1640

PYM'S LEADERSHIP.

ΙΟΙ

of the bishops was unnecessary to give validity to the proceedings of the Peers. Laud modestly answered that he asked for the adjournment not of right, but of courtesy. Finch came to the support of the Archbishop, stating that he was himself out of health, and that it would be difficult for him to attend, upon which the adjournment was voted solely on account of the Lord Keeper's inability to be present. It was evident that the bishops were as unpopular amongst the Lords as they were amongst the Commons. "The Lower House," was Northumberland's comment on that day's proceedBishops. ings, "fell into almost as great a heat as ever you saw them in my Lord of Buckingham's time, and I perceive our House apt to take fire at the least sparkle."

The Lords ready to

attack the

The next day petitions from several counties, complaining April 17. of grievances of every kind, were presented, to the The petitions Commons. The courtiers described them as the Scottish Covenant wanting only hands.'

from the counties.

Pym's speech.

6

If the petitions wanted hands, Pym gave them a voice. He spoke for nearly two hours, at a length to which the Commons of those days were unaccustomed. The speech itself, sustained as it was by the fervour of strong conviction, had nothing of the poetic imagination for which members of earlier parliaments had never looked in vain to Eliot or Wentworth. Those who sympathised with Pym most thoroughly feared lest his long argumentative reasoning should strike coldly upon the ears of his hearers. When he sat down they knew that their fears had been unfounded. The general sense of the House was expressed by cries of "A good oration ! " 2

The House was in the right. Pym's speech was one of those which gain immeasurably by subsequent study. Its greatness consists far more in what the speaker left unspoken than in what he said. Others could have summed up the well-known catalogue of grievances as well. The words of the petitions were too distinct to allow much

Its merits.

'Northumberland to Conway, April 17, S. P. Dom. ccccl. 101.

2 "The best feared it would scarce have taken because it was so plain; but at the end of it all cried out, A good oration!" Harl. MSS. 4,931, fol. 47.

room for addition. That which marked Pym from henceforth as a leader of men was the moderation combined with firmness with which every sentence was stamped. It was easy enough to start with an assurance that the King would be strengthened rather than weakened by granting the relief demanded. The Scotch Covenanters had said as much as that. But it was not easy to say things which must have been diametrically opposed to all the King's ideas, and yet so to say them as to give as little offence as possible to men who had no sympathy with fanaticism or violence. It may possibly have occurred to Pym's hearers-it will certainly occur to his readers-that the cause which Pym and Eliot had alike at heart had gained not a little by the sad fate which had condemned the stainless martyr to an early grave.

Pym on

ary privi

lege.

The first words with which Pym touched on the great question of parliamentary privilege showed how thoroughly he was. in accord with Eliot's principles. The 'powers of parliament Parliament,' he said, ' are to the body politic as the rational faculties of the soul to a man.' The whole spirit of the coming revolution, at least on the political side, was to be found in these words. They made, indeed, the task of this Parliament hopeless from the first. It was the contention of Charles against the Scots that he and no assembly, civil or ecclesiastical, was the soul of the body politic. What would it advantage him to receive subsidies and to gather armies to impose his authority on Scotland, if he were compelled to yield at Westminster all that he claimed at Edinburgh. It was therefore to the nation rather than to Charles that Pym's appeal was addressed. If once this first principle were admitted, all the rest of his argument would follow. The complaint was justified, that the events of the last day of the session of 1629 and the treatment of the imprisoned members had been distinct violations of the privileges of the House, and even that the sudden and abrupt dissolution of Parliaments before their petitions were answered was 'contrary to the law and custom.'1

The ground on which the Scots had opposed the prorogation of their Parliament was that the matters were still dependent before the Lords of the Articles, and therefore neither accepted nor denied.

1640

} PYM ON CHURCH AND STATE.

103

On eccle.

On turning to the ecclesiastical grievances, Pym stepped upon more uncertain ground. Till the question of Church government had been solved in the sense of religious siastical in- liberty, there could be no permanent solution of novations. the constitutional problem. Yet for Pym or for any other man to solve it as yet was altogether impossible. The sense of irritation which had been roused by Laud's unwise proceedings had been conducive to a temper predisposed to treat Laud and his allies as the enemies of the Church and country. It might, indeed, have been expected that, after the occurrences of the last eleven years, Pym would have called for measures far more stringent than had satisfied the last Parliament. Exactly the contrary was the case. In 1629 Eliot led the House in asking for the proscription of all but Calvinistic opinions. In 1640 Pym, after speaking of the danger from Popery, touched lightly upon the support which had been given in public to 'the chiefest points of religion in difference between us and the Papists.' Abstaining from any attempt to set up a new doctrinal test, he commented less upon the opinions of his opponents than upon their ceremonial innovations. He spoke of the new ceremonies and observances, which had put upon the churches a shape and face of Popery,' of the introduction of 'altars, images, crucifixes, bowings, and other gestures,' the preferring of the men who were most forward in setting up such innovations, and the discouragement of the 'faithful professors of the truth.' Matters of small moment had been taken hold of 'to enforce and enlarge those unhappy differences,' and 'to raise up new occasions of further division.' Then, too, there had been 'the over rigid prosecution' of those who were 'scrupulous in using some things enjoined,' which were yet held by those who enjoined them to be in themselves indifferent. Pym's remedy for the mischief lay at least in the direction of liberty. "It hath ever been the desire of this House," he said, "expressed in many Parliaments in Queen Elizabeth's time and since, that such might be tenderly used. It was one of our petitions delivered at Oxford to His Majesty that now is; but what little moderation it hath produced is not unknown to us all. Any other vice almost may be better en

dured in a minister than inconformity." That there might be no doubt to what he referred, he enumerated the cases in which punishment had been inflicted 'without any warrant of law.' Men, he said, had been brought to task for refusing to read the Declaration of Sports, for not removing the communion-table to the east end, for not coming to the rails to receive the Sacrament, for preaching on Sunday afternoons instead of catechising, and even for using other questions than those which were to be found in the authorised Catechism. Finally, there had been abuse in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

It cannot be denied that to grant Pym's demands would have broken up the Church system of Charles and Laud; but, though some of the more extreme ceremonial forms would undoubtedly have been proscribed, the whole tone of his speech was in favour of a liberal and comprehensive treatment of the Church question. The unnecessary restrictions upon conscientious religion held far the largest space in his argument. Even when Pym spoke of practices to which he took objection, it was the compulsion even more than the practices which he held up to animadversion.

The civil

Finally, came the long enumeration of the political grievances. The enforcement of tonnage and poundage, and of impositions without a Parliamentary grant, which grievances. had been the subject of contention in preceding Parliaments, was naturally placed first. Pym distinctly asserted that in attacking these he had no wish to diminish the King's profit, but merely to establish the right in Parliament. Then came the grievances of the past eleven years--the enhancement of the customs by the new book of rates, the compositions for knighthood, the monopolies in the hands of the new companies, the enforcement of ship-money, the enlargement of the forests, the appeal to obsolete statutes against nuisances in order to fill the exchequer, whilst no attempt was made to abate the nuisances themselves; and last of all, those military charges which were now for the first time treated as a grievance. Pym gave a history of the way in which these last charges had grown. Coat-and-conduct money, or the expenses of clothing newly raised levies, and of taking them to the place of rendezvous had

1640

PYM ON CHURCH AND STATE.

105

originally been borne by the Crown. Elizabeth in her need had sometimes asked the counties to advance the money till she was able to repay it. By degrees the exception had become the rule, whilst the engagement to repay the advance had ceased to be observed. New customs were already springing up. Not only were men pressed against their will, but the counties were compelled to furnish public magazines for powder and munitions, to pay certain officers, and to provide horses and carts for the King's service without any remuneration whatever.

As Pym knew, the strength of the King's authority lay in his being able to fall back upon the courts of law.. As yet no one was prepared to strike at the root of the evil. Pym contented himself with protesting against 'extrajudicial declarations of judges,' made without hearing counsel on the point at issue, and against the employment of the Privy Council and the Star Chamber in protecting monopolists. Many of the clergy had thrust themselves forward to undertake the defence of unconstitutional power. It was 'now the high way to preferment' to preach that there was 'Divine authority for an absolute power in the King' to do what he would with 'the persons and goods of Englishmen.' Dr. Manwaring had been condemned in the last Parliament for this offence, and he had now 'leapt into a bishop's chair.'

Then, returning to the point from which he started, Pym pointed to the source of all other grievances in 'the mission of long intromission of Parliaments, contrary to the two

The intro

Parliaments. statutes yet in force, whereby it is appointed there

should be Parliaments once in the year.'

How then was the mischief to be remedied? Here Pym refused to follow Grimston. He refrained from requiring that individual minister should be called to account.

any

The remedy. Let them ask the Lords to join in searching out 'the causes and remedies of these insupportable grievances,' and in petitioning the King for redress.1

1 I cannot agree with Ranke in holding that the draft in the State Paper Office is more accurate than that given by Rushworth. It leaves out all about the privileges of Parliament. The printed speech in the King's Pamphlets, used by Mr. Forster, is not perhaps to be taken as being