LIX. THE method of keeping accounts practised in the CHA P. exchequer was confessedly the exactest, the most ancient, the best known, and the least liable to 1647. fraud. The exchequer was, for that reason, abolished, and the revenue put under the management of a committee who were subject to no control. THE excise was an odious tax, formerly unknown to the nation; and was now extended over provisions, and the common necessaries of life. Near one half of the goods and chattels, and at last one half of the lands, rents, and revenues of the kingdom had been sequestered. To great numbers of royalists, all redress from these sequestrations was refused: To the rest, the remedy could be obtained only by paying large compositions and subscribing the covenant, which they abhorred. Besides pitying the ruin and desolation of so many ancient and honourable families, indifferent spectators could not but blame the hardship of punishing, with such severity, actions which the law in its usual and most undisputed interpretation strictly required of every subject. THE severities too, exercised against the episcopal clergy, naturally affected the royalists, and even all men of candour, in a sensible manner. By the most moderate computation, it appears, that above one half of the established clergy had been turned out to beggary and want, for no other crime than their adhering to the civil and religious principles in which they had been educated; and for their attachment to those laws under whose countenance they had at first embraced that profession. To renounce episcopacy and the liturgy, and to subscribe the covenant, Clement Walker's History of Independency, p. 8. See John Walker's Attempt towards recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy. The parliament pretended to leave the sequestered clergy a fifth of their reveuue; but this author makes it sufficiently appear, that this provision, small as it is, was never regularly paid the ejected clergy. LIX. CHA P.nant, were the only terms which could save them from so rigorous a fate; and if the least mark of 1647. malignancy, as it was called, or affection to the king, who so entirely loved them, had ever escaped their lips, even this hard choice was not permitted. The sacred character, which gives the priesthood such authority over mankind, becoming more venerable from the sufferings endured for the sake of principle, by these distressed royalists, aggravated the ge neral indignation against their persecutors. BUT what excited the most universal complaint was, the unlimited tyranny and despotic rule of the country-committees. During the war, the discre-. tionary power of these courts was excused from the plea of necessity: But the nation was reduced to despair, when it saw neither end put to their duration, nor bounds to their authority. These could sequester, fine, imprison, and corporally punish, without law or remedy. They interposed in questions of private property. Under colour of malignancy, they exercised vengeance against their private enemies. To the obnoxious, and sometimes the innocent, they sold their protection. And instead of one star-chamber which had been abolished, a great number were anew erected, fortified with better pretences, and armed with more unlimited authority. COULD any thing have increased the indignation against that slavery, into which the nation, from the too eager pursuit of liberty, had fallen, it must have been the reflection on the pretences by which the people had so long been deluded. long been deluded. The sanctified hypocrites, who called their oppressions the spoiling Clement Walker's History of Independency, p. 5. Hollis gives the same representation as Walker of the plundering, oppressions, and tyranny of the parliament: Only instead of laying the fault on both parties, as Walker does, he ascribes it solely to the independent faction. The presbyterians, indeed, being commonly denomi nated the modern party, would probably be more inoffensive. See Rush. vol. vii. p. 598. and Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 230. LIX. spoiling of the Egyptians, and their rigid severity CHA P. the dominion of the elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and fervent prayers, saved them- 1647. selves from blushing by their pious grimaces, and exercised in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men. An undisguised violence could be forgiven: But such a mockery of the understanding, such an abuse of religion, were, with men of penetration, objects of peculiar resentment. THE parliament, conscious of their decay in popularity, seeing a formidable armed force advance upon them, were reduced to despair, and found all their resources much inferior to the present necessity. London still retained a strong attachment to presbyterianism; and its militia, which was numerous, and had acquired reputation in wars, had by a late ordinance been put into hands in whom the parliament could entirely confide. This militia was now called out, and ordered to guard the lines which had been drawn round the city, in order to secure it against the king. A body of horse was ordered to be instantly levied. Many officers who had been cashiered by the new model of the army, offered their service to the parliament. An army of 5000 men lay in the north under the command of general Pointz, who was of the presbyterian faction; but these were too distant to be employed in so urgent a necessity. The forces destined for Ireland were quartered in the west; and, though deemed faithful to the parliament, they also lay at a distanae. Many inland garrisons were commanded by officers of the same party; but their troops, being so much dispersed, could at present be of no manner of service. The Scots were faithful friends, and zealous for presbytery and the covenant; but a long time was required ere they could collect their forces, and march to the assistance of the parliament. СНАР. LIX. 1647. 8th June. 16th June. In this situation, it was thought more prudent to submit, and by compliance to stop the fury of the enraged army. The declaration, by which the military petitioners had been voted public enemies, was recalled and erased from the journal-book.' This was the first symptom which the parliament gave of submission; and the army, hoping, by terror alone, to effect all their purposes, stopped at St. Albans, and entered into negotiation with their masters. HERE commenced the encroachments of the military upon the civil authority. The army, in their usurpations on the parliament, copied exactly the model which the parliament itself had set them, in their recent usurpations on the crown. EVERY day they rose in their demands. If one claim was granted, they had another ready still more enormous and exorbitant; and were determined never to be satisfied. At first they pretended only to petition for what concerned themselves as soldiers: Next, they must have a vindication of their character: Then it was necessary that their enemies be punished:" At last they claimed a right of modelling the whole government, and settling the nation." THEY preserved, in words, all deference and respect to the parliament; but, in reality, insulted them and tyrannised over them. That assembly they pretended not to accuse: It was only civil counsellors, who seduced and betrayed it. THEY proceeded so far as to name eleven members, whom, in general terms, they charged with high treason, as enemies to the army and evil counsellors LIX. sellors to the parliament. Their names were Hollis, C HA P. sir Philip Stapleton, sir William Lewis, sir John Clotworthy, sir William Waller, sir John Maynard, 1647 Massey, Glyn, Long, Harley, and Nicholas. These were the very leaders of the presbyterian party. THEY insisted, that these members should immediately be sequestered from parliament, and be thrown into prison. The commons replied, that they could not, upon a general charge, proceed so far. The army observed to them, that the cases of Strafford and Laud were direct precedents for that purpose. At last, the eleven members themselves, not to give occasion for discord, begged leave to retire from the house; and the army, for the present, seemed satisfied with this mark of submission.b PRETENDING that the parliament intended to levy war upon them, and to involve the nation again in blood and confusion, they required, that all new levies should be stopped. The parliament complied with this demand. THERE being no signs of resistance, the army, in order to save appearances, removed at the desire of the parliament, to a greater distance from London, and fixed their head-quarters at Reading. They carried the king along with them in all their marches. THAT prince now found himself in a better situation than at Holdenby, and had attained some greater degree of freedom, as well as of consideration, with both parties. ALL his friends had access to his presence: His correspondence with the queen was not interrupted: His chaplains were restored to him, and he was allowed the use of the liturgy: His children were |