they proceed, 'we, your poor commons, have to watch over our privileges is manifest in itself to all men. The prerogatives of princes may easily and do daily grow. The privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand. They may be by good providence and care preserved; but being once lost, are not recovered but with much disquiet.""

It is not certain, whether this instrument was ever delivered to the King, though he is supposed to allude to it, in a letter written to one of his ministers about the same time. The original of this letter, is in Mr. Hallam's possession; and both its matter, and its manner, are curious:

"My faithful 3, such is now my misfortune, as I must be for this time secretary to the devil in answering your letters directed unto him. That the entering now into the matter of the subsidy should be deferred until the council's next meeting with me, I think no ways convenient, especially for three reasons. First, ye see it has bin already longest delayd of anything, and yet yee see the lower house are ever the longer the further from it; and (as in everything that concerns mee) delay of time does never turn them towards mee, but, by the contrary, every hour breedeth a new trick of contradiction amongst them, and every day produces new matter of sedition, so fertile are their brains in ever buttering forth venome. Next, the Parlt. is now so very near an end, as this matter can suffer no long delay. And thirdly, if this be not granted unto before they receive my answer unto their petition, it needs never to be moved, for the will of man or angel cannot devise a pleasing answer to their proposition, except I should pull the crown not only from my own head, but also from the head of all those that shall succeed unto mee, and lay it down at their feet. And that freedom of uttering my thoughts, which no extremity, strait nor peril of my life could ever bereave mee of in time past, shall now remain with me, as long as the soul shall with the body. And as for the Reservations of the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage, yee of the Upper House must out of your Love and Discretion help it again or otherwise they will in this, as in all things else that concern mee, wrack both me and all my Posterity. Yee may impart this to little 10 and bigg Suffolk. And so Farewell from my Wildernesse, wch I had rather live in (as God shall judge mee) like an Hermite in this Forrest, then be a King over such a People as the pack of Puritans are that overrules the lower house. J. R."" MS. penes autorem. "I cannot tell who is addressed in this letter by the numeral 3: perhaps the carl of Dunbar. By 10 we must doubtless understand Salisbury."

There is little else, in the narrative of this reign, which is not well known to the public.

Details are given of the case of Bates, in the Exchequer; and of what was then considered as the tergiversation of Coke, who is described as "a man of strong, though narrow intellectconfessedly, the greatest master of English law, that had ever appeared; but proud and overbearing, a flatterer, and tool of the Court, till he had attained his ends; and odious to the nation, for the brutal manner in which he had behaved, as Attorney General, towards Sir Walter Raleigh, on his trial."

A note giving an extract of a private letter, to be found in Lodge's illustrations, exhibits the indecorous treatment which the greatest officers sometimes experienced from James:

"On Sunday, before the king's going to Newmarket, (which was Sunday last was a se'nnight), my lord Coke and all the judges of the common law were before his majesty to answer some complaints made by the civil lawyers for the

general granting of prohibitions. I heard that the lord Coke, amongst other offensive speech, should say to his majesty that his highness was defended by his laws. At which saying, with other speech then used by the lord Coke, his majesty was very much offended, and told him he spoke foolishly, and said that he was not defended by his laws, but by God, and so gave the lord Coke, in other words, a very sharp reprehension, both for that and other things; and withal told him that Sir Thomas Crompton [judge of the Admiralty] was as good a man as Coke; my lord Coke having then, by way of exception, used some speech against Sir Thomas Crompton. Had not my lord treasurer, most humbly on his knee, used many good words to pacify his majesty, and to excuse that which had been spoken, it was thought his highness would have been much more offended. In the conclusion, his majesty, by the means of my lord treasurer, was well pacified, and gave a gracious countenance to all the other judges, and said he would maintain the common law."" Lodge, iii. 364.

On a subsequent occasion, when the twelve Judges had concurred in writing a letter to the King, in which they declared, that they could not suspend proceedings at law, on any intimation from the Crown to that effect, Coke was meanly deserted by his colleagues:—

"Hobart, Doddridge, and several more, were men of much consideration for learning, and their authority in ordinary matters of law is still held high. But having been induced by a sense of duty, or through the ascendancy that Coke had acquired over them, to make a show of withstanding the court, they behaved like cowardly rebels, who surrender at the first discharge of cannon; and prostituted their integrity and their fame through dread of losing their offices, or rather perhaps of incurring the unmerciful and ruinous penalties of the Starchamber. The government had nothing to fear from such recreants; but Coke was suspended from his office, and not long afterwards dismissed."

Such was the "State of government" in those days. Mr. Hallam quotes from a manuscript in his own possession, the advice given by Bacon to call a Parliament in 1614, when Sir Henry Neville supported him in the promise, to undertake the management of the House, so that the King's wishes should be complied with. Hence, they and some others who united with them, acquired the title of undertakers. "The circumstance," says Mr. Hallam, "like several others in the present reign, is curious, as it shows the rise of a systematic parliamentary influence, which was one day to become the main-spring of government." We believe, however, that in the reign of Henry VIII., a scheme of the same sort was attempted, and proved equally unsuccessful; but, whether from the difference of personal character, or the general change of manners, Henry could carry points by the strength of prerogative, to which James was incompetent. The reign of the first of the Stuarts, is closed with remarking, that the commons had now been engaged for more than twenty years, in the struggle to restore and to fortify their own, and their fellow subjects' liberties; yet they had obtained in this period, but one legislative measure of importance, the declaratory Act againt monopolies. But among other points gained in different forms, they had secured the exclusive privilege of determining the contested elections of their members, and the power

1

of judging and inflicting punishment, even for offences not committed against the house:

"Of these advantages some were evidently incomplete, and it would require the most vigorous exertions of future parliaments to realize them. But such exertions the increased energy of the nation gave abundant cause to anticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom had taken hold of every class, except perhaps the clergy; from which, when viewed together with the rash pride of the court, and the uncertainty of constitutional principles and precedents, collected through our long and various history, a calm by-stander might presage, that the ensuing reign would not pass without disturbance, nor perhaps end without confusion."

Thus we are conducted to the ill-fated reign of Charles; and one third of the first volume is dedicated to the consideration of the great events by which it was characterized. Mr. Hallam justly describes him, as a man in many respects well suited to the times in which he lived; of a stern and serious deportment, a disinclination to all licentiousness, and a sense of religion that seemed more real than that of his father. These qualities, he says, might have procured for him, at his accession, some of that popularity which is rarely withheld from untried princes.

"But he did not enjoy even a transient sunshine of his subjects' affections. They were solely intent on retrenching the excesses of prerogative, and seem to have dreaded to admit any sentiments of personal loyalty, which might enervate their resolution." "Charles," he says, "took speedy pains to convince them, that they had not erred in withholding their confidence."

To the character given of the young prince, by our author, may be added the want of prudence, that full consideration of probable consequences, without which no man can steer his course with safety in any condition of life. Charles was notoriously deficient in this useful quality, during the whole of his reign. One of his first acts was to offend the House of Lords, in the case of the Earl of Bristol. His conduct in respect to the Earl of Arundel, was equally injudicious; and the sudden dissolution of his first Parliament, in order to protect Buckingham from impeachment, completed the general dissatisfaction.

Our author supposes that the King did not consider the famous. petition of right as very injurious to his prerogative; and his slow assent to it, is attributed merely to wounded pride. An opinion in which he will find few to unite with him. It rendered illegal, he says, the exacting of money under the name of loans, all arbitrary commitments, the billeting of soldiers on private persons, and the commissions to try military offenders by martial law. This is the summary of the petition as he gives it; and in respect to the last article, as it is described by him, one might wonder that the commons should request, and that the King should assent to the prohibition of a measure so essential to the good order of an army; but Mr. Hallam has passed over the really obnoxious part of the system of martial law noticed in the

petition, the addition of the words "other dissolute persons, joining with soldiers and mariners." Now, as the right to pronounce who were such dissolute persons must have rested with the commissioners, it is obvious that the extension of martial law beyond the class of military men, was the grievance contemplated by the commons. This inaccuracy is the more surprising, when we find, that in a note to the same page, mention is made of a commission issued in 1625, to Lord Wimbledown, empowering him to proceed against soldiers, or dissolute persons, joining with them.*

The other parts of the petition were soon disregarded:-

"A few days after the dissolution, Sir John Eliot, Holles, Selden, Long, Strode, and other eminent members of the commons, were committed, some to the Tower, some to the King's Bench, and their papers seized. Upon suing for their habeas corpus, a return was made that they were detained for notable contempts, and for stirring up sedition, alleged in a warrant under the king's sign manual. Their counsel argued against the sufficiency of this return, as well on the principles and precedents employed in the former case of Sir Thomas Darnel and his colleagues, as on the late explicit confirmation of them in the Petition of Right. The king's counsel endeavoured, by evading the authority of that enactment, to set up anew that alarming pretence to a power of arbitrary imprisonment, which the late parliament had meant to silence for ever. A petition in parliament,' said the attorney-general Heath, is no law, yet it is for the honour and dignity of the king to observe it faithfully; but it is the duty of the people not to stretch it beyond the words and intention of the king. And no other construction can be made of the petition, than that it is a confirmation of the ancient liberties and rights of the subjects. So that now the case remains in the same quality and degree, as it was before the petition.' Thus by dint of a sophism which turned into ridicule the whole proceedings of the late parliament, he pretended to reeite afresh the authorities on which he had formerly relied, in order to prove that one committed by the command of the king or privy council is not bailable. The judges, timid and servile, yet desirous to keep some measures with their own consciences, or looking forward to the wrath of future parliaments, wrote what Whitelock calls a humble and stout letter' to the king that they were bound to bail the prisoners; but requested that he would send his direction, to do so, The gentlemen in custody were, on this intimation, removed to the Tower; and the king, in a letter to the court, refused permission for them to appear on the day when judgment was to be given. Their restraint was thus protracted through the long vacation; towards the close of which, Charles, sending for two of the judges, told them he was content the prisoners should be bailed, notwithstanding their obstinacy in refusing to present a petition, declaring their sorrow for having offended him. In the ensuing Michaelmas term accordingly they were brought before the court, and ordered not only to find bail for the present charge, but sureties for their good behaviour. On refusing to comply with this requisition, they were remanded to custody."

The efforts of the ministry to evade that part which related to exactions of loans by levying ship money, and the noble efforts of Richard Chambers, Lord Say, and Mr. Hampden, in opposition thereto, are well described.

The energies of the Star-Chamber, while it continued, were in constant requisition. Its habits of proceeding, in general, are well known; but, as a specimen of the minuteness of its severity

* It may readily be conceived, that any person obnoxious to the Court, would be liable to arrest under this description.

and injustice on some occasions, the following extract from the Harl. MSS. is not unacceptable :

"An information was preferred in the Star-chamber against Griffin and another for erecting a tenement in Hog-lane, which he divided into several rooms, wherein were inhabiting two poor tenants that only lived and were maintained by the relief of their neighbours, &c. The attorney-general and also the lord mayor and aldermen prayed some condign punishment on Griffin and the other, and that the court would be pleased to set down and decree some general order in this and other like cases of new building and division of tenements. Whereupon the court generally considering the great growing evils and inconveniences that continually breed and happen by this new erected building and divisions made and divided contrary to her majesty's said proclamation, commit the offenders to the Fleet and fine them £20 each; but considering that if the houses be pulled down, other habitations must be found, did not, as requested, order this to be done for the present, but that the tenants should continue for their lives without payment of rent, and the landlord is directed not to molest them, and after the death or departure of the tenants the houses to be pulled down."

After conducting us, dispassionately, and circumstantially, through the difficulties and despotism of Charles, down to the year 1640, our author opens the new scene which then presented itself, in the following impressive manner:

"We are now arrived at that momentous period in our history, which no Englishman ever regards without interest, and few without prejudice; the period, from which the factions of modern times trace their divergence; which, after the lapse of almost two centuries, still calls forth the warm emotions of partyspirit, and affords a test of political principles; at that famous parliament, the theme of so much eulogy and of so much reproach; that synod of inflexible patriots with some, that conclave of traitorous rebels with others; that assembly, we may more truly say, of unequal virtue and chequered fame, which, after having acquired a higher claim to our gratitude, and effected more for our liberties, than any that had gone before or that has followed, ended by subverting the constitution it had strengthened, and by sinking in its decrepitude, and amidst public contempt, beneath a usurper whom it had blindly elevated to power."

On the first Act of this memorable body, the bill for triennial Parliaments, our author expresses a doubt, whether the supine and courtier-like character of the peers, and the want of concert and energy in the electors themselves, would not have enabled the government to set the statute at nought. It would, however, have been happy for the nation, if the experiment had been made. After observing that the statutes, on constitutional subjects, which were rapidly passed at the beginning of the session, "made scarce any material change in the Constitution as it stood in the time of the Plantagenets;" it is somewhat contradictory to remark, that the statutory measures of this Parliament formed the Constitution such nearly as it now exists." The latter observation is the most just of the two.

He considers the early impeachment of Strafford, as a masterstroke of policy; and observes, that from that very hour, Charles never ventured to resume his former high tone of command, or to speak to the commons, but as one complaining of a superior force. Baillie, one of the Scotch commissioners, then in London, relates, in a letter to his constituents, some of the minor