If there are sometimes strange panics in the moneymarket, there are also still more unaccountable contrasts, for which there is no name: South Sea Bubbles, Lotteries, Railways, and other stimulants to stagnant wealth; but none of these ever produced such an effect--because none were ever backed by the excitement of party and religious zeal-as this proclamation of the Parliament. The streets became choked with crowds hurrying to the Roundhead receiving-office. Capacious as were the apartments destined to contain the spoil, they were soon glutted: sufficient men could not be found to receive the deposits, and many were obliged to return repeatedly to the hall before they could disengage themselves of their wealth. Not only bullion, plate, and jewels were poured in on the astonished collectors, but the sole wealth of the poorest, especially amongst the women-marriage-rings, thimbles, silver hair-pins, ear-rings; every one wished to identify themselves with the cause.' The golden calf of Aaron never received contributions more various and profuse. Whatever temporal return the citi

and as much contemned and hated afterwards."-Heath's Chronicle, 37.

1 Clarendon's Rebellion, ii. 60. May, Hist. Parl. ii. 196. Guizot, Revolut. ii. 240.

2 "Fuller, (the preacher,) knowing there was no living where the Presbyterian calf was not worshipped, deserted London."Wynstanley (in his Life of Fuller). If the reader thinks this enthusiasm was altogether inspired by an elevated sense of patriotism, he will probably as much err on one side, as he would err on the other, if he supposed it all arose from sordid feelings.

zens expected for their money and their goods, which were taken as coin, no doubt it was considered very secondary to the triumphant sense of helping the "good cause," and promoting the object nearest to their hearts. Violent declamations in Parliament; eager and vehement appeals from the pulpit, and an amazing outpouring of pamphlet eloquence,' sustained this enthusiastic liberality.

Charles immediately attempted to follow this example; but the imitation was far from successful; so Loyal Oxford, however, at the first requisition, sent all her plate, and Cambridge attempted to do so some time afterwards. Many, also, of the gentry of the north sent their plate, with such contributions of money as they could, or could not afford. All this, however, and all other means of raising money, scarcely sufficed to pay the King's small guard and the expenses of his table. The Queen had not yet been able to transmit any of the money she had raised in Holland, so vigilant were the Parliamentary restraints upon her movements.3

A few months later these very citizens were clamouring for Pym's death.

1 "Acres of typography thrillingly alive in every fibre of them."-Carlyle, Cromwell, i. 152.

2 Aug. 15, but was anticipated by Cromwell, who made plunder of it, "to the value of 20,000l. or thereabouts."-Carlyle,

i. 154.

3 We have no estimate, I believe, of what these jewels were worth in money to the King, but they must have been of great value. Charles seems to have had a passion for gems in his more prosperous days. In the Athenæum, No. 573, there is a formidable list of expenses incurred by him for jewellery,

It is difficult to fill up the time, between this and the 22nd of August, by any connected details of action, so minute and numerous were the yet isolated events. Words there were in plenty, but I cannot attempt to introduce the voluminous controversy1 into these already crowded pages. Nevertheless, it is well that the men of the time should speak for themselves, and I gladly offer the two following speeches delivered in Parliament instead of any further comment of my own. The first was spoken by Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Surveyor of his Majesty's Court of Ward and Liveries: yet, on the opening of the Session, he had been the first to denounce the crimes of the Court party, and to expatiate, in his own manly and vigorous style, upon the wrongs of the long-suffering people. He was a type of what an English senator of that, or any

50,000l. worth, or thereabouts, in eighteen months! The greater part of this was for gifts, however. See Forster's Statesmen, iv. 77. Howell tells us, in one of his "Letters" (p. 86), that "Queen Anne hath left a world of brave jewels behind; and though one Piers, an outlandish man, hath run away with many, she has left all to the Prince (Charles the First), and none to the Queen of Bohemia." It seems from Evelyn (v. 28), that " a great collar of rubies" had been disposed of in Holland for the King's necessities so early as 10th September, 1641. The Queen raised, Miss Strickland informs us, 2,000,000l. in one year: but the jewels only sold or were pledged for 253,000 guilders (nearly the same as florins); their "High Mightinesses at Rotterdam" lent her 40,000, and their bank 25,000 florins, the Bank of Amsterdam lent 845,000, and two English merchants at the Hague 166,000. All this only amounts to 1,329,000, guilders, or about 106,000l.

"Those [publications] on the King's side were temperate and constitutional, and as superior to those on the opposite side in argument as they were in eloquence."-Hallam, Const. Hist.

other age, should be; calm, wise, dispassionate, benevolent; possessed of a lofty sense of courage and honour that never required exhibition, and that never suffered doubt. Thus he spake on the 9th of July 1642, and his words are well worthy to be laid to heart after two hundred years.

MR. SPEAKER,

In the way we are, we have gone as far as words can carry us we have voted our own rights, and the King's duty. No doubt there is a relative duty between a king and his subjects; obedience from a subject to a king, protection from a king to his people. The present unhappy distance between his Majesty and the Parliament makes the whole kingdom stand amazed, in a fearful expectation of dismal calamities to fall upon it. It deeply and conscionably concerns this House to compose and settle these threatening, ruining distractions. Mr. Speaker, I am touched, I am pierced with an apprehension of the honour of the House, and success of this Parliament. The best way to give a stop to these desperate imminent mischiefs is, to make a fair way, for the King's return hither, it will likewise give best satisfaction to the people, and will be our best justification. Mr. Speaker, that we may better consider the condition we are now in, let us set ourselves three years back. If any man then could have credibly told us that, within three years, the Queen shall be gone out of England into the Low Countries for any cause whatsoever; the King shall remove from his Parliament, from London to York, declaring himself not to be safe here; that there shall be a total rebellion in Ireland, such discords and distempers both in Church and State here, as now we find; certainly we should have trembled at the thought of it: wherefore it is fit we should be sensible now we are in it. On the other side, if a man then could

have credibly told us that within three years ye shall have a Parliament, it would have been good news; that shipmoney shall be taken away by an Act of Parliament, the reasons and grounds of it so rooted out, as that neither it, nor anything like it, can ever grow up again; that monopolies, the High-Commission Courts, the Star Chamber, the bishops' votes, shall be taken away; the council-table regulated and restrained, the forests bounded and limited; that ye shall have a triennial Parliament, and, more than that, a perpetual Parliament, which none shall have power to dissolve without yourselves, we should have thought this a dream of happiness: yet, now we are in the real possession of it, we do not enjoy it, although his majesty hath promised and published he will make all this good to us. We stand chiefly upon further security, whereas the very having these things is a convenient, fair security, mutually securing one another; there is more security offered even in this last answer of the King's, by removing the personal votes of popish lords, and by the better education of papists' children, by supplying the defects of laws against recusants, besides what else may be enlarged and improved by a select committee of both Houses, named for that purpose. Wherefore, sir, let us beware we do not contend for such a hazardous, unsafe security, as may endanger the loss of what we have already; let us not think we have nothing, because we have not all we desire, and though we had, yet we cannot make a mathematical security. All human caution is susceptible of corruption and failing. God's providence will not be bound: success must be his. He that observes the wind and rain shall neither sow nor reap; if he do nothing till he can secure the weather, he will have but an ill harvest. Mr. Speaker, it now behoves us to call up all the wisdom we have about us, for we are at the very brink of combustion and confusion. If blood once begin to touch blood, we shall presently fall into a certain