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134 that "he would rely on the love of his people in parliament." This was on the 16th of February, but like Pharaoh, Charles repented himself of his momentary concession, and on the 28th he issued an order to raise the money which the counties had refused, by a duty on merchandise. The merchants were, however, not a whit more willing to submit to an illegal imposition, nor more timid than the counties; the ministers trembled before the storm, and anticipated certain impeachment; the judges pronounced the duty illegal, and once more Charles recalled his order.

What rendered the public more sensitive to these acts of royal licence was, that a number of foreign troops were about to be brought into the kingdom, on the plea of employing them against France, but which the people saw might be turned against themselves or their representatives. They were, therefore, worked up to a pitch of extreme excitement, and bestirred themselves to send up to the house of commons a body of such men as should not be readily intimidated. Never before had parliament assembled under such favourable circumstances. Daring as had been the king's assaults on the public liberties, this had only served to rouse the nation to a resolute resolve to withstand his contempt of Magna Charta at all hazards. Westminster elected one Bradshaw, a brewer, and Maurice, a grocer. Huntingdon sent up a far more remarkable man, one Oliver Cromwell, the first time that he had been returned to parliament from any place. There was a general enthusiasm to turn out all such members as had been inert, indifferent, or ready to betray their trusts out of terror or a leaning towards the court. When the members assembled the house was crowded; there were four hundred such men as had rarely sate in any English parliament before. Both county and town had selected such brave, patriotic, and substantial freeholders, merchants, and traders, as made sycophants and time-servers tremble. They were no longer the timid commons who had formerly scarcely dared to look the lords or even the knights in the face; they were well aware of their power, and in wealth itself they were said to be three times superior to the house of peers. In running his eye over them, a spectator would see such men as Cromwell, Hampden, Selden, Pym, Hollis, Elliot, Dudley Digges, Coke, Wentworth (soon to apostatise), and others, with intellects illumined by the study of the orators, lawgivers, and philosophers of republican Greece, animated with the great principles of Christianity, and with resolutions like on. Many of these men had been attended to London by trains of their neighbours, sturdy freeholders and substantial shopkeepers, more numerous than the retinues of any lords, such was the intense expectation of what might ensue, and the prompt resolve to stand by their representatives. And they were not deceived, for this third parliament of Charles I. marked itself out as one of the great land-marks of our history.

The king was conscious that if he hoped to gain his great object from them—money—he must curb his haughty temper, and assume a conciliating manner. He therefore, just before the opening of the session, liberated seventy-eight gentlemen who had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the forced loan; he let the earl of Bristol out of the Tower, though he lay under an impeachment for high treason; accorded the same favour to bishop Williams, whom Buckingham had caused to be lodged there; and restored archbishop Abbot, who had been suspended for refusing to license Sibthorpe's base sermon. But when he had made all these concessions to popular opinion, Charles could not command his inveterate habit of threatening, and so spoilt all. In his opening speech he said:—"I have called you together, judging a parliament to be the ancient, speediest, and best way to give such supply as to secure themselves and save our friends from imminent ruin. Every man must now do according to his conscience; wherefore, if you, which God forbid, should not do your duties in contributing what this state at this time needs, I must, in discharge of my conscience, use those other means which God hath put into my hands, to save that which the follies of other men may otherwise hazard to lose. Take not this as threatening—I scorn to threaten any but my equals—but as an admonition from him that, both out of nature and duty, hath most care of your preservation and properties."

This was followed by an equally impolitic speech of the lord keeper Coventry, who informed the commons that the king had come to parliament, not because it was at all necessary, not because he was destitute of other means, but because it was more agreeable to the goodness of his most gracious disposition. And then added, "If this be deferred, necessity and the sword may make way for others. Remember his majesty's admonition; I say, remember it."

Surely if the veriest novices in government had been set to talk to parliament, they could not have done it in a more insane, blundering style. If the commons had had as little tact as the king and his minister, there would have been hard words hurled back again, and the parliament would have been not many days ere it had ceased to exist. But the commons had men as profound as these were shallow. They took all patiently, and set about quietly to determine on the question of supplies. They came to the resolution to offer ample ones—no less than five subsidies, the whole to be paid within one year—but they tagged this simple condition to them, that the king should give them a guarantee against any further invasion of their rights.

As we have already stated, during the past year many gentlemen had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the demands of the king made without sanction of parliament. Five of them had been, at their own request, brought before the King's Bench by writ of habeas corpus, and their counsel demanded that, as they were charged with no particular offence, but merely committed at the particular command of the king, they should be discharged or admitted to bail; but both were refused. The question was now discussed by the house, and it was resolved that no subsidy should pass without a remedy granted against this royal licence. "It will in us be wrong done to ourselves," said Sir Francis Seymour, "to our posterity, to our consciences, if we forego this just claim and pretension."

"We must indicate what?" demanded Wentworth; "new things? No; our ancient, legal, and vital liberties, by enforcing the laws enacted by our ancestors; by setting such a stamp upon them that no licentious spirit shall dare henceforth to invade them." In the repeated debates which followed. Sir Edward Coke particularly distinguished himself,