government; and in spite of the manifest differences between the population of India and of Barbary, policy and civil government, founded on the great principles of human nature and civilized society, are the only basis of lasting dominion.

ART. III.-1. A Journal of the Parliament begun November 3d, Tuesday, anno Domini 1640, anno 16mo Caroli Regis. By Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Bart. Harleian MSS. 162 to 166. Brit. Mus.

2. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Bart. Edited by J. O. HALLIWELL, Esq. Two vols. London: 1845.

8vo.

WE E think that it might help to forward useful purposes, if we should succeed in fixing the attention of our readers, for a short time, upon that memorable company of English gentlemen, which assembled at Westminster on Tuesday the 3d of November, 1640. History has assigned to them collectively the name of the Long Parliament;' and prejudice and ignorance have given to the majority of them, as individuals, other appellations less just and less agreeable but time will relax even the adhesiveness of slander, and to its gentle influence we will leave them, whilst we endeavour to recall a few of the scenes and incidents in which they were engaged. An authority, too long overlooked, enables us to do so, with more particularity than any of those who have hitherto written upon the subject.

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The Long Parliament proceeded to business on the 7th of November, 1640. Within a very few days afterwards, troops of horsemen, bearing petitions for redress of grievances, flocked into London, even from far distant counties ;* and grave, sober men descanted with solemn earnestness upon many enormities in Church and State. Some poured out their lamentations over the attempts made in high places to evaporate and dispirit the 'power of religion, by drawing it out into solemn, specious 'formalities; into obsolete antiquated ceremonies new furbished up: others were indignant that all of the religion' were branded under the name of Puritans, so that whosoever squares 'his actions by any rule, either divine or human, he is a Puri'tan; whosoever would be governed by the King's laws, he is a 'Puritan; he that will not do whatsoever other men would have him do, he is a Puritan.'t Others, again, affected by more worldly considerations, exclaimed against the great and intoNalson, i. 452.

*Whitelocke's Memorials, 38.

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'lerable burden of ship-money,'* the imposition of which, at the mere pleasure of the crown, made the farmers faint, and the ' plough to go heavy;' against coat and conduct money; against the compulsory demand for arms,-people being threatened, if 'you will not send your arms, you shall go yourselves;' and against the giant, the monster grievance of at least seven hundred Monopolies. These,' it was said, like the frogs of Egypt, have gotten possession of our dwellings, and leave scarce a room free from them. They sup in our cup, they dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dyevat, wash-bowl, and powdering-tub; they share with the butler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head 'to foot. They will not bate us a pin. We may not buy our own clothes without their brokage.' The House was appealed to for justice against the great oppressions practised in Ireland; against the cruelties of the Star- Chamber; the open breaches of the privileges of Parliament, the illegal canons, the Etcetera Oath; the subserviency of the Judges who had overthrown the Law; the harshness of the Bishops who had forgotten the Gospel. Every member, as he rose, added his quota of complaint to the general mass; and as the sum-total of grievances gradually increased, the speakers glanced to the Achitophels' and Hamans' out of whose misdoings the mighty accumulation of wrongs had arisen.

The first blow was struck at the greatest of them all. Strafford was suddenly impeached and committed to the Tower; and this was done, and many Committees which were appointed to consider the grievances brought to notice, were all actively at work, in less than a week,-a proof of predetermination and preparedness altogether unparalleled in the history of popular movements.

A Fast-Day, with a general reception of the Lord's Supper in Westminster Abbey, followed; and thus we are brought on to Thursday the 19th of November. If we could look down upon the House as it appeared between eight and nine o'clock in the morning of that Thursday, we should see a considerable number of diligent members already congregated.

Prayers have been said. Speaker Lenthall, a Barrister of small practice, returned for Gloucester, and very unexpectedly thrown into the position of the First Gentleman of England, is seated in a comfortable cushioned receptacle, surmounted by the Royal Arms. The House is sitting in St Stephen's

Chapel, a long narrow chamber of the fourteenth century, with a western entrance, and a large eastern window; in advance of the middle of which, at the distance of some few feet, stands the Speaker's Chair. The members are seated on rows of benches placed parallel to the walls of the Chapel, and rising, as in an amphitheatre, from an open space in the centre of the floor. We pass into the House by an avenue between rows of benches, and under a Members' Gallery, the ascent to which is by a ladder' placed at the southern, or right hand corner of the House as we enter. Under the gallery sits the 'learned' Selden, one of the representatives for the University of Oxford, and Maynard- honest Jack Maynard'a lawyer who had suddenly risen into eminence, under the auspices of Noy, the framer of the writ for ship-money. Maynard was now stepping into a good deal of the practice of his deceased patron; but it was not until politics had aided his professional advancement, that his gains, upon one circuit, amounted to the then unparalleled, and, in the estimation of a rival practitioner, almost incredible sum of £700. Maynard sat for Totness. As we advance beyond the gallery, we pass, on our right hand, the usual seat of Pym, one of the members for Tavistock, and the recognised leader of the popular party. On the floor of the House, at some little distance in front of the Speaker's Chair, stands the Clerk's Table, at which are seated, facing the entrance, Henry Elsyng, whose name shortly afterwards flew all over the three kingdoms, as the authenticator of parliamentary mandates, and who is ridiculed in Hudibras as Cler. Parl. Dom. Com.; and, on his left hand, John Rushworth, the compiler of the Historical Collections,' who had been recently admitted Clerk- Assistant. At the upper end of the front bench, on the Speaker's right, sits the elder Vane, treasurer of the King's household; and on the same side of the House, Sir Edward Herbert the Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Jermyn, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Sir John Evelyn, Sir Harry Mildmay, Strode, St John,-soon to succeed Herbert as Solicitor-General,-and Alderman Pennington. On the opposite benches were Henry Martin, Waller the Poet, Miles Corbet, and Sir Thomas Bowyer; Sir Arthur Hazlerig and Holborn usually sat in the gallery. These are all the Members whose accustomed places we have been able to ascertain; but the subsequent proceedings on that very morning, prove, that there were then assembled Hampden, Digby, Hyde, Falkland, Culpepper, Bagshaw, Deering, Grimston, Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes, Sir John Hotham, and several others of celebrated name.

And now, a grave and somewhat stately gentleman, having

taken the oaths in an adjoining apartment, before Sir Gilbert Gerrard, the Lord Steward's Deputy, is ushered into the House, He is introduced to the Speaker by Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston, one of the members for Suffolk, and a distinguished leader amongst the Puritans. The new member is just thirty-eight years of age,—a man of formal precise demeanour ; quite self-possessed and self-satisfied. He takes his seat on the front bench, on the left hand of the Speaker, just opposite the end of the Clerk's table, with an evident determination to enter into the business before the House. He gives a nod of recognition to old Cage, Bailiff of Ipswich, and one of the members for that borough, who is sitting just behind him; and also to Squire Bence,' a merchant of that county who was returned for Aldborough; and then, drawing out pen, ink, and paper, commences Note-taking. This action reveals that he is near-sighted, and apparently has lost the sight of one eye.

The business before the House related to a contested return for Great Marlow. Maynard was reporting from a Committee, that the question turned upon the right to vote of certain Almsmen. The House was divided in opinion whether they should have voices or no. Up starts the new member, dilates, after the frequent style of maiden speeches, upon the birth-right of the subjects of England, and moves that the poor should have a ' voice.' At a subsequent period of the same day, St John moved for a Committee, to examine certain records appropriate to the case of the Earl of Strafford. Nothing could be more fortunate for the maiden member. Records were his peculiar study and delight. He hastened to confide his attachment to Mr Speaker,quoted 46 Edw. III. Rot. 2. No. 43, as a precedent in St John's favour, and was rewarded by the House, which was then, as it is now, always ready to derive amusement from the gratification of any strange taste of an honourable member, by being put upon St John's Record Committee.

A more promising commencement of a parliamentary career has seldom been known; and whilst the honourable member plied his task of Note-taking, no doubt the questions ran round the House, Who is he? What is he member for ?' To many of our readers the answer will convey but little information. It is 'Sir Simonds D'Ewes, member for Sudbury. In vain stands he chronicled in the Biographia Britannica, and other similar Collections, the compilers of which have from time to time been guilty of

The fond attempt to give a deathless lot

To names ignoble, born to be forgot.'

His name arouses no echo in the hearts of those who read it;

it is not a name to conjure with; and therefore all attempts to preserve it from the inevitable doom have necessarily failed. And yet he was a man of some consideration in his own day; and it is essential to our present purpose that we should convey to our readers some impression of his character.

In order to do so we must go back to about the year 1575, when Richard Simonds and Paul D'Ewes were Chamber-fellows in the Middle Temple. Simonds, who was much the elder of the two, was a jovial merry man, of little eminence as a lawyer, but with sufficient practice to produce a competent, if not a considerable income. He married respectably, purchased an estate at Coxden in the parish of Chardstock, in Dorsetshire, spent his vacations there, (for in those days lawyers slept between term and term,) maintained a liberal hospitality, kept a cellar well stocked with cider, strong beer, and several wines;' and had moreover one only child, a daughter, whom he loved, as Polonius says, 'passing well.' Paul D'Ewes was a man of a very different character. He also was bred to the Bar, but his talent lay in the discovery of profitable investments for the patrimony which he inherited from his citizen-father. In his hands money made money; and it was his delight to watch it, and to encourage it, whilst in the act of accumulation. Preferring the safe to the pursuit of the brilliant, he abandoned the chances of legal practice, and sunk his fortune in the purchase of the office of one of the six Clerks in the Court of Chancery, worth at that time, about £1700 per annum. Being thus established for life, he married the only daughter of his old Chamber-fellow, Richard Simonds, then of the age of fourteen; he himself being probably nearly three times that age. Simonds D'Ewes was the eldest son of that marriage, and was born at Chardstock on the 18th December 1602. Until his eighth year, he was brought up by his grand-parents, and was the spoiled child of an affectionate grandmother, and the pet and pride of his jovial grandfather. In 1611 both those worthy people died; and Master Simonds was transferred to the care of his money-loving father, and of an amiable pious mother, who was a convert and a disciple of the celebrated Gifford of Malden. D'Ewes saw but little of her, for she died in 1618, before his education was completed; but that little sufficed to fix in his mind the seeds of her deep religious feelings. Affection for her memory became the medium by which his heart was opened, to receive the deep things of Puritanical divinity.

His father destined him for the profession which himself had deserted, and, by a great abuse, he was entered of the Middle Temple when in his ninth year; so that nine years afterwards,