6 more into an Irish Massacre, to the terror and horror of all Antipapist men; and in England, or even in Scotland, except by the liberal use of varnish, nothing yet being satisfactorily mended, nay all things hanging now, as it seemed, in double and treble jeopardy, the Commons had decided on a 'Grand Petition and Remonstrance,' to set forth what their griefs and necessities really were, and would require to have done for them. The Debate upon it, very celebrated in those times, came on this day, Monday, 22d November.* The longest Debate ever yet known in Parliament; and the stormiest,-nay, had it not been for Mr Hampden's soft management, we had like to have sheathed our swords in each other's bowels,' says Warwick; which I find otherwise to be true. The Remonstrance passed by a small majority. It can be read still in Rushworth,† drawn up in precise business order; the whole 206 Articles of it,—every line of which once thrilled electrically into all men's hearts, as torpid as it has now grown. The chimes of Margaret's were striking two in the morning when we came out.'-It was on this occasion that Oliver, 'coming down stairs,' is reported to have said, He would have sold all and gone to New England, had the Remonstrance not passed ;—a vague report, gathered over dining-tables long after, to which the reader need not pay more heed than it merits. His Majesty returned from Scotland on the Thursday following; and had from the City a thrice-glorious Civic Entertainment.§ December 10th. The Episcopal business, attempted last Spring in vain, has revived in December, kindled into life by the Remonstrance; and is raging more fiercely than ever; Crowds of Citizens petitioning, Corporation going in sixty coaches' to petition ;|| the Apprentices, or City Shopmen, and miscellaneous persons, petitioning:-Bishops much insulted' in Palaceyard, as they go in or out. Whereupon hasty Welsh Williams, Archbishop of York, once Bishop of Lincoln, he with Eleven too hasty Bishops, Smectymnuus Hall being one of them, give in a Protest, on this 10th of December,¶ That they cannot get to their place in Parlia * Commons Journals, in die; D'Ewes's Mss. f. 179 b. tiv., 438-51; see also 436-7. Clarendon. Vicars, p. 56. § Rushworth, iv., 429. Rushworth, iv., 467. ment; that all shall be null and void till they do get there. A rash step; for which, on the 30th of the same month, they are, by the Commons, voted guilty of Treason; and 'in a cold evening,' with small ceremony, are bundled, the whole dozen of them, into the Tower. For there is again rioting, again are cries 'loud and hideous;'-Colonel Lunsford, a truculent one-eyed man, having drawn his sword' upon the Apprentices in Westminster Hall, and truculently slashed some of them; who of course responded in a loud and hideous manner, by tongue, by fist, and single-stick: nay, on the morrow, 28th December,* they came marching many thousands strong, with sword and pistol, out of the City," Slash us now! while we wait on the Honorable House for an answer to our Petition !"—and insulted his Majesty's Guard at Whitehall. What a Christmas of that old London, of that old Year! On the 6th of February following, Episcopacy will be voted down, with blaze of 'bonfires' and 'ringing' of all the bells, very audible to poor old Dr. Laud† over in the Tower vonder. 1642. January 4th. His Majesty seeing these extremities arrive, and such a conflagration begin to blaze, thought now the time had come for snatching the main livecoals away, and so quenching the same. Such coals of strife he counts to the number of Five in the Commons House, and One in the Lords: Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, with Holles and Strode (who held down the Speaker fourteen years ago), these are the Five Commons; Lord Kimbolton, better known to us as Mandevil, Oliver's friend, of the 'Soke of Somersham,' and Queen's-Court Committee, he is the Lord. His Majesty flatters himself he has gathered evidence concerning these individual firebrands, That they 'invited the Scots to invade us' in 1640 he sends, on Monday, 3d January, to demand that they be given up to him as Traitors. Deliberate, slow, and as it were evasive reply. Whereupon, on the morrow, he rides down to St. Stephen's himself, with an armed very miscellaneous force, * Rushworth, iv., 464. † Wharton's Laud, p. 62; see also p. 65 of 500 or of 300 truculent braggadocio persons at his back; enters the House of Commons, the truculent persons looking in after him from the lobby,—with intent to seize the said Five Members, five principal hot coals; and trample them out, for one thing. It was the fatallest step this poor King ever took. The Five Members, timefully warned, were gone into the City; the whole Parliament removed itself into the City, 'to be safe from armed violence.' From London City, and from all England, rose one loud voice of lamentation, condemnation: Clean against law! Paint an inch thick, there is, was, or can be, no shadow of law in this. Will you grant us the Militia now; we seem to need it now!-His Majesty's subsequent stages may be dated with more brevity. January 10th. The King with his Court quits Whitehall; the Five Members and Parliament purposing to return to-morrow, with the whole City in arms round them.* He left Whitehall; never saw it again till he came to lay down his head there. March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen from Dover, to be in a place of safety,'-and also to pawn the Crown-jewels in Holland, and get him arms. He returns Northward again, avoiding London. Many Messages between the Houses of Parlia-X ment and him: "Will your Majesty grant us Power of the Militia; accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants ?" On the 9th of March, still advancing Northward without affirmative response, he has got to Newmarket; where another Message overtakes him, earnestly urges itself upon him: Could not your Majesty please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time? "No, by God!" answers his Majesty, "not for an hour!"t-On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far off. There we will leave him; attempting Hull Magazine, in vain ; exchanging messages with his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers without limit :-Law-pleadings of both parties before the great tribunal of the English Nation, each VOL. I. * Vicars, p. 64. 7 † Rushworth, iv., 533 party striving to prove itself right, and within the verge of Law: preserved still in acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not rememberable by any. It is too clear his Majesty will have to get himself an army, by Commission of Array, by subscriptions of loyal plate, pawning of crown-jewels, or how he can. The Parliament by all methods is endeavoring to do the like. London subscribed 'Horses and Plate,' every kind of plate, even to women's thimble, to an unheard-of amount;* and when it came to actual enlisting, in London alone there were 'Four thousand enlisted in a day.'t The reader may meditate that one fact. Royal messages, Parliamentary messages; acres of typography thrillingly alive in every fibre of them,-these go on slowly abating, and military preparations go on steadily increasing till the 23d of October next. The King's Commission of Array for Leicestershire' came out on the 12th of June, commissions for other counties following as convenient; the Parliament's 'Ordinance for the Militia,' rising cautiously pulse after pulse towards clear emergence, had attained completion the week before. The questions puts itself to every English soul, Which of these will you obey?--and in all quarters of English ground, with swords getting out of their scabbards, and yet the constable's baton still struggling to rule supreme, there is a most confused solution of it going on. Of Oliver in these months we find the following things noted; which the imaginative reader is to spread out into significance for himself the best he can. February 7th. Mr. Cromwell,' among others, 'offers to lend Three hundred Pounds for the service of the Commonwealth,'§— towards reducing the Irish Rebellion, and relieving the afflicted Protestants there, or here. Rushworth, copying a List of such subscribers, of date 9th April, 1642, has Cromwell's name written down for '5007.,'||—seemingly the same transaction; Mr. Crom * Vicars, pp. 93, 109; see Commons Journals, 10th June, 1642. † Wood's Athenæ, iii., 193. Husbands the Printer's First Collection (London, 1643), pp. 346, 331. & Commons Journals, ii., 408 Rushworth, iv., 564. well having now mended his offer; or else Mr. Rushworth, who uses the arithmetical cipher in this place, having misprinted. Hampden's subscription there is 1,0007. In Mr. Cromwell it is clear there is no backwardness, far from that; his activity in these months notably increases. In the D'Ewes MSS. .* he appears and reappears; suggesting this and the other practical step, on behalf of Ireland oftenest; in all ways zealously urging the work. July 15th. 'Mr. Cromwell moved that we might make an order to allow the Townsmen of Cambridge to raise two Companies of Volunteers and to appoint Captains over them.'† On which same day, 15th July, the Commons Clerk writes these words: 'Whereas Mr. Cromwell hath sent down arms into the County of Cambridge, for the defence of that County, it is this day ordered,' that he shall have the '1007.' expended on that service, repaid him by and by. Is Mr. Cromwell aware that there lies a color of high treason in all this; risk not of one's purse only, but of one's head? Mr. Cromwell is aware of it, and pauses not. The next entry is still stranger. 6 August 15th. Mr. Cromwell in Cambridgeshire has seized the Magazine in the Castle at Cambridge; and hath hindered the carrying of the Plate from that University; which, as some report, was to the value of 20,0007. or thereabouts.'§ So does Sir Philip Stapleton, member for Aldborough, member also of our new 'Committee for Defence of the Kingdom,' report this day. For which let Mr. Cromwell have indemnity.||-Mr. Cromwell has gone down into Cambridgeshire in person, since they began to train there, and assumed the chief management,-to some effect, it would appear. The like was going on in all shires of England; wherever the Parliament had a zealous member, it sent him down to his shire in these critical months, to take what management he could or durst. The most confused months England ever saw. In every shire, in every parish; in courthouses, alehouses, churches, mar. kets, wheresoever men were gathered together, England, with February-July, 1642. § Commons Journals, ii., 720. Commons Journals, ii., 674. || Ibid., 726. |