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. Το "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, "other record can be so precious?"Carlyle's Miscellanies, iv. 338-9.

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in confirmation of what is said in the text. "For some part of the "time, the Notes have been copied "and written out in a narrative form, "in a respectable hand; in other places, we have nothing but the "rough jottings-down of D'Ewes's own pen. At first, when we begin to "read them, all is obscurity, as dull "and dense as that which overclouds "the pages of Rushworth, Nalson, "and the Journals; but as we go 66 - what the mist gradually grows less 66 dense, -rays of light dart in here "and there, illuminating the palpable "obscure; and in the end, after much 'plodding, and the exercise of infinite "patience, we may come to know the "Long Parliament as thoroughly as if we had sat in it."

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,

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on,

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

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 exhibited by members of the house in regard to the practice of note-taking. Sir Edward Alford, member for Arundel, had been observed taking notes of a proposed Declaration moved by Pym. Sir Walter Earle, member for Weymouth, upon this objected that he had seen "some at the lower "end comparing their notes, and one "of them had gone out." Alford was thereupon called back, and his notes required to be given up to the Speaker. D'Ewes then continues-"Sir Henry Vane senr. sitting at "that time next me, said he could remember when no man was allowed "to take notes, and wished it to be "now forbidden. Which occasioned

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me, being the principal note-taker

ing from 1640 to 1645, and in which the fourth or fifth of those years is found jumbled up with the first, second, or third, the one perhaps written on the reverse of the other, have been thrown together and bound with such equally small regard to succinct arrangement, that the record of the same week's debates may occasionally have to be sought through more than one, or even two volumes. The pages elsewhere facsimiled, which express fairly the condition of the rest, were selected not for that reason, but because they were found to contain a fact of such great historical importance, and to set at rest, in a manner so startling and unexpected, discussions relating to it which have divided the writers of history,' that it seemed desirable to present them in a specially authentic form. Yet these very pages were found entirely separated from the volume containing the main part of the debates of which they form the connected portion, and mixed up with the quite disconnected records of three years later. All this, at the same time, while it explains the obscurity in which D'Ewes's Notes have until now been permitted to rest, gives us also striking proof of the genuineness of the record. For that reason only it has been dwelt on here. The reader, who now returns with me to the subject of the Great Remonstrance, will have less reason to doubt the scrupulous veracity of what is here contributed to its illustration.

Nowhere does the author of the History of the Rebellion affect such particularity of detail as in describing the various incidents and circumstances of the discussion of this Remonstrance. It was indeed, to the party of which he then first assumed the lead in the house, as to

It

their opponents, the critical moment of their career. was, to both, the turning point of all they had done heretofore, or might hope to do hereafter. Falkland told his friend Hyde that as he and Cromwell left the house together, immediately after the last division, the member for Cambridge said to him, that, if it had gone against them in that vote, he and many other honest men he knew would have sold all they had the next morning, and never have seen England more; and, without too readily accepting this anecdote, or thinking "the poor kingdom,” as Mr. Hyde phrases it, to have been half so near to its deliverance in that particular as he affects to believe, it would be impossible to overstate the gravity, to both parties, of the issue depending on the vote which had just been taken.

Immediately after the execution of Strafford, which Hyde and his associates helped more largely than any other section of the House to accomplish,' they began steadily and secretly to employ every artifice, and all the advantages which their position in the Commons gave them, to bring about a reaction favourable to the King. The one formidable obstacle had been removed, by Strafford's death, to their own entry into Charles's counsels; and without further guarantees for the security of any one concession they had wrested from the Crown, they were prepared to halt where they stood, or even (as in the case of the Episcopacy Bill) to recede from ground they had taken up.' Nor was it to be doubted that the

plan had some chances of success, in the particular time when it was tried. From the moment the Impeachment was carried against Strafford, those old relative positions of King and House of Commons, which, in the memory of living men, had existed as if unchangeably, were suddenly reversed. There was not a Parliament in the preceding reign that James had not lectured, as a schoolmaster his refractory pupils; nor any in the existing reign that Charles had not bullied, as a tyrant his refractory slaves. But this was gone. The King was now, to all appearance, the weaker party, and the House of Commons was the stronger; and how readily sympathy is attracted to those who are weak, however much in the wrong, and how apt to fall away from the strong, however clearly in the right, it does not need to say. The popular leaders became conscious of daily defections from their ranks; the House of Lords unexpectedly deserted them, on questions in which they had embarked in unison; the Army was entirely unsafe; and opinions began to be busily put about, that enough had been conceded by the King, and that the demand for more would be ungenerous.

Never had a great cause been in peril more extreme. For most thoroughly was the character of their adversary known to its chiefs, and that not a single measure of redress had been extorted from him which was not yielded in the secret hope of finding early occasion to reclaim it. Strafford could not be raised from the dead, and therefore only had the concession in his case been obtained with greater difficulty than in the rest. The army had been widely tampered with; to save the bishops and their bishopricks, the universities were moving heaven and earth;' reliance could no longer be placed upon the

(whom Selden refused to join), had taken the lead in promoting the Bill of Attainder. I am now, indeed, in possession of evidence to show that when the liberal leaders, who to this hour are supposed to have originated and most hotly urged forward

the Bill, were in reality opposing it, and bent only on continuing and closing by way of impeachment, Culpeper and Falkland strenuously advocated the procedure by Bill.

1 "Bishops had been much lifted "at," says May (lib. i. cap. ix),