with a terrible destruction ; Dundee was taken and sacked ; the heavy Lowland troops panted after his fiery course in vain. The a 045- Marston Moor and Naseby. 143 New Model would have to bear the whole brunt of the English war. The Scots who had fought the year before at Marston Moor were hesitating, looking back over their shoulders as it were, to see if they were not needed nearer home. The New Model was equal to its task. On June 14 it met the king's army at Naseby, in the very centre of England. Charles was beaten into utter ruin. ^ ^ ^g He never ventured to lift his head again in June 14. the field. Some months were to pass away Battle of before all the English counties were cleared of Naseby. royahst troops, and before all the fortified houses held by royalist garrisons were stormed or reduced to capitu- lation. But the final triumph was only a question of time. Raglan castle, the last post which held out for the king in England, surrendered in August 1646. Better tidings, too, came from Scotland. Montrose, emboldened by victory, had ventured out of the Highlands in the spirit of his favourite verses — He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all. Full of confidence he approached the English border. But the Highlanders were back amongst the Sept. 13. mountains to secure their booty. With a of'philip"^ handful of men around him, Montrose was haugh. surprised at Philiphaugh by a force sent from the Scottish army in England. It was a slaughter rather than a fight, and Montrose's chance of ruling Scotland or of succour- ing the kins in England had come to an end. 144 The Downfall of Royalty. 1646. Section IV. — The Army and the Parliament. Swift acknowledgment that kingship was hencefor- ward impossible except on his enemies' terms was now A.D. 1646. Charles's one chance of safety. Unhappily, 5 1- '^'^^, decision of any kind to do anything un- the Scots. pleasant was always out of the question with him. With his utter blindness to the thoughts and feelings of the world around him, he was puffed up with the thought that no party in the State could do without him, and that he had but to play off their mutual jealousies against one another, and so come to his own by intrigue. After futile negotiations with the Parliament, he made up his mind at last to trust himself to the Scots. On May 5, 1646, he entered their camp at Newark. The Scots, in order to secure their guest or their prize from the English army, carried him off to Newcastle. Whatever else the Scots might expect of Charles, they were sure to expect him to do something for Pres- Nov. 13. byterianism, and he was thus able to fancy ^^"h^E*'"^ that if he was very clever they might be lisharmy. brought into colHsion with the New Model. In the New Model the feeling against Presbyterianism, or rather against the refusal of toleration which shel- tered itself under the name of Presbyterianism, was grow- ing more bitter than ever. Richard Baxter, an active preacher and controversialist, hating sectarianism and Independency to the backbone, had been to see what the army looked like. ' Abundance of the common troopers,' he reported, ' and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the truth, and of upright intentions ; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief favourites, 1646. The Army and the Parliament. 145 and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and were the soul of the army. They said. What were the lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or the barons but his majors, or the knights but his captains ? They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of religion and the kingdom upon them as conquerors.' In these last words lay the key of the immediate future. These men had not exposed their lives in order that they might be sent home again without liberty of conscience. It was for Parliament weilonToler- to put an end to the Presbyterian tyranny. If ^"°°- not, Parliament must take the consequences. Of this reso- lution Cromwell, with all moderation, was the firm expo- nent. He had no enmity against the Presbyterians as such, ' Presbyterians, Independents, all,' he wrote, ' have here the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same pre- sence and answer. They agree here, have no names of difference ; pity it is it should be othenvise anywhere. For, brethren, in things of the mind we look for no com- pulsion but that of light and reason.' The rougher demand of the common soldier would give strength to the modest language of the chief All through 1645 Parliament and Assembly had been busy in completing the presbyterian arrangements for Eng- land. By the end of the year there was a large c proposi- accession of strength to the Toleration party tjons of Par- in Parliament. New elections were held to fill up vacancies, and these mostly went against the Presby- terians. But the Presbyterians were still strong enough to settle the terms which were to be offered to the king. On July 14 the parliamentary propositions were deli- vered to Charles at Newcastle. He was to surrender the power over the militia to Parliament for twenty years, M.H. L 146 The Downfall of Royalty. 1647. and he was to rule, as far as he was permitted to rule at all, as a Presbyterian king, to take the Covenant himself, and to support the new presbyterian order of things in the Church. Charles had no intention of doing any- thing of the kind. ' All my endeavours,' he wrote to the queen, ' must be the delaying of my answer till there be considerable parties visibly formed ; ' in other words, till Presbyterians and Independents had come to blows, and were ready to take him at his own price. Presbyterians and Independents, however, did not seem inclined to come to blows to please Charles. For A.D. 1647. six months he declined to give any answer §^"''fhe to the propositions. At last the Scots per- Scotssurren- ceived that nothing satisfactory could be got king. out of him. They intimated to the English ParHament that they were ready to surrender him, and to go home to Scotland. All they wanted now was that the expenses of their campaign should be paid. Four hundred thousand pounds were owing to them for their services in England. The money was paid down at once, and on January 30, 1647, the Scots marched out of Newcastle, leaving Charles in the hands of parliamentary commissioners. Charles was now lodged at Holmby House, in North- Feb.— June, amptonshire, and treated with all outward it^Ho^mb^^ show of respect. It seemed as if the oppor- House. tunity for which he had been watching was at last to occur. The Army and the Parliament were begin- ning to quarrel. Knowing its danger from the army, the Presbyterian majority in the Commons suggested that the time had § 7. Dispute come to disband the army, that strange army, between the in vvhich every opinion under the sun found the Pariia- refuge, and in which soldiers occupied their '"^"'' leisure hours not in the cricket-field or the public-house, but in theological argument or Scriptural i647- The Army and the Parliament. 147 exposition. The contemptuous disregard for such doc- trines as still prevailed in England was as distasteful to the ruling Presbyterians as the contempt of the Presby- terians for earlier forms had been distasteful to Laud. ' If I should worship the sun or moon, like the Persians,' said one of them, 'or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody has anything to do with it.' Such an army claimed to be something more than an ordinary army. It had not fought simply for , g rpj^^ the supremacy of Parliament. It had fought army the for liberty for its opinions, and it refused to feifgiou" ° allow itself to be disbanded till that liberty "''^"y- was assured. The soldiers regarded themselves, as indeed they were, as a power in the State. They were the more resolute as Charles and the Pres- byterians had been drawing near to one another. On May 12 the king had at last accepted the jung. parliamentary propositions, though not with- §p- The out some important modifications. For three brought to years, and three years only, he would be a ^^ ^-n^y- Presbyterian king, reserving religious liberty for himself The army determined otherwise. On the evening of June 3 a certain Cornet Joyce, followed by a party of horse, rode up to Holmby House, and told the king that he was commissioned to remove him. The next morning he repeated his assertion. The king asked where his commission was. ' There is my commission,' answered Joyce, pointing to his soldiers drawn up before the win- dow. There was no resisting such an argument, and Charles was safely conducted to Newmarket. The army raised its demands. Eleven leaders of the Presbyterian party, they declared, must be § 10. The excluded from the House. Helpless in the t"e''deve"n°'^ grasp of the army, the eleven ceased to at- members. tend the debates. But the City of London was even more 148 The Downfall of Royalty. 1647. presbyterian than the Parliament. A City mob burst into the House, ordering the Commons to stand firm against the army. The army took advantage of the tumult. Marching rapidly upon London, the troops took military possession of the City on August 7, The eleven mem- bers were summarily got rid of, and many of their presbyterian followers voluntarily withdrew. In his plays of Richard II. and Henry IV. Shake- speare lays down the conditions and the results of a suc- cessful revolution. The incapable ruler who § II. The 11- /-I ■ 1 army in ncglects the interests of the nation and power. thinks only of his own cannot maintain his authority. The work of governing must of necessity be done, and some one more capable than himself must be put in his place. But every violent change brings its own penalty with it. Old habits of obedience are broken off, and the new rule introduced by force is subject to daily questioning, and even to open attack. A rebellion, how- ever justifiable, is the parent of other rebellions perhaps not justifiable at all. So it was now. The sword which had smitten down Charles smote down the House of Com- mons. The violation of a legislative assembly is no light thing. It is the substitution of the rule of force for that of discussion. Yet if ever it was justifiable it was now. Parliament, which lived by discussion within its own walls, was longing to suppress discussion everywhere else. The army was permeated with discussion from one end to the other. The blow which it struck was on behalf of that freedom of thought and speech without which the supremacy of a Parliament is as despotic as the supremacy of a king. The army, too, knew well that the hands that wielded the sword could not sway the sceptre also. .z. iLS pru- ku posals to the Its chiefs at once drew up certain heads of ^*"^- proposals, which it offered to the king for his acceptance. They proclaimed complete religious liberty i647- The Second Civil War. 149 for all except the Roman Catholics. Those who chose to do so might submit to the jurisdiction of bishops. Those who chose to do so might submit to the jurisdic- tion of presbyters. But no civil penalties were to be inflicted upon those who objected equally to episcopacy and to presbyterianism. No proposal so wise and comprehensive had yet been made. It gave to Charles, as it gave to the Presby- terians, all that they could fairly ask. But j^^^ „ neither Charles nor even Parliament was 5'3-,'^.«, prepared for so admirable a settlement, and to"the isle of the leaders of the army withdrew their pro- ^'E*^'- posals, hoping to engraft some practical toleration on the original parliamentary propositions. The king thought he saw his opportunity, tried with feeble cunning to play off one set of his opponents against the other, and then, when he found that they preferred a compromise with one another to submission to himself, got on horse- back late one evening and galloped southward, finally taking refuge in the Isle of Wight. He was there lodged in Carisbrooke Castle, from which place he wrote to ex- press his readiness to negotiate afresh on the basis of Presbyterianism for three years and a moderate tole- ration. Section V. — The Second Civil War and the Execution of the King. During the past negotiations the conduct of Crom- well and the army leaders had been masterly. They had seen that, if their object of toleration a.d. 1647. could be gained in any way whatever, it was ^jnV'^nd better that it should be obtained with the the Scots. concurrence of Parliament. But this lull in the contro- versy thus originating between Parliament and army drove the Scots into despair. If there was to be any sort T50 The Dowiifall of Royalty. 1648. of toleration at all, they would have nothing more to do with the English Parliament. When a negotiation was opened at Newport on this basis, the Scottish com- missioners entered into a secret treaty with Charles by which he bound himself to acknowledge the presby- terian discipline in England for three years, and to suppress the Independents and all other sects. The Scotch, on their part, promised to furnish him with an army to restore him to the throne. In spite of the reluctance of Argyle and other notable A D 1648 Scotchmen, war between Scotland and Eng- April. land was imminent. In April 1648 an army, invasion under the Duke of Hamilton, was ordered to preparing. ^.j-Qsg the border. Charles at last got the darling wish of his heart. Two of his enemies were about to fight with one another, § 3. Indig- 3.nd he would come by his own. Never was nation of the ^j^g vanity of human wishes more strongly army. exemplified. A thrill of angry horror ran through the English army when they learned that, in the midst of negotiations, the perfidy of the king had deli- vered England up to Scottish Presbyterianism. The soldiers met together to seek the Lord, to wrestle with Him in prayer, that He might reveal to them the cause why such evil had befallen them. Their own minds supplied them with an answer. Their first duty was to fight the enemy. Their second duty, if ever the Lord brought them back in peace, was ' to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations.' On every side Royalist insurrections blazed up in an- ticipation of the arrival of the Scots. Wales was the first to rise. Cornwall an4.Pev(mshire came next. There 1648. The Second Civil War. 151 were riots in London, and Kent was soon in full revolt. Cromwell hurried down to Wales, Fairfax suppressed the Kentish rising. The main rectio^"in body of the Southern insurgents threw them- England, selves into Colchester, were surrounded by Fairfax and pinned there, whilst Cromwell was making ready to deal with the Northern danger. By the middle of July Cromwell had suppressed the Welsh rising, and was marching steadily northwards. On August 17, with 9,000 men, he swept down at Preston upon the 24,000 men which § 5. Defeat gathered round Hamilton. After a three days' °^ '^^ ^°^- battle Hamilton's army was swiept out of existence. On the 28th Colchester surrendered to Fairfax after a terrible siege. The second civil war had come to a swift end. Whilst the army had been fighting royalism, the House of Commons had been carrying on negotiations with the king. Presbyterian members, fright- § 6. Presby- ened away in the preceding autumn, had come 'he^om^ '" back to their seats, and a renewed Presbyte- mons. rian majority was the result. As soon as they saw Crom- well well engaged in the war, the Commons issued a fierce ordinance for the suppression of blasphemies and heresies, condemning to death the holders of certain spe- cified opinions, and imposing the penalty of imprison- ment on all who held, amongst other things, that Church- government by presbytery was anti-Christian or unlawful. The negotiations with the king — the Treaty of New- port, as it was callad — were now reopened. But even the defeat of his Scotch allies wrung no submis- § 7 The sion from Charles. He had no mind to come Treaty of to terms with the parliamentary Presbyterians. Newport His negotiation was all a sham. He had fresh hopes from Ireland, or from Holland; and he had returned to his old game of arguing much and concluding nothing. 152 The Downfall of Royalty. 1648. To that game the victorious army had determined to put an end. England must be brought under a settled Nov. 20. government ; and a settled government, with , 8. The Charles to stir up discord against every army remon- _ \ o j strance. element in the State in turn, was a sheer impos- sibility. In a long statement of their case the soldiers laid down that a king was but the highest functionary of the State, and that if he deliberately abused his trust he was liable to be called to account. It was evident that Charles could be bound by no ties, that he regarded the nation as his own, to deal with as he pleased. They demanded, therefore, that the king should be brought to justice. In such a mood the soldiers were not likely to trust much to Parliament. Their first move was to gain pos- Dec 1 session of the king's person. Charles was § 9. The removed from Carisbrooke and safely lodged king at jo Hurst at Hurst Castle, a desolate spot at the end of Castle. ^ gpj(. Qf land running out into the sea. For a moment Charles fancied that murder was intended. He was not in the hands of murderers. The next step of the army was to overcome the re- sistance of Parliament. On December 5 the Commons declared for a reconciliation with the king ; § 10. Pride's in Other words, for endangering all the Purge. valuable results of the civil war. The next morning was the morning of Pride's Purge. Colonel Pride was stationed at the door of the House, to turn back such members as were displeasing to the army leaders. In all ninety- six members were excluded, and the House became a mere instrument for the time in the hands of the army. It was a mere residue of a House, the number still voting being about fifty or sixty. §11. The Such a House was sure to be compliant, ■Windsor. On the 13th a resolution was passed that the king should be brought to justice. He was already on the road to Windsor under a strong guard- 1 649- Execution of the King. 153 On the first day of the new year a High Court of Jus- tice was appointed by the Commons for the trial of the king, the Lords refusing to take any part in a.d. 1649. the act. On the 4th the Commons declared f/igh court that the People were, under God, the source of of justice, all just power, and that the Commons, being chosen by the people, formed the supreme power in England, and had no need of the concurrence of king or House of Lords. The principle of national sovereignty was surely never declared by a less representative body. In accord- ance with this resolution the High Court of Justice was finally constituted on the 9th by the authority of the Commons alone. On January 20 Charles was brought to Whitehall. The next morning his trial commenced. Of 135 mem- bers of the court only sixty-seven, Cromwell being one of them, were present. When § 13". Trial of Fairfax's name was called his wife cried t^heking. out, ' He is not here, and will never be; you do wrong to name him.' To the charge brought the king replied by simply denying the authority of the court. As he refused to plead, the trial was reduced to a mere for- mality. On the 27th the King of England was sentenced to death. On the 29th the sentence was carried into execu- tion. He took leave of his two youngest children who alone were still in England. §'14. The Then he stepped firmly on the scaffold, out- "^cution. side the window, bent his head upon the block, and all was over. IS4 The Commonwealth. 1649, CHAPTER VIII. THE COMMONWEALTH. Section I. — Cromwell's Last Victories. Nothing in Charles's life became him like the manner in which he left it. His own conviction of the justice of § I. Charles's his cause had been so thorough that he had o^au'th^ seen even in the underhand intrigues which "ty- led to his ruin nothing but legitimate weapons to be used in defence of the nation whose happiness was in his eyes inextricably bound up with his own authority. His opinion was clearly expressed in those lines of the Roman poet of the declining empire which Charles wrote in a book not long before his death, as a testimony against the levelling and anti-monarchic spirits which predomi- nated at that time : ' He is deceived who thinks that there can be slavery under an excellent prince. There is no fairer form of liberty than under a pious king.' Against this notion the leaders in the army had uttered their protest. They thought to emphasise their §2. The pro- words by the blow on the scaffold at White- agafnsfhira ^^^^- ^^ ^^^ poli^ical crime committed with illegal. good intentions deserves the extreme penalty of the law, that penalty was deserved by Charles by his breach of faith at the time of the treaty of Newport. But it was not from the law that Charles had suffered. Legal tribunals are not infallible. But they are composed in such a way as to secure as much impartiality as possible, and are accustomed to act according to certain rules which offenders are aware of in advance. To reach Charles the army leaders were obliged to overturn the House of Commons, to pass over the resistance of the 1 049- CrofHiueU's Last Victories. 1 55 House of Lords, and to nominate a new tribunal to de- cide by rules hitherto unknowTi. That which was done would have been just as legal if the officers had brought Charles before a court-martial, and ordered out a platoon of infantry to shoot him. Never was any army more desirous of escaping from the necessity of using brute force than this one. The cause which it sustained was the right cause, § 3. The ob- and it sustained it worthily with the pen as well l^f^X °°' as with the sword. But they could not endure formal, that aU their sacrifices should go for nothing; that foolish, unwise prejudices should have the upper hand ; that armies should gather round Charles in the absurd ex- pectation that he would rule otherwise than he had ruled before. If only Charles's head were off, justice would be done, and men's minds would no longer be set on so ridiculous a quest as that of a Presbyterian Charles I. Not so ! That which seemed to end all ended nothing. Brute force had been put forth, and that was all. It was bad enough to contend with the elements of confusion which had gathered round Charles. It would be worse to contend with them when the narrow-minded and self- wiUed prince had been elevated to the position of a saint and a martyr, and when the defence of violated law, and the maintenance of popular rights against the iron will of a triumphant soldiery, came to be the watchword of the followers of Charles II. For the moment a government was established. The Commonwealth of England took the place of the King- dom of England. A Council of State, com- § ^. Estab- posed of forty-one leading parliamentary |heCom-°^ officials and military personages, exercised the monwealth. executive power. The House of Lords had already ceased to exist. The fragment of the House of Commons, practi- cally seldom exceeding some fifty members, played the i 56 The Commonwealth. 1649. part of a Parliament. Of this body the Council of State formed the great majority, and was thus able to register its owji decrees under parliamentary forms. In quiet times such a burlesque on parliamentary government could not have lasted long; and a real elected House of Commons was amongst the ideals of the army. But the times were not quiet, and there was fighting enough in prospect to make the leaders of the army disinclined at present to tamper further with the constitution. Wild ideas were seething in the ranks ; but an attempt to mutiny in their favour was suppressed by the iron hand of Cromwell. Cromwell was first called to Ireland. Ever since the massacre of 1641 Ireland had been the scene of anarchy Aug. 15. and slaughter. The Royalists were now com- ^5-|Croni- bined in an alliance with the native Roman Ireland. Catholic population against the parliamentary forces cooped up in Dublin. If Dublin fell, an inde- pendent government would be established which might hold out the hand to the English Royalists. On Au- gust 15, Cromwell landed at Dublin. On September 11, he stormed Drogheda. Quarter was refused, and 2,000 men with arms in their hands were put to the sword. Even CromweU felt a half-suspicion that some excuse was needed, though the refusal of quarter had been a matter of everyday occurrence in the German war, and had been not without precedent even in England. ' I am persuaded,' he wrote, ' that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood ; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future : which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.' The massacre of Drogheda was but the beginning of victory. At Wexford there was another slaughter, this time with- out orders from the general. Town after town surren- 1650. CromwelVs Last Victories. ■ 157 dered. In the next spring Cromwell was able to quit Ireland, leaving what work remained to be done to be accomplished by his successors. The conquest was pro- secuted with savage effectiveness, and when at last, in 1652, the war came to an end, three out of four provinces of Ireland were confiscated for the benefit of the con- quering race. The landowners of Ireland were driven from their homes, to find what sustenance they could in the wilds of Connaught. It was time for Cromwell to be back in England. The young Commonwealth was looked upon askance by the European Powers. One of §6. Montrose its ambassadors was murdered by English '" Scotland. Royalists at the Hague. Another was murdered at Madrid with general applause. Montrose, who was living in exile, started once more for his native country on a mis- sion of vengeance for his slain master. In the spring of 1650 he landed in the Orkneys. Crossing to Caithness he found no one prepared to rise in his behalf. It may be that there was no jealousy of Argyle so far north, and no enthusiasm for the king. At any rate, he was overpowered, carried to Edinburgh, and hanged as a rebel. If the Scots would not tolerate Montrose, they had not given up their own idea of living under a Presby- terian king. They proclaimed the young June 24. prince— Charles II., as they called him— king, ff^'in s^t? and invited him to Scotland. Much against land, his will he swore to the Covenant. On June 24 he landed in Scotland. The idea of Charles II. as a Covenanting king seems absurd enough now that his character is known. He was then but a lad, and the Scotch ministers thought they could mould him to their wishes. Cromwell had not gained much by executing one Charles. Another Charles was there, with a whole Scottish nation behind his back, and with a large nart of the English nation t58 The Commonwealth. 1650. ready to support him, if it could be done with safety. The head of one man was off his shoulders ; but the senti- ment which had made that man powerful had not been eradicated. Cromwell hastened to Scotland to nip the mischief in the bud. Fairfax with all friendliness declined to go. He did not see, he said, why the Scotch had §8. Crom- . , ' , .' ^ Avell in not a right to settle their own government as Scotland. ^^^ pleased. On July 22 the army crossed the border. On the 28th it was before Edinburgh. But the Scottish army was entrenched in front, too strongly posted to be attacked. Cromwell had to retreat to save his men from starvation. He lingered as long as he could, but, on August 31, he marched back to Dunbar. His prospects now were forlorn enough. The Scotch had seized the pass through which the road led to England. On one side of him was the sea, § 9. Battle of on the other a long hill, now crowned with Dunbar. ^^ Scottish army. Escape seemed difficult, wellnigh hopeless. But the Scots were weary of waiting. On the morning of September 3 they began to descend the hill. Oliver saw his advantage. As the enemy reached the bottom he charged into them, dashed them into sheer confusion, and drove them back into the ranks behind them. ' Let God arise, let his enemies be scat- tered ! ' were the words which rose to the lips of the victor. The Scottish army was utterly ruined. Cromwell was soon at Edinburgh, pleading scornfully and yet half-tenderly with the Presbyterian weU at ^"^ ministers. A large part of Scotland submitted Edinburgh. ^Q j^jj^_ g^,j. ^j^gj.g ^^3 gj-ju ^^ ^^^^ Jj^ j.jjg field which refused to submit, and during the winter and spring that army gathered strength. In August the Scottish leaders resolved to push for England. An English insurrection in Cromwell's rear 1651. CromwclVs Last Victories. 159 would make his position in Scotland untenable. With the young king in their midst, and Cromwell a.d. 1651. hard upon their heels, they marched doggedly | "w^^-"'^ southwards. Their hopes were disappointed, cester. The fear of Cromwell kept those at home whose heart; were beating to join the Scots. Almost unaided the invaders struggled on till they reached Worcester. There Cromwell overtook them. Slaughter or capture was the lot of that doomed army. ' The dimensions of this mercy,' wrote Cromwell, ' are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy.' He spoke truly. Never again was he called upon to draw sword in England. Cromwell was at least spared the anxiety of deciding what was to be done with a second royal prisoner. Charles threw himself upon the loyalty of a , , . , • , , % 1 §• 12. Escape Royalist gentleman, m the neighbourhood, of Charles and he was not deceived. In after days men told how he had been seated in the branches of an oak whilst the troopers who were searching for him rode below. Dressed as a servant he rode to Bristol, with a lady riding on a pillion behind. At Charmouth he hoped to find a vessel to carry him to France. But the master of the ship refused to go. It was not till he reached Brighton, then a small fishing village, that he found the help that he wanted, and made his escape from England in safety. Section II.— 77-;^ Dissolutio7i of the Long Parliament. ' Peace,' sung Milton, in his sonnet to Cromwell, * hath her victories no less renowned than war.' Peace, too, has her forlorn hopes, her stout battling for ^ ^ ^<^^ a cause lost by anticipation, and destined only work of the to reappear in other days when the standard accom- '°° shall have been entrusted to arms more for- P'''^hed. tunate if not more stalwart. Cromwell and the higher i6o The Commonwealth. 1651. officers in the army, Sir Henry Vane and the nobler spirits yet remaining in the Parliament, were alike bent upon realising the same high object — a free state go- verned in accordance with the resolutions of its elected representatives, and offering guarantees for individual liberty of thought and speech, without which parlia- mentary government is only another name for tyranny. But their powers were not equal to their wishes. The revolutionary force in the country had been spent long before the execution of Charles ; and now that his possible successor was a youth of whom no harm was known, the Royalist flood was mounting steadily. Even the original feeling of the nation had been not against royalty, but against the particular way in which the king had acted ; and the necessity for dethronement and the supposed necessity for execution had been founded upon reasoning which had never stirred the popular heart. The nation at large did not really care for a commonwealth, did not care for religious liberty. The violent suppression of the episcopalian worship had alienated as many as had been alienated by Laud's injudicious resuscitation of obsolete forms. Most Englishmen would have been quite content if they could have got a king who would have shown some reasonable respect for the wishes of Parliament, and who would abstain from open illegality. In short, the leaders of the Commonwealth found themselves, in some sort, in the same position as that in. 5 2 Ideas which Laud found himself in 1 629. They had of the lead- an ideal of their own which they believed to Common- be really good for the nation, and they hoped wealth. ^^^ ^y habituating the nation to that which they thought best they could at last bring it to a right frame of mind. If their experiment and its failure is more interesting than Laud's experiment and its failure, it is because their ideal was far higher than his. It broke I&52. Dissolution of the Long Parliament. i6i do\vn not because they were wrong, but because the nation was not as yet ripe for acceptance of anything so good. The difference of opinion which slowly grew up between army leaders and Parliamentary leaders was only the natural result of the tacit acknow- a.d. 1652. ledgment of this rock ahead, which was none f 3- Scheme o ' lor a new the less felt because both parties shrunk Parliament. from avowing it. A free Parliament would perhaps be a Royalist Parliament. In that case, it would probably care nothing about liberty, and would certainly care no- thing about Puritanism. How was the danger to be met ? The fifty or sixty men who called themselves a Parlia- ment had their own remedy for the disease. Let there be new elections to the vacant seats, but let their own seats not be vacated. Let these old members have power to reject such new members as seemed to them unfit to serve in Parliament. There would be something that looked like a free Parliament, and yet it would not be a free Parliament at all. Those only would be admitted who were thought by the old members to be the right sort of persons to influence the nation. The scheme, in fact, was a sham, and Cromwell dis- liked shams. He had another objection equally strong. If there was one thing for which he and his soldiers had fought and bled, it was for the well's objec- sake of religious liberty, a liberty which was "°'^" real enough as far as it went, even if it was much less comprehensive than that which has been accepted in later times. No security was offered for religious liberty under the new-old Parliament. There was nothing to prevent it from abolishing all that existed at any moment it pleased. As often happens, moral repugnance came to the help of logical reasoning. Not afew of the members of Parliament were conducting themselves in such a way as to forfeit the AT. H. M 1 62 TJie Commonwealth. \(r-,?.. respect of all honest men. Against foreign foes, indeed, A D 1651 ^^ Commonwealth had been successful. The § s. The navy reorganised by Vane had cleared the Dutch war. ^ . ° ^. ' . ^ . . Navigation seas of Royalist privateers. Commercial •'^'^'" jealousy against the Dutch had mingled with the tide of political ill-feeling. In 165 1 the Navigation Act was aimed at the Dutch carrying trade, which had flourished simply because the Dutch vessels were better built and long experience had enabled them to transport goods from one country to another more cheaply than the merchants of other nations. Henceforth English vessels alone were to be allowed to import goods into England, excepting in the case of vessels belonging to the country in which the goods were produced. War was the result. In January 1652 the seizure of A.D. 1652. Dutch ships began. The two sturdy an- § 6. War tagonists were well matched. There were no with the '^ Dutch. decisive victories. But on the whole the English had the upper hand. Such a war was expensive. Royalists were forced to compound for their estates forfeited by their adoption of the king's cause. Even if this measure had tion in Par- been fairly carried out the attempt to make hament. ^^^ ^^^^ qJ- ^^ nation pay for the expenses of the whole was' more likely to create dissension than to heal it. But it was not fairly carried out. Members of Parliament took bribes to let this man and that man off more easily than those who were less able to pay. The effects of unlimited power were daily becoming more manifest. To be the son or a nephew of one of the liolders of authority was a sure passport to the public service. Forms of justice were disregarded, and the nation turned with vexation upon its so-called liberators, whose yoke was as heavy to bear as that which had been shaken off. \ i653- Dissohition of tJic Long Parliavicut. 163 Of this dissatisfaction Cromwell constituted himself the mouthpiece. His remedy for the evil which both sides dreaded was not the perpetuation of a A. D. 1653. Parliament which did not represent the nation, § 8. Crom- but the establishment of constitutional secu- "'^"'^ p'"""- rities, which would limit the powers of a freely elected Parliament. He and his officers proposed that a com- mittee formed of members of Parliament and officers should be nominated to deliberate on the requisite se- curities. On April 19 he was assured or believed himself to be assured by one of the leading members that nothing would be done in a hurry. On the morning ^ ;, ^^ of the 20th he was told that Parliament was § 9- Dissolu- , . ,, . . ,.,,.. ^ , tionofthe hurriedly passmg its own bill m dehance 01 Long Pariia- his objections. Going at once to the House, '"^"'• he waited till the decisive question was put to the vote. Then he rose. The Parliament, he said, had done well in their pains and care for the public good. But it had been stained with ' injustice, delays of justice, self-interest.' Then, when a member interrupted him, he blazed up into anger. ' Come, come ! we have had enough of this. 1 will put an end to this. It is not fit you should sit here any longer.' Calling in his soldiers, he b^de them clear the House, following the members with words of obloquy as they were driven out. ' What shall we do with this bauble?' he said, taking up the mace. 'Take it away.' Then, as if feeling the burthen of the work which he was doing pressing upon him, he sought to excuse himself, as he had sought to excuse himself after the slaughter of Drogheda. ' It is you,' he said, ' that have forced me to do this. I have sought the Lord night and day, that he would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this ^vork.' 164 The Commonwealth. 1653. Section III. — The Assembly 0/ Nominees. Every political institution which England possessed was now levelled with the ground. King, Lords, and 5 1. Views Commons had fallen, as Cromwell explained,, of the Army, bccausc they had failed to perform their trust- In every case the judgment had been delivered not by the nation but by the army. In the eyes of the army leaders a sort of Divine right attached to their actions. God, they held, ' by their victories, had so called them to look after the government of the land, and so entrusted them with the welfare of all His people here, that they were responsible for it, and might not in conscience stand still while anything was done which they thought was against the interest of the people of God.' How would this power be exercised ? Was the army to aim only at maintaining liberty of conscience ; or was- , , it also to aim at giving effect in other matters July 4. . § 2. The to the views of the few at the expense of the nominees. ^j^j^^g ^j- ^^^ many.' At least it had no thought of grasping political power itself. In the name of the General and the Council of officers, a body of 140 nominees were gathered together, called afterwards, in derision, Barebone's Parliament, from the name of one Praise-God Barebone who sat in it. The men were not mere fanatics, but they were most of them of a strongly Puritan character, many of them being foremost amongst the leading sects. In the speech which Cromwell addressed to them he dwelt at length on their qualifi- cations as godly men. It was not now to prepare a constitution that they had come together. They were to rule England simply on the grounds of their godliness. The time might come when an elective Parliament would take their place, when the people were fitted by God to elect and to be elected. ' Would all were the Lord's i653. The Assembly of Nominees. 165 people ! ' When they were, there would be no further difficulty about elections. It was CromwelFs ideal ; men were to be excluded from all part in government till they were fit to take part in it, an ideal not altogether dissimilar Proceed- from that of Charles and Strafford. It was ingsofthe destined to a rude awakening. The godly ^^^" ^' men turned out the most crotchety and unpractical set ever gathered together. They had no knowledge of practical affairs, no sympathy for the commonplace, un- ideal men who form the bulk of the community. They proposed to abolish the Court of Chancery, without substituting any other tribunal for it, and to suppress the payment of tithes without providing any other means of support for the clergy. In a few months the Assembly had become as unpopular as the Long Parliament. Law and order, it seemed, were to be offered up a sacrifice to a handful of dreamers. It would be well if the worst had now been told. Fifth Monarchy men, as they were called, seriously declared that the time had come for the reign of the saints to begin, and that they were the saints to rule. All men who had anything to lose, especially the clergy and the lawyers, turned their eyes upon Cromwell. For it was known that Cromwell's strong common sense would preserve him from the extravagances which swept away lighter heads. In the Assembly itself the party of resistance formed a strong minority. One day in December the minority got up early in the morning, came down to Dec. n. the House, and before their opponents knew nation^offiie what they were about, resigned their powers Assembly, into the hands of Cromwell. The political institutions of the nation had been swept away. But the social insti- tutions were less easily touched. At a later time, a long ■course of abuses festering in the very heart of society t66 Oliver'' s Protectorate. 1653. itself, stirred up the French nation to a revolution which left no time-honoured principle unassailed, no established aiTangement unquestioned. Centuries of fairly good government in England had naturally resulted in no such • feeling. The majority of the Assembly were doubtless right in pointing to real abuses. But they wanted to do in a few weeks hurriedly and ignorantly a work which it would take years of the most accurate knowledge and the most patient enquiry to accomplish. They forgot that it is not enough to mean well in order to do well. The nominees sank again into private life as little regretted by the nation as the Long Parliament had been regretted before them. 1 CHAPTER IX. OLIVER'S PROTECTORATE. Section I. — Olivers First Parliament. Amongst the leading officers there had, doubtless, been aknowledge of what was coming. On December 16 Dec. 16. they drew up an Instrument of Government,, difficultfes of ^ Constitution, as we should say. The idea the situation, of temporarily superseding the representa- tives of the nation was dropped. There was to be again an elected Parliament, consisting of one House. But there were two lessons taught by the history of the Long Parliament, which had not been forgotten by the officers. In the first place, a large assembly cannot pro- fitably govern directly. In the second place, there are certain rights, such as those of mental and religious freedom, which ought to be beyond the power of any government to overthrow. The time would come when these principles would enter into the constitutional habits of the nation. As yet it was difficult to teach Parlia- 1 653- Oliver's First Parliament. 167 ments the needful lesson ; and the instruction was all the more difficult because the ideas which the officers wished to prevail were only the ideas of a minority of the nation. To institute an executive Government respon- sible to Parliament would be to expose it to be called upon to become the instrument of religious tyranny in one shape or another. The executive power, therefore, was lodged in Crom- well as Lord Protector, a title which had been borne in, old days by regents who had governed in the time of a king who was a minor. He strumentof was bound in cases of importance to consult Government, the Council of State, which filled up all vacancies in its own body. The Parliament, on the other hand, had the very largest powers. It alone could grant supplies and levy taxes. If the Protector could issue temporary ordi- nances during the interval between the sessions, he was bound to lay them before Parliament when it met and to obtain its assent to their continuance. Parliament, too, could make laws whether the Protector approved of them or not. It was to meet once a year, and when it had once met, till five months were passed he could neither dissolve it nor prorogue it. The Instrument of Government was the first of hun- dreds of written constitutions which have since spread over the world, of which the American is the , • , • , , § 3- The first most conspicuous example, m which a bar- written con- rier is set up against the entire predominance s'"""°"- of any one set of official persons, by attributing strictly limited functions to each. The Protector, the Council of State, and the Parliament each had his or their recog- nised sphere of action ; yet each needed the co-operatioK of the other. In America provision is made, by the neces- sity which the president is under of leaving office at the end of four years, for an appeal to the people to decide 1 68 Oliver* s Protectorate. 1654. in the last instance between the president and the legis- lative body, if they have otherwise been unable to come to an agreement. There was no similar provision in the Instrument of Government. If the new Parliament chose to refuse taxes, it could make all government impossible excepting according to its wishes, whilst the Protector and his council would be left to carry out a policy of which they disapproved. Such a fault in the constitution was not attri- butable to any mere defect in the wording of the Instru- ment. It grew out of the necessities of the situation. There was an honourable desire on the part of the framers of the Constitution that government should _ be carried on in accordance with the wishes of the repre- sentatives of the people. There was an equally honour- able desire to maintain the actual administration of government in the hands of men of proved capacity, and to save the great principle of toleration from the shipwreck to which it was inevitably destined if it was to depend upon the votes of a popular assembly. Those who were anxious to avert a collision between the Government and the future Parliament might hope that the character of the new Government § 4. Oliver's would count for something. The nine months Government, •v^ijifjh intervened between Oliver's elevation to the protectorate and the meeting of Parliament were spent in intelligent and fruitful work. An end was put, on honourable terms, to the war with the Dutch, and England was once more at peace with the world. By a provision of the Instrument the Protector was empowered to issue ordinances valid till they had been examined by Parliament. In this way provision was made for those difficulties which had thrown an apple of discord into the midst of the Assembly of Nominees. Chancery was reformed, and not abolished; arrangements were made for securing an able and efficient clergy, without inquisi- J 6 54- Oliver s First Parliament. 169 tion into opinion, so long, at least, as that opinion was Puritan, and without throwing the clergy for its support on the voluntary offerings of a population too often steeped in ignorance and vice. If much was to be hoped for from the excellence of the Government, something, too, might be looked for from the constitution of Parliament itself. For the first time members sat in it for Scotland uuionof and Ireland, and a redistribution of seats had ^^''^^nf- made the House a fairer reflection of the wishes of the nation than it had been before. Such changes were likely to have but little influence on the special contro- versy of the day. The arrangement of immediate impor- tance was the exclusion, for twelve years, of all persons who had in any way assisted the king, that is to say, of the old Episcopalian royalists, and of the new Presbyte- rian royalists as well. It might be expected that a House elected on these terms would be willing to co -operate with the Protector. Parliament met on September 3, the day of Dunbar and Worcester. The parliamentary instinct was strong in this assembly. It at once called in ques- Sept. 3. tion the Instrument of Government. It had ^ent^'op- no wish to overthrow the Protector. But it position, demanded that the terms of the constitution should be settled by itself, and that the Protector should act under limitations imposed upon his office by Parliament. It was no merely theoretical constitutional difference. Oliver was good, and his government was good, but he owed his position to military force. If mili- tary force was to settle affairs of government § 7. Oliver's rightly to-day, it might settle them wrongly '"'erference. to-morrow. England would for ever be at the mercy of those who held the sword. Cromwell, nevertheless, had something to say for himself. If Parliament settled things 170 Olivers Protectorate. 1655. rightly to-day, it too might settle them wrongly to- morrow. If it was to do as it pleased in matters of rehgion, toleration would, at least when the twelve years of exclusion were over, be abandoned by a large majo- rity. Between these two positions there was no middle term attainable then. The only possible solution lay in the frank acknowledgment that if the nation has tho- roughly made up its mind to do wrong it cannot be prevented from doing so, and must be allowed to learn wisdom from experience. Such an acknowledgment was impossible for Oliver. He well knew that as a whole the nation cared nothing for toleration, nothing, perhaps, by this time, for Puritanism itself He had force in his hands, and he believed that its possession was a token of Divine favour. Rather than see the country drift back into misery he resolved to employ force. Yet he tried hard to veil from himself and from others the significance of his act. Parliament, he argued, had been elected under the conditions of the Instrument. Those who re- fused to acknowledge by their signatures that they would be faithful to those conditions, and would never consent to alter the government as it was settled in a single person and in Parliament, had no business there. A hundred re- fused to sign the document presented to them, and to allow the Divine right of victory any more than they were ready to allow the Divine right of hereditary kingship. If the principal conditions of the Instrument were raised above debate, the minor conditions were still A.u, 1655. assailable. In spite of the. exclusion of the § T' Disso- hundred, the House again and again main- lution. tained its view that Parliament was the cen- tral point round which the constitution turned. Again and again it voted down some part or other of the autho- rity which the Protector claimed. Oliver could bear it no longer. He was bound by the Instrument to allow i655- TJie Major-Gcncrals. ijt Parliament to sit for five months. He interpreted the article to mean five lunar months, and when those came to an end, on January 22, he dissolved Parliament. Section II. — T/ie Major-Generals. Toleration was maintained in France by the will of a Richelieu or a Mazarin, without taking root in the- instincts of the nation. Somethingof the same . ^^^^^ kind seemed likely to happen in England, tion by For though the dissolved Parliament had not attacked the principle, everyone knew that this was simply because it did not fully represent the nation. It was the assurance that some day or another a Parliament would speak the ideas which prevailed around which supplied one of the chief motives which made Cromwell shrink from entrusting the supreme power to a Parliament. Happily there was present to Englishmen the instinct or consciousness — call it what you will — that it was better for a nation to blunder on, making mistakes , „ . , , , ° „ § 2. Resist- as It goes, than to have the most excellent ance to arrangements forced upon it by external '^^'^' violence. Nor must it be forgotten that even Cromwell's toleration was but an imperfect toleration after all. He never acknowledged that the old Church worship was anything more than a superstition, to be contemptuously allowed permission here and there to gather itself inta private houses and secret meeting places without open check, but not to be permitted to step forward into the li-jht of day. An ever-abiding sense of wrong stirred up the indignation of men who had looked back with regret to the Church observances which had been familiar to them in youth. Extempore prayer offers abundant facilities for the display of folly and profanity as well as of piety, and there were thousands who con- trasted the tone and language of the new clergy with the f72 Olivers Protectorate. 1655, measured devotion of the Book of Common Prayer, alto- gether to the advantage of the latter. Church and king, the old religious forms, and the old political institutions came to be inextricably fused together in their minds, mingled with a vague and inarticulate sense of wrong being done to England by the openly avowed attempt to drive her by force when argument made no impression. There was a breadth of view and a keenness of vision in Oliver which had no parallel in Charles, and the principle of averting doctrinal tyranny by liberty was as right as the principle of averting it by ceremonial uniformity was ^\^rong. But the resolution to drive those who would not be guided was the same in both, and the result to which it led in Oliver's case was as disastrous as it had been in the case of Charles. At Salisbury the seething discontent actually burst into a flame. A gentleman named Penruddock, with a force of - . , some two hundred followers, marched into the March ii. . , . , § 3 Penrud- City, and seized the judges who had just come oc-srising. down for the assizes. It was madness in the face of the army, and the insurgents were soon seized and the movement suppressed. Ohver well knew that if the rising was nothing in itself it was a symptom of a danger- ous hostility to his government, widely spread through the country. Oliver took instant measures of repression. He divided England into ten military districts. Over each ^, . he set a Major-General, with strict military §4- Major- J • J T,, Generals ap- powers for preservmg order. The expenses pointed. ^fjQxQ. to be paid by the Royalists, whose disaffection seemed to him to have made the ar- rangement necessar)'. Ten per cent, was levied upon their incomes, by the Protector's orders. Military rule was developing itself more clearly every day. Everywhere soldiers were at hand, enforcing obedience. f 65 5- TJie Major- Generals. 1 7 3 Obstacles were placed in the way of social meetings, at which plans against the Government might be discussed. Yet if the power of the Protector rested upon force, it was not exercised in any violent way. No compulsion was used, beyond that which the exigencies of the case seemed to demand. Cruelty, and insult, usually more provoking than cruelty, were sedulously avoided. Leniency, wher- ever leniency was possible, was the rule of the Protector's action, and if there were many who were exasperated by the mode in which resistance was suppressed and by the trammels to which their daily life was subjected, there were others who recognised the good intentions of the Go- vernment, and were thankful to the Protector for the sub- stantial justice which he tried to afford to all, when once the money which he exacted had been paid. The disposi- tion to resist a power based upon the possession of the sword was balanced by a disposition to submit to a power which used its authority on the whole so wisely and so well. In one direction Oliver departed from his policy of toleration. He had made up his mind that the Common Prayer Book was the rallying point of disaf- fection. On November he issued orders to ^°^- =^7- § 5. Episco- prohibit Its use. He would deal with the palianwor- worship of the English Church as the Eng- preLed!'" lish Church had dealt with the older forms of the Mass. It is true that the proclamation was not rigorously enforced, and that zealous congregations con- tinued to meet in private. ' I went to London,' wrote Evelyn, a country gentleman of studious and literary tastes, ' to receive the blessed Sacrament, the first time the Church of England was reduced to a chamber and conventicle, so sharp was the persecution.' A few week? later he notes that ' there was now nothing practical preached or that pressed reformation of life, but high and speculative points and strains that few understood 174 Olivers Protectorate. 1655. Avhich left people very ignorant and of no steady principles, the source of all our sects and divisions, for there was much envy and uncharity in the world ; God of his mercy amend it ! ' The pure doctrine of toleration gave way to the doctrine that religious opinions were to be tolerated just so far as they respected the authority of the State. Men who, springing from the various sects into which the force of Puritanism was splitting up, questioned in any way the authority of the State, were silenced or imprisoned. The principles which prevailed in Oliver's domestic government gave the tone to his foreign policy. In the § 6. Quarrel great contcst which was going on between with Spain. France and Spain, he saw a quarrel between a tolerant and an intolerant nation. With Spain he had a quarrel of his own. Her claim to exclude English trade and colonisation from America was as strongly maintained as ever. When Cromwell asked for freedom of trade in the Spanish colonies, and for the exemption of English merchants and sailors from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, the Spanish ambassador flatly rejected his demand. ' It is to ask,' he said, ' for my master's two eyes.' Oliver fired up into indignation. Already he had sent out Penn and Venables to the West Indies to seize San Domingo in reprisal for the seizure by Spain of English islands in the West Indies, and had sent Blake, the great sea-captain, into the Mediterranean to demand reparation from the Algiers and Tunis pirates who had been preying upon English commerce. He now offered to make alliance with France. The treaty with France received a sudden check. News reached England that the Duke of massacre in Savoy had been persecuting his Vaudois Piedmont. subjects, whose Protestantism reached back to an earUer date than the Reformation. Troops had i655- The Major-Gciicrals. 175 been sent into the valleys where they lived, those who escaped from the sword were conveyed away as prisoners, or were driven into the snow-clad mountains to perish miserably of cold and hunger. Milton's prayer rose to heaven : — Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not : in thy book record their groans, Wlio were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold. Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes .ww O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant, that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe. Milton's prayer remained unanswered. The saints remained unavenged. Italy remained unconverted. But Cromwell took good care that the barbarity should not be repeated. France was plainly told that if it wished for the English alliance this persecution must stop. The King of France put a pressure on the Duke of Savoy, and liberty of worship was conceded to the Vaudois. The war with Spain, which was the immediate con- sequence, was conducted with singular courage and ability. If Penn and Venables failed at San 5 g y^;^^ Domingo, they secured Jamaica. Blake ^^"'^ Spain, dashed into Tunis harbour and burned the pirate vessels in spite of the protection of the forts. On his return he was ordered to sail about the coast of Spain, to pounce, if possible, upon the fleet which brought home to Europe the yearly produce of the American silver mines, and to do what mischief he could. For some time the results were not apparent ; but Blake held his own at sea, and the Spanish fleet dared not come out to meet him. 1/6 Oliver's Protectorate. 1656, Section III. — Oliver's Second Parliament. War is expensive, and though Oliver had hitherto levied taxes by his own unsupported authority, a deficit A.D. 1656. of ^8oo,030 made him anxious to obtain Par- ^i^The new li^^mentary assent to the fresh burden w^hich Parliament. it would be necessary to lay upon the nation. Though he could dispense with Parliaments as readily as Charles, he had not Charles's indifference to the weakness caused by the want of Parliamentary support. He knew how hard the work was which he had been set to do, and knowing as he did that he could not save the nation, — only help the nation to save itself, — he turned wistfully, half wearily, in his thoughts, to that great representative body whose co-operation he desired. Once more he summoned a Parliament. On September 17, 1656, he opened the session with a speech, in which he laid bare his thoughts about England. He defended the war against § 2. Ohver-s ^-jrjj ,_• r- opening Spam, defended too his promptness of action speech. jj^ Suppressing domestic broils. But it was when he came to speak of his principles of action that his heart was revealed. ' Our practice,' he said, ' since the last Parliament hath been, to let all this nation see that whatever pretensions to religion would continue quiet, peaceable, they should enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves ; and not to make religion a pretence for arms and blood.' After all that had passed, it was impossible for Oliver to look with equal eyes upon the whole range of Christian life and thought. To him the 'Cavalier interest' was but 'the badge and character of countenancing profaneness, disorder, an^l wickedness in all places, and whatever is most of km to these and what is Popery, and with the profane 1656. Oliver s Second Parliameiit. 177 nobility of this nation.' The old attacks upon Puri- tanism were bitterly remembered — * In my conscience it was a shame to be a Christian, within these fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years, in this nation. It was a shame, it was a reproach to a man ; and the badge of Puritan was put upon it.' Then followed words of warn- ing — ' Make it a shame to see men bold in sin and profaneness, and God will bless you. You will be a blessing to the nation ; and by this will be more repairs of breaches than by anything in the world. Truly these things do respect the souls of men, and the spirits, — which are the men. The mind is the man ! If that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat ; if not, I would fain see what difference there is betwixt him and a beast. He hath only some activity to do some more mischief The whole spirit of Puritanism lay in these words. Milton's ' Comus ' was there translated into action. The weakness of Puritanism was doubtless there too, its incapacity to conceive that men of another stamp might grow in spiritual life in quite another way, and its con- sequent failure to appreciate the motives by which large numbers of Englishmen had been trained to virtue by the influence of habitual devotion in its ceremonial form. It was not to such that Oliver spoke. They were ex- cluded from his Parliament, and others were excluded too. About a hundred, one-fourth of the assembly, , ^ , /• 1 1 ■ T , § 3- Exclu- were refused admittance. It was not to know sion of mem- the nation's mind that Oliver had called this ''^'^' Parliament, but to find amongst the nation those who would support him in carrying out his ideal of government. Oliver's second Parhament thus purified was more disposed to support him than his first had . •o c 1 u-i- ^5 4- Capture ^en. Before long, news came which must of a Spanish have gone far to strengthen his authority. ^''^'^' Stayner, with part of Blake's fleet, had fallen in with M. H. N 178 Oliver's Protectorate. 1657. the Spanish treasure ships and had captured the costly prize. Before long, thirty-eight waggons laden with Spanish silver rolled through the streets of London to the Tower. The relations between Protector and Parliament were smooth enough. Money was voted, and Oliver in A.D 1657. return withdrew the Major-Generals. Then §T Nay- came a plot, by no means the first, for the ler'scase. murder of the Protector, the detection of which roused the Parliament to a sense of the insecurity of the government, all resting on the single life of Oliver. The Protector, on his part, had reasons for desiring a change. Parliament had been doing things which re- newed his old dread of the despotism of a single House. One James Nayler, a mad or half-mad fanatic, had al- lowed himself to be worshipped at Bristol and in the West of England. Parliament took up the case, ordered him to be whipped, branded, bored through the tongue, and so forth. Oliver interfered with protest. But his legal power was slight, and he was likely to welcome any change which would stop a representative assembly from assuming the functions of a judge. After long debate, an amended constitution was voted by Parliament. It is not strange if the remedy for the , ^ T-u T, various evils which were dreaded was sought § 6. The Pe- . ° tition and in some rctum to the Imes of the old Consti- ' vice. tution. There was to be a second House to revise the decisions of that which would be once more the House of Commons. The Council of State went into the old subordinate position of the Privy Council, and though the exclusion of the Royalists was maintained, the power of excluding from either House members who had been duly elected was taken from the Protector. Oliver had the right of naming his own successor, and a fixed and per nnanent sum was granted to him for the maintenance of the 165 7- Oliver's Second Parliamefit. 179 army and navy. Toleration for all peaceable Christians was incorporated with the Constitution, but from this toleration Episcopalians and Roman Catholics were excluded. Thus far the acknowledged difficulties of the political situation had led to a drawing back towards the old con- stitutional forms. A new House of Lords ^ would serve as a check upon the despotic fuses the tendencies of the House of Commons. The '" ^ ° '"°' Petition and Advice went farther still. It revived the kingly office and offered the title to Oliver. After some consideration he declined the title, whilst he accepted the remainder of the Petition and Advice. On June 26 Oliver was installed more solemnly than before as Pro- tector, and the session came to an end. The resistance of the army and of the old enemies of Charles's kingship had doubtless the very greatest weight in Oliver's determination to refuse the kingly 5 g ■wisdom title. But at the bottom there would have of the refusal. been an incongruity in his assumption of the time- honoured name which could not fail to act as a deterrent. A king owed his authority to ancient tradition, handed down from former generations. Oliver owed his autho- rity to his personal qualities, qualities in which his suc- cessor would undoubtedly be far behind him. To call him a king was to make him ridiculous by bringing into men's minds a set of ideas quite different from those which would naturally apply to his real position. If this was true of Oliver's kingship, was not it also true of the new Lords ? When Parliament met again on January 20, the composition of the House was ^ ^ ^g g changed in two ways. Oliver's chief sup- Jan^ 20. porters had been removed to the House of lutionof Lords, and the excluded members were, by the ^^'■•'^^■"e"'- terms of the constitution, re-admitted. The result was a i8o Oliver's Protectorate. 165S. House which called in question all that had been done in the preceding session. Throwing themselves upon their position as elected representatives of the nation, they claimed to speak in its name. They rejected the new House of Lords. If they were left alone it would not be long before they rejected the Protector as well. On February 4, after a speech of mingled sadness and in- dignation, Oliver dissolved his second Parliament, as he had dissolved his first. 'The Lord,' he said, 'judge between me and you.' Section IV. — Death of Oliver. As FAR as the present moment was concerned Oliver was doubtless in the right. The pretensions of the Lower ^,. , House to speak in the name of the English 5 I. Olivers . ^ . . ° system nation were quite as ridiculous as the pre- oome . tensions of the Upper House to drape itself in the robes of the House of Lords. But in the long run the deficiency in the representative character of all merely Puritan Parliaments would be the ruin of all that either party was striving to establish. On one occasion Oliver had compared himself to a constable set to keep order. Higher than that he could not rise. There is something mournful in his last appeal. ' I can say in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under any woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertaken such a government as this.' Very noble was the ideal which he set before them. To maintain right and justice, to take care that the people of God, as he termed them, were not op- pressed, to maintain, with any limitations, religious liberty, was a high work. But the nation, as a nation, wanted other things than these. It wanted, as Oliver would have said, to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. The 1658. Death of Oliver. 181 Puritan rule was too strict, too little regardful of human weaknesses, too firmly persuaded that there was no truth and no godliness outside its own conceptions, to impose itself by force for ever upon a great nation. It is quite true that the highest Puritan minds were not morose, or disregardful of the lighter charms of life. But there was a seriousness in them which deepened in lesser men into congenial sourness. Men missed the cakes and ale, the dance round the maypole, the open theatre, and all the various modes of enjoyment which they had loved well if not always wisely. They turned savagely upon the hypocrisy which waits like a dark shadow upon religious fervour, and upon the frequent use of cant phrases as a substitute for the devotion of the heart. Olivers Parlia- ments, Oliver himself, had struck no root into the na- tional mind. His House of Lords, his House of Com- mons, were but a mockery. If he was himself no mockery it was because his feet were firmly planted elsewhere than on the nation. His strength lay in the army, and the army was a grim reality. His last days were days of external victory and glory. In 1657 six thousand English troops had taken part with France in her war against Spain. In 1658 ^^ Progress they had shared in the victory of the Dunes, of the war. and had called forth the warmest admiration of the French generals by their discipline and prowess. Dun- kirk was captured and surrendered to Oliver as the price of his assistance. But at home the Protector had difficulties enough. Many of his old companions looked sourly upon him. There were plots to murder him, plots to bring back the king, plots to establish a common- wealth. Oliver kept them all down with a tight hand. In the summer there was talk again of another Parliament. Doubtless it would but have ended in the same way as the former ones. No assembly would ever be brought to t82 diverts Protectorate. 1658, acknowledge that the power of the sword might fairly be thrown into the balance of its deliberations. No circum- stances would bring the Protector to acknowledge that an assembly could wisely be entrusted with irresponsible government. Oliver was spared the years of weariness which seemed to lie before him. His work, full of instruction as it was for the generations to come, had been accom- § 3. Oliver's plished as far as that generation was con- sickness. cemed. On August 6 he lost his favourite daughter. Though he was but fifty-nine, his health, worn by long care and anxiety, was beginning to fail. On the 2 1 St a change for the worse took place. There were men in England who knew what his value was. ' Prayers abun- dantly and incessantly poured forth on his behalf, both publicly and privately, as was observed, in a more than ordinary way.' It was all in vain. For days he lay on his bed of sickness, pouring out his soul to God. There were times when old doubts stole over his mind. * It is a fearful thing,' he repeated again and again, ' to fall into the hands of the living God.' Then the clouds would pass away in the light of self-forgetfulness. * All the promises of God are in Him, yea, and in Him, Amen, to the glory of God by us, by us in Jesus Christ.' ' The Lord hath filled me with as much assurance of his pardon and his love as my soul can hold. I think I am the poorest wretch that lives ; but I love God ; or rather am beloved of God. I am a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, through Christ that strengtheneth me,' On August 30 a mighty storm swept over England. The devil, said the cavaliers, was fetching home the soul of the tyrant. Oliver little recked of their Sept. 3. . -iiii jTT- §4. Oliver's saymgs now. The wmds howled around. His ' ■ voice found utterance in one last prayer of faith : ' Lord,' he cried, ' though I am a miserable and 1658. Death of Ollva'. 183 wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I will, come to Thee, for thy people. Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service ; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do good to them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love ; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation ; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on Thy instruments, to de- pend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short prayer : even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen.' For three more days Oliver lingered on. September 3 came — the day of Dunbar and Worcester. In the afternoon the brave spirit passed away to the rest which it had never known upon earth. CHAPTER X. END OF THE REVOLUTION Section I. — Anarchy. With Oliver's death the Puritan Revolution had ful- filled its appointed destiny. Starting from a 51 Review double origin — the political desire to make the °f ''^^ p^^'- will of the nation paramount over the will of the Court, and the religious desire to keep Protestantism pure from the Laudian innovations — the Long Parliament had been completely successful in overpowering the king. But rl4 End ef the Rev«lntien. 1*58. the existence of differences of religious opinion in the ranks of the Long Parhament itself and in its most at- tached followers gave rise to new difficulties. If things had been left to take their natural course nothing would have been heard of toleration for many a long year. The fact that those who wielded the sword stood in need of toleration compelled the nation to listen to their claims. The permission for the free development of diversity of religious opinion was extorted by force and not conceded to reason. It would be in the highest degree unjust to compare Cromwell with Richelieu. The great Protector never sat down in calm satisfaction that the nation was as clay in the hands of a potter. He yearned for co- operation, for life in all its forms, religious and political. The early history of the English people had not been wasted upon him. He was of the race which had looked up to Simon de Montfort and Edward I., not of the race which had looked up to Charles V. and Lewis XII. For all that he was aiming at the impossible. He had placed his standard too high for those who lived with him to follow. The day would come when the nation would appreciate his greatness. For the time it resolutely re- fused to be transformed after his ideal. Oliver's Protectorate had been founded on the sym- pathies of the army, and of the lawyers and statesmen, who A.D. 1658. saw nothing but tyranny and confusion in the Ld's^ro- predominance of a single House of Parlia- tectorate. nient. The lawyers and statesmen gathered round his son Richard, named by Oliver on his deathbed as his successor. On Jan. 27, 1659, a new Parliament met round the new Protector. Richard, peaceable and sluggish, was the very man to be moulded to the wishes of the lawyers and the states- men. But the army knew him not. His father had led them in peace and war, had watched with them under the heights of Dunbar, had triumphed with them within the walls of Worcester. Their dissatisfac- tion was directed not agamst the rrotecto- April 22. rate system or the Parliamentary system, but ment^k-'*" against the authority of the civil power. They solved by , , , \ , '^ . the army. demanded a control over the appomtment of officers, and to choose Fleetwood, Oliver's son-in- law, as their general. Parliament of course upheld the authority of the civil power over the army. On April 22 the soldiers dissolved the Parliament and abolished the Protectorate. Richard Cromwell made no resistance, and his father's whole political system was scattered toSj the winds. fi The soldiers did not venture to govern Englar\.d inJ >^ their own name. A few of those members of the House of Commons who had sat to the end of the May 7. Long Parliament when it was expelled in LongParlia- 1653 were still to be found in London. The ment again. poor remains of a once powerful assembly — the Rump, as men called them in derision — took their seats once more under the protection of the army. They were but forty-two in number. Lenthall was replaced in the chair. No legitimist king ever showed himself more tenacious of his rights than they. They took a high tone with the officers, told them ' that the Parliament expected faithful- ness and obedience to the Parliament and Common- wealth,' spoke of all acts done under Oliver's orders as legally invalid, and e.\pressed a resolution to hold all persons who had collected taxes for the Protector as re- sponsible for their payment afresh. The officers were naturally indignant. ' I know not,' said Lambert, * why they should not be at our mercy as well as we at theirs.' The inevitable conflict was postponed for a time by a Royalist insurrection. The army had not yet lost its vigour. The rebellion was beaten down by Lambert at 1 86 End »f the Rev»luti»n. 165^. Winnington Bridge. The officers came back with high § s. The re- demands, which the Parliament refused to ikme'lit'di^^- ?rant. As the members arrived at West- persed. minster, on October 13, they found the ap- proaches guarded by troops, who refused them admission to the House. ' Do you not know me ? ' said Lenthall. ' If you had been with us at Winnington Bridge,' was the answer, ' we should have known you.' The rough words painted the situation. It was no longer the army demanding political power because it §6. Military 'was wiser and more thoughtful than other insolence. classes. It was the contempt of the military element for the civilian. Fortunately for the world no army,. however excellently trained and disciplined, can maintain itself at the head of a nation on such terms as these. Armies are composed of men after all, and they will not cling together unless there be some mind to direct them or some common object to pursue. Without Oliver even that army was bound together but by a rope of sand. All that it had to ask was that it should not be subject to any civil authority. Even in its own ranks there were found those who shrunk from defying their countrjTTien on such ground. The garrison of Portsmouth declared against the officers in London. In London itself the soldiers discovered that they had been less regularlypaid since their officers had taken the government into their own hands. On Dec. 24 they once more drew Lenthall from his retire- ment. On the 26th the Rump was brought back for a second restoration to power, and resumed its sittings at Westminster as if nothing had happened to ruffle its serenity. i66o. The Restoration. 187 Section II. — The Restoration. Men who had hitherto shown little inclination to fa- vour the Royal cause were growing sick of being subject to the caprices of a domineering soldiery. 5 ,_ Monk Nor was this feeling unknown in the ranks •" Scotland. of the army itself. George Monk, who commanded the English forces in Scotland, was a cool, taciturn man, without passion or enthusiasm. He had served the king in the early part of the civil war, and had then passed over to the side of the Parliament. Blind to the higher side of Oliver's nature, he had served him faithfully in his effort to maintain order, and he knew, as neither Lam- bert nor Fleetwood seemed to know, that the government of a great kingdom cannot be carried on as a mere appen- dage to the military duties of a commander-in-chief As long as Richard Cromwell retained his authority, Monk seconded him loyally. ' Richard Cromwell,' he afterwards said, ' forsook himself, else had I never failed my promise to his father or regard to his memory.' As soon as Monk heard that the officers had dissolved Richard's government he prepared for action. Gathering a Convention of the Scottish Estates, he ob- a.d. 1660. tained from them a vote of money. On New marc?into Year's Day, 1660, he crossed the Border. On England. Jan. 1 1 he was met by Fairfax at York, who brought with him all the weight of his unstained name and his high military reputation. In the negotiations which followed Monk showed a great dislike of any change which would threaten the material and spiritual interests which had grown up since the beginning of the civil war. He objected to the return to Parliament of the Presbyterian members excluded by Pride's Purge, and to the return of the king, lis End of the Revolution. 1660. as both would be animated by hostility to those who had risen under the existing order of things. On Feb. 3 Monk entered London. Whatever he might think about the king^s return, he had no en- §3. Monk thusiasm in his composition. He was not m London. ^^iQ man to take an active part against a possible government, and he refused to take an oath of abjuration of the House of Stuart. He wished first, he said, to know the grounds on which it was tendered to him. Matters were soon brought to a crisis by a resolu- tion taken on Feb. 8 by the City of London. They de- clared that, as no members for the City were amongst the forty-two who were governing England by so strange a title, they would pay no taxes. Taxation must follow re- presentation. Monk was ordered to suppress the resist- ance. Marching into the City, he enforced his will for a moment upon the citizens. But the sight of London spurning the yoke of the Rump convinced him, if he was not convinced before, that, whatever else happened, the Rump could not continue to give laws to England. Monk had entered the City on the loth. In the even- ing he called a council of his officers, and obtained their , T-. I approbation to a letter which he had written §4. Declares '^^ for a free to the House, in which he demanded the issue ar lamen . of writs to fill up the vacant seats within eight days, and a dissolution by May 6. Next morning the news was received with enthusiasm in the City. That night every street was ablaze with bonfires. That there might be no mistake about the meaning of the display, rumps were roasted over the fires and carried about the streets in derision. The writs for fresh elections were not issued. Ano- March i6. thcr way of coercing the Rump was found, the^ong"*^ On February 26 the excluded Presbyterian Parliament. members took their seats. The majority passed at once to their side. A dissolution, to be fol- i66o. The Restoration. 1 89 lowed by new elections, was voted without further diffi- culty. On March 16 the Long Parliament came by its own act to its unhonoured end. The Restoration was now a foregone conclusion. The one predominant feeling of Englishmen was to escape from the rule of the soldiers ; and every ^ recently-introduced form of civil government Restoration having been alike discredited, it was natural "^'^^s^^'^- to turn back to that form under which the nation had flourished for centuries, and which had fallen rather from the personal faults of the last king than from the in- herent vices of the system. The Declaration of Breda converted the chances of the Restoration into a certainty. In this celebrated address Charles offered a general pardon to April 14. all who were not specially excepted by Par- clarldon^V liament. The material interests which had Breda, grown up during the Revolution were placed in safety by a clause assuring the retention of confiscated estates by their actual holders. Spiritual interests were not forgotten. The Cromwellian doctrine that no man should be called in question for differences of opinion so long as he did not disturb the peace of the kingdom was embodied in the manifesto of the Restoration. On April 14 the new Parliament met. It had been freely chosen without regard for the old Royalist dis- qualifications, which the Rump, by its last 58 The Res- act, had attempted to maintain. The king toration. was at once recalled. On May 25 Charles landed at Dover, amidst applauding crowds. On the 29th, the day of his birth, he entered London. The soldiers of the Parliamentary army were drawn up on Blackheath to receive him. With their leaders divided their power was gone, and they submitted to be disbanded and to leave the care of the commonwealth to others. 1 90 End of the Revolution. 1660. Section III. — The Ecclesiastical Settlement of the Restoration. The Government, as established by the Restoration, attempted to give effect to the poHtical principles adopted in 1641. In recalling Charles Parliament and Parha- had resolved that the government of Eng- "'^"'" land consisted of King, Lords, and Com- mons. Not one of these constituent parts was to act in total independence of the other. The objections raised by Oliver against an irresponsible House of Commons were admitted as valid by the statesmen of the Resto- ration. Oliver's principle of religious toleration fared worse. Enshrined in the Declaration of Breda, it had no place as yet in the hearts of the English people. In 6 2. No reh- . i . , . , . , f f . gious tole- their mmds it was connected with the domina- ration. ^^^^ ^^ ^^ army and with the rude harangues of uneducated and fanatical preachers. The Bishops were re-established, and the Common Prayer-book was brought back with general satisfaction. Penalties the .lost severe were placed upon those who ventured to use any other form of worship. If the king did not throw himself heart and soul into the repression as his father had done, he offered no resistance. Never had the cause of religious liberty seemed more hopeless. Laud and Charles I. might be resisted. But who should resist a persecuting nation ? In this apparent hopelessness lay the brightest hopes for the future. The Laudian system had been main- tained by the authority of the few over the 43. Hopes ' ^ for the many. The Puritan system had been main- uture. tained by the armed strength of the few over the many. The rule of a minority must ever be watchful, f66o-5. TJie Ecclesiastical Settlement. 191 ever on its guard against hidden dangers, ever keeping the hand upon the bridle. The rule of the many brings with it a feeling of security. For a few years after the Restoration the dread of a possible rising of Oliver's old soldiers was too keen to make it likely that the reins would soon be i56o_5 loosely held. The Cavalier Parliament — the §4-. Acts Long Parliament of the Restoration, as it is Nonconfor- sometimes called — passed act after act ™'"^' against those Puritans who refused to conform to the Established Church. On August 24, 1662, the Noncon- formist clergy were expelled from their livings. In 1664 the Conventicle Act visited with fine, imprisonment, or transportation, all persons meeting together for religious purposes without public authority. In 1665 the Five Mile Act forbade the ejected ministers to live within five miles of any corporate town, or to keep schools where the young might be bred up in their principles. One notable change in language testifies to the feeling raised by the irresistible power of a Parliamentary perse- cution. The names of Puritan and Noncon- formist begin to drop out of sight. The formistTand" name of Dissenter begins to be heard. The Dissenters. Nonconformist in the reign of Charles I. claimed to take his place within the Church system, and to modify it as far as he was able. The Dissenter of the reign of Charles II. was contented to stand outside it, to leave the Church of the nation to go on its own way, whilst pleading for toleration for the minority which differed from the dominant religion. No doubt some time would elapse before this change of position was generally under- stood; but there could be little doubt that, when once it was understood, the way to toleration would become comparatively smooth. Men who would hesitate to yield to their opponents a vantage ground from which to work 192 End of the Revolution. 1661. a change in the religion of the country, would not be likely to be very stubborn in refusing to the Dissenters rights which would not in any way affect their own Church. Many years, however, must elapse before the change in the ecclesiastical position of the Dissenters could be A.D. 1661. felt or understood. At present the estrange- Coiroration "lent caused by the memory of the wrongs Act. done and suffered in the religious quarrel was embittered by a political difference. The governing classes of the nation had rallied to the doctrine of non- resistance; that is to say, to the doctrine that under no conceivable circumstances was forcible resistance to the king permissible. The resolution of Parliament to main- tain this doctrine had found expression in the Corpora- tion Act, passed in 1661, before the ecclesiastical measures of repression had come into existence. By that Act, all bearers of office in corporate towns were compelled to take ' the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England,' to renounce the Covenant, and that ' traitorous position of the legality of taking arms by the king's authority against himself or his officers.' If Parliament had been content to ask the Dissenters to promise to abstain from taking anns against the § 7. The Crown, it is probable that few would have doctrine of refused compliance. It would have seemed non-resist- ^ ance. hardly worth while to forsake the position of loyal subjects, when the chances of successful resistance had become so extremely slight, and when past resist- ance had led to consequences so distasteful to most of those from whom it had proceeded. But those who still cherished the memories of Marston Moor and Naseby could but, as honest men, give an unqualified contra- diction to the doctrine that any human person was placed 1667. The Ecclesiastical Settlement. 193 entirely above the control of his fellow-men. Those who refused to make the required declaration handed down to following generations the great principle that no position is so exalted as to render him who occupies it entirely irresponsible. But in the midst of the exuberant loyalty around them they became for the time outcasts from the common life of the nation. The reaction against Puritanism showed itself in other ways than in the invention of new political and ecclesias- tical watchwords. Licentiousness came into , ,^ A.D. 1667. fashion. In Charles II. Comus seemed to have §8. 'Para- seated himself upon the throne of England. The poet of Comus, old and blind, poured forth the great epic of Puritanism, ' Paradise Lost,' in which the interest is concentrated not, as in the Iliad, upon warring armies ; or, as in the Odyssey, upon the fortunes and achievements of a hero ; or, as in the ^neid, on the foundation of an empire ; but on the war waged by heavenly and infernal powers fcjr the maintenance or destruction of the purity of a single hu- man soul. Once more he, who in his youth had declared that outward beauty was but the expression of internal purity, stepped forward to develope at yet greater length his high theme, and to adjure men by the example of their first ancestor to guard the fortress of their purity against the assaults of temptation. Equally distinctive with the Puritanism of ' Paradise Lost' is the Puritanism of 'Paradise Regained.' The in- stinct of Christendom has fixed upon the Saviour's death upon the cross as the central point of the a.d. 1671. work of redemption. There have been those li^gRe-"" who have dwelt upon the physical suffering, gained.' upon the crown of thorns, the lacerated body. There have heen those who have dwelt upon the sacrifice of the will ', question of the liability of his goods to tonnage and pouncl- age, 66, 67 Root and Branch Bill, the, 116 Roundway Down, success of the Royalists at, 130 Rupert, Prince, leads the cavalry at Edgehill, 127 ; fights at Marston Moor, 138 ST. Domingo, failure of Penn and Venables at, 175 Salisbury, Royalist disturbances at, 172 Samson Agonistes, the, 195 Savoy, Duke of, massacres the Vau- dois, 174 Scotch, the decision of the judges on their naturalisation, 17 Scotland, Episcopacy in, 102 ; Prayer Book introduced into, 103 ; General Assembly of, 104 ; resis- tance to the king in, 105 ; charac- STA ter of the movement in, 106 ; «Sit of the king to, 119 ; forms a league with England, 131 ; takes part against the king, 138 ; takes the king's part, 150 ; coronation of Charles II. in, 157; members from sit in Cromwell's Parlia- ments, 169 Scottish Army, the, encamps at Dunse Law, 107 ; invades Eng- land, no ; returns to Scotland, 114 ; crosses the border and fights at Marston Moor, 138 ; receives the king after the battle of Naseby, 144 ; delivers up the king, 146 ; prepares to invade England under Hamilton, 150 ; is defeated at Preston, 151 ; is defeated at Dun- bar, 158 ; is defeated at Worcester, Self-denying ordinance, 140 Separatists, congregation of, at Leyden, 82 ; emigrate to America, 83 Shakespeare, his moral teaching, 6 , character of his loyally, 11 ; his views on revolutions, 148 Sheldon, Gilbert, a visitor at Great Tew, 117 Sherfield, Henry, sentenced in the Star Chamber, 77 Ship-money levied, 91 ; raised from the inland counties, 92 ; declared legal by the judges, 93, 94 ; de- clared illegal by Act of Parlia- ment, 114 Sibbes, Richard, character of his Puritanism, 80 ; his attachment to the Church, 81 Skippon leads the forces of the city to Tumham Green, 128 Somerset, Earl of, his rise and fall, 25 Somersetshire, dedication feasts in, 85 Spain makes peace with France, 4 ; its negotiations with England, 23 ; distrust of, in the House of Com- mons, 37 ; warlike tendencies in England against, 44 ; war waged against, 51 ; alliance directed against, 52 ; peace with, 91 ; Cromwell's quarrel with, 174 ; pro- gress of the war with, 175, 177, 181 Star Chamber, Court of, its rise, 9 , its character, 10 ; sentence of^ Index. 215 STA Against Chambers, 69 ; against Leighton and Sherfield, 77 ; against Prj-nne.SS; against Prynne, Bastwick, Burton, 94 ; abolished by Act of Parliament, 114 Stayner captures a Spanish fleet, 177 Strafford, Earl of, advises the sum- moning of the Short Parliament, 108 ; joins Charles in the north, no; impeached, in; Bill of Attamder against, 112; execution of, 113 Strode, William, impeachment of, 122 TEST Act, the, 202 Thirty Years' War, outbreak of, 29 ' Thorough,' Laud's system of, 89 Tilly invades the Palatinate, 37 Toleration Act, the, 203 Tonnage and poundage, the king's right to raise, disputed, 61 Triple Alliance, the, 201 Tudor, House of, its strong govern- ment, 8 Tumham Green, the City forces at, 128 T TLSTER colonised, 1 VALENTINE, Benjamin, holds the Speaker in his chair, 68 Vane, Sir Henry, the younger, brings fresh evidence against Strafford, in; his political ideas, IS9 . Vaudois, persecuted by the Duke of YOR Savoy, 174 ; Milton's sonnet on, 175 Venables takes part in Penn's ex- pedition to the West Indies, 174 Vemey, Sir Edmund, his conversa- tion with Hyde, 126 Vervins, peace of, 4 Virginia, colonisation of, 83 "X^TALES, outbreak of war in, Wentworth, Sir Tliomas, his part in Charles's third Parliament, 57,; contrasted with Eliot, 58; becomes President of the North, 76 : be- comes Lord Deputy of Ireland, 98 ; his reforms, 100 ; proposes fo colonise Connaught, loi ; created Earl of Strafford, 108 ; see Straf- ford, Earl of West Indies, expedition sent by Cromwell to, 174 Westminster Assembly, the, 131 Weston, Lord Treasurer, character of his policy, 74 ; created Earl of Portland, 90 ; see Portland, Earl of Wexford taken by Cromwell, 156 Wimbledon, Viscount, leads the ex- pedition to Cadiz, 51 Winceby, fight at, 138 Winnington Bridge, defeat of the Royalists at, 185 Winthrop John, settles in Massa- chusetts, 83 ; changes the name of Hue's Cross, 84 Worcester, battle of, 159 YORK, besieged by the Parlia- mentary army, 138 LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISVVOODE AND CO., NEW-STKEET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET La 3 1210 00014 8138 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 311 613 2