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] him were publicly placarded, saying that his body being opened, a bundle of proclamations were found in his head, worm eaten records in his stomach, and a barrel of soap, alluding to the enforcement of the monopoly on that article, in his paunch. Thomas Carlyle has aptly styled this turn-coat lawyer, so extolled for his genius and learning by the royal party, "an amorphous, cynical law-pedant, and invincible living heap of learned rubbish." He found plenty like him to carry out his plans, farther than he ever dreamed of, or themselves either. These illegal writs returned a sum of two hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred pounds to the royal treasury.

To put an end to all murmurs or resistance, Charles determined to have the sanction of the judges, knowing that he could not have that of parliament. He therefore removed chief justice Heath on this and other accounts already noticed, and put in his place the supple Sir John Finch, lately conspicuous as speaker of the commons. The questions submitted to the judges were whether, when the good and safety of the realm demanded it, the king could not levy this ship-money, and whether he was not the proper and sole judge of the danger and the necessity. Finch canvassed his brethren of the bench individually and privately. The judges met in Serjeant's Inn on the 12th of February, 1636, when they were all perfectly unanimous except Croke and Hutton, who, however, subscribed, on the ground that the opinion of a majority settled the matter.

To obtain this opinion Charles had let the judges know through Finch, that he only required their decision for his private satisfaction; but they were startled to find their sanction immediately proclaimed by the lord keeper Coventry in the star-chamber, order given that it should be enrolled in all the courts at Westminster, and themselves required to make it known from the bench on their circuits through the country. Nor was that all, for Wentworth, now become a full-fledged agent of despotism, contended that "since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax towards the equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army; and the same reason which authorises him to levy an army; to resist, will authorise him to carry that any abroad, that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law in England is also law in Ireland and Scotland. This decision of the judges will, therefore, make the king absolute at home, and formidable abroad. Let him," he observed, "only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to the payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors."

Such were the principles of Wentworth, ready on smallest concession to grant a dozen other assumptions upon it, and such the counsellors, himself and Laud, who encouraged the already too fatally despotic king to his traitorous to the nation, and preached the most absolute doctrines, and passed the most absolute sentences. Richard Chambers, the London merchant, who had already suffered so severely for resisting the king's illegal demands, also refused payment of this, and brought an action against the lord mayor for imprisoning him for his refusal. But judge Berkeley would not hear the counsel of Chambers in his defence; and afterwards, in his charge to the grand jury at York, described ship money as the inseparable flower of the crown. Put they were not so easily to override the rights of the people of England. There were numbers of stout hearts only waiting a fitting opportunity to unite and crash the spirit of despotism now growing so rampant. One of the most distinguished of these patriots was John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, whose name has become a world-wide synonyms for sturdy constitutional independence.

Hampden was distinguished alike for his ancient descent—tracing in a clear direct line from the Saxon period—for his great estate, and his mild and courteous manners. He was the last man to all appearance who would assume the character of a demagogue or vehement reformer. Put under this gentle exterior, and a great love of literature and retirement, he bore a mind of singular sagacity, glowing with the light and fervour of the ancient champions and historians of liberty, of sensitive perception of the approaches of tyranny, and a conscience which forbade him alike to co-operate with any attempts against the just rights of others, or to suffer their diminution by a weak compliance.

He was born in 1594, and his father dying in his childhood, he came early into his estates. He was a student at Oxford when Laud was master of St. John's, and he afterwards studied law in the Inner Temple. Whilst he was a mere youth, his mother was very anxious that he should take advantage of king James's creation of peerages to become a lord; but he had the good sense steadily to decline honours given as the wages of court slavery, or sold to the highest bidder. He entered parliament in 1621, at the same time with Wentworth, who for awhile was equally ranged on the side of liberty, and a much more forward and noisy champion of it than himself. In 1621, when Charles was illegally levying his forced loan, Hampden refused to contribute. He had during each successive parliament firmly supported the efforts of the patriots In the house—Pym, Selden, Elliot, and the rest, and he now declared that "he could be content to lend like others, but he feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." He was sent prisoner to the Gate House, and thence released, but ordered to confine himself to one of his manor-houses in Hampshire. He had, however, in parliament borne a decided share in the determined opposition to the king's proceedings, along with Selden, Elliot, Pyra, St. John, Croke, and others. After the defection of Wentworth, Noye, Finch, and others, Hampden became still more prominent in his public support of the patriotic opposition. Amid the fierce bigotry of those dauntless but intolerant men, he was almost the only one who had arrived at the true idea of Christianity, that it was a tolerant and forbearing religion, allowing to others the destruction. The judges were, for the most part, equally same freedom of conscience that he claimed for himself, He was greatly annoyed at the religious acrimony which prevailed, and declared that he would renounce the church of England on the spot "if it obliged him to belive that any other Christians should be damned; and that nobody would conclude another man to be damned who did not wish him so."

In 1634, Hampden having lost his wife, to whom he was