Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/93

 girl, and sit down unable to speak? The modern honourable gentleman cannot tell. Let him consider it, and try if he can tell! And then, putting off his Shot-belt, and striving to put on some Bible-doctrine, some earnest God’s truth or other,—try if he can discover why he cannot tell!—

The Remonstrance against Buckingham was perfected; the hounds having got all upon the scent. Buckingham was expressly ‘named,’—a daring feat: and so loud were the hounds, and such a tune in their baying, his Majesty saw good to confirm, and ratify beyond shadow of cavil, the invaluable Petition of Right, and thereby produce ‘bonfires,’ and bob-majors upon all bells. Old London was sonorous; in a blaze with joy-fires. Soon after which, this Parliament, as London, and England, and it, all still continued somewhat too sonorous, was hastily, with visible royal anger, prorogued till October next,—till January as it proved. Oliver, of course, went home to Huntingdon to his harvest-work; England continued simmering and sounding as it might.

The day of prorogation was the 26th of June. One day in the latter end of August, John Felton, a short swart Suffolk gentleman of military air, in fact a retired lieutenant of grim serious disposition, went out to walk in the eastern parts of London. Walking on Tower Hill, full of black reflections on his own condition, and on the condition of England, and a Duke of Buckingham holding all England down into the jaws of ruin and disgrace,—John Felton saw, in evil hour, on some cutler’s stall there, a broad sharp hunting-knife, price one shilling. John Felton, with a wild flash in the dark heart of him, bought the said knife; rode down to Portsmouth with it, where the great Duke then was; struck the said knife, with one fell plunge, into the great Duke’s heart. This was on Saturday the 23d of August of this same year.