their sittings. A guard of respectable | royal residence. The tyrant could no. citizens, duly relieved twice a day, was bear to see the triumph of those whom posted at their doors. The sheriffs he had destined to the gallows and the were charged to watch over the safety quartering-block. On the day preof the accused members, and to escort them to and from the committee with every mark of honour.

ceding that which was fixed for their return, he fled, with a few attendants, from that palace which he was never to see again till he was led through it to the scaffold.

On the eleventh of January, the Thames was covered with boats, and

A violent and sudden revulsion of feeling, both in the House and out of it, was the effect of the late proceedings of the King. The Opposition regained in a few hours all the ascend-its shores with the gazing multitude. ancy which it had lost. The constitu- Armed vessels decorated with streamtional royalists were filled with shame ers, were ranged in two lines from and sorrow. They saw that they had London Bridge to Westminster Hail. been cruelly deceived by Charles. They The members returned upon the river saw that they were, unjustly, but not in a ship manned by sailors who had unreasonably, suspected by the nation. volunteered their services. The trainClarendon distinctly says that they perfectly detested the counsels by which the King had been guided, and were so much displeased and dejected at the unfair manner in which he had treated them that they were inclined to retire from his service. During the debates on the breach of privilege, they preserved a melancholy silence. To this day, the advocate of Charles take care to say as little as they can about his visit to the House of Commons, and, when they cannot avoid mention of it, attribute to infatuation an act which, on any other supposition, they must admit to have been a frightful crime.

bands of the city, under the command of the sheriffs, marched along the Strand, attended by a vast crowd of spectators, to guard the avenues to the House of Commons; and thus, with shouts and loud discharges of ordnance, the accused patriots were brought back by the people whom they had served and for whom they had suffered. The restored members, as soon as they had entered the House, expressed, in the warmest terms, their gratitude to the citizens of London. The sheriffs were warmly thanked by the Speaker in the name of the Commons; and orders were given that a guard selected from the trainbands of the city, should attend daily to watch over the safety of the Parliament.

The Commons, in a few days, openly defied the King, and ordered the accused members to attend in their places at Westminster and to resume their The excitement had not been conparliamentary duties. The citizens fined to London. When intelligence resolved to bring back the champions of the danger to which Hampden was of liberty in triumph before the win-exposed reached Buckinghamshire, it dows of Whitehall. Vast preparations excited the alarm and indignation of were made both by land and water for the people. Four thousand freeholders this great festival. of that county, each of them wearing The King had remained in his palace, in his hat a copy of the protestation in humbled, dismayed, and bewildered, favour of the privileges of Parliament, "feeling," says Clarendon, "the trouble rode up to London to defend the perand agony which usually attend gene-son of their beloved representative. rous and magnanimous minds upon They came in a body to assure Partheir having committed errors;" feel-liament of their full resolution to deing, we should say, the despicable re- fend its privileges. Their petition pentance which attends the man who, having attempted to commit a crime, finds that he has only committed a folly. The populace hooted and shouted all day before the gates of the

was couched in the strongest terms. "In respect," said they, "of that latter attempt upon the honourable House of Commons, we are now come to offer our service to that end, and resolved.

in their just defence, to live and die."

A great struggle was clearly at hand. Hampden had returned to Westminster much changed. His influence had hitherto been exerted rather to restrain than to animate the zeal of his party. But the treachery, the contempt of law, the thirst for blood, which the King had now shown, left no hope of a peaceable adjustment. It was clear that Charles must be either a puppet or a tyrant, that no obligation of law or of honour could bind him, and that the only way to make him harmless was to make him powerless.

The attack which the King had made on the five members was not merely irregular in manner. Even if the charges had been preferred legally, if the Grand Jury of Middlesex had found a true bill, if the accused persons had been arrested under a proper warrant and at a proper time and place, there would still have been in the proceeding enough of perfidy and injustice to vindicate the strongest measures which the Opposition could take. To impeach Pym and Hampden was to impeach the House of Commons. It was notoriously on account of what they had done as members of that House that they were selected as objects of vengeance; and in what they had done as members of that House the majority had concurred. Most of the charges brought against them were common between them and the Parliament. They were accused, indeed, and it may be with reason, of encouraging the Scotch army to invade England. In doing this, they had committed what was, in strictness of law, a high offence, the same offence which Devonshire and Shrewsbury committed in 1688. But the King had promised pardon and oblivion to those who had been the principals in the Scotch insurrection. Did it then consist with his honour to punish the accessaries? He had bestowed marks of his favour on the leading Covenanters. He had given the great seal of Scotland to one chief of the rebels, a marquisate to another, an earldom to Leslie, who had brought the Pres

byterian army across the Tweed. On what principle was Hampden to be attainted for advising what Leslie was ennobled for doing? In a court of law, of course, no Englishman could plead an amnesty granted to the Scots. But, though not an illegal, it was surely an inconsistent and a most unkingly course, after pardoning and promoting the heads of the rebellion in one kingdom, to hang, draw, and quarter their accomplices in another.

The proceedings of the King against the five members, or rather against that Parliament which had concurred in almost all the acts of the five members, was the cause of the civil war. It was plain that either Charles or the House of Commons must be stripped of all real power in the state. The best course which the Commons could have taken would perhaps have been to depose the King, as their ancestors had deposed Edward the Second and Richard the Second, and as their children afterwards deposed James. Had they done this, had they placed on the throne a prince whose character and whose situation would have been a pledge for his good conduct, they might safely have left to that prince all the old constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, the command of the armies of the state, the power of making peers, the power of appointing ministers, a veto on bills passed by the two Houses. Such a prince, reigning by their choice, would have been under the necessity of acting in conformity with their wishes. But the public mind was not ripe for such a measure. There was no Duke of Lancaster, no Prince of Orange, no great and eminent person, near in blood to the throne, yet attached to the cause of the people. Charles was then to remain King; and it was therefore necessary that he should be king only in name. A William the Third, or a George the First, whose title to the crown was identical with the title of the people to their liberty, might safely be trusted with extensive powers. But new freedom could not exist in safety under the old tyrant. Since he was not to be deprived of the name of

this army might become, what it is the nature of armies to become, what so many armies formed under much more favourable circumstances have become, what the army of the Roman republic became, what the army of the French republic became, an instrument of despotism? Was it not probable that the soldiers might forget that they were also citizens, and might be ready to serve their general against their country? Was it not certain that, on the very first day on which Charles could ven

punish his opponents, he would establish an arbitrary government, and exact a bloody revenge?

king, the only course which was left of the realm have been, under these was to make him a mere trustee, no- circumstances, safely confided to the minally seised of prerogatives of which King? Would it not have been frenzy others had the use, a Grand Lama, a in the Parliament to raise and pay an Roi Fainéant, a phantom resembling army of fifteen or twenty thousand those Dagoberts and Childeberts who men for the Irish war, and to give to wore the badges of royalty, while Charles the absolute control of this Ebroin and Charles Martel held the army, and the power of selecting, proreal sovereignty of the state. moting, and dismissing officers at his The conditions which the Parlia-pleasure? Was it not probable that ment propounded were hard, but, we are sure, not harder than those which even the Tories, in the Convention of 1689, would have imposed on James, if it had been resolved that James should continue to be king. The chief condition was that the command of the militia and the conduct of the war in Ireland should be left to the Parliament. On this point was that great issue joined, whereof the two parties put themselves on God and on the sword. We think, not only that the Com-ture to revoke his concessions, and to mons were justified in demanding for themselves the power to dispose of the military force, but that it would have been absolute insanity in them to leave Our own times furnish a parallel that force at the disposal of the King. case. Suppose that a revolution should From the very beginning of his reign, take place in Spain, that the Constiit had evidently been his object to go-tution of Cadiz should be reestablished, vern by an army. His third Parlia- that the Cortes should meet again, ment had complained, in the Petition that the Spanish Prynnes and Burtons, of Right, of his fondness for martial who are now wandering in rags round law, and of the vexatious manner in Leicester Square, should be restored to which he billeted his soldiers on the their country. Ferdinand the Seventh people. The wish nearest the heart would, in that case, of course repeat of Strafford was, as his letters prove, all the oaths and promises which he that the revenue might be brought made in 1820, and broke in 1823. into such a state as would enable the But would it not be madness in the King to keep a standing military esta-Cortes, even if they were to leave him blishment. In 1640, Charles had sup- the name of King, to leave him more ported an army in the northern coun- than the name? Would not all Europe ties by lawless exactions. In 1641 he scoff at them, if they were to permit had engaged in an intrigue, the object him to assemble a large army for an of which was to bring that army to expedition to America, to model that London for the purpose of overawing army at his pleasure, to put it under the Parliament. His late conduct had the command of officers chosen by proved that, if he were suffered to re- himself? Should we not say that every tain even a small body-guard of his member of the Constitutional party own creatures near his person, the who might concur in such a measure Commons would be in danger of out- would most richly deserve the fate rage, perhaps of massacre. The Houses which he would probably meet, the were still deliberating under the pro- fate of Riego and of the Empecinado? tection of the militia of London. Could We are not disposed to pay complithe command of the whole armed forcements to Ferdinand; nor do we con

ceive that we pay him any compliment, | and by their standard, which bore on when we say that, of all sovereigns in one side the watchword of the Parliahistory, he seems to us most to re- ment, "God with us," and on the other semble, in some very important points, King Charles the First. Like Charles, he is pious after a certain fashion; like Charles, he has made large concessions to his people after a certain fashion. It is well for him that he has had to deal with men who bore very little resemblance to the English Puritans.

the device of Hampden, "Vestigia nulla retrorsum." This motto well described the line of conduct which he pursued. No member of his party had been so temperate, while there remained a hope that legal and peaceable measures might save the country. No member of his party showed so much energy and vigour when it became necessary to appeal to arms. He made himself thoroughly master of his military duty, and "performed it," to use the words of Clarendon, "upon all occasions most punctually." The regiment which he had raised and trained was considered as one of the best in the service of the Parliament. He exposed his person in every action, with an intrepidity which made him conspicuous even among thousands of brave men.

The Commons would have the power of the sword; the King would not part with it; and nothing remained but to try the chances of war. Charles still had a strong party in the country. His august office, his dignified manners, his solemn protestations that he would for the time to come respect the liberties of his subjects, pity for fallen greatness, fear of violent innovation, secured to him many adherents. He had with him the Church, the Univer-"He was," says Clarendon, "of a persities, a majority of the nobles and of the old landed gentry. The austerity of the Puritan manners drove most of the gay and dissolute youth of that age to the royal standard. Many good, brave, and moderate men, who disliked his former conduct, and who entertained doubts touching his present sincerity, espoused his cause unwillingly and with many painful misgivings, because, though they dreaded his tyranny much, they dreaded democratic violence more.

On the other side was the great body of the middle orders of England, the merchants, the shopkeepers, the yeomanry, headed by a very large and formidable minority of the peerage and of the landed gentry. The Earl of Essex, a man of respectable abilities and of some military experience, was appointed to the command of the parliamentary army.

Hampden spared neither his fortune nor his person in the cause. He subscribed two thousand pounds to the public service. He took a colonel's commission in the army, and went into Buckinghamshire to raise a regiment of infantry. His neighbours eagerly enlisted under his command. His men were known by their green uniform,

sonal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been made a friend, and as much to be apprehended where he was so, as any man could deserve to be." Though his military career was short, and his military situation subordinate, he fully proved that he possessed the talents of a great general, as well as those of a great statesman.

We shall not attempt to give a history of the war. Lord Nugent's account of the military operations is very animated and striking. Our abstract would be dull, and probably unintelligible. There was, in fact, for some time no great and connected system of operations on either side. The war of the two parties was like the war of Arimanes and Oromasdes, neither of whom, according to the Eastern theologians, has any exclusive domain, who are equally omnipresent, who equally pervade all space, who carry on their eternal strife within every particle of matter. There was a petty war in almost every county. A town furnished troops to the Parliament while the manor-house of the neighbouring peer was garrisoned for the King. The combatants were rarely disposed to

march far from their own homes. It perpetually passing and repassing bewas reserved for Fairfax and Cromwell tween the military station at Windsor to terminate this desultory warfare, by and the House of Commons at Westmoving one overwhelming force suc-minster, as overawing the general, and cessively against all the scattered frag- as giving law to that Parliament which ments of the royal party. knew no other law. It was at this time that he organised that celebrated association of counties to which his party was principally indebted for its victory over the King.