THE LONG PARLIAMENT
1640-1644
[Sidenote: John Pym.]
If Strafford embodied the spirit of tyranny, John Pym, the leader of the
Commons from the first meeting of the new Houses at Westminster, stands
out for all after time as the embodiment of law. A Somersetshire
gentleman of good birth and competent fortune, he entered on public life
in the Parliament of 1614, and was imprisoned for his patriotism at its
close. He had been a leading member in that of 1620, and one of the
"twelve ambassadors" for whom James ordered chairs to be set at
Whitehall. Of the band of patriots with whom he had stood side by side
in the constitutional struggle against the earlier despotism of Charles
he was almost the one survivor. Coke had died of old age; Cotton's heart
was broken by oppression; Eliot had perished in the Tower; Wentworth had
apostatized. But Pym remained, resolute, patient as of old; and as the
sense of his greatness grew silently during the eleven years of
deepening misrule, the hope and faith of better things clung almost
passionately to the man who never doubted of the final triumph of
freedom and the law. At their close, Clarendon tells us, in words all
the more notable for their bitter tone of hate, "he was the most popular
man, and the most able to do hurt, that have lived at any time." He had
shown he knew how to wait, and when waiting was over he showed he knew
how to act. On the eve of the Long Parliament he rode through England to
quicken the electors to a sense of the crisis which had come at last;
and on the assembling of the Commons he took his place, not merely as
member for Tavistock, but as their acknowledged head. Few of the country
gentlemen indeed who formed the bulk of the members, had sat in any
previous House; and of the few none represented in so eminent a way the
Parliamentary tradition on which the coming struggle was to turn. Pym's
eloquence, inferior in boldness and originality to that of Eliot or
Wentworth, was better suited by its massive and logical force to
convince and guide a great party; and it was backed by a calmness of
temper, a dexterity and order in the management of public business, and
a practical power of shaping the course of debate, which gave a form and
method to Parliamentary proceedings such as they had never had before.
[Sidenote: His political theory.]
Valuable however as these qualities were, it was a yet higher quality
which raised Pym into the greatest, as he was the first, of
Parliamentary leaders. Of the five hundred members who sate round him at
St. Stephen's, he was the one man who had clearly foreseen, and as
clearly resolved how to meet, the difficulties which lay before them. It
was certain that Parliament would be drawn into a struggle with the
Crown. It was probable that in such a struggle the House of Commons
would be hampered, as it had been hampered before, by the House of
Lords. The legal antiquarians of the older constitutional school stood
helpless before such a conflict of co-ordinate powers, a conflict for
which no provision had been made by the law, and on which precedents
threw only a doubtful and conflicting light. But with a knowledge of
precedent as great as their own, Pym rose high above them in his grasp
of constitutional principles. He was the first English statesman who
discovered, and applied, to the political circumstances around him, what
may be called the doctrine of constitutional proportion. He saw that as
an element of constitutional life Parliament was of higher value than
the Crown; he saw too that in Parliament itself the one essential part
was the House of Commons. On these two facts he based his whole policy
in the contest which followed. When Charles refused to act with the
Parliament, Pym treated the refusal as a temporary abdication on the
part of the sovereign, which vested the executive power in the two
Houses until new arrangements were made. When the Lords obstructed
public business, he warned them that obstruction would only force the
Commons "to save the kingdom alone." Revolutionary as these principles
seemed at the time, they have both been recognized as bases of our
constitution since the days of Pym. The first principle was established
by the Convention and Parliament which followed on the departure of
James the Second; the second by the acknowledgement on all sides since
the Reform Bill of 1832 that the government of the country is really in
the hands of the House of Commons, and can only be carried on by
ministers who represent the majority of that House.
[Sidenote: His political genius.]
It was thus that the work of Pym brought about a political revolution
greater than any that England has ever experienced since his day. But
the temper of Pym was the very opposite of the temper of a
revolutionist. Few natures have ever been wider in their range of
sympathy or action. Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial
and even courtly; he turned easily from an invective against Strafford
to a chat with Lady Carlisle; and the grace and gaiety of his social
tone, even when the care and weight of public affairs were bringing him
to his grave, gave rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient
royalists. It was this striking combination of genial versatility with
a massive force in his nature which marked him out from the first moment
of power as a born ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest
of diplomatists and the grandest of demagogues. He was equally at home
in tracking the subtle intricacies of royalist intrigues, or in kindling
popular passion with words of fire. Though past middle life when his
work really began, for he was born in 1584, four years before the coming
of the Armada, he displayed from the first meeting of the Long
Parliament the qualities of a great administrator, an immense faculty
for labour, a genius for organization, patience, tact, a power of
inspiring confidence in all whom he touched, calmness and moderation
under good fortune or ill, an immovable courage, an iron will. No
English ruler has ever shown greater nobleness of natural temper or a
wider capacity for government than the Somersetshire squire whom his
enemies, made clear-sighted by their hate, greeted truly enough as "King
Pym."
[Sidenote: The meeting of the Parliament.]
On the eve of the elections he rode with Hampden through the counties to
rouse England to a sense of the crisis which had come. But his ride was
hardly needed, for the summons of a Parliament at once woke the kingdom
to a fresh life. The Puritan emigration to New England was suddenly and
utterly suspended; "the change," said Winthrop, "made all men to stay in
England in expectation of a new world." The public discontent spoke
from every Puritan pulpit, and expressed itself in a sudden burst of
pamphlets, the first-fruits of the thirty thousand which were issued in
the twenty years that followed, and which turned England at large into a
school of political discussion. The resolute looks of the members, as
they gathered at Westminster on the third of November 1640, contrasted
with the hesitating words of the king; and each brought from borough or
county a petition of grievances. Fresh petitions were brought every day
by bands of citizens or farmers. The first week was spent in receiving
these petitions, and in appointing forty committees to examine and
report on them, whose reports formed the grounds on which the Commons
subsequently acted. The next work of the Commons was to deal with the
agents of the royal system. It was agreed that the king's name should be
spared; but in every county a list of officers who had carried out the
plans of the Government was ordered to be prepared and laid before the
House. But the Commons were far from dealing merely with these meaner
"delinquents." They resolved to strike at the men whose counsels had
wrought the evil of the past years of tyranny; and their first blow was
at the leading ministers of the king.
[Sidenote: Impeachment of Strafford.]
Even Laud was not the centre of so great and universal a hatred as the
Earl of Strafford. Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a
servile instrument of tyranny, it was the guilt of "that grand apostate
to the Commonwealth who," in the terrible words which closed Lord
Digby's invective, "must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he
be despatched to the other." He was conscious of his danger, but Charles
forced him to attend the Court; and with characteristic boldness he
resolved to anticipate attack by accusing the Parliamentary leaders of a
treasonable correspondence with the Scots. He reached London a week
after the opening of the Parliament; and hastened the next morning to an
interview with the king. But he had to deal with men as energetic as
himself. He was just laying his scheme before Charles when the news
reached him that Pym was at the bar of the Lords with his impeachment
for high treason. On the morning of the 11th of November the doors of
the House of Commons had been locked, Strafford's impeachment voted, and
carried by Pym with 300 members at his back to the bar of the Lords. The
Earl hurried at once to the Parliament. "With speed," writes an
eye-witness, "he comes to the House: he calls rudely at the door," and,
"with a proud glooming look, makes towards his place at the board-head.
But at once many bid him void the House, so he is forced in confusion to
go to the door till he was called." He was only recalled to hear his
committal to the Tower. He was still resolute to retort the charge of
treason on his foes, and "offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone
without a word." The keeper of the Black Rod demanded his sword as he
took him in charge. "This done, he makes through a number of people
towards his coach, no man capping to him, before whom that morning the
greatest of all England would have stood uncovered."
[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministers.]
The blow was quickly followed up. Windebank, the Secretary of State, was
charged with a corrupt favouring of recusants, and escaped to France;
Finch, the Lord Keeper, was impeached, and fled in terror over sea. In
December Laud was himself committed to the charge of the Usher. The
shadow of what was to come falls across the pages of his diary, and
softens the hard temper of the man into a strange tenderness. "I stayed
at Lambeth till the evening," writes the Archbishop, "to avoid the gaze
of the people. I went to evening prayer in my chapel. The Psalms of the
day and chapter fifty of Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me
worthy of it, and fit to receive it. As I went to my barge, hundreds of
my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my
house. For which I bless God and them." In February Sir Robert Berkeley,
one of the judges who had held that ship-money was legal, was seized
while sitting on the Bench and committed to prison. In the very first
days of the Parliament a yet more emphatic proof of the downfall of the
royal system had been given by the recall of Prynne and his fellow
"martyrs" from their prisons, and by their entry in triumph into London,
amidst the shouts of a great multitude who strewed laurels in their
path.
[Sidenote: Work of the Houses.]
The effect of these rapid blows was seen in the altered demeanour of the
king. Charles at once dropped his old tone of command. He ceased to
protest against the will of the Commons, and looked sullenly on while
one by one the lawless acts of his Government were undone. Ship-money
was declared illegal; and the judgement in Hampden's case was annulled.
In February 1641 a statute declaring "the ancient right of the subjects
of this kingdom that no subsidy, custom, impost, or any charge
whatsoever ought or may be laid or imposed upon any merchandise exported
or imported by subjects, denizens, or aliens, without common consent in
Parliament," put an end for ever to all pretensions to a right of
arbitrary taxation on the part of the Crown. A Triennial Bill enforced
the assembly of the Houses every three years, and bound the returning
officers to proceed to election if no royal writ were issued to summon
them.
[Sidenote: Church reform.]
The subject of religion was one of greater difficulty. In ecclesiastical
as in political matters the aim of the parliamentary leaders was
strictly conservative. Their purpose was to restore the Church of
England to its state under Elizabeth, and to free it from the
"innovations" introduced by Laud and his fellow-prelates. With this view
commissioners were sent in January 1641 into every county "for the
defacing, demolishing, and quite taking away of all images, altars, or
tables turned altarwise, crucifixes, superstitious pictures, monuments,
and reliques of idolatry out of all churches and chapels." But the bulk
of the Commons as of the Lords were averse from any radical changes in
the constitution or doctrine of the Church. All however were agreed on
the necessity of reform; and one of the first acts of the Parliament was
to appoint a Committee of Religion to consider the question. Within as
without the House the general opinion was in favour of a reduction of
the power and wealth of the prelates, as well as of the jurisdiction of
the Church courts. Even among the bishops themselves the more prominent
saw the need for consenting to an abolition of Chapters and Bishops'
Courts, as well as to the election of a council of ministers in each
diocese, which had been suggested by Archbishop Usher as a check on
episcopal autocracy. A scheme to this effect was drawn up by Bishop
Williams of Lincoln; but it was far from meeting the wishes of the
general body of the Commons. The part which the higher clergy had taken
in lending themselves to do political work for the Crown was fresh in
the minds of all; and in addition to the changes which Williams
proposed, Pym and Lord Falkland demanded a severance of the clergy from
all secular or state offices, and an expulsion of the bishops from the
House of Lords. Such a measure seemed needful to restore the independent
action of the Peers; for the number and servility of the bishops were
commonly strong enough to prevent the Upper House from taking any part
which was disagreeable to the Crown.
[Sidenote: The Bishops and Parliament.]
Further the bulk of the Commons had no will to go. There were others
indeed who were pressing hard to go further. A growing party demanded
the abolition of Episcopacy altogether. The doctrines of Cartwright had
risen into popularity under the persecution of Laud, and Presbyterianism
was now a formidable force among the middle classes. Its chief strength
lay in the eastern counties and in London, where a few clergymen such as
Calamy and Marshall formed a committee for its diffusion; while in
Parliament it was represented by Lord Brooke, Lord Mandeville, and Lord
Saye and Sele. In the Commons Sir Harry Vane represented a more extreme
party of reformers, the Independents of the future, whose sentiments
were little less hostile to Presbyterianism than to Episcopacy, but who
acted with the Presbyterians for the present, and formed a part of what
became known as the "root and branch" party, from its demand for the
utter extirpation of prelacy. The attitude of Scotland in the struggle
against tyranny, and the political advantages of a religious union
between the two kingdoms, gave force to the Presbyterian party; and the
agitation which it set on foot found a vigorous support in the Scotch
Commissioners who had been sent to treat of peace with the Parliament.
Thoughtful men, too, were moved by a desire to knit the English Church
more closely to the general body of Protestantism. Milton, who after the
composition of his "Lycidas" had spent a year in foreign travel,
returned to throw himself on this ground into the theological strife. He
held it "an unjust thing that the English should differ from all
churches as many as be reformed." In spite of this pressure however, and
of a Presbyterian petition from London with fifteen thousand signatures
which had been presented at the very opening of the Houses, the
Parliament remained hostile to any change in the constitution of the
Church. The Committee of Religion reported in favour of the reforms
proposed by Falkland and Pym; and on the tenth of March 1641 a bill for
the removal of bishops from the House of Peers passed the Commons almost
unanimously.
[Sidenote: Trial of Strafford.]
As yet all had gone well. The king made no sign of opposition. He was
known to be resolute against the abolition of Episcopacy; but he
announced no purpose of resisting the removal of the bishops from the
House of Peers. Strafford's life he was determined to save; but he
threw no obstacle in the way of his impeachment. The trial of the Earl
opened on the twenty-second of March. The whole of the House of Commons
appeared in Westminster Hall to support it, and the passion which the
cause excited was seen in the loud cries of sympathy or hatred which
burst from the crowded benches on either side as Strafford for fifteen
days struggled with a remarkable courage and ingenuity against the list
of charges, and melted his audience to tears by the pathos of his
defence. But the trial was suddenly interrupted. Though tyranny and
misgovernment had been conclusively proved against the Earl, the
technical proof of treason was weak. "The law of England," to use
Hallam's words, "is silent as to conspiracies against itself," and
treason by the Statute of Edward the Third was restricted to a levying
of war against the king or a compassing of his death. The Commons
endeavoured to strengthen their case by bringing forward the notes of a
meeting of the Council in which Strafford had urged the use of his Irish
troops "to reduce that kingdom to obedience"; but the Lords would only
admit the evidence on condition of wholly reopening the case. Pym and
Hampden remained convinced of the sufficiency of the impeachment; but
the House broke loose from their control. Under the guidance of St. John
and Lord Falkland the Commons resolved to abandon these judicial
proceedings, and fall back on the resource of a Bill of Attainder. The
bill passed the Lower House on the 21st of April by a majority of 204 to
59; and on the 29th it received the assent of the Lords. The course
which the Parliament took has been bitterly censured by some whose
opinion in such a matter is entitled to respect. But the crime of
Strafford was none the less a crime that it did not fall within the
scope of the Statute of Treasons. It is impossible indeed to provide for
some of the greatest dangers which can happen to national freedom by any
formal statute. Even now a minister might avail himself of the temper of
a Parliament elected in some moment of popular panic, and, though the
nation returned to its senses, might simply by refusing to appeal to the
country govern in defiance of its will. Such a course would be
technically legal, but such a minister would be none the less a
criminal. Strafford's course, whether it fell within the Statute of
Treasons or no, was from beginning to end an attack on the freedom of
the whole nation. In the last resort a nation retains the right of
self-defence, and a Bill of Attainder is the assertion of such a right
for the punishment of a public enemy who falls within the scope of no
written law.
[Sidenote: The Army Plot.]
The counsel of Pym and of Hampden had been prompted by no doubt of the
legality of the attainder. But they looked on the impeachment as still
likely to succeed, and they were anxious at this moment to conciliate
the king. The real security for the permanence of the changes they had
wrought lay in a lasting change in the royal counsels; and such a change
it seemed possible to bring about. To save Strafford and Episcopacy
Charles listened in the spring of 1641 to a proposal for entrusting the
offices of state to the leaders of the Parliament. In this scheme the
Earl of Bedford was to become Lord Treasurer, Pym Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Holles Secretary of State, while Lords Essex, Mandeville, and
Saye and Sele occupied various posts in the administration. Foreign
affairs would have been entrusted to Lord Holland, whose policy was that
of alliance with Richelieu and Holland against Spain, a policy whose
adoption would have been sealed by the marriage of a daughter of Charles
with the Prince of Orange. With characteristic foresight Hampden sought
only the charge of the Prince of Wales. He knew that the best security
for freedom in the after-time would be a patriot king. Charles listened
to this project with seeming assent; the only conditions he made were
that Episcopacy should not be abolished, nor Strafford executed; and
though the death of Lord Bedford put an end to it for the moment, the
Parliamentary leaders seem still to have had hopes of their entry into
the royal Council. But meanwhile Charles was counting the chances of a
very different policy. The courtiers about him were rallying from their
first panic. His French Queen, furious at what she looked on as insults
to royalty, and yet more furious at the persecution of the Catholics,
was spurring him to violent courses. And for violence there seemed at
the moment an opportunity. In Ireland Strafford's army refused to
disband itself. In Scotland the union of the nobles was already broken
by the old spirit of faction; and in his jealousy of the power gained by
his hereditary enemy, the Earl of Argyle, Lord Montrose had formed a
party with other great nobles, and was pressing Charles to come and
carry out a counter-revolution in the North. Above all the English army,
which still lay at York, was discontented by its want of pay and by the
favour shown to the Scottish soldiers in its front. The discontent was
busily fanned by its officers; and a design was laid before Charles by
which advantage might be taken of the humour of the army to march it
upon London, to seize the Tower and free Strafford. With the Earl at
their head, the soldiers could then overawe the Houses and free the king
from his thraldom. Charles listened to the project; he refused any
expression of assent; but he kept the secret, and suffered the plot to
go on, while he continued the negotiations with the Parliamentary
leaders.
[Sidenote: Death of Strafford.]
But he was now in the hands of men who were his match in intrigue as
they were more than his match in quickness of action. In the beginning
of May, it is said through a squabble among the conspirators, the army
plot became known to Pym. The moment was a critical one. Much of the
energy and union of the Parliament was already spent. The Lords were
beginning to fall back into their old position of allies of the Court.
They were holding at bay the bill for the expulsion of the bishops from
their seats in Parliament which had been sent up by the Lower House,
though the measure aimed at freeing the Peers as a legislative body by
removing from among them a body of men whose servility made them mere
tools of the Crown, while it averted--if but for the moment--the growing
pressure for the abolition of episcopacy. Things were fast coming to a
standstill, when the discovery of the army plot changed the whole
situation. Waver as the Peers might, they had no mind to be tricked by
the king and overawed by his soldiery. The Commons were stirred to their
old energy, London itself was driven to panic at the thought of passing
into the hands of a mutinous and unpaid army. The general alarm sealed
Strafford's doom. In plotting for his release, the plotters had marked
him out as a life which was the main danger to the new state of things.
Strafford still hoped in his master; he had a pledge from Charles that
his life should be saved; and on the first of May the king in a formal
message to the Parliament had refused his assent to the Bill of
Attainder. But the Queen had no mind that her husband should suffer for
a minister whom she hated, and before her pressure the king gave way. On
the tenth of May he gave his assent to the bill by commission, and on
the twelfth Strafford passed to his doom. He died as he had lived. His
friends warned him of the vast multitude gathered before the Tower to
witness his fall. "I know how to look death in the face, and the people
too," he answered proudly. "I thank God I am no more afraid of death,
but as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I
went to bed." As the axe fell, the silence of the great multitude was
broken by a universal shout of joy. The streets blazed with bonfires.
The bells clashed out from every steeple. "Many," says an observer,
"that came to town to see the execution rode in triumph back, waving
their hats, and with all expressions of joy through every town they
went, crying, 'His head is off. His head is off!'"
[Sidenote: The Panic.]
The failure of the attempt to establish a Parliamentary ministry, the
discovery of the army plot, the execution of Strafford, were the turning
points in the history of the Long Parliament. Till May 1641 there was
still hope for an accommodation between the Commons and the Crown by
which the freedom that had been won might have been taken as the base of
a new system of government. But from that hour little hope of such an
agreement remained. The Parliament could put no trust in the king. The
air at Westminster, since the discovery of the army conspiracy, was full
of rumours and panic; the creak of a few boards revived the memory of
the Gunpowder Plot, and the members rushed out of the House of Commons
in the full belief that it was undermined. On the other hand, Charles
put by all thought of reconciliation. If he had given his assent to
Strafford's death, he never forgave the men who had wrested his assent
from him. From that hour he regarded his consent to the new measures as
having been extorted by force, and to be retracted at the first
opportunity. His opponents were quick to feel the king's resolve of a
counter-revolution; and both Houses, in their terror, swore to defend
the Protestant religion and the public liberties, an oath which was
subsequently exacted from every one engaged in civil employment, and
voluntarily taken by the great mass of the people. The same terror of a
counter-revolution induced even Hyde and the "moderate men" in the
Commons to bring in a bill providing that the present Parliament should
not be dissolved but by its own consent; and the same commission which
gave the king's assent to Strafford's attainder gave his assent to this
bill for perpetuating the Parliament.
[Sidenote: Charles in Scotland.]
Of all the demands of the Parliament this was the first that could be
called distinctly revolutionary. To consent to it was to establish a
power permanently co-ordinate with the Crown. But Charles signed the
bill without protest. He had ceased to look on his acts as those of a
free agent; and he was already planning the means of breaking the
Parliament. What had hitherto held him down was the revolt of Scotland
and the pressure of the Scotch army across the border. But its payment
and withdrawal could no longer be delayed. The death of Strafford was
immediately followed by the conclusion of a pacification between the two
countries; and the sum required for the disbanding of both armies was
provided by a poll-tax. Meanwhile the Houses hastened to complete their
task of reform. The civil and judicial jurisdiction of the Star Chamber
and the Court of High Commission, the irregular jurisdictions of the
Council of the North, the Duchy of Lancaster, the County of Chester,
were summarily abolished with a crowd of lesser tribunals. The work was
pushed hastily on, for haste was needed. On the sixth of August the two
armies were alike disbanded; and the Scots were no sooner on their way
homeward than the king resolved to prevent their return. In spite of
prayers from the Parliament, he left London for Edinburgh, yielded to
every demand of the Assembly and the Scotch Estates, attended the
Presbyterian worship, lavished titles and favours on the Earl of Argyle
and the patriot leaders, and gained for a while a popularity which
spread dismay in the English Parliament. Their dread of his designs was
increased when he was found to have been intriguing all the while with
the Earl of Montrose--whose conspiracy had been discovered before the
king's coming and rewarded with imprisonment in the castle of
Edinburgh--and when Hamilton and Argyle withdrew suddenly from the
capital, and charged Charles with a treacherous plot to seize and carry
them out of the realm.
[Sidenote: The Irish Rising.]
The fright was fanned to frenzy by news which came suddenly from
Ireland. The quiet of that unhappy country under Strafford's rule had
been a mere quiet of terror. The Catholic Englishry were angered by the
Deputy's breach of faith. Before his coming Charles had promised for a
sum of L120,000 to dispense with the oath of supremacy, to suffer
recusants to practise in the courts of law, and to put a stop to the
constant extortion of their lands by legal process. The money was paid;
but by the management of Wentworth, the "Graces" which it was to bring
received no confirmation from the Irish Parliament. The Lord-Deputy's
policy aimed at keeping the recusants still at the mercy of the Crown;
what it really succeeded in doing was to rob them of any hope of justice
or fair dealing from the government. The native Irishry were yet more
bitterly outraged by his dealings in Connaught. Under pretext that as
inhabitants of a conquered country Irishmen had no rights but by
express grant from the Crown, the Deputy had wrested nearly a half of
the lands in that province from their native holders with the view of
founding a new English plantation. The new settlers were slow in coming,
but the evictions and spoliation renewed the bitter wrath which had been
stirred by the older plantation in Ulster. All however remained quiet
till the fall of Strafford put an end to the semblance of rule. The
disbanded soldiers of the army he had raised spread over the country,
and stirred the smouldering disaffection into a flame. In October 1641,
a rising, organized with wonderful power and secrecy by Roger O'Moore
and Owen Roe O'Neill, burst forth under Sir Phelim O'Neill in Ulster,
where the confiscation of the Settlement had never been forgiven, and
spread like wildfire over the centre and west of the island. Dublin was
saved by a mere chance; but in the open country the rebellion went on
unchecked. The trembling planters fled for shelter to the towns as the
clansmen poured back over their old tribal lands, and rumour doubled and
trebled the number of the slain. Tales of horror and outrage, such as
maddened our own England when they reached us from Cawnpore, came day
after day over the Irish Channel; and sworn depositions told how
husbands were cut to pieces in presence of their wives, their children's
brains dashed out before their faces, their daughters brutally violated
and driven out naked to perish frozen in the woods.
[Sidenote: Its effect on England.]
Much of all this was no doubt the wild exaggeration of panic, and the
research of later times has shown how fraud lent a terrible aid to panic
in multiplying a hundredfold the tales of outrage. But there was enough
in the revolt to carry terror to the hearts of Englishmen. It was unlike
any earlier rising in its religious character. It was no longer a
struggle, as of old, of Celt against Saxon, but of Catholic against
Protestant. The Papists within the Pale joined hands in it with the wild
kernes outside the Pale. When the governing body of the rebels met at
Kells in the following spring they called themselves "Confederate
Catholics," resolved to defend "the public and free exercise of the true
and Catholic Roman religion." The panic waxed greater when it was found
that they claimed to be acting by the king's commission, and in aid of
his authority. They professed to stand by Charles and his heirs against
all that should "directly and indirectly endeavour to suppress their
royal prerogatives." They showed a Commission, purporting to have been
issued by royal command at Edinburgh, and styled themselves "the king's
army." The Commission was a forgery, but belief in it was quickened by
the want of all sympathy with the national honour which Charles
displayed. To him the revolt seemed a useful check on his opponents. "I
hope," he wrote coolly, when the news reached him, "this ill news of
Ireland may hinder some of these follies in England." In any case it
would necessitate the raising of an army, and with an army at his
command he would again be the master of the Parliament. The Parliament,
on the other hand, saw in the Irish revolt, the news of which met them
but a few days after their reassembly at the close of October, the
disclosure of a vast scheme for a counter-revolution, of which the
withdrawal of the Scotch army, the reconciliation of Scotland, the
intrigues at Edinburgh were all parts. Its terror was quickened into
panic by the exultation of the royalists at the king's return to London
at the close of November, and by the appearance of a royalist party in
the Parliament itself.
[Sidenote: The new Royalists.]
The new party had been silently organized by Hyde, the future Lord
Clarendon. To Hyde and to the men who gathered round him enough seemed
to have been done. They clung to the law, but the law had been
vindicated. They bitterly resented the system of Strafford and of Laud;
but the system was at an end. They believed that English freedom hung on
the assembly of Parliament and on the loyal co-operation of the Crown
with this Great Council of the Realm; but the assembly of Parliaments
was now secured by the Triennial Bill, and the king professed himself
ready to rule according to the counsels of Parliament. On the other
hand they desired to preserve to the Crown the right and power it had
had under the Tudors. They revolted from any attempt to give the Houses
a share in the actual work of administration. On both political and
religious grounds they were resolute to suffer no change in the
relations of the Church to the State, or to weaken the prerogative of
the Crown by the establishment of a Presbyterianism which asserted any
sort of spiritual independence. More complex impulses told on the course
of Lord Falkland. Falkland was a man learned and accomplished, the
centre of a circle which embraced the most liberal thinkers of his day.
He was a keen reasoner and an able speaker. But he was the centre of
that Latitudinarian party which was slowly growing up in the reaction
from the dogmatism of the time, and his most passionate longing was for
liberty of religious thought. Such a liberty the system of the Stuarts
had little burdened; what Laud pressed for was uniformity, not of
speculation, but of practice and ritual. But the temper of Puritanism
was a dogmatic temper, and the tone of the Parliament already threatened
a narrowing of the terms of speculative belief for the Church of
England. While this fear estranged Falkland from the Parliament, his
dread of a conflict with the Crown, his passionate longing for peace,
his sympathy for the fallen, led him to struggle for a king whom he
distrusted, and to die in a cause that was not his own. Behind Falkland
and Hyde soon gathered a strong force of supporters; chivalrous soldiers
like Sir Edmund Verney ("I have eaten the king's bread and served him
near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him"),
as well as men frightened at the rapid march of change, or by the
dangers which threatened Episcopacy and the Church. And with these stood
the few but ardent partizans of the Court; and the time-servers who had
been swept along by the tide of popular passion, but who had believed
its force to be spent, and looked forward to a new triumph of the Crown.
[Sidenote: The Remonstrance.]
With a broken Parliament, and perils gathering without, Pym resolved to
appeal for aid to the nation itself. The Grand Remonstrance which he
laid before the House of Commons in November was in effect an appeal to
the country at large. It is this purpose that accounts for its unusual
form. The Remonstrance was more an elaborate State-Paper than a petition
to the king. It told in a detailed narrative the work which the
Parliament had done, the difficulties it had surmounted, and the new
dangers which lay in its path. The Parliament had been charged with a
design to abolish Episcopacy, it declared its purpose to be simply that
of reducing the power of bishops. Politically it repudiated the taunt of
revolutionary aims. It demanded only the observance of the existing
laws against recusancy, securities for the due administration of
justice, and the employment of ministers who possessed the confidence of
Parliament. The new king's party fought fiercely against its adoption;
debate followed debate; the sittings were prolonged till lights had to
be brought in; and it was only at midnight, and by a majority of eleven,
that the Remonstrance was finally adopted. On an attempt of the minority
to offer a formal protest against a subsequent vote for its publication
the slumbering passion broke out into a flame. "Some waved their hats
over their heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of
their belts, and held them by the pommels in their hands, setting the
lower part on the ground." Only Hampden's coolness and tact averted a
conflict. The Remonstrance was felt on both sides to be a crisis in the
struggle. "Had it been rejected," said Cromwell as he left the House, "I
would have sold to-morrow all I possess, and left England for ever!" It
was presented to Charles on the first of December, and the king listened
to it sullenly; but it kindled afresh the spirit of the country. London
swore to live and die with the Parliament; associations were formed in
every county for the defence of the Houses; and when the guard which the
Commons had asked for in the panic of the army plot was withdrawn by the
king, the populace crowded down to Westminster to take its place.
[Sidenote: Cavaliers and Roundheads.]
The gathering passion soon passed into actual strife. Pym and his
colleagues saw that the disunion in their ranks sprang above all from
the question of the Church. On the one side were the Presbyterian
zealots who were clamouring for the abolition of Episcopacy. On the
other were the conservative tempers who in the dread of such demands
were beginning to see in the course of the Parliament a threat against
the Church which they loved. To put an end to the pressure of the one
party and the dread of the other Pym took his stand on the compromise
suggested by the Committee of Religion in the spring. The bill for the
removal of bishops from the House of Lords had been rejected by the
Lords on the eve of the king's journey to Scotland. It was now again
introduced. But, in spite of violent remonstrances from the Commons, the
bill still hung fire among the Peers; and the delay roused the excited
crowd of Londoners who gathered round Whitehall. The bishops' carriages
were stopped, and the prelates themselves rabbled on their way to the
House. At the close of December the angry pride of Williams induced ten
of his fellow-bishops to declare themselves prevented from attendance in
Parliament, and to protest against all acts done in their absence as
null and void. Such a protest was utterly unconstitutional; and even on
the part of the Peers who had been maintaining the bishops' rights it
was met by the committal of the prelates who had signed it to the
Tower. But the contest gave a powerful aid to the projects of the king.
The courtiers declared openly that the rabbling of the bishops proved
that there was "no free Parliament," and strove to bring about fresh
outrages by gathering troops of officers and soldiers of fortune, who
were seeking for employment in the Irish war, and pitting them against
the crowds at Whitehall. The combatants pelted one another with
nicknames which were soon to pass into history. To wear his hair long
and flowing almost to the shoulder was at this time the mark of a
gentleman, whether Puritan or anti-Puritan. Servants on the other hand
or apprentices wore the hair closely cropped to the head. The crowds who
flocked to Westminster were chiefly made up of London apprentices; and
their opponents taunted them as "Roundheads." They replied by branding
the courtiers about Whitehall as soldiers of fortune or "Cavaliers." The
gentlemen who gathered round the king in the coming struggle were as far
from being military adventurers as the gentlemen who fought for the
Parliament were from being London apprentices; but the words soon passed
into nicknames for the whole mass of royalists and patriots.
[Sidenote: Seizure of the Five Members.]
From nicknames the soldiers and apprentices soon passed to actual
brawls; and the strife beneath its walls created fresh alarm in the
Parliament. But Charles persisted in refusing it a guard. "On the
honour of a king" he engaged to defend them from violence as completely
as his own children, but the answer had hardly been given when his
Attorney appeared at the bar of the Lords, and accused Hampden, Pym,
Holles, Strode, and Haselrig of high treason in their correspondence
with the Scots. A herald-at-arms appeared at the bar of the Commons, and
demanded the surrender of the five members. All constitutional law was
set aside by a charge which proceeded personally from the king, which
deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial by their peers, and
summoned them before a tribunal that had no pretence to a jurisdiction
over them. The Commons simply promised to take the demand into
consideration. They again requested a guard. "I will reply to-morrow,"
said the king. He had in fact resolved to seize the members in the House
itself; and on the morrow, the 4th of January 1642, he summoned the
gentlemen who clustered about Whitehall to follow him, and, embracing
the Queen, whose violent temper had urged him to this outrage, promised
her that in an hour he would return master of his kingdom. A mob of
Cavaliers joined him as he left the palace, and remained in Westminster
Hall as Charles, accompanied by his nephew, the Elector-Palatine,
entered the House of Commons. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "I must for a time
borrow your chair!" He paused with a sudden confusion as his eye fell
on the vacant spot where Pym commonly sate: for at the news of his
approach the House had ordered the five members to withdraw.
"Gentlemen," he began in slow broken sentences, "I am sorry for this
occasion of coming unto you. Yesterday I sent a Sergeant-at-arms upon a
very important occasion to apprehend some that by my command were
accused of high treason, whereunto I did expect obedience and not a
message." Treason, he went on, had no privilege, "and therefore I am
come to know if any of these persons that were accused are here." There
was a dead silence, only broken by his reiterated "I must have them
wheresoever I find them." He again paused, but the stillness was
unbroken. Then he called out, "Is Mr. Pym here?" There was no answer;
and Charles, turning to the Speaker, asked him whether the five members
were there. Lenthall fell on his knees, and replied that he had neither
eyes nor tongue to see or say anything save what the House commanded
him. "Well, well," Charles angrily retorted, "'tis no matter. I think my
eyes are as good as another's!" There was another long pause while he
looked carefully over the ranks of members. "I see," he said at last,
"my birds are flown, but I do expect you will send them to me." If they
did not, he added, he would seek them himself; and with a closing
protest that he never intended any force "he went out of the House,"
says an eye-witness, "in a more discontented and angry passion than he
came in."
[Sidenote: Charles withdraws from London.]
Nothing but the absence of the five members and the calm dignity of the
Commons had prevented the king's outrage from ending in bloodshed. "It
was believed," says Whitelock, who was present at the scene, "that if
the king had found them there, and called in his guards to have seized
them, the members of the House would have endeavoured the defence of
them, which might have proved a very unhappy and sad business." Five
hundred gentlemen of the best blood in England would hardly have stood
tamely by while the bravoes of Whitehall laid hands on their leaders in
the midst of the Parliament. But Charles was blind to the danger of his
course. The five members had taken refuge in the City, and it was there
that on the next day the king himself demanded their surrender from the
aldermen at Guildhall. Cries of "Privilege" rang round him as he
returned through the streets: the writs issued for the arrest of the
five were disregarded by the Sheriffs; and a proclamation issued four
days later, declaring them traitors, passed without notice. Terror drove
the Cavaliers from Whitehall, and Charles stood absolutely alone; for
the outrage had severed him for the moment from his new friends in the
Parliament, and from the ministers, Falkland and Colepepper, whom he had
chosen among them. But, lonely as he was, Charles had resolved on war.
The Earl of Newcastle was despatched to muster a royal force in the
north; and on the tenth of January news that the five members were about
to return in triumph to Westminster drove Charles from Whitehall. He
retired to Hampton Court and to Windsor, while the Trained Bands of
London and Southwark on foot, and the London watermen on the river, all
sworn "to guard the Parliament, the Kingdom, and the King," escorted Pym
and his fellow-members along the Thames to the House of Commons. Both
sides prepared for a struggle which was now inevitable. The Queen sailed
from Dover with the Crown jewels to buy munitions of war. The Cavaliers
again gathered round the king, and the royalist press flooded the
country with State papers drawn up by Hyde. On the other hand, the
Commons resolved by vote to secure the great arsenals of the kingdom,
Hull, Portsmouth, and the Tower; while mounted processions of
freeholders from Buckinghamshire and Kent traversed London on their way
to St. Stephen's, vowing to live and die with the Parliament.
[Sidenote: Preparations for war.]
The Lords were scared out of their policy of obstruction by Pym's bold
announcement of the position taken by the House of Commons. "The
Commons," said their leader, "will be glad to have your concurrence and
help in saving the kingdom: but if they fail of it, it should not
discourage them in doing their duty. And whether the kingdom be lost or
saved, they shall be sorry that the story of this present Parliament
should tell posterity that in so great a danger and extremity the House
of Commons should be enforced to save the kingdom alone." The effect of
these words was seen in the passing of the bill for excluding bishops
from the House of Lords, the last act of this Parliament to which
Charles gave his assent. The great point however was to secure armed
support from the nation at large, and here both sides were in a
difficulty. Previous to the innovations introduced by the Tudors, and
which had been taken away by the bill against pressing soldiers, the
king in himself had no power of calling on his subjects generally to
bear arms, save for the purposes of restoring order or meeting foreign
invasion. On the other hand no one contended that such a power has ever
been exercised by the two Houses without the king; and Charles steadily
refused to consent to a Militia bill, in which the command of the
national force was given in every county to men devoted to the
Parliamentary cause. Both parties therefore broke through constitutional
precedent, the Parliament in appointing Lord Lieutenants of the Militia
by ordinance of the two Houses, Charles in levying forces by royal
commissions of array.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of war.]
But the king's great difficulty lay in procuring arms, and on the
twenty-third of April he suddenly appeared before Hull, the magazine of
the north, and demanded admission. The new governor, Sir John Hotham,
fell on his knees, but refused to open the gates: and the avowal of his
act by the Parliament was followed at the end of May by the withdrawal
of the royalist party among its members from their seats at Westminster.
Falkland, Colepepper, and Hyde, with thirty-two peers and sixty members
of the House of Commons, joined Charles at York; and Lyttelton, the Lord
Keeper, followed with the Great Seal. But one of their aims in joining
the king was to put a check on his projects of war; and their efforts
were backed by the general opposition of the country. A great meeting of
the Yorkshire freeholders which Charles convened on Heyworth Moor ended
in a petition praying him to be reconciled to the Parliament; and in
spite of gifts of plate from the universities and nobles of his party
arms and money were still wanting for his new levies. The two Houses, on
the other hand, gained in unity and vigour by the withdrawal of the
royalists. The militia was rapidly enrolled, Lord Warwick named to the
command of the fleet, and a loan opened in the City to which the women
brought even their wedding-rings. The tone of the two Houses rose with
the threat of force. It was plain at last that nothing but actual
compulsion could bring Charles to rule as a constitutional sovereign;
and the last proposals of the Parliament demanded the powers of
appointing and dismissing the ministers, of naming guardians for the
royal children, and of virtually controlling military, civil, and
religious affairs. "If I granted your demands," replied Charles, "I
should be no more than the mere phantom of a king."
END OF VOL. V
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
The following words appear with and without hyphens. They have been
left as in the original.
Franche Comte Franche-Comte
goodwill good-will
middle classes middle-classes
newcomer new-comers