ration going from this house alone, without having desired the lords to join, went but upon one leg, he answered that the matter of this particular declaration was in no respect fit for the lords. Many of the lords were accused in it. It also dealt throughout with subjects which had been agitated only in that house. The assertions made by the same honourable person, that all remonstrances should be addressed to the King, and that their writs of election did not warrant them to send any declarations to the people, were not borne out by the practice. Remonstrances were not in truth directed either to the King or the people, but showed the acts of the House. If it were desired to present the Declaration now before them to the King, it must be done by Petition prefixed to it; and for his own part he inclined that such should be the course. Honourable speakers had complained of a direction to the people in this case, but where was it? Such had not been the purpose, nor was it necessary. It would suffice that its contents should reach the people, and be read by them. And when, by means of the Declaration, it became known throughout England how matters stood, and how the members of the house had been slandered, it would bind and secure to them the people's hearts.

It was late in that November evening before Pym resumed his seat, but candles had been brought long ago, and the debate still went on. Orlando Bridgman, member for Wigan, so soon to be Sir Orlando and law dignitary to the King, rose next from among the group of lawyers seated near Hyde, and questioned Pym's view of the House's right to remonstrate or declare alone. They could only consent, counsel, and petition; and it was expressly said, in the indemnity of the Lords and Commons, that nothing should be reported out of either house, without consent of both houses. As for what had been said of the separatists driven beyond sea, he thought them a condition of men to be taken away, being they were not at all moderate. To the right of approval sought by the House for ever over all counsellors selected by the King, he

objected; and he thought the temporary ground alleged, of the necessity so to obtain security for a proper use of the money to be voted for the affairs of Ireland, a reason too particular to justify so general a demand.

Edmund Waller started up and spoke after Bridgman, and with ingenious and lively turns of expression, as his custom was. He thought the Declaration ill-named, he said. It was aimed more at the future than the past, and expostulated less with what had been done than with what was expected to be done. He thought it should be called, not a Remonstrance, but a Premonstrance. And how unnatural were all such expedients for expressing the will of that House. Laws were the children of the parliament, and it did not become them to destroy their offspring by means of orders and declarations. By what authority, too, did they claim the right to control the King in the choice of his counsellors? Freeholders had power to choose freely the members of the House of Commons to make laws, and yet the King must not choose counsellors to advise according to law without the approbation of the House. In one sense it might indeed be a Remonstrance, but it was a Remonstrance against the laws.

John Hampden now rose. Little remains of what he said, but sufficient proof that he must have spoken, as he did ever, with calm decision, yet with that rare temper universally attributed to him in debate, and which even to a discussion so angry and passionate as this, could bring its portion of affability and courtesy. What were the objections, he asked, to this Declaration? When that House discovered ill counsels, might it not say there were ill counsellors, and complain of them? When any man was accused, might he not say he had done his endeavour? "And," continued the member for Bucks, "we say no "more in this." The party opposed to the members of the house was prevalent, and it was therefore necessary for them to say openly that they had given their best advice. That was declared in the Remonstrance, and no counter remonstrance could come against them, being it was

wholly true. Quiet and merely suggestive, however, as Hampden's general tone in this speech seems to have been, yet at least once, in the course of it, he rose to a higher strain. We have seen that Dering enforced his argument against using the power and revenues of the Bishops in any attempt to strengthen the Church by so giving influence and increase to the general body of the clergy, by remarking that if any man could cut the moon out all into little stars, although the same amount of moon might still remain in small pieces, both light and influence would be gone. Taking up this extravagant illustration, Hampden claimed to apply it differently. He asked the House to remember what authority they had for believing that the stars were more useful to the Church than the moon. And then he quoted from the Book of Revelations the passage' under which the perfect Church, the spouse of Christ, is figured, and warned them that when the woman should be clothed with the sun, the moon would be under her feet, and her head would be circled with stars.

The House had now been sitting, without interval or rest, for a length of time unexampled in any one's experience. It was nearly nine o'clock before Hampden resumed his seat, yet still the cries for adjournment were resisted amid excitement and agitation visibly increasing. D'Ewes had himself left the house soon after four in the afternoon. He foresaw, as he tells us, that the debate in the issue would be long and vehement; and having been informed by Sir Christopher Yelverton, member for Bossiney, that those who wished well to the Declaration did intend to have it pass without the alteration of any one word, he did the rather absent himself ("being also somewhat ill of a cold taken yesterday") because there were some particulars therein which he had formerly spoken against, and could not in his conscience assent unto, although

66

1 "And there appeared a great "wonder in Heaven: A Woman "clothed with the sun, and the

moon under her feet, and upon her "head a crown of twelve stars." Revelations, xii. 1.

otherwise his heart and vote went with it in the main. His relation of what followed in his absence, therefore, was derived by him from other members of the house.

The resolution of which Yelverton informed D'Ewes, though relaxed upon a few points, appears to have been in the main steadily adhered to; and it was this resolved determination to resist all attempts at any material compromise, which tended more than anything else to prolong and exasperate the opposition. Several such attempts were made, but without success. Though verbal changes were assented to, and one clause was omitted,' it may be inferred, from the two divisions which immediately preceded those taken upon the main question, that such few previous changes were not made under the pressure of any adverse vote. The first was upon a proposition by the promoters of the Declaration to remove a clause to which they had found reason to object, and this they carried, in a house of three hundred and ten members, by a majority of sixty-four. The second division, which was taken on the clause avowing the necessity and intention to reduce the exorbitant power of the bishops, ran closer, for, though in the interval, two members only had left the house, the liberal majority was only fourteen.3

2

which the subject is not now to be traced, was probably that to which D'Ewes referred when, after the remark quoted in the text, he added, "But those who desired the declara"tion might pass, were compelled,

contrary to their resolution of which "Sir Christopher Yelverton had in"formed me, to suffer many par"ticulars to be altered, and amongst "the rest that which I could not have "assented unto."

2 Sir Thomas Barrington and Sir John Clotworthy were tellers for the ayes, Sir Frederick Cornwallis (member for Eye in Suffolk) and Mr. Stanhope (member for Tamworth, and fourth son of Lord Chesterfield) for the noes.

3 The numbers were 161 to 147,

Still it sufficed; and no signs of receding were shown. More firmly than ever, therefore, as the night went on, the debate continued to rage; and what remains of the speech of Denzil Holles gives proof of a less tolerant and more defiant temper than any previous speaker had exhibited. He plainly avowed with what belief and expectation he was there to support the Declaration. The kingdom, he said, consisted of three sorts of men, the bad, the good, and the indifferent. The indifferent could turn the scales, and that kind of men it was their hope to satisfy by publishing this Remonstrance. In denial of what had been averred by Culpeper, Bridgman, and other speakers, he declared the House to be expressly empowered, by their writs of election, to do this; and he quoted, in proof, the language of the writ by which they were called ad tractandum de arduis negotiis, &c. As to the ability residing in either branch of the legislature to make declarations without the concurrence of the other, he said that it rested on grounds not to be assailed. The Lords had often made declarations without the Commons, as about the Irish nobility; and the Commons without them, as about the Duke of Buckingham. It had been objected that there were subjects on which they of that house were not entitled to advise his Majesty, but all necessary truths must be told. If kings were misled by their counsellors, the people's representatives may, nay they must, tell them of it. It was a duty which rested within safe limits. They only beseeched the King to choose good counsellors, for against such the House would never except.

Many members rose after Holles, but Speaker Lenthal's eye (a rule of precedence only lately adjudged to be settled)'

Sir Walter Earle and Mr. Arthur Goodwyn (Hampden's colleague in the representation of Bucks) telling for the majority, and Sir F. Cornwallis and Mr. Strangways for the minority.

1 "Then," says D'Ewes (in the course of his note describing the

debate on the Canons, 26th November 1640, after Glyn had done speaking, "long dispute ensued who "should speak, divers stood up, and "at last ruled for Mr. White, and "the Speaker's eye adjudged to be "the rule."