own hands. At Pym's motion, two members, who happened to be justices of the peace for Westminster, were directed to set a watch. The House thus put itself under the protection of the local authorities. The Lords protest against tumultuous The Lords were less anxious to be safely guarded against the King's designs; but they applied to the Commons to join them in a declaration prohibiting assemblies. the concourse of armed multitudes at Westminster.' Amidst fears and menaces on every side, a deputation from the Commons carried the Remonstrance to the King at Hampton Court. In a petition which accompanied it Charles was warned against the designs of the corrupt and ill-affected party, which was aiming at the alteration of religion and government. Dec. 1. The Remonstrance taken to the King with an accompany He was ing petition. asked to concur in legislation aimed at the exclusion of the bishops from Parliament, and at the removal of the abuses which had been fomented by them. In this way he would unite together all such as joined 'in the same fundamental truths against the Papists, by removing some oppressions and unnecessary ceremonies by which divers weak consciences' had been scrupled and seemed to be divided from the rest.' The demand for counsellors agreeable to Parliament was renewed, and to it was added a special request that Charles would abstain from granting away any forfeited lands in Ireland, in order that they might serve as the basis of a fund to be applied to the expenses of the war.2 Its reception his ears. Charles was in high spirits when this petition was read in He criticised its weak points, jeered at the by the King. notion that anyone had advised him to change religion, replied to the claim about Ireland that it would not be C. F. ii. 327. 'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 201. L. J. iv. 329. The words of the Venetiar. ambassador show how completely sovereignty was at issue. The removal of the guard he says, 'porge inditio che cessato loro l'appoggio delle armi Scocesi, e le speranze di esser spallegiati da questa Città, sian per ridursi anco li più ostinati nei debiti della prima modestia e possa S. Mtà ripigliare il giusto possesso dell' autorità goduta da predecessori suoi.'-Giustinian to the Doge, Dec. 3, Ven. Transcripts, R. O. 2 Rushworth, iv. 437. 13' well to sell the bear's skin before it was dead, and, after trying in vain to extract from the deputation an engagement that the Remonstrance should not be published, dismissed them with the promise that he would give an answer after he had taken time for consideration. There can be little doubt that Charles had made up his mind to resist, and that he fully expected that resistance would be successful. The day after the Remonstrance had The King's been handed over to him he came to Westminster Dec. 2. speech. to give the royal assent to a Bill for the renewal of tonnage and poundage for three months. In the presence of the two Houses, he spoke scornfully of the misplaced alarm under which the Commons were suffering, and after an allusion to his joyful reception: in the City, he expressed a hope that his presence would dispel all their fears. He was resolved not only to maintain all the acts of the existing Parliament, but to 'grant what else can be justly desired in point of liberties or in maintenance of the true religion that is here established.' He then announced that commissioners had arrived from Scotland to treat about the relief of Ireland, and expressed a hope that in this matter there would be no delay.1 Charles's position of The position of legal resistance to violent change was the strongest which Charles could possibly assume now, as it had been the strongest which he could possibly have assumed in the days of Strafford's trial. Unforturesistance. nately to maintain it, now as then, required a stronger will and a more masterful temper than was ever at his disposal. Now as then, the rash eagerness of his wife, and the passionate zeal of heated partisans, would see in the tumultuous gatherings of the crowd at Westminster, a provocation to be met by an appeal to violence, instead of a call to the most scrupulous abstention from every indication of a readiness to resort to the use of force. Yet even with every wish to remain on constitutional ground, it is hardly likely that Charles would have been a match for Pym. He had played too long with the wild machinations of the Queen to gain credit for a resolution to abide even by 1 L. F. iv. 459. that system of passive resistance which was, after all, the dearest to his heart. The majority of the Commons were sore at the treatment which the Remonstrance had received at the King's hands on the preceding day, and at the language which had just been addressed to them from the throne in the House of Lords. They felt no inclination to accept Charles's promise to grant 'what else can be justly desired" as a sufficient guarantee that his future action would be more in accordance with their wishes than his past conduct had been. Above all, the conduct of Dorset irritated and alarmed them. That and not the King's address was the first object of their thoughts. The House left the Royal presence to wrangle over the question whether Dorset or the crowd had been to blame.' Disinterested lookers-on saw that, whichever might be to blame, parties were too inflamed to settle down in peace. "Within ten days," wrote the French ambassador, 66 one side or the other will suffer a reverse." 2 Dec. 3. The events which were thus rapidly unfolding themselves have afforded a favourite battle-field to constitutional lawyers and historians. On the one hand, it is easy to show Constitu- that the King, ostensibly at least, was standing on the tional questions raised. defensive, and that the sovereignty claimed by the House of Commons had never been theirs, and, in the unlimited form in which they claimed it, never ought to be theirs. On the other hand, it is equally easy to show that the past history of the King's relations with the Parliament had not been such as to invite confidence in the future, and that his defensive position involved an aggression of a very practical kind, because the existing law, if it were to be enforced as Charles would legally be justified in enforcing it, condemned the ecclesiastical practices dear to the hearts of a large proportion of religious Englishmen Why it is to absolute extinction. Yet, after all has been said, better to it is more than doubtful whether the ink which has pass them by. been employed upon this argument has not been absolutely thrown away. Constitutional rules are good because 'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 205. 2 La Ferté's despatch, Dec. 2, Arch. des Aff. Étr. xlviii. fol. 430. they enforce the application of the laws by which healthy societies are governed to the details of political life in which the passions of the actors are most hotly stirred; but they cannot be made applicable to a society in which the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. The daily food of the constitution cannot be its medicine. Law and liberty, kings and parliaments, are available to a society which, in spite of wide differences of opinion and character, is in substantial unity with itself. When that unity has departed, when religious and political factions glare at one another with angry eyes, the one thing needful is not to walk in the paths of the constitution, but to restore unity. No doubt, Pym and Hyde would have agreed upon the necessity of restoring unity, but each wanted to restore it by the simple process of suppressing the religion of the other Not thus could a new order be evolved out of the ruins of the old. Religious antipathies will never bow their head before the mere remedy of force. It is only in the presence of some higher and more ennobling spiritual idea that they will sink abashed to the ground. In Elizabeth's days theological strife had been smoothed away before the common thought of patriotism in the face of the invader and the assassin. England was not in such danger now, and she needed a grander and more universal thought than patriotism, to reconcile the foes upon her soil. Because she had not yet wholly given her heart to the spirit of liberty, nor had welcomed the all-conquering charity which clears the eye and shakes the sword from the hand, therefore she was now entering into that valley of the shadow of death in which brother was to smite down brother in his blindness. land. If, in the darkness, Englishman could not discern the face of Englishman, how could it be hoped that he would discern the face of the Irish Celt? His rebellion and cruelty Bearing of Irish affairs had left no room, if there had been room before, for upon Engany remembrance of the wrongs which he had suffered. There was no thought at Westminster of the employment of any remedy in Ireland save that of force alone. And yet, as the conflict grew visibly nearer in England, the force which it would be necessary to use beyond the sea would be a danger in Eng. land as well as in Ireland. On December 3 news arrived which Nov. 25. Sir Phelim O'Neill declares that he had been acting by brought this home to every man. Sir Phelim O'Neill had taken Armagh. The English prisoners had been stripped naked and bound hand and foot. O'Neill had exhibited a commission under the Broad Seal of England by which he said that he was authorised by the King's orders. the King to restore the Roman religion in Ireland.'1 Such was the tale brought by a prisoner who had been allowed to escape. A later and better authenticated story told how the commission produced was under the Great Seal of Scotland, and that it was affixed to a document purporting to proceed from Charles himself, and empowering all Irish Catholics to rise in defence of the King's person, to attack all castles and forts, and to 'seize the goods, estates, and persons of all the English Protestants.' That this document was forged there can be no doubt whatever; but it does not follow that it was not forged upon the lines of a real document sent from Edinburgh by the King to the Catholic Lords, authorising them to seize the forts and to use them against the English Parliament.2 I D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. 207 b. 2 It is printed in Rushworth, iv. 402. The internal evidence of the forgery is complete, as Charles would never have spoken of Protestants disparagingly. He would have said Puritans. See, too, the evidence in Nalson, ii. 529. Dr. Burton (Hist. of Scotland, vii. 160) wrote thus :-"When we find the document thus treated as an evident fabrication, there arises an obvious question-If there was a forgery for the purpose of creating a temporary delusion, why was it not in the name of the English Government, and under the great seal of England? As a warrant of sovereignty the great seal of Scotland was nothing in Ireland. If it was that only an impression of the great seal of Scotland was available, and that was considered better than no seal, the accident, when connected with what has yet to be told, is one of the strangest that ever happened. The author of a pamphlet which was published two years later, and obtained great notoriety, gave currency to the following rumour :— "It is said that this commission was signed with the broad seal of that kingdom, being not then settled in the hands of any officer who could be answerable for the use of it, but during the vacancy of the Chancellor's place entrusted with the Marquis Hamilton, and by him with one Mr. John Hamilton, the scribe of the cross-petitioners in Scotland, and sometimes under the care of Master Endymion Porter, a very fit opportunity for such a clandestine transaction.' |