should also be presented to him in the name of the House.

D'Ewes had left his place while Holles was speaking, and when he returned to it, between eleven and twelve o'clock, he found the Solicitor-General pressing his bill of tonnage and poundage through the necessary stages to obtain its enactment before the existing bill should expire. After this some other business of moment presented itself, but members grew impatient for the conclusion of the debate respecting Palmer; and on the motion of Sir Robert Cook, who sat for Tewkesbury, and who urged with some vehemence the propriety of not delaying censure in a matter affecting the high privileges of the House, that subject was resumed. "We then," says D'Ewes, "pro

"ceeded before twelve of the clock with the debate and "consideration touching Mr. Palmer's offence. That held "till about three of the clock in the afternoon, before we "proceeded to debate of his punishment."

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The substance of the speeches on either side will sufficiently indicate the character of the early part of the debate. In aggravation it was insisted on, that as to the particular matter, Palmer's great ability in his profession, his very temperateness of nature in the general, and the fact of his being a gownsman, much increased his offence. "That "after the first distemper of the House was well pacified "which arose about the protestation-making, he, by his new motion to have a protestation entered in his own name and the name of all the rest, did again raise the "flame to such an heighth, as, if God had not prevented "it, murder and calamity might have followed thereupon, "and this parliament with our posterity and the kingdom "itself might have been destroyed. For, upon Mr. Palmer's "said motion, some waved their hats, and others took "their swords with the scabbards out of their belts and "held them in their hands." On the other side in extenuation it was urged, that Palmer had in no respect forfeited his reputation as a sober, learned, and moderate

man.

That his only intent in the motion he made was

to put an end to the particular night's debate, it being so far spent; and to put off to a further day the dispute of the question whether the members of that house might protest or not. There had been an earnest offer to protest on the part of Mr. Hyde, then a motion to take names by others, and then Palmer moved in the name of himself and all others of his mind: but whether this was to protest, or to take names, was yet a question. Afterwards, indeed, Palmer was questioned by Mr. Hampden, and he stood up, and the House cried, " All, all." But there was no proof that he had an intention to raise any heat or combustion. He had done very good service in the house, and particularly in the enquiries into forest abuses, where he occupied the chair; and he was entitled to have that remembered now. Some, however, went still further in extenuation, and others even justified what he had done to be no offence at all.

The afternoon wore away in such debate, but it was in vain that Palmer's friends exhausted every resource to avert what they too plainly felt must inevitably come. The popular leaders were not to be turned from their purpose. The offence committed, and the person committing it, were of no ordinary kind. The offence struck at the very source and foundation of the power of the House, breaking down all the barriers which old usage and custom had thrown up, to keep before the people sole and intact, no matter what their internal divisions might be, the authority and influence of the Commons. The offender in himself represented a new and powerful party, bred within the house itself, who would have entered through the breach so made, and turned that very influence and authority to the secret service of the King. Palmer's success would have divided the House against itself; into a minority claiming to be free from undue strain and pressure upon their consciences, opposed to a majority claiming predominance incompatible with the exercise of individual rights, and coercing free deliberation. Once admit such division, all the votes of the past year would

lose their claim to continued respect,' and the Sovereign would again be uncontrolled. No jot would Pym and Hampden consent to abate therefore, from what was strictly necessary to single out and set aside what Palmer had done, as matter of high and weighty censure. But they did not go beyond it. They demanded his committal to the Tower until due submission and retractation were made.

Some indeed were eager to have gone farther, demanding his expulsion; but none of the great names on the liberal side appear among these, who were in truth led by the very man, Sir John Hotham, whom Clarendon represents as most opposed to what the more prominent and leading men desired. Sir Robert Cook, the member for Tewkesbury, would have had the offender not only sentenced to the Tower, but turned out of the House as well whereupon Sir John Strangways got up and reminded that worthy member, that as he had been sworn since the last Lord Steward surrendered his staff, some doubts existed how far there was any legal commission to ́swear him, and perhaps he might himself, by the statute 21st of James, be turned out of the house before Mr. Palmer. The member for Southwark, Mr. Bagshaw, rose next, and, as a brother barrister of Palmer's, took the liberty to doubt whether, having denied the fact charged, he was fit to be

"of strength to make that act good, "which was in itself null. And I "doubt," he adds, "this logic had

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1 Clarendon occasionally, to use an expression of his own, "lets himself loose" (i. 7: as if, to quote Warburton's shrewd comment phrase, he were speaking against his duty when he censures the Crown); and there is a remarkable and most weighty passage in his History (ii. 252), in which he distinctly admits that it was the King's habit to consent to particular measures (in this case he is speaking of the bill for taking away the legislative power of the bishops) from an opinion that what he held to be the violence and force used in procuring them, rendered them absolutely invalid and void, and "made the confirmation of "them less considered, as not being

'an influence upon other acts of no "less moment than these." Those are surely very significant and pregnant words.

2 Three days subsequent to this, an order was made to move the Lords to join with the Commons in moving his Majesty "to appoint the Earl of "Pembroke Lord Steward of his

sentenced; seeing that the charge had really not yet been proved by any one man, and all judges should go secundum allegata et probata. But Palmer found a more effective advocate in Mr. John Crew, the member for Brackley.

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Crew, a man of great fortune, and of principle as firm and unassailable as he was generally moderate in speech (it was by his help chiefly that Vane and Cromwell were able subsequently to pass the Self-Denying Ordinance), had voted uniformly with Pym and Hampden throughout the debates on the Remonstrance,' and he now thought that the justice of the case, which he considered to have been fully admitted, would be satisfied sufficiently by such admonishment as the Speaker standing in his place might then and there administer. For himself, he would interpret things doubtful ever in the best sense; and he could not forget such service as Mr. Palmer had heretofore rendered to the cause which in this late matter had received some offence from him. Sir," continued this discreet and temperate advocate, "though none can plead his merits to excuse a fault, yet if I have received many favours “ from a man that now doth me injury, I shall not forget "those benefits, but be the willinger to forget the injury, "and the rather in this place, because we have power to "punish our own members when they offend, but not to "reward them when they do well." It was impossible that such an appeal as this should fail of effect; but the effect was in a great degree removed by a speech in which Waller meant to have followed up the advantage, but in his lively audacious way, seeking to please both sides, satisfied neither, and almost wholly lost what Crew had gained. He desired the House not to permit a man's success to be the proof of his delinquency. All their punishments were but the Tower and the Bar, and those were great punishments, when they were inflicted for great

1 It is worth mention, perhaps, that in the famous treaty of Uxbridge, nearly four years after this date, Crew was one of the commissioners on the

side of the Parliament, with Geoffrey Palmer opposed to him on the King's side. See Clarendon, Hist. iii. 37, 76, and 90.

offences. But the custom had arisen, both within and without those walls, of punishments disproportioned to the offence. In former days, while Queen Elizabeth reigned, a check from the Council Table, or a sentence in the Star Chamber, were of such repute that none esteemed men who were so checked or sentenced: but what was it their Remonstrance had justly taken exception to? Of late these punishments had been inflicted for such small offences, that all men did rather value and esteem those as martyrs who suffered in that way, than disesteem them for it. He adjured them, therefore, to let no man be punished for temperance, lest they should seem to punish virtue. The result of which homily, by one whose great wit and parts had brought himself such small esteem, may perhaps be measured by what followed immediately after. Sir John Hotham declared that if by the rules of the House any greater censure than expulsion and the Tower could be laid upon the offender, he would gladly go higher than even those. Happily the majority were not of that opinion.

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"This last debate," says D'Ewes, "held till past four, "at which time I withdrew out of the house. When I "returned again, the debate was, which of the two "questions should be put first: whether for his sending "to the Tower, or for his being expelled out of the "House." Upon this, Sir Ralph Hopton, member for Wells, afterwards so conspicuous on the King's side in the war as "Hopton of the West," appears to have taken the lead. He moved that the question of sending to the Tower should be first put, because, he argued, if that for expulsion were put first, being the greater, the judgment of the House would be past by it, and then the lesser question could not be put. Such a point mooted as this rarely failed to call up D'Ewes. He rose accordingly, and craved leave rather to speak to the orders of the House than to the order of putting the questions. In respect of the remarks which had been last made, he wondered to hear such from an ancient parliament man: for it was not