has been already said of the opposition raised to certain compliances with popish discipline, may be urged with equal fairness to justify the jealousy with which all the relicks of it's ceremonial were regarded by a party still sore from oppression and insult.

It is idle to contend that the means of persecution which the high church had exercised were now destroyed by the Puritans having become the dominant party in the House of Commons, and by the House of Commons having become, in some respects, the ruling power of the Parliament, and by the Parliament having become strong enough to overawe the Court. All this, doubtless, is true in part; but granting that it were entirely so, how had this popular influence been secured? By calling in the reforming principle to act against church abuses. These abuses were only checked, not crushed, while any political power reconclusion of the memorable passage descriptive of the leaders of the Long Parliament at its opening, (ibid.) deserves notice. The enthusiastick genius of young Vane, extravagant in the ends which he pursued, sagacious and profound in the means which he employed, incited by the appearances of religion, negli'gent of the duties of morality. For the concluding antithesis there is not the slightest justification in fact.

mained with a hierarchy whose intemperance had been inflamed by successful resistance, and whose reign of active persecution was so recent, and still ready, upon any opportunity, to be renewed by the same hands. Hampden had, from the beginning of his publick life, opposed these innovations as a pure and zealous Christian. But, on the principles of civil liberty only, he would have been bound to guard against the revival of the high church ascendency, now half subdued in it's attempts to force free conscience. Archbishop Neile, fortunately for himself, was now dead. Pierce, bishop of Bath and Wells, and Dr. Cozens, dean of Durham, had boldly proceeded to make levies of publick money in those dioceses for the building of high altars, where they had established boys with tapers to serve at the communion, a consecrated knife to cut the sacramental bread, and almost all those outward appearances of a mass which had some years before been introduced with so much scandal at the consecration of St. Paul's, by Laud. Cozens, indeed, had gone so far as to declare that the reformers, when they took away the mass,

had, instead of a reformed, made a deformed ' religion.' He had denied the King's supremacy over the church, saying that the King 'had no more power over the church than the 'boy who rubbed his horse's heels.' And all these doctrines he had made practical by his violent persecution of Smart the prebendary, whose case was just now beginning to be subject of a Parliamentary enquiry, conducted by Hampden. Hampden also undertook the case against Wren, bishop of Ely; and served on the committee of thirty which had been appointed, February 10, to consider the matter of church government†.

On these questions Selden's was a singular course. His great mind, stored with profound learning, and guided by a pure and lofty integrity, was not unfrequently capricious and impracticable in the affairs of a party; sometimes, in spite of his mild and humble temper, sanctioning extreme propositions, and sometimes deviating into scrupulous debates on points of mere form and nicety, little suited

* Parliamentary History.-Rushworth.

For Sir Ralph Verney's account of the proceedings of this Committee, as given in his MS. notes in the possession of Sir Harry Verney, see Appendix B.

to a time when a rapid and determined spirit was so important to the popular cause. On the examinations and report of this committee he took a decided part, denying the sole power of ordination in the bishops, and concurring in the report against their civil jurisdiction. Yet, in the debates on the question of whether the bishops sat in Parliament as barons or as prelates, he gave it as his opinion that they sat as neither, but as representatives of the clergy. This, opening up again the whole question of separate jurisdiction, led to the reply, that the clergy were already represented out of Parliament in convocation, and in the end, tended powerfully to the exclusion of the spiritual Lords from Parliament. Selden afterwards concurred with the leaders in framing the Grand Protestation to maintain the Doctrine of the Church, and the person and authority of the King, privileges of Parliament, and rights of the Subject.

It is not true, as has been insinuated, that the bill to restrain the clergy from the administration of secular affairs had the purpose of debarring Strafford from the assistance of the votes of persons favourable to his cause;

for, astounded at the commitment of Laud, and at the proceedings announced against certain of the judges, and willing to compound with the popular party, the bishops had spontaneously declared that, as spiritual persons, they could take no part in a matter of blood. Besides, Pym, the great author and conductor of the proceedings against the Earl, was but a faint supporter of the bill to restrain the bishops from voting; and, on the further measures for abolishing Episcopacy, he was openly opposed to Hampden, Vane, Hazelrigge, Fiennes, Sir Edward Deering, Harry Martin, and Lord Say, by whom that course was urged in the two houses. Nor can it be at all true, as Lord Clarendon would have it believed upon the alledged authority of Lord Falkland, that some persons, well wishers to the church establishment, were betrayed into voting for the first Bill against the Bishops by false assurances as to the limits at which the attack upon the temporal powers of the church was to stop.

According to Clarendon, Hampden's engagement to Lord Falkland was, that he would proceed no further against the clergy,