Their arrival in London was hailed by the popular party; Mr Prynn, and Sir John Clotworthy, both members of the English parliament, moved for a committee of the commons, to take into consideration the grievances of Ireland. The Irish deputies preferred laying their remonstrance before the committee, to submitting their grievances to Charles. Strafford, contrary to the admonition of his friends, confronted his enemies; he was impeached, sequestered from parliament, and committed to custody; he miscalculated either the power or the sincerity of the king; he now lay at the mercy of his powerful and inveterate enemies.

Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase, two puritan lords justices, without abilities or character, were appointed to the government of Ireland. These men were not more remarkable for their fanatical virulence, than they were for the meanness of their understandings; and we shall hereafter find every act of their administration marked with those features which distinguished the character of the governors.

The English and Irish committees went on in their work of reformation, and the spirit of Charles was at last obliged to bow to the dictation of his subjects. They rose in their demands as Charles conceded; and the royal power, which was accustomed to treat with contempt the respectful petitions of the people, was now crouching to their threats, and struggling to conciliate, by a liberal admission of their demands. The Irish were not satisfied with the mere granting the prayer of their

remonstrance; they aspired still higher, and, like their neighbours, they seized this opportunity which the king's embarrassments afforded, to extend their own power, and advance the public interests. They carefully examined into various instances of illegal practices during the administration of Strafford, and severely censured every deviation from the strict line of constitutional liberty. They submitted to the judges in 1640, a number of questions relative to the power and authority of the chief governor and privy council, in hearing and determining civil causes; the legality of monopolies, and of the punishments inflicted on those who infringed them; the legal force of proclama-tions or acts of state; the execution of martial law .in time of peace; the jurisdiction of the exchequer, - castle chamber, and other courts; the censures and severe punishments of jurors. All those griev ances were laid before the judges of the land, to ascertain the legitimate powers of the government. The spirit of reform which thus distinguished the commons, was not equally conspicuous in the lords, and the friends of the royal prerogative adopted every expedient by which they could blunt the keen edge of popular intemperance. The Earl of Ormond was attached to Lord Strafford, and he prevailed on the lords to delay the answers of the judges to the queries of the commons for some months. The commons were offended at the coldness of the lords, and immediately transmitted their queries to their committee in England, ordering the latter to lay their grievances before the

-English parliament, and to pray that parliament do declare the law in several particulars contained in those queries.

The Irish parliament then proceeded to the impeachment of the most distinguished partizans of Strafford; they impeached Sir Richard Bolton, the chancellor; Dr Bramhal, the bishop of Derry; Sir Gerard Lowther, chief justice of the common pleas; and Sir George Radcliffe. They charged them with exercising an illegal and tryannical government in Ireland, in conjunction with Strafford ; that they assumed a regal power over the properties, persons, and liberties of the subjects; pronounced unjust decrees and extrajudicial opinions; that they subverted the rights of parliament, and the ancient course of parliamentary proceedings. The Irish lords were little inclined to yield to the violence of the commons; they started objections of delay and difficulty; they denied the power of sequestrating, and committing the speaker of the lords; they insisted that it was sufficient that their house was answerable for the forthcoming of the chancellor, and that the latter could not be committed as long as he was suffered by the sovereign to hold the seals. This contest between the two houses was, after much discussion, suspended by a prorogation. In the interim the enemies of Strafford hurried on his trial in England, and the act of attainder passed against this unhappy lord. The consequences of these struggles between the Irish parliament and the king, were peculiarly visible in the pure administration of justice, and the extinc

tion of the oppressive jurisdictions of the high commission courts, which sacrificed the rights and the properties of the subject. The judges in the law courts no longer decided against the law of the land; the people were respected, and the powers of the crown restrained within legal and constitutional limits. Charles being hard pressed by his present difficulties, unable to extend his protection even to the most zealous of his servants, sought refuge in conceding to that prayer which he no longer had the power to refuse. He agreed to redress the grievances contained in the remonstrance of the Irish parliament, and to surrender those powers which his predecessors had exercised with impunity. The concessions obtained on this oc. casion, by the indefatigable spirit of parliament, are worthy of record; because, in a brief and comprehensive sentence, they exhibit the rapid strides made by popular spirit, and the low degree of humiliation to which a monarch, almost unlimited in power, was reduced in the short space of a few months. Charles was obliged to consent that the assessment of the nobility should be moderated; he agreed to confirm their rights and privileges by act of parliament; to deprive those peers of their votes who should not purchase estates in Ireland; to allow all his Irish subjects to repair to any part of his dominions without restraint; to prohibit the chief governors and privy council from deciding property or avoiding letters patent; to revoke monopolies; to suspend the high commission court, and to regulate the claims and the councils of the

clergy. Thus are the liberties of the people the offspring of royal embarrassment, and the same power which tramples with insolence on the rights and feelings of humanity, is always seen in every country to yield, with cowardly precipitance, to the well directed resistance of the public mind. The administration of Lord Strafford strained the royal prerogative to its utmost limits. The times in which he lived gave birth to a new spirit of reformation in religion as well as in politics, and the oscillating disposition of Charles gave confidence to his enemies, while it discouraged the efforts of his friends. Neither he nor his advisers possessed sufficient judgment to direct the vessel of the state in so unprecedented a storm; his religious bigotry inflamed the hostility of the puritan, and his undecided, and sometimes insincere protection, shook the confidence of the catholics.

Notwithstanding the spirit of conciliation manifested by Charles towards his Irish parliament, the latter did not merely rely on the promises of their sovereign for the possession of those constitutional rights which they so firmly asserted. Nothing less than a legislative declaration of their right to the claims which they demanded, would satisfy those suspicious and stern defenders of public liberty. They determined to be no longer depending on the will of the king for the enjoyment of the equal and impartial dispensation of justice, and proceeded to mark out and prescribe the exact limits of his authority, out of which even he could not legally travel. The session of the succeeding year (1641)