the party in the streets, that the king was ad- | the door and in the hall, he entered the house, vancing towards Westminster Hall, guarded by with his nephew Charles, the Prince-palatine his gentlemen pensioners, and followed by some of the Rhine, at his side. He glanced his eyes hundreds of courtiers, officers, and soldiers of towards the place where Pym usually sat, and fortune, most of them armed with swords and then walked directly to the chair, saying, "By pistols. The house was bound by its recent and your leave, Mr. Speaker, I must borrow your solemn protestation to protect its privileges and chair a little." Lenthall, the speaker, dropped the persons of its members: there were halberts upon his knee, and Charles took his seat; the and probably other arms at hand; but could they mace was removed; the whole house stood up defend their members against this array, led on uncovered. Charles cast searching glances among by the king in person? Would it be wise, on them, but he could nowhere see any of the five any grounds, to make the sacred inclosures of members. He then sat down and addressed them parliament a scene of war and bloodshed? They with much agitation:-"Gentlemen," said he, “I ordered the five members to withdraw; "to the am sorry for this occasion of coming unto you: end," says Rushworth, "to avoid combustion in yesterday I sent a serjeant-at-arms upon a very the house, if the said soldiers should use violence important occasion, to apprehend some that upon to pull any of them out." Four of the members my commandment were accused of high treason, yielded ready obedience to this prudent order, whereunto I did expect obedience, and not a but Mr. Strode insisted upon staying and facing message; and I must declare unto you here, that, the king, and was obstinate till his old friend albeit no king that ever was in England shall be Sir Walter Earle pulled him out by force, the more careful of your privileges, to maintain them king being at that time entering into New Palace- to the utmost of his power, than I shall be; yet yard, and almost at the door of the house. As you must know, that in cases of treason no perCharles passed through Westminster Hall to the son hath a privilege, and therefore I am come to know if any of those persons that I have accused, for no slight crime, but for treason, are here. I cannot expect that this house can be in the right way that I do heartily wish it, therefore I am come to tell you, that I must have them wheresoever I find them." Then he again looked round the house, and said to the speaker, now standing below the chair, "Are any of those persons in the house? Do you see any of them! Where are they?" Lenthall fell on his knees, and told his majesty that he had neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in that place, but as the house was pleased to direct him. Then again casting his eyes round about the house, Charles said, "Well, since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect from you, that you do send them to me, as soon as they return hither. But I assure yon, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a legal and fair way, for I never meant any other. And now, since I see I cannot do what I came for, I think this no unfit occasion to repeat what I have said formerly; that whatsoever I have done in favour, and to the good of my subjects, I do mean to maintain it. I will trouble you no more, but tell you I do expect, as soon as they come to the house, you will send them to me; otherwise I must take my own course to find them." With these words the disappointed king rose and retired amidst loud cries of "Privilege! privilege!" and the house instantly adjourned.? PASSAGE FROM WESTMINSTER HALL TO THE HOUSE OF entrance of the House of Commons, the officers, 1 From a sketch by J. W. Archer, taken inmediately after the burning of the Houses of Parliament. That night the city was a gayer place than the court. Early on the following morning the com2 Rushworth: Whitelock. mons, safe in "that mighty heart," sent Mr. | he thus addressed them:-"Gentlemen, I am Fiennes with a message to the lords, to give them notice of "the king's coming yesterday," and to repeat their desires that their lordships would come to demand such persons as I have already accused of high treason, and do believe are shrouded in the city. I hope no good man will keep them from me; their offences are treasons and misdemeanours of a high nature. I desire your loving assistance herein, that they may be brought to a legal trial. And whereas there are divers suspicions raised that I am a favourer of the Popish religion, I do profess in the name of a king, that I did, and ever will, and that to the utmost of my power, be a prosecutor of all such as shall any ways oppose the laws and statutes of this kingdom, either Papists or Separatists; and not only so, but I will maintain and defend that true Protestant religion which my father did profess, and I will continue it during my life." This conciliatory speech produced little or no effect; Charles did not get the five members, but he got a very good dinner at the house of one of the sheriffs, and after dinner returned to Whitehall without interruption or tumult. GUILDHALL, LONDON.-From an old view in the Crowle Pennant, British Museum. join with them in a petition for a guard to secure them, and also to let them know that they were sitting at Guildhall, and had appointed the committee for the pressing Irish affairs to meet there. The commons then appointed that a permanent committee should sit at Guildhall, in the city of London, with power to consider and resolve of all things that might concern the good and safety of the city; and thereupon adjourned till Tuesday, the 11th of January, at one in the afternoon. In the meantime Charles had sent orders to stop the sea-ports, as if the five members could be scared into a flight. On the morning, after a night of painful doubt and debate, Charles set off to the city in person, with his usual attendants, but without any reformados or bravos. On his way he was saluted with cries of "Privileges of parliament! privileges of parliament !" and one Henry Walker, an ironmonger and pamphletwriter, threw into his majesty's coach a paper whereon was written, "To your tents, O Israel." The common council had assembled at Guildhall, and they met the king as he went up to that building almost alone. The lords, on receiving the commons' message, had also adjourned to the 11th of January. The permanent committee, which sat sometimes at Guildhall, sometimes at Grocers'-hall, proceeded actively in drawing up a declaration touching his GROCERS' HALL, LONDON, South View.-From Maitland's London. Concealing his ill-hu- | majesty's intrusive visit to their house; and this occupied them till the 9th of January, many witnesses being examined to prove the words, actions, mour, and his irritation against the citizens, 1 Rushworth. The pamphleteer was committed, and afterwards proceeded against at the sessions. 2 Reshaorth. and gestures of that array of men who had followed his majesty and stood near the door of the House of Commons. Papers and records were also sent for. It was reported to them, that on the 4th of January the lieutenant of the Tower had permitted 100 stand of arms, two barrels of powder, and match and shot proportionate, to go out of the Tower to Whitehall; and the committee, upon examination, found this report to be true. The common council, who went hand in hand with the committee, drew up a petition to the king, representing the great dangers, fears, and distractions of the city, by reason of the prevailing progress of the bloody rebels in Ireland; the dangerous putting out of persons of honour and trust from being constable and lieutenant of the Tower; the fortifying of Whitehall; the wounding of unarmed citizens in Westminster Hall; the strange visit paid to the House of Commons by his majesty, &c.; and in the end, the petitioners prayed his sacred majesty to give up his intention of arresting the Lord Kimbolton and the five members, and not to proceed against them otherwise than according to the privileges of parliament. Charles, in his answer to this petition, justified his late proceedings. At the same time he published a proclamation, charging the Lord Kimbolton and the five members with high treason, and commanding the magistrates to apprehend them, and carry them to the Tower. Forth with many mariners and seamen went to the committee with a petition signed by 1000 hands, tendering their services, and offering to escort the committee by water to Westminster on the appointed day. The committee accepted their offer, and ordered them to provide such artillery as was necessary, and to take care that all great guns and muskets in their vessels should be cleared before hand, to the end that there might be no shooting that day, except in case of great necessity. When the sailors were gone, the London apprentices flocked in great numbers to the committee, and offered their services as guards for the journey from the city back to Westminster. Serjeant Wild gave the apprentices thanks for their affection and willingness to serve the parliament, but told them that they were already provided with a sufficient guard. On the Monday following the committee declared that the proclamation of treason was a great scandal to his majesty and his government-a seditious act, manifestly tending to the subversion of the peace of the kingdom, and to the injury and dishonour of the accused members, against whom there was no legal charge or accusation whatever.1 On the afternoon of the same day, Charles, with the queen, his children, and the whole court, Rushworth. left Whitehall and went to Hampton Court. He never entered London again until he came as a helpless prisoner, whose destinies were in the iron hand of Oliver Cromwell. On the morrow afternoon the committee, together with the Lord Kimbolton and the five accused members, took water at the Three Cranes, attended by thirty or forty long boats with guns and flags, and by a vast number of citizens and seamen in other boats and barges; and thus they proceeded triumphantly to their old port at Westminster, some of the train-bands marching at the same time by land, to be a guard to the two Houses of Parlia ment. The next day they received a very humble message from Hampton Court-"His majesty, taking notice that some conceive it disputable whether his proceedings against the Lord Kimbolton, Mr. Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, and Mr. Strode, be legal and agreeable to the privileges of parliament, and being very desirous to give satisfaction to all men in all matters that may seem to have relation to privilege, is pleased to waive his former proceedings; and all doubts by this means being settled, when the minds of men are composed, his majesty will proceed thereupon in an unquestionable way, and assures his parliament that upon all occasions he will be as careful of their privileges as of his life or his crown." On the same day "divers knights, gentlemen, and freeholders of the county of Bucks, to the number of about 4000, as they were computed, came to London, riding every one with a printed copy of the protestation lately taken in his hat."" These countrymen of Hampden presented a petition, not to the House of Commons, but to the House of Peers, praying them to co-operate with the lower house in perfecting the great work of reformation. At the same time, these Buckinghamshire petitioners, who received the thanks of both houses, acquainted the commons that they had another petition which they wished to present to his majesty on behalf of their loyal countryman, neighbour, and member, Mr. John Hampden, in whom they had ever found good cause to confide. They asked the commons which would be the best way of delivering this petition; and the commons selected six or eight of their members to wait upon his majesty with it. These members accordingly went to Hampton Court; but Charles was not there, having gone on to Windsor Castle. The members followed him to Windsor, and presented the paper, which told him that the malice which Hampden's zeal for his majesty's service and the service of the state had excited in the enemies of king, church, and commonwealth, had occasioned this foul accusation of their friend. Charles instantly repeated his determination of waiving 2 Rushworth, the accusation. And yet this was not done very | cating their intentions to him in private. He clearly or very graciously. On the 12th of January, the day after Charles's departure from Whitehall, information was brought to the House of Commons that the Lord Digby and Colonel Lunsford, with other disbanded officers and reformados, were gathering some troops of horse at Kingston-upon-Thames. The alarm was the greater, because the magazine of arms for that part of Surrey was at Kingston. The lords and commons ordered the sheriffs and justices of peace to suppress the gathering with the train-bands and secure the magazine. The like orders were soon sent into every part of the kingdom; and nearly everywhere they were readily obeyed. Lord Digby escaped and fled beyond sea; Colonel Lunsford was taken and safely lodged in the Tower. On the same day (the 12th of January) the lord-steward reported to the lords that his majesty would command the lord-mayor to appoint 200 men out of the train-bands of the city to wait on the two houses, under the command of the Earl of Lindsay. The House of Commons, without regarding this message, called up two companies of the train-bands of the city and suburbs, and placed them under the command of Sergeant-major Skippon. They also ordered, in conjunction with the lords, that the Earl of Newport, master of the ordnance, and the lieutenant of the Tower, should not suffer any arms or ammunition to be removed without their express orders; and that, for the better safeguard of the Tower, the sheriff's of London and Middlesex should appoint a sufficient guard to watch that fortress both by land and water. Their minds, indeed, were now almost wholly occupied by the thoughts of arsenals, arms, and ammunition. A committee was appointed to attend especially to the best means of putting the kingdom in a posture of defence. The members of this committee were Mr. Pierpoint, Sir Richard Carr, Mr. Hollis, Mr. Glynne, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir Henry Vane, the chancellor of the exchequer, and the Solicitor-general St. John. also wrote to the Earl of Lanark, now secretary for Scotland, to whom he bitterly complained of the course pursued by the commissioners in meddling and offering to mediate betwixt him and. his English parliament. The House of Commons, of course, received the offer of mediation in a very different manner. On the day after it was presented they ordered Sir Philip Stapleton to return thanks to the Scottish commissioners, assuring them that what they had done was very acceptable to the house, who would continue their care to remove the present distractions, as also to confirm and preserve the union between the two nations. A few days after this the commissioners concluded an arrangement for the sending of 2500 men of the Scotch army into Ireland, to make head against the rebellion, which now threatened the entire loss of that country. The lords joined the commons in petitioning the king to proceed with the impeachment of Lord Kimbolton and the five members. Charles again offered a free pardon. With this the two houses would not rest satisfied; and they both demanded justice against the informers on whose testimony his majesty had acted. On the 20th of January, the king, by message, desired the parliament to digest and condense into one body all the grievances of the kingdom, promising his favourable assent to those means which should be found most effectual for redress; but the commons scarcely heeded this message, knowing at the moment that Charles had already sent Lord Digby abroad in search of foreign assistance. Charles's conduct with regard to the Irish rebels also excited their discontent and vehement suspicions. When the rebellion broke out, he had delayed his royal proclamation against the insurgents for three months, and when it was issued at last, only forty copies were printed. The Irish insurgents, or rebels, had styled themselves the queen's army, and professed that the cause of their rising was to maintain the king's prerogative and the queen's religion against the Puritan parliament of England. There was also observed on the part of Charles a backwardness to send over assistance to the Protestant It was now apparent to most men that the kingdom was about to blaze with the long-conceived flame of civil war. The Scottish commissioners, raised into vast importance by their skil-party in Ireland, who were as much Puritans as ful management of affairs, chose this moment to offer their mediation between the king and his English parliament. On the 19th of January, Charles, in a letter from Windsor, let the Scottish commissioners know that he had expected, before they should have intermeddled, that they would have acquainted him with their resolution in private; and that he trusted that, for the time coming, they would no way engage themselves in these private differences, without first communi Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. his English subjects, and a forwardness to expedite men who were notorious for their attachment to the old Roman church. Great numbers of Papists, both English and Irish, some of whom had served the king in his unlucky campaigns against the Scottish Covenanters, went out of England immediately before or shortly after the insurrection and joined their co-religionists in arms; others remaining in England prepared, or were said to be preparing arms, ammunition, money, corn, and other victual for the assistance all he hath done of late, he shall betake himself to the easiest and compliantest ways of accommodation, I am confident that then I shall serve and encouragement of the Irish. On the 29th of | never implore it), I shall then live in impatience January, the lords and commons issued strict and misery till I wait upon you. But if, after orders to the sheriffs, justices of peace, &c., to stay and prevent these perilous enterprises. The commons had found it necessary to apply to the city for a loan of £100,000 for the service in Ire-him more by my absence than by all my industry." land; and the petitions poured in from the city of London, from the counties of Essex and Hertford, and from the knights, gentlemen, ministers, and others, of various other counties. These papers were full of a boiling patriotism and fiery fanaticism-they deplored the destruction of the properties, lives, and religion of Englishmen in Ireland; and they proposed, as the proper means of ending rebellion, cruelty, and massacre in Ire-appointed a committee to consider the intercepted land, the execution in England of all Catholic priests, Jesuits, &c., legally condemned; and they further denounced the ill-affected persons about court, and the bishops and Popish lords in the House of Peers who were hindering, by their votes, the effectual and speedy cure of all our state evils. Upon these remarkable petitions the commons desired a conference with the lords, and appointed Pym to manage it. The lower house had been for some time apprehensive of a falling-off on the part of the upper house. Pym now flatly told their lordships that they must either join the commons in the cure of this epidemical disease, whereof the commonwealth lay gasping, or be content to see the commons do without them. The House of Commons forthwith ordered that the speaker, in the name of all, should give thanks to Mr. Pym for his able performance of the service in which he had been employed; and they further desired that Mr. Pym would deliver in writing to the house the bold speech he had made at this conference, in order that it might be printed.' From this day the gauntlet was thrown down to the peers, the overthrow of the upper house became a familiar idea with a great part of the nation, and the movement of reform was changed into the march of revolution. At the very opening of this letter was an offer to correspond with the queen in ciphers, and to do service abroad, for which the king's instructions were desired. The commons were naturally thrown into a great heat by the strain in which their proceedings were now spoken of by one who, like Strafford, had formerly been among the most zealous assertors of popular rights. They letters, and with little loss of time, both houses joined in a strong representation to his most gracious majesty. At the end of this paper the lords and commons said "We most earnestly beseech your majesty to persuade the queen that she will not vouchsafe any countenance to or correspondence with the Lord Digby, or any other the fugitives or traitors, whose offences now depend under the examination and judgment of parliament; which, we assure ourselves, will be very effectual to further the removal of all jealousies and discontents betwixt your majesty and your people, and the settling the great affairs of your majesty and the kingdom in an assured state and condition of honour, safety, and prosperity." This was worse than gall and wormwood to the court. Nor did the parliament stop here; a committee of the commons drew up a charge of high treason against Lord Digby. Henrietta Maria, who never was the heroine that some have delighted to picture her, who in no particular of her life showed any high-mindedness, was terrified almost out of her senses by the notion that the commons meant to impeach her; and self-preservation, and wounded pride, and an indefinite hope of doing great things against the parliament of England among the absolute princes on the Continent, all prompted her to be gone. Both houses intimated to her, through the Earl of A few days after Lord Digby's escape, a packet, Newport and the Lord Seymour, that there was addressed by his lordship to his brother-in-law, no ground for the fears they were aware she enSir Lewis Dives, was intercepted and read in the tertained of the intention of the commons to aeHouse of Commons. A letter for the queen in-cuse her of high treason. But there was now an closed in the packet was opened and read with excellent pretext for Henrietta Maria's departure. just as little ceremony. In the letter Digby said In the midst of this unhappy turmoil with his "If the king betake himself to a safe place, parliament, Charles had married his daughter where he may avow and protect his servants (from Mary to the young Prince of Orange, and it rage I mean, and violence, for from justice I will seemed proper and expedient that the young lady should be conducted by her mother to her betrothed husband. The king readily entered 1 Rushworth. According to Clarendon, Digby's letter was brought to the House of Commons by the treachery of the person to whose care it was intrusted for conveyance. We learn from Rushworth into the scheme of this journey, but it was neces sary to obtain the consent of parliament. He that, besides writing to Dives, Digby also wrote to Secretary therefore acquainted both houses with the mat Nicholas, who was now trusted with most of the secret plans of the court. ter; and, as neither of them raised any very |