ance to their authority, imposing on them the et cætera oath* as it was named, and regulating the position of the communion table and so forth, and finally granting the king a benevolence of four shillings in the pound for six years.

The dissolution was a matter of exultation to Pym and his friends, for they knew that the king must soon call another parliament. Oliver St. John said to Hyde, “that all was well, and that it would be worse before it could be better, and that this parliament could never have done what was necessary to be done." Their communications with the Scottish agents now became more frequent, and their future tactics were arranged.

Preparations for invading Scotland were now made; the voluntary loan produced 300,000l.; the counties were required to supply each a certain proportion of men, provide them with coat- and conduct-money, and furnish horses. It was proposed to invade Scotland with 20,000 men from England and 10,000 men from Ireland, while Hamilton should pour down with 10,000 more from the Highlands. The want of funds, however, and the activity of the covenanters, frustrated this plan. Charles gave the chief command of his army to the earl of Northumberland, but that nobleman falling sick he took it himself; Strafford was lieutenant-general: lord Conway, who was a military man, commanded the cavalry.

Conway marched with the first troops that were levied into Northumberland. The Scottish army of 26,000 men was encamped at Dunse, and on the 12th of August, at the desire, as they thought, of their English friends†, they crossed the Tweed, and entered England. Conway pre

*The oath was to maintain the church as it was. One of the clauses was, "Nor give consent to alter the government of this church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c."

+ Lord Savile wrote them a letter to which he forged the signatures of some of the leading opposition peers inviting them to enter England.

1640.]

DESPOTISM OF CHARLES.

367

pared to dispute the passage of the Tyne at Newburn, but it was forced by the Scots, who speedily became masters of the two northern counties, which being the coal counties, enabled them to distress the city of London whenever they pleased. At the same time they forced the inhabitants to pay them 56007. a-week, and they seized the property of the clergy and the catholics.

The king was now at York with an ill-affected army. He had summoned a great council of the peers to meet him there on the 24th of September, and he proposed to lay before it the petition which the Scots now sent him; he had also received a petition subscribed by twelve peers, and another signed by ten thousand citizens of London, praying him to call a parliament, a measure which his council also advised. Accordingly, when the great council met he announced his intention of calling a parliament for the 3rd of November, and sixteen peers then proceeded to Ripon to negotiate with the Scots. The treaty was soon transferred to London, and it was arranged that till it was concluded the northern counties should pay the Scots 56007. a-week, to be repaid out of the first supply granted by parliament.

The despotism of Charles had now reached its close. We have exposed it freely; we have shown that it went to depriving the nation of all that is most valuable to civilised man. The lives, the liberties, the properties of the people, were to be at the disposal of the monarch, who held himself accountable to Heaven alone for the exercise of the powers which he claimed. A galling ecclesiastical tyranny also pressed on the people, fettering conscience and controlling the free expression of thought. Is there any one so base, so unworthy of the name of freeman, as to regret that this state of things has not been perpetuated to our own times? And what certainty have we that such would not have been the case had Charles not been checked in his career; and that popery would not again have over

spread the land, if he had transmitted the plenitude of despotism to his popish sons*? We are now to witness the conduct of the men who broke that power, and to treat them with the same impartiality which we have employed in the case of the monarch.

*We think we are justified in supposing that they would have been such by the document published by Mr. D'Israeli (Cur. of Lit., iii. 397) from the 'Ambassades de Bassompierre' (iii. 49), which, as he says, "is nothing less than a most solemn obligation contracted by the queen with the pope and her brother the king of France, to educate her children as catholics, and only to choose catholics to attend them. In this matter she would easily have triumphed over the uxoriousness of Charles."

CHAPTER V.

CHARLES I. (CONTINUED).

1640-1641.

The Long Parliament.-Impeachment and trial of Strafford.-Army-plot.— Execution of Strafford.-Arts of the popular leaders.

On the 3rd of November, 1640, that parliament met, whose deeds, for good or for evil, have rendered it, with one exception, the most memorable assembly in the annals of the world. The greatest exertions had been made by both parties to procure returns favourable to their political views; but the efforts of Pym, Hampden, and the other leaders of the popular party, joined with the feelings of the electors themselves, who saw the necessity of a reform in the state, had obtained them a triumph in most places over their opponents. But to the honour of our forefathers, and the disgrace of our own self-styled age of intellect, it is to be recorded, that in no single case did the popular choice fall, as we have seen it fall, on the vulgar demagogue, the political charlatan, the bankrupt in fame or fortune, who cajoled his constituents by affecting to have no will of his own, and to be in the legislature merely the mouthpiece of their notions and whims. The members of the Long Parliament, as this was subsequently styled, were in general men of high moral character, of cultivated minds, and of independent fortunes, the landed property of the commons being said to be the treble of that of the peers. In a word, a more august assembly than that which now met at Westminster has never appeared on the scene of the world.

Yet partiality must not blind us; we must not give the reins to imagination, and view in the Pyms, the Hampdens, and the St. Johns of those days men without blemish,

raised above the common lot of humanity, and incapable of artifice or error. We shall find them employing the arts inseparable from political parties, acting at times in violation of the principles of justice, and treading in the footprints of the despotism which they sought to restrain. We have not hidden the faults of the king; we will not pass over in silence those of the parliament.

It may be of advantage here to enumerate some of the men in this parliament who took the lead in opposing the excesses of the prerogative. In the house of peers the principal were Percy, earl of Northumberland; Wriothesley of Southampton; Devereux of Essex; Rich of Warwick, and his brother of Holland; Russell of Bedford; Hollis of Clare; Herbert of Pembroke; Cecil of Salisbury; and Fiennes, viscount Say; Greville, lord Brooke; and Montague, lord Mandeville, son to the earl of Manchester, who sat as baron Kimbolton. Most of these were men of honour and principle, desirous of reforming, but of preserving the constitution in church and state. Say and Brooke alone wished to overturn the church, but both on conscientious motives. Holland and Pembroke were men of no principle. The former had been a creature of Buckingham, who procured for him a marriage with the heiress of Cope, lord of the manor of Kensington, by which title he was created a baron; and then had him placed about the prince of Wales, made earl of Holland, knight of the garter, &c. After the death of his patron he attached himself to the queen, and no man enjoyed more of the courtfavour. It was hatred of Strafford that placed him in the ranks of the patriots, and not regard to the interests of his country. Pembroke was a man thoroughly contemptible. He was indebted for his rank to his handsome person and his skill in horses and dogs, which won him the favour of king James, combined with the merit of having tamely put up with a switching from one of the insolent Scottish favourites*. According to Clarendon, it was fear of impeach

* See Osborne.