so we can find in America, sometimes, indeed, in a form very shadowy, but sometimes in a form very distinct, the assembly of the people to confer and to speak their own will. It appears vaguely in Virginia, where we have seen a portion of the people cast their votes on county-court day, in the presence of the sheriff, for the burgesses who are to sit at Williamsburg. It appears very definitely in Pennsylvania. Nowhere, probably, was the popular moot utterly unapparent, though in many places no doubt it was greatly attenuated. We shall note hereafter to what extent it has been possible to revive it, and what are its prospects for the future. CHAPTER IX. THE ENGLAND OF CHARLES I. Charles I, 1625. HAVING seen an English-speaking world firmly established in the Western Hemisphere, let us now return to England to watch the fortunes of the stock in the old home. As has been described, an utter subversion of the ancient popular freedom seemed on the point of taking place at the time of the accession of the Stuarts. Under James I, the claims of absolutism, before his time only vaguely set forth, were carefully formulated and published. These claims, Charles I went to work with great energy to make good. At the beginning of 1640, when Charles had been ruling for eleven years without a Parliament, King and people are found Parliament. locked in a fierce wrestle; for the people, roused from an apathy that had lasted since the fall of the Lancastrians, nearly two hundred years before, had been stung into vigorous opposition by the encroachments of tyrannical princes utterly without tact. Charles, at war with the Scotch, upon whom he had undertaken to force a form of worship to the last degree repugnant to them, found his resources Effort of quite inadequate to the situation, even though the judges had sanctioned ship-money, and was forced at last to summon Parliament in hope of a subsidy. The members of this Parliament, the "Short Parliament," took their places upon the benches The Short of Westminster, so long empty, quite Parliament. strange to legislative work. In the long intermission, the longest which had occurred since Parliament began, even methods of procedure had been to a large extent forgotten. There were a few veterans, however, who had fought on the floor of St. Stephen's in the days of Sir John Eliot and the Petition of Right, and these served as instructors. Particularly conspicuous in this capacity were Pym and Hampden. Both Houses were apt pupils. As to what was the right course, neither Lords nor Commons had any doubt; and before three weeks had passed, the King, disheartened at the stern demand for a redress of grievances before a grant of money should be made, put an end to the session. Necessity, however, pressed. His ill-appointed, demoralized forces fled before the Scotch at the skirmish of Newburn, in the summer. No other issue being possible, the writs were issued again, and in November, 1640, convened that memorable Parliament, whose history was not to end until nearly twenty years had passed, the "Long Parliament.” Assembling of the Long Parliament. The temper of the Long Parliament was most stubborn, and it showed from the first the soundest English courage in carrying out its purpose. Before the King could have help from the nation, a number of innovations upon time-honored constitutional ways must come to an end, and a swarm of evil advisers Attempts to restore equilibrium be tween King, Lords, and Commons. must be dismissed and brought to judgment. As yet, there was no whisper of any polity except that which had come up in England in feudal times, in which the people were by no means sovereign as in the AngloSaxon freedom, but stood co-ordinate with the King, and a privileged class, possessing a voice in the gov. ernment, but far from being supreme; in this system, the balance had been disturbed by the effort of the monarch to arrogate all substantial power to himself. Both Houses were equally zealous to restore the ancient equilibrium, lost since the Wars of the Roses. Both Houses were firm in declaring that England must be for Englishmen; foreign money, foreign armies, must play no part in English affairs; above all, the terrible potentate, whose yoke had been thrown off a hundred years before, but who sat forever sleepless upon the distant Seven Hills, was a personage abhorrent. Arrest of At once after the assembling, Laud and Strafford, the leaders of the King's administration, the chief directors of the courts of High Commission and Star Chamber, were taken from the right hand of Charles and thrown into dungeons; while frowns so sinister were bent upon Henrietta, the Catholic Queen, that fears were entertained of her being torn to pieces in the street. Strafford atoned at the block for his effort to play in England the part of a Richelieu; his allies in promoting an arbitrary policy, fled for the most part beyond the sea; Laud, in the Tower, awaited the axe, while the ecclesiasticism of which he had been the type and spokesman was proscribed. The Grand strance. Charles for the time showed prudence: he won friends among the Scotch Covenanters by pretending a spirit of concession; he bent before the storm of reform which raged in his southern kingdom; he appeared on the point of gaining the advantage, for to many in the nation the fierce rush of Parliament toward a new order began to seem extreme and dangerous. The Grand Remonstrance of November, 1641,1 when the Long Parliament (which had Remonextorted from the King authority to sit as long as it should think proper) was just a year old, was a sharp arraignment of the King for his arbitrary policy. It was received with small favor, being carried in Parliament by a bare majority against an opposition so violent that a bloody battle seemed on the point of taking place within the walls of St. Stephen's itself. A reaction had set in which a cunning despot might have used to make his position secure. Fortunately Charles was as stupid as he was stubborn. By violating the most cherished privileges of Parliament in his attempt in January, 1642, to seize within the House of Commons the Five Members, he confirmed in the minds of the people the arrest the Five worst charges that had been brought as to his disposition and purpose, and checked to a large extent the outflow of sympathy which his situation was beginning to evoke. To a large extent, but not entirely; for multitudes, both of high and low degree, who in the time of the demand of ship-money had been glad of the resistance of Hampden, and who more recently had rejoiced when the usher of the Attempt to Members. 1 See "Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, selected and edited by S. R. Gardiner," Clarendon Press, 1889, p. 127. |