in any way. ... A Parliament was appointed for the 3d of
November next;--whereupon London cheerfully lent £200,000; and
the Treaty with the Scots at Ripon, 1st October, 1640, by and
by transferred to London, went peaceably on at a very
leisurely pace. The Scotch Army lay quartered at Newcastle,
and over Northumberland and Durham, on an allowance of £850 a
day; an Army indispensable for Puritan objects; no haste in
finishing its Treaty. The English army lay across in
Yorkshire; without allowance except from the casualties of the
King's Exchequer; in a dissatisfied manner, and occasionally
getting into 'Army-Plots.' This Parliament, which met on the
3d of November; 1640, has become very celebrated in History by
the name of the 'Long Parliament.'"
T. Carlyle,
Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,
part 1: 1640.
ALSO IN:
J. Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford.
S. R. Gardiner,
History of England, 1603-1642,
chapter 91-94.
J. H. Burton,
History of Scotland,
chapter 72-73 (volume 7).
ENGLAND: A. D. 1640.
Acquisition and settlement of Madras.
See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1640-1641.
The Long Parliament and the beginning of its work.
Impeachment and Execution of Strafford.
"The game of tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and lost
his last stake. It is impossible to trace the mortifications
and humiliations which this bad man now had to endure without
a feeling of vindictive pleasure. His army was mutinous; his
treasury was empty; his people clamoured for a Parliament;
addresses and petitions against the government were presented.
Strafford was for shooting those who presented them by martial
law, but the king could not trust the soldiers. A great
council of Peers was called at York, but the king would not
trust even the Peers. He struggled, he evaded, he hesitated,
he tried every shift rather than again face the
representatives of his injured people. At length no shift was
left. He made a truce with the Scots, and summoned a
Parliament. ... On the 3d of November, 1640--a day to be long
remembered--met that great Parliament, destined to every
extreme of fortune--to empire and to servitude, to glory and
to contempt;--at one time the sovereign of its sovereign, at
another time the servant of its servants, and the tool of its
tools. From the first day of its meeting the attendance was
great, and the aspect of the members was that of men not
disposed to do the work negligently. The dissolution of the
late Parliament had convinced most of them that half measures
would no longer suffice. Clarendon tells us that 'the same men
who, six months before, were observed to be of very moderate
tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied,
talked now in another dialect both of kings and persons; and
said that they must now be of another temper than they were
the last Parliament.' The debt of vengeance was swollen by all
the usury which had been accumulating during many years; and
payment was made to the full. This memorable crisis called
forth parliamentary abilities, such as England had never
before seen. Among the most distinguished members of the House
of Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, Young, Harry Vane, Oliver
St. John, Denzil Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes. But two men
exercised a paramount influence over the legislature and the
country--Pym and Hampden; and, by the universal consent of
friends and enemies, the first place belonged to Hampden."
Lord Macaulay,
Nugent's Memorials of Hampden
(Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2).
"The resolute looks of the members as they gathered at
Westminster contrasted with the hesitating words of the king,
and each brought from borough or county a petition of
grievances. Fresh petitions were brought every day by bands of
citizens or farmers. Forty committees were appointed to
examine and report on them, and their reports formed the
grounds on which the Commons acted. One by one the illegal
acts of the Tyranny were annulled. Prynne and his fellow
'martyrs' recalled from their prisons, entered London in
triumph, amid the shouts of a great multitude who strewed
laurel in their path. The civil and criminal jurisdiction of
the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, the Court of High
Commission, the irregular jurisdictions of the Council of the
North, of the Duchy of Lancaster, the County of Chester, and a
crowd of lesser tribunals, were summarily abolished.
Ship-money was declared illegal, and the judgment in Hampden's
case annulled. A statute declaring 'the ancient right of the
subjects of this kingdom that no subsidy, custom, impost, or
any charge whatsoever, ought or may be laid or imposed upon
any merchandize exported or imported by subjects, denizens or
allies, without common consent of Parliament,' put an end
forever to all pretensions to a right of arbitrary taxation on
the part of the crown. A Triennial Bill enforced the Assembly
of the Houses every three years, and bound the sheriff and
citizens to proceed to election if the Royal writ failed to
summon them. Charles protested, but gave way. He was forced to
look helplessly on at the wreck of his Tyranny, for the Scotch
army was still encamped in the north. ... Meanwhile the
Commons were dealing roughly with the agents of the Royal
system. ...
{854}
Windebank, the Secretary of State, with the Chancellor, Finch,
fled in terror over sea. Laud himself was flung into prison.
... But even Laud, hateful as he was to all but the poor
neighbours whose prayers his alms had won, was not the centre
of so great and universal a hatred as the Earl of Strafford.
Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a servile
instrument of tyranny--it was the guilt of 'that grand
apostate to the Commonwealth who,' in the terrible words which
closed Lord Digby's invective, 'must not expect to be pardoned
in this world till he be dispatched to the other.' He was
conscious of his danger, but Charles forced him to attend the
Court.' He came to London with the solemn assurance of his
master that, "while there was a king in England, not a hair of
Strafford's head should be touched by the Parliament."
Immediately impeached of high treason by the Commons, and sent
to the Tower, he received from the king a second and more
solemn pledge, by letter, that, "upon the word of a king, you
shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune." But the "word of
a king" like Charles Stuart, had neither honor nor gratitude, nor
a decent self respect behind it. He could be false to a friend
as easily as to an enemy. When the Commons, fearing failure on
the trial of their impeachment, resorted to a bill of
attainder, Charles signed it with a little resistance, and
Strafford went bravely and manfully to the block. "As the axe
fell, the silence of the great multitude was broken by a
universal shout of joy. The streets blazed with bonfires. The
bells clashed out from every steeple."
J. R. Green,
Short History of England,
chapter 8, section 6.
The king "was as deeply pledged to Strafford as one man could
be to another; he was as vitally concerned in saving the life
and prolonging the service of incomparably his ablest servant
as was ever any sovereign in the case of any minister; yet it
is clear that for some days past, probably ever since the
first signs of popular tumult began to manifest themselves, he
had been wavering. Four days before the Bill passed the Lords,
Strafford as is well known, entreated the king to assent to
it. There is no reason to doubt the absolute sincerity with
which, at the moment of its conception, the prisoner penned
his famous letter from the Tower. That passionate chivalry of
loyalty, which has never animated any human heart in equal
intensity since Strafford's ceased to beat, inspires every
line. ... Charles turned distractedly from one adviser to
another, not so much for counsel as for excuse. He did not
want his judgment guided, but his conscience quieted; and his
counsellors knew it. They had other reasons, too, for urging
him to his dishonour. Panic seems to have seized upon them
all. The only man who would not have quailed before the fury
of the populace was the man himself whose life was trembling
in the balance. The judges were summoned to declare their
opinion, and replied, with an admirable choice of
non-committing terms, that 'upon all that which their
Lordships have voted to be proved the Earl of Strafford doth
deserve to undergo the pains and forfeitures of high treason.'
Charles sent for the bishops, and the bishops, with the
honourable exception of Juxon, informed him that he had two
consciences,--a public and a private conscience,--and that
'his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with,
but oblige him to do, that which was against his conscience as
a man.' What passed between these two tenants in common of the
royal breast during the whole of Sunday, May 9th, 1641, is
within no earthly knowledge; but at some time on that day
Charles's public conscience got the better of its private
rival. He signed a commission for giving the royal assent to
the Bill, and on Monday, May 10th, in the presence of a House
scarcely able to credit the act of betrayal which was taking
place before them, the Commissioners pronounced the fatal Le
roi le veult over the enactment which condemned his Minister
to the block. Charles, of course, might still have reprieved
him by an exercise of the prerogative, but the fears which
made him acquiesce in the sentence availed to prevent him from
arresting its execution."
H. D. Traill,
Lord Stafford,
pages 195-198.
"It is a sorry office to plant the foot on a worm so crushed
and writhing as the wretched king ... [who abandoned
Strafford] for it was one of the few crimes of which he was in
the event thoroughly sensible, and friend has for once
cooperated with foe in the steady application to it of the
branding iron. There is in truth hardly any way of relieving
the 'damned spot' of its intensity of hue even by distributing
the concentrated infamy over other portions of Charles's
character. ... When we have convinced ourselves that this
'unthankful king' never really loved Strafford; that, as much
as in him lay, he kept the dead Buckingham in his old
privilege of mischief, by adopting his aversions and abiding
by his spleenful purposes; that, in his refusals to award
those increased honours for which his minister was a
petitioner, on the avowed ground of the royal interest, may be
discerned the petty triumph of one who dares not dispense with
the services thrust upon him, but revenges himself by
withholding their well-earned reward;--still does the
blackness accumulate to baffle our efforts. The paltry tears
he is said to have shed only burn that blackness in. If his
after conduct indeed had been different, he might have availed
himself of one excuse,--but that the man, who, in a few short
months, proved that he could make so resolute a stand
somewhere, should have judged this event no occasion for
attempting it, is either a crowning infamy or an infinite
consolation, according as we may judge wickedness or weakness
to have preponderated in the constitution of Charles I. ... As
to Strafford's death, the remark that the people had no
alternative, includes all that it is necessary to urge. The
king's assurances of his intention to afford him no further
opportunity of crime, could surely weigh nothing with men who
had observed how an infinitely more disgusting minister of his
will had only seemed to rise the higher in his master's
estimation for the accumulated curses of the nation. Nothing
but the knife of Felton could sever in that case the weak head
and the wicked instrument, and it is to the honour of the
adversaries of Strafford that they were earnest that their
cause should vindicate itself completely, and look for no
adventitious redress. Strafford had outraged the people--this
was not denied. He was defended on the ground of those
outrages not amounting to a treason against the king. For my
own part, this defence appears to me decisive, looking at it
in a technical view, and with our present settlement of
evidence and treason.
{855}
But to concede that point, after the advances they had made,
would have been in that day to concede all. It was to be shown
that another power had claim to the loyalty and the service of
Strafford--and if a claim, then a vengeance to exact for its
neglect. And this was done. ... One momentary emotion ...
escaped ... [Strafford] when he was told to prepare for death.
He asked if the king had indeed assented to the bill.
Secretary Carleton answered in the affirmative; and Strafford,
laying his hand on his heart, and raising his eyes to heaven,
uttered the memorable words,--'Put not your trust in princes,
nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation.'
Charles's conduct was indeed incredibly monstrous."
R. Browning,
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
(Eminent British Statesmen, by John Forster, volume 2,
pages 403-406).
ALSO IN:
J. Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford; Pym.
Earl of Clarendon,
History of the Rebellion,
book 3 (volume 1).
Lord Nugent,
Memorials of Hampden.
parts 5-6 (volumes 1-2).
Lady T. Lewis,
Life of Lord Falkland.
The following are the Articles of Impeachment under which
Strafford was tried and condemned:
"Articles of the Commons, assembled in Parliament, against
Thomas Earl of Strafford, in Maintenance of their Accusation,
whereby he stands charged with High Treason.
I. That he the said Thomas earl of Strafford hath traiterously
endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of
the realms of England and Ireland, and, instead thereof, to
introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government, against law,
which he hath declared by traiterous words, counsels, and
actions, and by giving his majesty advice, by force of arms,
to compel his loyal subjects to submit thereunto.
II. That he hath traiterously assumed to himself regal power
over the lives, liberties of persons, lands, and goods of his
majesty's subjects, in England and Ireland, and hath exercised
the same tyrannically, to the subversion and undoing of many,
both peers and others, of his majesty's liege people.
III. The better to inrich, and enable himself to go through
with his traiterous designs, he hath detained a great part of
his majesty's revenue, without giving any legal accounts; and
hath taken great sums of money out of the exchequer,
converting them to his own use, when his majesty was
necessitated for his own urgent occasions, and his army had
been a long time unpaid.
IV. That he hath traiterously abused the power and authority
of his government, to the increasing, countenancing, and
encouraging of Papists, that so he might settle a mutual
dependence and confidence betwixt himself and that party, and
by their help prosecute and accomplish his malicious and
tyrannical designs.
V. That he hath maliciously endeavoured to stir up enmity and
hostility between his majesty's subjects of England and those
of Scotland.
VI. That he hath traiterously broken the great trust reposed
in him by his majesty, of lieutenant general of his Army, by
wilfully betraying divers of his majesty's subjects to death,
his majesty's Army to a dishonourable defeat by the Scots at
Newborne, and the town of Newcastle into their hands, to the
end that, by effusion of blood, by dishonour, by so great a
loss as of Newcastle, his majesty's realm of England might be
engaged in a national and irreconcilable quarrel with the
Scots.
VII. That, to preserve himself from being questioned for these
and other his traiterous courses, he laboured to subvert the
right of parliaments, and the ancient course of parliamentary
proceedings, and, by false and malicious slanders, to incense
his maj. against parliaments.--By which words, counsels, and
actions, he hath traiterously, and contrary to his allegiance,
laboured to alienate the hearts of the king's liege people
from his maj. to set a division between them, and to ruin and
destroy his majesty's kingdoms, for which they do impeach him
of High Treason against our sovereign lord the king, his crown
and dignity. And he the said earl of Strafford was lord deputy
of Ireland, or lord lieutenant of Ireland, and lieutenant
general of the Army there, under his majesty, and a sworn
privy counsellor to his maj. for his kingdoms both of England
and Ireland, and lord president of the North, during the time
that all and every of the crimes and offences before set forth
were done and committed; and he the said earl was lieutenant
general of his majesty's Army in the North parts of England,
during the time that the crimes and offences in the 5th and
6th Articles set forth were done and committed.--And the said
commons, by protestation, saving to themselves the liberty of
exhibiting at any time hereafter any other Accusation or
Impeachment against the said earl, and also of replying to the
Answer that he the said earl shall make unto the said
Articles, or to any of them, and of offering proof also of the
premises, or any of them, or of any other Accusation or
Impeachment that shall be by them exhibited, as the case
shall, according to the course of parliaments, require; and do
pray that the said earl may be put to answer to all and every
the premises; and that such proceedings, examination, trial,
and judgment, may be upon every of them had and used, as is
agreeable to law and justice."
Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England,
volume 2, pages 737-739.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (March-May).
The Root and Branch Bill.
"A bill was brought in [March, 1641], known as the Restraining
Bill, to deprive Bishops of their rights of voting in the
House of Lords. The opposition it encountered in that House
induced the Commons to follow it up [May 27] with a more
vehement measure, 'for the utter abolition of Archbishops,
Bishops. Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries and Canons,' a
measure known by the title of the Root and Branch Bill. By the
skill of the royal partisans, this bill was long delayed in
Committee."
J. F. Bright,
History of England,
period 2 (volume 2), page 650.
ALSO IN:
D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
volume 2, book 2, chapter 3.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (October).
Roundheads and Cavaliers.
The birth of English parties.
"After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September,
1641, adjourned for a short vacation and the king visited
Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom, by
consenting not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical
reform, but even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act
declaring that episcopacy was contrary to the word of God. The
recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on
which the houses met again is one of the most remarkable
epochs in our history. From that day dates the corporate
existence of the two great parties which have ever since
alternately governed the country. ...
{856}
During the first months of the Long Parliament, the
indignation excited by many years of lawless oppression was so
strong and general that the House of Commons acted as one man.
Abuse after abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small
minority of the representative body wished to retain the Star
Chamber and the High Commission, that minority, overawed by
the enthusiasm and by the numerical superiority of the
reformers, contented itself with secretly regretting
institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be
openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it
convenient to antedate the separation between themselves and
their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained the
king from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the
Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and the
attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made
war on the king. But no artifice could be more disingenuous.
Everyone of those strong measures was actively promoted by the
men who were afterwards foremost among the Cavaliers. No
republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more
severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour
of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The impeachment of
the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The demand that the
Lord Lieutenant should be kept close prisoner was made at the
bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law attainting
Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunion
become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but
extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty members of
the House of Commons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in
the minority, and that Falkland not only voted with the
majority, but spoke strongly for the bill. Even the few who
entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a
retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the
utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.
But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and
when, in October 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a
short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with
those which, under different names, have ever since contended,
and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs,
appeared confronting each other. During some years they were
designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently
called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these
appellations are likely soon to become obsolete."
Lord Macaulay,
History of England,
chapter 1.
It was not until some months later, however, that the name of
Roundheads was applied to the defenders of popular rights by
their royalist adversaries.
See ROUNDHEADS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (November).
The Grand Remonstrance.
Early in November, 1641, the king being in Scotland, and news
of the insurrection in Ireland having just reached London, the
party of Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell "resolved on a great
pitched battle between them and the opposition, which should
try their relative strengths before the king's return; and
they chose to fight this battle over a vast document, which
they entitled 'A Declaration and Remonstrance of the State of
the Kingdom,' but which has come to be known since as The
Grand Remonstrance. ... The notion of a great general document
which, under the name of 'A Remonstrance,' should present to
the king in one view a survey of the principal evils that had
crept into the kingdom in his own and preceding reigns, with a
detection of their causes, and a specification of the
remedies, had more than once been before the Commons. It had
been first mooted by Lord Digby while the Parliament was not a
week old. Again and again set aside for more immediate work, it
had recurred to the leaders of the Movement party, just before
the king's departure for Scotland, as likely to afford the
broad battle-ground with the opposition then becoming
desirable. 'A Remonstrance to be made, how we found the
Kingdom and the Church, and how the state of it now stands,'
such was the description of the then intended document (August
7). The document had doubtless been in rehearsal through the
Recess, for on the 8th of November the rough draft of it was
presented to the House and read at the clerk's table. When we
say that the document in its final form occupies thirteen
folio pages of rather close print in Rushworth, and consists
of a preamble followed by 206 articles or paragraphs duly
numbered, one can conceive what a task the reading of even the
first draft of it must have been, and through what a storm of
successive debates over proposed amendments and additions it
reached completeness. There had been no such debates yet in
the Parliament."
D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
volume 2, book 2, chapter 6.
"It [The Grand Remonstrance] embodies the case of the
Parliament against the Ministers of the king. It is the most
authentic statement ever put forth of the wrongs endured by
all classes of the English people, during the first fifteen
years of the reign of Charles I.; and, for that reason, the
most complete justification upon record of the Great
Rebellion." The debates on The Grand Remonstrance were begun
November 9 and ended November 22, when the vote was taken:
Ayes, 159.--Noes, 148.--So evenly were the parties in the
great struggle then divided.
J. Forster,
History and Biographical Essays,
volume 1: Debates on the Grand Remonstrance.
The following is the text of "The Grand Remonstrance," with
that of the Petition preceding it:
"Most Gracious Sovereign: Your Majesty's most humble and
faithful subjects the Commons in this present Parliament
assembled, do with much thankfulness and joy acknowledge the
great mercy and favour of God, in giving your Majesty a safe
and peaceable return out of Scotland into your kingdom of
England, where the pressing dangers and distempers of the
State have caused us with much earnestness to desire the
comfort of your gracious presence, and likewise the unity and
justice of your royal authority, to give more life and power
to the dutiful and loyal counsels and endeavours of your
Parliament, for the prevention of that eminent ruin and
destruction wherein your kingdoms of England and Scotland are
threatened. The duty which we owe to your Majesty and our
country, cannot but make us very sensible and apprehensive,
that the multiplicity, sharpness and malignity of those evils
under which we have now many years suffered, are fomented and
cherished by a corrupt and ill-affected party, who amongst
other their mischievous devices for the alteration of religion
and government, have sought by many false scandals and
imputations, cunningly insinuated and dispersed amongst the
people, to blemish and disgrace our proceedings in this
Parliament, and to get themselves a party and faction amongst
your subjects, for the better strengthening themselves in
their wicked courses; and hindering those provisions and
remedies which might, by the wisdom of your Majesty and
counsel of your Parliament, be opposed against them.
{857}
For preventing whereof, and the better information of your
Majesty, your Peers and all other your loyal subjects, we have
been necessitated to make a declaration of the state of the
kingdom, both before and since the assembly of this
Parliament, unto this time, which we do humbly present to your
Majesty, without the least intention to lay any blemish upon
your royal person, but only to represent how your royal
authority and trust have been abused, to the great prejudice
and danger of your Majesty, and of all your good subjects. And
because we have reason to believe that those malignant
parties, whose proceedings evidently appear to be mainly for
the advantage and increase of Popery, is composed, set up, and
acted by the subtile practice of the Jesuits and other
engineers and factors for Rome, and to the great danger of
this kingdom, and most grievous affliction of your loyal
subjects, have so far prevailed as to corrupt divers of your
Bishops and others in prime places of the Church, and also to
bring divers of these instruments to be of your Privy Council,
and other employments of trust and nearness about your
Majesty, the Prince, and the rest of your royal children. And
by this means have had such an operation in your counsel and
the most important affairs and proceedings of your government,
that a most dangerous division and chargeable preparation for
war betwixt your kingdoms of England and Scotland, the
increase of jealousies betwixt your Majesty and your most
obedient subjects, the violent distraction and interruption of
this Parliament, the insurrection of the Papists in your
kingdom of Ireland, and bloody massacre of your people, have
been not only endeavoured and attempted, but in a great
measure compassed and effected. For preventing the final
accomplishment whereof, your poor subjects are enforced to
engage their persons and estates to the maintaining of a very
expensive and dangerous war, notwithstanding they have already
since the beginning of this Parliament undergone the charge of
£150,000 sterling, or thereabouts, for the necessary support
and supply of your Majesty in these present and perilous
designs. And because all our most faithful endeavours and
engagements will be ineffectual for the peace, safety and
preservation of your Majesty and your people, if some present,
real and effectual course be not taken for suppressing this
wicked and malignant party:--We, your most humble and obedient
subjects, do with all faithfulness and humility beseech your
Majesty,
1. That you will be graciously pleased to concur with the
humble desires of your people in a parliamentary way, for the
preserving the peace and safety of the kingdom from the
malicious designs of the Popish party:
For depriving the Bishops of their votes in Parliament, and
abridging their immoderate power usurped over the Clergy,
and other your good subjects, which they have perniciously
abused to the hazard of religion, and great prejudice and
oppression of the laws of the kingdom, and just liberty of
your people:
For the taking away such oppressions in religion, Church
government and discipline, as have been brought in and
fomented by them;
For uniting all such your loyal subjects together as join
in the same fundamental truths against the Papists, by
removing some oppressions and unnecessary ceremonies by
which divers weak consciences have been scrupled, and seem
to be divided from the rest, and for the due execution of
those good laws which have been made for securing the
liberty of your subjects.
2. That your Majesty will likewise be pleased to remove from
your council all such as persist to favour and promote any of
those pressures and corruptions wherewith your people have
been grieved, and that for the future your Majesty will
vouchsafe to employ such persons in your great and public
affairs, and to take such to be near you in places of trust,
as your Parliament may have cause to confide in; that in your
princely goodness to your people you will reject and refuse
all mediation and solicitation to the contrary, how powerful
and near soever.
3. That you will be pleased to forbear to alienate any of the
forfeited and escheated lands in Ireland which shall accrue to
your Crown by reason of this rebellion, that out of them the
Crown may be the better supported, and some satisfaction made
to your subjects of this kingdom for the great expenses they
are like to undergo [in] this war. Which humble desires of
ours being graciously fulfilled by your Majesty, we will, by
the blessing and favour of God, most cheerfully undergo the
hazard and expenses of this war, and apply ourselves to such
other courses and counsels as may support your real estate
with honour and plenty at home, with power and reputation
abroad, and by our loyal affections, obedience and service,
lay a sure and lasting foundation of the greatness and
prosperity of your Majesty, and your royal prosperity in
future times.
The Commons in this present Parliament assembled, having with
much earnestness and faithfulness of affection and zeal to the
public good of this kingdom, and His Majesty's honour and
service for the space of twelve months, wrestled with great
dangers and fears, the pressing miseries and calamities, the
various distempers and disorders which had not only assaulted,
but even overwhelmed and extinguished the liberty, peace and
prosperity of this kingdom, the comfort and hopes of all His
Majesty's good subjects, and exceedingly weakened and
undermined the foundation and strength of his own royal
throne, do yet find an abounding malignity and opposition in
those parties and factions who have been the cause of those
evils, and do still labour to cast aspersions upon that which
hath been done, and to raise many difficulties for the
hindrance of that which remains yet undone, and to foment
jealousies between the King and Parliament, that so they may
deprive him and his people of the fruit of his own gracious
intentions, and their humble desires of procuring the public
peace, safety and happiness of this realm. For the preventing
of those miserable effects which such malicious endeavours may
produce, we have thought good to declare the root and the
growth of these mischievous designs: the maturity and ripeness
to which they have attained before the beginning of the
Parliament: the effectual means which have been used for the
extirpation of those dangerous evils, and the progress which
hath therein been made by His Majesty's goodness and the
wisdom of the Parliament: the ways of obstruction and
opposition by which that progress hath been interrupted: the
courses to be taken for the removing those obstacles, and for
the accomplishing of our most dutiful and faithful intentions
and endeavours of restoring and establishing the ancient
honour, greatness and security of this Crown and nation.
{858}
The root of all this mischief we find to be a malignant and
pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and
principles of government, upon which the religion and justice
of this kingdom are firmly established. The actors and
promoters hereof have been:
1. The Jesuited Papists, who hate the laws, as the obstacles
of that change and subversion of religion which they so much
long for.
2. The Bishops, and the corrupt part of the Clergy, who
cherish formality and superstition as the natural effects and
more probable supports of their own ecclesiastical tyranny and
usurpation.
3. Such Councillors and Courtiers as for private ends have
engaged themselves to further the interests of some foreign
princes or states to the prejudice of His Majesty and the
State at home. The common principles by which they moulded and
governed all their particular counsels and actions were these:
First, to maintain continual differences and discontents
between the King and the people, upon questions of prerogative
and liberty, that so they might have the advantage of siding
with him, and under the notions of men addicted to his
service, gain to themselves and their parties the places of
greatest trust and power in the kingdom. A second, to suppress
the purity and power of religion, and such persons as were
best affected to it, as being contrary to their own ends, and
the greatest impediment to that change which they thought to
introduce. A third, to conjoin those parties of the kingdom
which were most propitious to their own ends, and to divide
those who were most opposite, which consisted in many
particular observations. To cherish the Arminian part in those
points wherein they agree with the Papists, to multiply and
enlarge the difference between the common Protestants and
those whom they call Puritans, to introduce and countenance
such opinions and ceremonies as are fittest for accommodation
with Popery, to increase and maintain ignorance, looseness and
profaneness in the people; that of those three parties,
Papists, Arminians and Libertines, they might compose a body
fit to act such counsels and resolutions as were most
conducible to their own ends. A fourth, to disaffect the King
to Parliaments by slander and false imputations, and by
putting him upon other ways of supply, which in show and
appearance were fuller of advantage than the ordinary course
of subsidies, though in truth they brought more loss than gain
both to the King and people, and have caused the great
distractions under which we both suffer. As in all compounded
bodies the operations are qualified according to the
predominant element, so in this mixed party, the Jesuited
counsels, being most active and prevailing, may easily be
discovered to have had the greatest sway in all their
determinations, and if they be not prevented, are likely to
devour the rest, or to turn them into their own nature. In the
beginning of His Majesty's reign the party began to revive and
flourish again, having been somewhat damped by the breach with
Spain in the last year of King James, and by His Majesty's
marriage with France; the interests and counsels of that State
being not so contrary to the good of religion and the
prosperity of this kingdom as those of Spain; and the Papists
of England, having been ever more addicted to Spain than
France, yet they still retained a purpose and resolution to
weaken the Protestant parties in all parts, and even in
France, whereby to make way for the change of religion which
they intended at home.
1. The first effect and evidence of their recovery and
strength was the dissolution of the Parliament at Oxford,
after there had been given two subsidies to His Majesty, and
before they received relief in any one grievance many other
more miserable effects followed.
2. The loss of the Rochel fleet, by the help of our shipping,
set forth and delivered over to the French in opposition to
the advice of Parliament, which left that town without defence
by sea, and made way, not only to the loss of that important
place, but likewise to the loss of all the strength and
security of the Protestant religion in France.
3. The diverting of His Majesty's course of wars from the West
Indies, which was the most facile and hopeful way for this
kingdom to prevail against the Spaniard, to an expenseful and
successless attempt upon Cadiz, which was so ordered as if it
had rather been intended to make us weary of war than to
prosper in it.
4. The precipitate breach with France, by taking their ships
to a great value without making recompense to the English,
whose goods were thereupon imbarred and confiscated in that
kingdom.
5. The peace with Spain without consent of Parliament,
contrary to the promise of King James to both Houses, whereby
the Palatine's cause was deserted and left to chargeable and
hopeless treaties, which for the most part were managed by
those who might justly be suspected to be no friends to that
cause.
6. The charging of the kingdom with billeted soldiers in all
parts of it, and the concomitant design of German horse, that
the land might either submit with fear or be enforced with
rigour to such arbitrary contributions as should be required
of them.
7. The dissolving of the Parliament in the second year of His
Majesty's reign, after a declaration of their intent to grant
five subsidies.
8. The exacting of the like proportion of five subsidies,
after the Parliament dissolved, by commission of loan, and
divers gentlemen and others imprisoned for not yielding to pay
that loan, whereby many of them contracted such sicknesses as
cost them their lives.
9. Great sums of money required and raised by privy seals.
10. An unjust and pernicious attempt to extort great payments
from the subject by way of excise, and a commission issued
under the seal to that purpose.
11. The Petition of Right, which was granted in full
Parliament, blasted, with an illegal declaration to make it
destructive to itself, to the power of Parliament, to the
liberty of the subject, and to that purpose printed with it,
and the Petition made of no use but to show the bold and
presumptuous injustice of such ministers as durst break the
laws and suppress the liberties of the kingdom, after they had
been so solemnly and evidently declared.
12. Another Parliament dissolved 4 Car., the privilege of
Parliament broken, by imprisoning divers members of the House,
detaining them close prisoners for many months together,
without the liberty of using books, pen, ink or paper; denying
them all the comforts of life, all means of preservation of
health, not permitting their wives to come unto them even in
the time of their sickness.
{859}
13. And for the completing of that cruelty, after years spent
in such miserable durance, depriving them of the necessary
means of spiritual consolation, not suffering them to go
abroad to enjoy God's ordinances in God's House, or God's
ministers to come to them to minister comfort to them in their
private chambers.
14. And to keep them still in this oppressed condition, not
admitting them to be bailed according to law, yet vexing them
with informations in inferior courts, sentencing and fining
some of them for matters done in Parliament; and extorting the
payments of those fines from them, enforcing others to put in
security of good behaviour before they could be released.
15. The imprisonment of the rest, which refused to be bound,
still continued, which might have been perpetual if necessity
had not the last year brought another Parliament to relieve
them, of whom one died [Sir John Eliot] by the cruelty and
harshness of his imprisonment, which would admit of no
relaxation, notwithstanding the imminent danger of his life,
did sufficiently appear by the declaration of his physician,
and his release, or at least his refreshment, was sought by
many humble petitions, and his blood still cries either for
vengeance or repentance of those Ministers of State, who have
at once obstructed the course both of His Majesty's justice
and mercy.
16. Upon the dissolution of both these Parliaments, untrue and
scandalous declarations were published to asperse their
proceedings, and some of their members unjustly; to make them
odious, and colour the violence which was used against them;
proclamations set out to the same purpose; and to the great
dejecting of the hearts of the people, forbidding them even to
speak of Parliaments.
17. After the breach of the Parliament in the fourth of His
Majesty, injustice, oppression and violence broke in upon us
without any restraint or moderation, and yet the first project
was the great sums exacted through the whole kingdom for
default of knighthood, which seemed to have some colour and
shadow of a law, yet if it be rightly examined by that
obsolete law which was pretended for it, it will be found to
be against all the rules of justice, both in respect of the
persons charged, the proportion of the fines demanded, and the
absurd and unreasonable manner of their proceedings.
18. Tonnage and Poundage hath been received without colour or
pretence of law; many other heavy impositions continued
against law, and some so unreasonable that the sum of the
charge exceeds the value of the goods.
19. The Book of Rates lately enhanced to a high proportion,
and such merchants that would not submit to their illegal and
unreasonable payments, were vexed and oppressed above measure;
and the ordinary course of justice, the common birthright of
the subject of England, wholly obstructed unto them.
20. And although all this was taken upon pretence of guarding
the seas, yet a new unheard-of tax of ship-money was devised,
and upon the same pretence, by both which there was charged
upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and yet the
merchants have been left so naked to the violence of the
Turkish pirates, that many great ships of value and thousands
of His Majesty's subjects have been taken by them, and do
still remain in miserable slavery.
21. The enlargements of forests, contrary to 'Carta de
Foresta,' and the composition thereupon.
22. The exactions of coat and conduct money and divers other
military charges.
23. The taking away the arms of trained bands of divers
counties.
24. The desperate design of engrossing all the gunpowder into
one hand, keeping it in the Tower of London, and setting so
high a rate upon it that the poorer sort were not able to buy
it, nor could any have it without licence, thereby to leave
the several parts of the kingdom destitute of their necessary
defence, and by selling so dear that which was sold to make an
unlawful advantage of it, to the great charge and detriment of
the subject.
25. The general destruction of the King's timber, especially
that in the Forest of Deane, sold to Papists, which was the
best store-house of this kingdom for the maintenance of our
shipping.
26. The taking away of men's right, under the colour of the
King's title to land, between high and low water marks.
27. The monopolies of soap, salt, wine, leather, sea-coal, and
in a manner of all things of most common and necessary use.
28. The restraint of the liberties of the subjects in their
habitation, trades and other interests.
29. Their vexation and oppression by purveyors, clerks of the
market and saltpetre men.
30. The sale of pretended nuisances, as building in and about
London.
31. Conversion of arable into pasture, continuance of pasture,
under the name of depopulation, have driven many millions out
of the subjects' purses, without any considerable profit to
His Majesty.
32. Large quantities of common and several grounds hath been
taken from the subject by colour of the Statute of
Improvement, and by abuse of the Commission of Sewers, without
their consent, and against it.
33. And not only private interest, but also public faith, have
been broken in seizing of the money and bullion in the mint,
and the whole kingdom like to be robbed at once in that
abominable project of brass money.
34. Great numbers of His Majesty's subjects for refusing those
unlawful charges, have been vexed with long and expensive
suits, some fined and censured, others committed to long and
hard imprisonments and confinements, to the loss of health in
many, of life in some, and others have had their houses broken
up, their goods seized, some have been restrained from their
lawful callings.
35. Ships have been interrupted in their voyages, surprised at
sea in a hostile manner by projectors, as by a common enemy.
36. Merchants prohibited to unlade their goods in such ports
as were for their own advantage, and forced to bring them to
those places which were much for the advantage of the
monopolisers and projectors.
{860}
37. The Court of Star Chamber hath abounded in extravagant
censures, not only for the maintenance and improvement of
monopolies and other unlawful taxes, but for divers other
causes where there hath been no offence, or very small;
whereby His Majesty's subjects have been oppressed by grievous
fines, imprisonments, stigmatisings, mutilations, whippings,
pillories, gags, confinements, banishments; after so rigid a
manner as hath not only deprived men of the society of their
friends, exercise of their professions, comfort of books, use
of paper or ink, but even violated that near union which God
hath established between men and their wives, by forced and
constrained separation, whereby they have been bereaved of the
comfort and conversation one of another for many years
together, without hope of relief, if God had not by His
overruling providence given some interruption to the
prevailing power, and counsel of those who were the authors
and promoters of such peremptory and heady courses.
38. Judges have been put out of their places for refusing to
do against their oaths and consciences; others have been so
awed that they durst not do their duties, and the better to
hold a rod over them, the clause 'Quam diu se bene gesserit'
was left out of their patents, and a new clause 'Durante bene
placito' inserted.
39. Lawyers have been checked for being faithful to their
clients; solicitors and attorneys have been threatened, and
some punished, for following lawful suits. And by this means
all the approaches to justice were interrupted and forecluded.
40. New oaths have been forced upon the subject against law.
41. New judicatories erected without law. The Council Table
have by their orders offered to bind the subjects in their
freeholds, estates, suits and actions.
42. The pretended Court of the Earl Marshal was arbitrary and
illegal in its being and proceedings.
43. The Chancery, Exchequer Chamber, Court of Wards, and other
English Courts, have been grievous in exceeding their
jurisdiction.
44. The estate of many families weakened, and some ruined by
excessive fines, exacted from them for compositions of
wardships.
45. All leases of above a hundred years made to draw on
wardship contrary to law.
46. Undue proceedings used in the finding of offices to make
the jury find for the King.
47. The Common Law Courts, feeling all men more inclined to
seek justice there, where it may be fitted to their own
desire, are known frequently to forsake the rules of the
Common Law, and straying beyond their bounds, under pretence
of equity, to do injustice.
48. Titles of honour, judicial places, sergeantships at law,
and other offices have been sold for great sums of money,
whereby the common justice of the kingdom hath been much
endangered, not only by opening a way of employment in places
of great trust, and advantage to men of weak parts, but also
by giving occasion to bribery, extortion, partiality, it
seldom happening that places ill-gotton are well used.
49. Commissions have been granted for examining the excess of
fees, and when great exactions have been discovered,
compositions have been made with delinquents, not only for the
time past, but likewise for immunity and security in offending
for the time to come, which under colour of remedy hath but
confirmed and increased the grievance to the subject.
50. The usual course of pricking Sheriffs not observed, but
many times Sheriffs made in an extraordinary way, sometimes as
a punishment and charge unto them; sometimes such were pricked
out as would be instruments to execute whatsoever they would
have to be done.
51. The Bishops and the rest of the Clergy did triumph in the
suspensions, ex-communications, deprivations, and degradations
of divers painful, learned and pious ministers, in the
vexation and grievous oppression of great numbers of His
Majesty's good subjects.
52. The High Commission grew to such excess of sharpness and
severity as was not much less than the Romish Inquisition, and
yet in many cases by the Archbishop's power was made much more
heavy, being assisted and strengthened by authority of the
Council Table.
53. The Bishops and their Courts were as eager in the country;
although their jurisdiction could not reach so high in rigour
and extremity of punishment, yet were they no less grievous in
respect of the generality and multiplicity of vexations, which
lighting upon the meaner sort of tradesmen and artificers did
impoverish many thousands.
54. And so afflict and trouble others, that great numbers to
avoid their miseries departed out of the kingdom, some into
New England and other parts of America, others into Holland.
55. Where they have transported their manufactures of cloth,
which is not only a loss by diminishing the present stock of
the kingdom, but a great mischief by impairing and endangering
the loss of that particular trade of clothing, which hath been
a plentiful fountain of wealth and honour to this nation.
56. Those were fittest for ecclesiastical preferment, and
soonest obtained it, who were most officious in promoting
superstition, most virulent in railing against godliness and
honesty.
57. The most public and solemn sermons before His Majesty were
either to advance prerogative above law, and decry the
property of the subject, or full of such kind of invectives.
58. Whereby they might make those odious who sought to
maintain the religion, laws and liberties of the kingdom, and
such men were sure to be weeded out of the commission of the
peace, and out of all other employments of power in the
government of the country.
59. Many noble personages were councillors in name, but the
power and authority remained in a few of such as were most
addicted to this party, whose resolutions and determinations
were brought to the table for countenance and execution, and
not for debate and deliberation, and no man could offer to
oppose them without disgrace and hazard to himself.
60. Nay, all those that did not wholly concur and actively
contribute to the furtherance of their designs, though
otherwise persons of never so great honour and abilities, were
so far from being employed in any place of trust and power,
that they were neglected, discountenanced, and upon all
occasions injured and oppressed.
61. This faction was grown to that height and entireness of
power, that now they began to think of finishing their work,
which consisted of these three parts.
62. I. The government must be set free from all restraint of
laws concerning our persons and estates.
{861}
63. II. There must be a conjunction between Papists and
Protestants in doctrine, discipline and ceremonies; only it
must not yet be called Popery.
64. III. The Puritans, under which name they include all those
that desire to preserve the laws and liberties of the kingdom,
and to maintain religion in the power of it, must be either
rooted out of the kingdom with force, or driven out with fear.