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, "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 1 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. 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 now. 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 66 66 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 not less urgent. "You must needs speak with such of my servants that you may best trust, in my name, that by "all means possible this Declaration may be stopped." Alas! this was not by any means possible. All that could now be done, by earnest recruiting for the royal service, was to arouse and league firmly together, in desperate opposition to the Remonstrance and its authors, a band of members of the lower house, even more fierce, and only less determined, than the other indissoluble league already pledged to support it, and bent upon carrying it to the people. And so the struggle began. On Tuesday, the 9th of November, the first debate was taken. The hour appointed for it was nine o'clock, but it did not begin till about twelve o'clock, and it continued until a late hour. The order of procedure was first settled. The Declaration was to be read clause by clause; every member was to speak to each clause, if he would; and if any spoke to have the clause amended, and that the House gave leave, then it was to be amended, and the clause with the amendments put to the question. Cromwell and Strode were among those who moved the first amendments. At this first sitting also, Bulstrode Whitelocke, who sat for Marlow, Serjeant Wylde, the member for Worcestershire, Mr. Henry Smith, the member for Leicestershire and afterwards one of the King's judges, Sir John Clotworthy, who sat for Malden, Mr. Wingate, the member for St. Albans, and Mr. Geoffrey Palmer, the member for Stamford, and formerly one of the managers of Strafford's impeachment, moved and carried insertions and additions; all of them, with exception of the last, designed to make it more stringent and severe in tone. On the following day, Nicholas reported as usual to the King. A fourth part had been gone through, comprising nearly fifty clauses; and the rest of it, Mr. Secretary had learnt, was to be voted in the same way, as fast as might be; after which it was to be transmitted straightway to the Lords. The latter information was inaccurate; but the King's instant order to act upon it, though destined to be of no avail as to the upper house, was a new incentive to activity in the lower. "Command the Lord Keeper in my name," he wrote, "that he warn all my servants to 66 oppose it in the Lords' house." On Wednesday, the 10th of November, says a member who took part in the debate, "we proceeded with the "Remonstrance where we left off yesterday," Insertions and additions were again made, among them one having reference to slavish doctrines against the subject's property in his estate, very generally preached from pulpits before the King; and a peremptory order, issued at this sitting, to the effect that the clerk should on no account give out copies of the Declaration until the House had fully perfected it, may serve to show how interest was gathering around it from day to day. The Irish Rebellion, and provision for the levies and expenditure it had suddenly rendered necessary, occupied the House so incessantly during the sitting of the 11th of November, that the order for resuming the Remonstrance had to be laid aside; but a remarkable allusion was thrown out in reference to it, by Strode, in the course of the debate on the raising money for supply of his Majesty's wants in Ireland. He spoke of the dissatisfaction of the people, and of the injustice of laying further burdens on them, until something were done to reassure them under their present fears and misgivings, and to give them hope that what with so much toil and sacrifice had been lately gained was not again to be completely lost. Sir," said the member for Beeralston, "I move against the order of the committee "that we should not admit of the giving of money till the "Remonstrance be passed this house, and gone into the country to satisfy them." This at any rate was plain speaking. Thus early in the debates the desire and 66 1 Strode seems to have had the habit of blurting out in words, in a sudden impulsive way, what the more reserved of the party more prudently 66 were content to leave as matter of inference from their acts. As to the question of disbanding the Scotch army, for instance, he frankly avowed: the design of the promoters of the Remonstrance were frankly avowed. It was to be to them some guarantee that the army about to be raised for the suppression of Irish rebellion, should not hereafter be used for the suppression of English liberty. It was to be printed and circulated among the people. That was on Thursday, the 11th of November. On the day following, the Remonstrance was proceeded with, and every part so obstinately disputed, that the House sat far into that November afternoon. A motion for rising having been resisted successfully, another member moved that candles should be brought. This was a proceeding as yet very rarely resorted to; it having been only during the proceedings on the Attainder of Strafford that the order of the house had been so far relaxed as to admit of new motions made, except with special permission, after noon.' "Sir," said the advocate for candles, who was no other than D'Ewes himself, "we have now been sitting in the "house near upon seven hours" (the ordinary hour of meeting was eight o'clock in the morning, but of late, in consequence of the prolonged sittings, the hour had been generally nine, sometimes even ten o'clock), "and we do "We cannot yet spare the Scotch. "The sons of Zeruiah are too strong for us" for which, being called to order, the House refused to exact any apology. (Journals, Feb. 6, 1640-1.) What he thus openly declared had till then (according to May, lib. i. cap. viii.) been asserted princicipally by the ill-affected, who not only in discourse but written libels taxed the Parliament with it, imputing it to them as a crime of too much distrust of the King, and accusing them of having kept up a foreign army to overawe their own Prince. 1 I find, from the D'Ewes manuscript before me, that on the 4th December 1640, on the motion of Strode, an order was made that "every one 66 upon coming into the house who "did not take his place, or did, after "taking his place, talk so loud as to "interrupt the business of the house "from being heard, should pay a "shilling fine, to be divided between "the serjeant and the poor." And to this order, on the motion of Sir John Strangways, the member for Weymouth, it was added "that after "twelve o'clock no new business be "entered into, or moved, without the "leave of the house." More formally it was resolved a few days later, upon the motion of Sir Walter Earle, the other member for Weymouth, "that "the ancient order of the house be ob"served namely, that no bills be "read the second time but between "the hours of nine and twelve." To which it was added, at the suggestion of Mr. Speaker (Lenthal), that all bills might be read a first time, early in the morning. |