Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing

from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and on

that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The

force of his character, the singularly favourable situation in which

he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the

spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of

that class which still halted between two Opinions, enabled him to bid

defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who

avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who

owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had

his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain a

position assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous either for

the new or for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royal

prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to persist in

so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It

was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to

Rome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the

Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power.

The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the

Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian numerous dogmas

and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth

reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to things

indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the

mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester

for his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop

Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars

of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the

middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termed

oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage

dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that

he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.

Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislike

of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst

uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would propose to

herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian

community. Bishop Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should be

abandoned to the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified

church should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that

none of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the Protestant

party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that party

had been followed, the work of reform would have been carried on as

unsparingly in England as in Scotland.

But, as the government needed the support of the protestants, so the

Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore

given up on both sides: an union was effected; and the fruit of that

union was the Church of England.

To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong

passions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends and of

enemies, are to be attributed many of the most important events which

have, since the Reformation, taken place in our country; nor can the

secular history of England be at all understood by us, unless we study

it in constant connection with the history of her ecclesiastical polity.

The man who took the chief part in settling the condition, of the

alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Archbishop Cranmer. He

was the representative of both the parties which, at that time, needed

each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a courtier. In his

character of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of

change as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier

he was desirous to preserve that organisation which had, during many

ages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome, and might be

expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English Kings and

of their ministers. His temper and his understanding, eminently fitted

him to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in

his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a

timeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in

every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the

religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.

To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the

Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she

sprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome

and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed by

Protestants, set forth principles of theology in which Calvin or

Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and

thanksgivings, derived from the ancient Breviaries, are very generally

such that Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in

them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her Articles and

Homilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a

controversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration

can be discovered in her Liturgy.

The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine institution, and

that certain supernatural graces of a high order had been transmitted by

the imposition of hands through fifty generations, from the Eleven who

received their commission on the Galilean mount, to the bishops who

met at Trent. A large body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded

prelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they

found a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in

Scripture. The founders of the Anglican Church took a middle course.

They retained episcopacy; but they did not declare it to be an

institution essential to the welfare of a Christian society, or to the

efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed, on one important occasion,

plainly avowed his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was no

distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands

was altogether superfluous.

Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is, to a great

extent, left to the minister. Their prayers, therefore, are not exactly

the same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on any two days in

the same assembly. In one parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full of

meaning. In the next parish they may be languid or absurd. The priests

of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during many

generations, daily chanted the same ancient confessions, supplications,

and thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in Ireland and Peru. The

service, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the learned;

and the great majority of the congregation may be said to assist as

spectators rather than as auditors. Here, again, the Church of England

took a middle course. She copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer,

but translated them into the vulgar tongue, and invited the illiterate

multitude to join its voice to that of the minister.

In every part of her system the same policy may be traced. Utterly

rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning as

idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, she

yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive the

memorials of divine love, meekly kneeling upon their knees. Discarding

many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith,

she yet retained, to the horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen,

typical of the purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of

Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the Roman

Catholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yet

shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled from

the font with the sign of the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed his

prayers to a multitude of Saints, among whom were numbered many men

of doubtful, and some of hateful, character. The Puritan refused the

addition of Saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to the

disciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of England, though she asked

for the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the

commemoration of some who had done and suffered great things for the

faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as edifying rites; but

she degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her

system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to

a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul by

an absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In

general it may be said that she appeals more to the understanding, and

less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of Rome, and

that she appeals less to the understanding, and more to the senses

and imagination, than the Protestant Churches of Scotland, France, and

Switzerland.

Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England from

other Churches as the relation in which she stood to the monarchy. The

King was her head. The limits of the authority which he possessed,

as such, were not traced, and indeed have never yet been traced with

precision. The laws which declared him supreme in ecclesiastical

matters were drawn rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose of

ascertaining the sense of those laws, we examine the books and lives of

those who founded the English Church, our perplexity will be increased.

For the founders of the English Church wrote and acted in an age of

violent intellectual fermentation, and of constant action and reaction.

They therefore often contradicted each other and sometimes contradicted

themselves. That the King was, under Christ, sole head of the Church was

a doctrine which they all with one voice affirmed: but those words had

very different significations in different mouths, and in the same

mouth at different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which would have

satisfied Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign: then it dwindled

down to an authority little more than that which had been claimed by

many ancient English princes who had been in constant communion with the

Church of Rome. What Henry and his favourite counsellors meant, at one

time, by the supremacy, was certainly nothing less than the whole power

of the keys. The King was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar

of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental

graces. He arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what

was orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and imposing

confessions of faith, and of giving religious instruction to his people.

He proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as well as temporal, was

derived from him alone, and that it was in his power to confer episcopal

authority, and to take it away. He actually ordered his seal to be put

to commissions by which bishops were appointed, who were to exercise

their functions as his deputies, and during his pleasure. According to

this system, as expounded by Cranmer, the King was the spiritual as well

as the temporal chief of the nation. In both capacities His Highness

must have lieutenants. As he appointed civil officers to keep his seal,

to collect his revenues, and to dispense justice in his name, so

he appointed divines of various ranks to preach the gospel, and to

administer the sacraments. It was unnecessary that there should be any

imposition of hands. The King,--such was the opinion of Cranmer given in

the plainest words,--might in virtue of authority derived from God, make

a priest; and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever. These

opinions the Archbishop, in spite of the opposition of less courtly

divines, followed out to every legitimate consequence. He held that his

own spiritual functions, like the secular functions of the Chancellor

and Treasurer, were at once determined by a demise of the crown. When

Henry died, therefore, the Primate and his suffragans took out fresh

commissions, empowering them to ordain and to govern the Church till the

new sovereign should think fit to order otherwise. When it was objected

that a power to bind and to loose, altogether distinct from temporal

power, had been given by our Lord to his apostles, some theologians of

this school replied that the power to bind and to loose had descended,

not to the clergy, but to the whole body of Christian men, and ought

to be exercised by the chief magistrate as the representative of the

society. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of certain

persons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the

faithful, it was answered that King Henry was the very overseer,

the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom the

expressions of Saint Paul applied. [3]

These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as to

Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the supremacy,

which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to the

crown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a woman

should be the chief bishop of a Church in which an apostle had forbidden

her even to let her voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found it

necessary expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character which

her father had assumed, and which, according to Cranmer, had been

inseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function. When the

Anglican confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy

was explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been

fashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphatic

terms, that God had immediately committed to Christian princes the whole

cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of

God's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the administration of

things political. [4] The thirty-seventh article of religion, framed

under Elizabeth, declares, in terms as emphatic, that the ministering

of God's word does not belong to princes. The Queen, however, still had

over the Church a visitatorial power of vast and undefined extent. She

was entrusted by Parliament with the office of restraining and punishing

heresy and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and was permitted to

delegate her authority to commissioners. The Bishops were little more

than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the

absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in

the eleventh century, set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to the

civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the

ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livings

by hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royal

authority alone her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority

alone her Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and

dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. One

of the articles of her faith was that without the royal consent no

ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures

an appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign, even when the

question was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, or

whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the

Church grudge this extensive power to our princes. By them she had been

called into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded from

Papists on one side and from Puritans on the other, protected against

Parliaments which bore her no good will, and avenged on literary

assailants whom she found it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear,

common attachments, common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her

traditions, all her tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a point

of professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which

distinguished them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the

Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other respects,

regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal power

on the domain of the spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists

maintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword against

ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists

resisted Henry the Fourth: both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry

the Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of

the Trent Papists took arms against the English throne. The Church

of England meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly

boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by her

than that of submission to princes.

The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance with

the Established Church were great; but they were not without serious

drawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been

considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two

masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship

of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had

repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When

Elizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.

Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was

therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary

than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new

opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and

Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the

faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich,

and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple

worship, and to a more democratical form of church government, than

England had yet seen. These men returned to their country convinced that

the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less

searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required.

But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from

Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her brother's,

seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to

submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had recently,

in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a

Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no

common exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke

of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect

that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would patiently

submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest

lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as before

a present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an idolatrous

mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the successor of the

chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys of earth and heaven,

they had learned to regard him as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of

Sin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transfer

to an upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the

Vatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authority

of a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid

to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately

been the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceive

the indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitive

spirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution younger

by many years than themselves, an institution which had, under their own

eyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a

court, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome.

Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that they

should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them.

It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To their hatred of the

Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments were

intermingled; and each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritan

concerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely different from

those which were inculcated in the Homilies. His favourite divines had,

both by precept and by example, encouraged resistance to tyrants

and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and

in Scotland, were in arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His

notions, too, respecting, the government of the state took a tinge

from his notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of the

sarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without much

difficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the arguments which

were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synod

seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power was best lodged in

a parliament.

Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest, from

principle, and from passion, zealous for the royal prerogatives, the

Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and from passion, hostile to

them. The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found

in every rank; but they were strongest among the mercantile classes in

the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in

the reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of

Commons. And doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix

their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the

Crown and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that was

no season for internal dissensions. It might, indeed, well be doubted

whether the firmest union among all the orders of the state could avert

the common danger by which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe

and reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. France divided

against herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in

Christendom. The English Government was at the head of the Protestant

interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at home, extended a

powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches abroad. At the head of the

opposite party was the mightiest prince of the age, a prince who ruled

Spain, Portugal, Italy, the East and the West Indies, whose armies

repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of

Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long seemed probable that Englishmen

would have to fight desperately on English ground for their religion and

independence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from apprehensions

of some great treason at home. For in that age it had become a point of

conscience and of honour with many men of generous natures to sacrifice

their country to their religion. A succession of dark plots, formed by

Roman Catholics against the life of the Queen and the existence of the

nation, kept society in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults of

Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm

and of all reformed Churches was staked on the security of her person

and on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was,

therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that duty

was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to

which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she

might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be

put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea

and land. One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately

after his hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he had been

hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was

still left him, and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment with

which these men regarded her has descended to their posterity. The

Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them, have, as a body, always

venerated her memory. [5]

During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in the

House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no disposition to

array themselves in systematic opposition to the government. But,

when the defeat of the Armada, the successful resistance of the United

Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm establishment of Henry the

Fourth on the throne of France, and the death of Philip the Second,

had secured the State and the Church against all danger from abroad,

an obstinate struggle, destined to last during several generations,

instantly began at home.

It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had, during

forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding strength, fought

its first great battle and won its first victory. The ground was well

chosen. The English Sovereigns had always been entrusted with the

supreme direction of commercial police. It was their undoubted

prerogative to regulate coin, weights, and measures, and to appoint

fairs, markets, and ports. The line which bounded their authority over

trade had, as usual, been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual,

encroached on the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature.

The encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became serious.

But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly

by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not

feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse

naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch,

yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices.

The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain

that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of

the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the

discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voice

of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown was

surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, and

exclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to touch the old

liberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be some danger that

the long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and

disastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper,

declined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming party,

redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified

language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to

herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable

example of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal with public

movements which he has not the means of resisting.

In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many accounts,

one of the most important epochs in our history. It was then that both

Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with England. Both

Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets;

but neither country had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with

heroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert

Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern

part of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded her

national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second,

been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against

them long and fiercely. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

the English power in that island was constantly declining, and in the

days of Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominions

of that prince consisted only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of

some parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along

the coast. A large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into

counties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns,

partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their

origin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the

sixteenth century, the English power had made great progress. The half

savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one after

another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few weeks before

the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had been begun more than

four hundred years before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy.

Scarcely had James the First mounted the English throne when the last

O'Donnel and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed

his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges held

assizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded the

customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal tribes.

In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and were

together nearly equal to England, but were much less thickly

peopled than England, and were very far behind England in wealth and

civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her soil;

and, in the midst of light, the thick darkness of the middle ages still

rested on Ireland.

The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes

which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainous

parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the population

of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest

English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differed

from each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the

exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and

still kept the Celtic speech and manners.

In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now became

connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in selfcommand, in

forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the

Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were

distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather

than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved

to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of

northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural

turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the

Mediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable

superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom,

it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured

countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as

those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more than

the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have

added to the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or

Napier. The genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely

endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged as

they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion of

the pure gold of poetry.

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her

dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood the

English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the most

honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained

her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained

entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at

Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for

no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with

the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be

scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland

by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is

connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater

resources. Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more

than a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject province.

Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Her

rude national institutions had perished. The English colonists submitted

to the dictation of the mother country, without whose support they could

not exist, and indemnified themselves by trampling on the people among

whom they had settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no

law which had not been previously approved by the English Privy Council.

The authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. The

executive administration was entrusted to men taken either from England

or from the English pale, and, in either case, regarded as foreigners,

and even as enemies, by the Celtic population.

But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland to

differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was Protestant. In

no part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the Roman

Catholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had vanquished,

deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous sovereign. They would not

endure even such a compromise as had been effected in England. They had

established the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they

made little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and

the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whom

she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by

the pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him the

privileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical

polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his

effeminate nature to hate anything, and had no sooner mounted the

English throne than he began to show an intolerant zeal for the

government and ritual of the English Church.

The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had remained true

to the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed to the circumstance

that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. But

other causes had cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as well

as a moral revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of the laity

against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the

great German race against an alien domination. It is a most significant

circumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not Teutonic

has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from

that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day

prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction.

The object of their animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had

especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the

chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During

the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained

against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became

inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud

of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt.

The English conquerors meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of

conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation with

instructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation of

the Bible was put forth in the Irish language. The government contented

itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops,

bishops, and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were

paid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body

of the people.

There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which might

well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet,

however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the first time

all the British isles were peaceably united under one sceptre.

It should seem that the weight of England among European nations ought,

from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory which her new

King governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth had

inherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and the most

secure from attack that was to be found in the world. The Plantagenets

and Tudors had been repeatedly under the necessity of defending

themselves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental war.

The long conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on

their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns had

been highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore, not

unreasonably be expected that England, Scotland, and Ireland combined

would form a state second to none that then existed.

All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of the

accession of James the First, England descended from the rank which she

had hitherto held, and began to be regarded as a power hardly of the

second order. During many years the great British monarchy, under four

successive princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more important

member of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland had

previously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James the

First, as of John, it may be said that, if his administration had been

able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country,

and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom and

courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at a critical

moment. The time was fast approaching when either the King must

become absolute, or the parliament must control the whole executive

administration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of

Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler,

had he put himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had

he gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned

Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish

cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's,

and had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fifty

thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his

person, the English Parliament would soon have been nothing more than

a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He began his

administration by putting an end to the war which had raged during

many years between England and Spain; and from that time he shunned

hostilities with a caution which was proof against the insults of his

neighbours and the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of

his life could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament,

and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in

defence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those whom he

governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect of

his pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed,

and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed with

mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided to the

militia.

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to form one,

it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict with his people.

But such was his indiscretion that, while he altogether neglected the

means which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly put

forward, in the most offensive form, claims of which none of his

predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strange

theories which Filmer afterwards formed into a system and which became

the badge of the most violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first

emerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being

regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,

with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of

primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and

even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that

of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it

extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his

rights, that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always

despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries,

the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions

which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume;

and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was

merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of

which the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this theory,

though intended to strengthen the foundations of government, altogether

unsettles them. Does the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit

females, or exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of

Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, and

liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine that

kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives no

countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read

that the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and

that they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiance

from him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the notion that

succession in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, would

rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the especial

protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob

of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David

Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from those

passages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance

of God: for the government under which the writers of the New Testament

lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republican

magistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule by

right of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded

that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to

obey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers.

In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would

have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible with

the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown

to the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion

had strongly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission to

constituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary

end elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed

most of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have

regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William

Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the

Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had

all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave

doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was

impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been

lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in

the realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from

considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable

institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth

obtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by

will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family

of Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a

similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.

Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and

unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy

the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that

whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the

assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should

suffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was widely

different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and

in popularity, regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from

the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was

yet the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had,

therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitions notion

that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. It

was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soon

found many advocates among those who aspired to his favour, and made

rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church.

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest

itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of the

monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudest

and most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne.

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and

yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly opposed

to all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed. The policy

of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popular

forms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon established absolute

monarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens

invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct

reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantly

telling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasure

and that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfully

do than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them,

abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them

to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations.

Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by

his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless

minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and

rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his

childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent,

made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments

there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of

his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throng had long

been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred

years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of

Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of

princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary

level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the decisive

struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be

exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears,

trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a

buffoon and of a pedagogue.

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the days of

Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had become

more formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the first

generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when

compared with the interval which separated the third generation of

Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's

cruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic party

still inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and

aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had

a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity

which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with

the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and

Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme

severity against the Papists. But when more than half a century of

undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church,

when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when

England was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger that

Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last

confessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took

place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the

Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated.

Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The

controversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party

took such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new controversies

of still greater importance were added to the old subjects of dispute.

The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an

ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity, but had not

declared that form of church government to be of divine institution. We

have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the office

of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and

other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what

the state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the

state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they never

denied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure

Church. [6] On the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the

Continent as of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmen

in England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop,

as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of

the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman,

nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed without

scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad the ambassadors

of Elizabeth and James went in state to the very worship which Elizabeth

and James persecuted at home, and carefully abstained from decorating

their private chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should

be given to weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the

Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister,

ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by the

Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments in

any part of the province of Canterbury. [7] In the year 1603, the

Convocation solemnly recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church in

which episcopal control and episcopal ordination were then unknown, as a

branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. [8] It was even held that

Presbyterian ministers were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical

councils. When the States General of the United Provinces convoked at

Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and

an English Dean, commissioned by the head of the English Church, sate

with those doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on the gravest

questions of theology. [9] Nay, many English benefices were held by

divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form

used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such cases

then thought necessary, or even lawful. [10]

But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church of England.

In their view the episcopal office was essential to the welfare of a

Christian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances of

religion. To that office belonged certain high and sacred privileges,

which no human power could give or take away. A church might as well be

without the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation,

as without the apostolical orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in the

midst of all her corruptions, had retained the apostolical orders,

was nearer to primitive purity than those reformed societies which had

rashly set up, in opposition to the divine model, a system invented by

men.

In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders of the

Anglican ritual had generally contented themselves with saying that it

might be used without sin, and that, therefore, none but a perverse and

undutiful subject would refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by the

magistrate. Now, however, that rising party which claimed for the polity

of the Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a new

dignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the established worship

had any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the Reformers

had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient

ceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days and

places were again held in mysterious veneration. Some practices which

had long been disused, and which were commonly regarded as superstitious

mummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had escaped the

fury of the first generation of Protestants, became the objects of a

respect such as to many seemed idolatrous.

No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the

Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine

of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the apostle

Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes and

scandals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation.

Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing

a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by

fire during the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however,

it began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared

in the Church of England; that there was in high quarters a prejudice

against married priests; that even laymen, who called themselves

Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost amounted

to vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set up a

nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a company of

virgins dedicated to God. [11]

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of the

Anglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had differed

little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The

controversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy had

related almost exclusively to Church government and to ceremonies. There

had been no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points of

metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy

touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and election,

were those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close of

Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop Whitgift, drew

up, in concert with the Bishop of London and other theologians, the

celebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that

instrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed

with a distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are reputed

Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshly

of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the University of

Cambridge, and escaped punishment only by expressing his firm belief in

the tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow for

the offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the great

French reformer. The school of divinity of which Hooker was the chief

occupies a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of

Laud; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians

as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superior

in wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to whom

thousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth, but who was

himself indebted to God alone. When the Arminian controversy arose

in Holland, the English government and the English Church lent strong

support to the Calvinistic party; nor is the English name altogether

free from the stain which has been left on that party by the

imprisonment of Grocius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.

But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the

Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic Church

government and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to regard with

dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling was very naturally

strengthened by the gross injustice, insolence, and cruelty of the party

which was prevalent at Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine less

austerely logical than that of the early Reformers, but more agreeable

to the popular notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spread

fast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which

at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed

without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best

title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple

country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth

as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the

position which they had originally occupied, the majority of the

Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from the

principles and practices of their fathers. The persecution which the

separatists had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not

severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but

baited into savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressed

sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety,

encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition to

brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into

hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies

of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when

perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance

the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained

the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and

ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many

things which, if done without his special command, would have been

atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce

and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their

wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old

Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow

even to themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and

habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused

to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul

have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of

Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance

of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they

turned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive

times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath.

They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for

precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges

and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which were

assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet who

hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood of

a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and

of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the

fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under

the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering

under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were

subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue

was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the

studies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles

not unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and

broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a

winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a

friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to

wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals,

to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have

appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and

contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw

over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by

which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which

they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, were

regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with

aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar,

because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The

fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was

superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques was dissolute.

Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half

indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his

gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the

upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and

above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the

imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the

English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry

of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of

English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant,

which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists and

libertines.

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in the

sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth

century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism

were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were

in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The violent

Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent

Puritans who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament,

regarded each other with animosity more intense than that which, in the

preceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.

While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a peace

of many years, at length engaged in a war which required strenuous

exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutional

crisis. It was necessary that the King should have a large military

force. He could not have such a force without money. He could not

legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It followed,

therefore, that he either must administer the government in conformity

with the sense of the House of Commons, or must venture on such a

violation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during

several centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true,

occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a benevolence or

a forced loan: but these expedients were always of a temporary nature.

To meet the regular charge of a long war by regular taxation, imposed

without the consent of the Estates of the realm, was a course which

Henry the Eighth himself would not have dared to take. It seemed,

therefore, that the decisive hour was approaching, and that the English

Parliament would soon either share the fate of the senates of the

Continent, or obtain supreme ascendency in the state.

Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded to the

throne. He had received from nature a far better understanding, a far

stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's.

He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much more

disposed than his father to carry them into practice. He was, like his

father, a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had

never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist

much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles had

some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote

and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but

after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His taste

in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though not

gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief

cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in

truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways.

It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little

moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached

him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was

perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also on

principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most

esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the

nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divest

himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he

made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken

in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge.

And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the destinies of

the English people. It was played on the side of the House of Commons

with keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness, and perseverance.

Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far before them were at

the head of that assembly. They were resolved to place the King in such

a situation that he must either conduct the administration in conformity

with the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on the

most sacred principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled out

supplies to him very sparingly. He found that he must govern either in

harmony with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choice

was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes by

his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and found it more

intractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient of

dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, and

threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison At the same time a new

grievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation

made insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to

be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and alarm. Companies

of soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in some

places, substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm.

The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the

opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a

change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the

demands of the Commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions,

agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would

have averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted

an ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that

celebrated law, which is known by the name of the Petition of Right,

and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England. By

ratifying that law he bound himself never again to raise money without

the consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, except

in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to the

jurisdiction of courts martial.

The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnly

given to this great Act, was a day of joy and hope. The Commons,

who crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth into loud

acclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form of

words by which our princes have, during many ages, signified their

assent to the wishes of the Estates of the realm. Those acclamations

were reechoed by the voice of the capital and of the nation; but

within three weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention of

observing the compact into which he had entered. The supply given by the

representatives of the nation was collected. The promise by which that

supply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed. The

Parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure. Some of

the most distinguished members were imprisoned; and one of them, Sir

John Eliot, after years of suffering, died in confinement.

Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own authority,

taxes sufficient for carrying on war. He accordingly hastened to make

peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave his whole mind to

British politics.

Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had occasionally committed

unconstitutional acts: but none had ever systematically attempted to

make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such

was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March

1629 to April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history

had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and

Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that

length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who represent

Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets

and Tudors.

It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters,

that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of the Petition of

Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and on

system; that a large part of the revenue was raised without any legal

authority; and that persons obnoxious to the government languished for

years in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before any

tribunal.

For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible.

From the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister.

Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited to

his purposes, were at the head of different departments of the

administration.

Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of

Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of a

cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political

and military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished members

of the opposition, and felt towards those whom he had deserted that

peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of

apostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the

policy of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed a

vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the

able tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been

directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gave

the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all,

and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France; to make Charles a

monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and the

personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to

deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary

questions of civil right between man and man; and to punish with

merciless rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who

applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for

relief against those acts. [12]

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this

end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a

clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing

an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly

entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument,

and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried

into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of

such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind.

In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing

a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also

over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island,

the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be. [13]

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, principally

directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelates

of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles

of the Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more

remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the

Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays,

vigils, and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage

of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal

with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the

laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even

if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his

ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world

had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his

own dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone

to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish

and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction

every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute

inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out and

broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the

vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire that the

deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, was

generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve

of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of several

extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single

dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction. [14]

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil

and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common

law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were

scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less

ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of

courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two

centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among

these courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High

Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition.

Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamber

had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. The

power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles

had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when

compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violent

spirit of the primate, and free from the control of Parliament, they

displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been

unknown to any former age. The government was able through their

instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without

restraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the presidency

of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of

prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All

these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster Hall,

and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished Royalists have

warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly

a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the

harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commission

had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom,

and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a

dead letter on the north of the Trent.

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as

that of France. But that one point was all important. There was still no

standing army. There was therefore, no security that the whole fabric

of tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and, if taxes were

imposed by the royal authority for the support of an army, it was

probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion.

This was the difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth.

The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were employed

by the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted.

The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of the

counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the defence of

the border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish

ships for the defence of the coast. In the room of ships money had

sometimes been accepted. This old practice it was now determined, after

a long interval, not only to revive but to extend. Former princes had

raised shipmoney only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of

profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, had

raised shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the

inland shires. Former princes had raised shipmoney only for the maritime

defence of the country: It was now exacted, by the admission of the

Royalists themselves. With the object, not of maintaining a navy, but

of furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased at

his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for any

purpose.

The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and

well born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his own

neighbourhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom generally, had the

courage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government,

and take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative

to which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the judges

in the Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the arguments against the

pretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were,

the majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there was

a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one great

and productive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth

justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judgment

except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had not

ventured to draw. If money might legally be raised without the consent

of Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that

money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the

support of an army.

The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. A

century earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a general

rising. But discontent did not now so readily as in an earlier age take

the form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in

wealth and in civilisation. Since the great northern Earls took up arms

against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventy

years there had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existence

of the English nation, had so long a period passed without intestine

hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful

industry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drew

the sword.

This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in

the greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair of

the destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wilderness

as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual

freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their

religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of

uncivilised life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks

of more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forests, villages

which are now great and opulent cities, but which have, through

every change, retained some trace of the character derived from their

founders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion,

and attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not

prevent the population of New England from being largely recruited by

stouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old England.

And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few years

might probably suffice for the execution of his great design. If

strict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers were

carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there

would be funds available for the support of a large military force; and

that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole

face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a

cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in the

South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the

greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might

become a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as he

had encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh.

The Parliament of his northern kingdom was a very different body from

that which bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it was

little considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint on

any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house. The

commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the

great nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been approved by

the Lords of Articles, a committee which was really, though not in

form, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament was

obsequious, the Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent and

ungovernable. They had butchered their first James in his bedchamber:

they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the

Second; they had slain James the Third on the field of battle: their

disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposed

and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was

still as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. All

along the southern border, and all along the line between the highlands

and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of the

country men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand.

Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled

during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mind

was divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil

and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had often

impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and preachers

who had inherited the republican opinions and the unconquerable spirit

of Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the population

had been wounded. All orders of men complained that their country, that

country which had, with so much glory, defended her independence against

the ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality of

her native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province

of England. In no part of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine and

discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church of Rome

was regarded by the great body of the people with a hatred which might

justly be called ferocious; and the Church of England, which seemed

to be every day becoming more and more like the Church of Rome, was an

object of scarcely less aversion.

The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the

whole island, and had already, with this view, made several changes

highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, the

most hazardous of all, because it was directly cognisable by the senses

of the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worship

of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now,

however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English

liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of

England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the

worse.

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal

ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, our country owes

her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced

a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism,

fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was

in arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some years later,

sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English people

sympathised with the religious feelings of the insurgents; and many

Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars

and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which

seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and to

make the calling of a Parliament necessary.

For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworth

is not responsible. [15] It had, in fact, thrown all his plans into

confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. An

attempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword: but the

King's military means and military talents were unequal to the task.

To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law, would, at this

conjuncture, have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament;

and in the spring of 1640 a Parliament was convoked.

The nation had been put into good humour by the prospect of seeing

constitutional government restored, and grievances redressed. The new

House of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the throne

than any which had sate since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation

of this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distinguished

Royalists and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment

to the chiefs of the opposition: but it was the uniform practice of

Charles, a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous, to refuse all

compliance with the desires of his people, till those desires

were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed a

disposition to take into consideration the grievances under which

the country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the

Parliament with every mark of displeasure.

Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the meeting

of that ever memorable body known by the name of the Long Parliament,

intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down more

severely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up

more angrily than ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons

were questioned by the Privy Council touching their parliamentary

conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Shipmoney was

levied with increased rigour. The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London

were threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the

payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was

exacted from their counties. Torture, which had always been illegal, and

which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of

that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of

May, 1610.

Everything now depended on the event of the King's military operations

against the Scots. Among his troops there was little of that feeling

which separates professional soldiers from the mass of a nation, and

attaches them to their leaders. His army, composed for the most part of

recruits, who regretted the plough from which they had been violently

taken, and who were imbued with the religious and political sentiments

then prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to himself

than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads of the English

opposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched across

the Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of Yorkshire.

And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into an uproar by which all

spirits save one were overawed.

But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even, in this

extremity, showed a nature so cruel and despotic, that his own pikemen

were ready to tear him in pieces.

There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered himself,

might save him from the misery of facing another House of Commons. To

the House of Lords he was less averse. The Bishops were devoted to

him; and though the temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with

his administration, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in the

maintenance of order, and in the stability of ancient institutions, that

they were not likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing from

the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a Great Council

consisting of Lords alone. But the Lords were too prudent to assume the

unconstitutional functions with which he wished to invest them. Without

money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, he

yielded to the pressure of necessity. The Houses were convoked; and the

elections proved that, since the spring, the distrust and hatred with

which the government was regarded had made fearful progress.

In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite of many

errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the reverence and

gratitude of all who, in any part of the world enjoy the blessings of

constitutional government.

During the year which followed, no very important division of opinion

appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical administration

had, through a period of nearly twelve years, been so oppressive and so

unconstitutional that even those classes of which the inclinations

are generally on the side of order and authority were eager to promote

popular reforms and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. It

was enacted that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse

between Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the Great

Seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers should,

without such writs, call the constituent bodies together for the choice

of representatives. The Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Council

of York were swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had

been confined in remote dungeons, regained their liberty. On the chief

ministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation was unsparingly

wreaked. The Lord Keeper, the Primate, the Lord Lieutenant were

impeached. Finch saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower.

Strafford was put to death by act of attainder. On the day on which this

act passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himself

not to adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve the existing Parliament without

its own consent.

After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September 1641,

adjourned for a short vacation; and the King visited Scotland. He with

difficulty pacified that kingdom by consenting, not only to relinquish

his plans of ecclesiastical reform, but even to pass, with a very bad

grace, an act declaring that episcopacy was contrary to the word of God.

The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on

which the Houses met again is one of the most remarkable epochs in our

history. From that day dates the corporate existence of the two great

parties which have ever since alternately governed the country. In one

sense, indeed, the distinction which then became obvious had always

existed, and always must exist. For it has its origin in diversities

of temper, of understanding, and of interest, which are found in all

societies, and which will be found till the human mind ceases to be

drawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit and by the charm of

novelty. Not only in politics but in literature, in art, in science,

in surgery and mechanics, in navigation and agriculture, nay, even in

mathematics, we find this distinction. Everywhere there is a class of

men who cling with fondness to whatever is ancient, and who, even when

convinced by overpowering reasons that innovation would be beneficial,

consent to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find also

everywhere another class of men, sanguine in hope, bold in speculation,

always pressing forward, quick to discern the imperfections of whatever

exists, disposed to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences which

attend improvements and disposed to give every change credit for being

an improvement. In the sentiments of both classes there is something to

approve. But of both the best specimens will be found not far from the

common frontier. The extreme section of one class consists of bigoted

dotards: the extreme section of the other consists of shallow and

reckless empirics.

There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments might have been

discerned a body of members anxious to preserve, and a body eager to

reform. But, while the sessions of the legislature were short, these

bodies did not take definite and permanent forms, array themselves under

recognised leaders, or assume distinguishing names, badges, and war

cries. During the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignation

excited by many years of lawless oppression was so strong and

general that the House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse after

abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of the

representative body wished to retain the Star Chamber and the High

Commission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and by the

numerical superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretly

regretting institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be

openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it convenient to

antedate the separation between themselves and their opponents, and

to attribute the Act which restrained the King from dissolving or

proroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act, the impeachment of

the ministers, and the attainder of Strafford, to the faction which

afterwards made war on the King. But no artifice could be more

disingenuous. Every one of those strong measures was actively promoted

by the men who were afterward foremost among the Cavaliers. No

republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more severely than

Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial Bill

was made by Digby. The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by

Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept close

prisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law

attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunion

become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but extreme

necessity could justify, only about sixty members of the House of

Commons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in the minority, and that

Falkland not only voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the

bill. Even the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by

a retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the utmost

abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.

But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and when,

in October, 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two

hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different

names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the

direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During

some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They

were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these

appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.

It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or panegyric on either

of these renowned factions. For no man not utterly destitute of judgment

and candor will deny that there are many deep stains on the fame of the

party to which he belongs, or that the party to which he is opposed may

justly boast of many illustrious names, of many heroic actions, and of

many great services rendered to the state. The truth is that, though

both parties have often seriously erred, England could have spared

neither. If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the advantages

arising from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription,

have been combined to an extent elsewhere unknown, we may attribute this

happy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and alternate victories

of two rival confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous for

authority and antiquity, and a confederacy zealous for liberty and

progress.

It ought to be remembered that the difference between the two great

sections of English politicians has always been a difference rather of

degree than of principle. There were certain limits on the right and on

the left, which were very rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one

side were ready to lay all our laws and franchises at the feet of

our Kings. A few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing,

through endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic.

But the great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse

to despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular rights

were averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century,

the two parties suspended their dissensions, and united their strength

in a common cause. Their first coalition restored hereditary monarchy.

Their second coalition rescued constitutional freedom.