Thomas Wentworth, who had succeeded to much of Buckingham's influence, and who soon earned even greater unpopularity.

The parliament was dissolved early in 1629, and the king announced his intention of governing without one, a resolution which he kept, unhappily for himself and for his subjects, for more than eleven years. He, however, was not most to blame. The Commons, by their persevering refusal to grant supplies, had in reality commenced the contest, and reduced the king and his ministers to the necessity of attempting to raise a revenue in an unconstitutional manner. Some of the measures resorted to were odious and oppressive; the courts of Starchamber and High Commission were seen to levy fines that were excessive, as if to replenish the Exchequer, and the common law courts affirmed the legality of notoriously unlawful demands. At length, having, as they too hastily conceived, crushed all opposition in England, Charles and his councillors attempted to complete the restoration of episcopacy in Scotland commenced by James I.; this was resisted by force

He belonged to a wealthy Yorkshire family, ut was born in London in 1593. After an education at Cambridge, and foreign travel, he was knighted by James I., and sat in several parliaments for Yorkshire. He made himself conspicuous by his opposition to the measures of the court, was on one occasion chosen sheriff to prevent his having a seat in the House of Commons, and at another was imprisoned for refusing to contribute to a forced loan. Ambition, however, was his ruling passion, and he was induced to forsake his party by the offer of a peerage. On July 22, 1628, he was created baron Wentworth, afterwards viscount Wentworth (Dec. 10, 1628), and was made lord president of the Council of the North. This had been an arbitrary court from the first, but his instructions went beyond those of all former presidents, and, according to Clarendon, were opposed to every principle of law, yet they did not appear to give him power enough. In 1633 he was removed, by his own wish, to Ireland, where he established a perfect despotism, and also raised an army which was generally supposed to be intended to crush that resistance that it was expected would sooner or later be made to the king's illegal measures in England. When the Scottish troubles commenced, Wentworth dealt with a high hand with such of that nation as had settled in Ulster, and was afterwards summoned to England to take the field against them. He was now created earl of Strafford (Jan. 12, 1640), but he was unpopular with his own army, and unable to effect anything. The Scots manifested extreme hatred against him, and they were eagerly seconded by Pym and others, whom he had forsaken so many years before. He wished to remain at a distance from the parliament; but the king insisted on his attendance, and gave a promise of protection which he was unable to keep. Strafford had hardly taken his seat in the House of Lords, when he was impeached as "that great fire

of arms, and the illegal means that had been so long practised being inadequate to maintain an army, the king was obliged, in 1639, to meet the representatives of his justly offended people. Unwarned by experience, however, the ill-advised king speedily dissolved his fourth parliament, as he had its predecessors, before any funds had been granted. Urgent want of means, however, compelled him very soon to assemble another, the memorable Long Parliament, which met Nov. 3, 1640. Mindful of the fate of former assemblies, they procured an act [16 Car. I. c. 7], which deprived the king of power to prorogue or dissolve them without their own consent, and they soon became the paramount power in the state. They had before this seized on Archbishop Laud and the earl of Strafford; they displaced and otherwise punished the judges and others who were charged with having acted illegally; obtained the suppression of the three obnoxious courts of Starchamber, High Commission, and the Earl Marshal, and expelled the bishops from parliament, neither king nor lords venturing openly to resist

brand," (Nov. 18, 1640,) and sent to the Tower. In the April of the next year he was convicted of treason, not according to the course of law, but by an attainder to which the peers were forced to agree by popular violence. The king was with great difficulty brought to consent to his execution, chiefly, it is alleged, through the sophistry of Williams, bishop of Lincoln, who drew an odious distinction between his private conscience as a man and his public conscience as a king. Strafford had himself offered his life as a means of peace between the king and his subjects, but apparently did not expect to be taken at his word, as when told that the warrant was signed he exclaimed, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation!" but soon calmed himself. He was beheaded on Tower-hill, May 12, 1641, and he died. as a contemporary, who had conducted the process against him (Whitelock), says, "with charity, courage, and general lamentation." He left a son, William, who was restored to his title by Charles II. and lived till 1695, but took no part in public affairs. d In defiance of the act of the last reign (see A.D. 1624), there were created, "monopolies of soap. salt, wine, leather, sea-coal, and, in a manner, of all things of most common and necessary use." "Supplemental acts of state were made to supply defect of laws. ... obsolete laws were revived and rigorously executed, wherein the subject might be taught how unthrifty a thing it was, by too strict a detaining of what was his, to put the king as strictly to inquire what was his own." Such is the only palliation which even Clarendon can offer for the system pursued; how that system was viewed by the nation in general is but too manifest in the unhappy result.

Clarendon remarks that the great misfortune of Archbishop Laud was the want of a true friend: the same remark applies with still greater force to his royal master.

against "tumultuous petitioning," the very means by which their own power had been first established.

To keep alive the interest in their cause they imposed a contribution of a meal a-week towards the support of their troops, and ordained a monthly fast m (March 26, 1644), beside numerous occasional ones; they also prohibited public amusements (Oct. 22, 1647), but were obliged, by the clamour of the London apprentices, to allow the second Tuesday in each month as a day of recreation, instead of the customary festivals and holydays, which had been suppressed as superstitious and vain (June 8, 1647).

The parliament had, long before the king's departure, shewn their irreconcilable hostility to the Church and its ministers ", and had done everything in their power to banish all decency and order from the public service of God. They now appointed an Assembly of Divines (June 12, 1643), ordered a systematic defacement of churches under

the pretext of "removing monuments of superstition or idolatry" (Aug. 28, 1643), "regulated" the University of Cambridge, and removed "scandalous ministers" (Jan. 22, 1644). In forgetfulness of their professed regard for "tender consciences," they imposed the Covenant on all classes, beginning with the judges and lawyers, and disabling all refusers to practise any liberal profession, or hold any public employment (Jan. 30, Feb. 2, 16449); substituted the Directory for the Prayerbook (Jan. 3, Aug. 23, 1645); forbade any preaching, except by persons allowed by both Houses (April 26, 1645); set up the presbyterian form of Church government (June 5, 1646); formally abolished episcopacy (Oct. 9, 1646), and sold the bishops' lands (Nov. 16, 30, 1646), paying their most active instruments with the proceeds, thus making the plunder of the Church directly contributory to the ruin of the State, a lesson that should not be forgotten.

Saddlers, and others, were occupied by them, the committee of sequestrations sitting in the first, the committee of compositions in the second, a committee of accounts in the third, and a military committee in Derby House, on the site of the College of Arms. But the most important was the Grand Committee of Religion, which was divided into numerous subcommittees, (as the Committee of Scandalous Ministers, for the coercion of the loyal clergy, and the Committee of Plundered Ministers, for the benefit of such of their own party as had been formerly de

spread all over the country, so that it was soon remarked that the Puritans had destroyed one Starchamber and one High Commission, only to establish infinitely

disabled all dissentients.

Sir Arthur Hasilrigge thus received so much of the Church property in the north, that he was familiarly known as the Bishop of Durham.

This was the property of one of their most active opponents, the earl of Derby; the houses of other equally obnoxious parties were converted into gaols. The members of this committee were, the earls of Essex, Northumberland, Holland, and Pembroke, and Lord Saye, with 10 members of the House of Commons, namely, Fiennes, Glynne, Hampden, Holles, Marten, Meyrick, Pierrepont, Pym, Stapleton and Waller.

worse tribunals in fifty different places. These local committees ", the members of which are charged in numerous publications of the time with enriching themselves both with plunder and with bribes, were the great engines of oppression, particularly to the clergy, and they were guilty of pro fanations and barbarities which might well seem incredible, were they not, unhappily, attested by indisputable evidence, both from the perpetrators and the sufferers.

II. DESECRATION OF CHURCHES. One of the earliest steps of the Long Parliament was, in effect, to denounce all the clergy as "scandalous," and to issue injunctions having no other end than the profanation of holy places. The inquisitorial Committee of Scandalous Ministers was erected to deal with the clergy, and to deface the churches. Commissioners were appointed, concerning whose proceedings we have the unexceptionable testimony of one of their own number,

The constitution of these committees appears from the instructions issued, Feb. and March, 1643, by the earl of Manchester to certain persons in each of the associated counties (i.e. the eastern counties, from Essex to Lincoln). The committees were to consist of not more than ten nor less than five persens, who were to have 5s. a-day for their attendance. They were to be "speedy and effectual" in the discharge of their office; were to call to their assistance some "well-affected men" in each hundred, and inquire into the lives, doctrine, and conversation of all ministers and schoolmasters, "the parishioners in general being not forward to complain of their ministers, though scandalous." They were to proceed against all ministers who were said to be scandalous in their lives or doctrines, nonresident, ignorant, idle, lazy, or ill affected to the Parliament. In conducting their inquiry, they were directed to take the depositions of witnesses without the accused being present, but if he desired it, they were to let him have a copy of the accusations, at his own charge, while the accusers were to be "encouraged" to come forward by being free from all charges and fees. The person accused might put in an answer, but without being confronted with the witnesses; and when condemned, as was reasonably expected to be the case, his name was to be returned to the earl with that of his proposed successor, "an able person, having a testimonial from the well-affected gentry and ministry." The following letter from the committee at Ashford, Kent, to Richard Fogge, esq., of Tilmanstone, shews one of the means resorted to, to raise funds for the cause: (the spelling is modernized).

"Sir, You cannot be ignorant of the great charges this country hath been at in the suppressing several rebellions, and in maintaining so many regiments of auxiliaries for their necessary defence upon all occasions, besides the taxes to the Parliament (amounting to £9,700 and upwards a month), which has contracted a great debt upon the country, and of the hazard of life and fortunes the well-affected have run all this while for the common good, of which you must needs partake as well as they. Of the advantage you have had of them in sitting still, and the countenance to rebellion within the country, and to all the malignant party abroad, which you and your party have given by your backwardness in the Parliament service; and there

William Dowsing, of Stratford, whose very curious Journal has been preserved, and gives us the heads of his dealing with the churches of about 150 parishes in the associated counties. He commenced his proceedings Jan. 9, 1644, in the town of Sudbury, breaking the windows and the organs, taking down crosses, levelling chancels, and tearing up "brazen superstitious inscriptions;" which latter it is fair to conclude that he sold, as he tells us that 19 such at Wetherden weighed 65 lb; he also "rent hoods and surplices," and dug down the steps of the chancels, or left his orders for it to be done in a limited time. In general his proceedings were aided by the "godly men of the parish,' and he received a fee of 6s. 8d., which in some cases was reduced to 4s. 6d. or 3s. 4d. He had been anticipated in some places, where he records "nothing to be done." But he sometimes met with opposition; five times he enters "no noble;" sometimes it was promised, but not paid, in

fore cannot but think it reasonable that you should extend yourselves as well towards the recompense of those public damages, also to some proportionable counterpoise of these disadvantages of the wellaffected, yet we, being desirous rather to receive a pledge of your future better inclination than a forfeiture for your past malignity, do expect from you, by the 25th of this month, the sum of £30, to be paid in to the Treasurer at Ashford: and in default whereof we shall be enforced to make use of the authority given us by Ordinance of Parliament, for levy of a greater sum. Your friend, ANTHONY WELDON (signed in the name and by the command of the general Committee)."

The curious MS. in the British Museum, called "The Journal of Nehemiah Wallington," a London citizen, may be taken as not unfairly representing the feeling of the Puritans in general in these matters. Speaking of his own immediate neighbourhood, he says,

On the beginning of October, 1641, at Leonard's Eastcheap, being our church, the idol in the wall was cut down, and the superstitious pictures in the glass were broke in pieces, and the superstitious things and prayers for the dead in brass were picked up and broke, and the picture of the Virgin Mary on the branch of candlesticks was broke. And some of those pieces of broken glass I have to keep for a remembrance, to shew to the generation to come what God hath done for us, to give us such a reformation that our forefathers never saw the like: His name ever have the praise!"

* Under the name of John Dowsing, he is mentioned as breaking the painted windows in the public schools, libraries, colleges, and halls at Cambridge, ("mistaking, perhaps, the liberal arts for saints," says the author of Querela Cantabrigiensis,) and digging down and defacing the floors of the chapels, and then, by armed force, extorting a fee of 40s. from each society where he had committed these ravages.

> This date shews that the people in general were not inclined to destroy the ornaments of the churches, as all such had been condemned as "reliques of idolatry" as early as Jan. 23, 1641, by an order of the Commons. Yet we see that the majority of the churches remained uninjured three years later, and were only ruined by the exertions of such men as Dowsing and his associates.