commons themselves did not believe the charge, and, with his characteristic warmth, was about to enter on a defence of his conduct. But the most powerful ecclesiastic of the realm was called to order, as the most powerful layman had been some weeks before, and was committed to the custody of the black rod. The accusation presented against him consisted of fourteen articles, and was followed by his removal to the Tower *.

The storm which fell thus violently on the two personages who were regarded as the chief authors of the late disorders in the Windebanke. church and commonwealth, would naturally extend to many subordinate instruments of misrule. Windebanke, secretary of state, was the intimate friend of Laud, and the agent through whom the government had exercised its lenity towards catholics. It was ascertained that more than a hundred priests had been liberated by his order within the last four years. Judging from this fact, he must have dispensed with the laws in favour of the catholic laity in innumerable instances. The offender might have pleaded that in these things he had merely executed the instructions of his sovereign, and that the monarch had repeatedly declared that his servants were not responsible in such cases to any authority apart from his own. But these royal declarations, which no doubt had greatly emboldened the ministers of the crown in their late practices, were not renewed by the king at this juncture, and Windebanke consulted his safety by an immediate escape to the continent +.

Finch.
Dec. 23.

Finch, the lord keeper, had exposed himself to the resentment of the patriots by his zeal in the cause of ship-money, and against him the commons directed the next stroke of their retributive justice. To soften the displeasure of his prosecutors, he descended to the meanest flatteries and entreaties, and despairing of success by such means of defence, he fled to Holland to avoid the consequences of an impeachment. The due appearance of the other judges, nearly the whole of whom had lent their names, if not their judgments, in support of the obnoxious impost, was immediately secured, by binding them each in the sum of ten thousand pounds ‡. Among the earliest acts of this parliament was the vote which released Bastwick, Prynne, and Burton from their confinePrynne, Bast- ment; and those sufferers made their public entry into wick, and Bur- London, followed by five thousand persons, men and women, on horseback, all wearing in their hats bay and rosemary, in token of exultation and triumph. The lords of the commission court, who had passed sentence on these objects of popular sympathy, were now arraigned, and required to pay to Burton

Release of

ton. Nov. 28.

May, Hist. 56. Parl. Hist. ii. 680. Baillie, i. 250. Whitelocke, 39. Land's Troubles, 75. May, 56, 57. Rushworth, iv. 91. May, 57, 58. Rushworth, iv. 123-130, 136, 137, 189.

six thousand pounds, to Prynne and Bastwick five thousand each. Nothing can be said that would justify the language with which these offenders had assailed the ruling clergy. According to Burton, who was not the most extravagant of the three, the prelates were "dumb dogs, anti-Christian mushrooms, ravening wolves, robbers of souls, factors of anti-Christ, and limbs of the beast *."

But if nothing can be said to justify this style of controversy, there are considerations which serve to extenuate it. These hard words should be compared with the unreasonable and violent proceedings which had served in so great a degree to produce them; and it should be recollected that many of the ecclesiastical leaders, both in England and Scotland, were not men who attracted any great respect to their office by the excellence of their personal character. Nor should it be forgotten, that the hard measures to which the prelates resorted for the accomplishment of their objects were often accompanied, even in their case, with the use of language which, if not altogether so violent as that which was sometimes directed against themselves, was quite as reproachful. There was no offence against social order or true religion which had not its place in the court vocabulary of abuse when the puritans were the objects of attack. Hence, while some persons censured the release of Prynne and his brethren, and the expressions of popular feeling which marked their return to the capital, as an insult cast upon the courts of justice, a much greater number applauded what was done as exhibiting the triumph of justice over oppression; and this they did the more freely as the penalties inflicted on these sufferers had been adjudged in the star-chamber, a court the recent proceedings of which had made it the just object of aversion both with the parliament and the people.

commons.

The commons adopted various regulations which proscribed many of the existing monopolies, fixed the boundaries of the royal Important forests, and lessened the evils of purveyance. They also measures abolished the feudal custom of compulsory knighthood, adopted by the and put an end to the practice of impressing men to serve as soldiers in foreign countries, or in Ireland. In an act granting the duties of tonnage and poundage, it was declared to be, and to have long been, the right of the subjects of this realm, that no charge should be laid on merchandise, imported or exported, belonging to natives or aliens, without consent of parliament. In another bill ship-money was declared to be an illegal impost, and the sentence against Hampden by the judges and the barons of the exchequer was reversed f.

But however wise these arrangements may have been, what perma

Rushworth, iii. App. 122-132. May, 53-55. Baillie, i. 218, 222, 227. Rushworth, iv. 19-146, passim, et seq. Clarendon's strong censure of the judges at this time accords but little with the account given in his history of the general character of the king's government from 1629 to 1640. Clarendon, Hist. i. 495-504.

Bill for tri

ments.

nent value could be attached to them so long as the meetings of parliament, whose vigilance alone could secure their being ennial parlia- acted upon, were allowed to depend on the pleasure of the crown? In what manner to provide against this evil, which was generally regarded as a principal source of the late irregularities in the conduct of the government, was a question with which the thoughts of the popular members in both houses were much occupied. It was well known that Charles had learned to "abominate the name" of a parliament, and that it had long been the great object of his policy to substitute in the place of all such assemblies a mere council of state which should be responsible to himself alone. On his disposition and purpose in this respect, his ministers had founded their hope of impunity when violating the laws in obedience to his instructions, and this had rendered them bold in transgression.

Jan. 19.

But a bill was now passed, which required that a new parliament should be convened every third year, and which also provided, that in case the proper authority should neglect to summon such an assembly at the appointed time, the people themselves should be authorized to assemble unbidden, and to choose their representatives. The suspicions implied in this measure had respect in part to the known temper of the present monarch, but still more to that spirit of encroachment which is at all times so natural to the possessors of supreme power. The design of this act was in effect the same with that of the institution of the Ephori in ancient Sparta, and embraced a precaution strictly necessary to every properly balanced constitution. That it would be very unacceptable to the king, and to all persons whose loyalty was but imperfectly influenced by reflection and patriotism, was sufficiently understood; but the popular leaders knew from sad experience, that a periodical appeal to the people was not to be secured by any less decisive measure. Judging, indeed, from the past, they could not have looked even upon such an enactment with perfect confidence: but if, like the Petition of Right, it did not wholly prevent a recurrence of the evils against which it was directed, it would perhaps be found to hasten their extinction by fixing upon them a broader character of illegality. The king gave his consent to this bill with visible reluctance; but the people, on learning that it had become law, kindled bonfires, and exhibited every demonstration of joy *.

Feb. 15.

chamber and high-commission abolished.

The instruments employed with most effect in support of those arbiCourts of star- trary acts which had spread so much alarm and such a sense of injury through the nation, were the courts of starchamber and high-commission. There was little in the civil or ecclesiastical affairs of the community that might not be brought within the cognizance of those tribunals, Parl. Hist. ii. 702, 716.

March 10.

*Rushworth, iii. 1341, 1342; iv. 146-148, 189, 192.

and in the absence of parliaments, their authority, seldom restrained by any just regard to law, was found to be irresistible. But the time had come in which these strong-holds of irregular power were to be assailed and demolished. After a struggle, entered upon by the patriots with a determination to prevail, and resisted for a while, though with small hope of success, by the monarch, those memorable courts fell completely and for ever *.

Contemporaneous with these proceedings were others which bespoke the growing disaffection to the hierarchy, and the rapid Attack on the increase of persons who called for nothing less than the hierarchy. abolition of episcopacy. The boldness which marked the January. language and conduct of this party alarmed the prelates, and was attributed in a great degree to the presence and influence of the Scottish commissioners, who, being now resident in London, preached to large anditories on the Lord's day, and published their opinions with regard to the origin and claims of the episcopal office without the smallest reserve. It now became manifest that there was a large body of persons, both among the laity and clergy, who were desirous of seeing the office of the bishops abolished, while many more proceeded so far in this course as to demand that the authority and the wealth of the prelates should be reduced to much narrower limits. One petition, praying for the extinction of the order, received the signatures of nearly two thousand English clergymen. From a number of counties, petitions on this subject were presented signed by many thousands; some urging that the office of the bishops should be no longer acknowledged, others, and perhaps the greater proportion, imploring a removal of ecclesiastical abuses, and expressing concern that the power of the order, whose ill-regulated zeal had been the occasion of so much evil, might be subject to considerable and well-defined restrictions in future. But many petitioners of the latter description spoke with much earnestness of their anxiety for the preservation of the office itself. In the parliament, Selden, Digby, Faulkland, and Rudyard, distinguished themselves in the cause. of the bishops as an order. In the commons, however, and in the capital, the Presbyterians, or the men whose reformed episcopacy would have approached nearly to the same system, predominated.

nanters had no just notion of religious toleration.

But unhappily, the civil power, which had exerted its strength to destroy the ancient discipline of the Scottish kirk, and to The Coveimpose the customs which were described as the abominations of prelacy in its room, was the agency now chiefly invoked to expel those abominations from both kingdoms, and to enforce an observance of the presbyterian polity. still, in a great measure, to have the place of persuasion; religion was

Force was

The bills which put an end to those courts were drawn up on certain great principles that swept away several tribunals of the same arbitrary character which had long operated as heavy local grievances.-Clarendon, Hist. i. ubi supra.

still to be a state apparatus. Its professors, as heretofore, were to be of one faith and one order. Upon this principle the Covenanters had proceeded in Scotland, and with this temper they would have imbued the minds of their partisans in England; nor did they labour in this vocation without a considerable portion of success. Thus the new order of things was to include all the elements of power, which, in their natural operation, had brought so much disgrace upon the old, and had prepared the way for the overthrow which now awaited it.

But though the presbyter would have set up his own exclusive pretensions in this manner in the place of those which had been so long avowed and acted upon by the bishop, there was some difference between these rival parties. The prelates had become intolerant almost without a cause, while the presbyterians had been driven to the adoption of the exclusive views which they now professed by the arrogance of the claims broached on the part of their opponents, and were prepared to enforce those views with some severity as a natural consequence of the many injuries to which, as a subjugated party, they had long been obliged to submit. It should be added, too, that the ascendency which the episcopal clergy had sought by their subserviency to a corrupt government, accelerating its course toward the most degrading despotism, the presbyterians had contended for on more open ground, appealing to the deliberations of popular assemblies, and to the awards of a constitutional legislature *.

dents.

It was well for both these parties, and for those rights of conscience The Indepen- which are now so happily recognized among us, that there was still another protestant party in the kingdom, rising daily in its influence over the community, and not without its advocates in parliament. This body soon became known under the name of "Independents," or "Congregationalists." Their principles of ecclesiastical polity, which we have stated elsewhere, not only taught that no man should be liable to any civil penalty on account of his religious opinions, but that the sole object of the state in regard to religion is to protect its professors from injury, so long as they are found to conduct themselves as peaceable members of society t. Each church, they inculcated, should consist of a body of persons associated for purposes purely religious, and governed by regulations and sanctions strictly of that character, possessing in themselves all the powers necessary to their own

Ministers who refuse to read the Covenant are called before their presbyteries to hear and see themselves deposed, and all this without warrant. Gentlemen of quality also are refused the benefit of communion for refusing to subscribe the band." Hardwicke Papers, ii. 107. Baillie could see nothing but confusion and ruin to a national church, whose "presbyteries and general assemblies have no power of censure, but only of charitable admonition." Letters, i. 254. At the same time bishop Williams is found complaining that the civil courts were about to leave the ecclesiastical nothing beyond the rusty sword of excommunication. Sce p. 124 of this volume.