bath-day; but in truth, puritanical religious professions CHARLES I. resembled the little eruptive pustule on the surface which 1625-1649. betrays the infection and putridity at the core. Christian Numerous proofs exist of the "Christian disposition" of the Puritanical puritans, such as, in some churches, baptizing horses or swine, charity. in profane mockery of baptism; in other churches breaking open the tombs, and scattering about the bones of the dead, or, if the bodies were entire, defacing and dismembering them". At Sudeley they made a slaughter-house of the chancel, cut up the carcasses upon the communion table, and threw the garbage into the vault of the Chandoses, insulting thus the remains of some of the most heroic men, who, in their day, defended and did honour to their country. At Westminster, the soldiers sate smoking and drinking at the altar, and lived in the abbey, committing every kind of indecency there, which the parliament saw and permitted. No cathedral escaped without some injury; painted windows were broken, statues pulled down or mutilated, carvings demolished, the organs sold piecemeal for the value of the materials, or set up in taverns. At Lambeth, Parker's monument was thrown down, that Scott, to whom the palace had been allotted for his portion of the spoils, might convert the chapel into a hall; the archbishop's body was taken, not out of his grave alone, but out of his coffin, the lead in which it had been enclosed was sold, and the remains were buried in a dunghill". Under the puritans, controversy and intrigue usurped the place of pure religion; and immorality and wickedness of all kinds everywhere abounded; licentiousness, oppression, pride, covetousness, and a secret hatred of all religion, was widely disseminated amongst the nation. And these are forcible and practical illustrations of the "miseries" which the nation encountered from the temporary subversion of the English Catholic church. These proceedings convinced every person that further to support the commons was only to consummate the annihilation of the crown, the church, and the peerage, and that all who entertained opinions opposed to their selfish and interested caprices, were treated as a proscribed caste, and that liberty, law, and justice had ceased to exist. 65 Southey's Book of the Church, 472, 473. Under the puritans, controversy usurped the place and intrigue of pure religion. CHARLES I. 1625-1649. TREASONABLE ACTS OF THE Possession of the sword sought after by the commons. Persecution of the king. Command of the army assumed by the commons. Propositions tendered to the king at York. The measure upon which the commons rested all future hopes of uncontrollable ascendancy was by a bold and decisive stroke, to seize at once the whole power of the sword, and to confer it entirely on their own creatures and adherents. A bill for regulating the militia was introduced, and passed the two Houses, restoring to lieutenants and deputies the same powers of which the votes of the commons had bereaved them; but nominating in the bill the lords-lieutenant in every county, who were to obey the orders of the two Houses, and to be irremovable by the king for two years. However reprehensible the conduct of the king might have been, he had suffered a more than commensurate punishment; his favourite ministers had been either executed, banished, or imprisoned; almost all the just prerogatives of the crown had been destroyed; he had been forced to extinguish one estate of parliament; had been causelessly insulted by the commons upon various occasions; they had forced his queen to become an exile, and were now desirous to become his gaolers, at a time when he was unable to trample upon public or private rights. But Charles, desirous to conciliate, offered his consent to the bill, if the persons recommended to him as lieutenants were to be appointed by commissions revocable at his pleasure, or rendering them irremovable for one year, provided they received their orders from himself and the two Houses jointly, which proposals being refused, the king withheld his assent. The commons then framed an ordinance, in which, by the sole authority of the two Houses, lieutenants were named for all the counties, and the command of the whole military force, guards, garrisons, and forts of the kingdom, were conferred on them, with commands that they were only to obey the orders of his majesty, "as signified by both houses of parliament." The king issued counter proclamations, and the adherents of each party arranged themselves under their respective banners, to decide the question by the sword. In the beginning of June, 1642, the commons, to show that their determination was to destroy the executive authority of the crown, tendered to him, at York, nineteen propositions, founded upon addresses and declarations of an earlier date. They required that the privy council and officers of state should be approved by parliament, and take such an oath as 67 2 Clarendon, 375. 2 Parl. Hist. 1077, 1106, &c. 1625-1649. the two Houses should prescribe, and that during the intervals CHARLES I. of parliament, no vacancy in the council should be supplied without the assent of the major part, subject to the future sanction of the two Houses; that the education and marriages of the king's children should be under parliamentary control; the votes of popish peers to be taken away; the church government and liturgy be reformed as both Houses should advise; the militia and all fortified places put in such hands as parliament should approve; finally, that the king should pass a bill for restraining all peers to be made in future from sitting in parliament, unless they be admitted with the consent of both Houses. The crown bound bills offered by parliament. to assent to all Charles I. In addition to these demands, the commons voted that in a right construction of the old coronation oath, the king was bound to assent to all bills which the two houses of parliament should offer 68. Charles, from having no party in the nation, had, by his con- Popularity of cessions to the parliament, acquired a powerful party; and, notwithstanding the small interval of time which had elapsed from his rash attempt to seize the six members", he was surrounded by the nobility and gentry, who conceived that law, justice, and moderation now belonged to the crown, the commons having perpetrated so many acts of deliberative violence. The friends of the constitution were resolved to adhere to that moderate freedom transmitted them from their ancestors, and now better secured by such important concessions, rather than by engaging in a giddy search after more independence, run a manifest risk either of incurring a cruel subjection, or abandoning all law and order; they were further induced to this determination by the fact of the city apprentices, porters, &c., having been allowed to influence the decisions of the legislature, and were aware that the moment the licentious appetites of such people ceased to be gratified, physical strength could alone reduce them to proper subjection 7. 68 1 Clarendon, 452. 2 Parl. Hist. 1302. 2 Hallam's Const. Hist. 188. 69 2 Rushworth, 473. Whitlocke, 50. 2 Nalson, 811. Franklyn, 906. 70 Those who have once bowed their knee to force, must expect that force will be for ever their master. In a few weeks after the legislative power and civil government of England had submitted to the army, the commons were insulted by an unruly, tumultuous mob of apprentices, engaged in the presbyterian politics of the city, who compelled them, by actual violence, to rescind several of their late votes. (2 Hallam's Const. Hist. 281.) Motives by which the royalists were actuated. CHARLES I. 1625-1649. A. D. 1642. Declaration of the king to the peers. Non attendance of the members Lords and Commons. The king made a declaration to the peers who attended him, that he expected from them no obedience to any commands which were not warranted by the laws of the land. The peers answered this declaration by a protest, in which they declared their resolution to obey no commands but such as were warranted by their authority". In fact, the rank, intelligence, and property of the country rallied round the crown, and to such an extent, that, according to Clarendon's computation, a single troop of guards possessed estates and revenues equal to those of all the members, who, at the commencement of the war, voted in both Houses". At this period the House of Lords seldom consisted of more of the Houses of than sixteen members, and near the moiety of the commons absented themselves from counsels which they conceived so replete with danger; and the great majority of those who did attend were under the influence of intimidation. A band of rogues and rebels, who had everything to gain and nothing to lose, now influenced the commons, and by audacious falsehoods, persuaded the uncultivated and seditious masses of society, that they were the eternal guardians of law and liberty, and whom no motive, but the necessary defence of the people, could ever engage in an opposition to the crown. The king's adherents were by the commons designated "wicked," and "malignant." Their adversaries were the "godly," and "well affected";" and in the orders which Essex received to advance upon the royalists, he was directed to "present a most humble petition to the king, and to rescue him and the royal family from those desperate malignants who had seized their persons74 75" Character of the 747599 In fact, the House of Commons "was a close committee of House of Com- sordid tyrants, who violated every principle of law and justice, who imprisoned their own constituents for refusing to answer mons. 71 6 Hume, 491. 72 3 Clarendon, 41. Warwick, 231. 73 Warwick, 318. May, 86. 74 Whitlocke, 59. 3 Clarendon, 27, 28. 75 This mean, false, and hypocritical conduct was pursued during the war in their treatment of the House of Lords, to whom the commons, upon all occasions, gave respectful language, and denounced those who advocated their suppression; and on occasion of some rumours, the House voted they held themselves obliged, by the fundamental laws of the kingdom and their covenant, to preserve the peerage, with the rights and privileges belonging to the House of Peers, equally with their own (3 Parl. Hist. 369); and the council of war more than once, in the year 1647, declared their intention of preserving the rights of the peerage. (Whitlocke, 298. Sir William Waller's Vindication, 192.) 1625-1649. Civil liberty, tered by the devoted friends when adminis of the people." criminating interrogatories which no judge in England would CHARLES I. have dared to ask, or have permitted to be put; who, professing hostility to corruption, could deal secretly for the whitewashing of the blasted character, or replenishing the empty purse of an useful associate; who, in a word, with 'patriotism' for ever in their mouths, went to deluge their country with civil blood, and hack and mutilate the constitution which they swore they were defending, till it fell prostrate and lifeless at the feet of a military usurper." But such is "civil liberty," when administered by the "devoted friends of the people," uncontrolled by a king and an hereditary House of Peers. SECTION III. CHARLES II., January 30, A.D. 1649,-February 6, A.D. 1685. 1. The Misfortunes of Anarchy. 3. Grant of Royal Revenues. 4. Disbanding the Army. 5. Titles to Property. 6. The Parliament of 1661. 7. Punishment of the Regicides. 8. The Corporation Act. 9. The Triennial Act. 10. Religious Dissensions. 11. Original Jurisdiction in Civil of Lords. 12. Impeachment of Danby. 16. Quo Warranto Informations. 1. The Misfortunes of Anarchy. 1649-1685. Whoever has Whoever has power, abuses it; every page of history proves CHARLES II. the fact; individual, body, the people, it is all the same; power is abused, yet some one, or some body, must have it. The great problem seems to be to vest it in such a manner power, abuses it. that as little mischief can be done as possible. But to effect this, something very different is necessary from merely clipping the wings of power. Injudicious restraint of power leads to as many evil consequences as unlimited power'. The histories of Greece, Rome, and France, justify the observation, that although with the multitude ultra democracy may often originate in the love of true liberty, it has its source, almost always, in those who seek to be leaders of the multitude, merely in an insatiable thirst for power, which is which is generally followed by the abuse of it when acquired. 1 Lieber's Remin. Niebuhr, 82, 83. Popular leaders ambition. actuated by |