Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/153

 read still in Rushworth, drawn up in precise business order; the whole 206 Articles of it,—every line of which once thrilled electrically into all men’s hearts, as torpid as it has now grown. ‘The chimes of Margaret’s were striking two in the morning when we came out.’—It was on this occasion that Oliver, ‘coming down stairs,’ is reported to have said, He would have sold all and gone to New England, had the Remonstrance not passed; —a vague report, gathered over dining-tables long after, to which the reader need not pay more heed than it merits. His Majesty returned from Scotland on the Thursday following, and had from the City a thrice-glorious Civic Entertainment.

December 10th. The Episcopal business, attempted last Spring in vain, has revived in December, kindled into life by the Remonstrance; and is raging more fiercely than ever; crowds of Citizens petitioning, Corporation ‘going in sixty coaches’ to petition; the Apprentices, or City Shopmen, and miscellaneous persons, petitioning:—Bishops ‘much insulted’ in Palaceyard as they go in or out. Whereupon hasty Welsh Williams, Archbishop of York, once Bishop of Lincoln and Lord Keeper, he with Eleven too hasty Bishops, Smectymnuus Hall being one of them, give in a Protest, on this 10th of December, That they cannot get to their place in Parliament; that all shall be null and void till they do get there. A rash step; for which, on the 30th of the same month, they are, by the Commons, voted guilty of Treason; and ‘in a cold evening,’ with small ceremony, are bundled, the whole dozen of them, into the Tower. For there is again rioting, again are cries ‘loud and hideous’;—Colonel Lunsford, a truculent one-eyed man, having ‘drawn his sword’ upon the Apprentices in Westminster Hall, and truculently slashed some of them; who of course responded in a loud and hideous manner, by tongue, by fist, and single-stick; nay, on the morrow, 28th of December, they came marching many