no longer possible. When the spiritual basis of co-operation is wanting, a quarrel arises which can be decided by the sword alone. The Impressment Bill again. Dec. 21. The discussions on the Impressment Bill were enough to show that both parties were already clutching at the sword. The day on which the question of protestation was settled in the Commons, Holles carried up to the Lords a declaration that, if they did not give way on the point at issue, the Commons would hold themselves free from responsibility for the blood and misery which The Militia might follow. The next day the Lower House emphasised its warning by reading the Militia Bill for the first time, and by sending up a petition from a asked to send number of Irish Protestants of English birth, setting Ireland. forth in detail the wretched state of Ireland, and urging the Lords to send away with all speed the 10,000 Scots who were but waiting for their word.1 Bill read a first time. The Lords Scots to Lords. The Lords were in a difficulty. They did not wish to curtail the King's prerogative, and to place Ireland in the hands of Reply of the an army of Scottish Presbyterians. They therefore replied by asking the Commons to assure them that if the 10,000 Scots were sent, the 10,000 English should also go. The Commons refused to give any such assurance, as matters stood. Unless the Impressment Bill were passed the English. soldiers could not go. The Lords answered by voting that both the English and the Scottish force should go, whilst they preserved a complete silence on the subject of the Impressment Their decision ascribed to Bill. Outside the House, this decision was set down to the obstinacy of the bishops, and many men bethe bishops. gan to ask one another whether it would be enough to exclude them from the House of Lords. Would it not be better, it was said, to abolish the office entirely ? 3 For the present the removal of the bishops from the House of Lords was the object which the leaders of the Commons had set before themselves as likely to put an end to the 1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 264 b. L. 7. iv. 484. Dec. 24 Dec. 20. the conduct Strong language of antagonism between the Houses. They knew full well what deep roots the ecclesiastical dispute had. The Cormons had been recently engaged in inquiring into the diffiInquiry into culties thrown by the authorities of the City in the of the City way of the petitioners who had asked that the authorities. bishops and the Catholic lords might be deprived of their votes. There was everything to show that the authorities regarded the signature of this petition as a punishable action. Lord Mayor Gurney, who had just received his promised baronetcy, had asserted that the petition 'tended to mutiny,' and that those who signed it Recorder. 'did not know into what danger they fell.' The Recorder, Sir Thomas Gardiner, had taken fire at the statement that the exclusion of the bishops was desired by the Common Council. He swore that this was a lie. The petition, he said, 'did tend to sedition, and to set men together by the ears.' He was answered that it tended to peace. "No!" he burst out, "it is for blood and cutting of throats; and if it come to cutting of throats, thank yourselves, and your blood be upon your own heads." 2 the Lord Mayor and Apparent strength of the Episcopalians. The meaning of this was obvious. The Puritans knew that the forms of the constitution were against them. The Episcopalians had the advantage-so great at the opening of a contest, so absolutely worthless after a contest has proceeded for a little while-of standing on the defensive. Pym and his followers had been reduced to mere protestations which they were powerless to transform into acts. They had discovered that they could not, by their protestations, compel the Lords to do anything whatever to modify the Prayer-book, or even to declare the King incapable of forming an English army on English soil without the consent of Parliament. The obstruction of the Peers seemed likely to leave them masters of the field. Even to petition for a constitutional change was counted as a crime by the Lord Mayor and Recorder of London. Nor was it possible to be certain that even in the City Dec 19. Prophet physical force would be on the side of the Puritans. On the Sunday morning a fanatic who went by the name of Hunt at St. Prophet Hunt, having attempted after the sermon Sepulchre's. was over at St. Sepulchre's, to denounce the Divine vengeance upon an evil generation, was dragged off by the congregation, brought before the Lord Mayor, and committed Attack on Barebone's house. to prison. In the afternoon there was a more serious riot. Praise-God Barebone, a leather-seller, whose remarkable name afterwards brought him to an unlooked for celebrity, lived in Fleet Street near the corner of Fetter Lane. He preached so loudly to a congregation of Separatists which met in his house, as to attract the attention of the passers by. A crowd soon gathered, mainly composed of apprentices, possibly the very lads who had been so noisy at Westminster a few days before. If so, they were quite as ready Barebone to bait a Separatist as to bait a bishop. The house in custody. was stormed, and its sign was unhooked in order to provide a gallows on which to hang the preacher. Fortunately, the constables arrived in time and saved Barebone by carrying off both himself and some of his auditors in custody.1 Difficulties of the Parliamentary leaders. The difficulties thus raised would have been sufficient to try the nerves of the coolest statesman. As matters then stood, it was impossible that the leaders of the Commons should have remained cool. For months they had lived in a heated atmosphere of baffled plots, directed against themselves and the institutions which they firmly believed to be essential to the repose of their beloved country. They had every reason to believe that such a plot was again on foot. Not only the chatter of the antechambers at Whitehall, but the talk of grave divines jike Chillingworth, and of grave lawyers like Holborne, pointed to a conviction that the Crown and the Church were to be saved only by treating Pym and Hampden as Pym and Hampden had treated Strafford. In The Discovery of a Swarm of Separatists, E. 180. Amongst the same collection of pamphlets (E. 138) is a discourse written by Barebone, arguing that it was unnecessary to rebaptize persons who had been baptized under the defection of Antichrist,' and that infant baptism was warrantable. little more than three weeks the absentee members of the Commons might again be seen on the benches of the House. If an Episcopalian majority were the result, Charles would be able to settle the Church as he pleased. There could be little doubt that nothing at all would be done to conciliate the Puritans. The Laudian system would return, not now outside the pale of the law, but sanctioned by the very law itself. The Church system of the Restoration would be anticipated. Yet even this was not the limit of the danger. It was rather against violence than against law that the majority of the Commons sought to provide-violence, it might be, carried out in the name of the law, and executed by troops put in motion at the command of the King. 107 1641. Charles's intentions. CHAPTER CIII. THE ATTEMPT ON THE FIVE MEMBERS. WOULD Charles have patience to wait till January 12 brought back the absentee members? Patience is hardly possible except where a deliberate plan has been formed, and Charles was never capable of forming such a plan. It can hardly be doubted that the idea of bringing the leaders of the Commons before a criminal tribunal, had again and again presented itself to his mind. It was just the sort of act, combining a show of legality with a reality of violence, which would have most readily commended itself to him, and there is every reason to believe that he had sought in Scotland for evidence to convict his political opponents of complicity with the Scottish invasion. But with him it was always one thing to propose a course of action to himself, and another to carry it out. Unless something occurred to force his hand, it was probable that this project would never be pushed on to actual execution, and might share the fate of the two Army Plots, and of the combination with the Irish Lords. Dec. 21. The new Common Council. The That something occurred on December 21. elections to the Common Council took place, accoiding to custom, on that day, and the elections were largely in favour of the Puritan opposition. The constitutional 1 An account is to be found in Somers' Tracts, iv. 588, but I have grave doubts of the truth of the charge that the newly elected councillors came to vote before they were legally qualified to do so. From a pam phlet, An answer to a late . . . pamphlet (E. 135), it would seem that there was raised a question of the treatment of the poor by the old Common Councillors. |