councillors as Finch and Laud, more inconsiderate and violent than himself, and all tended to a popular revolution. Bellasis and Sir John Hotham, who had opposed the Court in the Lower House, were immediately summoned before the Council, and refusing to answer the questions the Lord Keeper put to them respecting their conduct in parliament, were committed to prison. Crew, the chairman of the committee of religion, shared the same fate, because he would not deliver up the petitions and complaints which had been intrusted to him.

The Lord Keeper gave a fresh instance of his ignorance and folly, by publishing an opinion in which he induced some of the Judges to join him, that the Convocation, after the dissolution of the parliament, was still entitled to sit and grant supplies from the clergy, and by a novel commission under the Great Seal, he authorised them to frame an ecclesiastical code adapted to thé exigency of the times. The more timid members of the Convocation were still much alarmed, but a majority agreed to seventeen new canons, and although they in various particulars affected the rights of the laity and were clearly illegal, they all received the royal assent, one of them being "that every clergyman, four times in the year, should instruct his parishioners in the Divine right of Kings, and the damnable sin of resistance."* These ecclesiastical enactments added greatly to the general excitement. vessel was already full, and this last drop made the waters of bitterness to overflow."†

“The

Nothing so strikingly proves how universally the feeling of resentment against the government prevailed in the nation, as that it infected the camp, and unnerved the English soldier,-insomuch, that now occurred the only instance in our history of an English army flying from the field of battle. "The king saw plainly that both divers officers of his army, and even the private soldiers generally (which was a most remarkable inclination), would not fight against the Scots."

After the route at Newburn, and the flight to Durham, Charles and his councillors were in a state of the utmost perplexity. Without funds, his troops must be immediately disbanded, and Leslie, with his Covenantors, might march triumphant to join the discontented in London. The late unfortunate dissolution of the parliament was already deeply deplored, but to meet a new House of Commons seemed a measure not only humiliating, but hopeless. The Peers had been willing to grant a supply, and the King

† Clarendon.

‡ Whitelock.

*Rush, i. 1205. Wilk. Con. iv. 553. § Another difficulty was then experienced (which we now meet by the Annual Mutiny Act), that the Petition of Right having abolished martial law, there were no means of punishing military offences. Even Finch was obliged to acknowledge this, and he privately passed pardons under the Great Seal to officers who had found it necessary to execute à mutineer. Lord Conway said upon the occasion, that if any lawyer were so imprudent as to discover the secret to his soldiers, it would be necessary instantly to refute him, and to hang him by sentence of a court-martial.-Rush. iii. 1199.

had parted amicably with them. Finch suggested that they might be summoned without the Commons, and treated as a national assembly,-pretending that there were various precedents for a great Council of the Peers so acting in cases of imminent national danger. The advice was relished, and he issued writs of summons under the Great Seal to all the Peers, requiring them to meet at York on the 25th of September, to consult with the King de arduis regni.

Before the day arrived, petitions poured in from all quarters for the calling of a parliament, as the only remedy to save the nation from anarchy and ruin; and many Peers joining in these, Charles foresaw that this would be the first recommendation of the Great Council. He yielded to the torrent, which he despaired of being able to stem. But though it was announced that a parliament should be summoned, the Peers were allowed to assemble, and "the Grand Council" was constituted. In his address to them, the King, according to the information he had received from the Lord Keeper stated, " that upon sudden invasions, where the dangers were near and instant, it had been the custom of his predecessors to assemble the Great Council of the Peers; and, by their advice and assistance, to give a timely remedy to such evils which could not admit a delay so long as must, of necessity, be allowed for the assembling of parliament.” But Lord Clarendon says, "this assembly of the Peers was a new invention, not before heard of; or so old, that it had not been practised in England for some hundreds of years :" and, in truth, since the time of Henry III., when the Commons became a constituent part of the legislature, there had been no instance of the Peers being summoned without them to deliberate on public affairs. As nothing was done at this Council, historians have been much puzzled to explain the motive for calling it; but there can he little doubt that when the writs for it issued, the intention was that it should take upon itself all the functions of parliament, and that it was, by a coup-d'état, to supersede the House of Commons, which had been found so troublesome. The attempt created serious alarm among the middling and lower orders of the people, and regarded as another proof of a deep-laid scheme to crush public liberty.

[SEPT. 25.]

Although Charles announced to the Great Council that he had already given orders to his Lord Keeper to issue writs for a parliament, the general conviction was, that this was the result of his altered purpose, and that the nation was to have been taxed by an ordinance of the House of Lords. To save appearances they held several meetings,-advised the negotiation with the Scots, which ended in the treaty of Ripon,and sent a deputation to London, to assist in borrowing money for the support of the army. They then all quietly dispersed. 39*

CHAPTER LXIV.

CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD KEEPER FINCH.

On the third of November began the most memorable parliament recorded in our annals. Instead of the usual grand [A. D. 1640.] procession, the King, attended by the Lord Keeper and a few of the great officers of state, came privately by water from Whitehall, and landed at the parliament stairs, near where Westminster Bridge now stands. The King, after a few general observations, in a very conciliatory and touching tone, said he had commanded his Lord Keeper to give a particular account of what had happened since the last dissolution.

Finch's address was very artful; his great object being to divert indignation from himself to the Scots. Having eulogised the bravery, and genius, and greatness of the natives of England, he boldly denied that they had ever been conquered either by Saxons, Danes, or Normans. It were an easy task," he said "to make it appear that they never changed the old established laws of England, nor ever brought in any new, so that you have the frame and constitution of a commonwealth, made glorious by antiquity; and, with states as with persons and families, certainly an uninterrupted pedigree doth give lustre." He then pointed out the extreme presumption of the Scots, in passing with an army the rivers Tweed and Tyne, seizing upon Newcastle, and levying contributions on Northumberland and Durham "to the prejudice of monarchy, and rendering less glorious this kingdom." Next came the indispensable necessity of instantly providing funds for supporting an army, by which the invasion might be opposed, the King's authority vindicated, and the honour of the country maintained. Aware of the ill construction that had been put upon the Council of the Peers at York, he pretended to say that it was after a custom which had been frequently used*: "This was not done to prevent, but to prepare for a parliament. It was not to clash or interfere with this assembly by acting or ordering any thing which belongeth to this high and supreme jurisdiction, but only to give their assistance for the present to render things more fit for this great assembly. They could never attempt, nor had the least thought to make, by any act or order, any thing tending to charge the subject."+

Nevertheless, there was a greater disposition to sympathise with the Scots than to raise an army for their destruction, as they

* Although Camden and Selden flourished about this time, it is certain that the general mass of men of education were by no means so well acquainted with the history and antiquities of the country as at the present day,-or the Lord Keeper durst not have ventured on such an assertion.

† 2 Parl. Hist, 630.

declared their only object was to lay their grievances before their Sovereign. The elaborate denial of all bad intentions in calling the Council of the Peers at York strengthened the previous suspicions on this subject, and the Commons only waited till their speaker was chosen that they might proceed against the authors of their grievances, of whom the Lord Keeper himself was considered one of the most guilty.

In a few days he had a specimen of the temper of the Commons, and a forewarning of his own fate,-in the impeachment, suddenly voted with closed doors, against the Earl of Strafford ; —and, as the organ of the Peers, he was obliged to issue the order for the commitment of his colleague, and to direct that he should at once be carried off by the Serjeant-at-arms, without then being permitted to say a word in his own defence.*

It is said that Finch now gave out privately that he was willing to go over to the popular party, and to do every thing he could to assist them, and that he had actually made some impression on the most violent leaders, who hoped to have turned him into a useful tool; but that Lord Falkland, Hyde, and the more moderate reformers, put an end to the negotiation, thinking that he might, in his new-born zeal for liberty, suggest measures which would be dangerous to the monarchy.

The Lords seem to have originated no proceeding before Finch's fall, except an inquiry into the manner in which the studies and the repositories of Lord Warwick and Lord Brook had been searched at the conclusion of the last parliament within time of privilege; and upon this occasion he took the liberal side, although the acts complained of must have been done with his privity. Sir William Beecher, the clerk of the Council, being brought to the bar, the Lord Keeper demanded of him "by what warrant he had searched and carried away the papers of the aforesaid Peers?" The witness having demurred to answer, on the ground that he was the King's sworn servant, and that he must acquaint the King with the matter before he answered," the Lord Keeper ordered him to show his warrant, and blamed him for naming the King in the business; and, he again refusing to give a direct answer till the King was made acquainted with it, the Lord Keeper told him that "the Lords did take him to be the chief actor of the fact, and were resolved to proceed against him as the principal.” Sir William was finally committed to the Fleet, but in two days after, on acknowledging his error, he was released. At this time there certainly was a large majority of the Lords against the Court, and, though attached to the monarchy, eager for a correction of the abuses which had prevailed both in the church and the state. as, according to the respective functions of the two Houses as finally settled in Floyd's case, they were to sit as Judges, the Commons being the accusers,—they properly remained quiet till charges should regularly be brought before them.

* Ibid. 734.

But

In the meanwhile, the Commons having liberated Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, and procured the commitment of Strafford and Laud to the Tower, proceeded against Lord Keeper Finch as the person next most obnoxious to them. The chief grounds of complaint against him were his conduct as Speaker, in refusing to put the question; his oppressive perversion of the Forest Laws; his endeavours to incerse the King against parliaments; and, above all, his conduct with respect to ship-money, in obtaining the extrajudicial opinion of the Judges in his judgment against Hampden, and in declaring on his circuit that the right to ship-money was so inherent in the Crown, that no act of parliament could take it away.

Bagshaw, the member for Southwark, referring to the Lord Keeper's recent honeyed words, said, "If these troublers of our Israel do go unpunished, it will never be better with us; for now, during parliament, like frozen snakes, their poison dries up; but let the parliament dissolve, and then their poison melts and scatters abroad, and doth more hurt than ever. What then must be done? Why, what the plaster cannot do, must be done with the

saw:

Ense recidendum est, ne pars sincera trahatur.

I cannot better English it than in the words of a King: Let them be cut off in their wickedness that have framed mischief as a law."

The formal motion for Finch's impeachment was brought forward by the virtuous, moderate, and loyal Lord Falkland, who said "this great delinquent pursued his hatred to the fountain of justice, by corrupting the streams of it-the laws, and perverting and corrupting the Judges who administered it. He endeavoured to annihilate the ancient and notorious perambulations of particular forests, the better to prepare himself for annihilating the ancient and notorious perambulations of the whole kingdom, the metes and boundaries between the liberties of the subject and sovereign power, to bring all laws from his Majesty's courts into his Majesty's breast. He gave our goods to the King, our lands to the deer, and our liberties to the sheriffs; so that there was no way in which we should not have been oppressed and destroyed if his power had been equal to his will. Being a sworn Judge of the law, he has not only given his judgment against law, but has been the solicitor to corrupt all the other Judges to concur with him in perverting it."*

Some of the leading men, in consequence of the intrigue I have referred to, wished to screen him; and, suggesting that they had already too much business on their hands, proposed to suspend the debate on ship-money till there should be more leisure to discuss a subject of such importance.

Thereupon Hyde, still of the popular party, rose, and urged that delay would make future examination of no purpose; and there

* 2 Parl. Hist. 685.