was but slightly attended to, while schemes of much more consequence were in agitation at home. There was nothing now required but a cause for an open rupture, and that was not long wanting.

The Commons found a considerable opposition to the extreme violence of their measures from the House of Peers. It was therefore necessary that some course should be taken to bring them to a more perfect acquiescence. Some of the bishops having presented a formal complaint to parliament that the insults of the populace endangered their lives, and protested against all proceedings in the upper house which might be held in their absence, the Commons framed an impeachment of the whole bench of bishops, as endeavouring to subvert the constitution of parliament, and they were all committed to custody.

These measures had the effect for which, it is presumable, they were intended. The patience of Charles was entirely exhausted, and he was impelled to a violent exertion of authority. The attorney-general, by the king's command, impeached five members of the House of Commons, among whom were John Hampden, Pym, and Holles, the chiefs of the popular party. A serjeant being sent, without effect, to demand them of the Commons, the king, to the surprise of every body, went in person to the house to seize them. They had notice of his intention, and had withdrawn. The Commons justly proclaimed this attempt a breach of privilege. The streets re-echoed with the clamours of the populace, and a general insurrection was prognosticated. The king acknowledged his error by a humiliating message to the house;

but the submission was as ineffectual as the violence had been imprudent.

The spirits of the people were now wound up to the highest pitch. War was the last resource; and the signal was soon given for its commencement by a new bill of the Commons, naming the governors and lieutenants of all fortified places, and making them responsible for their conduct to the parliament alone. The next step was to assume the whole legislative power, which was done by a new vote, making it a breach of privilege to dispute the law of the land declared by the Lords and Commons.

Counter-manifestoes were now published on the part of the king and of the parliament. It is remarkable that in one of those upon the part of the king, the constitution is represented as a mixture of three forms of government-the monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical; an idea which perhaps Charles, in his high notions of an arbitrary prerogative, would not have admitted in the beginning of his reign, and which now, by a strange vicissitude of opinions, was virtually denied by his parliament, who assumed to themselves, independent of the king, the whole legislative and executive authority of government.

The royal cause was supported by almost all the nobility, a great portion of the men of landed property, all the members of the church of England, and all the Catholics of the kingdom. The parliament had on their side the city of London, and the inhabitants of most of the great towns. I will not enter into a minute detail of this calamitous civil war.

The first military operations were

favourable to the king; he was aided by his nephew, Prince Rupert, son of the unfortunate Elector Palatine. The Parliamentarians were defeated in the battles of Worcester and Edgehill. The queen, who inherited a considerable portion of the spirit of her father, the great Henry IV. of France, brought to the aid of her husband, money, troops, arms, artillery and ammunition, from the continent. She had raised money even by the sale of her own jewels and effects. The first

campaign, on the whole, was favourable to the royalists; though they were defeated in the battle of Newbury, in which Charles lost one of his best counsellors and ablest partisans, Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, a man of superior talents, and whose virtues were equal to his abilities. He had formerly with the most laudable zeal for the interests of the subject, stood foremost in all attacks on the high prerogative of the crown; but he wished to reform, not to destroy, the constitution; and with the same noble ardour with which he had resisted the first tyrannical exertions of the monarch, he now supported Charles in those limited powers which yet remained to him: he pursued the straight and onward path, equally remote from either extreme-a beautiful model of the most exalted and virtuous patriotism.

To strengthen their cause by the active assistance of the Scots, the parliament, of whom the greatest part were inclined to the Presbyterian form of discipline, now expressed their desire for ecclesiastical reformation and the abolition of the hierarchy. Commissioners were appointed to treat with the king to adopt the Scottish mode of ec

clesiastical worship, and others despatched to Scotland with powers to enter into a strict confederacy in the articles of religion and politics. The Solemn League and Covenant was framed at Edinburgh, in which both parties bound themselves, by oath, to extirpate popery, prelacy, and profane ceremonies, and to reform the two kingdoms according to the word of God, and on the model of the purest churches; to maintain the privileges of king and parliament, and to bring to justice all incendiaries and malignants. In consequence of this confederacy, 20,000 Scots took the field, and marched into England to co-operate with the parliamentary forces.

The celebrated Oliver Cromwell, who had hitherto made no figure, began now to distinguish himself. A sect had lately sprung up, who termed themselves Independents. They held the Presbyterians in as great abhorrence as those of the church of England. They pretended to immediate inspiration from heaven; rejected all ecclesiastical establishments; disdained all creeds and systems of belief; and, despising every distinction of governors and governed, held all men, king, nobility, and commons, to be upon a level of equality. Of this sect, Cromwell was one of the chief leaders. He was a person of a rude and uncultivated, but very superior genius; a man whose peculiar dexterity lay in discovering the characters, and taking advantage of the weaknesses, of mankind. He was in religion at once an enthusiast and a hypocrite; in political matters, both a leveller and a tyrant; and in common life, cautious, subtle, and circumspect, at the same

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time that he was daring and impetuous. With these qualities, Oliver Cromwell acquired such superiority as to attain the command of the parliament and of the kingdom.

By the interest of Cromwell and his party, Sir Thomas Fairfax was chosen general of the parliamentary forces-a man over whom he had an absolute ascendant, and under whom he himself immediately took the command of a regiment of horse.

The royal cause, in the mean time, had met with some success in Scotland from the great military abilities of the marquis of Montrose; but matters in England wore a different aspect. The royal army was totally defeated in the battle of Naseby. This victory was decisive. With the shattered remains of his troops, the king retired to Oxford, and on the point of being besieged, while he lay between the Scots and English armies, he came to the resolution of putting himself into the hands of the Scots, who, he still flattered himself, as his countrymen, had yet some regard for his person and authority; but here he was disappointed. Equally inveterate and inflamed, and at this time dependent upon the English for indemnifying them in the charges of the war, they made no scruple to deliver up Charles to the parliament, who cheerfully paid all their demands of arrears.

The war was now at an end; but the views of Cromwell were only in their first opening. The parliament, who had no further occasion for the army, now thought of disbanding them; but Cromwell and the troops had no such inclination. The king was in the hands of the commissoners