then let them go to the King; having first put their Declaration before the people, which would enable them to see where the obstructions lay. "We may have our "part in the misery occasioned," he said, "let us be “careful that we have no part in the guilt or the dis"honour." He further threw out the suggestion that since the Lords possessed the undoubted right to protest in their individual capacity, and were not constitutionally involved by the major part, it would be well that they should take those protesting Lords with them, and represent jointly to the King the causes of obstruction. A proposal which called forth instantly a retort from the quarter where Hyde's party sat; for up sprang Mr. Francis Godolphin, Edmund Waller's colleague in the representation of St. Ives, and asked Mr. Speaker to inform him, whether, if the majority of that House went to the King with the lesser part of the Lords, the greater part of the Lords might not go to the King "with the lesser part of us." tion was startling, and he to make due submission for 66 "doubt not but our proceedings will I am I now come to a conclusion. nothing to propound to your Lordships by way of regret or desire "from the House of Commons. "doubt not but your judgments will Your "tell you what is to be done. 66 consciences, your honours, your "interests, will call upon you for the "doing of it. The Commons will be "glad to have your concurrence and 66 help in saving of the kingdom; but "if they fail of it, it shall not dis66 courage them in doing their duty. "And whether the kingdom be lost or saved, (I hope, through God's "blessing, it will be saved!) they "shall be sorry that the story of "this present parliament should tell Mr. Godolphin's sugges was reprimanded and had it; but nothing could more 1 posterity, that in so great a danger "and extremity the House of Commons should be enforced to save "the kingdom alone, and that the "Peers should have no part in the "honour of the preservation of it; "having so great an interest in the good success of those endeavours, "in respect of their great estates and "high degrees of nobility." 66 1 "Ordered that on Tuesday next "the House shall take into considera"tion the offence now given by words "spoken by Mr. Godolphin."-Commons' Journals, 3rd Dec. The offence is not further specified. On the Tuesday named, an order appears "that the "House do take into consideration, on "Thursday next, such words spoken perfectly have revealed all that at this time filled the minds and hopes of the King and his friends. And if the right blow could only be aimed, at the right time, against the leaders of the Commons, the way to its accomplishment seemed not remote. That was on Friday the 3d. On Monday the 6th, Cromwell brought forward a case of interference by a peer with House of Commons privileges, which had no tendency to abate the prevailing excitement. He charged Lord Arundel with having sought unduly to influence and intimidate burgesses of the borough of Arundel in regard to new elections. This appears to have raised an animated debate, in the course of which a doctrine laid down by Hyde and Culpeper, to the effect that Lords might "write "commendatory letters" during the progress of an election, was somewhat roughly handled. But Tuesday the 7th saw a still more startling proposition launched from the other side a proposition so notable indeed, that Clarendon in his History is disposed to single it out, and set it apart, as the sole cause and ground of all the mischiefs which ensued. Nevertheless it will probably seem to us, after watching the course of events immediately before and since the return of the King, but as an advance or step, hardly avoidable, in the hazardous path which had been entered. The necessity of greatly increasing the forces of the realm was not more obvious, than the danger of entrusting to an executive in whom no confidence was placed, the uncontrolled power of disposing those forces. The disaffected spirit of the army, as now officered, and in the midst of a frightful rebellion raging in one of the three kingdoms, was no longer matter of doubt. Irrefragable proofs of the second army plot had been completed; and resolutions were at this time prepared, to take effect on the day after that to which my narrative has arrived, disabling four of those officers, men high in (the 16th), occurred the King's great breach of privilege in taking notice of a Bill while in progress, and the matter was again deferred. I have the King's confidence and to whom he afterwards gave peerages, from their seats in the lower house as guilty of misprision of treason; by name Wilmot, Pollard, Ashburnham, and Piercy, members for Tamworth, Beeralston, Ludgershall (Wilts), and Northumberland. The distrust felt by the Commons on the King's removal of their guard, the resolutions as to the defence of the kingdom which they passed on that troubled Saturday after his return, and the incident now to be related, receive only their full explanation from keeping such facts in view. On Tuesday, the 7th of December, Sir Arthur Haselrig rose in his usual place in the gallery of the house, and presented a Bill for settling the militia of the kingdom by sea and land, under a Lord General and a High Admiral, to whom it gave great powers to raise and levy forces. It was styled An Act for the making of (Blank) Lord General of all the Forces within the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, and (Blank) Lord High Admiral of England. Clarendon says that this bill had been privately prepared by the King's solicitor, St. John; and that his influence as a lawyer, on his declaring the existing law to have been so unsettled by disabling votes of the two houses that a special enactment was become absolutely necessary, mainly led to the bill being permitted to be read. But while his statements here are to be taken with even more than the usual caution,' it is to be 1 Perhaps no more remarkable warning could be given of the scrupulous care with which Clarendon's History should be read, and of the danger of trusting to its statements even where there is no suspicion of bad faith, than is afforded by his account of the first introduction of this Bill for putting the power of the militia substantially into the hands of the House of Commons. In his Fourth Book (ii. 76), speaking of the exact period to which my text refers, he says that there was "at this time, 66 or thereabout," a debate started in the house, as if by mere chance, SO remarked that D'Ewes, while he says nothing absolutely inconsistent therewith, does not expressly confirm them; 66 an insurrection or rebellion, if it "should be attempted." He goes on to say that the House kept a long silence after the motion, the newness of it amazing (until the edition of 1826, this word had been printed "amusing") most men, and few in truth understanding the meaning of it; until sundry other members, not among the leading men, appeared to be so moved by the weight of what had been said, that it grew to the proposition of a committee for preparing such a bill, whereupon Mr. Hyde so strongly opposed it as encroaching on the royal prerogative, that the House appeared satisfied to take up another subject: when the king's solicitor, St. John, "and the 66 only man in the house of his learned "council," got up and questioned Mr. Hyde's law, observing that the question was not about taking away power from the King (which it was his duty always to oppose), but to inquire if the sufficient and necessary power existed at all. This he regretted to say he did not believe, supporting his opinion by the many adverse votes which that House had passed against the ordinary modes of levy in the King's name by means of commissions to Lord Lieutenants and their subordinates; and the result of his display of learning was, that in the end he was himself requested to introduce such a bill, which, within a few days after, was actually brought in, enacting "that henceforward the "militia, and all the powers thereof, "should be vested in ." and then a large blank was left for inserting names, in which blank, the Solicitor urged, they might for aught he knew insert the King's, and he hoped it would be so. This bill, he concludes, notwithstanding all opposition, was read, "they who had contrived it "being well enough contented that it "able conjuncture should be offered : "and so it rested." (ii. 80.) Now having proceeded so far, let the reader turn back to the Third Book of the same History (i. 486), and he will there find that the same historian, professing to speak of the period immediately before the King's departure for Scotland, antedates the whole of the transaction just described; and narrates quite differently, and as though impelled by motives and inducements altogether different,events precisely the same. His object now is to show that the leaders of the House were anxious to prevent the King's departure by warning him that he was leaving affairs in a dangerously unsettled state, and without sufficient powers inherent to the laws and constitution to meet the danger. "And "therefore," he continues, "one day "Sir Arthur Haselrig (who, as was "said before, was used by the leading 66 'men, like the dove out of the ark, "to try what footing there was) pre"ferred a bill for the settling the "Militia of the kingdom both by sea "and land in such persons as they "should nominate." He adds that there were in the bill no names, but blanks to receive them, when the matter should be passed; and that when the mere title of the bill was read, it gave so general an offence to the House that they seemed inclined to throw it out, without suffering it to be read not without some reproach to the person that brought it in " as a matter of sedition :" till Mr. St. John, the King's Solicitor, rose up and spake to it, and ("having in "truth himself drawn the bill ") defended its provisions, declaring his belief as a lawyer, that the power it proposed to settle was not yet by law vested in any person or in the Crown itself, the House by their votes having blasted the former modes of proceeding by the ordinary royal commissions to Lord Lieutenants and their deputies; and D'Ewes's account, of which I proceed to give an abstract from his manuscript, is the only other on record, so far as I am aware, of this memorable debate. Haselrig had scarcely named the provisions of the bill when a great many members cried, "Away with it!" and others that they should "Cast it out!" Sir John Culpeper started up on the instant of Haselrig's resuming his seat, and after wondering that the gentleman in the gallery should bring in such a bill, moved at once that it be rejected. Sir Thomas Barrington, though he had voted with the majority in all the Remonstrance debates, regretted that he could not support the particular measure, and wished it might be thrown out; but he thought another less objectionable should be brought in with similar design. Strode "and others" spoke for it was never called upon the second "time, but slept, till, long after, "the matter of it was digested in "ordinances" (i. 488). Infinite of course has been the confusion, to readers, consequent on these two versions of the same incident, dated at different times, and having objects quite dissimilar; and it has still further been increased by a statement of Nalson's (Collections, ii. 719) that Haselrig's bill was rejected indignantly on its introduction, by a majority of 158 to 105. The one point on which Clarendon is not inaccurate is, in stating, in both his narratives, that the bill was read. The error in this respect has arisen from a too hasty reading of the Commons' Journals (ii. 334), where the Yeas at the division appear un doubtedly as 125 (not 105), and the Noes as 158; but it has been overlooked that the division was taken not on the question whether the bill should be read, but whether it should be rejected. The names of the tellers are quite decisive, Culpeper and Cornwallis being for the Yeas, and Denzil Holles and Sir W". Armyn (member for Grantham, and afterwards a king's judge) for the Noes. Even that generally accurate and reliable writer, Mr. Bruce, has fallen into error on this point (see Verney's Notes, p. 132), and supposes the bill to have been rejected. I take the opportunity of adding that Nalson's Collections, which, by some extraordinary freak in the fortunes of books, has been generally accepted as an authority on these times, is an utterly untrustworthy farrago of violent party rubbish, compiled towards the close of Charles the Second's reign, for the special delectation of his Majesty and as an antidote to Rushworth, by an unscrupulous royalist partizan who had himself no personal knowledge of the events over which he exercised an unlimited right of the grossest abuse and misrepresentation. |