CHAPTER V.
GRAND REMONSTRANCE.--IMPEACHMENT OF FIVE MEMBERS. 1641-1642.
* * It is not so, thou hast misspoke, misheard; Be well advised, tell o’er thy tale again: It cannot be; thou dost but say ’tis so: I trust I may not trust thee; for thy word Is but the vain breath of a common man: Believe me, I do not believe thee, man; I have a king’s oath to the contrary.--KING JOHN, iii. 1.
During Strafford’s trial, the Commons had not been unmindful of reform. Early in the year Charles had given his consent to a bill which required that a Parliament should be elected once every three years, and that no future Parliament should be dissolved or adjourned, without its own consent, in less than fifty days from the opening of the session (16th Feb.). In order that the act might not remain a dead letter, it provided that if the king failed in his duty, various officers employed in the Government should send out writs for elections in his stead; and that if these failed in their duty, the electors should meet of themselves and choose their representatives.
The too long continuance of the same Parliament changes the character of the House of Commons from that of a popular assembly to that of an oligarchical senate, by making the members heedless of the wishes of their constituents, and apt to sacrifice their duties to their interests. The too frequent election of new Parliaments renders members subservient to their electors, so that instead of following some settled course of action according to their own convictions, they act merely as delegates apt to reflect every prejudice that obtains amongst the multitude. There is no universal rule of right in this matter. In the seventeenth century, new Parliaments might, without injury to their character, have been elected every year, so slight was the control constituents possessed over their representatives. The House of Commons was subject to the influence of the court; the county members were gentlemen by birth, often connected by blood or marriage with peers and ministers; while the members for small boroughs were returned according to the directions of neighbouring peers and gentlemen. No public meetings were held for the debate of political questions. No petitions of a political character had been presented to any previous Parliament. No newspaper press existed before the commencement of the civil war. The votes of members were unrecorded. Parliamentary debates were never published. The privilege of excluding strangers from the House was constantly exerted by the Commons. London, however, in stirring times, knew much and judged freely; but at duller periods there was a want of the coffee-houses of a later date to bring public opinion to a focus. The knowledge of events in London took months in circulating through the country. The action, therefore, of a Triennial Bill would have been beneficial in itself, and the experience of the last eleven years had shown the absolute necessity of a guarantee for the meeting of Parliaments. The measure which followed was of a different character.
%AN INDISSOLUBLE PARLIAMENT.%
♦Parliament cannot be dissolved without its own consent.♦ At the same time that he gave his consent to the Bill of Attainder, Charles, sick at heart, without heeding its contents, passed a second bill, depriving him of the right to dissolve the Parliament without its own consent (10th May). This bill had been introduced into the Commons upon the disclosure of the Army Plot, which gave Pym and Hampden good cause to doubt, whether their own lives or the liberties of the people would be safe, were the Parliament once dissolved.
♦Danger of assembly which cannot be dissolved.♦ If too long Parliaments become oligarchical, much more will a Parliament which is indissoluble. It may now, in fact, be taken as an axiom that a Parliament which can only dissolve of its own consent, will never dissolve unless forced to do so by some power external to itself. Either it is in accordance with the popular feeling, in which case there is no reason it should dissolve as it is still representative; or, again, if the pulse of popular opinion beats feebly, it feels it can go on governing as it likes; or, lastly, public opinion is strongly against it, and under these circumstances it feels that dissolution is suicide, so it is then most determined to ride over the storm and wait for a time when sympathy is restored. But in a moment of terror like this such far-sighted calculations would have seemed but mistrust of the patriotism of fellow-members.[68] It is not the only occasion on which the disregard of future dangers, induced by the terrors of the present, has brought countries into a constitutional dead-lock.
%REFORM IN LAW AND CHURCH.%
♦Illegal courts abolished.♦ Statutes were passed to abolish those great engines of tyranny, the courts of Star Chamber, of High Commission, and of the North, and deprive the king’s council of all jurisdiction, criminal or civil, and of the power of imprisoning without showing legal cause[69] (July); as also to prevent the recurrence of what was practically confiscation, by fixing the extent of the royal forests; and, lastly, to declare the illegality of all customs levied without consent of Parliament.
♦Reform in Church.♦ In the Church, reform was also carried on. The times were likened to ‘a little Doomsday;’ ministers who frequented taverns instead of teaching and preaching, those who burned three hundred wax candles in honour of our Lady, who called the communion table, altar, who taught the people that all they had belonged to the king, or in other ways had the character of being popishly or slavishly inclined, were now all alike turned out of their livings, fined, and imprisoned.
%QUESTION OF EPISCOPACY.%
♦Presbyterians and Independents.♦ All over the country the Presbyterians and sectarians rose again to the surface. The Presbyterians looked forward to overthrowing the Episcopal Church; the aspirations of the sectarians, or Independents, as they were often called, from the name of their most influential sect, looked rather to securing liberty to worship as they pleased. Men who had lain hid in corners, or migrated to New England, re-appeared to spread their special doctrines. Conventicles were filled, preachings held, by the poorest of the people. No wonder, it was said, “that chandlers, salters, and such like preached, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of preaching, had busied himself in projects about leather, salt, soap, and the like. They had but reciprocally invaded each other’s calling.”[70] Nevertheless there were numbers both in the Parliament and the country unwilling to see strange forms of Church government, free preaching, and the growth of schism uncontrolled by the authority of the bishops. Hence when religious matters were debated, the House was far from being at unity. ♦Episcopalians and political reformers.♦ ‘Let us keep the Church as it is,’ said Hyde and his Church party. ‘Let us allow bishops to keep their office, but shut them out of all share in State government, and lessen their power over the clergy,’ said Pym and Hampden and the political reformers. ♦Different religious parties.♦ ‘Let us bring them down, root and branch’, said a third, the Presbyterians. The Independents joined their votes to the Presbyterians, for although they did not wish the Presbyterian Church to be established by law, they knew there was little hope of escaping persecution, until the old rule of Episcopacy was overthrown. “I can tell you, sir, what I would not have, though I cannot tell you what I would,” said Cromwell, their leader, one day when pressed to declare his views.[71] The country was as divided in its wishes as the House. The abolition of Episcopal government was demanded by a petition of 15,000 Londoners (11th Dec., 1640), its maintenance by nineteen petitions from different counties.
%ROYALISTS DRAW APART.%
After the discovery of the Army Plot, the force of the Presbyterians in the Commons was much increased, for Pym and Hampden, with the political reformers, though not ill disposed to the Church, found it necessary to form an alliance with the Presbyterians. Hence for the present, in religious or political questions alike, these two sections voted as one. ♦‘Root and Branch Bill’ thrown out.♦ The results of this powerful coalition were soon shown in the introduction into the Lower House of a bill called the ‘Root and Branch Bill’, which required, not simply that the clergy should be deprived of all civil power, and the bishops consequently of their seats in the House of Lords, as one did that had already passed the Commons (1st May), but that the very order of bishops should be abolished, their titles, their power over the clergy, their revenues, all taken from them (27th May). On this parties plainly declared themselves, and the previous unanimity gave way to a fierce division, which crushed the bill. ♦Royalist party formed.♦ Men such as Hyde and Falkland drew back from further change whether in Church or State. The work of reform and justice, they argued, had now been completed; Strafford had paid the full penalty of his tyranny; Laud was in the Tower, a prisoner for life; other culprits had been punished by fine, imprisonment, or banishment; to ensure liberty, new statutes had been made, and the illegal courts abolished. If more was demanded of the king, the Commons would be trespassing on his just rights, and altering the ancient form of government as it had existed before Charles first encroached on the liberties of the people. ♦Political reformers.♦ On the other hand to Pym, Hampden, and their followers, the Army Plot, and other intrigues in Strafford’s behalf, were convincing proofs that Charles was not to be trusted. Granted he had consented to many bills, how had he given this consent? His deep reluctance was not subdued, it was only biding its time till he could use force to recover what he had lost? Even now the queen was talking of going to Spa, nominally to recover her health, really to try and gain some foreign aid to help her husband in crushing the Parliament; Charles, of a journey to Scotland, no doubt to strengthen his party there, and maybe to foster the discontent of the English army he would pass through. And what then? So old friends parted company. The party of Hyde and Falkland, now become royalist, went one way; that of Pym and Hampden, followed by all the Presbyterians and Independents, another.
♦Tampering with army.♦ Charles, on his way to Scotland, visited the English army, at the time disbanding (Aug.), and readily obtained promises of assistance from Papist officers and soldiers of fortune. But his opponents were generals enough to have organized their intelligence department well: they numbered friends among the king’s friends, and one wrote to the Earl of Essex, that strange attempts had been made to pervert and corrupt the army.
%IRISH REBELLION.%
♦King in Scotland.♦ Arrived in Scotland, Charles granted the Scottish Parliament the establishment of the Presbyterian Church and triennial Parliaments, and bestowed honours and pensions upon the leading Covenanters, hoping by such means to win the favour of nobles and people, and prevent them from befriending his enemies in England. At the same time he sought to obtain proofs against the leaders of the Parliament of having been in communication with the Covenanters in 1640, and on these he intended impeaching them of high treason on his return. “I believe after all be done,” he wrote to his secretary, who reported Pym’s apparent cheerfulness, “that they will not have such great cause of joy.” While his conduct, narrowly scanned as it was, was making Parliament more and more doubtful of his good faith, an act fell out that cast upon him the suspicion of all his Protestant subjects. ♦Irish Rebellion.♦ On the 1st November, the Commons, holding their breaths through horror, heard, that on the 23rd of October, the Irish of Ulster had risen in arms, and nearly surprised Dublin, and all over their own province were driving the Scotch and English from their homes with robbery, plunder, murder, while they displayed a commission, stamped, as they said, with the king’s great seal, authorizing them to take up arms. Every week with fresh despatches the tale increased in horror. Ulster was the province where the settlers were most thickly planted, but the rebellion and its attendant massacre spread fast from county to county, from province to province. The scattered remains of Strafford’s army, still some 3000 in number, joined the insurgents, the ‘degenerate English,’ also Papists, uniting with the Irish. It was a fearful time, a whole people in rebellion to avenge years of oppression and wrong, a people, moreover, brutal through ignorance, burning with fanaticism. Heartrending were the accounts that came to England, how men, women, and children were mercilessly butchered; how people of all conditions, spoiled and stripped, with only rags for coverings, some wounded to death, others frozen with cold, came crowding into Dublin, now almost their only asylum, until barns, stables, and outhouses were over-filled with dying wretches; how the Irish boldly declared their purpose to extirpate English Protestants, and not to lay down arms until the Romish religion was established, the government settled in the hands of natives, and the Irish restored to the lands of their ancestors.[72]
♦King and queen suspected of complicity in rebellion.♦ Though Charles declared that the commission published in his name was a forgery, and offered to commit the care of the war entirely to the Parliament, he did not succeed in counteracting the prevailing and persistent opinion that both he and the queen had been concerned in the rebellion.
%GRAND REMONSTRANCE.%
History has revealed that there was grave cause of suspicion. Charles, when the Parliament had insisted on his disbanding Strafford’s army, had sent private instructions to the Earl of Antrim, in Ireland, to get the same forces together again, and to engage the lords of the Pale to seize possession of Dublin castle, and declare for himself against the English Parliament. But it is ill playing with edged tools. The native Irish, who had planned an insurrection on their own account, possibly with the knowledge and consent of the queen,[73] seized the occasion to wreak vengeance for the seizure of their lands, and rising before the English Catholics were ready to join them, began the rebellion with the inhuman massacre of the Protestant settlers.[74] The king seems now to have cherished the strangely mistaken idea that the horrors of the rebellion might make his English subjects more inclined to support his own authority. “I hope,” he wrote to his secretary, “this ill news in Ireland will hinder some of these follies in England.”
♦Grand Remonstrance.♦ It had, of course, quite the opposite effect. Before Charles returned from Scotland, Pym and Hampden caused a Remonstrance to be drawn up, which it was intended afterwards to print and disperse throughout the country. This Remonstrance began by indicting the king’s government for all its past errors, the voyage to Cadiz, the loss of Rochelle, the long imprisonments and cruel sentences of the Star Chamber, and the death of one whose “blood still cries for vengeance, or repentance of those ministers of State who at once obstructed the course both of his Majesty’s justice and mercy.”[75] Next followed a statement of the reforms effected by the Parliament, the abolition of the illegal courts, the beneficial laws passed, the justice meted to evil councillors. After this came a complaint against the enemies of the Parliament, who had tampered with the army, and whose “designs defeated in England and Scotland, had succeeded in Ireland,” and this led up to the final demand that for the future the king should select councillors in whom Parliament could confide. To understand the motives which led a body of country gentlemen to propose what was in fact the first step to a revolution, we must imagine ourselves environed with the dangers that they saw around them on every side.
In England, Pym’s life had been attempted, not only by a loathsome attempt to inoculate him with the plague, but in Westminster Hall another man had been stabbed by mistake for him. From Scotland accounts came of a plot to assassinate both Hamilton and Argyle; there were suspicions, which history has confirmed, that the would-be murderer was Montrose. The popular leaders had strong reasons for believing that there was a second Army Plot brewing in Scotland; by which Parliament was to be crushed. Meantime, within the House the union which had been strength was gone; the Lords were inclined to retrace their steps; in the Commons, the longer Parliament lasted the more court influence increased. The secession of Hyde had carried with it even Falkland, though noted as a lover of justice, and of Parliament as the fountain of justice. Outside there was one of the reactions which ensue on revolutionary legislation, however salutary. The weak are alarmed; the violent remain dissatisfied; while the masses, on finding their wild and unreasonable hopes have met with an inevitable disappointment, are apt to echo the cries of the privileged classes who resent or dread interference. The people in such a mood will sacrifice their friends, and let slip all they have gained, unless some leader appears to restore confidence by showing clearly what is yet to be done, and how. The Remonstrance was Pym’s manifesto. In its pages the good of government by Parliament was contrasted with the well-known evils of government by Prerogative; the remedy was shown; the old method of electing the king’s council must give way to a new and more constitutional one; and the country must be governed by ministers in whom the Parliament had confidence, whether the king had confidence in them or not. After a debate which lasted for more than fifteen hours, the House divided on the question whether the Remonstrance should be passed. It was passed. The yeas numbered 159, the noes 148. Whereupon a member moved that it should be printed at once. To print it was to appeal from the king to the people. Hyde and Colepepper said, if the motion were persisted in, they should ask leave to enter their protest in the journals of the House, a custom occasionally adopted in the Upper House, but unknown in the Lower. Pym and Hollis referred to the usage of the House. An opponent then, putting aside the question of leave, called out that he did then and there protest for himself and for all the rest of his party. ‘All! all!’ shouted the enemies of the Remonstrance, waving their hats over their heads and snatching their swords from their belts. In the passion of the moment, blood might have been shed within the walls of the Commons’ House itself, had not Hampden, ever ready, calmed the turbulent spirits by a few well-timed words. Debates were then by day and not by night, but though no final vote was taken, it was not until two o’clock in the morning that the wearied members, depressed or elated by that majority of eleven, left their gloomy chamber for their homes[76] (Nov. 22).
So far the political reformers had gained a victory, but they were still far from carrying the whole sense of the House or the nation with them. ♦Royalist party.♦ Even in London, among the wealthier citizens a royalist party appeared, and celebrated the king’s return from Scotland by a great demonstration. A royalist Lord Mayor was elected, who, attended by the city aldermen in their scarlet robes, by troops of horsemen, by gentlemen richly clad in velvet coats and chains of gold, went out to meet the king and queen, and entertained them royally in the city.
Charles, elated by the rise of a royalist party, and with the lightly-given promises of Scotch nobles and army officers fresh in his mind, felt confident that he should yet be able to get the better of his enemies in the Parliament. But his acts gave warning of danger. A proclamation for the enforcement of laws against Puritans was published; the train-band that formed the guard of the two Houses, was dismissed by his orders; Balfour, a friend of the Parliament, was removed from the command of the Tower; and Lunsford, a cavalier of bad reputation, appointed in his place (22nd Dec.). On the news of this appointment, tumults arose in the city, where there was already excitement enough to warn Charles that his friends were not so many as he thought. But though he consented to cancel it within twenty-four hours at the representation of his friend the Lord Mayor, he could not allay the suspicion to which such peculiar measures had given rise.
%BISHOPS’ EXCLUSION BILL.%
The Remonstrance, printed by order of the House (15th Dec.), was already in the hands of the citizens. Reports were abroad that a charge of treason was intended against some members of Parliament. ♦Bill for depriving bishops of seats.♦ At this critical time, a bill to deprive the bishops of their seats in the House of Lords, was rejected for the second time, owing, as was said, to the opposition of papist peers. It was the Christmas holidays; and apprentices, watermen, workmen, crowds of all sorts, came flooding out of the city to Westminster, threatening the lords opposed to the bill, and insulting the bishops.
Meanwhile, there had gathered round Charles at Whitehall, officers from the late disbanded army, young students from the inns of court, gentlemen from the country, eager for a fight with the Parliament. “What!” said one, in actual hearing of some members, “shall we suffer these base fellows at Westminster to domineer thus? Let us go into the country and bring up our tenants to pull them out!”[77] These reckless men, spreading themselves between Whitehall and Westminster, soon drew their swords upon the citizens, who were often armed only with clubs. In Westminster Hall, in Westminster Abbey, frays took place; citizens were wounded, and a knight, who supported the Parliament, was slain. ♦Frays between ‘Cavaliers’ and ‘Roundheads.’♦ The names of Roundheads and Cavaliers were now first heard, bandied as epithets of reproach. The spiritual peers, as the cause of the quarrel, suffered most from the insolence of the mob; one day the Archbishop of York nearly had his robes torn off his back; on another, in real or pretended fear, the bishops slipped out of the House by back ways, or went home in the coaches of the popular lords.
%PROTEST OF BISHOPS.%
♦Protest of bishops.♦ After this last adventure, eleven bishops, following the lead of Williams, Archbishop of York, who, as some think, had arranged the whole matter with Charles, drew up a protestation declaring that all that should be done during their compelled absence from the Parliament was null and void. The protestation was presented to the king, who ordered it without delay to be read to the Lords (30th Dec.) fancying that now any bill passed by them during the bishops’ absence would be recognized as void in law. ♦Bishops impeached.♦ The Lords, deeply offended at the conduct of the absentees, sent the protestation down to the Commons, who immediately impeached the bishops of high treason, for endeavouring to subvert the fundamental laws of the realm (30th Dec.). The violence offered in no case seems to have been great, in fact three prelates still continued to frequent the House; and, if a bishop had met with injuries while attending his post in the House of Lords, the question might have entered the minds of those not unfriendly to the Parliament, whether, after all, the tyranny of a king was not more tolerable than the tyranny of a mob. But, at the very time when his friends might have won golden opinions as the victims of violence, he laid himself open to the suspicion of double dealing. Straws show which way the wind blows; and his message only made the House think that he intended hereafter to declare acts of Parliament null and void, because the bishops had been too timid to face the menaces of a crowd. The suspicion in Pym’s mind was not removed by a secret offer now made him of the chancellorship of the exchequer. ♦Pym refuses office.♦ At a previous crisis, such an offer had tempted one of the ablest leaders of the opposition to forsake the principles he professed. But Pym was not Strafford. The Remonstrance was not a bid for office, but a demand for a constitutional ministry. This demand could be satisfied not by a secret concession to one of its subscribers, but by the public resignation of a point of prerogative. The secrecy was itself a proof that there was no concession of the principle. Failing Pym, Charles sought new ministers out of the party of his friends.
%FIVE MEMBERS IMPEACHED.%
♦Falkland and Colepepper take office.♦ Lord Falkland, with reluctance, became secretary of state. “I choose to serve the king,” he said to his friend Hyde, “because honesty obliges me to it, but I foresee my own ruin.” Charles, who had made him his minister only because of his influence in the Parliament, felt no gratitude; a man who objected to the opening of letters, or the employment of spies, was of little use for the measures he contemplated. Sir John Colepepper, another member belonging to the same party, was made chancellor of the exchequer (1st Jan., 1642). Hyde refused office, only to serve the king’s interests in the House with less suspicion of his honesty. Charles, however, had framed his policy before he appointed his ministers; for he now determined on carrying into execution a deep-laid plot, which he had been discussing with the queen and his confidants ever since he went to Scotland. Among patriots, vague rumours of impending danger thickened. The Commons, growing more and more suspicious, petitioned the king to allow the restoration of their proper guard (31st Dec.). Charles took three days in replying, and then sent a refusal, concluding thus: “WE DO ENGAGE UNTO YOU SOLEMNLY, ON THE WORD OF A KING, THAT THE SECURITY OF ALL AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FROM VIOLENCE IS, AND SHALL EVER BE, AS MUCH OUR CARE AS THE PRESERVATION OF US AND OUR CHILDREN” (3rd Jan.). ♦Impeachment of five members.♦ Upon the same day that this message was received, the king’s attorney impeached of high treason, in the king’s name, at the bar of the House of Lords, Lord Kimbolton, and five members of the Commons, Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Haslerig, and Strode; and desired immediate possession of the persons of the accused. He read seven articles of accusation, but the real charge, which Charles hoped hereafter to substantiate by proof, was the fourth, that of having invited a foreign foe to invade England. This referred to secret encouragement that had been given by some of the popular leaders to the invading Covenanters of 1640, the very men on whom the king had just been conferring honours in Scotland; and though such a charge could not be fairly made after the Scotch Act of Oblivion, passed in 1641, it was quite possible that, the members once in his power, he could find means to ensure their suffering the penalty of high treason. Shortly after the articles of impeachment had been read in the Upper House, a sergeant-at-arms entered the Lower and said, “In the name of the king, my master, I am come to require Mr. Speaker to place in my custody five gentlemen, members of this House, whom his Majesty hath commanded me to arrest for high treason.” The Lords had refused to deliver up Lord Kimbolton; the Commons replied by sending a committee to the king, in which were both Falkland and Colepepper, to inform him that their members should be forthcoming as soon as a legal charge was preferred against them (3rd Jan.). ♦Illegality of king’s proceedings.♦ The answer of the Commons meant more than it said, for the king’s whole method of proceeding was illegal: 1st, a commoner cannot be called to answer at the suit of the crown to a criminal charge, unless the articles contained in the bill of accusation are first declared by a grand jury not to be groundless; 2nd, a commoner, unless impeached by the Commons before the House of Lords, can only be tried for treason before the common law judges by a petty jury, after the bill of accusation has been ‘found’ by a grand jury; 3rd, the king cannot arrest in person or by a messenger, but only by a warrant drawn up and signed by a magistrate or councillor; and for this reason, that, if the arrest is illegal, an action may be brought against a fellow-subject, but not against the king, who, in the eye of the law, is himself the fountain of justice.
%ATTEMPT ON FIVE MEMBERS.%
Though the members, who should have been prisoners, were the heroes of the hour, Charles was far as yet from doubting his triumph. The next morning the queen at Whitehall was urging him not to hesitate in playing out the second act of his plan. “_Allez, poltron_,” said she, as he seemed to hesitate, “go, pull those rogues out by the ears, _ou ne me revoyez jamais_.” “In an hour,” said the king, as he kissed her, “I will return master of my kingdom;” and, followed by a train of some three hundred armed men, proceeded to Westminster to arrest his enemies in person.
The Commons had received intimations from various quarters that some violence was intended, and were sitting, foreboding evil, when a friendly officer, who had climbed over the roofs of some neighbouring houses to be in time, entered the House with the information that, from this vantage point, he had seen the king set out from Whitehall, attended by his guards and a long train of cavaliers. ♦Five members escape.♦ The five members slipped out through the Speaker’s garden, and thence took boat for the city, not a moment too soon, as they were hardly out of the House before Charles was entering Palace Yard, outside Westminster Hall. He came to the door of the Commons’ House, and taking his nephew, now elector palatine,[78] in with him, commanded all others upon their lives to stay without. “So the doors were kept open, and the Earl of Roxburgh stood within the door leaning upon it. Then the king came upwards towards the chair with his hat off, and the Speaker stepped out to meet him; then the king stepped up to his place, and stood upon the steps, but sat not down in the chair. And after he had looked a great while, he told us he would not break our privileges, but treason had no privilege; he came for those five gentlemen, for he expected obedience yesterday, and not an answer. Then he called Mr. Pym and Mr. Hollis by name, but no answer was made. Then he asked the Speaker if they were here, or where they were. Upon this, the Speaker fell on his knees, and said, ‘May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and humbly beg your Majesty’s pardon, that I cannot give any other answer than this, to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.’ ‘Well,’ replied the king, ‘since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect from you that you shall send them unto me as soon as they return hither, otherwise, I must take my own course to find them. But I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way.’ He then left the House, amid cries of ‘Privilege! privilege!’” (4th Jan.).
%FATAL RESULTS OF ATTEMPT.%
Notwithstanding his protest, the House felt that bloodshed had only been averted by the narrow escape of the five members. ♦King drives to Guildhall, and demands persons of five members.♦ The next morning, still adhering to his resolution of obtaining the persons of the accused, Charles, unattended by any guards, drove from Whitehall into the city. As he passed through the streets, cries were raised of ‘Privilege of Parliament,’ and some daring hand flung into his coach a paper inscribed, ‘To your tents, O Israel!’ a menace of revolt like that of the ten tribes to Rehoboam. Arrived at Guildhall, he addressed the lord mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen, demanding them not to shelter in the city those whom he had accused of high treason, and saying repeatedly he must have those traitors. But he had come on a bootless errand. Even among the city dignitaries his friends were few, while his foes were many, and cries of ‘God bless the King,’ were drowned by those of ‘Privilege of Parliament.’[79] “I have,” said Charles, “and will observe all privileges of Parliament, but no privileges can protect a traitor from a trial” (5th Jan.). Westminster being regarded as no longer safe, the Commons were installed in the Guildhall, where the city set a guard to defend them. There was no chance of Charles getting the members into his power, unless by force. ♦City alienated.♦ The citizens were completely alienated. Even those who had doubted the reports of previous plots against the Parliament, now believed in them all, and recognized the foresight of Pym and Hampden, whom they had thought alarmists. All that had been whispered of Ireland was now talked aloud and printed, while the shops of the city were shut, as if an enemy were at the gates. “Our late troubles have been attended with one benefit,” said Hampden to Hyde, “that we know who are our friends. I know well you have a mind we should be all in prison.” Whether Hyde and the two new ministers did know or not, is still a moot point. Every one disclaims complicity in a plot that has failed. In Hyde’s case even a knowledge of the intended impeachment involved treachery to friends he had long worked with. According to Hyde’s own account, Charles had promised nothing should be done without their knowledge, and then concealed this from them. The best solution is to suppose that Hyde knew he was not to know.
♦War inevitable.♦ There was now no hope of reconciliation between the two parties, short of Charles submitting to rule through a ministry responsible to Parliament. The march of those 300 on Westminster was in fact looked on as the declaration of war, or rather as war without a declaration. Men who remembered Eliot’s fate, could not renounce self-defence after such a hair-breadth escape. Charles’ hope had been, Periander like, to cut off the ears that overtopped. History has shown that a country can be unmanned by such a policy for a time. But by failure he had rather given the party heads than taken them away.
The 11th of January was a gala day, a day of triumph for Presbyterians and reformers. While the London train-bands marched along the banks of the Thames, to the sound of drum and trumpet, as a guard, the five heroes of the day went by water from London Bridge to Westminster, followed by hundreds of boats and barges thronged with people and adorned with flags and streamers. Whitehall was silent as they passed. Charles had retired the day before to Hampton Court with his family to avoid the spectacle. “Where now are the king and his cavaliers? What has become of them?” cried the people, as with shouts of triumph they rowed on to reseat the members at Westminster. On landing the members were met by 4000 gentlemen and freeholders, who had come on horseback from Buckinghamshire, Hampden’s native county, as a guard of honour for their insulted representative, bringing them a petition to the Parliament against the king’s evil councillors.
%COMMAND OF MILITIA.%
The king had made a great mistake. A momentary triumph, if won, is not a final victory; and no successes won by violence or chicanery can make up for the lost vantage ground of clean hands and frank conduct. Charles was especially unfortunate; his secret plots were always revealed, always failed, and always precipitated the discussion of vital questions. ♦County militia.♦ It was now necessary to raise forces to send against the Irish rebels. To whom was the right of commanding and calling out the county militia to belong? By the statute of Winchester, passed in the thirteenth year of Edward I., every man was required to possess arms in quantity and value according to the value of his lands and goods, so that each county was provided with a sort of feudal militia, which was called out in lieu of police by the lord-lieutenant of the county, in case of any tumult or riot. Two rights with regard to this militia the king of England had always exercised; first, that of nominating the lords-lieutenant and other officers in command;[80] secondly, when invasion was threatened, that of sending so-called commissions of array to the lords-lieutenant, bidding them call out the militia and train them for service. But whether in time of peace the king could summon his subjects to service outside their respective counties, was a question that had never yet been determined, or if at all in the negative, as Charles had just passed a bill which deprived him of the power of pressing troops into his service.
Both sides were equally keen on the question. The failure that rankled in Charles’ breast was due, he thought, to the fact that his volunteers were enough to overawe the Commons, but not enough to overawe the capital. The Parliament had seen to what use Charles intended to put the sword, if he got it. ♦Command of militia.♦ Accordingly the Commons sent a petition to the king, asking that Parliament should nominate the commanders of fortified places, and the lords-lieutenant and other officers of the militia forces. The people beset the Upper House, demanding that the lords should both join in petitioning for the militia, which they had refused to do, and pass the bill removing ecclesiastics from all civil offices.
%KING LEAVES LONDON.%
Between the 20th of January, and 5th of February, numbers of petitions to this effect flowed in from town and country, from young men, apprentices, seamen, tradesmen, porters, women. Many lords left the House in disgust at the noise and violence of their petitioners. ♦Lords pass Bishops’ Exclusion Bill.♦ Those that remained yielded in both the points required, and an ordinance was at once prepared to transfer the command of the militia from the king to the Parliament (Feb.). Since his departure from London, Charles had been preparing for war. The queen was to cross to Holland to procure arms and ammunition by the sale of the crown jewels. He intended himself to fix his residence at York, where it was expected his friends would gather round him, and the people be found more devoted to their king than in the immediate neighbourhood of London. ♦Charles consents to Bishops’ Exclusion Bill,♦ When the bill to deprive the bishops of their seats in the House of Lords was presented to Charles, Colepepper urged him to yield, hoping that he might save the command of the militia. ‘It is better,’ he said, ‘to satisfy them in one or other of these bills; this one can easily be repealed, and while the sword remains in your hands, there will be no attempts to make further alterations.’[81] ‘Is Ned Hyde of this mind?’ asked the king. ‘No, he does not wish that either of the bills should be passed; a very unreasonable judgment, as times go.’ ‘It is mine too, though,’ replied Charles, ‘and I will run the hazard.’ Finding the king obstinate, Colepepper went to the queen, and assured her that in consequence of this refusal, the Parliament would stop her journey abroad. Henrietta, eager to get out of a country in which she felt herself always hated and now defenceless, never ceased importuning her husband with tears till he gave his consent to this bill.
At Newmarket, on his way to York, Charles gave his final answer to the commissioners sent by the Parliament to ask his consent to the Militia Ordinance. ♦but refuses Militia Bill.♦ ‘Talk of your fears and jealousies,’ he said indignantly, after hearing a bitterly worded declaration read, ‘what would you have? Have I violated your laws? Have I declined to pass one bill for the ease and security of my subjects? I do not ask you what you have done for me. God so deal with me and mine as all my thoughts and intentions are upright for the observance of the laws of the land.’ ‘I wish,’ said one of the commissioners, ‘your Majesty would reside nearer your Parliament.’ ‘I would you had given me cause; but I am sure this declaration is not the way to it.’ ‘Might not the militia be granted for a time?’ ‘By God, not for an hour. You have asked that of me in this, was never asked of a king, and with which I will not trust my wife and children’ (9th March).
%PRELUDE TO WAR.%
At York, Charles found himself again in possession of power. The Cavaliers followed in eager crowds; friends, who had been forced into exile, returned to his side, and many gentlemen from the neighbouring counties came to offer their support to his cause. His first step was to demand admittance to Hull, at that time the arsenal of the north. ♦Charles refused admittance into Hull.♦ On his approach he found the gates shut, the bridges drawn, the walls manned, as though an enemy were expected: and Sir John Hotham, who had been lately sent down as governor by the Commons, came upon the walls and, kneeling down, said he durst not open the gates, being placed in trust by the Parliament (April). When the Commons were attacked as endangering the foundations of private property by thus denying the king access to his own arsenal, Pym replied by attacking as unconstitutional the principle, “that his Majesty hath the same right and title to his towns and magazines that every particular man hath to his house, lands, and goods.... This erroneous maxim, being infused into princes, that their kingdoms are their own, and that they may do with them what they will (as if their kingdoms were for them, and not they for their kingdoms) is the root of all the subjects’ misery, and of all the invading of their just rights and liberties. Whereas, they are only intrusted with their kingdoms.... By the known law of this kingdom, the very jewels of the crown are not the king’s proper goods, but are only intrusted to him for the use and ornament thereof; as the towns, forts, treasures, magazines, offices, and people of the kingdom, and the whole kingdom itself, are intrusted unto him for the good, and safety, and best advantage thereof; and as this trust is for the use of the kingdom, so it ought to be managed by the advice of the Houses of Parliament, whom the kingdom hath trusted for that purpose; it being their duty to see it be discharged according to the condition and true intent thereof.”
%MEETINGS IN YORKSHIRE.%
Even the pretence of peace could hardly be maintained much longer; and events were hurried on by the gentlemen of Yorkshire, who held a meeting in which it was proposed to raise a guard for the king’s person (14th May). On the other side, after a century and a half of civil peace, the great body of the nation, whatever the injuries they suffered, were not willing to see the flames of civil war re-lighted; and now, while the gentlemen were assembling, the freeholders of the county came crowding into York, declaring that they also ought to have been summoned, for the knights and gentlemen had no right to act in their names. ♦Meeting at Heyworth Moor.♦ To satisfy them, a second meeting was held on the 3rd of June, at Heyworth Moor, where some 40,000 men assembled to meet the king. The freeholders had prepared a petition, begging him to dismiss the Cavaliers and be at accord with his Parliament. The Cavaliers, indignant at its contents, tore the petition out of the hands of those who were reading it to approving groups. Yet the freeholders had their wish, for young Thomas Fairfax, a Yorkshire gentleman, who sympathized with them, forced his way right up to the king, and falling upon one knee, fixed a copy of the petition upon the pommel of the royal saddle.
♦Parliament becomes a war-council.♦ The Parliament, on its side, was making active preparations. First it formed itself into a war-council, eliminating obstructives. The House had made up its mind on the end to be pursued, and freedom of discussion was confined henceforward to the means. Open supporters of the royal enemy were put in confinement for a time or expelled the House.[82] One by one, as occasion or excuse offered, the king’s friends fled to York; the House of Peers, in which, when the Parliament first met, had sat above eighty, now dwindled down to twenty members;[83] of the House of Commons sixty-five departed, amongst them Hyde and Falkland. An order was passed for raising troops and money (10th June); the money lent was to receive eight per cent. interest, the Parliament promising repayment on the nation’s credit. Within a few days, such an amount of money and plate was brought to the treasurer at Guildhall, that there was hardly room to stow it; the wealthy bringing their large bags and goblets, the poor women their very wedding-rings, and their gold and silver hair-pins, thimble and bodkin money,[84] as the royalists contemptuously called it. The city was treated as a camp; one who called the leaders traitors as a spy. In the artillery grounds in Finsbury fields, the muster ground of the volunteer troops, citizens were nearly all day at drill. The Presbyterians, who had formerly looked on the grounds with disfavour, as the resort of courtiers and gentlemen, now hastened thither to practise themselves in arms, and enlist in the London trained bands. Major-General Skippon soon commanded eight regiments, above 8000 soldiers. The militia ordinance was put in force without further care for the king’s consent. In the same counties, in the same towns, sometimes on the very same day, appeared the officer appointed by the Parliament, and the officer appointed by the crown, the one summoning the people to arms in the name of the ordinance, the other in that of the king’s commission of array.
%ESSEX APPOINTED GENERAL.%
Without slackening their preparations, the Parliament sent to the king at York nineteen propositions, for the first time formally tabulating their demands. Their hope was not so much that the king would grant them, as that the blame of the war would fall upon him for his refusal. They asked, that he should resign to Parliament (1) the nomination of his privy councillors and other officers of state, (2) the command of the militia and all fortified places; (3) that he should suffer the Church to be reformed by the advice of Parliament, and (4) not marry his children without asking its consent. ♦Charles refuses propositions of York.♦ Though securities practically equivalent to these are now incorporated in the constitution, the king of the seventeenth century was indignant at their bare proposal. “These being passed,” he said, “we may be waited on bare-headed, have swords and maces carried before us, and please ourselves with the sight of a crown and sceptre, but as to true and real power, we should remain but the picture, but the sign of a king.” The Commons fixed on the Earl of Essex as the general for their army. He had fought in his youth for the Protestant cause in the Low Countries. Charles had appointed him lieutenant-general in the first Scotch campaign, and after it had dismissed him with studied discourtesy. In earlier times he had suffered a deeper wrong from the Stuart court, for James the First had caused him to be divorced from his wife, in order to marry her to his own profligate favourite, Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset. Thus experience and personal antecedents seemed alike to fit him for the post. His nomination was acceptable to the Presbyterians, who sympathized with his creed; to gentlemen, who would have scorned to serve under a general of inferior rank; to the people at large, who loved his honest, straightforward nature. ♦Essex appointed general.♦ On being voted general (4th July), he proved at once his honesty and courage, by accepting the dangerous honour, defeat meaning death to the leader of a rebel army. Several members of the Parliament received commands; St. John, Hampden, Hollis, were named colonels of regiments of foot; Cromwell, Haslerig, Fiennes, of regiments of horse. Great excitement prevailed in London; everybody went about decorated with orange ribands, the colour of Essex’ house, the shops were closed, and civil business was almost at a standstill.
♦King raises his standard.♦ The king was not idle; the queen sent arms and money from Holland, and, as soon as a small force was collected, he raised his standard on a hill near Nottingham (23rd August). Thence he marched into the west, making many friendly speeches to the people on his way, declaring his good intentions towards the laws and liberties of the kingdom.[85] His nephews, Rupert and Maurice, sons of his sister Elizabeth, came over from Germany to fight for him; the Catholics lent him money, and by the middle of October he mustered at Shrewsbury an army of about 12,000 men.
♦Charles depicted by Parliament as tyrant and persecutor.♦ And now the people had to choose between King and Commons. Declarations and pamphlets were eagerly devoured. Though half a year had passed, the Grand Remonstrance still served as the chief manifesto of the Parliament. In that document the king had been depicted as the tyrant, imprisoning without law, and taxing without right; as the friend of Rome and the persecutor, cruelly maiming his subjects’ bodies, and more cruelly maiming their souls’ health; while the Parliament stood forth as the upholder of true and tempered liberty, who kept the property of the rich safe from the grasping hand of confiscation, the hard-won earnings of the poor from being wasted by monopolies and illegal customs; who enabled peer and peasant to walk again on English soil, free of all constraint but the well-known laws; and above all as the protector of tender consciences, godly itself, and a shield to the godly against the courts which formed the English Inquisition.
♦Commons depicted by Royalists as rebels and fanatics.♦ In the royalist pamphlets the king was God’s anointed, ruling by divine right, a pillar of the Church, the preserver of order, the upholder of the ancient constitution, yet giving up his right at his subjects’ desire, and passing every law that conduced to his people’s good; while the Commons were rebels, bent on encroaching alike on the king’s prerogative and the rightful authority of the peers, friends of anarchy and misrule, ready to plunge the country in civil war to gratify their inordinate ambition, with a sullen and fanatical religion, which could neither take enjoyment itself, nor tolerate it in others; in fact, with that in them which might make a tyranny of many, far worse than any tyranny of one.
%CHARLES THE DECEIVER.%
♦Charles the deceiver.♦ But since the Remonstrance the king had unfortunately added to the reckoning his enemies kept against him. Not only had the tyranny received a new illustration in their eyes from the attempted arrest of the five members; the friendship with Rome by the muster of Catholics, and the persecution from a proclamation against Puritans; but a new count of crime was added. The solemn assurance to the Commons, that their preservation was as much his care as that of his wife and children, had been used to lull them into a false security; the oath that, on the honour of a king, he had never intended force, stood blankly contradicted by his armed retinue at the door. The untruthfulness of character suspected from his answer to the Petition of Right, and more than suspected from the army plots, now seemed a certainty. To the Parliament the king was not only the tyrant and the persecutor, but the deceiver. This count was really the cause of the war. Charles was not incapable of the position of a constitutional governor. He had ability above the average, dignity of manners, and a higher dignity, raising him above all low tastes; and he had not that unbending obstinacy, which would amount to incapacity, as a governor. But he was believed to have admitted an unfortunate distinction between a public and private conscience, which dispensed him from the necessity of keeping faith with political opponents. Measures past, concessions obtained, promises to observe the law, all these the cherished victories of peaceful patriots, seemed as unavailing as bands to bind a Proteus. The very awe of majesty requires a king’s truthfulness to be above suspicion. But the leaders of the Commons had to work with a vision of the Tower ever before their eyes: the fairer the offers made to them the more the dread of foul play. This prevented the due action of that safety-valve of the State, a constitutional opposition. Even in foreign diplomacy, where bad faith is not uncommon, the discoverer of fraud is held justified in laying arbitration aside and drawing the sword at once: at home the interests of king and subjects being really identical, deceit has still less occasion for practice.
Devoted partisans on either side were not very many in number. Those of the king were mostly to be found in the soldiers of fortune from Germany, and the more reckless of the country gentlemen, who looked forward to the excitement of war. On the Parliament’s side the Presbyterians and sectarians, seeing in their own cause the cause of God, strove for the overthrow of the Established Church with all the ardour of religious enthusiasts. But between the views of these two extreme parties opinion generally fluctuated, and men took sides doubtingly as their natures or circumstances prompted.
♦Gentry with king.♦ The greater part of the nobility and gentry either openly joined the king, or tried to remain neutral, and generally had sufficient influence over their tenantry to cause them to embrace the same side as themselves, To many it seemed absurd to hazard wealth and a secured position to avoid paying a few shillings arbitrarily raised; an upheaval from below was more dangerous to them than pressure from above; others, again, who recognized the importance of the principle at stake, were still inclined to their king by the instincts of chivalry, or the abhorrence of fanaticism. ♦Towns and freeholders with Commons.♦ On the other hand, the inhabitants of manufacturing towns, independent county freeholders, merchants, and others, who had made fortunes in trade, and afterwards bought land in the country, showed themselves, as a rule, friendly to Parliament. Besides being influenced by religion and a sense of independence, these classes had especially suffered from the monopolies and extortions which had raised the price of necessaries and shackled the enterprise of trade. There were exceptions, however, on both sides. Many gentlemen felt that the cause of the Parliament was so good, they were bound to take up arms in its defence; many yeomen and burghers adhered to their county magnates and their king. As a general rule where the contagion of neighbourhood or the necessities of religion did not decide the question, the king was preferred to the Parliament. It was only the men of strong convictions, of unusual foresight, who would coolly and deliberately embark on an unknown sea, without chart or compass of guidance, and risk all for the sake of liberty, and the doubtful gratitude of posterity. So with unwilling hearts did men array themselves. One Royalist wrote to his wife, that though he loved not his side, ‘grinning honour’ compelled him to stay by it, for he could not bring himself to fight for the Parliament, and if he remained neutral he should be called a coward.[86] “You,” said Sir Edmund Verney, the king’s standard-bearer, to Hyde, who reproved him for looking melancholy, “are satisfied in conscience that the king ought not to grant what they desire. I have eaten my master’s bread, and served him near these thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him, but for my part I do not like the quarrel, and wish he would yield.”[87]
Sir William Waller, one of the Parliament’s commanders, wrote to Sir Ralph Hopton, a Royalist officer: “The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfect hatred I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace in His good time send us peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it! We are both on the stage, and we must act the parts that are assigned us in this tragedy; let us do it in a way of honour, and without personal animosities.”
At any rate, thought these unwilling enemies, one battle will decide everything, so that, whatever the consequences to the vanquished, our country will soon rest again on ‘the gentle bosom of civil peace.’
FOOTNOTES:
[68] According to an act passed in the first year of George I. (1717), Parliaments now sit for seven years, unless previously dissolved by the crown.
[69] The statute abolishing the arbitrary courts contained a clause, that any person imprisoned by the command or warrant of the king, or any of his council, should be entitled to a writ of _Habeas Corpus_ from the Courts of King’s Bench or Common Pleas, without delay on any pretence whatsoever.--See p. 16.
[70] May, L. P., 75.
[71] Warwick, Memoirs, 177.
[72] Lingard, vii. 283, from Nalson.
[73] The suspicion against the queen was revived at the Restoration by the extraordinary exertions she then made to procure for Antrim the restoration of the estates forfeited by his treasonable help to Cromwell. It was supposed he knew some dark secret; and the only other motive her apologist suggests was certainly inadequate. See Carte’s Ormond, 277-293.
[74] Godwin, ii.
[75] See p. 58.
[76] Forster’s Grand Remonstrance; Warwick’s Mem.
[77] Ludlow, i. 19.
[78] Charles Louis, p. 14.
[79] Forster, Five Members.
[80] Hallam, Const. Hist. i. p. 552.
[81] Clar. Mem. 114.
[82] Clar. Mem. 134.
[83] Hallam, i. 537.
[84] May, 139.
[85] May, 134.
[86] Forster, B. S. iii. 50.
[87] Clar. Mem. 160.