debate he was ordered into the committee chamber, and had to make submission in the required terms. It was near five o'clock on that November evening, when Mr. Waller "publickly asked pardon of the House and "Mr. Pym."' But the House, or Mr. Pym, was little now to Mr. Waller and his friends, in comparison with their new and late-found allegiance to the other master whom till now they had determinedly opposed. So quick and ready the change, it was as the shifting of a scene upon the stage. The men who had always been courtiers were seen suddenly deposed from what importance they had, and an entirely new set of characters promptly filled their place. "I may not forbear to "let your Majesty know," writes Nicholas immediately before the scene just named, and describing the debates which led to it, "that the Lord Falkland, Sir "John Strangways, Mr. Waller, Mr. Edward Hyde, and "Mr. Holborne, and divers others, stood as champions in "maintenance of your prerogative, and showed for it "unanswerable reason and undeniable precedents, whereof your Majesty shall do well to take some notice, as your Majesty shall think best, for their encouragement." Eagerly did the King respond, that his good Nicholas was commanded to do so much at once in his name, and to tell those worthy gentlemen that he would do it himself at his return. Whereupon closely had followed Mr. Waller's assault on Mr. Pym, and the rebuke at Westminster winning him fresh favour at Whitehall. 66 66 1 All, until now, revealed of this affair, is contained in the subjoined entry from the Commons' Journals (ii. 306), under head of Friday, 5th Nov. 1641: "Exceptions were taken at words "spoken by Mr. Waller, which re"flected upon Mr. Pym in a high way for which he was commanded "to withdraw. "And he being withdrawn, the "Business was a while debated: And "then he was commanded to return to his place. "And then the Speaker told him, "that the House held it fit, that, in "his place, he should acknowledge "his offence given by his words, both "to the House in general, and Mr. "Pym in particular. "Which he did ingenuously, and "expressed his sorrow for it." The special cause of offence is now first made known. Each incident that had manifested thus, however, the spirit and purpose of the new opposition served only to knit more closely what was left of the old liberal phalanx. No word was breathed of any kind of concession. Their speech had not been more decisive, or their action more vigorous, while Strafford stood at bay. Broken as were their ranks, their majority was sufficient and decisive: and they had a supreme force in reserve, to which they were about to appeal. Wherever Hyde and his friends, therefore, might be expected to muster strongest, there they struck ever themselves the first, and the heaviest. Before the recess, thirteen bishops had been impeached for an attempt to override the law by asserting a legislative authority in new Canons which they claimed to impose; and after the House again met, as we have seen, a bill had been introduced for taking away their votes in the upper house; yet this was the time selected by Charles for pressing with characteristic vehemence the investiture of five new bishops! In writing to Edinburgh, Nicholas had been careful to recount the surprise he heard expressed that any man should move his Majesty for making of bishops in those times, to which his Majesty wrote instantly back that on no account was there to be any delay; and at the very moment these letters were thus interchanged, Mr. Oliver Cromwell had carried in the Commons, by a majority of eighteen, a motion for a conference with the Lords to stay the investiture. The day had now arrived, too, when the impeached bishops were to put in their answer; and a demurrer was entered on their behalf so skilfully drawn up, that the curiosity was great to ascertain its author. It came on for discussion in the house; and the one of Hampden's counsel who had argued with most consummate ability against ship-money, and who had not heretofore been very friendly to bishops, Mr. Holborne, member for St. Michael's and of late entirely leagued with Hyde, got up to support it. Hereupon Sir Simonds D'Ewes, that wealthy and respected country gentleman who now sat for Sudbury, ex-high-sheriff of Suffolk, but 66 formerly student and barrister of the Middle Temple, made a lucky hit. He complimented his learned friend; recalled the days when they used to meet at mootes in Lincoln's Inn, and admitted that, of all men, he was wont to get deepest into the points of a case; but truly, he had this day so strongly maintained the plea and demurrer of the bishops, that he could not have performed it more exactly if he himself had drawn the same. Something here perhaps in Holborne's manner betrayed him, but a loud laugh burst forth which was kept up some time. "All the House laughed so long," says D'Ewes, as I was fain to remain silent a good while; for I believe many in the house did suspect, as well as myself, that either the said Mr. Holborne had wholly "drawn them, or at least had given his assistance therein." It was quite true: but the great ship-money lawyer took little for his pains in having thus come to the rescue. Upon the success of the demurrer, Pym headed a conference with the Lords; demanded, in the name of the Commons, that the votes of the bishops should be suspended until the fate of the bill under discussion was decided; and so began the conflict with the Right Reverend Bench which ended in their committal to the Tower. 66 66 66 In like manner it fared with the two other questions, control of his Army and choice of his Counsellors, on which the King was himself most sensitive, and his friends in the house most busy and eager. Every move they made was outmoved. Vehement as were the excitements, and grave the dangers, of the Irish Rebellion, of the doubtful allegiance of the force under arms in England, and of the attempts in Scotland against Argyle and the Hamiltons, Pym seized and turned to instant advantage, as already we have seen on one subject, the equivocal position regarding all in which ill counsels had placed the King. At a conference with the Lords, every step to which had been hotly contested in the Commons, he obtained their consent to the introduction of a VOL. I. с clause against evil counsellors into the instructions for requesting help from the Scotch Parliament for suppression of the Irish Rebellion; and this after a speech consummate in its power and effect, and remarkable for the subtlety of its argument against the Roman Catholic religion as in its full indulgence incompatible with the existence in a State, not only of any other form of religion, but of any form whatever of political government and freedom. The clause embodied the exact sentiment, in almost the exact words, to which Hyde and his friends, as we have seen, had taken violent objection; and on the same day when this clause passed the lower house by a majority of forty-one, and the conference with the Lords was obtained, which was only two days later than that of Waller's high-flying parallel between Strafford and Pym, I discover that Mr. Cromwell moved and carried an addition to the subjects for conference-(" that we should "desire the Lords that an ordinance of parliament' "might pass to give the Earl of Essex power to assemble, 66 at all times, the trained bands of the kingdom on this "side Trent, for the defence thereof, till further orders "therein taken by the Houses") - wherein lay the ominous germ and beginning of the victorious army of the parliament. 1 Then for the first time appeared the ill-boding claim of power for an Ordinance of both Houses in the absence of the King. Nicholas hastened to inform the King of the portent. A great lord had objected, he said, and expressed doubts whether men might be raised without warrant under the Great Seal; whereupon, this doubt being made known in the Commons' house, it was declared that an Ordinance of both Houses was a sufficient warrant for levying of volunteers by beating of the drum, "and an entry of such their declar"ation was accordingly made in the "Register of that house." The letter of Nicholas is dated the 10th November. Meanwhile, however, the Queen appears to have sent, upon this In the afternoon of that same Monday the 8th of November, the "Declaration and Remonstrance" was submitted in its first rough draft for discussion by the House. Never before was presented to it, never since has it received, such a State Paper as that!-Immediately upon its production, it was read at the clerk's table; whereupon several notices of motions for additions and amendments were given, and order was taken for commencing the discussion upon its several clauses, seriatim, on the following morning at nine o'clock. 66 now. The character of the impression at once made by it will be inferred from the instant communication of Secretary Nicholas to the King. On the evening of the same day, he wrote off to Scotland that there had been that afternoon brought into the Commons' house, and there read, a Declaration of the State of Affairs of the kingdom which related all the misgovernment, and all the unpleasing things that had been done by ill counsels ("as they call it "), since the third year of the reign until The further consideration of it was to be had the next day in the house; and so much was it likely to reflect to the prejudice of his Majesty's government, that Mr. Secretary "troubled" to think what might be the issue if his Majesty came not instantly away from Edinburgh. Every line in the letter showed the sore perplexity the writer was in. He could not possibly account for this Remonstrance satisfactorily as a party demonstration. Surely if there had been in this," he says, "nothing but an intention to have justified the proceedings of this parliament, they would not have begun so high.” He entreated the King to burn his letter, or he, Nicholas, might be lost; and at its close he again made urgent and anxious representation to his Majesty, that he could not possibly so much prejudice himself by at once leaving Edinburgh and all things there unfinished, as by delaying his return to London even one day. The King's answer, avoiding the question of the immediate return, as to which he had already communicated with the Queen, was 66 66 66 |