1 strance of eleven, 22; declaration; midnight, when it was adopted by a majority of only eleven Remonvotes. How bitter and serious this first great parliamentary adopted by conflict between the new parties must have been is evidenced majority by the declaration made by Cromwell when he left the house, November that "if the Remonstrance had been rejected, I would have Cromwell's sold all I had next morning, and never have seen England any memorable more; and I know there are many other honest men of this same resolution."2 The royalists, on the other hand, accepted the result in a spirit of defiance which manifested itself when, upon a motion to print the Remonstrance, Mr. Palmer declared, Palmer protested "I protest for myself and all the rest." At this attempt to for himself thwart the will of the majority by the use of tactics employed and "all in the lords but utterly unknown in the commons,3 the house broke into flame, and only the sagacity and calmness of Hampden averted a conflict between the excited antagonists, some of whom "took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts and held them by their pommels in their hands, setting the lower part on the ground." 5 As a rebuke to Palmer for sent to the having asserted the right of protest he was sent to the Tower, Remonand the Remonstrance, after presentation to Charles on the strance Ist of December, was on the 15th ordered to be printed by a be printed. majority of fifty-two votes." the rest;" Tower; ordered to branch to secure abolition of ing clergy Through the adoption of that part of the Remonstrance that Root-andconceded the retention of the bishops with diminished author- faction fail ity, the moderate element of the Puritan party triumphed over the root-and-branch faction within its ranks, which had de- episcopacy; manded the entire abolition of the episcopacy. A bill for the bill excludexclusion of the clergy from secular office, and for shutting from out the bishops from the upper house, which the moderates secular had passed through the commons as an evidence of their good passed intentions, was sent in May, 1641, to the lords, who after con- house and ference finally threw it out on the third reading on the 8th of rejected by June. As further proof of their sincerity, the moderates reintroduced the exclusion bill in the commons on the 21st of 1 See Foster, Grand Remonstrance, p. 316. 2 Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 52. 8 Cf. Foster, Grand Remonstrance, P. 347. 4 Hampden coolly asked Palmer, "how he could know other men's minds?" 5 D'Ewes' Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii. fol. 180. 6 Ibid., Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii. fol. 244 b. 7 In May, 1641, Vane and Cromwell brought in a bill to that end, which was finally dropped. 8 Lords' Journals, vol. iv. pp. 239, 265. office by the the lords; popular demon stration bishops; October, where it was passed two days thereafter and sent to the lords.1 To get rid of the twenty-six solid episcopal votes that stood in the upper house as an obstacle to all church reform now became a matter of such prime importance as to evoke turbulent expressions of public interest. On the 27th of December a mob, composed chiefly of London apprentices, who wore the hair closely cropped to the head, gathered at against the Westminster, where, with cries of "no bishops" no "popish lords," a demonstration was made in which the archbishop was hustled as he passed in and his gown torn. Whereupon Lunsford, recently in command of the Tower, together with a group of officers from the king's disbanded army which the mob found within, drew their swords and drove the intruders into the street, where the conflict continued amid a shower of stones that finally forced the officers to take refuge in Whitehall. In the midst of conflicts such as these two nicknames came into existence which the opposing parties were destined to wear for a long time to come. The Puritan popular party were taunted as "Roundheads," because of the mob of closely heads " and cropped apprentices by which they were surrounded at Westminster, while the royal-episcopal party were in return dubbed as "Cavaliers," because of the soldiers of fortune who gathered around the king as a guard at Whitehall.2 The next day after the affray only two of the bishops were brave enough to take their seats, and eleven of those who thus absented themselves upon the ground that parliament was not free joined Archbishop Williams in a protest, to be presented to the king and the lords, that all laws, orders, votes, resolutions, and determinations made by the upper house during their absence were null and void. So incensed were the peers by this indiscreet act that they at once sent the protest to the commons as an assault upon the very existence of parliament, where, after a motion from Pym to call upon the city to send up its trained impeached bands as a guard, the bishops who had signed the protest were impeached for high treason," and before night ten were in the origin of the names, "Round "Cava liers;" bishops protested that all acts done in their absence were void; for high treason; 1 D'Ewes' Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii. fol. 31 b. 2 Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. x. p. 121; Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iii. p. 211. They asked the king to command that their protest should be entered in the records of the house. Lords' Journals, vol. iv. p. 496. 4 Ibid., vol. iv. p. 496. 5 One member said they were stark mad and should be sent to Bedlam. Tower and two in custody of the Usher of the Black Rod. A few days later Charles was startled by the rumor that the parliamentary leaders would soon strike higher by impeaching impeachthe queen herself as an intriguer with the Irish rebels and a the queen conspirator against the public liberties.1 ment of mooted. attempt on members; of the by the Thus menaced, Henrietta Maria, against whom a serious The case could certainly have been made, nerved Charles, who was the five also urged no doubt by Digby, to the desperate step against her assailants which cost him his crown and his life. On the 3d of January, 1642, the very day upon which the king refused the written request of the commons for a guard,2 the attorney-general, under an order signed by the king's own hand, substance impeached at the bar of the lords for high treason Lord Kim- articles bolton, together with Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazlerigg, and presented Strode, members of the lower house, who were charged gen- attorneygeneral; erally with an attempt to subvert the fundamental laws and government, to deprive the king of his royal power, and to place in subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his majesty's loving people, and specially with the authorship of the Remonstrance, with tampering with the army, with inviting an invasion by the Scots, with an attempt "to subvert the rights and very being of parliaments," and finally with actually having "levied war upon the king." As soon as the charge had been made, the attorney-general, who had followed the course pursued without objection in 1626, in the case of the earl of Bristol, asked for the arrest of those whom he had impeached, and for the appointment of a committee to examine into the accusation against them. When the lords in effect refused the request, when by simply appointing a committee to inquire whether the at- refused torney-general's procedure had been according to law, Charles to order took the extraordinary step of himself issuing a warrant com- the king manding a serjeant-at-arms to make the arrest. Before his issued the arrival the house, which had that very day received the king's refusal to furnish them a guard, sent a message to the city Commons' Journals, vol. ii. p. 363. 1 Clarendon, vol. xv. pp. 154, 280; D'Ewes' Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii. fol. 339. 2 Rushworth, vol. iv. p. 471. 8 Lords' Journals, vol. iv. p. 501. See the copy of the charge, "Articles of treason against Mr. Pym and the rest," taken from the State Papers and printed by Foster, Arrest of the Five Members, p. 114. the lords their arrest, himself warrant ; to deliver serjeant; Charles then make the arrest in person; what occurred in the house January 4, 1642; asking that the trained bands might be made ready for their house failed defence. When the serjeant appeared and made his demand, them to the the house answered that as their privilege was involved a committee would be appointed and a reply made after due consideration, and that in the mean time the gentlemen who had been accused would be ready to answer any legal accusation against them. Thus baffled in his first attempt, Charles, after conresolved to ference that night with his intimates, resolved to go to the house the next day1 in person, and there make the arrest by force, if necessary; and thus, upon a charge based upon his sole authority, and by a warrant for which no minister was responsible, deprive the five members of their legal right to a trial by their peers by dragging them before a tribunal which had no jurisdiction over them. The popular historians have all recounted, with more or less dramatic power, what transpired in the afternoon of that fateful 4th of January when Charles set out from Whitehall with the Elector Palatine at his side and a mob of Cavaliers at his back, intent upon the execution of his purpose at Westminster. There, after commanding his retinue to remain without,2 the king crossed that threshold which none of his predecessors had ever passed, while the earl of Roxburgh leaned against the open door so that the members might see from within what to expect in case of resistance. Taking the speaker's chair, Charles, after comspeaker's plaining of the failure of the house to obey his mandate on the day before, said to them: "You must know that in cases of treason no person hath a privilege; and therefore I am come to know if any of those persons that were accused are here." Failing to detect them with his own eyes, he asked the speaker, "Do you see any of them? Where are they?" Whereupon, Lenthall's Lenthall made the memorable answer: "I have neither eyes reply to his demands; to see, nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and I humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me." Charles took the chair; 1 For a more elaborate statement, see Commons' Journals, January 4; Rushworth, vol. iv. p. 477; Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. x. pp. 129-141; Foster, Arrest of the Five Members, pp. 184 2 About eighty, however, followed him into the lobby, and among them, as D'Ewes tells us, were " divers of the late army in the north, and other desperate ruffians." sees that are flown;" against compared Before his departure from Whitehall the king's secret was known to the queen, who passed it on to Lady Carlisle, who at once conveyed the news to Essex, by whom the five members had been advised to withdraw. Thus baffled, Charles, the king after confessing, "I see all the birds are flown. I do expect "the birds from that you shall send them unto me as soon as they you return hither," passed out of the house "in a more discontented and angry passion than he came in." The real essence of the charge upon which the house had impeached Strafford charge was that he had attempted to assert the sovereignty of the Strafford crown in such a way as to menace the existence of parliament ; with that the real essence of the charge upon which Charles had im- against peached the five members was that they had attempted to members; assert the sovereignty of parliament in such a way as to imperil the existence of the royal authority. As the assertion of these antagonistic views of sovereignty was not within the terms of the statute against treason, and as the conflict which they involved could not be drawn within the jurisdiction of the irreany existing tribunal, the fact was clear that the only arbiter conflict. was the sword. So it may be said that "when Charles and his armed attendants passed through the lobby of the house of commons on the 4th of January, the civil war had substantially begun." 1 the five pressible Thus conscious of the important part which the sword was Struggle destined to play in the settlement of the impending conflict, it control of was natural that both parties should have been eager to clutch the militia; at its possession. The first move in that direction was made in the fall of 1641, when the commons attempted to prevent Charles from raising an army for Ireland by the enactment of an impressment bill, which positively denied the right of the king to force men to perform military service beyond the limits of their own counties, except in the sudden emergency of a foreign invasion. Although it was claimed that that clause, copied verbally from an unrepealed statute of Edward III., heretofore noted,2 took away a prerogative which the crown the had actually enjoyed for more than three centuries, the lords Impresspassed the bill without amendment, and the king approved it approved February, on the 13th of February, 1642, along with the Bishops' Exclu- 1642; 2 See above, p. 197. 1 Foster, Arrest of the Five Members, pp. 376, 377. ment Bill |