Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/209

] agreements which had arisen from the want of a parliament.

The last parliament was called the Short Parliament; this was destined to acquire the name of the Long Parliament, never to be dissolved till it had dissolved the monarchy—the most memorable parliament that ever sate. In spite of all the efforts of Charles and his Gog and Magog of despotism, Laud and Stratford, to abolish parliaments for ever; in spite of the outrages on the constitution which had made their names hateful in the ears of all true Englishmen; in spite of armies raised to tread the last spark of liberty out of the land; and to compress a nation's liberties within the single person of the king—here was the loathed power and presence of parliament thrust back upon him, and under circumstances which boded to the aggressive king and his evil ministers nothing but submission. It was notorious that he had not dared to cope with even Scotland in arms, and England was ready to rise, too, if its demands were longer eluded. He was destitute of money to pay soldiers, and still more destitute of power to command their allegiance; he therefore came back, as it were, worsted, bound, and humbled. "The parliament," says Clarendon, "met on the 3rd of November, 1640. It had a sad and a melancholic aspect upon the first entrance, which presaged some unusual and unnatural events. The king himself did not ride with his accustomed equipages, nor in his usual majesty to Westminster, but went privately in his barge to the parliament stairs, and so to the church, as if it had been a return of a prorogued or adjourned parliament. There was likewise an untoward, and in truth, an unheard of accident, which broke many of the king's measures, and infinitely disordered his service beyond a capacity of reparation."

This was the defeat in the city of the man on whom he had fixed as speaker of the commons. Sir Thomas Gardiner, the recorder of London, a lawyer on whom Charles greatly calculated for managing the house. But that very morning he learned that Gardiner had been thrown out as one of the four members, and he was so confounded, that it was afternoon before he could go to the house. There Lenthall, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, was immediately elected speaker, and Charles, believing him well affected to the church and state, when two days afterwards he was, according to custom, presented to him, confirmed the choice, which he afterwards most bitterly repented. But it was not only in the case of the speaker that the king was doomed to see himself disappointed. The whole body of the new house was of a new character and spirit. The conduct of the king and his ministers had clearly shown the people that they must do their duty, and send none to parliament but men of a stanch and popular temperament. They had exerted themselves in the election to such purpose that only two of the king's ministers were returned to it, Sir Henry Vane and Sir Francis Windebanke, his secretaries. But Windebanke was so universally detested as the tool and blood-hound of Laud, that his presence was a real mischief to the king's interest; and whilst Vane was believed to lean secretly to the popular side, his son, Henry Vane, who was now first brought in, a man of singular and most brilliant, though eccentric, genius, war a wonderful accession of strength to the force of the reformers. Here again were met Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Selden, St. John, Hollis, Falkland, Rudyard, Digby, the son of the earl of Bristol, Grimston, Deering, Hyde, yet a reformer, and a host of others, of like tone and calibre. It was immediately perceived that they had come together with a quicker memory of their injuries, and a vastly enlarged perception of their powers. The events of the last six months had given them centuries of advantage, and they now aimed at measures which made the timid tremble, and even the proudest oppressors shrink. "There was," says Clarendon, "observed a marvellous elated countenance in most of the members of parliament before they met together in the house. The same men, who six months before were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied without opening the wound too wide and exposing it to the all, and rather to excuse what was amiss than too strictly make inquisition into the causes and origin of the malady, talked now in another dialect both of things and persons. Mr. Hyde, who was returned to serve for a borough in Cornwall, met Mr. Pym in Westminster Hall some days before the parliament, and conferring together on the state of affairs, Pym told Hyde that "'they now must be of another temper than they were the last parliament; that they must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down the cobwebs which hung on the tops and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter. That they had now an opportunity to make their country happy by removing all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their duties;' and used much other sharp discourse to the same purpose, by which it was discerned that the warmest and boldest counsels and overtures would find a much better reception than those of a more temperate allay, which fell out accordingly."

Charles opened parliament, as usual, by promising freely redress of grievances on the granting the necessary subsidies, and called on the two houses to abandon all suspicions, and put confidence in him; but, after fifteen years of constant struggle and constant breaches of faith, that was impossible, The commons saw the certainty at length of achieving their objects, not from any good will towards constitutional freedom in the king, but from the stringent necessity in which he had placed himself. His creeping into parliament, as it were, by the back door, instead of coming there in the usual state, showed that he was anxious and depressed, and his advisers were in an equal state of terror. His latest hope, the selection of the speaker, had failed him, and he saw the commons commence their work by passing altogether over the question of supplies, and falling in ominous earnestness on the grievances.

Hyde, afterwards lord chancellor and royalist historian, but hitherto a stanch reformer, attacked the president's court in the north, which Wentworth, by his arbitrary acts in it, had brought prominently into notice. Lord Digby, Waller, and Sir John Culpepper, introduced numerous petitions from almost all parts of the country against abuses, ship-money, neglect of parliaments, time-serving judges, and other government offences. Petitions were not only poured in in abundance, but from some counties were brought up by formidable parties of horsemen. It was manifest that