carry out in the matter a generous and civil toleration. At the next yearly election Vane was superseded by Winthrop, and the Hutchinson party were banished the colony. The family affairs of Vane soon called him home, and his American experiment in statesmanship ended.

In the conduct of all civil questions he had shown himself competent, sagacious. Against his private life no word was ever whispered; and in regard to his action in this Antinomian contest, although his theological position was rather on the unsafer side, yet as the advocate of the weak against the strong, and of toleration against persecution for opinion's sake, the sympathies of all advancing ages will be with him. He left Boston in 1637. A concourse of friends attended him to the water's edge; a parting salute was fired from the town. He left behind him his first printed publication, being an answer to Governor Winthrop, denying the power of any church to reject from its communion, for any difference in mere opinion, any whom Christ does not reject (a position which our Congregational churches seem more than ever ready now to adopt); denying the alleged power of Massachusetts to expel heretics from its bounds; compressing his argument into one allusion of characteristie force, "Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren." His education is finished. Henceforth he is the consistent statesman for a cause; for a government of the people by the people themselves, the working of which he had seen in America; for the universal freedom of religious conscience, to which the colony of Massachusetts Bay had not yet attained.

Meanwhile, England was on the eve of an explosion. The political gunpowder plot had been long forming-Charles had been eight years without a parliament, and was to be three years more without one. At the instigation of Wentworth and Laud, he had gone to the length of prerogative, in illegally levying ship-money for his army. Hampden had resisted payment before the courts. Wentworth had goaded the Irish almost to rebellion. Laud was putting his scheme of Episcopacy through Scotland, where nothing but Presbyterianism, pure and simple, ever had or has had any considerable hold. The Scotch impetuously flew to arms. They invaded England, occupied Northumberland' and Durham. Charles must have an army, and an army must have money. He can get no more money without a Parliament. So, early in 1640, his first Parliament meets. Vane has been remaining quiet in Lincolnshire for these two years. He is accustomed to gather his friends and neighbours on Sundays and exercise the gift of lay preaching. He has married and taken to his home, Frances Wray, whom, in a celebrated letter long after he is to address as "My dear heart." During the settlement of some matters connected with her estate, he, by accident, discovers among his father's

papers a document, which he felt bound to communicate to his friend Pym, and which was soon to be used in the impeachment of his father's and his country's enemy, Lord Strafford. His election to the First and the Second, or Long Parliament, in 1640, brings us to his active career. By the influence of his father, or else for the sake of seducing him from the people's cause, as Charles had successfully done in the case of Strafford, Vane receives a lucrative office, as joint treasurer of the navy, and is allowed to call himself "Sir Harry Vane, of Raby Castle, Knight." But these honours, though apparently neither sought nor declined, do not seem to have influence upon his course. any That course begins and continues to be straightforward.

The course of this statesmanship follows the course of the changing periods of the approaching contest. We can only sketch them rapidly in their succession.

The first period is from the opening of the Long Parliament to the breaking out of the secession of King Charles from his Parliament, 1640-1642. Like other secessionists, King Charles and the house of Stuart were perfectly willing to remain in the union, provided they could have the power. But the people of England had been gradually but surely coming to the conclusion that it was not safe for their king to have the supreme power. During the rule of both James and Charles, they had reason to fear that a papal or worse than papal slavery would be fastened upon the whole nation. Accordingly, when the Long Parliament came together, it determined to circumscribe the power of the king and of the Church within safe limits. They began not with the intention of destroying the king or eliminating him from the system, but with the purpose of marking off certain limits, to which he would come, and no further. He had been marked off in Magna Charta long ago. They wished to hold him at his proper bounds. Their later experience with Charles had taught them, as certain later experiences have taught the people of the United States, that monarchy and oligarchy do by their native drift encroach upon liberty, and if any government has the misfortune to have either of these elements in it, there is no safety but in shearing the Samson of his hair.

The shearing at once commenced. The Roundheads did credit to their name. The measures of Parliament were numerous, decisive, and mercilessly thorough. Strafford's impeachment was pressed to his execution. The "little urchin," Laud, was impeached and shut up. The courts of high commission and Star chamber, by which Strafford's and Laud's scheme of Thorough had been largely carried out, were abolished. The control of the militia was taken from the king. In every step of this "uprising of a great people," Vane's heart, and speech, and vote were with the popular cause.

The second stage brings out more prominently Vane's qualities as a diplomatist and parliamentary leader. It will not close for seven years, and then only with the death of the king. The early months of the war are chequered with frequent reverses. The Royal troops prove themselves spirited, gallant, and brave. They are of the first families and affect contempt for the Parliamentary yeomen. Worse than all, there is no policy adequate to the great emergency.

The

The Parliament appointed the Assembly of Divines, which met at Westminster, to model the church. But in both the Parliament and Assembly, the Presbyterian party was greatly ascendant in numbers. The Assembly numbered eighty in attendance only eight or ten were Independents. But Vane was one of them. They are supposed to have had but one member in the House of Lords; in the Commons they were greatly in the minority. Pym and Hampden, their great leaders, died early; but there still remained Vane, Cromwell, Marten, and St. John. These men had embarked in a cause and had a policy. During this whole period their statemanship is-to make the most of their small means. cause of the Parliament is growing weak in England. They must win the co-operation of Scotland. But Scotland is Presbyterian, and will insist that Episcopacy shall give place to Presbytery over the whole Commonwealth. The Presbyterian leaders are for halfmeasures also with the king, and if they could get him to establish or favour Presbyterianism in England, they would be content to lay down their arms. The small, but masterly band of Independents, with Vane at their head, gird themselves to their work. Vane is sent to treat with the Scots. He treats with them. They insist on the English nation signing her solemn covenant. Vane induces them to permit it to be called League and Covenant. The League engages the English Parliament to endeavour the establishment of religion in both kingdoms, "according to the manner of the reformed churches." Vane succeeds in prefixing the saving and latitudinary_clause," according to the Word of God."

Their army

The Scots are on the side of the Parliament. crosses the Tweed. Vane returns to devise means of advancing the influence of his cause against the now increased force of the majority. In the Westminster Assembly of Divines, he pleads for universal toleration. No other member of that famous body, nor even but few of his own party, were able to go to this extent. They wished for a good deal of freedom; they would not be so foolhardy as to claim an absolute freedom. The majority reduce the whole nation under the catechisms and the Directory and Rouse's version of Psalms. Presbyterian persecution takes the place of prelatical. It is the glory of Sir Harry Vane, himself called a zealot in religion, to have been the only one in that venerable

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body who spoke and acted in the light of perfect toleration. The Confession of Faith is still a thing for whole denominations to swear by, and on the rack of its theological definitions such men as Lyman Beecher and Albert Barnes have even in our day been stretched. Much as we honour the noble symbol and the body of men who framed it, we uncover our heads in the presence of that solitary young knight, whose voice was raised for the freedom which has at last become the Anglo-Saxor heritage.

While Vane is pleading the cause in the Assembly, Cromwell is organizing it in the army. His Ironsides regiment is made up on the model of an armed and drilled Fulton-street prayer meeting. Ardent Independents of the middle classes fill its companies. It proves itself the one invincible battalion, which is never known to quail. Before its serried lines the cavaliers are uniformly broken. The people feel that the whole army must be after this pattern or all will be lost. The other divisions of the army are inefficient. Their Presbyterian officers are men of rank, experience, and character, but they are half-hearted in the cause. On several recent occasions they have let go amazing opportunities of success. The bill of Vane is proposed in Parliament. By a fortunate dexterity, it provides that no member of Parliament shall have a command in the army. The bill gently puts out of office the moderate officers. Cromwell is by an equally dexterous fortune retained on plea of pressing necessity. The army is reduced to the Cromwellian model. Henceforth it is the Republican strong arm.

At the right time, also, Vane introduces provision for filling vacancies in Parliament. The result is an increase, though not ever a majority, of independent members. But it is a comfort to this little band to receive such men to its numbers as Fairfax, Blake, Ludlow, Ireton, and Algernon Sydney. For now that the new modelled army has justified its leaders on the field of Naseby, and Charles is in the hands-now of Scots, then of Parliament, and last of the army-the struggle against the compromising majority begins afresh and continues long. Vane, a commissioner to treat with the king, never shows any signs of compromise; he believes that secession is to be annihilated, not coaxed and tried again. But the Peace Party is too strong for him. On the final decision for settling the kingdom with the king, the vote stood one hundred and forty to one hundred and two. Vane had used all his resources of eloquence and of management, but the deed was done. He was prepared to submit to the Parliament; but not so the new modelled army, not so that unconquerable man of destiny, Cromwell. The victorious majority were destined to a mortifying reaction the next morning, when Colonel Pride entered the hall and took fifty-two gentlemen out, sent them to lodgings, and excluded one hundred and sixty more. The fifty or sixty Independents who remained, were a Rump indeed.

Vane was there, but his spirit bore not well arbitrary power. Much as he loved the cause, he deemed it not fit that it should have such defenders. He returned to his home and family. He remained there and stood aloof and in doubt, as the High Court of Justice proceeded to that startling scene, at which history itself seems to stand still, the trial and execution of the rebel king. A new great seal is struck-on which is written, "The first year of Freedom, by God's blessing restored." (1648). King and Lords are no more, and the cause for which Vane had for nine years planned seems now successful.

The Commonwealth was fairly begun. Vane enters upon the third stage of his statesmanship. After a short retirement, he received such assurances of Cromwell's fidelity to the cause, that he returned to Parliament and was made a member of the Council of State. There were joined with him two congenial and immortal men, the Secretary of State, John Milton, and the Admiral, Robert Blake. The Commonwealth commenced its career of foreign renown in the Dutch war. The masses of people will always be more dazzled by the deeds of the general who leads the armies, or the admiral who manages the fleet in deadly conflict. But they that stop to reflect, apportion no minor share of all successes to those more quiet men who manage the different departments of civil administration. The glory which belongs, in the history of English supremacy on the seas, to Robert Blake, no man taketh from him; he has the higher glory even of remaining a true, untempted Republican. But it was Vane who supplied-in that hour, when the Dutch Admiral was sailing the channel with brooms. at his masthead-the sinews of war by which Blake was to turn the taunt and sweep the seas.

During these four years Vane showed himself as able to shine in Administration and Finance, as on the floor of Parliament. And yet it was in this period that his Parliamentary talents were put to their hardest work. He was busy with plans for Representative Reform, plans which have ever since been pressed by the Liberal party in England. He desired to have the Rump Parliament really represent the people. But he was opposed by Cromwell. The army, which he had hoped would prove a friend of a free Parliament, was alienated by Oliver's omnipotent influence. Vane hurried down, one morning in 1653, to the House of Commons, to press through his Reforming Amendments to the Bill for dissolving the Parliament. The Bill was at its final stage. Vane arose to urge that it must be passed at once. So earnest, even impassioned was he that the creatures of Cromwell in the House sent word to their chief that if he was to do anything, he must do it at once. Cromwell was soon at hand in a towering passion and with a military force. After listening to Vane for a while, just as the question