Mr. Stroode, Alderman Pennington, Sir Edward Hungerford, Mr. Kirton, Mr. Holles,

many of the members of parliament before they met together in the house; the same men who, six months before, were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, without opening the wound too wide, and exposing it to the air, and rather to cure what was amiss, than too strictly to make inquisition into the causes and original of the malady, talked now in another dialect both of things and persons; and said that they must now be of another temper than they were the last parliament; that they must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down all the cobwebs which hung in the top and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter; that they had now an opportunity to make their country happy, by removing all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their duties; and used much other sharp discourse to the same purpose." And what is there marvellous in this? These men had, by very late and fresh experience, found that the king was obstinately bent on his old courses, cherished the same tools of tyranny, hated the sons of freedom, and even dared to imprison men for doing their duty in parliament: I say, they had lately had new proofs of it, and therefore were not to be blamed for their sharp discourse, or sharper actions.

Immediately, on the opening of this parliament, we find great complaints made of grievances, not only by Mr. Pymme (alone mentioned by Clarendon, who has confounded the business of grievances with lord Strafforde's affair) but also by Mr. Capel, afterwards lord Capel, sir Henry Bellasis, Sir John Wray, Sir Hugh Cholmely, Sir Philip Musgrave, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir John Packington, Sir Thomas Barrington, Sir John Colepepper, and others. The grievances were threefold; 1. some against

Mr. Valentine, Mr. Peard, Lord Digby, Mr. St. John, Mr. Selden, Mr. Rous, Mr. Pym,

the privilege of parliament; 2. others to the prejudice of religion; and, 3. another sort against the liberty of the subject. These were enlarged on with no unnatural warmth; their illegality and hardship manifested; the instruments of oppression pointed out, and their demerits displayed; and remedies for removing the grievances were mentioned, viz. by declaring the law where it was doubtful, and providing for the execution of the law where it was clear. And to the honour of the house of commons it must be said, that they went briskly to work, and accomplished many of their good intentions, uninfluenced by hope, unawed by fear. They impeached the king's chief ministers, Strafforde and Laud, and brought them deservedly to the block; they declared the judgment of the judges to be false and illegal; they abolished those vile courts of the high-commission and star-chamber, in which so many oppressive and cruel sentences had been passed; they gave liberty to those in captivity for their opposition to the prelates; they provided for the frequency of parliaments, the disuse of which had given boldness to the courtiers; they clipt the wings of the ecclesiastics, and brought them nearer to their first institution; and they would have done many other things, equally useful to that age and posterity, had they not been deserted by some, opposed by others, and hindered by royal authority. But they continued their endeavours notwithstanding, and, for the public good, exposed their fortunes, themselves, and their posterity, to the civil war; in which, had they been overcome, they would all have been treated as traitors and rebels. Mr. Neville had reason then for characterizing them, at least twenty or thirty of them, as men of high and unquestionable reputation, who having stood their ground in seven parliaments before, which, in the two last kings'

1

Mr. Bagshaw, and Mr. Grimston, to take into consideration the petitions of Leighton and

reigns, [this was wrote in the time of Charles II.] had been dissolved abruptly and in wrath, and having resisted the fear of imprisonment and great fines for their love to England, as well as the temptation of money and offices to betray it, both inferred by the wicked councellours of that age, tending both to the ruin of our just rights, and the detriment of their master's affairs; I say, having constantly, and with great magnanimity and honour, made proof of their integrity, they had acquired so great a reputation, that not only the parliament, but even almost the whole people, stuck to them and were swayed by them without fear of being deserted, or, as we say, left in the lurch" Let us hear Milton rehearsing their praises in 1642. After having mentioned their birth, their education, and their virtue unsullied amidst great discouragements and temptations, he adds, "Thus, in the midst of all disadvantages and disrespects (some also at last not without imprisonment and open disgraces in the cause of their country) having given proof of 'themselves to be better made and framed by nature to the love and practice of virtue, than others, under the holiest precepts and best examples, have been headstrong and prone to vice; and having, in all the trials of a firm ingrafted honesty, not oftner buckled in the conflict than given every opposition the foil; this, moreover, was added, by favour from heaven, as an ornament and happiness to their virtue, that it should be neither obscure, in the opinion of men, nor eclipsed for want of matter equal to illustrate itself; God and man consenting, in joint approbation, to chuse them out, as worthiest above others, to be both the great reformers of the church, and the restorers of the commonwealth. Nor did they deceive that expectation which, with the eyes and desires of their country, was fixt upon them; for no sooner

Lilburn, who had been so inhumanly used for

did the force of so much united excellence meet in one globe of brightness and efficacy, but, encountering the dazled resistance of tyranny, they gave not over, though their enemies were strong and suttle, till they had laid her groveling upon the fatal block: with one stroke winning again our lost liberties and charters, which our forefathers, after so many battles, could scarce maintain. And meeting next, as I may so resemble, with the second life of tyranny (for she was grown an ambiguous monster, and to be slain in two shapes) guarded with superstition, which hath no small power to captivate the minds of men otherwise most wise, they neither were taken with her mitred hypocrisy, nor terrified with the push of her bestial horns, but, breaking them immediately, forced her to unbend the pontifical brow, and recoil: which repulse, only given to the prelates (that we may imagine how happy their removal would be) was the producement of such glorious effects and consequences in the church, that, if I should compare them with those exploits of highest fame in poems and panegyrics of old, I am certain it would but diminish and impair their worth, who are now my argument; for those antient worthies delivered men from such tyrants as were content to inforce only an outward obedience, letting the mind be as free as it could; but these have freed us from a doctrine of tyranny that offered violence and corruption even to the inward perswasion: they set at liberty nations and cities of men, good and bad mixed together; but these, opening the prisons and dungeons, called out of darkness and bonds the elect martyrs and witnesses of their Redeemer: they restored the body to ease and wealth; but these the oppressed conscience to that freedom which is the chief prerogative of the gospel; taking off those cruel burthens imposed not by necessity, as other tyrants are wont for the safeguard of their lives, but laid upon our necks by the strange wilfulness and wantonness of a needless and jolly persecutor called

• Journals of the House of Commons, Nov. 9, 1640.

their opposition to the prelates: and we need

indifference. Lastly, Some of those ancient deliverers have had immortal praises, for preserving their citizens from a famine of corn; but these, by this only repulse of an unholy hierarchy, almost in a moment replenished with saving knowledge their country, nigh famished for want of that which should feed their soulsa." This is very just, and admirably expressed; however, it is but justice to the reader, to let him know that Milton altered his opinion of these very men, on account that their after proceedings, in his judgment, were unsuitable to these glorious beginnings. His words are worth recording. "A parliament being called, to redress many things, as 'twas thought, the people, with great courage, and expectation to be eased of what discontented them, chose to their behoof in parliament, such as they thought best affected to the public good, and some indeed men of wisdom and integrity; the rest, (to be sure the greater part) whom wealth or ample possessions, or bold and active ambition (rather than merit) had commended to the same place. But when once the superficial zeal and popular fumes, that acted their new magistracy, were cooled and spent in them, strait every one betook himself (setting the commonwealth behind, his private ends before) to do as his own profit or ambition led him. Then was justice delayed, and soon after denied; spight and favour determined all: hence faction, thence treachery, both at home and in the field: every where wrong and oppression: foul and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintained in secret, or in open. Some who had been called from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in supreme councils and committees, (as their breeding was) fell to huckster the commonwealth. Others did thereafter as men could sooth and humour them best; so he who would give most, or under covert of hypocritical zeal, insinuate basest, enjoyed unworthily the rewards of learning and fidelity; or escaped the punishment of his crimes and

a Milton's Prose Works, vol. I. p. 130.