promoters succeeded in its first design; for the challenge it threw down had been promptly taken up. If the King had been sincere in his former professions of an intention to govern for the future within the limits of the laws he had himself assented to, there was nothing in the Remonstrance to defeat that intention; but if he had any other as yet masked desire or purpose, such was no longer maintainable. He never had a better opportunity than the present for betaking himself to parliamentary ways of asserting his power and prerogatives, but events were speedily to show with what far other views he was now inviting into office two out of those three of the House of Commons (calling also into secret council the third) who had organised and led the new party of his friends within its walls. Something less than twelve days are to pass before the debate which is to put finally before the people the Grand Remonstrance, and if the wish still lingered with Hampden or with Pym to have been saved, if possible, the necessity of that appeal, each day supplied its argument against such a possibility. I will select but a few, from the manuscript records before me, to show with what resistless march, as day followed day, the crisis came on.

The rumoured removal of Balfour from the command of the Tower was the first direct challenge to the House. Balfour stood high in their confidence for his unshaken fidelity in preventing the escape of Strafford, whereas Clarendon himself admits that Lunsford, selected to replace him, was a man of no education, of ill character, and of decayed and desperate fortune, who had been obliged, but a few years before, to avoid by flight

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into France the penalty of punishment for a grave misdemeanour. Such indeed was the feeling in the City aroused by his appointment when, in less than three weeks from this time, it actually took place, that under the pressure of very alarming indications of riot, the King had to withdraw it. Even already a certain uneasy feeling in the City connected itself with a sense of the insecurity of the Tower, and the report of Balfour's removal led to some tumultuous gatherings on the Monday after the King's return, and spread great alarm among the wellaffected.

That was on the 29th of November. On the morning of that same day, the new Guard to the houses was sent under command of Lord Dorset by the King, by way of reply to the reasons drawn up by Pym' and presented in the name of both houses; and before the day had closed, swords were drawn and muskets fired upon the people.' It was thus fast coming to an issue outside the walls of parliament, upon the suggestion or incitement of the sovereign; invitations were going out to the people to throw on either side their weight into the scale; and soon perforce the question must arise to which of the parties contending that power would most freely lend itself, to uphold monarchical pretension, or to strengthen and establish parliamentary privilege.

On the morning of the 30th of November, Pym, Hampden, and Holles went up to the Lords with a message for the discharge of the train-bands which the King had so substituted for their own. As Clarendon puts it, "since they could not have such a guard as pleased them, they would have none at all" (ii. 86). And so, the Lords consenting, Lord Dorset and his followers were dismissed, the Commons at the same time declaring that it should be lawful, in the absence of a guard duly

appointed, for every member to bring his own servants to attend at the door, armed with such weapons as they thought fit.'

The next move in the perilous game was made by Hyde and his party, to whom the popular riot of Monday offered good pretence for complaint of such pressure and coercion as "consisted not with the freedom of parlia"ment." In that expression their whole policy revealed itself; its entire aim and end lay there; and, in the same temper which had now supplied the occasion, it was eagerly followed up. It is not, I think, possible to doubt, that, from the day when Charles had left for Scotland in the autumn, his cherished and steadily pursued purpose was to find ground for revoking whatever had been done that was unpalatable to him during the past year; and such ground would be furnished by the pretence that parliament had not been free. Every act of himself or his partisans, therefore, assumed now that specific form and direction. The case of the protesters against the Grand Remonstrance he took where they left it, and made his own. Not they who passed it, but they who protested against it, were his faithful Commons. But they were under a tyranny both within and without the house which prevented fair expression of opinion.

On the return of the leaders to their seats after removal of Lord Dorset's men, at mid-day of the 30th of November, Hyde rose, and craving leave to advert again to the incident of the guard, taxed the London citizens and apprentices with having come on the previous day armed with swords and staves to Westminster specially to overawe particular members from voting as they wished. He was interrupted by the demand for instances; upon which Sir John Strangways said aside to those who sat near him, that he could extinguish some loud talkers and

1 Such is Clarendon's account (Hist. ii. 86), but the notice in the journals of the 30th of November simply says "Ordered, that the "guard shall be dismissed; and that

"Mr. Glyn and Mr. Wheeler do "require the High Constable of "Westminster to provide a strong "and sufficient watch in their "steads."

interrupters in that house perhaps were he to tell what he knew. "Tell it, then," was the cry of one who overheard him; and the member for Weymouth rose, nothing loath. He wished Mr. Speaker to inform him whether the privilege of parliament was not utterly broken if men might not come in safely to give their votes freely? Well, then, he must tell them that he had received information of a plot or conspiracy for the destruction of some of the members of that house, which he conceived to be little less than treason; and he had moreover grounds to believe that some other of the members of that house were either contrivers of it, or had consented to it; and he therefore desired that the Lord Falkland, Sir John Culpeper, and some three others, might be appointed a select committee to examine the matter. Upon which not very impartial proposal arose, not unnaturally, great murmurs, ending in peremptory order that Sir John should presently declare the whole matter in particulars, and not lay suspicion and charge indiscriminately upon members of the house. Authority for the statement was handed in accordingly, and proved to be to the effect' that a certain “lusty young man," a haberdasher's apprentice in Distaff Lane, had boasted to certain parties of having been one among a thousand or so, who with swords and staves had betaken themselves to Westminster Palace Yard; his master, who was a constable, having given him

1 I furnish these curious details from the manuscript Journal so often referred to; the paper produced by Strangways being entitled "A brief "of the Discourse had between one "Cole, an apprentice to Mr. Mans"field, an haberdasher in Distaff "Lane, and one John Nicholson, "D.D., in the presence of Stephen "Tirrett, uncle to the said Cole, and "John Derivale, both Chelmsford "men." The Rev. Doctor is the informant, and appears to have been sitting conversing with the said Tirrett and Derivale, probably on theological subjects, "in his lodgings

a sword and ordered him to go; in fact, that some parliament men had sent for them; and that the intent of their going was because of news of some certain division among the members of the lower house, in which the best-affected party, whom they were to assist, were likely to be overborne by the others; but that finding all quiet, and both sides agreeing well together, they had come home again.

Yes, well, and is this all? became the cry when Sir John Strangway's relation was ended. Where, then, is the evidence against members of this house, and who are the members impugned? “That I can "answer," cried an active partizan of Hyde's, Mr. Kirton, the member for Milborn Port; who thereupon handed in a further piece of evidence, to the effect that a worthy London citizen, being in Wood-street taking tobacco with some friends on the day in question, there came his man to him and brought him word that a message was arrived from Captain Ven (member for London, he who afterwards sat on the trial of the King) to desire him to come away speedily armed to the House of Commons, for swords were there drawn, and the wellaffected party was like to be overborne by the others. During the reading of this paper Captain Ven came into his place, and would at the moment have answered to it; but the House thought it not fit till somewhat were proved, and, as to the preceding relation, conceived that Sir John Strangways had considerably overstated himself, and had ventured upon an accusation which his information in no respect warranted. On which Pym, rising with unusual gravity of manner, put this very significant question to Mr. Speaker: "Whether, though the worthy member had failed to prove his "charge of a conspiracy, either contrived or consented "to by members unnamed, for the destruction of other "members more plainly referred to, he had yet not "succeeded in proving very fully, that there was a conspiracy by some members of this house to accuse other members of the same of Treason?"

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