into a full and elaborate demonstration of England's claim to the sovereignty of the seas. It had been written some nineteen years before, and submitted in MS. to James I. Disputes on the question of maritime supremacy arising with the Dutch in 1635, Selden's treatise seems to have been brought to the notice of Charles, who immediately ordered its publication. It was dedicated to the king, and by him was so highly esteemed that he gave directions for copies of it to be preserved in the council-chest, in the Court of Exchequer, and in the Court of Admiralty. In 1652, it was translated into English by Marchmont Needham, and also by J. H., probably James Howell (the author of the quaint Epistola Ho-Eliana).

To the famous Long Parliament, which assembled on the 3rd of November, 1640, Selden was returned as one of the members for the University of Oxford; a proof that, notwithstanding his former career in the House, he was not regarded as hostile to the royal cause. He behaved, however, with perfect consistency; and cast in his lot with the popular party so long as they kept within the lines of constitutional action. He sat and acted on the committee for inquiring into the arbitrary proceedings of the Earl Marshal's court; as also on the committee for preparing the remonstrance on the state of the nation. In this conduct he was countenanced, however, by Lord Falkland and Lord Digby, who afterwards became the most loyal of the king's followers; and in truth, opinion in the Lower House was as yet almost unanimous, and all parties were agreed in resisting the encroachments of the Crown. He joined in the proceedings which led to the impeachment of Strafford, because he believed him to have violated the law; but when the

majority in the Commons dropped the impeachment and introduced a bill of attainder, Selden strongly opposed it, because that too was, in his opinion, illegal and arbitrary. The measure of Selden's attachment to the popular cause can easily be attained he was prepared to support it only so long as it respected the ancient usages; and we can therefore understand that, sooner or later, a time must come when the swift expansion of reform into revolution would separate him from the party of progress.

That time had not come as yet; Selden sat on the committee appointed to examine into the unconstitutional decision of the Court of Exchequer on the subject of ship-money; and though, as a friend of the Church of England, he opposed the abolition of Episcopacy, he was appointed a member of the committee which drew up articles of impeachment against Archbishop Laud. It was, perhaps, with the view of detaching from the popular party a man of so much weight and learning that Charles proposed, when Sir Thomas Littleton was unwell, to confer the Great Seal upon Selden; but he was dissuaded from making the offer by Lords Falkland and Clarendon, who assured him that it would be rejected. "They concluded," says Clarendon, "that he would absolutely refuse the place if it were offered to him. He was in years, and of a tender constitution; he had for many years enjoyed his ease, which he loved; he was rich, and would not have made a journey to York, or have come out of his bed for any preferment which he had never affected." It is probable, however, that he would have been actuated also by higher motives, for of the sincerity of his attachment to the principle of constitutional reform there can be no question.

Selden was one of the majority which carried the

General Remonstrance, but he saw with alarm the rapid drifting of both parties towards the stern arbitrament of war. He regarded with disapproval the action of the House of Commons (February, 1642) in nominating the lord-lieutenants of the counties, for here it obviously encroached upon the royal prerogative; but, on the other hand, he denounced as equally unconstitutional the commissions of arms issued by the king. His speech on this subject produced a powerful effect, both in Parliament and the country, while it so disturbed the king that, with his consent and at his instigation, Lord Falkland addressed to him a letter inquiring into the grounds of his opposition. In reply, Selden repeated the arguments he had used in his speech, and added that he disputed in the same manner the legality of the ordinance of Parliament for appointing the lieutenants, stigmatising it as "without shadow of law or pretence of precedent.'

In the crisis of a great revolution, moderate men are nowhere. Both parties feel that he who is not with them is against them, and cannot brook the implied or spoken rebuke of the man who stands aside and refuses to cast in his lot with either. They resent his conduct, moreover, as indicating a consciousness of superior wisdom. When Edmund Waller's plot to arm the London citizens and seize the persons of the parliamentary leaders was discovered (31st May, 1643), Selden was suspected, along with Whitelocke and Pierpoint, of being implicated in it. The House, however, was satisfied with Waller's explanation, "that he did come one evening to Selden's study, where Pierpoint and Whitclocke then were with Selden, to propose to impart it to them all, and speaking of such a thing in general terms, these gentle

men did so inveigh against any such thing as treachery and baseness, and that which might be the occasion of shedding much blood, that he durst not, for the respect he had for Selden and the rest, communicate any of the particulars to them, but was almost disheartened himself to proceed in it." That Selden would have taken part in such a conspiracy was very improbable; but no doubt his want of ardour led to a suspicion of his faithlessness. The House, however, in acknowledgment of his scholarship, appointed him to the office of Keeper of the Records in the Tower; and he on his part proved his fidelity to the popular cause by subscribing with his colleagues, in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, on the 28th of September, 1644, the Solemn League and Covenant, by which, as the price of the Scotch Alliance, it was agreed to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms "to the nearest conjunction and conformity in religion, confession of faith, form of Church government, direction for worship, and catechising, that we, and our posterity after us, may as brethren live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to live in the midst of us." After undertaking to extirpate Popery, Prelacy, superstition, and schism, and to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliament, and the liberties of the kingdom, the subscribers declared it to be their "true unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavour, both in public and private, in all duties they owed to God and man to amend their lives, and each to go before another in the example of a real reformation." To Selden, as a Churchman, it must have been bitterness itself to have subscribed a document which provided for the abolition of Episcopacy, but events had proved too powerful for him. Thenceforward, however, he seem gradually to have abandoned the political stage.

It is certain that he had no sympathy with the vehement action of the party led by Vane, and Cromwell, Fairfax, Ludlow, and Ireton; the execution of Charles I., and the downfall of the monarchy must have been a death-blow to all his views and hopes of constitutional reform. He made no protest against these measures, nor did he join the king's party, whose violent proceedings were not less distasteful to him; but he retired from the din and fury of the conflict, to find peace and consolation in his beloved studies.

Even in the press of political duties he had not wholly deserted them. His pen had never ceased its activity. In 1640, he had published a wonderfully learned discourse on the Hebrew polity, civil and religious, under the title of "De Jure Naturali et Gentium, juxta Disciplinam Hebræorum, libri septem;" and in 1642, had translated into Latin from the Arabic, a tract of the Patriarch Eutychius upon certain disputed questions of ecclesiastical antiquities. To continue the catalogue of his contributions, which, however, can have but little interest for the general reader, in 1644, he published "De Anno Civili Veteris Ecclesiæ, seu Reipublicæ Judaicæ Dissertatio” ("On the Civil Year of the Ancient Church, or a Dissertation on the Jewish Commonwealth "); and in 1646, his "Uxor Hebraica, seu de Nuptiis et Divortiis ex Jure Civili, id est Divino et Talmudico, Veterum Ebræorum, libri tres." In the following year he published an edition of William de Brampton's "Fleta," with an elaborate preliminary dissertation. His great work, "De Synedriis et Præfecturis juridicis veterum Hebræorum," was given to the world in 1650; and in 1652 he terminated his long literary labours with the "Vindicia Maris Clausi," a reply to attacks upon the "Mare Clausum."