218

CHAPTER XCV.

THE FIRST TWO MONTHS OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.

Nov. 3. Meeting of the Long Parliament.

It

ON November 3 that famous assembly which was to be known to all time as the Long Parliament met at Westminster. 1640. was impossible that the view of public affairs which was taken by the King should satisfy the men who now came together from every part of England. They were firmly persuaded, not that a few things had gone wrong, but that everything had gone wrong. The future Cavalier and the future Roundhead were of one mind in this. Nor would they be content to submit the choice of the abuses to be abolished to the reason and conscience of the King. They had resolved to measure by their own reason and conscience the remedies which they desired. Charles had by his actions thrust into the foreground the question of sovereignty, and it could never be put out of sight again.

Temper of the members.

Unhappily it was rather to be wished than to be expected. that the claim to supremacy which Parliament was justified in putting forward, should have been swollen by no unreasonable demands, and supported on no fictitious allegations. The worst result of Charles's system of

Causes of future

mischief.

He had attempted to

government was, that this could not be. rule without understanding his subjects, and the process had not been such as to enable them to understand him. Called upon to interpret series of actions to which they did not possess the key, they naturally conceived that the explanation was to be found in a more resolute and consistent effort than any

1640

PARLIAMENT AND THE SCOTS.

219

of which Charles was really capable. They held that all that had taken place was the result of a settled conspiracy to replace law and liberty by an absolute despotism at home, whilst the political despotism thus brought into existence was to be subjected in turn to the ecclesiastical despotism of the Pope. This, they believed, was the deliberate intention of Laud and Strafford, for as yet Charles's name was not mentioned. It was natural enough that it should be so, but it was none the less fatal to any chance, if chance there were, of an understanding with the King. Errors do not any the less produce their evil crop because they are under the circumstances unavoidable.

Strength of the Parliament in the Scottish

No Parliament had ever met, since the days of Earl Simon, with so great a strength of popular support. Nor had it only to rely upon a vague and unorganised feeling, always hard to translate into combined action. For the first time since Parliaments had been, it had behind it an army. armed and disciplined force, possessing more military cohesion than any popular rising could possibly have had. That army, indeed, was, in the eye of the law, an army of foreigners encamped on English soil. But for the moment it was regarded by most Englishmen with more sympathy than that other army in the North which was entirely composed of Englishmen. By a strange combination of circumstances, it had become impossible for Charles to defy his Parliament without defying the Scottish army as well. Unless he could pay the 850l. a day, which the Scots had agreed to accept, their army would hold the Treaty of Ripon to be at an end, would cross the Tees, and march southwards. There was no force in existence which could be counted on to stop the invaders anywhere between Yorkshire and Whitehall. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary for Charles to find money, and he knew perfectly well that if he dissolved Parliament it would be out of his power to collect a single penny.

It was not now with Charles, as it had been in 1625, in 1626, in 1629, or even in the spring of 1640. His former quarrels with Parliament had brought to him disordered finances, and had frustrated his cherished plans. A dissolution now would bring him face to face with absolute ruin.

Charles speaks of

Plain as this seems to be, it took some little time to drive it home to Charles's understanding. In his opening speech he asked the Houses to join him in chasing out the rebels, and was surprised to find himself obliged to explain away the obnoxious term.1

the Scots as rebels.

Nov. 5. Lenthall

The new position of Parliament was emphasized by the choice of a Speaker. Charles had intended to propose the nomination of the Recorder of London, Sir Thomas Gardiner, a devoted adherent of the Crown. ConSpeaker. trary to all precedent, the City had refused to send its Recorder to Parliament, and was represented by four stout Puritans. Charles was therefore obliged to look elsewhere. His choice had fallen on William Lenthall, a barrister of some repute in the courts, and likely to be acceptable to the leading members of the Commons. Lenthall was better fitted for the post than Charles could have imagined. He was surpassed by some in the House in knowledge of Parliamentary precedent, but he was the first to realise the position of a Speaker in times of political controversy. He would not, like Finch, in 1629, place himself at the service of the Crown. Neither would he, like Glanville, in the Short Parliament, take an active part in opposition to the Crown. He was content to moderate and control, and to suggest the means of reconciling differences, without attempting to influence the House in its decision. Through his whole career he had, as he said on one famous occasion, neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, save as the House was pleased to direct him.

Strafford's

No one knew better than Strafford what danger was impending over his own head. He had to bear the burden of all other men's offences as well as of his own. To the mass forebodings. of Englishmen he was the dark-browed apostate, who had forsaken the paths of constitutional usage to establish a despotic and arbitrary power. The Scots, too, loudly proclaimed him as the enemy of their Church and country, and as the originator of that war which had been as obnoxious to Englishmen as it had been to themselves. Court favourites,

1 The King's Speeches, Rushworth, iv. II, 17.

1640

STRAFFORD SENT FOR.

221

whose schemes for their own enrichment had been thwarted by his imperious frown, were eager to remove such an obstacle from their path. The Puritans regarded him as their deadliest foe. The City of London had not forgotten how he had threatened its aldermen, and had attempted to ruin trade by the debasement of the coinage. Strafford knew how powerful the City had now become. Even Parliament could not raise subsidies for the payment of the armies without considerable delay, and a further application to the City for a loan was therefore inevitable. Without a loan the Royal army would be compelled to disband, and the Scots, as Strafford expressed it, would be more than ever 'a rod over the King, to force him to do anything the Puritan popular humour had a mind to.' Yet Strafford was not without hope. If only, he thought, the Scottish requirements were known in all their fulness, they would meet with universal resistance.

Intrigues at

Strafford knew that his place of safety was in Yorkshire, at the head of the army. The belief of his own family was, that Hamilton and Vane, anxious to make their peace Court. with the Parliamentary leaders, persuaded the King to send for him. Charles himself was eager to lean on that strong arm, and to consult that brain so fertile in resources. He assured Strafford that, if he came, he 'should not suffer in his person, honour, or fortune.' The Queen seconded her husband's entreaties by declarations of her protection. With a brave heart, though against his own judgment, the doomed statesman set out from that loved home at Wentworth Woodhouse, which he was never to behold again. He knew that his

Nov. 6.

Strafford sets out for London.

enemies were preparing to charge him with 'great matters out of Ireland.' "I am to-morrow to London," he wrote, "with more dangers beset, I believe, than ever any man went with out of Yorkshire; yet my heart is good, and I find nothing cold in me. It is not to be believed how great the malice is, and how intent they are about it. Little less care there is taken to ruin me than to save their own souls." 1

1 Strafford to Radcliffe, Nov. 5. Sir G. Wentworth's Narrative, Whitaker's Life of Radcliffe, 214, 228. I do not give Whitelocke's state

The Irish

Strafford was right about the danger from Ireland. The English House of Commons, indeed, cared little for the grievances of the native population. For the grievances complaints. of the Protestant landowners and the English officials they had a more open ear, and these were precisely the classes on which Strafford's hand had weighed most heavily.' It was no mere wish to swell the chorus of complaint which sent the Commons to hunt on the other side of St. George's Channel for fresh charges against their enemy. They instinctively felt that Strafford's conduct in Ireland was inseparable from his conduct in England. It was there that he had shown himself in his true colours as the arbitrary and irresponsible ruler; and

ment that the King said that they should not touch a hair of Strafford's head, as Whitelocke is not to be depended on in details.

An extract from a letter of Sir John Leeke to his half-brother, Sir E. Verney (Verney MSS.), will show something of the temper aroused by the working of one of Strafford's financial expedients, the tobacco monopoly. Leeke's son-in-law, a Captain Hals, had commanded a ship which was bringing home tobacco from Virginia, and had died on the voyage. "When the ship came home," wrote Leeke, "they considered not our losses, but by strong hand locked up our hatches, and after some few days got lighters and cellared it up; then fell to weighing. We had 1,100 rolls and odd; all merchants, before that day, were allowed 2 lbs. for every stick's weight; they enforced us to allow 3 lbs., by which we lost 1,100 pounds of tobacco. Next we were not allowed an indifferent weigher, but had the King's searcher put upon us, by whose crooked hand, I vow to God, we lost 3,000 pounds weight of tobacco. To conclude, we had no more than 4 a pound for the tobacco, which did amount unto us in all 319%. The tobacco was by them sold at 2s. per pound, and 7 and 8 groats the pound. You may by this guess what they ravished from my poor daughter. Our payment could not be, but at six and six months, but we were not paid the first six months. They alleged our tobacco did not prove well. It was God's judgment if it did not, for the widow and orphan's sake. We had likewise one other parcel for which we have not yet our money. If our great King and brave parliament take this general statement into their consideration, I will lay down more of this to your judgment. This monopoly, or rather hellish plot, hath undone a thousand families here, and undone the island. Captain Hals and his brothers did in those years carry off of the scum and lazy people of this kingdom six or seven hundred men and women. This was a great ease to the kingdom,

and kept many from the gallows."