ment, to see derived to his own kingdom, and procured to those of his allies, Happiness, Wealth, Peace, and Safety.

SUCH was the Declaration, the Great Remonstrance, which lay engrossed on the table of the house on Monday the 22nd of November 1641, waiting the final vote. The King, eager at last to reach London before that vote could be taken, was now hastening with all speed back from Edinburgh; and the fact that he was only distant a two days' journey was doubtless known to Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell, when they passed into the house that morning.

The Speaker was late, probably in expectation that he should have to sit long; and prayers were not over until a little after ten. There is then some business essential to be done, and honourable members eager for the great debate are fain to curb their impatience. Mr. Wheeler, the member for Westbury, has to report concerning a delinquent involved in the recent conspiracies. Sir John Price, the member for Montgomeryshire, has ill report to make of a Mr. Blany, a Welsh justice of peace. Mr. Strode has to complain of an order of the House as to a case in the Exchequer tending to throw discredit on himself, and to obtain correction of the same. Mr. Speaker has to prefer a petition from some hundred or so of the moniers of the mint, claiming to be exempt, by the precedents of four centuries, from contributing to the payment of the last six subsidies voted by the Commons; which petition, having been presented to the King, his Majesty had commended to Mr. Speaker for presentation this day, and by the House was now ordered to be referred to the committee for poll-money, some not very courtly members remarking that these subsidies were given to the Commonwealth "and not to the King, and therefore they were not freed

by any charter of exemption." But, above all, Mr. Pym has to report the result of a conference with the Lords the preceding Saturday on Irish affairs, and sundry important matters relating thereto. He has evidence to offer that "this design of Ireland was hatched in England." He has a petition bearing on these affairs to present from Sir Faithful Fortescue. He has to make an important suggestion for the transport, to Ireland, of the magazine at Hull; to get authority for the necessary estimates, from the officers of ordnance, as to the number of ships required for such transport; to take order for the immediate provision thereof; and to obtain means, by a vote of 4000l. to Mr. Crane, the victualler of the Navy, for the hastening away of other ships to guard the coast of Ireland.

So the time passed until the clock had struck twelve, when, as the members began to hurry out for dinner, cries became loud for the debate on the Remonstrance. Thereupon, order having been made (so little in some quarters, even then, was any debate of unusual duration expected) that the Irish business should be resumed as soon as the debate on the Declaration was done, and the order of the day for resumption of the latter subject having been read, Mr. Hyde rose and desired that the Serjeant might be sent with his mace to call up such members of the house as were then walking in Westminster Hall. It was a device to gain time, Mr. Hyde, we may presume, not liking to speak to thinly occupied benches; but on the other hand the liberal leaders were interested to have no time lost, and many resisted the proposal. After some debate, however, the objectors gave way, and the Serjeant with his mace departed accordingly.

The old House of Commons, it may be well here to remind the reader, now that a generation has grown up who never saw the narrow, ill-lighted, dingy room, in which for three centuries some of the most important business of this world was transacted, ran exactly at right

angles with Westminster Hall, having a passage into it at the south east angle. The Hall itself, in those days, shared in all the excitements of the House; and nothing of interest went on in the one, of which visible and eager indications did not present themselves in the other.

It was here, in the Hall, within an hour after the dissolving of the Short Parliament, that the cheerful and sanguine Mr. Hyde, with deeply despondent face, deplored gloomily that rash step to the dark and reserved Mr. St. John, who with laughter lighting up features rarely known to smile, rejoined briskly that all was well, and it must be worse before it would be better. It was here, upon the assembling of the Long Parliament, that Mr. Hyde had walked up and down conferring on the state of affairs with Mr. Pym, when that worthy and distinguished member told him they must now be of another temper than they had been heretofore, and must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down all the cobwebs which hung in the top and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter. It was here the King himself was so soon to enter on his ill-fated errand against the five members, striking such a fear and terror, according to a manuscript report now before me, "into all those that kept shops in the said "Hall, or near the gate thereof, as they instantly shut up "their shops. For here also such trades as those of booksellers, law-stationers, sempstresses, and the like, found customers among the variously idle, busy, or curious people, continually drawn together; and under the roof of the noble old Hall, whatever the business in progress might be within the Courts adjoining or in the Chapel beyond, might be heard the old city cry of What d'ye lack? addressed to lawyers walking up and down till

1 Booksellers, law-stationers, sempstresses-these and other trades akin to these, now and for some time later, plied their callings in the

place; and Laud notices in his Diary a narrow escape of the Hall from being burnt down, owing to a fire in one of the stalls.

their cases in the Bench or Exchequer come on, to clients in attendance to consult with their lawyers, to politicians anxious for news, and to members of either house escaping from committees or debates. As those of the lower house, however, for whom Mr. Hyde sent the Serjeant and his mace, have doubtless by this time been collected, it is our business to enter St. Stephen's with them and observe the aspect it presents.

The entire length of the room in which the members sat was something less than the breadth of Westminster Hall; and, handsome as it originally had been, with its rich architecture and decorated paintings of the thirteenth century, it had lost all trace of these under boards and whitewash immediately after the Reformation, when also a new floor above, and a new roof under the old, still more abridged its proportions. At the western end, the entrance was between rows of benches, passing the bar, and underneath a gallery into which members mounted by a ladder on the right-hand corner, near the southern window. At the eastern end, a little in advance of a large window looking on the river, stood the Speaker's chair; and again, a little less in advance of that towards the middle of the floor, stood the Clerk's table, at which sat Henry Elsyng, and John Rushworth his lately appointed assistant, with their faces to the mace and their backs to the Speaker. Then, on right and left of the Speaker, in benches stretching along and springing up as in an amphitheatre on either hand, were assembled the honourable members. There they sat, puritan and courtier, the pick and choice of the gentlemen of England; with bearded faces close-cut and stern, or here and there more gaily trimmed with peak and ruff; faces for the most part worn with anxious thoughts and fears, heavy with toil, weary with responsibility and care, often with long imprisonment; there they sat, in their steeple hats and Spanish cloaks, with swords and bands, by birth, by wealth, by talents, the first assembly of the world. And there, presiding in his great chair surmounted by the arms

of England, sat Mr. Speaker; also hatted, cloaked, and sworded like the rest; but not always treated by them, nor in sooth always treating them, with the respect which has gathered to his office in later time.

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It was but a few weeks, for example, before the late recess, that that honourable barrister and member for Melcombe Regis, Mr. Richard King, took upon himself to declare, that, in a particular rebuke which Mr. Speaker had addressed to another honourable member, he had transgressed his duty in using so disgraceful a speech "to so noble a gentleman;" and though the House interfered to protect their Speaker, and Mr. King was commanded to withdraw into the Committee Chamber, the matter ended in but "a conditional apology with which "the House was not satisfied but the Speaker was." The noble gentleman whom it vexed Mr. King to see treated with disrespect was the younger brother of Lord Digby, Mr. John Digby, member for Milborn Port; who, on the day when his brother would have been expelled the House of Commons if the King's letters-patent had not issued the night before calling him to the House of Lords," came into the house, and getting upon the ladder "that stands at the door of the house by which the "members thereof usually go up to those seats which are

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over the same door under the gallery, he sat still upon "the said ladder;" whereupon the Speaker, doubtless coupling the act, as a sign of disrespect, with a display of insubordination by the same young gentleman on discussion of his brother's case the previous day, "called "out to him, and desired him to take his place, and not "to sit upon the said ladder as if he were going to be "hanged: at which many of the House laughed," and Mr. King, as aforesaid, was indignant. The incident leaves us at least no room for doubt, that, though the Speaker's powers were in their infancy as yet, and his claim to proper consideration only grudgingly admitted, he had nevertheless as unruly an assemblage to deal with, as the powers and consideration conceded him in modern parliaments have