This decision was supposed by the court party to carry with it ulterior results. "Since it is lawful," observes Lord Strafford, "for the king to impose a tax towards the equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army, and the same reason which authorises him to levy an army to resist, will enable him to carry that army abroad, that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law in England, is law also in Scotland and Ireland. This decision of the judges will therefore make the king absolute at home, and formidable abroad."

6. John Hampden proceeded against for refusing to pay Ship-money, 1637. Notwithstanding the decision of the judges, some sturdy men refused to pay; and among others, John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, and possessed of "immense estates". A suit was commenced against him in the exchequer for twenty shillings, due for such of his property as was situate in the parish of Stoke Mandevile. This cause, on account of its magnitude, was heard before all the judges in the exchequer chamber, during twelve days. The precise question in the case of Hampden was, Whether the king had a right, on his own allegation of public danger, to require an inland county to furnish ships, or a prescribed sum of money by way of commutation, for the defence of the kingdom. St. John and Holborne argued in behalf of Hampden; Littleton and Banks for the crown. Six months after the opening of this celebrated case, the final judgment was given-seven judges being in favor of the crown, and five in favor of Hampden; but of the latter only two denied the right claimed by the crown, the other three decided against its exercise only in the present instance. Hallam remarks on this trial, that it was "of infinite disservice to the crown. During this long period, every man's attention was directed to the exchequer chamber. The convincing arguments of St. John and Holborne, but still more the division on the bench, increased their natural repugnance to so unusual and dangerous a prerogative. Those who had trusted to the faith of the judges. were undeceived by the honest repentance of some, and looked with indignation on so prostituted a crew. That respect for courts of justice, which the happy structure of our judicial administration has in general kept inviolate, was exchanged for distrust, contempt, and desire of vengeance. They heard the speeches of some of the judges with more displeasure than even their final decision. Ship-money was held legal by Finch and several other judges—not on the authority of precedents, which must in their nature have some bounds-but on principles subversive of any property or privilege in the subject. Those paramount rights of monarchy, to which they appealed to-day in justification of ship-money, might to

morrow serve to supersede other laws, and maintain new exertions of despotic power. It was manifest by the whole strain of the court lawyers, that no limitations in the king's authority could exist but by the king's sufferance. This alarming tenet, long bruited among the churchmen and lawyers, now resounded in the halls of justice."

7. "The felicity of the times"? So writes Lord Clarendon :-"I must be so just as to say, that during the whole time these pressures were exercised, and those new and extraordinary ways were run, that is, from the dissolution of the parliament in the fourth year, to the beginning of this parliament, which was above twelve years, this kingdom, and all his majesty's dominions

... enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of felicity, that any people, in any age, for so long a time together have been blessed with." In striking contrast is the following statement of the oppressive exactions of this period, from the pen of Guizot :

Commissioners went about the country, questioning here the rights of the possessors of former domains of the crown, there the rate of emolument attached to certain offices, elsewhere the right of citizens to build new houses, or of agriculturists to change their arable land into pasture; and they proceeded, whenever they could make out a case at all, not to reform abuses, but to sell their continuation at a high price. Privileges, irregularities of all kinds, were between the king and those who made a business of them, a compact subject of disgraceful bargains. They even turned into a commodity the severity of the judges; under the least pretext, unheard-of fines were imposed, which striking terror into those who apprehended a similar situation, determined them to secure themselves beforehand by a handsome bribe. It really seemed as if the tribunals had no other business than to provide for the wants of the king, or to ruin the adversaries of his power. (The sum total of the fines imposed during this epoch for the king's profit, amounted to more than six millions of money.) If discontent in any particular county appeared too general for such proceedings to be easily practicable, the provin cial militia was disarmed, and royal troops were sent there, whom the inhabitants were bound, not only to lodge and board, but moreover to equip. For not paying what they did not owe, men were put in prison; they were released on paying a portion of the amount, more or less, according to their fortunes, credit, or management. Imposts, imprisonments, judgments, rigors, or favors, everything was matter of arbitrary rule; and arbitrary rule extended itself daily more and more over the rich, because there was money to be got from them-over the poor, because they were not to be feared."

SECTION VIII. SEVERITIES INFLICTED BY THE COURTS OF STAR CHAMBER & HIGH COMMISSION.

1. The powers of the Star Chamber. Clarendon, who will not be suspected of drawing too unfavorable a sketch, says:—

"For the better support of these extraordinary ways, [of raising a revenue] and to protect the agents and instruments who must be employed in them, and to discountenance and suppress all bold enquirers and opposers, the council-table and star-chamber enlarged their jurisdictions to a vast extent, holding', as Thucydides said of the Athenians, for honorable that which pleased, and for just that which profited'; and being the same persons in several rooms, grew both courts of law to determine right, and courts of revenue to bring money into the treasury: the council-table by proclamations enjoining to the people what was not enjoined by the law, and prohibiting that which was not prohibited; and the starchamber censuring the breach and disobedience to those proclamations, by very great fines and imprisonments; so that any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more penal, and those foundations of right, by which men valued their security, to the apprehension and understanding of wise men, never more in danger to be destroyed." And this is what Clarendon in another place calls enjoying "the fullest measure of felicity".

2. The case of Dr. Alexander Leighton, 1630. During this period the condition of the Puritans was an uncomfortable one, especially so for those who where distinguished for their zeal. They were often called up before the courts, and made to suffer fines and imprisonments. Many of them, both ministers and laymen, sought religious freedom by joining their brethren in the wilds of America, till in 1637, Charles forbad any "subsidymen" to leave the kingdom without a license from the privy council, and a testimony from their parish minister as to their conformity in ecclesiastical matters. Among those whose zeal was insufficiently tempered with prudence, was Leighton, a Scottish minister, (the father of Robert Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow, in Charles II.) who in a book entitled "An Appeal to Parliament, or Zion's Plea against Prelacy", maintained that God's children were subjected to a most cruel persecution, that the bishops were men of blood, and that the institution of the prelacy was antichristian and satanical. Laud called the writer before the Star-chamber; his plea that he had written through zeal and not personal malice, was disregarded, and the court adjudged him to a punishment so cruel, that it almost passes belief. The Puritan preacher was condemned to pay a fine of £10,000, to be degraded from the ministry, to be publicly whipped in the palace yard, to stand two hours in the pillory, and then to have an ear cut off, a nostril slit open, and a cheek branded with the letters S S, for sower of sedition. All these inflictions actually took place, and at the end of a week were repeated in each par

ticular. Leighton was now consigned to prison for life; he however obtained his release from the Long Parliament, was made keeper of Lambeth Palace, then used as a prison, and died mad in 1644.

3. Cases of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, 1637. Prynne, a barrister, had been before the Star-chamber in 1634, for his book entitled "Histriomastfix: the Player's Scourge, or Actor's Tragedie", of a thousand pages, written to prove that plays, masques, and other sports, were unlawful to Christians. This position was demonstrated "by divers arguments, and by the authority of sundry texts of scripture; of the whole of the primitive church; of seventy-one fathers and Christian writers before the year of our Lord 1200; of above one hundred and fifty foreign and domestic Protestant and Popish authors since; &c." Prynne's book had been written about four years, but happening to be published just at the time the queen was rehearsing a new play, it was taken to reflect on the royal consort. Charles was disposed not to stir in the matter, but was induced to do otherwise by the influence of Laud and his chaplains. The court adjudged the writer to be deprived of his Oxford degree, to be excluded from Lincoln's Inn, to stand in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, losing an ear at each place, to pay a fine of £5,000, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment.

While a prisoner, Prynne found means to compose other works, which reflected on the prelates. A fellow prisoner, Robert Bastwick, a physician of Colchester, who had been committed for a book against episcopacy, became the coadjutor of Prynne, and sent forth some tracts. Henry Burton, a clergyman, and formerly a chaplain to Charles, joined the other two in calling on the people to resist the innovations of the prelates. At the suggestion of Laud, a criminal information was filed in the Star-chamber against these three men, for attempting to bring the government in church and state into disrepute, and to excite sedition among his majesty's subjects. When called upon to answer, they defended their position at great length, but could not ward off a cruel sentence. These three persons were condemned to stand two hours in the pillory, to lose both ears, to be branded, to pay a fine each of £5,000, and to be imprisoned for life. When the sentence was executed in Palace-yard, the multitude expressed their disapprobation by groans and hisses, and when they were removed from London to distant prisons, the roads were filled with sympathisers. Those who presumed to entertain Prynne on the road, were put to heavy fines and compelled to make a public acknowledgement of their offence. The prisoners were subsequently sent to prisons out of England; Prynne to Jersey, Bast

wick to Scilly, and Burton to Guernsey, where they remained rigidly immured till released by the Long Parliament.

4. Of the High Commission Court. This court, it has already been remarked, was presided over by nearly the same persons as the Star-chamber; it was employed in the same way to crush all resistance to the existing government.

Lingard says, that its proceedings "did not produce less discontent than those in the Star-chamber. Never were the powers with which they were armed more rigorously exercised, never were the punishments which they inflicted,-fines, imprisonments, and costs of suit, so vexatiously multiplied as under the present metropolitan. They professed to take cognizance of all public breaches of morality, of all words, writings, or actions tending to the disparagement either of the religion or of the church established by law; and as in the prosecution of these duties they frequently came into collision with the courts at Westminster, the rivalry between the civil and spiritual jurisdictions naturally begot a hostile feeling between the church and the bar. The people lived in continual dread of these inquisitorial tribunals; and there existed a persuasion that many of the prosecutions were instituted, not through motives of morality or religion, but for the mere sake of the fines, which were set apart towards the repairs of St. Paul's Cathedral."

SECTION IX. AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.

1. Charles deceives the Irish in the matter of the graces". Apprehensive that the Spaniards would be provoked by the English expedition against Cadiz to retaliate, Charles ordered a small army to be raised in Ireland. Lord Falkland, at that time the deputy, consulted with the principal proprietors on the mode of supporting the forces raised. They consented to make a handsome grant, on condition of obtaining some concessions from the king. Charles, notwithstanding some opposition, agreed, on their pledging themselves to pay £120,000, to grant under his own hand one-and-fifty graces, by which among other concessions, "it was provided that recusants should be allowed to practise in the courts of law, and to sue the livery of their lands out of the Court of Wards, on taking an oath of civil allegiance in lieu of the oath of supremacy; that the undertakers on their several plantations should have time allowed them to fulfil the conditions of their leases; that the claims of the crown should be confined to the last sixty years; that the inhabitants of Connaught should be permitted to make a new enrolment of their estates; and that a parliament should be holden to confirm these graces, and to establish every man in the undisturbed possession of his lands." A parliament was called, but a defect in the writs occurred, and nothing was done. Wentworth was now appointed