On the 26th of May, Sir Henry Wotton made a final stand for the King's right to lay impositions. He spoke, writes the judicious Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, "a very mannerly and demure speech for the maintenance of them, alleging Spain, France, and Italy for examples." Secretary Winwood seconded Wotton; and Sir Thomas Lake detailed, by way of confirming the example cited from France, how many millions the impost of salt, the Gabelle, amounted to. But these Court speakers met with prompt reply. We are to be governed by our own laws, said Savile and others; not by foreign example. The exactions quoted might be de facto, but were not de jure. For Spain and France, they seldom or never have had any parliament or assemblies; and for the governments of Italy, there was no other consideration to be had of them than as of petty tyrannies rather than just principalities. "Sir Edwin Sandys," says a private letter of the time, "went further, and was more bitter in the conclusion of his speech. But the boldest Bayard of all was Wentworth" (namesake of the young member for Yorkshire, himself member for the city of Oxford, whose Recorder he was) "who said that the just reward of the Spaniards' Imposition was the loss of the Low Countries; and for France, that their late most exalting kings died like calves upon the butcher's knife; and that such princes might read their destiny in the fortyfifth of Ezekiel, verse seven or thereabouts, but specially in Daniel, the eleventh chapter, verse twenty." At which culminating point, certain personages in the Upper House took violent offence; and, upon a subsequent proposal for a Conference, my Lord Bishop (Neale) of Lincoln, holding strong opinions opposed to Mr. Went worth's, denounced the whole Lower House as a factious, mutinous, seditious assembly, that struck not any more at the branches, but at the root, yea at the very Crown and Sceptre itself! The Court was frantic with delight at this episcopal sally; and "a plain man" told some of the leading members that "they knew who looked over Lincoln, but now Lincoln had looked over them," and put an end to their prating. It was too true. The entire House responded in a flame to the scurrilous Bishop, and Dissolution was no longer avoidable. It took place on Tuesday the 7th of June. Six days before, the House had been endeavouring so to amend a Crown Improvement Act as to rescue the very poor from some part of the hardship inflicted by it, and to secure the insertion therein of a provision against the erection of more playhouses. But it did not pass. The House had been sitting a couple of months, and had passed nothing. The 7th of June came, and they were still an "addle" parliament; when the usher of the Lords called them to their Dissolution, and found them cheering for Savile against Wentworth's friend Wotton. "Sir Henry Wotton," writes Chamberlain, "for some indiscreet and indecent language used to Sir John Savile, was cried down, and in great danger to be called to the Bar, but escaped narrowly." The day after the Dissolution, Sandys, Crewe, Whitelocke, and the rest of the twelve members named to conduct the Conference against Impositions, were summoned to bring to the Council-Table all the notes and arguments they had prepared; and there, while the Clerk of the Council set fire to them, Whitelocke caught sight of the King in the adjoining Clerk's Chamber, 66 peeping through a hole in the arras to enjoy the bonfire! "I saw him," says Whitelocke, after mournfully recording the fact of his having seen his "twenty-four sides in folio," all written with his own hand, burnt by Mr. Cottington, " I saw him look throughe an open place in the hangins, about the bignes of the palm of one hand, all the while the lords were in withe us." The Lords having thus disposed of those learned and elaborate arguments in a manner much more effectual than by handling them in Conference, proceeded to sign warrants for committal of Mr. Recorder Wentworth and three others to the Tower. At the same time intimation was given to Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Edward Giles, Sir Roger Owen, Mr. Nicholas Hyde, and others, that their names had been removed from the Commission of Peace. A graver step seems at first to have been contemplated in regard to "Sir John Savile, Knight for Yorkshire," of whom bonds and sureties were taken; but at length, "after confinement to this town for a time," as a private letter informs us, he was released to his friends. Unmolested, but also undistinguished, and hardly perhaps much gratified by the scenes he had abstained from taking part in, the other ex-member for Yorkshire went back to Wood-house; and so ended the Parliament of 1614, "in that manner," says the good Sir James Whitelocke, "that all good people wear verye sorye for it. I think it not fit to play the part of a historiographer about it, but I pray God wee never see the like." Oh Grief! what have I Done? WISH that I had perish'd Or had vow'd myself a Nun, Ere I cross'd the wide AtlanticOh Grief! what have I done? Like a desert without water, Is this loveless life, this joyless- 'Tis so cold-so drear around me: These forests wild and dun, That frozen lake before me— Oh Grief! what have I done? My heart is very heavy Ere the long day is begunBut 'tis heavier far at evening: Oh Grief! what have I done? The stranger's eye it freezes me, The stranger's hearth I shun-The stranger's voice is harsh to me : Oh Grief! what have I done? The friends I lov'd so dearly, I left them all-I left them— Oh Grief! what have I done? They cry "Come back, come back to us; " And thither would I run, But the ocean rolls between us Oh Grief! what have I done? ANNA JAMESON. |