kingly supremacy. After some hesitation, the stan dard was fixed on the tower of the castle, amidst gathering clouds, and under a frowning sky. During the night the weather grew stormy, and the winds of heaven puffing against the mutilated motto of a king, blew it down. "Why did you put it there ?" said the affronted monarch, "It should have been set up in an open place, where every one might have approached it!" There was no need on this score for SO much irritation. Unhappily, it soon became notorious enough that Charles the First had plunged into a war with the parliament and people of England.

From these facts it is abundantly evident that the civil war was the result of the king's attempt to rule as an arbitrary monarch. Whatever may have been the importance attached, on both sides, to the possession of authority over the militia; a previous question remains to be answered, in order to decide upon the origination of the contest. This question is: Why was parliament unwilling that the supreme power should be lodged in the hands of the king? It is nothing to the purpose to affirm, that Elizabeth and James had acted in an arbitrary manner towards their subjects, without involving the nation in intestine strife. The people proved their ripeness for liberty in Charles's day, by the patient manner in which they endured his unconstitutional government from 1628 to 1640, and no less afterwards (when in the arrangements of a retributive providence, Charles was compelled to summon a parliament against his will), by the firm manner in which they pressed forward to secure themselves from evil government in future. Self-preservation is the law of nature. The measures of the Commons were nothing more than the succes

sive results of the operation of that law and if they became extreme and extraordinary at last, the fault must be laid on the original aggressor. The law concedes the justice of such procedure, in individual cases. If a man takes away the life of his fellow man in defending himself against a murderous attack, he is justified in his deed. Much ingenuity has been wasted by constitutional historians and others in attempting to bring the conduct of the two contending parties to the test of national laws. Such methods of historic criticism, (philosophy, they can hardly be called,) seem frivolous in a question of this nature. Let the philosopher of the nineteenth century put himself in the position of the parliament of 1642, and then say what that parliament should do. To recede before such a monarch as Charles had already proved, would have been to betray the liberties of the people; to advance against such a monarch as Charles, necessarily involved all the ensuing consequences. What patriot would have hesitated to adopt the alternative chosen by parliament ?

We now proceed to answer the question, respecting the manner in which Independency and the Independents were implicated in the struggle thus commenced. That at a later period they had much to do with it, no one can deny. But our present inquiry relates to the commencement, and not to the unforseen issues of the war.

It is evident, then, after what has been advanced above, that the contest between the king and his people, originated on purely civil grounds. Religious differences undoubtedly existed, and the course of parliamentary legislation was concerned to a great extent with matters of a religious nature; but these

were not the turning point of the conflict. If Charles had not attempted to seize the five members, and af terwards to obtain possession of the supreme power by fraud and force, the Commons would never have proceeded to extremities. Let their defenceless condition at the period of the attempted seizure, bear them witness. Without guard, without auxiliaries of any kind to render them assistance, beyond what the people might have afforded by a sudden rising in their favour; they would have been at the mercy of the king, had he been successful in the accomplishment of his project. But from that time they saw the danger they were in, and provided against it.*

It must be conceded, then, that Independency, as a form of religious opinion, had nothing whatever to do with the causes of the civil war. So far from this, the Independents were the smallest minority in parliament; and their principles were opposed not merely by the sentiments of the great body of the members, but by the various enactments of the legislative body. Some time after the civil war had commenced, as we shall have occasion to show in a succeeding portion of our history, the measures of parliament proceeded on principles directly at variance with those of the most moderate of the Congregationalists. The spirit of Nationalism, which led the House to frown upon those petitions which Burton's celebrated tract had elicited from the separatists, reigned triumphant for a long season, and was scarcely to be subdued afterwards by the victorious arms of Cromwell. When the bare idea of granting a toleration to the Independents, was a bugbear in the eyes of both houses, it

* See Milton's views respecting the conduct of Charles in Appendix C.

is not likely that any thought of ascendancy for their party should enter into the thoughts and plans of the Independent leaders.

If it be asked, then, in what capacity Lords Brooke and Say, Hampden, St. John, and Cromwell, engaged in the warfare; the answer is, unquestionably, as patriots, and as patriots alone.* No doubt their peculiar principles, no less than their piety, sustained their patriotism, and inspired them with singular courage, in a cause felt to be just. But they had no ends in view, other than those which the members of parliament and the people of England generally pursued. They contributed in every way to the defence of the nation against a despotic king; and having less superstition than most men, entered upon their enterprise with more undivided energy and zeal than the rest of the popular party. But this is the utmost that can be said of the connexion between their Independency and their patriotism.

It is gratifying to know that amongst the Independents of this period were to be found, not only

* All thus named became Colonels or Captains of Infantry in the army of 1642; the Earl of Essex being "Lord General for King and Parliament," and the Earl of Bedford General of the Horse. On the 15th of August, Cromwell seized the magazine in the castle of Cambridge, preventing the University from sending its plate, to the value of £20,000, to the aid of Charles. On Sunday, 23rd October, the battle of Edghill was fought. During the ensuing winter, various "Associations were formed between contiguous counties, for purposes of mutual defence against the royalist forces under Prince Rupert and others. Lord Grey of Wark commanded the Eastern Association, which included Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Herts. All the associations but this fell to pieces. Wither, the poet, became a captain on the parliament's side. Appendix D.

the foremost patriots, ready to risk their lives in defence of the hearths and homes of England; but also the best expounders of the rights of subjects against those who would act the part of tyrants, contrary to acknowledged laws and the constitution of the body politic. If the writings of Milton had descended to us as the only bequest of that age, we should have had ample reason for the grateful acknowledgment of our obligations to the genius of Independency, which prompted our great poet to lay aside his "garland and singing robes" for a season, in order to "teach the age to quit its clogs," and assume the exercise of its just liberties. But Milton was not the only great thinker and writer who was thus moved. Before him, in the earliest period of the civil war, two of those whom Laud prevented from repairing to New England, but who found a home for a season in Holland, and afterwards returned to their own country, espoused the cause of parliament and of popular right. While Brooke, Hampden, and Cromwell, were contending with the sword, Burroughes and Bridge,—the one of Stepney, and the other of Great Yarmouth, and both Independents,-were doing equal execution with the pen.* The writings of Bridge are specially worthy of notice, as giving the last home-thrust to the unscriptural and despotic doctrines of the high church and prerogative party. We therefore proceed to lay a few extracts from them before the reader.

*Herle also should be mentioned. He and Burroughes both replied to Dr. Ferne, to whom reference is made further on. Burroughes' reply was in two sermons, entitled, "The glorious name of God, the Lord of Hosts, etc." 1643.