The PARLIAMENTARIAN

Chapter I          Ancestry-Birth-Early Life  
Chapter II         Charles I, Spanish Adventures-First Parliaments  
Chapter III        Cromwell Sees the Parliament in Tears  
Chapter IV        The King and the Commons  
Chapter V         Lord of the Fens   
Chapter VI        A Short Account of Religion   
Chapter VII       Absolute Monarchy  
Chapter VIII      The Earl of Stratford  
Chapter IX        The Long Parliament  
Chapter X         Scottish Intrigues and Irish Massacres 

Oliver Cromwell, perhaps the most startling, certainly the most unique figure in the whole pageantry of English history, was born at Huntingdon, on the 25^th of April, 1599, and was christened in the parish church four days later, as shown by the register which is still preserved.

His family has been traced to Welsh extraction, and after his rise to power the heralds were able to invent for him a genealogical table which a worthy biographer naively describes as being two feet four inches in width and eight feet long. In this fabulous pedigree his descent from the ancient Lords of Powis and Cardigan is asserted, dating back to the Norman Conquest, but on this subject Oliver says, simply, "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity." An offshoot of that stock gives us Morgan Williams, the great-great-grandfather of the Protector, with whom the authentic history of the family really begins.

This Morgan Williams was a gentleman of Glamorganshire who enjoyed the income of a small estate, and he seems to have acquired an honorable position at the Court of Henry VII. He was married to Elizabeth, a sister of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and upon this brilliant alliance established the claim of his family to recognition at Court.

Richard Williams, the son of Morgan Williams, was a great favorite with Henry VIII. In a tournament at Westminster, on May-day, 1540, Richard, who had won his spurs and was now a Knight, performed daring deeds of valor, and, as the King’s champion against the challengers of France, Flanders, Spain, and Scotland, dexterously unhorsed his opponents until the merry Monarch vociferously called him from the lists and laughingly said, "Formerly thou wast my Dick, but hereafter thou shalt be my diamond." With that he took a diamond ring from his finger and bade Sir Richard wear it, commanding that he ever after bear such a one in the fore gamb of the demi-lion in his crest. And this ring appears on the armorial bearings of the Protector a century later. It was this Sir Richard who first assumed the name of Cromwell, acting under the advice of the King and out of compliment to his celebrated but unfortunate relative, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; and in the deeds and wills which were thereafter recorded, the name is written Williams, alias Cromwell. Sir Richard was a useful and valiant Knight, and for his part in suppressing an insurrection of His Majesty’s Catholic subjects in Lincolnshire he received a grant of the nunnery of Hinchinbrook, together with other spoils which flowed from Henry’s demolition of the monasteries. In the war with France (1543) he was sent over in command of the King’s infantry forces, and on his return to England the King bestowed upon him various marks of the Royal favor.

Sir Henry (Williams) Cromwell, the eldest son and heir of Sir Richard-of-the-Diamond, enjoyed the esteem of Elizabeth and was knighted by the Virgin Queen in 1563. In the course of his public services he sat in the House of Commons for Huntingdon, was four times Sheriff of Huntingdon and Cambridge shires, and was Commissioner in the inquiry concerning the Draining of the Fens, a matter which thenceforward engaged the attention of the Cromwell family for one hundred years. His domestic establishments were in Huntingdonshire, Ramsey being his summer and Hinchinbrook his winter seat. Some elaborate additions were made to Hinchinbrook House, and Sir Henry expended his ample means with so much munificence that he was called the Golden Knight throughout all that country. Whenever he came to Ramsey from Hinchinbrook, "he threw considerable sums of money to the poor townsmen." The Golden Knight seems to have been a chivalrous gentleman of the old school and he was universally beloved for his beneficence. He was twice married. His first wife was Joan, daughter of Sir Ralph Warren, Knight, twice Lord Mayor of London. After her death he espoused a gentlewoman of the name of Weeks, who in turn died of a lingering illness, and the popular superstition at once claimed that she had been bewitched. Our patient biographer, Mr. Noble, relates this incident in connection with her mysterious sufferings and death:

"John Samwell, Alice his wife, and Ann their daughter, then inhabitants of Warboys, were ridiculously supposed to be the authors of this lady’s death, and were committed to prison. The mother (who seems by age to have been weak and decrepit), was so seized and tortured in prison, and kept constantly without sleep, that her faculties (much impaired before) became now entirely lost, and at length she confessed any the most strange fooleries, that the malice and folly of her enemies could devise, in consequence of which they were all, in defiance of common-sense, tried before Mr. Justice Fenner, April 4, 1593, and convicted of the fact, of not only being the cause of the death of Lady Cromwell, but also bewitching five of Mr. Throgmorton’s children, and seven of his servants, the gaoler’s man, etc. No mercy, we may readily imagine, would be shown to these unbefriended victims, when even Majesty degraded itself by writing the most idle nonsense (some years after this) to prove, not only that there were witches, but recommending certain means to be used as infallible ways to discover them; they were therefore all three publicly murdered, suffering amidst the acclamations of a barbarous and rude populace, who rejoiced that they themselves were relieved from (as they supposed) dangerous neighbours. It was found upon their conviction, that their goods, which amounted in value to £40, were forfeited to Sir Henry as lord of the manor of Warboys; but he, unwilling to possess himself of the supposed felon goods, gave them to the corporation conditionally, that they procured from Queen’s College in Cambridge a doctor or bachelor of divinity to preach every day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, a sermon against the sin of witchcraft in one of the churches in Huntingdon."

This sermon was preached annually as late as Mr. Noble’s day, 1787.

The Golden Knight had eleven children born of his first marriage, his second yielding no progeny. These were six sons and five daughters, of whom Sir Oliver Cromwell was the first son and heir, and Robert, the father of the Lord Protector, the second son.

Upon the death of the Golden Knight (January 6, 1603), Sir Oliver, the Protector’s uncle, established his residence at Hinchinbrook and lived a life of prodigality which was perhaps not surpassed in England. He was knighted at the Court of Elizabeth in 1598. When James VI of Scotland, after waiting a score of years with ill-disguised impatience for the death of Elizabeth, came over upon her demise to become James I of England (1603), he stopped at Hinchinbrook with a large retinue, and was sumptuously entertained from Wednesday until Friday as Sir Oliver Cromwell’s guest. The memory of this hospitality was ever afterwards gratefully cherished by the King. The abundance and variety of the meats and wines were rare even to Majesty; it was said that no subject had ever furnished such a feast to a King, and Sir Oliver’s gifts to the monarch at parting included a cup of gold, superb horses, fine hounds and hawks, besides "fifty pounds amongst his Majesty’s officers." "Morry, mon," said James in his broad Scotch tongue, "thou hast treated me better than anyone since I left Edinburgh." The high esteem which was entertained by the Court for Sir Oliver and his family was shown by the subsequent visits of King James to Hinchinbrook in 1605, 1616, and 1617; and Sir Oliver, beholding the darkest hours of his country’s history, never wavered in his adherence to the Royal fortunes. He died on the 28^th of August, 1655, in the ninety-third year of his age.

Robert Cromwell, brother to Sir Oliver, and father of the Lord Protector, was a poor man and possessed an estate in the town of Huntingdon, the total income of which did not exceed £300 a year. He married Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward, of Ely, and widow of William Lynne, a gentleman of Bassingbourne. It is said that she was related to the Royal House of Stuart, and the usual genealogies exist to support the doubtful claim. Her family had been enriched from the revenues of the Church upon the spoliation of the monasteries, and her great-uncle, Robert Steward, D.D., was for twenty years the last Catholic Prior, and then, for twenty years more, the first Protestant Dean, of Ely. She was a woman of most exalted virtue and was gifted with a wise sense of domestic economy. In the management of their living, and especially of the brewery (which it has been impossible for the fond biographers of Oliver to explain or laugh away), she exercised a guiding care. By her frugality she was enabled to bestow the advantages of a modest education upon the seven children who lived to maturity out of a family of ten, and afterwards to provide each with a fair settlement in life. Oliver, the only son who lived, possessed her tenderest affection, which he most ardently reciprocated. In his young manhood he deferred to her advice, and later, when he had achieved honor and power, he established her in the Royal Palace of Whitehall, and when she died he buried her in Westminster Abbey.

Oliver Cromwell, afterwards the Lord Protector, was the fifth child of this marriage, and the only son who grew to manhood. When he was four years old (1603), his good grandfather, the Golden Knight, died, and Oliver had thus an early taste of solemn and woeful surroundings.

All attempts to relate the story of his early life have failed for lack of authentic information. The few incidents of his boyhood days which have come down to us are nothing more than village traditions. Among them is the story that, one day when he was sent to Hinchinbrook to visit his grandfather, an ape seized him in the cradle and carried him to the roof of the house. Again, there is the incredible tale of his wrestling when four years old with Prince Charles, one year younger, an encounter in which his victory was said to prophesy the outcome of their later combat. A third narrative tells us that one day, while reposing after a fatiguing sport, a gigantic figure having the appearance of a woman drew the curtains of his bed, and after gazing at him for a silent moment, told him that he would become the greatest man in England. The specter did not mention the word king, and it was gravely asserted that this significant omission caused him to reject the Royal title when his Parliament pressed him to accept it. Another tradition, based on the doubtful authority of the Royalist, Heath, relates that Oliver, while at school in Huntingdon, enacted the part of Tactus in an absurd play entitled The Five Senses. Tactus, after stumbling over a robe and crown, soliloquises in this ridiculous fashion:

"Tact. Tactus, thy sneezing somewhat did portend.
Was ever man so fortunate as I?
To break his shins at such a stumbling-block!
Roses and bays pack hence; this crown and robe
My brows and body circles and invests!
How gallantly it fits me! Sure the slave
Measured my head that wrought this coronet.
They lie that say complexions cannot change;
My blood’s ennobled, and I am transformed
Unto the sacred temper of a king.
Methinks I hear my noble Parasites
Styling me Caesar or great Alexander,
Licking my feet, and wondering where I got
This precious ointment. How my pace is mended!
How princely do I speak! How sharp I threaten!
Peasants, I’ll curb your headstrong impudence,
And make you tremble when the lion roars.
Ye earth-bred worms! Oh, for a looking-glass!
Poets will write whole volumes of this change!
Where’s my attendants? Come hither, sirrahs, quickly,
Or, by the wings of Hermes..."

Again, Oliver was saved from drowning by Mr. Johnston, a clergyman, who when asked in later years by Cromwell if he remembered it, replied, "Yes, I do, but I wish I had put you in rather than see you in arms against your King!"

But we do know that when he was very young his education was first committed to the Rev. Mr. Long, of Huntingdon, and then to Dr. Beard, master of the free grammar school in that place, a man of erudition and sense. That he made progress in his studies and possessed a reasonably studious habit, is proved by the strong mental development which his letters exhibit. He had a good understanding of Greek and Latin literature, and when he came into power he encouraged men of letters with liberality and discretion. He collected one of the best libraries in England, and an official dispatch to The Hague in the days of the Protectorate describes an interview of two hours between the Dutch Ambassador, Beveringe, and the Protector, in which Oliver gave his answers in Latin. This record of his scholarship is sufficient to refute the statements of the Royalist writers that his entire youth was passed in debauchery. His warm admirer, Mark Noble, quoting from the Royalist writers, Heath, Dugdale, and Warwick, has said that Oliver was a fast youth, that there was much sowing of wild oats, that gambling was his favorite pastime, and that there was a vein of coarseness in him which led to acts of extreme vulgarity. But these stories are not supported by any evidence that may be accepted as entirely credible, and they are doubtless founded upon partisan exaggeration of a country lad’s indiscreet pranks. Sir Philip Warwick, a careful but biased writer, says:

"The first years of his [Cromwell’s] manhood were spent in a dissolute course of life, in good-fellowship and gaming, which afterwards he seemed very sensible of and sorrowful for; and as if it had been a good spirit that had guided him therein, he used a good method upon his conversion, for he declared he was ready to make restitution unto any man who would accuse him, or whom he could accuse himself to have wronged (to his honour I speak this, for I think the public acknowledgments men make of the public evils they have done to be the most glorious trophies they can have assigned to them); when he was thus civilised, he joined himself to men of his own temper, who pretended unto transports and revelations."

The wild career which his enemies have ascribed to his youth could not have developed to any serious extent when Oliver, on the 23^rd of April, 1616, being then only seventeen years old, entered Cambridge University as a fellow of Sidney-Sussex College.

In the next year (1617) Oliver’s father died, and he, the only son among seven living children, became at eighteen a young heir, weighed with grave responsibilities, and compelled thus early to assume the direction of affairs. This bereavement forced his retirement from college, and he speedily returned to Huntingdon. There is a tradition that he shortly afterwards came to London and engaged in the study of law. Carrington says, "He came to Lincoln’s Inn, where he associated himself with those of the best rank and quality, and the most ingenious persons; for though he were of a nature not adverse to study and contemplation, yet he seemed rather addicted to conversation, and the reading of men and their several tempers, than to a continual poring upon authors."

On one of his visits to Huntingdon an incident occurred which had well-nigh left a permanent stain upon his early life. This was an attempt of Cromwell’s to seize the management of the estate of his uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, through an inquest of lunacy which he procured upon his uncle’s mind. The inquiry failed of its expected result, much, we may presume, to Oliver’s discomfiture. The story was first printed in Sir William Dugdale’s Short View of the Late Troubles, and pictures Cromwell in financial straits making application to his uncle for assistance. "Finding," says Dugdale, "that by a smooth way of application to him he could not prevail, he endeavoured by colour of law to lay hold of his estate, representing him as a person not able to govern it." Sir Thomas was naturally incensed at this conduct, but Oliver’s mother, and his uncle, old Sir Oliver, undertook to restore peace between them with so much success that Sir Thomas, dying soon after, left the coveted property by will to his over-impatient nephew. The only excuse that can be presented in Oliver’s behalf is that he was sincerely convinced of the mental incapacity of the old Knight.

His studies of the law at Lincoln’s Inn were probably of a cursory nature. That he came to London at frequent intervals, if he did not indeed reside there, is proved by a very interesting record. In Saint Giles’ Church, Cripplegate, London, is a carefully preserved record containing the following entry of his marriage:

"Oliver Cromwell to Elizabeth Bourchier, August 22, 1620."

He was married early, being at this time only twenty-one years and four months old. His bride, one year his senior, was the daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a Knight who had acquired affluent means as a London furrier, and had established a country seat at Felsted, in Essex. She was a woman of noble spirit, and of gentle and amiable manners. At their marriage Cromwell had conveyed to her, "for the term of her life, for her jointure, all that parsonage house of Hartford, with all the glebe lands and tithes," in the County of Huntingdon. But some years later, when his necessities seemed to require it, this docile and excellent woman surrendered her jointure, which went to the extinguishment of his debts, together with the ample fortune which she had brought him. There is a letter from this lady to her husband, written after they had been married thirty years, which exhibits so much tender affection between this exalted pair, that our history would be incomplete if it were left out. "My Lord Chief justice" is Oliver St. John; "President" is John Bradshaw, the President of the Regicides Court; "Speaker" is William Lenthall, of the House of Commons.

"27^th December, 1650.

"My Dearest, I wonder you should blame me for writing no oftener, when I have sent three for one: I cannot but think they are miscarried. Truly if I know my own heart, I should as soon neglect myself as to omit the least thought towards you, who in doing it, I must do it to myself. But when I do write, my Dear, I seldom have any satisfactory answer; which makes me think my writing is slighted; as well it may: but I cannot but think your love covers my weakness and infirmities.

"I should rejoice to hear your desire in seeing me; but I desire to submit to the Providence of God; hoping the Lord, who hath separated us, and hath often brought us together again, will in His good time bring us again, to the praise of His name. Truly my life is but half a life in your absence, did not the Lord make it up in Himself, which I must acknowledge to the praise of His grace.

"I would you would think to write sometimes to your dear friend my Lord Chief justice, of whom I have often put you in mind. And truly, my Dear, if you would think of what I put you in mind of some, it might be to as much purpose as others; writing sometimes a letter to the President, and sometimes to the Speaker. Indeed, my Dear, you cannot think the wrong you do yourself in the want of a letter, though it were but seldom. I pray think on; and so rest,

"Yours in all faithfulness,
"Elizabeth Cromwell."

Elizabeth was a woman of warm heart, faithful in her affections, and without genius. In the elevated station in which she afterwards flourished, she preserved a good sense and a homely wisdom which protected her from ridicule. While her husband trusted her judgment somewhat less than that of his mother, he leaned much upon her steadfast sympathy and always cherished a fondness for her society.

After their marriage he took his wife home to live with his mother at Huntingdon, and settled down to a life that was quiet and industrious, engaging himself about the farm, studying the drainage of the fens, taking the part of a good citizen in such affairs as might concern the town, and rejoicing in the birth of his children. His first son was born in the year following his marriage, and in all there came five sons and four daughters, of whom three sons and all the daughters lived to maturity.

Oliver Cromwell’s Children.
(Married to Elizabeth Bourchier, 22^nd August, 1620.)

It can be well understood how this pastoral life, unfolding its beautiful domestic incidents, and strengthening from day to day the ties of family love, would gradually develop the divinity that slept in the soul of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan spirit of the age was beginning to exercise its influence upon him. Dr. Simcott, Cromwell’s physician in Huntingdon, told Sir Philip Warwick "that for many years his patient was a most splenetic man, and had fancies about the cross in that town; and that he had been called up to him at midnight, and such unseasonable hours, very many times, upon a strong fancy, which made him believe that he was then dying." A valuable piece of professional information was that from Dr. Simcott, and it reveals the great struggles which night and day racked that mighty heart while the problems of eternity were pressing themselves upon him. But the light came at last to his groping soul. He formed his first clear understanding of Christianity, not indeed the broad and generous Christian spirit of today, but the dark and dogmatic system of that age which he, and those who believed as he did, received from Calvin and the Puritan reformers. He was converted to a firm belief in Christianity, and went heart and soul with the Puritans.

Waller, his kinsman, or rather Hampden’s kinsman, for the poet was not, strictly speaking, akin to Cromwell, wrote thus of him:

Oft have we wondered, how you hid in peace
A mind proportioned to such things as these;
How such a ruling spirit you could restrain
And practise first over yourself to reign.
Your private life did a just pattern give
How fathers, husbands, pious sons should live;
Born to command, your princely virtues slept
Like humble David’s while the flock he kept."

And he was prospering in worldly things. In John Milton’s panegyric there is this lofty passage: "Being now arrived to a ripe and mature age, all which time he spent as a private person, noted for nothing so much as the culture of pure religion and an integrity of life, he was grown rich at home; and enlarging his hopes with reliance in God for any the most exalted times, he nursed his great soul in silence."

We would like to leave him there, in the quiet town on the banks of the winding river Ouse, before his mind had conceived the thought of dominion. His lot would have been happier though without glory, had he been permitted to pass his life away with his family, and his livestock, and his fens, and left the King and the Commons to fight it out. But in 1628 Charles I called his third Parliament, and Oliver Cromwell was elected a member for the town of Huntingdon.

When Charles Stuart, by the death of his brother Henry, became Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, it was considered a public misfortune; for Charles from his youth was noted as an autocratic and ceremonial Prince, with a gift for polemic discussion which fitted him better for the Church than the State.

While Prince Henry lived, King James had conceived an overpowering ambition to contract a matrimonial alliance with the Royal House of Spain, and a treaty had been in negotiation for several years under which the Prince of Wales was betrothed to the Infanta. On Henry’s demise Charles was substituted on the part of England. The English Ambassador pressed the alliance with great assiduity, but the Spanish Court procrastinated until their good faith was gravely suspected. The concessions in matters of religion which were demanded by the Spaniards inflamed the popular prejudices of the English, and the proposed match provoked general disfavor and resentment. A knowledge of this condition of public feeling in England impelled the Pope to use every obstacle to break the match, and the Spanish King never intended until the last moment to permit the nuptials to be celebrated. The Earl of Bristol was Ambassador from England in this affair, but in spite of the humiliating assent of King James to every fresh demand for concessions, he was unable to bring the Infanta home to England.

Coupled with this long-sought marriage was another feature of English policy which was to go hand in hand with the match. The beautiful Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, had been espoused by Frederick, the Elector Palatine, who, at the breaking out of the Thirty Years’ War, had been deposed by the Catholic League as King of Bohemia. The English Court craved the assistance of the Spaniards in the restoration of this Prince. The Spaniards as a Catholic nation demurred. France, Germany, and Rome opposed the English claims. But the fatuous heart of James was led to hope that by an alliance with Spain he could secure both the marriage and the restoration. It was in this emergency, when reasons of State demanded the early marriage of the Prince, that the Duke of Buckingham, then the favorite at Court, proposed the quixotic scheme of a personal visit to Spain by the Prince and himself.

The King opposed it, but Charles pleaded earnestly for the Royal permission, which was reluctantly granted. The romantic excursion was arranged with all the secrecy which such a rash adventure required. On the 17^th of February, 1624, accompanied by only two followers, the Prince and the Duke left London, well disguised, and rode in haste to Dover, whence they sailed to Boulogne, and then by horse reached Paris. While they tarried there to observe the splendor of the French Court, the Prince, with an emotion which somewhat diminished the ardor of his present mission, beheld the beautiful Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII and England’s future Queen.

On the 7^th of March they arrived in Madrid, where, in spite of their attempted secrecy, Olivarez, the Prime Minister, had already received advice of their coming. The Spanish King at once arranged for the entertainment of the Prince on a scope of magnificence which could not have been surpassed. It was ordered that on all occasions of meeting Charles should have precedence of the King, that he should make his entrance into the Royal Palace with the degree of ceremonial which was used by the Kings of Spain at their coronation, that he should reside under the King’s roof, that a hundred of the guard should attend him, and that he be obeyed as the King’s own self.

Receptions, processions, and public honors of every sort overwhelmed him, but in the midst of them all he was carefully guarded from any opportunity of meeting the Infanta, and the joyous pleasures of courtship were jealously denied him. After a time he was indeed permitted to see the Princess, but only in the presence of the Court, and the conversation which he was expected to address to her was written out and supplied to him beforehand by Olivarez, which was certainly a mean indignity upon a Prince so accomplished and correct.

Charles now became aware of a settled purpose on the part of those both in Spain and at Rome, to secure his conversion to the Catholic faith, or end the match. The day following their arrival Olivarez had hinted at this to Buckingham, and Bristol had soon after informed Charles that there was no other expectation in Court or public than to see him renounce his own convictions and assume those of the Infanta. To Bristol, Charles replied, "I wonder what you have ever found in me, that you should conceive I would ever be so base and unworthy as for a wife to change my religion." The truth of Bristol’s remark was corroborated by a letter which Pope Gregory XV addressed to Charles, urging him to adopt the ancient religion which his fathers had practiced. He wrote in terms of great courtesy urging upon the Prince’s attention his favorite argument, that a Church that had once been the seat of truth could not now live in error. A letter from the same didactic pen implored Buckingham to perpetuate his own name in the Book of Life by compassing the Prince’s conversion, thus adding a soul to salvation. Charles answered the letter politely, pressing for the dispensation and promising his protection to his Catholic subjects in England, but offered no prospects that his own convictions would change. Death claimed Gregory before this letter reached him, and his successor, Urban VIII, wrote to both Charles and his father, still pressing the Prince’s reconciliation to the Roman dogmas.

This unseemly attack upon his conscience, the many humiliations in his addresses to the Infanta, and the undisguised duplicity of the Spanish Court in its present treatment of the match, cooled the affections of the Prince, and he reflected upon a speedy return to England. It was not long before he discovered, however, that the Spaniards had set a watch on him, and he sent home a despairing message to his father, that if the King of Spain should detain him a prisoner, he would be pleased never to be thought of again as a son, and bade him reflect upon the good of his sister and the safety of the English Crown.

The strained situation of this affair was increased by a trivial misunderstanding which arose between Olivarez and Buckingham; and just when matters were become most gloomy for the young Prince, the dispensation arrived from Rome, and the Spanish King announced his readiness to proceed with the marriage. Charles presented a message from his father commanding his immediate return. The Spaniard pressed him with apparent cordiality to remain, and the Infanta added her solicitations. Now, and not until now, was Spain in earnest about the match, and now was England as much opposed to its further consideration.

It is at this stage of the negotiation that we perceive the first indication of that elasticity of conscience and lack of sincerity in Charles, which were afterwards developed into enormous defects in his character.

The question of the Prince’s ability to depart from Spain before the solemnization of the marriage ceremony was full of grave doubts. Upon learning that a watch was kept on his movements, he sent Buckingham to tell them, that although they had stolen thither out of love, they would never steal thence out of fear. But this courageous tone was simulated; for being now resolved against the match, and fearing a consequence that he would never again see England, he wrote in deep despair to the King his father, "You must now, Sir, look upon my sister and her children, never thinking more of me, and forgetting that you ever had such a son."‘ He communicated to His Spanish Majesty the necessity for his instant return to his native land. Philip was startled at this announcement, and urged upon him that, having waited so many years for a wife, he would stay some few months longer. He told him that if he would consent to postpone the nuptials until spring, he would sign a blank power and permit him to write his own conditions for the restitution of the Palatinate. Charles’ secret resolution was inexorable, but he executed a proxy under the most solemn oath before high Heaven, authorizing the espousals to be made in his name by the King of Spain and Don Carlos, his brother. This paper was delivered into the custody of the Earl of Bristol, with direction that the ceremony take place within ten days after ratification by the Pope. But a creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s was entrusted with an instrument commanding the Earl to stay the delivery of the proxy until the receipt of further instructions from England, and Bristol was kept in ignorance of this instruction until the Prince had sailed away.

When Charles returned home without the Infanta, all England was ablaze with bonfires. King James sent an embassy to Madrid to thank Philip for the magnificent hospitality which he had extended to his son. But new conditions touching the Palatinate were insisted upon to the discomfiture of the Spanish Court.

So grave was this international question now become that James called a Parliament which was entertained by Buckingham with a highly wrought description of the Spanish adventure. The Duke, formerly envied and mistrusted, was now a popular hero. Some of the members, with a mischoice of words which in that Puritan age smacked of impiety, declared that he was their Savior. The Parliament presented an address to the King, advising that the treaties both for the marriage and the Palatinate be broken off, and offered to bestow upon him a very large appropriation if war should result.

And war did result, but it was a pusillanimous war. Twelve thousand troops were dispatched under the command of Count Mansfeldt, a German soldier of fortune, and supported by the Navy under the Duke of Buckingham, commissioned to secure the restoration of the Palatinate to King James’ son-in-law, the Elector Frederick. The attempt ended in defeat, and when his troops returned with decimated ranks King James had been gathered to his fathers. His last words to Charles, now betrothed to the French Princess, Henrietta Maria, exhorted him to love his wife but not her religion; to take especial care of the children of his sister, the Queen of Bohemia; and to exercise all his power to re-establish himself in the ancient dignity of England’s former kings. Nothing was said to the young Prince concerning those great principles of civil rights which were burning themselves upon the mind of the nation. With a last gasp for prerogative, on the 27^th of March, 1625, he yielded up his spirit.

Charles the First! Blushing in youth, affluent in health and strength, descended from a long line of kings, possessing great dignity of mind, bearing a noble and commanding carriage, beloved for his virtue and soberness, and full of that sweetness of hope which sat well on his twenty-five years of life, gifted thus, he seemed an ideal monarch, and the nation hailed his accession with great joy.

The contract of marriage with Henrietta Maria, Catholic daughter to the Protestant champion, Henry IV of France, had been already duly executed. The French Duke of Chevereux, acting as proxy for Charles, was attended by a retinue containing the flower of the English nobility. Cardinal Richelieu pronounced the ceremony which made the Princess Queen of Great Britain. Then, while the nuptial mass was sung, the English party withdrew to the house of their Ambassador—a mournful presage that they, having escaped one Catholic marriage, were not prepared to divest themselves of prejudice against another. But while this shadow of mistrust was present at the marriage feast, there was nevertheless great rejoicing over the union of two young hearts in that exalted station. The Duke of Buckingham, accounted to be the handsomest and courtliest man in Europe, came over to escort the Queen to her lord. A Royal Navy convoyed her across the Channel. On arriving at Dover the youthful Queen, then only fifteen years and seven months old, being somewhat discomposed by a slight seasickness, sent to Charles, begging him not to come until the morrow. At ten o’clock on the following morning the King came with all his Court to receive her. She was at breakfast, but flew to meet him. She tried to kneel and kiss his hand, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her. She then began a set speech. "Sire, I am come into this Your Majesty’s country to be at your command." A flood of girlish tears prevented her from continuing, and Charles, to whose heart they appealed more earnestly than her words, took her aside and soothed her with his vows of devoted love. He playfully expressed surprise that she appeared so much taller than he expected, and glanced down at her feet, thinking that she stood on tiptoe. Perceiving his look, she said in French, with her head reaching to his shoulder, "Sire, I stand upon my own feet. Thus high am I, neither higher nor lower."

She then besought him, out of her respect and love to him as her husband, that he would not be angry with her for her faults of ignorance or youth before he had first instructed her how to banish them, and especially desired him to use no third person when she did anything amiss, but to inform her of her failing himself. To this womanly appeal the King granted his affectionate submission.

The first Parliament began on the eighteenth day of June 1625. The King’s necessities for money were imperative. The war with Spain, undertaken by his predecessor in response to the desire of Parliament, the expenses of his marriage, the funeral and unpaid debts of his father, the promise of subsidies to the King of Denmark for the war against the Catholic League—these and other obligations called for generous supplies. So confident was Charles that the loyalty and affection of this Parliament would dictate to them the granting of a sufficient appropriation, that he would ask for no sum, nor would he allow his ministers to influence the amount. Every sentiment of national honor and religion demanded a wise grant of funds. The disappointment of the King can therefore be well understood when, without any attempt to disclose a motive for their parsimony, they voted him, for all the expenses of his grave situation, the sum of two subsidies, equal to about one hundred and twelve thousand pounds.

That this grant was niggardly and detestable, and calculated only to stir the King’s resentment, cannot be denied. And yet the men who sat in that Parliament were the ablest in England. Among them were Sir John Eliot, the most prominent of the agitators for constitutional government; Sir Edward Coke, wise in statesmanship and learned in the law; John Pym, unsurpassed for his fearless advocacy of popular rights; and Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards risen to melancholy celebrity as the Earl of Strafford. The proprieties of the case, the necessities of the existing complications, could not be forgotten in the deliberations of these men. It is rather to be inferred that the education of the public mind through centuries of monarchal government had produced a universal desire to confine within constitutional bounds the powers of the Royal authority, and to perform by consent of the people in Parliament a great many of those functions which had been previously exercised by the sole pleasure of the Sovereign. Swayed partly by their love of liberty, and partly by the fear of an unwholesome influence of the Catholic marriage, the subjects of Charles I had determined at the commencement of his reign to use those methods of popular agitation which finally drove the refractory House of Stuart out of England and reduced the King’s actual prerogative to a mere semblance of power. So they voted him two subsidies, when twelve would hardly have permitted him to meet his engagements.

The King preserved an admirable patience in this extremity, and sought to move the Parliament by explaining to them the plans which had reduced him to such urgent necessities. He told them that by a promise of money to the King of Denmark he had secured a pledge from that monarch to enter Germany with an army and conduct a war of diversion; that a large force of English soldiers under Count Mansfeldt was ready to invade Spain; that the maintenance of the fleet and the defence of Ireland required liberal provision; that he was obliged to press the war for the restitution of the Palatinate to his kindred; that debts amounting to three hundred thousand pounds, contracted by his father, were pressing him sorely; and that in spite of great frugality in his establishment the private purse of the Crown was empty and must be replenished. He condescended to remind them that this was the commencement of his reign; that he was young; and that if he now met with kind and dutiful usage it would endear him to the use of Parliaments, and would forever preserve an entire harmony between him and his people.

The plague now broke out in London and raged with such fatal fury that the Parliament adjourned to Oxford. And while sitting there they were apprised of an incident which caused so much consternation that they at once became inexorable to any further demands for appropriations.

When King James had grown weary of the Spanish match and negotiated the alliance with France, he had engaged to furnish Louis XIII, the brother of Henrietta Maria, with eight warships to be employed against the Genoese. It was not long before a cry went up from the besieged Huguenots in La Rochelle that it was the real object of the French King to use these ships to batter down their walls. When the fleet reached Dieppe this surmise proved to be true. To the honor of the English sailors, they mutinied at the command to surrender their vessels into the hands of the French for an assault on La Rochelle; and their commander, Captain John Pennington, declared that he would rather be hanged in England for disobedience than fight against his brother Protestants in France. The ships returned to England, where Buckingham, Lord Admiral, artfully told them that peace had been declared between the Huguenots and the French King, and ordered them back. When they reached Dieppe the second time, they found that they had been falsely informed by the Duke, whereupon one vessel escaped to England, and all the officers and all the sailors of the other ships immediately deserted. One gunner alone preferred to obey his King rather than his conscience, and the news of his death in the first attack was received with great delight in England.

Further supplies were refused. The Commons sent many dutiful and affectionate messages to the King, but gave him no money. They likewise presented a petition concerning religion, and the King assented to all of its demands. In the meantime the La Rochelle affair led to a general denunciation of the duke of Buckingham, whose continued favor at Court was much resented, and when it developed that the House of Commons intended to press his impeachment, the King, on the 12^th of August, 1625, dissolved the Parliament.

Charles now adopted the bad alternative of borrowing money from his subjects, through the issue of Privy Seals. With means raised in this way he equipped a fleet, and sent it to Spain to intercept the rich galleons from America, but it was attacked with the plague and obliged to return home with thinned ranks. The Duke of Buckingham did not accompany this enterprise, but placed Sir Edward Cecil in command, neglecting Sir Robert Mansel, a sailor of much larger capacity. The indignation that stirred the nation upon this incompetent expedition forced the King to call his second Parliament. Before they assembled Charles called for a full execution of the laws against the Catholics, hoping thus to assuage the narrow hatred of the Puritans against those persecuted people. In order to keep out the leading men who had in the last Parliament opposed his wishes, he had appointed four of the popular leaders sheriffs—Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Robert Phillips, and Sir Francis Seymour—thus incapacitating them to serve in the House of Commons. But the rising spirit of the times could not be quieted by such measures. The second Parliament met February 6, 1626. The Commons voted him this time three subsidies and three fifteens, but held the bill back until the end of the session, a plain intimation that they themselves would now endeavor to regulate and control every part of the Government which was not to their liking. The popular passion demanded a victim, and the Commons selected the Duke of Buckingham for punishment.

"The Duke was indeed," says Lord Clarendon, "a very extraordinary person, and never any man in any age, nor I believe in any country or nation, rose, in so short a time, to so much greatness of honor, fame, and fortune, upon no other advantage or recommendation than of the beauty and gracefulness of his person." The Duke was a younger son of Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, whose family traced its line to the Conquest. In his youth he was sent into France, where he acquired the accomplishments and education of a gentleman. Returning to England at the age of twenty-one, he went to Court, where his manly beauty instantly attracted the attention of King James, who made him his cupbearer. Excelling in the arts of a courtier, he won so much upon the Royal favor that the marks of the King’s esteem fell thick and fast upon him. He was knighted, was made a Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber, and received the Order of the Garter. He was then elevated successively to the rank of Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquis, and finally became Duke of Buckingham. He was appointed Lord High Admiral of England, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Captain-General of the Army, Master of the Horse, Constable of Dover and Windsor Castles, and Master of the King’s Forests and Chases. All rivals to the Royal favor were displaced in his rapid rise. He became himself the dispenser of patronage, and the members of his own family received a large share of the public bounty. So much success could not fail to excite great jealousy. So much responsibility could not fail to overtax the capacity of one so young. But when Charles came to the throne, Buckingham, who had won his confidence in the Spanish affair, was continued in power, a thing which surprised those who knew that the Duke had once, in a moment of rage, threatened the Prince with personal assault.

The nation evinced a disposition to lay all the common ills at the door of the Duke’s administration. He was known to be responsible for a great many objectionable things in existing treaties with Catholic countries, which drew upon him the rage and hatred of the Puritans. The visible decline of English power upon the high seas was attributed to his incompetent control of the Navy. Dr. Samuel Turner, Sir John Eliot, and others ventured to suggest in Parliament an impeachment against the Duke. The proposition was received by the Commons with profound though cautious approbation. Charles, upon hearing of this, arrogantly commanded them not to touch his servant, and ordered them to finish the bill for the subsidies, as he intended in a few days to dismiss them. And it was intimated very plainly to them that if they did not exhibit a more dutiful regard for the King, he would be likely to dispense with Parliaments and govern exclusively by his prerogative. Unabashed by his rebuke, they brought in an impeachment against Buckingham, and refused to make the appropriations, and the King determined to dissolve them before the attack upon his favorite could be concluded.

In this impeachment Buckingham was accused of having united many offices in his own person; of having obtained two of them by the payment of money; of neglecting to protect English commerce on the seas, insomuch that many merchant ships had been captured by the enemy; of delivering the eight ships to the King of France to attack La Rochelle; of accepting bribes for his patronage; of accepting extensive grants from the Crown; of procuring many titles of honor for his kindred; and lastly, of applying a plaster to the late King without consulting the physicians.

The Duke answered these charges with frankness and skill, admitting most of the allegations to be true, but disclaiming any dishonest or unworthy motive. And in this condition the affair was pushed upon the deliberation of the Lords.

While the matter of the impeachment was taking legal shape, the Earl of Suffolk, who was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, died, and Buckingham, through the influence of the Court, was chosen Chancellor for that great seat of learning. The Commons resented this, and protested to the King against it. But in order to show his contempt for them, the King wrote a letter to the University in high praise of the Duke, and commended them for his election.

Other unpleasant incidents preceded the dissolution of the Parliament, and inflamed the resentment of that body to the King. It was alleged that Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot, in their presentation of the impeachment, had used seditious language against the King’s honor, and they were both thrown into prison. The Commons protested to a man that the words had not been used; the two imprisoned members denied them; and the King, expressing his belief in their statements, restored them to liberty.

A second matter affected the Lords. Buckingham, who had never forgiven the Earl of Bristol for pressing the Spanish match after Charles and himself decided to relinquish it, had influenced the King to dismiss Bristol from Court. Not satisfied with this victory, he had, at the calling of this Parliament, prevailed upon Charles to withhold a writ from Bristol. The Earl appealed to the Lords for the privilege of his peerage. The Lords petitioned the King in Bristol’s behalf, whereupon the Monarch sent him his writ with a letter commanding him not to obey its summons to Parliament. Bristol in his reply made the ingenious point that the writ, under the Great Seal, commanded him, on his faith and allegiance, to attend the Parliament, while in the letter under the Privy Seal, the King had expressed his pleasure that he would personally continue in retirement. In the end Bristol was permitted to come to Parliament, where he joined in the impeachment of Buckingham, and was in turn accused of high treason by the Duke.

In a further instance of what he considered a just exercise of the powers of the Crown, Charles aroused the apprehension of the Lords, who were thus far loyal to him and opposed to the encroachments of the Commons. The King had privately taken offense at the Earl of Arundel, on account of a marriage negotiated by the Earl for his son with a sister of the Duke of Lenox, and had committed him to the tower during the sitting of Parliament without assigning a cause. The Lords respectfully remonstrated against this as a violation of privilege. Many messages between the King and the Lords ensued. At length the Lords refused to sit until the Earl was restored to them, or a cause assigned for his arrest, and the King was forced to yield him up.

The Commons, still refusing supplies, were persistently urging their grievances at the foot of the Throne. They used every endeavor to gain the King’s assistance in the Puritan legislation that had been framed to stamp out the Catholic faith in England. A cry against Popery was eternally on their tongues. Charles, hungrily waiting for an appropriation, was quick in his promises but ever slow in his performance. The House, forced by the temerity of its own conduct to expect a wrathful dissolution, conceived a measure which would forever cripple the King’s attempt to conduct the government despotically in the absence of a Parliament. They began to prepare a remonstrance against the levying of tonnage and poundage without consent of Parliament. The income from this source constituted an important part of the revenues of the Crown. The King, apprised of their proceeding, and perceiving that there was an intention to hold back all legislation until they had accomplished a revolution in the ancient methods of the government, dissolved them on the 15^th of June, 1626.

As this action was expected, the Commons had made haste to complete their remonstrance, which, at the dissolution, was published to the country. The King, anxious to stand well in the eyes of his subjects, likewise published a declaration, in which he gave his reasons for dissolving their sitting before they had finished a single act.

A careful study of the conflict during the session of this Parliament, in which the King indomitably strove for the preservation of his prerogative, and the Commons as stubbornly contended for popular rights, discloses weakness on both sides. The King had no settled purpose but to oppose their aggressions. He was surrounded by unwise counselors who could neither advise him to yield with grace a part of their demands, nor propose a counter course of action so expedient as to compel their approval. The Commons had no settled policy for their guidance but to oppose the King in every measure which they knew him to value. They frivolously passed from a remonstrance upon one grievance to a remonstrance upon another grievance without pressing any point to final victory. But their steadfast opposition was an evidence to the nation, whose representatives they were, that they were fixed in their purpose to alter and improve the Constitution while preserving its ancient form. And these conflicting views of duty, honestly entertained by the King and the Commons, were well represented by the party cries, "Prerogative" and "Privilege."

The theory of the character of the English Sovereign in that age presented him as a mysterious being, perfect and immortal. As King he was not subject to death, being a corporate part of the Constitution, and speaking in the plural pronouns our and we. Though in infancy, he was always mature, and not human in his office, he could do no wrong. Ubiquitous, he could act simultaneously in all parts of his dominion, and such was the value of a King’s word that whatever he declared to have passed in his presence became legal truth. His prerogative was so complete that laws were made or failed by his single voice, and peace or war rested solely upon his will. Cherishing this strictly legal but theoretical construction of his power, Charles now determined to sway the scepter absolutely.

His first act was to close a peace with Spain. Commissioners were then appointed to gather the customs duties, which, it was held by the Commons, could not lawfully be levied except by act of Parliament. Large sums of money were collected from the Catholics upon the practical nullification of the laws against teem. He called upon the nobles for large loans. He demanded one hundred thousand pounds from the City of London. He required the seaport towns to furnish him with ships. A general tax was levied, equal to the four subsidies and three fifteens which the late Parliament had intended to grant to the King. The Lord Lieutenants of the several counties were directed to muster men for military service, with commissions to execute martial law upon public enemies or rebels. Preparations were made to equip a fleet for foreign service.

In the month of September 1626, Charles received advice that the King of Denmark had been defeated by the Emperor of Germany. Thereupon, a further general tax was assessed upon all Englishmen for the war in the Palatinate. The soldiers who returned from Spain were billeted upon the people, and outrage and disorder followed them wherever they appeared. The Bishop of Lincoln, having expressed sympathy with the Puritans who were opposing the tax, was prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber. Dr. Sibthorpe and Dr. Mainwaring, at the instigation of the court, preached sermons calling upon the people to pay the money as a religious obligation to their rulers. Sir John Eliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and John Hampden were among those who were thrown into prison for refusing to pay.

While the young Monarch was, by these rash measures, bringing troublous times upon his people, the specter of discontent appeared upon his own hearthstone. The Catholic marriage was not in its first years a happy one. The nuptial contract provided that the Queen should have a certain number of priests for her household chaplains, together with a bishop, who should exercise all ecclesiastical jurisdiction matters of religion. The arrogant bearing of these priests soon offended the high-minded Monarch. They began to announce that the pope, upon the marriage treaty, assumed to himself, or his delegates, the direction and control of the Queen’s whole family, and that the King of England, being a heretic, had no power to intermeddle therein. Beneath the influence of this false teaching, the Queen became somewhat restless under the King’s authority, and an unhappy estrangement ensued between the Royal pair. Buckingham did what he could to enlarge this infelicity, lest the Queen’s influence might prevail against his own.

As a matter of fact, the contract of marriage between Charles and his vivacious Queen contained certain concessions which the youthful Monarch, under the glamour of ardent and irresponsible love, had yielded without alarm. But with a larger experience in life, Charles as a reflecting husband and hopeful father, now observed with dismay that these obligations pinched his conscience and irritated his mind. One article of the treaty provided that "the children of this future marriage shall be brought up by their mother till the age of thirteen years." With the Catholics this was doubtless a stipulation for the religion of the children. "James the First," says a Dutch historian of the times, "here betrayed the cause of his religion, and thus drew on his posterity all their calamities." That this obligation became hateful to Charles is shown by an authentic story which represents the King as coming into the Queen’s chamber during the early infancy of their first child, and beholding a Catholic priest about to baptize it, whereupon Charles stopped him and called in an Episcopal minister, who performed the rite. Among the last letters still extant which Charles wrote to the Prince of Wales is one in which he charges him most solemnly to obey his mother in all things saving religion.

The King has left an interesting account of a scene that transpired in the Royal bed-chamber. He says:

"One night when I was abed, she put a paper in my hand, telling me it was a list of those she desired to be of her retinue. I took it and said I would read it next morning; but withal told her that, by agreement in France, I had the naming of them. She said there were both English and French in the note. I replied that those English I thought fit to serve her I would confirm; but for the French, it was impossible for them to serve her in that nature. Then she said all those in the paper had breviates from her mother and herself, and that she would admit no other. Then I said that it was neither in her mother’s power nor hers to admit any without my leave, and if she stood upon that, whomsoever she recommended should not come in. Then she bade me plainly take my lands to myself, for if she had no power to put in whom she would in those places, she would neither have lands nor houses of me, but bade me give her what I thought fit in pension. I bade her then remember to whom she spoke, and told her that she ought not to use me so. Then she fell into a passionate discourse, how she is miserable, in having no power to place servants; and that business succeeded the worse for her recommendation; which when I offered to answer, she would not so much as hear me. Then she went on saying she was not of that base quality to be used so ill. Then I made her both hear me and end that discourse."

The individual whose presence among his wife’s attendants most annoyed the King was Father Saucy, the Queen’s confessor. Charles had already once expelled this meddling priest from the kingdom, but the French King sent him back to England, to the great indignation of Charles, who had discovered that he had enticed from the Queen disclosures of the most sacred passages in their married life.

What pained the King above all things, however, was the refusal of Henrietta Maria to be crowned with him in Westminster Abbey, her priestly advisers having forbidden her participation in the religious ceremonies of the Established Church. On that august occasion Charles walked alone, clad in a dress of white velvet, emblematic of the purity of his bridal union with the State. As the Royal procession neared the church, the Queen viewed it from an adjacent window, and exchanged frivolous comments with her ladies on the imposing celebration. No entreaties could break through the narrow bigotry of her mind, and no ceremony of coronation was ever performed in her behalf. She was Queen of England only by virtue of her marriage, and not by her installation into that office. In later years Cromwell refused to pay her dower upon the demand of the French King, because of this imperfect title.

Charles was especially inflamed against his wife’s religious advisers, because he believed that they had made her walk in penance to Tyburn and fix her gaze on the gallows. The Queen denied that she had gone thither by counsel of her priests, and explained that in leaving her chapel after the vesper service she had turned her footsteps through the park in the direction of Tyburn entirely without design.

Another source of the King’s displeasure was in her refusal during her early residence in England to learn the language and observe the customs of the country. But while the Queen’s Catholic zeal and the occasional explosion of her temper led to those infelicities which often surround an ill-assorted marriage, she was nevertheless an affectionate and devoted wife, fond of her husband, and the object always of his adoring passion.

It has been charged that Charles was swayed too much by his Queen’s influence in those measures which made his reign unpopular, and the charge seems to be well sustained by historical evidence. At the time of her departure for Holland to sell the Crown jewels for the prosecution of the war, Charles had made her a solemn promise that he would receive no person into favor or trust without her knowledge and consent; and that, as she had undergone many reproaches and calumnies at the commencement of the war, he would never make any peace but by her mediation, that the kingdom might receive that blessing only from her. Undoubtedly a knowledge of this ascendency of the Queen in her husband’s affairs had great weight with the Commons in their persistent obstinacy during the war.

But Charles, smarting under the interference of the Queen’s priests and some of her ladies, whom he justly charged with alienating his wife’s confidence and esteem, dismissed the entire French retinue and sent them home to France. This, as a violation of the marriage contract, was followed by a declaration of war, and a Navy was dispatched to France under the command of Buckingham. This force made for La Rochelle, but the wary Huguenots, filled with distrust of the English under a remembrance of the ships that were shortly before employed against them, refused to admit them inside their fortifications. The Duke then landed upon the Isle of Rhée, whence, after some insignificant and inglorious adventures, he was forced to depart without honor and with the loss of a considerable portion of his men.

The clamor of the nation over this mortifying disaster became so loud that there was no alternative, even for Charles Stuart, but to call a Parliament. Accordingly, on the 17^th of March, 1628, his third Parliament assembled, in no pacific frame of mind.

Oliver Cromwell, while cultivating his land at Huntingdon and studying the law of God’s eternal mercies and judgments from the new translation of the Bible, was called to the third Parliament of Charles I in 1628, as member for the town of Huntingdon. The austerity of Puritanism had burnt itself into his soul. For popery he entertained the intolerant hatred of his party, and he looked with but little more patience upon the dignified and stately ceremonial of the Established Church. The persecutions of the Puritans in the Star Chamber had driven many of these straightlaced believers to more hospitable homes in the New World; and the tradition that both Oliver Cromwell and his cousin, John Hampden, had intended, if liberty perished, to try their fortunes in America, is probably founded on fact.

Parliament found public affairs in a bad state, and all because the House of Stuart would never profit by experience, nor attempt to forecast for the signs of the times. They believed, with Shakespeare,

"There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would."

The three leading nations of Europe were ruled by three youths, Philip of Spain, Louis of France, and Charles of England, who in turn were almost wholly swayed by their intriguing ministers, Olivarez, Richelieu, and Buckingham. It was the zenith of the monarchal system, and the time was ripe for the assertion of popular rights.

When Oliver Cromwell, at the age of twenty-nine, entered the House of Commons, clad in home-spun clothes and walking with a shambling, slouching gait, with neither grace of manner nor dignity of carriage, he attracted but little attention. "Who," cried a Royalist clergyman in a sermon preached after the Restoration, "Who that beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell first entering the Parliament House, with a threadbare, torn coat, and a greasy hat (and perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that, in the course of so few years, he should, by the murder of one King and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested in the Royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a King but the changing of his hat into a crown?" "Odds fish, Lory!" exclaimed Charles II, when he heard this speech from the man who had been glad to eulogize Cromwell when living, "Odds fish, man! Your chaplain must be a bishop. Put me in mind of him at the next vacancy."

The Lords in their robes and the Commons being assembled, the King made them a speech from the Throne, calling their attention to the necessities for supply. "Every man must do according to his conscience," said he, "wherefore if you (as God forbid) should not do your duties in contributing what the State at this time needs, I must in discharge of my conscience use those other means which God hath put into my hands, to save that which the follies of particular men may otherwise hazard to lose. Take not this as a threatening," he continued, with rising spirit, "for I scorn to threaten any but my equals."

After this high speech the King departed, and the Commons at once began a discussion of grievances and the state of the kingdom, taking into consideration the late arbitrary acts of the Privy Council, as the billeting of soldiers, forced loans, and the imprisonment of certain patriots who had refused to pay the tax. It was shown that their ancestors had been so careful to secure the liberties of Englishmen, that six several statutes, as well as a provision in Magna Charta, already prohibited such infractions as the late imprisonments. Sir Francis Seymour opened the debate with great ability. He said:

"This is the great council of the kingdom, and here with certainty, if not here only, His Majesty may see, as in a true glass, the state of the kingdom. We are called hither by his writs, in order to give him faithful counsel, such as may stand with his honor, and this we must do without flattery. We are also sent hither by the people, in order to deliver their just grievances, and this we must do without fear. Let us not act like Cambyses’ judges, who, when their approbation was demanded by the Prince to some illegal measure, said that ‘though there was a written law, the Persian Kings might follow their own will and pleasure.’ This was base flattery, fitter for our reproof than our imitation; and as fear, so flattery, taketh away the judgment. For my part, I shall shun both, and speak my mind with as much duty as any man to His Majesty, without neglecting the public. But how can we express our affections while we retain our fears, or speak of giving till we know whether we have anything to give? For if his Majesty may be persuaded to take what he will, what need we give? That this hath been done, appeareth by the billeting of soldiers, a thing nowise advantageous to the King’s service, and a burden to the Commonwealth; by the imprisonment of gentlemen for refusing the loan, who, if they had done the contrary for fear, had been as blamable as the projectors of that oppressive measure. To countenance these proceedings, hath it not been preached from the pulpit, or rather prated, that ‘all we have is the King’s by Divine right’? But when preachers forsake their own calling, and turn ignorant statesmen, we see how willing they are to exchange a good conscience for a bishopric. He, I must confess, is no good subject, who would not willingly and cheerfully lay down his life, when that sacrifice may promote the interests of his Sovereign, and the good of the Commonwealth. But he is not a good subject, he is a slave, who will allow his goods to he taken from him against his will, and his liberty against the laws of the kingdom."

Sir Thomas Wentworth, after reciting some of the recent grievances, fulminated a future impeachment against himself as an "evil counselor" in these words:

"This hath not been done by the King, under the pleasing shade of whose Crown I hope we shall ever gather the fruits of justice, but by projectors, who have extended the prerogative of the King beyond the just symmetry which maketh a sweet harmony of the whole. They have brought the Crown into greater want than ever by anticipating the revenues. And can the shepherd be thus smitten and the sheep not scattered? They have introduced a Privy Council ravishing at once the spheres of all ancient government, imprisoning us without either bail or bond. They have taken from us—what? Shall I say, indeed, what have they left us? ... By one and the same thing have King and people been hurt, and by the same must they be cured. To vindicate, what, new things? No, our ancient, vital liberties."

Sir Benjamin Rudyard, alarmed at the tone of these speeches, arose and pleaded for a medium course, which, if followed by the Parliament, would possibly have saved all the blood and treasure of the Civil War. With dramatic emphasis, he cried:

"This is the crisis of Parliaments! We shall know by this if Parliament live or die. ... Men and brethren, what shall we do? Is there no balm in Gilead? If the King draw one way, the Parliament another, we must all sink. I respect no particular; I am not so wise to contemn what is determined by the major part. One day tells another, and one Parliament instructs another. I desire this House to avoid all contestations; the hearts of Kings are great; it is comely that Kings have the better of their subjects. Give the King leave to come off; I believe His Majesty expects but the occasion. It is lawful and our duty to advise His Majesty, but the way is to take a right course to attain the right end, which I think may be thus: by trusting the king, and to breed a trust in him, by giving him a large supply according to his wants, [and then] by prostrating our grievances humbly at his feet. From thence they will have the best way to his heart, that is done is duty to his Majesty. And to say all at once: Let us all labor to get the King on our side, and this may be no hard matter, considering the near subsistence between the King and people."

Sir Edward Coke said he was willing to give supply to His Majesty, yet with some caution. He continued:

"I am not able to fly at all grievances, but only at loans. Let us not tatter ourselves. Who will give subsidies, if the King may impose what he will, and if after Parliament the King may enhance what he pleaseth? the King will not do it; I know he is a religious King, free from personal vices. But he deals with other men’s hands, and sees with other men’s eyes. Will any give a subsidy that may be taxed after Parliament at pleasure? The King cannot tax any by way of loans. ... In Magna Charta it is provided, that ‘No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or restrained from his freehold, or liberties, or immunities, nor outlawed, nor exiled, nor in any manner destroyed, nor will we come upon him or send against him, except by legal judgment of his peers or the law of the land. We will sell or deny justice to none, nor put off right or justice’—which charter hath been confirmed by good kings above thirty times."

Sir Robert Phillips said:

"I read of a custom among the old Romans, that once every year they held a solemn festival, in which their slaves had liberty, without exception, to speak what they pleased, in order to ease their afflicted minds; and, on conclusion of the festival, the slaves severally returned to their former servitudes. This institution may, with some distinction, well set forth our present state and condition. After the revolution of some time, and the grievous sufferance of many violent oppressions, we have now at last, as those slaves, obtained, for a day, some liberty of speech; but shall not, I trust, be hereafter slaves, for we are born free. Yet what new illegal burdens our estates and burdens have groaned under, my heart yearns to think of, my tongue falters to utter! The grievances by which we are oppressed, I draw under two heads—acts of power against law, and the judgments of lawyers against our liberty."

It will be seen from these speeches that the cry for constitutional government was almost universal. Even the Court party could not defend the late abuses, and the King’s ministers were forced to ask for subsidies with grievances, a concession that so charmed the Commons that they voted an appropriation of five subsidies. The King received word of this generous action with tears of gratitude. So fearful were they, however, of the insincerity of his promises for the permanent redress of their grievances, that it was determined to hold back the grant until they could provide an impregnable law which would forever protect their liberties from the encroachments of the Crown. Forced loans, benevolences, taxes without consent of Parliament, arbitrary imprisonments, the billeting of soldiers, martial law—these made up the story of their grievances; and to abolish such burdens for themselves and their posterity, that statute was framed which has come down to us as a precious heritage with Magna Charta, and which is known as the Petition of Right.

The King learned of the preparation of the Petition of Right with undisguised alarm. The Lord Keeper was dispatched to the Parliament House with message after message, all of which, though couched in varying tones of entreaty, self-abasement, or command, equally displayed the agitation of the King’s mind. The Court party opposed the measure with skill and vigor. They argued, with truth, that Magna Charta contained in substance all that the Commons sought to incorporate in the Petition of Right. The Commons, admitting this, recalled that it had been necessary to secure a confirmation of Magna Charta from their Kings thirty times—why not secure its confirmation from Charles? The Court party claimed that arbitrary imprisonment was already unlawful under the Great Charter. The others pointed to the six statutes which frequent violations of the Charter had required to be enacted—why not incorporate a seventh statute in the Petition of Right? The insidious influence of the Court prevailed upon the Lords to propose to the Commons that the concluding clause in the Petition be worded as follows: "We present this our humble Petition to Your Majesty, with the care not only of preserving our own liberties, but with due regard to leave entire that sovereign power wherewith Your Majesty is trusted for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people." The subtle force of this apparently humble peroration would have left the whole without effect, and it was an evidence of the intelligence of the House that they instantly rejected it. The Petition passed in the form of a declaratory statute, and was delivered to the King. For two centuries it had been customary for the Sovereign to approve or reject a bill by one word, yet when Charles came in State before the Parliament, he spoke these ambiguous words, which were considered to contain his assent to the Petition:

"The King willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm, and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions, contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged as of his prerogative."

There were great disputations after the King’s departure. The Commons would not be content with such equivocation. But while they were discussing the means of securing the King’s positive assent, a message from the throne commanded them to finish the appropriations, as they would be dismissed in one week. Not alarmed at this threat, they calmly neglected the matter of supply, and framed an impeachment against Dr. Roger Mainwaring "for seducing the conscience of the King," by having insisted in a sermon on the duty of paying the forced loan. Having forwarded this impeachment to the Lords, they turned to strike at the Duke of Buckingham.

Instantly came a message from the King, reminding them of their impending adjournment and commanding them not to cast any aspersion or scandal upon his favorite.

Consternation and woe seemed suddenly to engulf the House. Sir John Eliot attempted to speak, but one of the King’s ministers, apprehending that he would mention the Duke’s name, commanded him not to proceed. "Hereupon," says John Rushworth, who was present, "there was a sad silence in the House for a while." Thomas Alured, one of the members, has left a pathetic description of the scene that now ensued. He writes:

"Yesterday was a day of desolation among us in Parliament, and this day we fear will be the day of dissolution. ... Sir Robert Phillips of Somersetshire spake and mingled his words with weeping. Mr. Pym did the like. Sir Edward Coke, overcome with passion, seeing the desolation likely to ensue, was forced to sit down, when he began to speak, by the abundance of tears. Yea, the Speaker in his speech could not refrain from weeping and shedding of tears. Besides a great many whose grief made them dumb. But others bore up in that storm and encouraged the rest."

By-and-bye they became somewhat more composed. But what a scene for that young and thoughtful Oliver Cromwell to witness! No hope of quarter for the King from him, if ever the memory of that day come back to him on the field of battle! "Did they not in former times," says Alured, "proceed by fining and committing John of Gaunt, the King’s own son; had they not in very late times meddled with and sentenced the Lord Chancellor Bacon and others?"

Sir Edward Coke made another effort. He now saw that God had not accepted of their humble and moderate carriages and fair proceedings; and he feared the reason was, they had not dealt sincerely with the King and country, and made a true representation of all their miseries. "Let us palliate no longer," he cried. "I think the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries, and till the King be informed thereof, we shall never go out with honor or sit with honor here. That man is the grievance of grievances!"

The Lords attempted to direct the alarm into other channels. They began to talk of the peril of the nation from Continental entanglements. They referred to the growing power of the House of Austria, the ambition of the King of Spain who was seeking to make his monarchy universal, the increasing danger of the Catholic League, and the lack of their own preparation to meet any emergency. But the Commons would not be diverted from their course.

The King perceived that he had gone too far in his absolutism, and came down to the Parliament House, and gave his assent to the Petition of Right in the usual form, speaking the words, "Let it be law as is desired."

The tenth article of the Petition of Right, which rehearses the grievances complained of in the preceding articles, is as follows:

"They [the Parliament] do therefore humbly pray Your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent, by act of Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined or otherways molested or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that Your Majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers or mariners, and that people may not be so burdened in time to come; and that the aforesaid commissions, for proceeding by martial law, may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth, to any person or persons whatsoever, to be executed as aforesaid, lest, by color of them, any of Your Majesty’s subjects be destroyed, or put to death, contrary to the laws and franchise of the land."

The Commons now persisted in completing the Buckingham impeachment, and they presented it to the King, who, after considering it in the Star Chamber, ordered that all record of any charges against the Duke be expunged.

They then began a remonstrance against tonnage and poundage, which brought the King to the Parliament House so hastily that the Lords had not sufficient time to put on their robes. And they were presently prorogued until October (and later until January) with every mark of the Royal displeasure.

The English nation, in its desire for constitutional government, would perhaps have felt itself completely satisfied by the enactment of the Petition of Right, had not Charles Stuart, in the knowledge of all men, lacked those elements of candor and sincerity which were essential to the enforcement of any law designed to protect the liberties of his people. Before giving his assent to the Petition of Right, he had called the two chief justices, Hyde and Richardson, to Whitehall, and propounded certain questions, directing that the other judges should likewise pass upon them. His first question was, "Whether in no case whatsoever the King may not commit a subject without showing cause?" The flexibility of the most sacred laws, in the hands of pliant judges, is shown by their reply. "We are of opinion," said the judges, the two chief justices concurring, "that by the general rule of law, the cause of commitment by His Majesty ought to be shown, yet some cases may require such secrecy, that the King may commit a subject without showing the cause for a convenient time." The King then asked them a second question: "Whether in case a habeas corpus be brought, and a warrant from the King without any general or special cause returned, the judges ought to deliver him before they understand the cause from the King?" This answer was equally elastic. "Upon a habeas corpus brought for one committed by the King," they said, "if the cause be not specially or generally returned, so as the court may take knowledge thereof, the party ought by the general rule of the law to be delivered. But, if the case be such that the same requireth secrecy and may not presently be disclosed, the court in discretion may forbear to deliver the prisoner for a convenient time, to the end the court may be advertised of the truth thereof." A third question from the Monarch was advanced: "Whether, if the King grant the Commons Petition, he doth not thereby exclude himself from committing or restraining a subject for any time or cause whatsoever without showing a cause?" And the judges replied, "Every law, after it is made, hath its exposition, and so this petition and answer must have an exposition as the case in the nature thereof shall require to stand with justice, which is to be left to the courts of justice to determine, which cannot particularly be discovered until such case shall happen. And although the Petition be granted, there is no fear of conclusion as is intimated in the question."

The truth must be confessed that Charles had an utter contempt for the very notion of popular rights. He had imbibed his ideas of the responsibility of a King from his father, whose view of the question is shown in a letter which he wrote late in life to the House of Commons, commanding "that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our Government." It was this narrow conception of the monarchal system which led Charles to violate every statute that was aimed at the powers of the Crown, and his oft-repeated promises, "on the word of a King," were found by his unhappy subjects to be without any binding force upon his conscience.

Free for a time from the interventions of his Parliament, Charles now participated in those operations of war which had engaged nearly the whole of Europe. The Earl of Denbigh, brother-in-law of the Duke of Buckingham, had been dispatched to the relief of the Huguenots besieged in the town of La Rochelle. The Huguenots bore so much resemblance to the Puritans, whom the King despised, that it is not likely his concern for their welfare had more than a political depth. An army and a fleet had gathered at Portsmouth, and thither Buckingham proceeded, to give his personal attention to their departure. The King and his Court followed Buckingham, and were hourly expected to arrive, when an event occurred which threw the nation into the wildest excitement. This was the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham.

John Felton, a lieutenant of a company whose captain had met his death in the inglorious retreat from the Isle of Rhée, had taken umbrage at Buckingham because the command of the company had not fallen to him, and had resigned from the army. He was descended from a good family, but was of a taciturn and brooding disposition. While in London he learned something of those debates in the House of Commons in connection with the impeachment of the Duke, in which Buckingham was declared to be a public enemy, responsible for all the evils which the kingdom suffered. Walking through the streets of the great city, a murderous-looking knife in a cutler’s window riveted his attention, and, instantly seized by the design of ridding the nation of its tyrant, he purchased the weapon. The morning of the 23^rd of August, 1628, found him at Portsmouth prepared to finish his sanguinary undertaking.

The Duke had just received letters informing him that the French, under command of Cardinal Richelieu, had been forced by the Protestant forces in La Rochelle to retire, and he directed his breakfast to be served forthwith in order that he might carry the tidings to the King at the house of Sir Daniel Morton, at Southwick, only five miles away. After discussing the situation of La Rochelle with some French gentlemen who were in his chamber, Buckingham started to go to his breakfast, which had been laid for him in another room. As he lifted the curtain of a dark passage-way connecting the two apartments, the Duke turned to give an order to one of his officers, Colonel Fryar, who then stood close beside him, when a hand out of the dark passage-way reached over Fryar’s shoulder, and plunged a knife into the Duke’s heart. "The villain hath killed me!" he exclaimed, and drawing the dagger from his bosom, he fell to the floor and expired.

So expertly was the deed accomplished that no one had seen the blow nor the assassin. The greatest consternation ensued, and there was a disposition shown to charge the murder upon the Frenchmen, whose loud voices had been indistinctly heard outside in the discussion of the letters from La Rochelle. A close search in the passage-way discovered a hat which had evidently been dropped by the culprit in his flight. In the crown of this hat was a paper containing some words from the impeachment proceedings, styling the Duke an enemy to the kingdom, with a brief prayer following them. Several men were taken into custody under suspicion, but in the midst of the excitement, when all were asking, "Where is the murderer?" Felton came up in perfect composure, and said, "I am he." Some hot-headed adherents of the Duke drew their swords and advanced to kill him, but he eyed their approach calmly and without fear. This stolid demeanor secured his protection from those of quieter nerve, who beat down the weapons of his assailants and remanded him to the charge of the guard.

Felton was now dragged into a private room, where, in order to ascertain whether he had confederates, his captors dissembled insomuch as to tell him that the Duke was not dead but only severely wounded. He answered with a disdainful smile that the Duke, he knew full well, had received a blow which had terminated all their hopes. When asked at whose instigation he had performed the atrocious murder, he replied, still smiling, that they should not trouble themselves on that point, as no man living had credit or power enough with him to have impelled him to such a deed, that he had never entrusted his purpose or resolution to any man, that it proceeded only from the impulse of his own conscience, and that the motives of his conduct would appear if his hat were found, in which he had deposited them, because he had expected to perish in his attempt and desired to leave his reasons on record.

Felton’s bearing in this arduous examination was that of a man who had done Heaven a good service. But after he had been in prison some time his conscience convinced him of the enormity of his crime, and he acknowledged that what he had understood to be a whispering of Divine purpose he now perceived was an instigation of Satan. He humbly solicited the forgiveness of the King and of the Duke’s widow and friends, and he implored the judges who pronounced capital punishment upon him that his right hand might be struck off before he would be put to death.

The King was at public prayers in the church at Southwick, when Sir John Hippesly spurred up to the door and entered. Without waiting for a pause in the services, the eager messenger informed the King what had happened. Charles received the news with an undisturbed countenance. So great was the control which he exercised over his feelings that his courtiers, who scrutinized his face, concluded he was secretly glad to be rid of a minister who had become an object of public odium. But under this outward composure the monarch concealed an agony to which he gave full expression shortly afterwards in the privacy of his own chamber. The attacks that had been made on Buckingham through all sources of public expression had only increased the King’s love for him. He retained an affectionate interest in Buckingham’s friends and cherished to the last a prejudice for his enemies. His kindness to the Duke’s wife and children was unremitting, and the large debts standing against Buckingham were discharged by the King’s bounty. When Felton’s trial came on, the King was desirous of putting him to the torture as a full measure of revenge for the murder of his favorite, but his advisers dissuaded him from this on the ground that it would be obnoxious to public sentiment. Felton was before the King’s privy council when Bishop Laud proposed to put him on the rack and make him name his confederates. Felton ingeniously retorted that if that were done he might in his extremity name his Lordship as quickly as any other, whereupon the Bishop pressed the point no further.

Before passing from the Duke of Buckingham, it may not be without interest to briefly describe the character of that most picturesque man. He was gifted with a generous disposition, and possessed a noble nature according to the standard of his times. His affability and courtesy towards all men, his apparent willingness to oblige all suitors, and his unquestioned personal courage, extorted the admiration of his countrymen. But the happy affluence of his own career caused him to offer such rash counsels to the King that admiration was soon succeeded by contempt, and contempt by open indignation and revolt. He was most vehement in his attachments and would go all lengths to oblige a friend. In dealing with his enemies he never affected dissimulation, but would acquaint them frankly with the causes of his resentment and warn them of his purpose of revenge. His manners were charming and his deportment was unequalled, not only in the fastidious Court of Charles, but even in Paris, where perfect manners were the aim of life. In his embassy to France to bring home the Queen, where he appeared in all the brilliance with which the wealth of England could adorn him, he far surpassed the gay courtiers of Louis in those vanities in which they esteemed themselves unrivaled. Trained in the favor of two Royal masters, it is not strange that his conceit was without bounds. While in Paris he even dared to entertain a passion for the French Queen, and, mistaking her graciousness for encouragement, he returned secretly after having taken public leave, and attempted to pay his addresses to her, but was dismissed with a gentleness which proved that even Majesty was not insensible to his charms. His ambition was great, yet his honors followed on each other’s heels so swiftly that he could yearn for nothing. It was the misfortune of his career that there was no one among all his friends to warn him frankly of those impetuous passions which provoked the indignation of the people. He considered every act which met their disfavor as a mere incident to be forgotten in the achievement of some new glory, and he never attempted to atone for such slights upon their judgment by mending his conduct or altering his policy. His private life was not free from the gallantries of the age, although he seems to have been an affectionate husband. Had he been permitted to attain maturity of years before undertaking those great responsibilities of power, his name would doubtless have been an illustrious one on the page of history. But his performances were the experiments of youth, and his life ended in an inglorious tragedy, without drawing tears from his countrymen. He was thirty-six years old when he died.

The King, now free from the counsels of his dangerous favorite, might gracefully have adopted the occasion as propitious for retracing those steps which he had made towards the assumption of absolute power. The progress of English civilization required it. The consensus of English opinion demanded it. But Charles went unfalteringly forward.

William Laud, now Bishop of London, succeeded Buckingham as the King’s most influential adviser. Sir Richard Weston, a much abler man, who had recently been made Lord Treasurer, and who was fitted for a prudent councilor, found his importance second to that of Laud. The Bishop of London was the head and front of the High Church party, ready to surpass the Catholics in ceremony, and for that reason an object of the bitter hatred of the Puritans. Laud was a virtuous man who abstained from pleasures and applied all his vast interest with the Court to exalt the power of the clergy. He was unsuited to a high station by his lack of patience and discretion. He imagined that all his enemies were necessarily the enemies of the State, and he persecuted them accordingly. Many temptations were sent to him from Rome to bring him over to the Catholic Church. He received a secret assurance from the pope that he could have a cardinal’s hat, but while of a narrow and bigoted mind, he was personally honest and he refused the offer. It was his desire to secure to the Episcopal Church in England that absolute sway over the souls of the people which the Catholic Church enjoyed in Italy and Spain. In the pursuit of this aim he persuaded the King to adopt a policy called "Thorough," which was responsible for a large part of the oppressions that ended in Civil War. His selection, therefore, as the successor of Buckingham was not calculated to appease the restless suspicions of the Parliament, soon to reassemble.

Dr. Mainwaring, who had preached that sermon on passive obedience which had evoked a sentence from Parliament prohibiting him forever from preferment in the Church, was pardoned by the King and presented with two rich livings. Dr. Montague, whose Appeal to Caesar had likewise stirred the wrath of Parliament, was made Bishop of Chichester.

The fleet which Buckingham had fitted out for the relief of La Rochelle was dispatched thither in command of the Earl of Lindesey. Expecting this succor to his foes, Richelieu, a man whose vast genius was equal to every emergency in war as in peace, had devised an engineer’s boom which obstructed the boisterous ocean for a mile on the seafront of La Rochelle. When the English fleet arrived, they found it impossible to convey their supplies over this barricade, seeing which, the unhappy Huguenots surrendered. The indomitable inhabitants of the town, buoyed up by the expectation of assistance from England, had subsisted for many weeks upon horse flesh, hides, and leather, and dogs and cats. Their situation at the surrender, in full view of armed assistance, was most deplorable. Out of fifteen thousand who had held the city at the commencement of the siege, but four thousand were alive when the gates were opened to the invaders. Their surrender with a succoring Navy in sight presented to the world another example of the incapacity of the English military system under a Government that was not supported by popular opinion.

The Parliament, which was to have reassembled on the 20^th of October, 1628, met by proclamation on the 20^th of January, 1629. They began at once to discuss their grievances, and learned to their great disgust that the copies of the Petition of Right which had been distributed to the nation had by Royal order the King’s first answer appended, in which he had equivocally confirmed the petition, instead of the usual form in which his second answer had been framed. They found that tonnage and poundage had been levied in express violation of the Petition of Right, and that merchants had had their goods seized for refusing to pay the duties. Among these merchants were Mr. Chambers, Mr. Vassal, and Mr. Rolls, of London, whose consignments of goods were seized by the customs officers for their failure to pay the imposts. The merchants had pleaded the statute of Magna Charta for exemption from taxes assessed without consent of Parliament, and had sued out writs of replevin for their goods. The King’s judges had ordered the sheriffs not to recognize the writs, and thus had the commercial privileges of the nation been invaded.

As it was this question of tonnage and poundage, or, in modern parlance, customs duties, which so often caused a breach between Charles and his Parliaments, it seems fitting to give a brief account of the controversy. The levying of customs duties in former times had been generally done as a temporary grant of Parliament. But when, on the accession of Henry V, the martial spirit of the nation was fired by the conquests of that youthful Sovereign, the right of tonnage and poundage was conferred upon him, and afterwards upon all succeeding Princes, during life. The necessity of these taxes for the support of the Navy was so apparent that each King had claimed it immediately on his accession, and the Parliament had usually granted the Claim. In the time of Henry VIII no grant of tonnage and poundage was made by Parliament until the sixth year of his reign. Yet Henry, who had not then reached the height of his power, continued to levy the tax all through that time, and when Parliament did make the grant they censured the merchants who had neglected to pay the Crown officers. Four succeeding Sovereigns had continued the old custom, which was undoubtedly a violation of the spirit of the constitution, but which Parliament had never undertaken to check until now. In the short interval which passed between the accession of Charles and the meeting of his first Parliament, he had followed the example of his predecessors, and when Parliament assembled they made no complaint. But what happened to be the first intimation on the part of that House of Commons that they had thus early formed a plan for making the young Monarch the creature of Parliaments and not the master of them, was that, instead of granting tonnage and poundage during the King’s lifetime, as it had been done in the preceding reigns, they voted it only for a year, reserving the power of renewing or refusing it after the year would have elapsed. The House of Lords, who believed that this duty was necessary to the increasing necessities of the Crown, and who always viewed the encroachments of the Commons with jealousy, rejected the bill in this form, and the Parliament had been dissolved without further action on that question. The King continued to levy the tax, at first without any signs of discontent on the part of his subjects. But the discussion of the matter in the succeeding Parliament inflamed everyone against it. There was an effort made to have it declared illegal to levy tonnage and poundage without consent of Parliament. But that Parliament was likewise abruptly dissolved ere they had taken decisive action.

In the interval between the second and third Parliaments there had been so many violent applications of the King’s prerogative, that the matter of tonnage and poundage had been somewhat obscured by more important affairs. But in the first session of the third Parliament, the Commons, not content with the large concessions that had been granted to them in the Petition of Right, had proceeded to take up tonnage and poundage, showing a fixed intention of exacting, in return for the grant of this revenue, a still further relinquishment of the powers of the Crown. Their hasty prorogation was brought about by their intended remonstrance on that subject.

When the King opened the second session, he had foreseen that tonnage and poundage would be the first subject the Commons would consider, and the tone of his speech from the throne was very mild and patient. He assured them "that he had not taken these duties as appertaining to his hereditary prerogative, but that it ever was, and still is, his meaning to enjoy them as a gift of his people; and that if he had levied tonnage and poundage he pretended to justify himself only by the necessity of so doing, not by any right which he assumed." Some of the King’s friends then presented a bill granting the right to collect tonnage and poundage as it had been done in former reigns, and the King sent a message directing the Commons to speedily consider the measure. The House, not intending to pass the bill in that form, resented its introduction by one of the King’s creatures, and sullenly refused to take any action with it as put before them. That their express plan to grant tonnage and poundage at their own pleasure, and for limited periods, was strictly within the limits of the constitution, is undoubtedly true. By the King’s own expressions, which have just been quoted, and by the form of every bill which had granted this tax to the Crown, the levy was shown to be a free gift of Parliament, and, consequently, might be withheld at pleasure. The money was granted to maintain the Navy for the protection of the seacoast and of commerce. But had not Parliament the right to say to what extent they would maintain the Navy, even for those purposes?

But Charles, notwithstanding his declaration to the Commons, was not prepared to give his assent to these propositions. He was persuaded that a certain class in the House of Commons, which was swayed by visionary ideas of a limited Monarchal system, was determined to derogate from the Crown every prerogative that made it an object of sovereign power. His predecessors would not have yielded to such influences, neither would he yield to them. If they pressed him too hard, he secretly determined that he would himself seize every function of Government, and conduct an absolute monarchy.

The Commons persistently refused to vote on the bill for tonnage and poundage, in spite of the King’s frequent messages commanding them to do so; but they passed to a discussion of the state of religion, and presented His Majesty a remonstrance on that subject.

The English people, not satisfied to deal only with those problems of civil government which seemed to be tearing the nation asunder, were distressed by the agitation of religious disputes. Fatalism and free will were the opposing sentiments which occasioned the controversy. The early reformers, led by John Calvin, had based their teachings upon predestination and absolute decrees. These tenets met with opposition from James Arminius, a prominent divine of Leyden, Holland, whose followers, the Arminians, soon introduced the discussion into England. The King and the High Church party generally entertained the Arminian theories, and some of the Arminians themselves, under the indulgence of James and Charles, had been appointed to the highest preferments in the Church. Bishops Laud, Neile, Montague, and others high in ecclesiastical station, who were the chief supporters of the beautiful ceremonial system of the Episcopal Church, were stigmatized as Arminians. Some members of the House of Commons believed that in attacking Arminianism, which they considered an esoteric and mysterious system, they could lay against that denomination a suspicion of disguised popery, and their attacks were consequently a matter of great frequency. "To impartial spectators, surely," says the philosophic Hume, "if any such had been at that time in England, it must have given great entertainment to see a popular assembly, inflamed with faction and enthusiasm, pretend to discuss questions to which the greatest philosophers, in the tranquility of retreat, had never hitherto been able to find any satisfactory solution."

In the speeches that remain to us, we can witness the fervor that possessed those men. Francis Rouse spoke thus in warning tones:

"I desire that it may be considered how the see of Rome doth eat into our religion, and fret into the banks and walls of it, the laws and statutes of this realm, especially since those laws have been made in a measure by themselves, even by their own treasons and bloody designs. And since popery is a confused heap of errors, casting down Kings before popes, the precepts of God before the traditions of men, ... I desire that we may consider the increase of Arminianism, an error that makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of men, that makes the sheep to keep the shepherd, and makes a mortal seed of an immortal God. Yea, I desire that we may look into the very belly and bowels of this Trojan horse to see if there be not men in it ready to open the gates to Romish tyranny, and Spanish monarchy, for an Arminian is the spawn of a Papist."

And then John Pym, the leader of liberty, but, like the others, somewhat narrow on religious toleration, arose and spoke about a violation of the law "in bringing in of superstitious ceremonies amongst us, especially at Durham, by Mr. Cozens, as angels, crucifixes, saints, altars, candles on Candlemas Day, burnt in the church after the popish manner."

Sir John Eliot denied the infallibility of the bishops in these words:

"It is said, if there be any difference in opinion concerning the seasonable interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, the bishops and the clergy in the convocation have power to dispute it, and to order which way they please; and for aught I know popery and Arminianism may be introduced by them, and then it most be received by all. A slight thing that the power of religion should be left to the persons of these men! I honor their profession; there are among our bishops such as are fit to be made examples for all ages, who shine in virtue and are firm for our religion. But the contrary faction I like not. I remember a character I have seen in a diary of Edward VI, that young Prince of famous memory, where he doth express the condition of the bishops of that time under his own handwriting: ‘That some for sloth, some for age, some for ignorance, same for luxury, and some for popery, were unfit for discipline and government.’"

And what of Oliver Cromwell? Where is he all this time? Still dressed in homespuns, Oliver keeps his seat and listens, has kept his seat all through these two sessions, has witnessed the endeavors of these honest men to bring the King to constitutional government, has observed and thought, has wept and prayed. And now he rises to speak.

It was not much of a speech that young Oliver made. He never was a good speaker, and as yet he had not tried it at all. But he informed the Commons what countenance the Bishop of Winchester did give to some persons that preached flat popery, and mentioned the persons by name; and how by this bishop’s means, Mainwaring (who by censure the last Parliament was disabled from ever holding any ecclesiastical dignity in the Church, and confessed the justice of that censure) is nevertheless preferred to a rich living. "If these be the steps to Church preferment," cried Oliver, "what may we expect?"

Though he was employed in the work of important committees of the House, this is the only public performance we have from Oliver in that Parliament; but it is enough to show the bent of his mind, enough to show which side he will take if it come to choosing sides. That "flat Popery" was a thing that offended him to the soul then, and aroused him to anger many times in later years, until in the growth of his mind he came at last to look with tolerable patience even upon popery.

And all this time messages were coming from the King, and were evaded in various ways by the Commons, on the matter of tonnage and poundage. And as every day found the King and the Commons farther apart, there was little hope that any more public business would be done by this Parliament than vas done by the two former ones. Finally, when the King, in a rather more peremptory tone than he had yet used, demanded a settlement of the tonnage and poundage, the Commons fell to attacking his ministers. Sir John Eliot named the Lord Treasurer Weston "in whose person all evil is contracted. I find him acting and building on those grounds laid by his master the great Duke." A question of impeachment was moved, but the Speaker said that the King had commanded him not to put it to the House. The Commons, unable to transact business, adjourned until Wednesday, February 25^th. When they came together on that date, they were again adjourned by the King’s order until March 2^nd. On March 2^nd they met again and urged the Speaker to put the question, but he informed them that he had an order from his Majesty to adjourn until March 10^th, and put no question. He then attempted to leave the chair, when two members, Denzil Hollis and William Strode, foreseeing a dissolution, dragged him back, swearing "by God’s wounds, he should stay there as long as the House chose!" Sir Thomas Esmond and his friends strove to rescue the Speaker. Other members drew their swords, and amid tears, groans, imprecations, and shouts, Sir Michael Hobart locked the door. In the midst of this scene of violence a protestation was read in the House, which denounced as public enemies (1) anyone who should bring popery or Arminianism into the Church, (2) anyone who should counsel or advise the levying of tonnage or poundage without consent of Parliament, and (3) anyone who should pay the same if levied.

On March 10, 1629, the King dissolved the Parliament, and eleven years elapsed before another sat in England.

After the violent dissolution of the third Parliament, Oliver Cromwell returned to Huntingdon in much perturbation of mind. The mad pace at which the nation seemed going to destruction filled him with vague alarms. He had not won a large share of public attention. His sole part in the debates had consisted in that denunciation of "flat Popery" which Dr. Alablaster had preached at Paul’s Cross. His fame was of slow growth, and the fact that he was not proscribed with the five members twelve years later shows that he had not even then become a leader among the English patriots.

Shortly after his return to Huntingdon he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for that borough, Thomas Beard, D.D., his old schoolmaster, and Robert Barnard, Esquire, likewise securing commissions. In the new charter that was granted to Huntingdon, Cromwell saw that the Aldermen had received power to work injustice to the property owners in the borough, and he spoke his mind in a savage way to Robert Barnard, then Mayor. On complaint at London, Cromwell was summoned before the Council, where he acknowledged that his words had been spoken in the heat of passion, and the matter was dropped.

While residing at Huntingdon, he wrote this letter, the first from his pen that has been preserved, relating to his third son, Richard. The young father’s pride of heart is discernible:

"To my approved good friend, Mr. Henry Downhall, at his Chambers in St. John’s College, Cambridge: These.

"Huntingdon, 14^th October, 1626.

"Loving Sir:

"Make me so much your servant as to be Godfather unto my child. I would myself have come over to have made a formal invitation, but my occasions would not permit me, and therefore hold me in that excused. The day of your trouble is Thursday next. Let me entreat your company on Wednesday.

"By this time it appears, I am more apt to encroach upon you for new favours than to show my thankfulness for the love I have already found. But I know your patience and your goodness cannot be exhausted by your friend and servant,

"Oliver Cromwell."

But he grew tired of Huntingdon, and prevailed upon his wife and mother to join with him in the sale of certain lands there, out of which his present living was derived. This sale put him in possession of about £1,800, and with this money he bought livestock for a grazing farm which he had rented at St. Ives, five miles down the Ouse River, and moved there with his wife and a rapidly increasing family of children. His mother remained at Huntingdon, where her old associations were doubtless too tenderly cherished to be hastily severed.

His life at St. Ives was quiet, thoughtful, and at times moved with doubts, at others full of hope. Striving after godliness was his chiefest care. Prayer was an institution in his household, and the laborers on his farm were called from their work frequently to join the family in its devotions. In the morning they knelt with him in the worship of God until the sun was high in the heavens, and at even they came early from their toil to renew their supplications to the Throne of Grace. Under this strict application of piety the farm did not thrive, but Oliver’s soul grew rich in grace, and it was here that he penned that letter to Mr. Storie, which, as the only remaining epistolary relic of the St. Ives residence, is given here. It exposes a very lively interest in religion:

"To my very loving friend, Mr. Storie, at the sign of the Dog in the Royal Exchange, London: Deliver these.