Pym, and was taken by every member of both Houses as a token of their determination to resist any forcible interference with their proceedings. It was rapidly followed by the King's assent, given under stress of mob violence, to the Act for Strafford's attainder (No. 20, p. 85).

On the day on which the King's assent to Strafford's death was given, he also consented to an Act against the dissolution of the Long Parliament without its own consent (No. 21, p. 87). It was the first Act which indicated the new issues which had been opened by the manifest reluctance of Charles to accept the diminution of his power on which Parliament insisted. Taking into account the largeness of the changes proposed, together with the character of the King from whom power was to be abstracted, it is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that nothing short of a change of Kings would meet the difficulties of the situation. Only a King who had never known what it was to exercise the old powers would feel himself at his ease under the new restrictions.

However reasonable such a conclusion may be, it was not only impossible, but undesirable that it should be acted on at once. Great as was both physically and morally the injury inflicted on the country by the attempt of Parliament to continue working with Charles, the nation had more to gain from the effort to preserve the continuity of its traditions than it had to lose from the immediate evil results of its mistake. If that generation of Englishmen was slow to realise the truth in this matter, and suffered great calamities in consequence, its very tenacity in holding firm to the impossible solution of a compromise with Charles I, gave better results even to itself than would have ensued if it had been quick to discern the truth. A nation which easily casts itself loose from the traditions of the past loses steadiness of purpose, and ultimately, wearied by excitement, falls into the arms of despotism.

In spite, therefore, of the appearance of chaos in the history of the years 1640-1649, the forces which directed

events are easily to be traced. During the first months of the Long Parliament there is the resolution-whilst retaining the Kingship-to transfer the general direction of government from the King to Parliament and more especially to the House of Commons, a resolution which at first seems capable of being carried out by the abolition of the institutions which had given an exceptional position to the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns. Later on there is the gradual awakening of a part of the nation to the truth that it is impossible to carry out the new system in combination with Charles, and this leads to the putting forth by Parliament of a claim to sovereignty really incompatible with Kingship. Even those, however, who are most ready to break with the past, strive hard to maintain political continuity by a succession of proposed compromises, not one of which is accepted by both parties.

The Tonnage and Poundage Act, which became law on June 22 (No. 22, p. 88), bears the impress of the first of these movements. On the one hand whilst it asserts the illegality of the levy of Customs-duties without a Parliamentary grant, it gives to Charles not merely the Tonnage and Poundage given to his father, but also 'such other sums of money as have been imposed upon any merchandise either outward or inward by pretext of any letters patent, commission under the Great Seal of England or Privy Seal, since the first year of his late Majesty King James, of blessed memory, and which were continued and paid at the beginning of this present Parliament' (p. 90). In other words, it followed the precedent of the abortive Bill of 1610 (see p. xviii) by including the Impositions in the grant, and thus enabled the King 'to live of his own' in time of peace. On the other hand, it shows how greatly Charles was distrusted by limiting the grant to less than two months, from May 25 to July 15 (p. 90).

The circumstances which caused this distrust are revealed in the Ten Propositions (No. 23, p. 91). The English army was still under arms in Yorkshire, and though it was about

to be disbanded, the King proposed to visit Scotland with the intention, as was then suspected, and was then known, of stirring up the Scots to assist him in England. At such a time it may well have seemed unwise to make the King financially independent, and subsequent events increasing the feeling, the Tonnage and Poundage Act was renewed for short periods only, till the outbreak of the Civil War put an end to any wish to supply the King.

In spite of the King's hope of bringing about a reaction with Scottish aid, he did not feel himself strong enough to refuse his assent to the Bills prepared for cutting off the powers acquired by the Tudors, and on July 5 he gave his consent to the Act for the Abolition of the Star Chamber (No. 25, p. 106) and to the Act for the Abolition of the High Commission (No. 26, p. 112). The work of branding with illegality the extraordinary financial means to which he had himself resorted was completed by the Act declaring the illegality of Ship-money (No. 27, p. 115), the Act for the Limitation of Forests (No. 28, p. 117), and the Act prohibiting the exaction of Knighthood Fines (No. 29, p. 121).

Thus far Parliament had been practically unanimous. The Constitution which had been virtually modified in 1629 to the profit of Monarchy, was legally modified in 1641 to the disadvantage of Monarchy. If there had been nothing more than constitutional questions at issue, it is highly probable that if the King had continued to intrigue with the object of redressing forcibly the balance in his favour, Parliament, backed by the active part of the nation, would have at last been almost unanimous in demanding a change of sovereigns. It is however seldom, if it is ever the case, that political movements are determined on such simple lines. Human action is influenced by many motives, and as the political current shifts and varies, ideas which have at one time hardly obtained recognition rise to the surface and become all important in the direction of events.

At the end of August, 1641, the political changes which

had been unanimously adopted, and which, with the exception of the clauses in the Triennial Act for the automatic assembling of Parliament, were permanently accepted in 1660 by the Government of the Restoration, had been accomplished. Room was thereby made for the consideration of another class of changes on which considerable difference of opinion existed. Something must be done to settle the Church as well as the State, and excepting so far as the abolition of the High Commission was concerned, there was no such agreement about ecclesiastical as there had been about political reforms. It was indeed generally desired that the Church, like the State, should be regulated by Parliamentary law rather than by the Royal authority; and that an end must be put to the alterations in the conduct of worship, which in Laud's eyes were but the restoration of legal order, whilst in the eyes of others they were unauthorised innovations. Further than this, agreement was not to be had. There were those who wished Episcopacy and the Common Prayer Book to be abolished, and there were others who wished them to be retained with some restraint of the authority of the Bishops, and with some more or less slight alteration of the form of prayer.

These two tendencies had already made themselves felt: the first in the Root and Branch Petition (No. 17, p. 67), presented to the House of Commons on December 11, 1640, and in the so-called Root and Branch Bill for transferring Episcopal jurisdiction to Parliamentary Commissioners, which reached the committee stage in the House of Commons; the second in the Bill on Church Reform (No. 24, p. 94), which was read twice in the House of Lords. Neither of these obtained the final sanction even of the House in which it had been introduced, and when in the beginning of September, when the King was away in Scotland, the Houses prepared for a short recess, the Resolutions of the Commons on Ecclesiastical Innovations (No. 30, p. 122) and the publication of an Order of the Lords on the Services of the Church (No. 31, p. 124) showed that

there were at least divergent tendencies in the two Houses as far as Church matters were concerned.

The event which precipitated the division of parties was the Ulster Rebellion. The first indication that the majority of the Commons felt that, with a war in Ireland in prospect, it was necessary that harmony should exist between the Crown and Parliament is to be found in the Instructions to the Commons' Committee in Scotland sent up to the Lords on November 8 (No. 32, p. 124). The demand made in these Instructions was for the appointment of councillors and ministers approved by Parliament (p. 125). To grant such a wish would practically annihilate the independent action of the Crown, and the division of parties on ecclesiastical affairs now gave to the King a majority of the Lords and a large minority of the Commons upon whom he could rely. All those, in short, who wished to see considerable ecclesiastical changes made in the Puritan direction supported the authority of the House of Commons, whilst those who wished the changes to be few or none supported the authority of the King. When Charles returned to London on Nov. 25 his speech to the Recorder (No. 33, p. 126) showed that he was aware where his real strength lay, and his policy was completely in accordance with his conscience. On Dec. 1, a deputation of the Commons presented to him the Grand Remonstrance (No. 34, p. 127), which had been carried by a small majority before his return. After setting forth at length the details of the late misgovernment, the House asked for the employment of ministers in whom Parliament might confide (p. 156), and for the reference of Church reform to a synod of divines whose conclusions might be confirmed by Parliament (p. 152). As there was to be no toleration of Nonconformity, the plan of the framers of the Grand Remonstrance was to substitute the general enforcement of their own form of Church government and worship for that which had recently been enforced by the authority of the King and the Bishops. On December 10, Charles answered indirectly by a Proclamation on Religion (No. 35, p. 154), and