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the service could not go on at all. "All Edinburgh, all Scotland, and behind that all England and Ireland," says Carlyle, "rose into unappeasable commotion on the flight of this stool of Jenny's."

29. The king tried to put down the rebellion, but he could not succeed. He had not soldiers enough, and he had not money enough. He and Strafford could see no alternative before them but, after the eleven years they had had their own way, to call a parliament again; they dared not make any more attempts to raise taxes illegally, lest England should flame up as Scotland

had done.

30. But when parliament met, and showed ever so mildly a desire to have their grievances, all the bitter grievances of those eleven years, looked into, the king, who could never learn wisdom, or see that he was walking over a mine of gunpowder, sent them about their business. He tried once more to govern at his pleasure, and even more tyrannically still. Ship-money was levied with increased rigour; soldiers were enlisted by force. But these soldiers did him no good; they were more inclined to side with the nation, and did not wish to fight the Scotch. Everything went so ill with him that he was obliged to summon another parliament-his last. This was the famous "Long Parliament."

1640.

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1640. Meeting of the Long Parliament.

1. WHEN the parliament first met all the members seem to have been of one mind. The government had been so flagrantly oppressive and tyrannical that no one attempted to defend it. They all set vigorously to work to restore freedom. The king could make no head against them at all. Those odious courts, the High Commission, the Star Chamber, the Council of York, were abolished at once; ship-money was declared illegal, and it was decreed that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse between parliament and parliament. Next they resolved to punish the tyrants. Not that they yet thought of punishing the king; no one dreamt of that; but they were determined to get rid of those who had helped and advised him, especially of Strafford and Laud.

Straf

The end of

Strafford and Laud.

2. Both these were imprisoned, and both, Strafford very soon, Laud after a few years, were beheaded. It only shows how the men on each side of these great conflicts persuaded themselves that they were right, that they were fighting for God, religion, and honour, to see the noble way in which they would go to their deaths. ford and Laud died, the one like a hero, the other like a saint; speaking with their latest breath of their devotion to their religion, loyalty to their king, and affection to the peace and welfare of the kingdom; though it seems so plain to us now how much they had done to injure them all.

3. Things had, however, come to so bad a pass now that it was not the death of those two men which could set them right. A great rebellion broke out in Ireland. Strafford

had ruled them with a rod of iron, but he had only crushed the people outwardly, and when he was gone their smothered rage broke out. The Irish

1641. Rebellion

in Ireland.

indeed had been oppressed by the English for a very long time. They had hardly been looked on as fellow creatures, still less as fellow Christians. In earlier times it had even been said that it was no more sin to kill an Irishman than to kill a dog. It could not be wondered at that they hated their oppressors. In punishment for some rebellion, a great number of English and Scotch Protestants had been settled in Ulster, turning out the old possessors of the land and their chiefs. The natives, who were devoted Catholics, now rose upon these foreign interlopers, and a terrible massacre took place.

4. It was agreed on all hands that the Irish revolt must be put down, but great differences of opinion arose in the parliament as to how much power ought to be confided to the king for suppressing it. His whole previous career had given rise to the gravest distrust. Charles had shown himself arbitrary and faithless; he was also believed to be inclined to favour the Roman Catholic religion, under the influence of his wife, who was still more unpopular than he was. It was even rumoured, though without the slightest foundation, that he had stirred up the Irish Catholics to murder the Protestants. All this made Charles deeply indignant.

5. After the death of Strafford he had made advances towards conciliation, by taking as his chief ministers some of the more moderate of the members of parliament, Falkland, The new Hyde, and Colepepper; men who were loyal and ministers. conservative, but who still loved liberty and justice, and hated lawless tyranny. The king promised he would do nothing without their advice, and would tell them all he wished or thought of doing. Could he but have kept his word! but that was just the one thing he never could do.

The king's

conscience.

6. That Charles was a good man, in a sense, no one can wish to deny, but he had no feeling of truth or honour in him in his dealings with his subjects. He had probably been bred up in the notion so common among royal personages of that period, that though it was wrong to tell lies to gentlemen, princes, and kings, it was no sin to deceive the people under him. The Archbishop of York had told him, in so many words, that there was a private conscience and a public conscience, and that his public conscience, as a king, might not only dispense with, but oblige him to do, that which was against his private conscience as a man. And it seems that if a man has two consciences, one of which is liable to go exactly contrary to the other, it is much the same as having none at all.

7. This doctrine, outrageous and immoral as it sounds, had, nevertheless, a certain truth in it. A constitutional sovereign, one who has to govern according to the sense of parliament and the nation, cannot and must not act always according to his own judgment. For he sometimes wishes and thinks right, things which the parliament and the majority of the nation think wrong. Our kings and queens may often have to consent to things which perhaps their private minds do not approve, but this does no violence to their conscience, because everybody knows that such affairs are settled by the ministers, or, as we call them, the Cabinet, and the Cabinet is always appointed in agreement with the majority of the House of Commons. It was the great misfortune of the Stuarts that no such plan had been thought of in their days, and as they were too blind, or too careless, or too obstinate to see and conform to the will of the nation, it led to all the disasters which ruined them at last.

1642. The five members.

8. In an evil hour one of Charles's consciences caused him to break the promise he had made to his ministers, and without their knowledge or consent to take a step which was, perhaps, the most important and the most ruinous in his whole life. He determined to charge five of the principal members of the House of Commons, Hampden, Pym, and three others, with high treason, and to arrest them within the very walls of the parliament. These five were the leaders of the popular party, and it was quite true that they opposed the tyranny of the king. But whatever they did, they did by fair and legal means, and it is evident that if the members might not say and discuss openly what they thought in parliament, the House of Commons would be of no use at all, either as advising and checking the king, or as representing the thoughts and the will of the nation.

9. This was the most flagrant act of tyranny Charles had yet committed. He went to the House himself, followed by armed soldiers, to seize on the five members by force. But the five members, who had had a hint of what was coming, were not there. They had taken refuge in the city of London, the Londoners being all in favour of liberty, and resolved to defend it; even "the rude people flocked together crying out, 'Privilege of parliament! privilege of parliament!'" The citizens protected the five members, and appointed a guard to watch over them. Everybody was filled with indignation, even the king's friends, and especially those three ministers were, as Hyde, afterwards known as Lord Clarendon, tells us himself, "so much displeased and dejected,

that they were inclined never more to take upon them the care of anything to be transacted in that House, for fear of being looked on as the authors of those counsels which they perfectly detested."

The

10. In a very few days the five members were brought back in triumph. "The Thames was covered with boats, and its shores with the gazing multitude. Armed vessels, decorated with streamers, were ranged in two lines from London Bridge to Westminster Hall. The members returned upon the river in a ship manned by sailors who had volunteered their services. train-bands of the city, under the command of the sheriffs, marched along the Strand, attended by a vast crowd of spectators," clamouring for the privilege of parliament. So the five members took their places again, the House of Commons having declared that any one who attempted to arrest them was a public enemy to the common wealth.

11. The king, who was bitterly mortified and ashamed, and who was perpetually hooted and shouted at by the rabble, could not bear to stay and see the triumph of the parliament, which was his own defeat. He left Whitehall and London, and never came back to them till he came back to die.

The king leaves London.

1642. Commencement of the

This violence of the king we may look on as the beginning of the great civil war. He and the parliament had negotiations for some few months longer, but they could never be friends again. Both parties began to muster up their supporters and to raise armies. In August King Charles set up his standard at Nottingham, and the war was begun. The parliament chose the Earl of Essex as their general, and the first battle in the great struggle was fought in October, at Edgehill. It was a sort of drawn battle, in which neither side conquered; but for some time afterwards things went best with the Royalist party.

civil war.

12. The two armies were very unlike one another, and the king's was by far the best, though he had no great general to command it. One of his principal officers was his nephew, Prince Rupert, who was wonderfully bold and dashing as a soldier, though he had not the qualities of a commander. The greater part of the nobility and gentry were on the side of the king, and hastened to rally around him in his need. Though they were not trained soldiers, they were high-spirited and brave, accustomed to riding, shooting, hunting, and fencing; whilst the parliament had only been able to enlist the lower sort of hire

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