best therein, but most humbly besought his majesty to think of summoning parliament. Strafford, who received their answer, proposed that, in reporting it to his master, he should leave out the words of advice about a parliament, as he knew it was the king's full purpose to call one; but the Yorkshire gentlemen's hearts and the voice of the whole kingdom being fervent for a parliament, they would not consent that those words should be left out, and therefore they delivered their answer themselves; and Charles thought it prudent to seem to take it in good part.* He now, indeed, saw that a parliament was inevitable; and before the meeting of the peers, who had been really summoned to York as a great council, he issued writs for the assembling of parliament on the following 3rd of November. Meanwhile, upon the appointed day -the 24th of September-the great council of peers assembled in the dean's house near the Minster at York. There Charles told them that he had called them together, after the custom of his predecessors, to ask their advice and assistance upon sudden invasions and dangers which had not allowed time for the calling of a parliament; that an army of rebels were lodged within the kingdom; that he wanted their advice and assistance, in order to proceed to the chastisement of these insolences. "I must let you know," continued the king, "that I desire nothing more than to be rightly understood of my people; and to that end I have, of myself resolved to call a parliament. And if my

subjects bring those affections which become them towards me, it shall not fail on my part to be a happy meeting." He then asked what answer he should give to the petition of the rebels, and in what manner he should treat them, and how he should keep his own army on foot and maintain it until supplies might be had from a parliament. (If Charles could have dealt with the Scots in his own way,-if he could have maintained his army, and been sure of its loyalty,-if he could have obtained the Irish troops, he would have contented himself with his council of peers, and we should have heard no more of his promises of calling a parliament.) The Earl of Bristol proposed to continue and conclude the treaty with the Scots. He and other lords were confident that they could make peace upon honourable terms. Bristol said, indeed, that if his majesty were in case, it were best to bring the Scots on their knees; but, as matters stood, considering their strength, and that they had taken Newcastle and two whole provinces, it would be better to speak of the business as to men that had gotten these advantages. While they were speaking a packet was brought from the Covenanters to Lord Lanark, with a new petition to his Majesty," supplicating in a more mannerly style than formerly." Besides Lanark, the Scottish earls of Traquair and Morton were both present; and Traquair was commanded to make the same relation to the peers which he had formerly made to the king and privy council, and which

Rushworth.

was the ground of the advice of the lords of the council, to reduce the rebels by force rather than to yield to their demands. On the following day (the 25th of September), the Lords, delighted with his majesty's assurance of calling a parliament, entered into debate with great cheerfulness and alacrity. Northallerton had been agreed upon for a place of meeting between the English and Scotch commissioners, but now it was declared that Ripon would be a better place; and the English peers unanimously resolved to hold the negotiations at Ripon. Sixteen of the English peers were to act for Charles; eight Scottish lords and gentlemen for the covenant.

Charles, having settled about the commissioners, desired the Lords to proceed to the great business of the day, which was the second proposition, or how the army should be supplied with money; and, after a little time spent in debate, it was unanimously resolved that 200,000l. should be borrowed from the city of London, upon the joint security of the privy council and the peers. To get rid of the Scottish claims for supplies of money, Charles consented that they might make levies themselves in the counties beyond the Tees. He attempted to transfer the conferences from Ripon to the city of York; but the Scots, who were very cautious,-who, in the midst of all their civility, had shown that they had not the slightest confidence in his royal word,-objected to putting themselves so completely in his power. Here, also, their jealousy and hatred of Strafford blazed forth. "We cannot conceal," they said, "what danger may be apprehended in our going to York and surrendering ourselves, and others who may be joined with us, into the hands of an army commanded by the lieutenant of Ireland, against whom, as a chief incendiary (according to our demands, which are the subject of the treaty itself), we intend to insist, as is expressed in our remonstrance and declaration; who hath in the parliament of Ireland proceeded against us as traitors and rebels (the best titles his lordship in his common talk doth honour us with), whose commission is to subdue and destroy us, and who by all means and upon all occasions desireth the breaking up of the treaty of peace; the army being commanded also by divers papists, who conceive our pacification to be their ruin and dissolution; and, when there, by divers godless persons doing the worst office about his majesty, and waiting the occasion of expressing their malice and revenge against us and their own nation." If the loose and inac

They were Bedford, Hertford, Essex, Salisbury, Warwick. Bris tol, Holland, Berkshire, Mandevill, Wharton, Pagett, Brooke, Paulet, Howard, Saville, and Dunsmore; and they were to be assisted in arranging the treaty by the earls of Traquair, Morton, and Lanark, Secretary Vane, Sir Lewis Stuart, and Sir John Burrough, who were men either versed in the laws of Scotland, or who had been formerly acquainted with this business. The Scottish commissioners were the lords Dunfermline and Loudon, Sir Patrick Hepburn, Sir William Douglas, Alexander Henderson the celebrated preacher, Johnson the clerk of the general assembly, Wedderburne, and Smith.

+ Rushworth. The Scottish commissioners were not satisfied with a safe-conduct under Charles's sign manual, aud demanded that it should be signed by certain of the peers assembled in the great council, which was done before they would move from their safe quarters with Leslie and the army.

curate minutes of the proceedings of the great council of peers at York may be trusted, Strafford did not advise his master at this juncture to break off all negotiation and trust to force of arms;-he was too keen-sighted a person not to perceive the great and growing disaffection of the English army; but another peer certainly gave something very like this resolute advice. Edward Lord Herbert, commonly called the Black Lord Herbert, irritated at the Scots' demand of 40,000l. per month, advised the king to fortify York, and dissuaded his majesty from yielding to that demand, giving his reasons for both proceedings. Regarding the first he said, "First, that, Newcastle being taken, it is necessary to fortify York, there being no other considerable place betwixt the Scots and London, which might detain their army from advancing forwards. Secondly, that reason of state having admitted fortification of our most inland towns against weapons used in former times, it may as well admit fortifications against the weapons used in these times. Thirdly, that towns have been observed always averse to wars and tumults, as

VOL. III.

subsisting by the peaceable ways of trade and traffick, insomuch that when either great persons for their private interest, or the commons for their grievances, have taken arms, townsmen have been noted ever to continue in their accustomed loyalty and devotion." Black Herbert knew the value of pacifications and agreements of this kind. "Treaties," said he, "are like thin, airy things, that have no real being in themselves, but in the imaginations of those who project them; they may quickly dissolve and come to nothing; and to give so great a sum of money for the treating only of a peace might be loss of the money, time, and many advantages." He said he had never read that ever prince bought a treaty of his subjects at so dear a rate; that it would reflect upon the honour of his majesty abroad, when foreign nations should learn that he could not find means of treating with his subjects for a peace but by giving money to their army which ought to be employed in paying his own army that his majesty should try whether the Scots meant really a treaty, and not an invasion, by moving his commissioners to propose the im

2 G

mediate disbanding 'of both armies, all things else remaining in statu quo until the negotiations at Ripon should be concluded. But this advice, though in all respects it coincided with the feelings of the king, was too dangerous to be adopted. The commissioners laboured with little effect from the 1st of October till the 16th, when they agreed upon articles for the quiet maintenance of the Scottish army for two months, for the opening of the sea-ports in the north and the renewal of free trade and commerce by sea and land, as in time of peace, and for the cessation of hostilities, and nothing more was settled, for all the grievances and important clauses of a definitive treaty were left untouched; and, on the 23rd of October,-the time of the meeting of parliament approaching, it was agreed that the negotiations should be transferred from Ripon to London. The Scots were to receive or levy the sum of 850l. per diem for the space of two months, beginning from the 16th of October; they were to content themselves with this maintenance, and neither molest papists, prelates, nor their adherents;* and by this arrangement Leslie and the Covenanters were left in undisturbed possession of Durham, Newcastle, and all the towns on the eastern coast beyond the Tees, with the single exception of Berwick. "Upon such terms," says a contemporary, was this unnatural war (although the armies could not as yet be disbanded) brought to a cessation; and both nations rested in assured confidence that a peace must needs follow, since the whole matter was now to be debated in the English parliament, which was to begin about a fortnight after, for it was likely that a parliament should put a period to that war which could never have been begun but for want of a parliament. They were also confident that that freedom which the fundamental laws and constitutions of the kingdom of England allow to parliaments could not be denied to this (though to many others it had long been), as being that parliament to which the king was necessitated, and the only way which was now left him to tread, after so many deviations unfortunately tried, and upon which the people had set up their utmost hope, whom it seemed not safe after so long suffering to provoke any further."†

Upon the 3rd of November, 1640, Charles, in evident depression of spirits, opened in person the ever-memorable Long Parliament. He told the Houses that the honour and safety of the kingdom being at stake, he was resolved to put himself freely and clearly on the love and affection of his

Some of the Scotch army thought it quite fair to plunder the papists of Northumberland, and from the papists they had proceeded to bishop's tenantry and episcopalians.

May.

Charles would not open parliament with the usual state. He, as it were, skulked to the House. "The king," says Laud in his Diary, "did not ride, but went by water to King's Stairs, and through Westminster Hall to the church, and so to the House." Clarendon says with more solemnity,-"This parliament had a sad and melancholic aspect upon the first entrance, which presaged some unusual and unnatural events. The king himself did not ride with his accustomed equipage, nor in his usual majesty, to Westminster, but went privately in his barge to the Parliament Stairs, and after to the church, as if it had been to a return of a prorogued parliament."Hist.

English subjects,-that he was exhausted by charges made merely for the security of England, and therefore must desire them to consider the best way of supplying him with money, chastising the rebels, &c., and then he would satisfy all their just grievances. And at the end of his speech, he said, with great emphasis,-"One thing more I desire of you, as one of the greatest means to make this a happy parliament, that you on your parts, as I on mine, lay aside all suspicion one of another: as I promised my Lords at York, it shall not be my fault if this be not a happy and good parliament.' But this invitation to a mutual confidence came many years too late. The court had signally failed in its endeavours to influence the elections; the people everywhere had been eager to return patriotic members, men tried in the furnaces of former parliaments, or known for their opposition in private life to the encroachments of the prerogative, and the innovations in the church. Of Charles's chief servants only two, Vane and Windebank, had obtained seats; and the first of these was suspected of treachery, while Windebank was so odious to the people as a creature of Laud, that his presence in the House was rather hurtful than beneficial. For a long time it had been usual with the Commons to bow to the king's inclinations in the choice of a Speaker; even in the preceding parliament they had chosen a courtier: but now, instead of Gardiner, the recorder of London, the man of the king's choice, Lenthall, a practising barrister, was hastily chosen; and the choice was approved by Charles, in ignorance of the man. Hampden, Pym, St. John, and Denzil Hollis again took their seats, and their party was wonderfully strengthened by the election of Mr. Henry Vane, the son of Sir Henry Vane, and one of the most remarkable men that sat in that parliament,―so wild an enthusiast in religion as to excite a suspicion of his sanity or sincerity,—so acute a politician, so accomplished a statesman, as to challenge the admiration of all parties. The first

Charles was followed by the Lord Keeper Finch, who made an elaborate speech to show that, with the exception of the impious troubles in the north, the country was] in a blessed state,-that things never had been so well, and never could be better. It was deemed necessary to bring in the name of the queen, who was excessively unpopular, and to declare that she was the paragon of queens. Charles, in his previous declaration of the motives which induced him to summon this parliament, had said nothing of the kind, but it was now thought fit to report that the wise and generous counsels of his wife had led him to this healing measure. Behold the king," said Finch," in another part of himself, in his dearest consort, our gracious queen, the mirror of virtue, from whom, since her happy arrival, now after three lustres of years, never any subject received other than gracious and benign influence; and I dare avos, as she is nearest and dearest to our sovereign, so there is none whose affections and endeavours (his majesty ouly excepted) have, or do, or can co-operate more to the happy success of this parliament, and the never-to-be-equalled joy and comfort of a right understanding between the king and his people! Behold him in his best image, our excellent young prince, and the rest of the royal and lively progeny, in whom we cannot but promise to ourselves to have our happiness perpetuated. From the throne, turn your eyes to the two supporters of it; on the one side, the stem of honour, the nobility and clergy; on the other side, the gentry and commons! Where was there, or is there, in any part of the world, a nobility so numerous, so magnanimous, and yet with such a temper that they neither eclipse the throne nor overtop the people, but keep in a distance fit for the greatness of the throne? Where was there a commonwealth so free and the balance so equally held as here? And certainly so long as the beam is duly held it cannot be otherwise."

thing these men did was to move for the appointment of committees of grievance, and the receiving of petitions praying for their removal. Mr. Edward Hyde, still on the patriotic side, brought up a crying grievance in the north, which was none other than Strafford's Court of the President of the North, or, as it was more usually called, the Court of York, which, he said, by the spirit and ambition of the minister trusted there, or by the natural inclination of courts to enlarge their own power and jurisdiction, had broken down the banks of the channel in which it was meant to run, had almost overwhelmed that country under a sea of arbitrary power, and involved the people in a labyrinth of distemper, oppression, and poverty. The eccentric George Lord Digby, son of the Earl of Bristol, brought up the grievances in the west,-Sir John Colpepper the grievances in the south,-Waller, the poet, a fresh denunciation of ship-money, subservient judges, and the intermission of parliaments. Other petitions were presented in a more startling manner. The first week," says Whitelock, 66 was spent in naming general committees and establishing them, and receiving a great many petitions, both from particular persons and from multitudes, and brought by troops of horsemen from several counties, craving redress of grievances and exorbitances, both in church and state." The Lord Falkland, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Sir Edward Deering, Mr. Harbottle Grimston, and other leading members, fell vigorously upon the system of episcopacy, and the House presently denounced all the acts and canons which Laud had hurried through the late convocation. They attacked every part of church government,-every proceeding of the primate in matters of religion and conscience. "He is a great stranger in Israel," exclaimed Lord Falkland, "who knoweth not that this kingdom hath long laboured under many and great oppressions both in religion and liberty; and his acquaintance here is not great, or his ingenuity less, who doth not both know and acknowledge that a great, if not a principal, cause of this have been some bishops and their adherents.. Under pretence of uniformity, they have brought in superstition and scandal; under the titles of reverence and decency, they have defiled our church by adorning our churches. . . They have tithed mint and anise, and have left undone the work of the gospel. They have made the conforming to ceremonies more important than the conforming to Christianity." Mr. Bagshaw said that there were two sorts of episcopacy-the first in statu puro, as it was in the primitive times; the second in statu corrupto, as it is at this day; that it was maintained by the Bishop of Exeter in a book, that episcopacy, both in the office and in the jurisdiction, is jure divino-of divine right-which position was directly contrary to the laws of Eng

Falkland also said that, while masses had been celebrated in security, a conventicle had been made a great crime. To conceive that the toleration he claimed for the latter should be extended to the former was above even his elegant and high mind.

land, which plainly showed that the bishops had their episcopal jurisdiction from the kings of England, and not jure divino. "It is holden at this day," said he, " that episcopacy is inseparable from the crown of England; and, therefore, it is commonly now said, no bishop, no king-no mitre, no sceptre; which I utterly deny-for it is plain and apparent, that the kings of England were long before bishops, and have a subsistence without them, and have done, and may still depose them." After quoting a number of statutes, the same orator said, "I am for a thorough reformation of all abuses and grievances of episcopacy; which reformation may perhaps serve the turn, without alteration of the government of England into a form of presbytery, as it is in other kingdoms-of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Low Countries; which, for mine own part, had I lived in those kingdoms, I should have been of the opinion of the Protestant party in point of Presbytery." Sir Benjamin Rudyard, however, thought it expedient that they should bethink themselves whether a popular democratical government of the church, though fit for other places, would be either suitable or acceptable to a regal, monarchical government like that of England. Sir Edward Deering compared the modern episcopacy to papistry, and attacked that tyrannical court which was so dear and essential to Laud. "With the papists," said he, "there is a severe inquisition, and with us there is a bitter high commission; both these, contra fas et jus, are judges in their own case. With the papists there

is a mysterious artifice; their index expurgatorius. To this I parallel our late imprimaturs, or licences for the press, which are so handled that truth is suppressed, and popish pamphlets fly abroad cum privilegio. Nay, they are already grown so

bold in this new trade, that the most learned labours of our ancient and best divines must be new corrected and defaced by the supercilious pen of my lord bishop's young chaplain." He went on to show how nearly Laud's notions of supremacy and infallibility approached to those of the pope. "And herein," added he, “ I shall be free and clear-if one of these must be, I had rather serve one as far off as the Tiber, than to have him come to me so near as the Thames: a pope at Rome will do me less hurt than a patriarch at Lambeth." It may readily be conceived how these things affected Laud, who shortly before had been visited by omens and misgivings, and who clearly saw ruin approaching.* It was, indeed, evident that the Commons believed, with Pym, that "they must not only make the house

"October 27, Tuesday, Simon and Jude's Eve, I went into my upper study to see some manuscripts, which I was sending to Oxford; in that study hung my picture, taken by the life, and, coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor, the string being broken by which it hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in parliament; God grant this be no omen."-Diary. A few days before, the archbishop notes in the same private record-" The high commission sitting at St. Paul's, because of the troubles of the times, very near two thousand Brownists made a tumult at the end of the court, tore down all the benches in the consistory, and cried out, they would have no bishop, nor no high commission."