the frogs of Egypt, have gotten possession of our dwellings, and we have scarcely a room free from them. They sip in our cup, they dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye vat, washing bowl, and powdering box; they share with the butler in the pantry, they have marked us from head to foot, they will not bate us a pin." The sovereign was bent on every illegal means of raising money. Yet the Long Parliament, after a very imperious speech from the king, voted him five subsidies, £350,000. It was an enormous sum for those days. Surely such men deserved some confidence. But the king would not halt on his grasping and suicidal way.

At this juncture the bishops precipitated matters by their unwise "Protestation," addressed, by twelve of their number, to the Upper House, a protestation which the peers themselves, in a conference they held upon the matter, declared to contain "matters of dangerous consequence, extending to the deep entrenching upon the fundamental privileges and being of parliaments." As to the bishops themselves, the Commons accused them of high treason, and on the next day ten of them were sent to the Tower, the two others, in regard to their great age, being committed to the custody of the Black Rod.

Rapidly now came on the tug of war. The king issued a declaration in reply to the Remonstrance. He sent the Attorney-General to the House of Lords to impeach one of the popular members, Lord

Kimbolton, together with Hampden, Pym, and three other members of the Lower House; and, as if determined that no act of his should be wanting to justify the opposition of his enemies, he went next day to the House of Commons, attended by desperadoes-" soldiers of fortune"-armed with partizan, pistol, and sword, to seize the members denounced. This scene has been so often described, that it were quite a work of supererogation to describe it again. here. Let all be summed up in a word. Reconciliation between the king and the Parliament was now impossible. The privileges of the House had been violated in a manner in which no monarch had dared to violate them before. And such a Parliament!men of the most distinguished courage and intelligence in the kingdom. The members he sought had escaped through the window. They fled in haste to the city. Thither the most distinguished members of the House followed them. They were protected by the Common Council from the king, who himself followed them to the city, demanding their bodies; but in vain. He was his own officer, both of military and police; but as he went along, the growls of "Privilege, privilege-privilege of Parliament," greeted him everywhere. One of the crowd, bolder than the rest, approached his carriage, shouting, "To your tents, O Israel!" The king had given the last drop to fill up the measure of contempt with which he was regarded. He had struggled with his Parliament, and he was unsuccessful. Here was a

hint for such men to act upon; and petitions from all parts of the land poured in, from vast bodies of the people, declaring their intention to stand by the Parliament: from counties, cities, towns, parishes, trades; the porters petitioned; the watermen (waterrats, Charles called them) petitioned. And we

may gather the state of domestic confusion from the fact that the women petitioned. The mind of the country was roused against the monarch. Meantime, the exiled members were brought back in triumph to the House, amidst the pealing of martial music, flags waving from the mast-heads of all the vessels on the river, the masts covered with shouting sailors, and the long procession of city barges-for at that day most great triumphal processions took place on the Thames; and while the five members stepped into the House, the House rising to receive them, Charles fled to Hampton Court, nor did he see his palace at Whitehall again until he beheld it as a prisoner, and stepped from its banqueting-house to a scaffold.

We have no idea, in these pages, of presenting to the reader a history of the times; but in this running stream of incident he will be able to gather the description of the platform preparing for the deeds of Cromwell. Of course the House was emboldened by its triumph. It no doubt judged that Charles, by his ignorance and his injudiciousness, had made himself unfit to guide the affairs of the nation, and the demands of the House were therefore now proportioned

to their triumphs. They demanded the keeping of the Tower and all the principal fortresses of the kingdom. They demanded the choosing and control of the militia, the army and navy then being so called. And upon the king's refusal, the House conferred upon themselves the powers they had desired. He issued a proclamation against them, which was in turn declared to be void in law. The king now left Hampton Court, proceeding towards York. He appeared before Hull, hoping by surprise to obtain possession of a large quantity of military stores deposited there. Thus the king begun the work of insurrection. The Parliament, in anticipation of the king's design, directed the several counties to array, train, and muster the people, as in cases of domestic insurrection. And the king retorted upon the Parliament by issuing a proclamation for suppressing the rebellion; and shortly after, coming to Nottingham, he there erected his standard, August 25th, 1642, in the midst of a loud storm, which, as none failed to notice, blew it down the same evening. Thus he began the Civil War. Cromwell, at this time, was

forty-three years of age.

It is not clear that even yet Charles suspected the dangers his rashness so persistently invoked. The reader has, perhaps, heard how, once upon a time, a London exquisite descended into a coal mine on a voyage of exploration and discovery; he saw everything-Davy lamps, blind horses, trucks of coal rolling along subterranean tramways. Seated on a cask

to rest himself, he proceeded to question the swarthy miner, who was his conductor, concerning many things, and especially about the operation of blasting. "And whereabouts, my man," condescendingly said he, "whereabouts do you keep your powder?' Please, sir," replied the swart one, "you're a-sittin' on it!" Charles was in a world to him all dark and subterranean, and sitting on a powder-mine, of the existence of which he had no knowledge, although it was beneath his throne.