On Saturday, the 20th of November, at two o'clock, the Remonstrance, engrossed and finished, was laid upon the table. Doubtless it was then expected by its supporters, and with some show of reason, that after having stood the brunt of so many prolonged debates, it might be voted without further resistance. A resolution was accordingly moved upon its introduction, " that it be "read and finished to-night;" which was met, however, by such determined opposition, that Pym was obliged to yield, and the final debate was fixed for ten o'clock on the morning of Monday the 22d. Why would you have it of Falkland, as they left 66 "still put off," asked Cromwell the house; "for this day would quickly have determined "it." To which Falkland made reply that there would not have been time enough, for sure it would take some further debate. Oliver rejoined, "A very sorry one."' Cromwell was mistaken, no doubt. He was not in Hyde's confidence, and could not know of the desperate party-move to be attempted on the occasion of the last debate. But before this is described, and while the Remonstrance, ready engrossed, is lying on the table of the house, the time would seem to have arrived for the endeavour to present it to the reader, at once with sufficient fulness for accurate reflection of all its statements and in such form as to render justice to the striking narrative they embody, yet at the same time so 1 Hist. ii., 42. Clarendon tells the anecdote, however, in a sense quite different from that which it derives from an authentic statement of the circumstances. It was in the ordinary course of the business of the House that Pym had proposed at once to bring the matter to a conclusion, but Clarendon (ii. 41) would have us believe that he made that proposition in direct forfeiture of a previous engagement. "And by these and the "like arts, they promised themselves "that they should easily carry it; so "that, the day it was to be resumed, "they entertained the House all the "morning with other debates, and to"wards noon called for the Remon"strance," &c. upon which they were forced to go back to the first understanding of giving an entire day to the debate. Accordingly, he continues, "the next morning, the debate being "entered upon about nine of the 'clock," &c. Now, no such incidents occurred. On the day fixed for the resumption of the debate, it was resumed, and at the hour precisely which before had been arrangednamely, twelve o'clock. Clarendon's statement is an entire misrepresentation. compressed as to bring it within the limits of ordinary histories. There, it should long ago have had the place, from which it may hardly be too much to believe now, with some degree of confidence, that it never more can be excluded. In which expectation are here appended to it some notes of matters not lying on the surface of ordinary books, which will be found to illustrate and completely corroborate the most startling of its averments. 66 And so to modern readers is committed that great vindication of the rising of their ancestors against the sovereign in the seventeenth century, as to which one who opposed it eloquently through all its stages thus frankly confessed the secret of his opposition: Sir, this "Remonstrance, whensoever it passeth, will make such an impression, and leave such a character behind, both of his Majesty, the People, and the Parliament, and of this present "Church and State, as no time shall ever eat it out, while histories are written, and men have eyes to read them!" 66 66 66 The Preamble, consisting of twenty not numbered clauses, and opening in the name of " the Commons in the present "Parliament assembled," begins by declaring that for the past twelve months they had been carrying on a struggle of which the object was to restore and establish the ancient honour, greatness, and security, of the Nation and the Crown. That during this time they had been called to wrestle with dangers and fears, with miseries and calamities, with distempers and disorders so various, great, and pressing, that for the time the entire liberty and prosperity of the kingdom had been extinguished by them, and the foundations of the throne undermined. And that now, finding great aspersions cast on what had been done. many difficulties raised for the hindrance of what remained to do, and jealousies everywhere busily fomented betwixt the King and Parliament, they had thought it good in this manner to declare the root and growth of the designs by which so much mischief had been caused; the heighth to which these had reached before the parliament met; the means they used for extirpating them; and, together with the progress made therein, the ways of obstruction by which such progress had been interrupted, and the only course by which the obstacles at present intervening could be finally removed. Then, in express terms, they state the general plan or scheme of the authors of these evils, as a conspiracy to subvert the fundamental laws and principles of government on which alone the religion and justice of the kingdom can firmly rest; and they denounce the conspirators as threefold, (1) the jesuited papists, (2) the bishops and ill-affected clergy, and (3) such counsellors, courtiers, and officers of state, as had preferred their private ends to those of his Majesty and the Commonwealth. All three classes of conspirators, they continued, had principles and counsels in common; and these were, to keep up continual differences betwixt the King and People, and to lower and degrade the protestant religion through the sides of those best affected to it. To the end that so, on the one hand, setting up the prerogative whenever a question of liberty was mooted, discrediting the claims and authority of Parliament, and ever pretending to be siding with the King, they might get to themselves the places of greatest trust and power, putting him upon other than the ancient and only legitimate ways of supply; and, on the other hand, by cherishing to the utmost such views of church doctrine and discipline as would establish ecclesiastical tyranny, by sowing dissensions between the common protestants and those whom they called puritans, and by including under the name of puritans all who desired to preserve unimpaired the public laws and liberties and the purity and power of the true religion, they might be able ultimately to introduce such opinions and ceremonies as would necessarily end in accommodation with Popery.' For, of the three elements of the conspiracy, that was the strongest. And as in all compounded bodies, so in this, the operations had been qualified and governed throughout by the predominating element. Such in substance was the Preamble to the Great Remonstrance; of which all that followed was in the form of practical proofs and illustrations. These were contained in two hundred and six numbered clauses; each clause, as we have seen, having been put separately to the House, and so voted. The first six had relation to the First Parliament of the reign, and to the recovery of strength by the popish party after their discomfiture by the breach with Spain at the close of the reign of James. Two subsidies had been given by that parliament, yet it was dissolved without the relief of a single grievance; and then followed the disasters of Rochelle, the desertion of the Protestant party in France, the discreditable attempt on Cadiz, the abandonment of the Palatinate and of the Protestant struggle in Germany, the wrongs inflicted on merchants and traders, the pressing and billeting of soldiers' in all "if none of them have found a way "to reconcile the opinions of Rome to "the preferments of England; and "to be so absolutely, directly, and cordially papists, that it is all "that fifteen hundred pounds a year can do to keep them from con'fessing it." 66 2 The intolerable wrong and misery implied in this grievance will be better understood by reminding the reader of the passionate speech of Wentworth (afterwards Earl of Strafford) in the debates on the Petition of Right, in which, referring to the billeting of soldiers, he exclaims, "They have rent "from us the light of our eyes! en"forced companies of guests worse "than the ordinances of France! viti"ated our wives and daughters before our faces!" In the Verney Papers Mr. Bruce prints the subjoined very parts of the kingdom, and the endeavour, happily frustrated, to introduce therein large bodies of mercenary troops. The next four clauses described the Second Parliament, its dissolution after a declared intention to grant five subsidies, and the subsequent levy of those subsidies, not by parliamentary authority, but by the sole order of the King. Commissions of loan were issued, and all who refused were imprisoned; many contracting sicknesses in prison from which they never recovered. Privy seals went forth, raising enormous sums. Court waste and profusion were spoken of on all sides, while the people were unlawfully impoverished.' And a commission under the great seal exacted payments from the subject by way of excise, to an extent and in a manner before unheard of.2 The Third Parliament; the attempt, by a surreptitious declaration, to evade its enactment of the Petition of "" way of loan as they are set in subsidy, "viz.: he that's set at 201. in subsidy to "lend unto the King 207., the judges "were urged to subscribe. They paid "their money, but refused to subscribe "the same as a legal course: for which "Sir Randall Crewe, Chief Justice of 'England, had his patent taken from him, and he was displaced Ter. Michael. "1626, anno 2 Caroli. The privy council "subscribed; the lords and peers sub"scribed, all except fourteen, whereof six "were Earls: viz. Earl of Essex, Earl of Warwick, Earl of Clare, Earl of Hun"tington, Earl of Lincoln, and the Earl "of Bolingbroke, being Lord St. John." (2) The Duke of Buckingham feasted the King, Queen, and French Ambassador, and bestowed 4000l. in a banquet. "The sweet water which cost him 2001. "came down the room as a shower from "heaven; the banquet let down in a "sheet upon the table, no man seeing "how it came; with other pompous "vanities to waste away and consume money, the country being in poverty, " and more necessary occasions for it." 66 2 Among the notices for additions to the original draft of the Remonstrance, entered on the Journals, the subjoined appear with the initials J. C., and may doubtless be assigned to Sir John Clotworthy. "The last expedition into Germany. |