end of the session, and proceeded, in the mean time, to an examination of public grievances, and, in the course of the session, framed regular articles of impeachment against the Duke of Buckingham. The King, by the Lord Keeper, expressly commanded the Commons not to meddle with his Minister and Servant, and as if to exhibit his contempt for the House, he caused Buckingham, by an open exertion of the interest of the Court, to be chosen Chancellor of the University of Cambridge while lying under an actual impeachment of the Commons. At the same time and by the same message, the House was ordered to finish, without delay, the Bill which they had begun for the subsidies and to make a farther addition to them; and they were told that, if they did not do so, they must not expect to sit any longer. and that the King would henceforward resort to new counsels, or, in other words, raise supplies from the people by his own authority, without the consent of Parliament. To fill the measure of insult and provocation offered to the Commons, the King threw into prison two of the leading members of the House, Sir John Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges, who had acted as managers of the Impeachment against the Duke of Buckingham.

The excitements, occasioned by these wanton and lawless acts of the King, now ran so high, and threatened to recoil with such accumulated weight on Buckingham, whom it was the object of the King to protect at all hazards, that he determined instantly to dissolve the Parliament without giving them time to finish any measure they had begun; and when the House of Lords interceded and petitioned him to allow the Par

liament to sit some time longer, he exclaimed with violence not a moment longer. From that ill-fated moment, Charles commenced a systematic warfare upon the liberties of the nation. He proceeded immediately to carry into execution those threatened new counsels, by which he was to raise money from the people, without the instrumentality of Parliament. He obtained pecuniary compositions from the Catholics by arbitrarily dispensing with the laws of the land which imposed restraints upon the public exercise of their religion-he exacted money from individuals under the fraudulent name of loans and benevolenceshe billeted soldiers upon the people; but finding that these methods of detail brought in money too slowly for his necessities, he determined at last upon the sweeping scheme of a general forced loan, under which every person was required to pay the same amount he would have been assessed with, if the bill of subsidies brought in during the late session of Parliament had passed into a law; and this arbitrary attempt to tax the goods and property of the people, by the mere authority of the King, was to be enforced by asserting his absolute power over their personal liberty.

Those who refused to pay their proportions of the exaction under this Royal Edict were immediately committed to prison by the Orders of the King. Among the noble spirits who resolved to withstand this double attack upon the personal liberty and the property of the people, Hampden stood in the front rank, as he was ever wont to do, when the fundamental privileges of the nation required a calm and vali

ant defender. Being asked why, out of his abundant means, he would not contribute to the necessities of the King, he made this memorable reply, which so admirably records his sacred devotion to the constitutional freedom of his country-"That he could be content to lend as well as others, but he feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Carta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it"-referring doubtless, in this allusion, to a law passed in the time of Edward the First for the confirmation of the Great Charter,* which directed that it should be publicly read in all the Churches twice a year, and that the Archbishops and Bishops, at each reading, should denounce sentences of excommunication against all who should violate its provisions. For this patriotic and manly resistance he was committed to a rigorous imprisonment in the Gate-House; and being subsequently brought before the Privy Council and persisting in his refusal, he was remanded into custody.

The infatuated tyranny of Charles on this occasion gave rise to another memorable instance of resistance, so intimately connected with the history of English liberty, that it is impossible to pass it by without a momentary notice. Five gentlemen, who had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the contributions assessed upon them under the Royal Loan-and their names deserve to be remembered by posterity, Sir Thomas Darnell, Sir John Corbet, Sir Walter Earl, Sir John Heveningham and Sir Edmund Hampdenresolved to try before the courts of the country, at

* See Stat. 25 Edw. I. commonly called Confirmatio Chartarum.

their own hazard and expense, the legality of the power of arbitrary imprisonment now claimed and exercised by the King. They sued out a Habeas Corpus from the Court of King's Bench, upon the return of which it appeared that their imprisonment was simply by the command of the King, without the specification of any charge whatever against them. If a power like this could be upheld in England, then it were worse than idle to talk of the immunities of English freemen. Englishmen were no longer freemen, but slaves. Well, therefore, has it been said that the issue of this great cause was of more vital consequence than "the event of many battles." And yet, as might have been expected from Judges, themselves enslaved by the tenure of their offices at the pleasure of the tyrant, this monstrous tyranny was virtually sustained by the decision of the Court, and the illustrious victims of arbitrary power returned to their prisons.

But a spirit of liberty was now abroad, in the hearts of the people, too strong to be broken by the King or his Courts. The payment of the Loan was still refused, in almost every portion of the Kingdom, and many of the leading men of the country, distinguished by their rank, property and talents, freely encountered the gloom and rigors of a prison rather than incur the curse, which Hampden dreaded, of being accessary, by a tame submission, to the violation of the Great Charter of the public liberties. Charles, finding at last but a scanty return to his coffers from all the illegal resources of his new counsels, was compelled,

5

however reluctantly, again to try the old and lawful way of parliamentary supply.

He convened, therefore, his third Parliament. Never before had the representatives of the English people been assembled under circumstances of deeper injury and excitement-never did they exhibit more calmness, self-possession, energy and wisdom. The serene, determined, and self-balanced spirit of Hampden, who was now associated with Coke, Selden, Pym, St. John, on all the great Committees of the House, though he rarely took part in the public debates, was evidently impressed upon the movement and action of the whole body. The first great object of these patriot statesmen was to entrench the public liberty, which had been lately assailed in so many vital points by the arbitrary conduct of the King, behind some new and solid rampart, resting upon the united sanction of all the estates of the realm in a solemn legislative compact. With this view the great Petition of Right, containing a formal and explicit re-enactment of all the fundamental principles of English liberty, was directed to be drawn up by Sir Edward Coke and Mr. Selden; and by a masterly display of talents, wisdom, courage, perseverance and statesmanship it was carried in triumph over the multiplied obstructions and evasions which beset its progress at every step, and became the declared law of the land by the recorded legislative assent of King, Lords and Commons.

Having achieved this great work, which, if any thing could, seemed to promise some security in future to the liberties of the nation, the Commons made a liberal grant of supplies to the King, and then re