said to have looked wistfully across the ocean to those little clearings where the clustered huts of the emigrant Puritans were nestling under the shade of hickory and maple.*

July 23,

1637

Before the trial of Hampden came on, a spark had been struck in Scotland which produced a mighty flame. Not content with forcing bishops on the Calvinists of the north, Charles and Laud prepared a liturgy, leavened with the spirit of Popery, and ordered its use in the churches of Scotland. A crowd filled St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh one July morning. Judges, prelates, bailies, were all there, to pray by book in the fashion after Laud's heart. But when the dean in his snowy surplice opened the obnoxious volume, a shout arose; and a folding-stool was flung at the reader's head by a woman named Jenny Geddes. This missile, luckily thrown too hastily for a good aim, was followed by a shower of stones. In vain the Bishop of Edinburgh, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and others high in station tried to calm the tumult. It was only by force that the rioters could be got to leave the church; and when the dean, on the shutting of the doors, proceeded with his reading, the words could scarcely be heard for the roars outside and the battering on walls and doors. Some spirited clergymen petitioned moderately enough against these prayers, maintaining that they had received the sanction neither of Parliament nor of Assembly. A great crowd of people gathered in Edinburgh when the harvest was over, to offer the same reasonable petition against the prayers. Charles met these movements rudely and foolishly. He removed the centre of government from Edinburgh to Linlithgow, and issued a menacing proclamation against the Presbyterians who had flocked to the capital. Out of the crisis grew

* History has long cherished a romantic story to the effect that Hampden, Cromwell, and Haselrig had embarked in a ship bound for America, and were only prevented from leaving England by a proclamation of the king, which imposed restrictions on emigration. It is almost a pity that the story is not true. The ship did sail, with its seven companions; and, more than that, all the passengers proceeded on their voyage after some delay.

1

a provisional government known as the Four Tables. Each table or board represented a class-nobles, gentry, clergy, burgesses; and, to bind the whole into one workable machine, there were chosen members from each, who formed a Fifth Table, holding supreme executive power. Thus organized and united, the Presbyterians began to act with singular boldness. They demanded the removal of the liturgy, the canons, and the High Commission Court. When the Lord Treasurer Traquair published a royal roclamation condemning these movements, their leaders, Lord Lindsay and Lord Hume, fixed a counterproclamation on the market-cross at Stirling. Then a great document, known as the National Covenant, bound the Scottish Presbyterians, as no modern nation has been bound, into a single mass, fervid with the glow of a solemn faith. Framed by Alexander Henderson, minister of Leuchars, in Fife, and Archibald Johnstone, a great lawyer of the day, the Covenant was laid on a gravestone in the churchyard of the Greyfriars at Edinburgh, and was confirmed with the oaths and signatures of a countless crowd. In six weeks the names of nearly all Scotland bristled in thick rows below the solemn words, which expressed the faith and the resolve of an insulted people. This looked serious. The Marquis of Hamilton arrived from England to reduce the Covenanters to obedience; but the task lay beyond his power. A General Assembly and a Parliament alone would satisfy the Scots. Charles yielded to this demand, because he was not yet ready for violence; but under the smooth-tongued consent lay the secret bitterness of war. The General Assembly met at Glasgow on the 23rd of November 1638, Hamilton acting as royal commissioner. Having chosen Henderson to be moderator, and Johnstone to be clerk-register, they proceeded to their work. It soon appeared that the old High Church of Glasgow was battle-field for the court and the Covenanters. direct defiance of the royal wishes, secured the admission of

Mar. 1, 1638

to be a great

Having, in

lay elders as an essential part of the Assembly, the members attacked the bishops. Hamilton, taking a leaf from his master's method of dealing with parliaments, pronounced the Assembly dissolved; but the Assembly refused to dissolve. Presided over by the Earl of Argyle, it continued to sit until the excommunication of the bishops and the overthrow of prelacy were brought to a successful issue.

In the following summer the king made a feeble effort at war, and reached the banks of the Tweed at Berwick with an army. Here, however, dismayed at the bold front which the Covenanters showed a few miles off under Leslie, and perceiving the reluctant spirit which prevailed in his own ranks, he came to terms with the Covenanters, and concluded the Peace of Berwick, a principal condition of which 1639 was that both armies should immediately disband. The conduct of Charles after this excited such distrust among the Covenanters, that they refused to lay down their arms; and, had the king possessed the necessary money, the spilling of civil blood would doubtless have begun without delay. But a happy lack of funds crippled the king, and drove him to that expedient he had so long avoided the calling of a Parliament once more. Wentworth was summoned from Ireland, where he was employed in drilling ten thousand soldiers for the king. He proposed to fill the treasury by means of loans and new exactions of ship-money, and thereafter to call the Houses from their long slumber of eleven years. He had tried the experiment of an Irish Parliament, and had succeeded in making it subservient to his will. His mistake lay in supposing that an English Parliament, on whose benches Pym and Hampden would be sure to sit, was likely to deal with political questions, and to meet royal demands, in the same way as an Irish Parliament tamed and cowed by a long course of Thorough. Nevertheless, so delighted was the king with Wentworth's daring project, that he created him Earl of Strafford, and ex

changed his lower title of Lord Deputy for the high-sounding name Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The Short Parliament met on the 13th of April 1640. It was dissolved by the furious king on the 5th of the following

month. Ominous indeed was the array of names, 1640 gathered there from the shires and boroughs of England. Hampden, Pym, Hollis, St. John, Strode, Haselrig, Cromwell, sat there, with many others who afterwards fought the good fight of freedom. Yet the temper of the House was calm. Charles mistook the calmness for submission, and tried to gain the only end for which he had summoned a Parliament, by promising to cease the collecting of ship-money, they would give him twelve subsidies. Willing to give money to their king, but not willing to acknowledge a tax the legality of which they denied, the Commons delayed an answer to the royal message. This conduct, coupled with the fact that a few days after they had met they had taken into consideration the imprisonment of Eliot (lately dead in the Tower), and the proceedings against Hampden in the ship-money case, put the king into a passion, and he abused his right of dissolution for the last time. Next day he committed several of the most energetic members of the Parliament to prison. Having obtained a subsidy from Convocation, the king moved northward to meet the rebellious Scots. On the very day on which he left London, Leslie, encouraged, it is said, by Hampden, crossed the Tweed. At Newburn on the Tyne an English force ran before a few shots from the Scottish guns. Newcastle was evacuated, and the Royalist army fell back on the city of York, while the Covenanters took possession of the four northern counties. At York, Charles called the peers together, to consult with him on the position of affairs (September). They approved of his proposal to call another Parliament; and the famous Long Parliament was summoned.

CHAPTER XII.

CIVIL WAR.

Meeting of the Long Parliament-Arrest of Strafford and Laud-Trial of Strafford-Rising in Ireland-The Grand Remonstrance-The five members-Flight of the king and the queen-The Castle Hill of Nottingham-Edgehill-Chalgrove Field-Atherton Moor-Fall of BristolRelief of Gloucester-The Solemn League and Covenant-Death of Pym.

VER the fallen leaves of 1640, resolute men went spurring

Nov. 3, 1640

through England, exhorting the electors in shire and borough to return trustworthy members to the approaching Parliament. Hampden was much in the saddle during these precious days. On the 3rd of November, instead of a brilliant procession as was usual at the opening of Parliament, a boat brought Charles to Westminster in a sullen, melancholy way. The autumn rides had not been fruitless. The benches of the Commons, lined with stern faces, presented only one or two very favourable to the court. Charles made a milder speech than usual; but conciliation now was hopeless. The tide which had set in must exhaust its force, sweeping off the enormous abuses that strangled English freedom. First of all, Prynne and his companions in suffering were freed from the dungeons in which they had been pining for years. Then a just and speedy retribution fell on their persecutors. Strafford, somewhat worn with the pain of disease, had given signs of unwillingness to face the newly met houses. But the king, too weak to be without this stern adviser and unsparing man, induced him to leave York for London, by giving his royal