Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/33

Rh of recording their protests against the measure. “When,” said Sir Edward Dering, “I first heard of a Remonstrance, I presently imagined that like faithful Counsellors, we should hold up a Glass unto his Majesty: I thought to represent unto the King the wicked Counsels of pernicious Counsellors I did not dream that we should remonstrate downward, tell stories to the people, and talk of the King as of a third person.”

From this date the House of Commons began to emphasize its own importance in the state. Partly as a result of the attempt on the five members, statements of its privileges came to have a larger place in its utterances. Occasionally, as from Grimston’s Guildhall speech, one gains the impression that the iniquity of the breach of privilege lay not so much in molesting the chosen servants of the nation, as in interfering with the privileges of a corporate body—privileges perhaps not wholly ancillary to the good of the kingdom outside St. Stephen’s Chapel. Furthermore, the Lower House ventured to assume to itself the new-found augustness of the Parliament. The utterances of the House of Commons began to imply that in case of necessity it might lawfully act without the Lords. In a conference with the Lords, January 25, Pym insinuated that if the obstinacy of the Upper House prevented the Com-