History of the English People Volume V Part 11

[Sidenote: Its rejection.]

The Liturgy and Canons had been Laud's own handiwork; in their composition the General a.s.sembly had neither been consulted nor recognized; and taken together they formed the code of a political and ecclesiastical system which aimed at reducing Scotland to an utter subjection to the Crown. To enforce them on the land was to effect a revolution of the most serious kind. The books however were backed by a royal injunction, and Laud flattered himself that the revolution had been wrought. But the patience of Scotland found an end at last. In the summer of 1637, while England was waiting for the opening of the great cause of s.h.i.+p-money, peremptory orders from the king forced the clergy of Edinburgh to introduce the new service into their churches. On the 23rd of July the Prayer-Book was used at the church of St. Giles. But the book was no sooner opened than a murmur ran through the congregation, and the murmur grew into a formidable riot. The church was cleared, and the service read; but the rising discontent frightened the judges into a decision that the royal writ enjoined the purchase, not the use, of the Prayer-Book, and its use was at once discontinued. The angry orders which came from England for its restoration were met by a shower of protests from every part of Scotland. The ministers of Fife pleaded boldly the want of any confirmation of the book by a General a.s.sembly. "This Church," they exclaimed, "is a free and independent Church, just as this kingdom is a free and independent kingdom." The Duke of Lennox alone took sixty-eight pet.i.tions with him to the Court; while ministers, n.o.bles, and gentry poured into Edinburgh to organize a national resistance.

[Sidenote: The temper of England.]

The effect of these events in Scotland was at once seen in the open demonstration of discontent south of the border. The prison with which Laud had rewarded Prynne's dumpy quarto had tamed his spirit so little that a new tract, written within its walls, denounced the bishops as devouring wolves and lords of Lucifer. A fellow-prisoner, John Bastwick, declared in his "Litany" that "h.e.l.l was broke loose, and the devils in surplices, hoods, copes, and rochets were come amongst us."

Burton, a London clergyman silenced by the High Commission, called on all Christians to resist the bishops as "robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of Antichrist." Raving of this sort might well have been pa.s.sed by, had not the general sympathy with Prynne and his fellow-pamphleteers, when Laud dragged them in 1637 before the Star Chamber as "trumpets of sedition," shown how fast the tide of general anger against the Government was rising. The three culprits listened with defiance to their sentence of exposure in the pillory and imprisonment for life; and the crowd who filled Palace Yard to witness their punishment groaned at the cutting off of their ears, and "gave a great shout" when Prynne urged that the sentence on him was contrary to law. A hundred thousand Londoners lined the road as they pa.s.sed on the way to prison; and the journey of these "Martyrs," as the spectators called them, was like a triumphal progress. Startled as he was at the sudden burst of popular feeling, Laud remained dauntless as ever.

Prynne's entertainers, as he pa.s.sed through the country, were summoned before the Star Chamber, while the censors.h.i.+p struck fiercer blows at the Puritan press. But the real danger lay not in the libels of silly zealots, but in the att.i.tude of Scotland, and in the effect which was being produced in England at large by the trial of Hampden. Wentworth was looking on from Ireland with cool insolence at the contest between a subject and the Crown. "Mr. Hampden," he wrote, "is a great brother; and the genius of that faction of people leads them always to oppose, both civilly and ecclesiastically, all that ever authority ordains." But England looked on with other eyes. "The eyes of all men," owns Clarendon, "were fixed upon him as their _Pater Patriae_ and the pilot who must steer the vessel through the tempests and storms that threatened it." In November and December 1637 the cause of s.h.i.+p-money was solemnly argued for twelve days before the full bench of judges. It was proved that the tax in past times had been levied only in cases of sudden emergency, and confined to the coast and port towns alone, and that even the show of legality had been taken from it by formal statute, and by the Pet.i.tion of Right.

[Sidenote: The judgement on s.h.i.+p-money.]

The case was adjourned, but its discussion told not merely on England, but on the temper of the Scots. Charles had replied to their pet.i.tions by a simple order to all strangers to leave the capital. But the Council at Edinburgh was unable to enforce his order; and the n.o.bles and gentry before dispersing to their homes pet.i.tioned against the bishops, resolved not to own the jurisdiction of their courts, and named in November 1637 a body of delegates, under the odd t.i.tle of "the Tables."

These delegates carried on through the winter a series of negotiations with the Crown. The negotiations were interrupted in the spring of 1638 by a renewed order for their dispersion, and for the acceptance of a Prayer-Book; while the judges in England delivered in June their long-delayed decision on Hampden's case. Two judges only p.r.o.nounced in his favour; though three followed them on technical grounds. The majority, seven in number, laid down the broad principle that no statute prohibiting arbitrary taxation could be pleaded against the king's will.

"I never read or heard," said Judge Berkeley, "that lex was rex, but it is common and most true that rex is lex." Finch, the Chief-Justice, summed up the opinions of his fellow-judges. "Acts of Parliament to take away the king's royal power in the defence of his kingdom are void," he said: "they are void Acts of Parliament to bind the king not to command the subjects, their persons, and goods, and I say their money too, for no Acts of Parliament make any difference."

[Sidenote: The Covenant.]

The case was ended; and Charles looked for the Puritans to give way. But keener eyes discerned that a new spirit of resistance had been stirred by the trial. The insolence of Wentworth was exchanged for a tone of angry terror. "I wish Mr. Hampden and others to his likeness," the Lord Deputy wrote bitterly from Ireland, "were well whipt into their right senses." Amidst the exultation of the Court over the decision of the judges, Wentworth saw clearly that Hampden's work had been done. Legal and temperate as his course had been, he had roused England to a sense of the danger to her freedom, and forced into light the real character of the royal claims. How stern and bitter the temper even of the n.o.blest Puritans had become at last we see in the poem which Milton produced at this time, his elegy of "Lycidas." Its grave and tender lament is broken by a sudden flash of indignation at the dangers around the Church, at the "blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheephook,"

and to whom "the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," while "the grim wolf" of Rome "with privy paw daily devours apace, and nothing said!"

The stern resolve of the people to demand justice on their tyrants spoke in his threat of the axe. Strafford and Laud, and Charles himself, had yet to reckon with "that two-handed engine at the door" which stood "ready to smite once, and smite no more." But stern as was the general resolve, there was no need for immediate action, for the difficulties which were gathering in the north were certain to bring a strain on the Government which would force it to seek support from the people. The king's demand for immediate submission, which reached Scotland while England was waiting for the Hampden judgement, in the spring of 1638, gathered the whole body of remonstrants together round "the Tables" at Stirling; and a protestation, read at Edinburgh, was followed, on Johnston of Warriston's suggestion, by a renewal of the Covenant with G.o.d which had been drawn up and sworn to in a previous hour of peril, when Mary was still plotting against Protestantism, and Spain was preparing its Armada. "We promise and swear," ran the solemn engagement at its close, "by the great name of the Lord our G.o.d, to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion, and that we shall defend the same, and resist all their contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation and the utmost of that power which G.o.d has put into our hands all the days of our life."

[Sidenote: Charles and Scotland.]

The Covenant was signed in the churchyard of the Greyfriars at Edinburgh on the first of March, in a tumult of enthusiasm, "with such content and joy as those who, having long before been outlaws and rebels, are admitted again into covenant with G.o.d." Gentlemen and n.o.bles rode with the doc.u.ment in their pockets over the country, gathering subscriptions to it, while the ministers pressed for a general consent to it from the pulpit. But pressure was needless. "Such was the zeal of subscribers that for a while many subscribed with tears on their cheeks"; some were indeed reputed to have "drawn their own blood and used it in place of ink to underwrite their names." The force given to Scottish freedom by this revival of religious fervour was seen in the new tone adopted by the Covenanters. The Marquis of Hamilton, who came as Royal Commissioner to put an end to the quarrel, was at once met by demands for an abolition of the Court of High Commission, the withdrawal of the Books of Canons and Common Prayer, a free Parliament, and a free General a.s.sembly. He threatened war; but the threat proved fruitless, and even the Scotch Council pressed Charles to give fuller satisfaction to the people. "I will rather die," the king wrote to Hamilton, "than yield to these impertinent and d.a.m.nable demands"; but it was needful to gain time. "The discontents at home," wrote Lord Northumberland to Wentworth, "do rather increase than lessen"; and Charles was without money or men.

It was in vain that he begged for a loan from Spain on promise of declaring war against Holland, or that he tried to procure two thousand troops from Flanders, with which to occupy Edinburgh. The loan and troops were both refused, and some contributions offered by the English Catholics did little to recruit the Exchequer.

[Sidenote: The Scotch Revolution.]

Charles had directed the Marquis to delay any decisive breach till the royal fleet appeared in the Forth; but it was hard to equip a fleet at all. Scotland in fact was sooner ready for war than the king. The Scotch volunteers who had been serving in the Thirty Years War streamed home at the call of their brethren; and General Leslie, a veteran trained under Gustavus, came from Sweden to take the command of the new forces.

A voluntary war tax was levied in every s.h.i.+re. Charles was so utterly taken by surprise that he saw no choice but to yield, if but for the moment, to the Scottish demands. Hamilton announced that the king allowed the Covenant, the service book was revoked; a pledge was given that the power of the bishops should be lessened; a Parliament was promised for the coming year; and a General a.s.sembly summoned at once.

The a.s.sembly met at Glasgow in November 1638; it had been chosen according to the old form which James had annulled, and its 144 ministers were backed by 96 lay elders amongst whom all the leading Covenanters found a place. They had hardly met when, at the news of their design to attack the Bishops, Hamilton declared the a.s.sembly dissolved. But the Church claimed its old freedom of meeting apart from any licence from kings; and by an almost unanimous vote the a.s.sembly resolved to continue its session. Its acts were an undoing of all that the Stuarts had done. The two books of Canons and Common Prayer, the High Commission, the Articles of Perth, were all set aside as invalid.

Episcopacy was abjured, the bishops were deposed from their office, and the system of Presbyterianism re-established in its fullest extent.

[Sidenote: The Scotch War.]

Scotland was fighting England's battle as well as her own. The bold a.s.sertion of a people's right to frame its own religion was a practical carrying out of the claim which had been made by the English Parliament of 1629. But Charles was as resolute to resist it now as then. He was firm in his resolve of war, and the strong remonstrances of his Scotch councillors against it were met by a fierce pressure from Wentworth and Laud. Both felt that the question had ceased to be one for Scotland only; they saw that a concession to the Scots must now be fatal to the political and ecclesiastical system they had built up in Ireland and England alike. In both countries those who opposed the Government were looking to the rising in the North. They were suspicious of correspondence between the Puritans in England and the Scotch leaders; and whether these suspicions were true or no, of the sympathy with which the proceedings at Edinburgh were watched south of the Border there could be little doubt. It was with the conviction that the whole Stuart system was at stake that the two ministers pressed for war. But angered as he was, Charles was a Scotchman, and a Scotch king; and he shrank from a march with English troops into his hereditary kingdom. He counted rather on the sympathy of the northern clans and of Huntly, on the impression produced by the appearance of Hamilton with a fleet in the Forth, and by the suspension of trade with Holland, than on any actual force of arms from the South. The 20,000 men he gathered at York were to serve rather as a demonstration, and to protect the border, than as an invading force. But again his plans broke down before the activity and resolution of the Scots. The news that Charles was gathering an army at York, and reckoning for support on the clans of the north, was answered in the spring of 1639 by the seizure of Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and Stirling; while 10,000 well-equipped troops under Leslie and the Earl of Montrose entered Aberdeen, and brought the Earl of Huntly a prisoner to the south. Instead of overawing the country, the appearance of the royal fleet in the Forth was the signal for Leslie's march with 20,000 men to the Border. Charles had hardly pushed across the Tweed, when the "old little crooked soldier," encamping on the hill of Dunse Law, a few miles from Berwick, fairly offered him battle.

[Sidenote: Scotland and France.]

The king's threats at once broke down. Charles had a somewhat stronger force than Leslie, but his men had no will to fight; and he was forced to evade a battle by consenting to the gathering of a free a.s.sembly and of a Scotch Parliament. But he had no purpose of being bound by terms which had been wrested from him by rebel subjects. In his eyes the pacification at Berwick was a mere suspension of arms; and the king's summons of Wentworth from Ireland was a proof that violent measures were in preparation. The Scotch leaders were far from deceiving themselves as to the king's purpose; and in the struggle which they foresaw they sought aid from a power which Scotch tradition had looked on for centuries as the natural ally of their country. The jealousy between France and England had long been smouldering, and only the weakness of Charles and the caution of Richelieu had prevented its bursting into open flame. In the weary negotiations which the English king still carried on for the restoration of his nephew to the Palatinate, he had till now been counting rather on the friendly mediation of Spain with the Emperor than on any efforts of France or its Protestant allies. At this moment however a strange piece of fortune brought about a sudden change in his policy. A Spanish fleet, which had been attacked by the Dutch in the Channel, took refuge under the guns of Dover; and Spain appealed for its protection to the friends.h.i.+p of the king. But Charles saw in the incident a chance of winning the Palatinate without a blow. He at once opened negotiations with Richelieu. He offered to suffer the Spanish vessels to be destroyed, if France would pledge itself to restore his nephew. Richelieu on the other hand would only consent to his restoration if Charles would take an active part in the war. But the negotiations were suddenly cut short by the daring of the Dutch. In spite of the king's threats they attacked the Spanish fleet as it lay in English waters, and drove it broken to Ostend. Such an act of defiance could only embitter the enmity which Charles already felt towards France and its Dutch allies; and Richelieu grasped gladly at the Scotch revolt as a means of hindering England from joining in the war. His agents opened communications with the Scottish leaders; and applications for its aid were forwarded by the Scots to the French court.

[Sidenote: The Short Parliament.]

The discovery of this correspondence roused anew the hopes of the king.

He was resolved not to yield to rebels; and the proceedings in Scotland since the pacification of Berwick seemed to him mere rebellion. A fresh General a.s.sembly adopted as valid the acts of its predecessor. The Parliament only met to demand that the council should be responsible to it for its course of government. The king prorogued both that he might use the weapon which fortune had thrown into his hand. He never doubted that if he appealed to the country English loyalty would rise to support him against Scottish treason. He yielded at last to the counsels of Wentworth. Wentworth was still for war. He had never ceased to urge that the Scots should be whipped back to their border; and the king now avowed his concurrence in this policy by raising him to the earldom of Strafford, and from the post of Lord Deputy to that of Lord Lieutenant.

Strafford agreed with Charles that a Parliament should be summoned, the correspondence laid before it, and advantage taken of the burst of indignation on which the king counted to procure a heavy subsidy. But he had foreseen that it might refuse all aid; and in such a case the Earl and the Council held that the King would have a right to fall back on "extraordinary means." Strafford himself hurried to Ireland to read a practical lesson to the English Parliament. In fourteen days he had procured four subsidies from the Irish Commons, and set on foot a force of 8000 men to take part in the attack on the Scots. He came back, flushed with his success, in time for the meeting of the Houses at Westminster in the middle of April 1640. But the lesson failed in its effect. Statesmen like Hampden and Pym were not fools enough to aid the great enemy of English freedom against men who had risen for freedom across the Tweed. Every member of the Commons knew that Scotland was fighting the battle of English liberty. All hope of bringing them to any attack upon the Scots proved fruitless. The intercepted letters were quietly set aside; and the Commons declared as of old that redress of grievances must precede any grant of supplies. No subsidy could be granted till security was had for religion, for property, and for the liberties of Parliament. An offer to relinquish s.h.i.+p-money proved fruitless; and after three weeks sitting the "Short Parliament" was dissolved. "Things must go worse before they go better" was the cool comment of St. John. But the country was strangely moved. After eleven years of personal rule, its hopes had risen again with the summons of the Houses to Westminster; and their rough dismissal after a three weeks sitting brought all patience to an end. "So great a defection in the kingdom," wrote Lord Northumberland, "hath not been known in the memory of man."

[Sidenote: The Bishops' War.]

Strafford alone stood undaunted. He had provided for the resolve of the Parliament by the decision of the Council that in such a case the king might resort to "extraordinary means"; and he now urged that by the act of the Commons Charles was "freed from all rule of government," and ent.i.tled to supply himself at his will. The Irish army, he said, was at the king's command, and Scotland could be subdued in a single summer. He was bent, in fact, on war; and he took command of the royal army, which again advanced to the north. But the Scots were as ready for war as Strafford. As early as March they had rea.s.sembled their army; and their Parliament commissioned the Committee of Estates, of which Argyle was the most influential member, to carry on the government. Encouraged by the refusal of the English Houses to grant supplies, they now published a new manifesto and resolved to meet the march of Strafford's army by an advance into England. On the twentieth of August the Scotch army crossed the Border; Montrose being the first to set foot on English soil.

Forcing the pa.s.sage of the Tyne in the face of an English detachment, they occupied Newcastle, and despatched from that town their proposals of peace. They prayed the king to consider their grievances, and "with the advice and consent of the Estates of England convened in Parliament, to settle a firm and desirable peace." The prayer was backed by preparations for a march upon York, where Charles had abandoned himself to despair. The warlike bl.u.s.ter of Strafford had broken utterly down the moment he attempted to take the field. His troops were a mere mob; and neither by threats nor prayers could the earl recall them to their duty.

He was forced to own that two months were needed before they could be fit for action. Charles was driven again to open negotiations with the Scots, and to buy a respite in their advance by a promise of pay for their army and by leaving Northumberland and Durham in their hands as pledges for the fulfilment of his engagements. But the truce only met half his difficulties. Behind him England was all but in revolt. The Treasury was empty, and London and the East India merchants alike refused a loan. The London apprentices mobbed Laud at Lambeth, and broke up the sittings of the High Commission at St. Paul's. The war was denounced everywhere as "the Bishops' War," and the new levies murdered officers whom they suspected of Papistry, broke down altar-rails in every church they pa.s.sed, and deserted to their homes. To all but Strafford it was plain that the system of Charles had broken hopelessly down. Two peers, Lord Wharton and Lord Howard, ventured to lay before the king himself a pet.i.tion for peace with the Scots; and though Strafford arrested and proposed to shoot them as mutineers, the English Council shrank from desperate courses. But if desperate courses were not taken, there was nothing for it but to give way. Penniless, without an army, with a people all but in revolt, the obstinate temper of the king still strove to escape from the humiliation of calling a Parliament. He summoned a Great Council of the Peers at York. But his project broke down before its general repudiation by the n.o.bles; and with wrath and shame at his heart Charles was driven to summon again the Houses to Westminster.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LONG PARLIAMENT

1640-1644

[Sidenote: John Pym.]

If Strafford embodied the spirit of tyranny, John Pym, the leader of the Commons from the first meeting of the new Houses at Westminster, stands out for all after time as the embodiment of law. A Somersets.h.i.+re gentleman of good birth and competent fortune, he entered on public life in the Parliament of 1614, and was imprisoned for his patriotism at its close. He had been a leading member in that of 1620, and one of the "twelve amba.s.sadors" for whom James ordered chairs to be set at Whitehall. Of the band of patriots with whom he had stood side by side in the const.i.tutional struggle against the earlier despotism of Charles he was almost the one survivor. c.o.ke had died of old age; Cotton's heart was broken by oppression; Eliot had perished in the Tower; Wentworth had apostatized. But Pym remained, resolute, patient as of old; and as the sense of his greatness grew silently during the eleven years of deepening misrule, the hope and faith of better things clung almost pa.s.sionately to the man who never doubted of the final triumph of freedom and the law. At their close, Clarendon tells us, in words all the more notable for their bitter tone of hate, "he was the most popular man, and the most able to do hurt, that have lived at any time." He had shown he knew how to wait, and when waiting was over he showed he knew how to act. On the eve of the Long Parliament he rode through England to quicken the electors to a sense of the crisis which had come at last; and on the a.s.sembling of the Commons he took his place, not merely as member for Tavistock, but as their acknowledged head. Few of the country gentlemen indeed who formed the bulk of the members, had sat in any previous House; and of the few none represented in so eminent a way the Parliamentary tradition on which the coming struggle was to turn. Pym's eloquence, inferior in boldness and originality to that of Eliot or Wentworth, was better suited by its ma.s.sive and logical force to convince and guide a great party; and it was backed by a calmness of temper, a dexterity and order in the management of public business, and a practical power of shaping the course of debate, which gave a form and method to Parliamentary proceedings such as they had never had before.

[Sidenote: His political theory.]

Valuable however as these qualities were, it was a yet higher quality which raised Pym into the greatest, as he was the first, of Parliamentary leaders. Of the five hundred members who sate round him at St. Stephen's, he was the one man who had clearly foreseen, and as clearly resolved how to meet, the difficulties which lay before them. It was certain that Parliament would be drawn into a struggle with the Crown. It was probable that in such a struggle the House of Commons would be hampered, as it had been hampered before, by the House of Lords. The legal antiquarians of the older const.i.tutional school stood helpless before such a conflict of co-ordinate powers, a conflict for which no provision had been made by the law, and on which precedents threw only a doubtful and conflicting light. But with a knowledge of precedent as great as their own, Pym rose high above them in his grasp of const.i.tutional principles. He was the first English statesman who discovered, and applied, to the political circ.u.mstances around him, what may be called the doctrine of const.i.tutional proportion. He saw that as an element of const.i.tutional life Parliament was of higher value than the Crown; he saw too that in Parliament itself the one essential part was the House of Commons. On these two facts he based his whole policy in the contest which followed. When Charles refused to act with the Parliament, Pym treated the refusal as a temporary abdication on the part of the sovereign, which vested the executive power in the two Houses until new arrangements were made. When the Lords obstructed public business, he warned them that obstruction would only force the Commons "to save the kingdom alone." Revolutionary as these principles seemed at the time, they have both been recognized as bases of our const.i.tution since the days of Pym. The first principle was established by the Convention and Parliament which followed on the departure of James the Second; the second by the acknowledgement on all sides since the Reform Bill of 1832 that the government of the country is really in the hands of the House of Commons, and can only be carried on by ministers who represent the majority of that House.

[Sidenote: His political genius.]

It was thus that the work of Pym brought about a political revolution greater than any that England has ever experienced since his day. But the temper of Pym was the very opposite of the temper of a revolutionist. Few natures have ever been wider in their range of sympathy or action. Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial and even courtly; he turned easily from an invective against Strafford to a chat with Lady Carlisle; and the grace and gaiety of his social tone, even when the care and weight of public affairs were bringing him to his grave, gave rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient royalists. It was this striking combination of genial versatility with a ma.s.sive force in his nature which marked him out from the first moment of power as a born ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest of diplomatists and the grandest of demagogues. He was equally at home in tracking the subtle intricacies of royalist intrigues, or in kindling popular pa.s.sion with words of fire. Though past middle life when his work really began, for he was born in 1584, four years before the coming of the Armada, he displayed from the first meeting of the Long Parliament the qualities of a great administrator, an immense faculty for labour, a genius for organization, patience, tact, a power of inspiring confidence in all whom he touched, calmness and moderation under good fortune or ill, an immovable courage, an iron will. No English ruler has ever shown greater n.o.bleness of natural temper or a wider capacity for government than the Somersets.h.i.+re squire whom his enemies, made clear-sighted by their hate, greeted truly enough as "King Pym."

[Sidenote: The meeting of the Parliament.]

On the eve of the elections he rode with Hampden through the counties to rouse England to a sense of the crisis which had come. But his ride was hardly needed, for the summons of a Parliament at once woke the kingdom to a fresh life. The Puritan emigration to New England was suddenly and utterly suspended; "the change," said Winthrop, "made all men to stay in England in expectation of a new world." The public discontent spoke from every Puritan pulpit, and expressed itself in a sudden burst of pamphlets, the first-fruits of the thirty thousand which were issued in the twenty years that followed, and which turned England at large into a school of political discussion. The resolute looks of the members, as they gathered at Westminster on the third of November 1640, contrasted with the hesitating words of the king; and each brought from borough or county a pet.i.tion of grievances. Fresh pet.i.tions were brought every day by bands of citizens or farmers. The first week was spent in receiving these pet.i.tions, and in appointing forty committees to examine and report on them, whose reports formed the grounds on which the Commons subsequently acted. The next work of the Commons was to deal with the agents of the royal system. It was agreed that the king's name should be spared; but in every county a list of officers who had carried out the plans of the Government was ordered to be prepared and laid before the House. But the Commons were far from dealing merely with these meaner "delinquents." They resolved to strike at the men whose counsels had wrought the evil of the past years of tyranny; and their first blow was at the leading ministers of the king.

[Sidenote: Impeachment of Strafford.]

Even Laud was not the centre of so great and universal a hatred as the Earl of Strafford. Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a servile instrument of tyranny, it was the guilt of "that grand apostate to the Commonwealth who," in the terrible words which closed Lord Digby's invective, "must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be despatched to the other." He was conscious of his danger, but Charles forced him to attend the Court; and with characteristic boldness he resolved to antic.i.p.ate attack by accusing the Parliamentary leaders of a treasonable correspondence with the Scots. He reached London a week after the opening of the Parliament; and hastened the next morning to an interview with the king. But he had to deal with men as energetic as himself. He was just laying his scheme before Charles when the news reached him that Pym was at the bar of the Lords with his impeachment for high treason. On the morning of the 11th of November the doors of the House of Commons had been locked, Strafford's impeachment voted, and carried by Pym with 300 members at his back to the bar of the Lords. The Earl hurried at once to the Parliament. "With speed," writes an eye-witness, "he comes to the House: he calls rudely at the door," and, "with a proud glooming look, makes towards his place at the board-head.

But at once many bid him void the House, so he is forced in confusion to go to the door till he was called." He was only recalled to hear his committal to the Tower. He was still resolute to retort the charge of treason on his foes, and "offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone without a word." The keeper of the Black Rod demanded his sword as he took him in charge. "This done, he makes through a number of people towards his coach, no man capping to him, before whom that morning the greatest of all England would have stood uncovered."

[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministers.]

The blow was quickly followed up. Windebank, the Secretary of State, was charged with a corrupt favouring of recusants, and escaped to France; Finch, the Lord Keeper, was impeached, and fled in terror over sea. In December Laud was himself committed to the charge of the Usher. The shadow of what was to come falls across the pages of his diary, and softens the hard temper of the man into a strange tenderness. "I stayed at Lambeth till the evening," writes the Archbishop, "to avoid the gaze of the people. I went to evening prayer in my chapel. The Psalms of the day and chapter fifty of Isaiah gave me great comfort. G.o.d make me worthy of it, and fit to receive it. As I went to my barge, hundreds of my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my house. For which I bless G.o.d and them." In February Sir Robert Berkeley, one of the judges who had held that s.h.i.+p-money was legal, was seized while sitting on the Bench and committed to prison. In the very first days of the Parliament a yet more emphatic proof of the downfall of the royal system had been given by the recall of Prynne and his fellow "martyrs" from their prisons, and by their entry in triumph into London, amidst the shouts of a great mult.i.tude who strewed laurels in their path.

[Sidenote: Work of the Houses.]

The effect of these rapid blows was seen in the altered demeanour of the king. Charles at once dropped his old tone of command. He ceased to protest against the will of the Commons, and looked sullenly on while one by one the lawless acts of his Government were undone. s.h.i.+p-money was declared illegal; and the judgement in Hampden's case was annulled.

In February 1641 a statute declaring "the ancient right of the subjects of this kingdom that no subsidy, custom, impost, or any charge whatsoever ought or may be laid or imposed upon any merchandise exported or imported by subjects, denizens, or aliens, without common consent in Parliament," put an end for ever to all pretensions to a right of arbitrary taxation on the part of the Crown. A Triennial Bill enforced the a.s.sembly of the Houses every three years, and bound the returning officers to proceed to election if no royal writ were issued to summon them.

[Sidenote: Church reform.]

The subject of religion was one of greater difficulty. In ecclesiastical as in political matters the aim of the parliamentary leaders was strictly conservative. Their purpose was to restore the Church of England to its state under Elizabeth, and to free it from the "innovations" introduced by Laud and his fellow-prelates. With this view commissioners were sent in January 1641 into every county "for the defacing, demolis.h.i.+ng, and quite taking away of all images, altars, or tables turned altarwise, crucifixes, superst.i.tious pictures, monuments, and reliques of idolatry out of all churches and chapels." But the bulk of the Commons as of the Lords were averse from any radical changes in the const.i.tution or doctrine of the Church. All however were agreed on the necessity of reform; and one of the first acts of the Parliament was to appoint a Committee of Religion to consider the question. Within as without the House the general opinion was in favour of a reduction of the power and wealth of the prelates, as well as of the jurisdiction of the Church courts. Even among the bishops themselves the more prominent saw the need for consenting to an abolition of Chapters and Bishops'

Courts, as well as to the election of a council of ministers in each diocese, which had been suggested by Archbishop Usher as a check on episcopal autocracy. A scheme to this effect was drawn up by Bishop Williams of Lincoln; but it was far from meeting the wishes of the general body of the Commons. The part which the higher clergy had taken in lending themselves to do political work for the Crown was fresh in the minds of all; and in addition to the changes which Williams proposed, Pym and Lord Falkland demanded a severance of the clergy from all secular or state offices, and an expulsion of the bishops from the House of Lords. Such a measure seemed needful to restore the independent action of the Peers; for the number and servility of the bishops were commonly strong enough to prevent the Upper House from taking any part which was disagreeable to the Crown.

[Sidenote: The Bishops and Parliament.]