before any important business had been finished, before even the vote for a supply had been passed into a law.

There was an interval of two years before the assembling of another parliament. In this interval the king made some experiment of the new counsels which he had threatened. Various irregular and arbitrary measures were employed to provide a revenue. These were of course unpopular, and were pursued with characteristic inefficiency, till, by the event of a battle on the continent, a new emergency arose in the king's affairs. Then, the want of money in the treasury having become more pressing, and the insufficiency of halfway measures more glaring than ever, an act of council was passed, and duly promulgated, demanding of each subject just what he would have paid had the proposed supply been granted by the parliament. The people, however, were informed, for their satisfaction, that the sums exacted were to be called loans, and not taxes. To enforce the payment of this revenue, soldiers were quartered upon the refractory; and he who declined lending his money to the king, found that refusal was likely to cost more than submission. Those who went so far as to persuade or encourage others to refuse, were thrown into prison. Appeal was made to the law against such invasion of personal liberty; but the courts of justice, newly organized by the king to meet the emergency, refused to sustain the appeal.

At the same time, that usurpation might not want the sanctions. of religion, the court clergy were employed to aid these despotic proceedings, by preaching up the duty of passive obedience, and the divine right of kings to govern without check or responsibility. Among these, one Dr. Sibthorp became distinguished by circumstances. Having preached, on some public occasion, a sermon full of the court doctrine, he dedicated it to the king, and carried it to archbishop Abbot to be licensed for the press. The good old primate, who was half a Puritan, and altogether a Protestant, refused to sanction such doctrine, and was therefore suspended from the functions of his office, and compelled to retire in disgrace to a country residence. Another of these preachers, Dr. Manwaring, was distinguished still more, not only by the boldness with which he carried out his principles, but by the favor with which he was regarded by the court. In two sermons preached before the king, and published by the king's command, he taught, among other matters, as follows-"The king is not bound to observe the laws of the realm concerning the subject's rights and liberties, but his royal will and pleasure, in imposing taxes without consent of parliament, doth oblige the subject's conscience on pain of damnation." These were the doctrines which the dominant party in the church took pains to propagate in that day of usurpation and national danger.

While the nation was in this state of angry and growing excite ment, the king-as if a war with the house of Austria, which then governed both Spain and Germany, were not embarrassment enough -engaged in a new war with France, merely to gratify the caprice and passion of his favorite. One expedition was fitted out under the command of Buckingham, which speedily terminated in disas ter and shame. Nothing now remained for the baffled monarch, but to try once more the expedient of calling the great council of the kingdom.

The third parliament of this reign accordingly met in March, 1628. At the opening of this parliament, the king, instead of making an acknowledgment of his past errors, or any promise of a more liberal and legal administration in future, boldly declared, as if the absolute power at which he was aiming were already consolidated, that, if they failed in their duty of providing for the necessities of the state," he must, in discharge of his conscience, use those other means which God had put into his hands." And the same claims of power were advanced under his direction, in language still more direct and offensive, by some of his ministers. Thus evident was it that the king, nothing wiser by experience, was still bent on changing the constitution of the kingdom, and removing every limitation of his power. In these circumstances, the parliament conducted themselves with a deliberate and prudent firmness, which deserves the highest admiration. They began by voting a supply, which Charles himself, moved to tears by a liberality almost unexpected, acknowledged to be ample; but they wisely refused to pass their vote into a law, till the king, after much reluctance, and many a pitiful evasion, had given his unqualified assent to a bill called the "petition of right," which they had framed with reference to the late arbitrary measures of the court, in the hope of securing in future the ancient privileges of Englishmen. But while Buckingham retained his ascendency, they could feel no security. They went on with the investigation of abuses, and soon presented a remonstrance recapitulating the public grievances and national disasters of the reign, and ascribing them all to the mismanagement of Buckingham. As they were proceeding in another remonstrance, the session was suddenly closed by a prorogation.

In one particular, of no great moment in itself, but worthy to be noticed, on account of its significance, the court, immediately after this prorogation, showed its contempt for the voice of parliament, and its persevering and daring adherence to the principles of despotism. The lords, on the impeachment of the commons, had condemned Dr. Manwaring, for his sermons above mentioned, to be imprisoned during the pleasure of the house, to be fined a thou

sand pounds, to make submission and acknowledgment, to be suspended three years, and to be incapable of holding any ecclesiasti cal dignity, or secular office. As soon as the session was closed, the condemned criminal was not only pardoned by the king, but, as if he had earned a reward, was preferred to a valuable living, and a few years afterwards raised to a bishopric. About the same time, Sibthorp received a similar reward; and Montague, another preacher and author of the same school, who, like Manwaring, was under the censure of parliament, was elevated to a seat among the bishops. Demonstration was thus afforded, that the king, after all his concessions, was still in principle a despot.

Not long after the prorogation of the parliament, all further proceedings against Buckingham, and all his schemes of mischief, were arrested by the dagger of an insane assassin. From this time, the prime minister, in church and in state, was William Laud, then bishop of London, and soon afterwards archbishop of Canterbury.

When the parliament came together according to prorogation, early in the following year, (1629,) they found new evidence of the king's unfaithfulness-evidence which must have wrought in many a mind the conviction that no confidence could be reposed in either his concessions or his promises. Not only had unauthorized taxes been levied, and illegal punishments been inflicted, as before, but the all-important petition of right, as published by au thority, instead of bearing that unqualified royal assent which made it a law, had, annexed to it, only an evasive and unmeaning answer from the king, which the parliament had refused to acknowledge as satisfactory. By such treacheries, so weak, so profligate, so contemptible, did this ill-starred monarch forfeit the confidence of his people, and make his own ruin inevitable. After all that had now been developed, what cordiality or co-operation could there be between the king and the parliament? Whatever followed was only the necessary result of what had gone before. The king was determined, and so were the people. The king was determined to be independent and absolute. The people were determined to submit to no authority but that which was lawful. The result could not have been avoided but by the people's abandoning their rights, and lying down to be trodden into the earth by the iron hoof of usurpation, or by the king's abandoning his principles, and becoming, what so few kings have ever been, a plain and honest lover of his country.

A bill had been introduced into the house of commons, for granting to the king, what he had levied from the beginning of his reign without law, and against many complaints both of parliament and of people, the customary taxes on commerce. But

before passing the bill, the house, for the sake of securing an important principle, insisted that the unauthorized collection of this revenue should cease. This the king refused; and his customhouse officers proceeded with their collections. The officers were summoned to the bar of the house; but the king sent a message to the commons, implying that he was responsible for the acts complained of. The house were still bent on proceeding; but the speaker, having received orders from the king, refused to put the question. A short protestation was framed and passed by acclamation, while the speaker was forcibly detained in the chair; and the house was then adjourned by the king's authority. Immediately afterwards, the parliament was dissolved. And soon a proclamation was published, in which the king very clearly avowed his intention to have no more to do with parliaments for the present.

For the twelve succeeding years, Charles reigned, very much as he had always been trying to reign, the absolute monarch. Under this new constitution, as it might be called, the Council was the legislative, and the Star Chamber and High Commission were the most important branches of the judiciary. The king's proclamations and orders in council were the law of the land. By this authority, not only the ancient taxes of tonnage and poundage, against which parliament had protested, were continued, but new imposts were collected. Under the name of ship-money, direct taxes were levied for the support of the navy. Numerous and odious monopolies were erected; and other measures for providing a revenue were resorted to. For every disobedience to the law enacted at the council-table, the offender was liable to be tried before the same persons assembled in the star chamber, and to be punished with fine, imprisonment, pillory, or mutilation, at the discretion of the court. The fines imposed by this court seem to have been no inconsiderable part of the ways and means. The high commission was an ecclesiastical court erected on the basis of the

king's supremacy, which, contrary to acts of parliament and judicial sentences, had usurped the power of fining, imprisoning, and inflicting corporal punishment for ecclesiastical offenses. It was during this twelve years' despotism that those Puritans fled from England, who settled the New England colonies. Four thousand persons became voluntary exiles, rather than submit to the system which then prevailed in the church and state. Some indication of the character and standing of these exiles is afforded by the fact that their removal is supposed to have drawn from the kingdom money to the amount of four or five hundred thousand pounds.

All this apparatus of despotism was under the control of Laud;

and he employed it all, with the zeal of a fanatic, to root out Puritanism, and to promote those Popish principles and practices with which (though himself an enemy to the court of Rome) he was so enamored. The mind of Charles was one of that class to which such notions are most congenial. He verily thought, as Laud did, that a Puritan was far worse than a Papist; and that, among all the errors of the church of Rome, there was not one so deadly as the error of supposing that there might be a true church without prelates or priestly vestments, and without liturgy or pompous ceremonies. It was therefore no difficult matter for the primate to persuade the monarch that he would be doing God service by stretching his prerogative to introduce into Scotland, not only the entire hierarchy, but the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England. The insane attempt roused that jealous and turbulent people to rebellion. A solemn covenant for mutual defence and support, and for the entire reformation of their national church from Popery and prelacy, was subscribed with oaths by willing thousands, and proved a bond of union which all the art and power of the English court were unable to dissolve. The king, having accumulated from the surplus of illegal taxation a treasure of two hundred thousand pounds, raised an army to reduce the Covenanters to obedience. The queen, at the same time, made an appeal to the Catholics of England for help in this emergency; and they came forward with abundant free-will offerings, thus helping to fix the impression on the public mind, that the question to be decided by arms, was in fact the question between Protestantism on the one hand, and a return to Popery on the other.

One grand infirmity in Charles's character was an extreme obsti nacy of purpose, conjoined with the utmost vacillation of conduct; and never, perhaps, was that infirmity more strikingly exhibited than in his management at this crisis. The enterprise of forcing English uniformity on the Presbyterians of Scotland, was one of which he might have said beforehand, "The attempt, and not the deed, confounds us;" and had he been endowed with the talent, as he was impelled by the spirit of usurpation, he would have seen that, if once embarked on such a project, he had no alternative but success or ruin. Having made great preparation, he marched in person, at the head of a numerous army, to the Scottish frontier. There, without hazarding a single action, he made a treaty with the Covenanters, in which he yielded nearly every thing they could ask for; and at once disbanded his army. Then, suddenly, when he began to feel the operation of his own concessions, he recommenced hostilities without an army, and without the means of raising one, his last resources having been expended in the previous operations.