become as arbitrary and despotic as the king himself. It might impose injustice upon unpopular persons and unpopular classes. But as a legislative body it would have this advantage, that it was less liable than was a single person to act on each special occasion upon the impulse of the moment. The king, professing only to execute the law, might, unless he were placed under control, execute it in a different way at different times according to the temper in which he was at the moment. Parliament, by the very fact that it was obliged to legislate for the future, was always tending to lay down general rules, and was likely to be especially careful to bring them into conformity with the rules of justice, because as long as the existing constitution lasted the execution of them would fall into the hands of the king. In this way the lawyers and the Puritans found a point of contact which was wanting at other periods of our history. Both alike looked for their rules of life to laws which were discovered by the exercise of reason rather than to the commands of an authoritative person or an authoritative class. Almost all that was noble and dignified in man was on the side of the opposition, Fanatics no doubt there were,-legal fanatics who saw nothing in law but a collection of precedents, religious fanatics who saw no salvation out of the observation of a narrow orthodoxy. But the main body of the opposition was not composed of fanatics. Puritan gentlemen like Hutchinson, or Puritan men of business who, like Milton's father, loved song and music and literature, ordering their lives. into a kindly if severe decency, self-respecting and respecting others, working manfully at their several callings, and remembering that they lived ever in their great Taskmaster's eye. Yet these were the men, forming as they did the bone and sinew of the nation, who were CHAP. VII. §11. Arbi trary Go vernment. СНАР. VII. frowned upon by Charles. Their ideas were treated with contempt. Every rule of law was interpreted or wrested against them. They were compelled, whether they liked it or not, to attend their own parish churches, to bow when the name of Jesus was pronounced, to receive the Communion on their knees before a table at the east end, which they were told to call an altar. Their names were left out of the commission of the peace, in favour of their more subservient neighbours. The Court of Star Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission were ever active to enforce the will of the king against them. Yet it was not solely because he provoked the enmity of thinking men that Charles ran into danger. Those who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their ideas were then, as they always are, a minority. But it is not likely that a government which disregards the ideas of its subjects will pay much regard to their interests. Hundreds who would not be touched by large grievances would be affected by small ones. Those who did not care whether the communion-table stood at the east end or in the centre of the church, cared very much when they found that the clergy began to assume lordly airs, that the bishop of the diocese had more influence at Court than the gentlemen who were his neighbours, or that the minister of the parish kept the squire in order. So too in civil matters. The enforcement of shipmoney led the way to a breach of the constitutional practice which had been sanctioned by the Petition of Right,— that money should not be taken without a parliamentary grant. But the resistance to the principle was much strengthened by the fact that it involved resistance to the payment of money. The dullest minds could hardly be impervious to the logic which taught them to guard against the demand of a few pence by the sole authority of the crown, because the authority which asked for a few pence might, by the same reasoning, ask for as much as it pleased. Charles's resolution to act independently of the nation marshalled well nigh the whole nation against him. Like every weak government, the government of Charles was driven from sheer terror to violent measures of repression. Argument against the principles on which it was based had long been prohibited, and those who were restrained from the use of serious argument took refuge in derisive and libellous attacks upon the persons of their oppressors. Laud and Charles had but one answer to give. The Star Chamber had brandings on the cheek, loppings off of ears, life-long imprisonments for men who like Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick assailed the bishops, cruel scourgings for men who like Lilburne called in question its method of procedure. Compassion for the victims added yet another cord to bind together the hearts of Englishmen against those who were treating England without knowledge and without sympathy. Yet even then there was no deliberate purpose of throwing off the king. King, Lords and Commons, it was held, must work together. The attempt of the king to stand alone had wrought nothing but mischief. СНАР. VII. Resistance Resistance came first from Scotland. The Scottish § 12. The nation had gained its Protestantism in more direct conflict in Scotwith a Roman Catholic sovereign than had been needed land. in England. Its Puritanism was therefore more intense, and its hatred of all ceremonial forms which resembled in any way the ceremonies of the Roman Church was far more decided. James, with the view of keeping the clergy in subordination to himself, had established episcopacy in Scotland, and had enjoined, though he was not everywhere able to enforce, the practice of kneeling at the reception of the Communion. Charles went further than his father had ventured to go. By his orders a new prayer-book was drawn up on the model of the CHAP. $13. The Beginning of the Long Par liament. English service, but differing from it in many places by the introduction of words still more offensive to those who were called on to use it. Scottish popular feeling was roused by the insult. Those of the clergy who tried to use the new book were mobbed and insulted. The fact that the new book was English roused the anger of Scotchmen as much as the fact that it was, or appeared to be, popish. The Scottish nobility almost to a man threw themselves on the side of the Scottish clergy and people. Their power was greater than that of the English peers. They were sorely afraid lest Charles should diminish their revenues for the benefit of the clergy, and they saw with disgust bishops admitted to temporal offices, and claiming precedence of themselves in the Privy Council itself. Here, too, Charles's disregard for the ideas of his subjects led to a disregard for their interests. A national resistance was formed before which the king was powerless. Twice he attempted to bring the force of England to bear upon the Scots who drove away his bishops and claimed to settle their affairs without his concurrence. Twice he failed entirely. Englishmen would not fight in such a cause. At last the Scottish army gained possession of Northumberland and Durham, and it was found necessary to summon a parliament which would find him money to pay them off. The Long Parliament, to call it by its historical name, was naturally not disposed to find the king money without demanding anything in return. Wentworth, now Earl of Strafford, who had been the most energetic maintainer of the king's system, was brought to the block. The Star Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission were swept away. The right to levy ship-money and customs without a parliamentary grant was abandoned by the king, and, as far as the law could bind him, Charles was reduced to act in accordance with the wishes of his parliament. He even VII. Breach between King and Par assented to an Act depriving himself of the power of dis- CHAP. solving the existing parliament without its own consent. Such an arrangement could not form a permanent § 14. settlement. The formula that government is founded on the co-operation of King, Lords and Commons sounds well. But it is no working rule for a constitution. In liament. every nation there must be some authority which is decisive, some man or body of men who have the power of saying the last word. Hitherto this power had been the king's. There would be no rest for England till it passed into the hands of the House of Commons. That which had been done, great as it was, had not been sufficient to deprive the king of the power of setting at nought to some extent the decisions of the Houses. If he had lost the right of dissolving Parliament he retained the right of refusing his assent to the Bills accepted by it, so that he could, without any effort of his own, put a stop to all further legislation. If he had given up the special courts by which his will had been enforced, and had even abandoned his right of levying the income without which he could not subsist with decency, he retained the command of the militia, which furnished the only military force then known, and the appointment of the officers by which it was controlled. Under any circumstances such a position would have been a menacing one. But the immediate danger lay in the fact that there was stil! a question of the first importance to be settled. The majority of the House of Commons proposed to modify the Book of Common Prayer in a Puritan sense. They also proposed to do away with Episcopacy, or at least to place it under the strongest possible restrictions. The bishops had been hard taskmasters to the Puritans, and the Puritans naturally thought that it would not be well to entrust the working of the new Church arrangements which they contemplated to men who |