Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/94

 Felton was tried; saw that his wild flashing inspiration had been not of God, but of Satan. It is known he repented when the death-sentence was passed on him, he stretched out his right hand; craved that this too, as some small expiation, might first be stricken off; which was denied him, as against law. He died at Tyburn; his body was swinging in chains at Portsmouth;—and much else had gone awry, when the Parliament reassembled, in January following, and Oliver came up to Town again.

The Parliament Session proved very brief; but very energetic, very extraordinary. ‘Tonnage and Poundage,’ what we now call Customhouse Duties, a constant subject of quarrel between Charles and his Parliaments hitherto, had again been levied without Parliamentary consent; in the teeth of old Tallagio non concedendo, nay even of the late solemnly-confirmed Petition of Right; and naturally gave rise to Parliamentary consideration. Merchants had been imprisoned for refusing to pay it; Members of Parliament themselves had been ‘subpeena’d’ : there was a very ravelled coil to deal with in regard to Tonnage and Poundage. Nay the Petition of Right itself had been altered in the Printing; a very ugly business too.

In regard to Religion also, matters looked equally ill. Sycophant Mainwaring, just censured in Parliament, had been promoted to a fatter living. Sycophant Montague, in the like circumstances, to a Bishopric: Laud was in the act of consecrating him at Croydon, when the news of Buckingham’s death came thither. There needed to be a Committee of Religion. The House resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion; and did not want for matter. Bishop Neile of Winchester, Bishop Laud now of London, were a frightfully ceremonial pair of Bishops; the fountain they of innumerable tendencies to Papistry and the old-clothes of Babylon! It was in this Committee of Religion, on the 11th day of February 1628-9, that Mr. Cromwell, Member for Hunting-