bowels, had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it, and led them to defer their angry debate until the next morning.' Doubtless a scene to be remembered, and which naturally has attracted all attentions since; but that, out of the many who have so adopted it, and from the mere reading it felt some share in the excitement it pourtrays, not one should have been moved to make closer inquiry into what the so-called "libel" really was that so had roused and maddened the partizans of the King, may fairly be matter of surprise. Hallam is content to give some eight or nine lines to it, in which its contents are not fairly represented. Lingard disposes of it in something less than a dozen lines. Macaulay has only occasion incidentally to introduce it, and a simple mention of it is all that falls within the plan of Carlyle. Godwin passes over it in silence; and such few lines as Disraeli (in his Commentaries) vouchsafes to it, are an entire mis-statement of its circumstances and falsification of its contents. It is not necessary to advert specifically to other histories and writings connected with the period; but the assertion may be confidently made, that in all the number there is not one, whatever its indications of research and originality in other directions may be, which presents reasonable evidence of any better or more intimate knowledge of the Great Remonstrance than was derivable from the garbled page of Clarendon. Yet, as I have said, this State Paper remains a fact living and accessible to us: a solid piece of actual history, retaining the form which its authors gave to it, and breathing still some part of the life which animated them. It embodies the case of the Parliament against the Ministers of the King. It is the most authentic statement ever put forth of the wrongs endured by all classes of the English people, during the first fifteen years of the reign of Charles 1 Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip Warwick, Knight. Ed. 1702. P. 201-2. the First; and, for that reason, the most complete justification upon record of the Great Rebellion. It describes the condition of the three kingdoms at the time when the Long Parliament met, and the measures taken thereon to redress still remediable wrongs, and deal out justice on their authors. Enumerating the statutes passed at the same time for the good of the subject, and his safety in future years, it points out what yet waited to be done to complete that necessary work, and the grave obstructions that had arisen, in each of the three kingdoms, to intercept its completion. It warns the people of dangerous and desperate intrigues to recover ascendancy for the court faction; hints not obscurely at serious defections in progress, even from the popular phalanx; accuses the bishops of a design to Romanize the English Church; denounces the effects of ill counsels in Scotland and Ireland; and calls upon the King to dismiss evil counsellors. It is, in brief, an appeal to the country; consisting, on the one hand, of a dignified assertion of the power of the House of Commons in re-establishing the public liberties, and, on the other, of an urgent representation of its powerlessness either to protect the future or save the past, without immediate present support against papists and their favourers in the House of Lords, and their unscrupulous partizans near the throne. There is in it, nevertheless, not a word of disrespect to the person or the just privilege of royalty; and nothing that the fair supporters of a sound Church Establishment might not frankly have approved and accepted. Of all the State Papers of the period, it is in these points much the most remarkable; nor, without very carefully reading it, is it easy to understand rightly, or with any exactness, either the issue challenged by the King when he unfurled his standard, or the objects and desires of the men who led the House of Commons up to the actual breaking out of the war. Essential as the study of it is, however, to any true comprehension of this eventful time, the difficulty of reproducing it in modern history must doubtless be admitted. It is not merely that it occupies fifteen of Rushworth's closely printed folio pages, but that, in special portions of its argument, it passes with warmth and rapidity through an extraordinary variety of subjects, of which the connection has ceased to be always immediately apparent. Matters are touched too lightly for easy comprehension now, which but to name, then, was to strike a chord that every breast responded to. Some subjects also have a large place, to which only a near acquaintance with party names and themes can assign their just importance, either as affecting each other, or making stronger the ultimate and wider appeal which by their means was designed. The very heat and urgency of tone, the quick impatience of allusion, the minute subdivision of details, the passionate iteration of topics, everything that made its narrative so intense and powerful once, and gives it in a certain sense its vividness and reality still, constitutes at the same time the difficulty of presenting it in such an abstract, careful and connected yet compressed, as would admit of reproduction here. It will be well worth while, nevertheless, to make the trial; which, however short it may fall of success in the particular matter, may have some historical value independently. For, by the use of manuscript records as yet unemployed by any writer or historian, it will be possible to illustrate the abstract to be given of the Remonstrance, by an account of the Debates respecting it in the House of Commons, and these with relation as well to itself as to its antecedents and consequences, far more interesting, because more minute and faithful, than any heretofore given to the world. And in this there will be the undoubted additional advantage, that thereby will be supplied a not inefficient test for Clarendon's accuracy and honesty of statement in the most critical part of his narrative of these affairs. But first, to establish for myself the claim it is proposed to dispute in others, it will be necessary to state the authority from which the most part of the facts given in this paper are derived, and now first contributed to history. They are the result of much tedious and painful research into the blotted manuscripts of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, preserved in five bound volumes in the British Museum, and entitled, “A Journal "of the Parliament begun November 3d, Tuesday, Anno "Domini 1640." To the existence of such a journal attention has been lately drawn more than once by allusions in Mr. Carlyle's writings in connection with Cromwell; ' and from a manuscript abstract made for him when he contemplated writing a History of the Puritans (a project he unhappily abandoned), a very interesting notice of D'Ewes, with some account of his Journal, was written twelve years ago in the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Carlyle kindly placed this manuscript at my disposal on my commencing, some years since, at the request of the Messrs. Longman, what I have found to be the not very easy task of preparing for a library edition, and making worthier of the favour extended to it, a work entitled The Statesmen of the Commonwealth written several years before. On comparing, however, its abstract of D'Ewes with the original, it proved to be so entirely imperfect and deficient even as an index to the larger collections, that there was no alter 1 "We call these Notes the most "interesting of all manuscripts. To an English soul who would under"stand what was really memorable "and godlike in the History of his "country, distinguishing the same "from what was at bottom un"memorable and devil-like; who "would bear in everlasting remem"brance the doings of our noble heroic "men, and sink into everlasting "oblivion the doings of our low ignoble "quacks and sham-heroes, what "other record can be so precious?"Carlyle's Miscellanies, iv. 338-9. 2 For July, 1846. I do not betray any confidence in stating that this paper was by that very learned and agreeable writer, Mr. John Bruce, whose description of D'Ewes's original manuscript may here be subjoined, native but to begin the research anew. I soon found, indeed, that without strictly honest and earnest examination of D'Ewes's actual handwriting, it was impossible to make anything of his Journal. Whatever in it is most valuable, is in the roughest blurred condition; written often on the backs of letters, mere disjecta membra of Notes for a Diary, often all but illegible, now and then entirely so; and the reader will better understand the full force of this remark who turns to the careful facsimile made for me of two of its pages, and given as an illustration to the present volume. Many portions, certainly, are more legibly written, a secretary or transcriber having been called in for the purpose; but these are found upon examination to be also the less valuable, consisting often of illustrations drawn from contemporaneous printed records, of prodigiously lengthy expansions of somewhat silly orations by D'Ewes himself, or of extracts from the Journals or other documents supplied by the Clerk of the House. On the other hand, wherever the blotted writing of D'Ewes recurs, there springs up again the actual and still living record of what he had himself heard, and himself noted down, with pen and ink, as he sat in that memorable parliament;' and these Notes, extend 1 I quote a passage from the original manuscript under date November 13th, 1641. The plea and demurrer put in by the bishops was then in debate, and Mr. Holborne, member for St. Michaels, was speaking. "I "was then about to withdraw a little 'out of the house, and went down "as far as the place where he was "speaking; and finding a seat empty "almost just behind him, I sat down, "thinking to have heard him a little, "before I had gone out. But finding "him endeavour to justify the plea "and demurrer, I drew out again "my pen and ink, and took notes, intending to answer him again as "soon as he had done." Between four and five months later (March 5, 1641-2) a special instance occurred of the jealousy very frequently exhi- |