under oppression: the exchequer gaped with exhaustion: courtiers waxed fat through repletion. So it was in other instances. For the monopoly of wine, £38,000 per annum, only found its way to Whitehall; while the vintners, paying forty shillings a tun to the patentees, raised the impost on the public for 45,000 tuns, the actual number sold, to £90,000! Yet this was merely an abuse in limine; for the vintners again imposed two-pence a quart on the retail, which thus quadrupled the duty to eight pounds sterling per tun, or £360,000; nearly ten times as much as reached the royal treasury. Meanwhile Noy, the attorneygeneral, a deserter from the patriots, invented ship-money. He was a great delver in antiquities, keeping his notes and precedents on small pieces of paper in the coffin of a pye, which had been 'sent him by his mother'; whereby many of them got lost from mouldiness. We are told by the historian of the Great Rebellion, that for a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and 'for an everlasting supply on all occasions, a writ was discovered ' and framed in a form of law, and directed to the sheriff of every 'county in England, to provide a ship of war for the king's ser'vice, and to send it amply fitted and provided, by such a day to 'such a place; and with that writ were sent to each sheriff instructions, that instead of a ship, he should levy upon his county 'such a sum of money, and return the same to the treasurer of 'the navy, for his Majesty's use, with direction in what manner 'he should proceed against such as refused; by which for some 'years accrued the sum of £200,000; which was in truth the only project that was accounted to the royal service.'

Together with Noy the attorney-general, Digges, Littleton, Glanville, and a few more, had gone over to the court; all which secessions faded away in importance, when compared with that of Sir Thomas Wentworth! This celebrated individual had for a long interval numbered Pym and Hollis amongst his most intimate friends. Eliot had never thoroughly trusted him; but in order to allay the apprehensions which so many deemed utterly groundless, it has been thought probable, not without good grounds, that the member for Tavistock went so far as to pledge his own faith for the fidelity of Wentworth. We therefore may more readily conceive than describe the bitterness of his disappointment. Our biographer thus proceeds:

Feeling in all its force the truth of one of his own favourite thoughts, hatred now sprang into the place of his former love. The anecdote which dates the first terrible dawning of the change, rests on the cautious authority of Dr. Wellwood. There had been a long and intimate friendship, he says, between John Pym and Sir Thomas Wentworth; and they had gone hand to hand in the House of Commons. But when Sir Thomas Wentworth was upon making his peace with the Court, he sent to Pym to meet him alone at Greenwich,

where he began in a set speech to sound him about the dangers they were like to run by the courses they were then in; and what advantages they might have, if they would but listen to some offers which would probably be made them from the king. Pym, understanding his drift, cut him short with this expression You need not use all this art to tell me that you have a mind to leave us but remember what I tell you, you are going to be undone; and remember also, that though you leave us now, I will never leave you while your head is upon your shoulders.' Pym kept his word.'-pp. 62-63.

Had Wentworth not been a traitor, he might have been an Achilles amongst politicians:

Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,

Jura neget sibi nata; nihil non arroget armis!'

His genius was invulnerable all over,-with a soul of fire, a mind of light, an indomitable will to guide, and an irresistible hand to execute. He had descended from long lines of ancestors, some of whom were rich and powerful before the Conquest; so that the pride of aristocracy ran like lightning in his veins. As the eldest of twelve children, he inherited an estate of £6000 per annum. Though heir to a baronetcy, he purchased knighthood soon after attaining his majority, probably that he might match himself more easily with a lady of title. He panted for distinction, as the hart after the water-brooks. Having travelled into France and Italy, about the period when Henry IV. was assassinated by Ravaillac, the event, with all that followed, no doubt deeply affected his imagination, and is even thought by some to have influenced his future course. However this might be, his voice and talents were employed on his return in the advancement of the patriotic cause. Serving in parliament for Yorkshire, he denounced abuses with the force of a Boanerges; though perhaps not with the perseverance of those, whose principles, flowing more decidedly from the heart, made less noise, and were less liable to exhaustion. Having resisted the privy-seals for an illegal loan, the council committed him to the Marshalsea for several weeks. He was afterwards one of the involuntary sheriffs; so fearful was the court at that time of his extraordinary energies and demeanour. And no wonder; as the following samples may serve to show: 'Our persons,' said he in the lower house, 'have been injured both by imprison'ment without law-nay, against law, boundless and without 'bank; and by being designed to some office, charge, and employ'ment, foreign or domestic, as a brand of infamy and mark of disgrace. Oh! Mr. Speaker, when it may not be safe to deny 'payments upon unjust exactions, but we must go to prison for 'it; nor in this place to speak our consciences, but we must be 'stamped to unwilling and unfitting employments! Our estates 'have been sacked two ways; one in the loan, wherein five sub

'sidies were exacted; and that by commission of men of quality, ' and instructions to prosecute the same, with an asperity which 'no times can parallel! And hence the other consideration of the projectors and executioners of it. Nay, this was not all, 'but ministers in their pulpits have preached it as gospel, and 'damned the refusers of it; so then we are already doomed to 'damnation.' Such burning words brought both king and courtiers to some sense of the triumph they would obtain, could Sir Thomas Wentworth be allured over to their side. There had been coquettings and tamperings before; but a direct negociation now commenced, with hardly decent delay. What portion can an aristocrat possess in popular rights, or the perpetuity of freedom? He stipulated to be created a viscount, and lord president of the North; and as indecision formed no feature in his character, he threw body, soul, and spirit into the bargain, when the terms. were once settled.

6

John Pym was not the coward described by Juvenal, who nunquam direxit brachia contra torrentem; but rather one who bore up the more gallantly, as difficulties and dangers multiplied. The desertion of his former friend only filled him with that species of abhorrence, which concentrates attention upon the culprit. He watched every motion and action of the newly plumed official, from that hour forward. The latter carried off his disgraceful honours; and avenged himself for the bitterness they must often have occasioned, by wreaking the power of his abilities upon the cause he had forsaken. His intellect was of the loftiest stature; but it seemed always in armour, so polished was its aspect, so unbending its strength,—and so heavy was the hand with which he held the helm of affairs. The baton of government, in his grasp, was an iron mace, crushing and grinding every direct opponent. Sometimes he would laugh to scorn the party he had left, mentioning them to others, as your Prynnes, Pyms, Bens (Sir Benjamin Rudyard), and the rest of that genera'tion of odd names and natures.' His authority extended over the shires of York, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham, including within itself the tyranny exercised by the courts of common law, of the chancery, and of the star-chamber. 'It was a chaste ambition,' he afterwards argued, to have as 'much power as may be, if rightly placed, that there may be the more ability to do good for the place where a man serves.' He certainly acted this perilous principle out, even to the uttermost. Absolutism was the single point at which he aimed. He devoted himself, day and night, to the public business. He appeared born to rule over man, that is, in the conservative sense of the phrase, -implying irresponsibility. Government and administration, in his vocabulary, involved two ideas,-raising revenue, and trampling out every spark of liberty, through fear of a conflagration in society.

The general turn of his temperament was in some things a little like that of his saturnine contemporary Wallenstein, so celebrated in the Thirty years' war. Lord Wentworth could attend perfectly to his own interests, even whilst apparently absorbed in national affairs. He was judge, general, statesman, grand vizier, and steward of extensive patrimonial estates, all at the same time. He managed lawsuits, superintended the education of his children though at a distance, baffled all sorts of intrigues in London against himself, ruined his enemies, and raised the income attached to his presidency from £2000 a year to an annual return of £9500! The king, his sultan and master, marvelled at a magician so felicitous in his operations. He offered him the government of Ireland, which he accepted; transferring from York to Dublin, the drama of Taming the Shrew, upon a larger scale than Shakespeare had ever imagined. Pym, with unwearied vigilance, followed him thither, in spirit, if not in person. The patriots knew full well, that Charles had a favourite crotchet of delivering up the three divisions of the kingdom to the superintendence of as many servile ministers, reserving to himself the supreme control over all. Laud was to sanctify England,-Hamilton to mystify Scotland,and Ireland 'accepted by Wentworth, completed the proposed plan.' His Irish commission commenced in the early months of 1632; and was accompanied with most extraordinary powers. He constituted himself all but sovereign of the sister island;-quickly convincing those with whom he had any thing to do, that though he served the most wily monarch under the sun, a viceroy could play something more than the part of a king, from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway. His lady had recently died; he had concluded a second marriage in private, with a young woman of humbler fortune than his own; he was furthermore a man of pleasure and intrigue; and yet nevertheless his very arrival at Dublin, in July of the subsequent year 1633, introduced a new era into Hibernian history. He ventured even to summon a parliament, because he felt satisfied that he could manage it. The very name of such an assembly struck horror into the breast of the craven Stuart; yet Wentworth over-ruled all objections, obtained license from his majesty to have the writs issued, met the houses with a mien and manner which terrified some, and overawed all; whilst he demanded and procured the enormous grant of six subsidies, besides eight more from the clergy, whom he had convoked at the same time. The lord-deputy felt that he was in the high road for achieving that object which was uppermost in his mind, when he landed; namely, that of rendering his prince the most absolute potentate in christendom. Here it also was, that both prince and servant were treasuring up for themselves the severest future retribution. The puritans remained quiet, but sleepless. Year after year was filling that heavy

bill of indictment, which John Pym and his friends were destined on another day to adduce in Westminster Hall. Wentworth's correspondence frequently betrays something like internal misgivings; such, for instance, as an acknowledgment that he was stretching the prerogative this way or that way at the price of 'his head.' Meanwhile, he hawked, fished, hunted, condescended even to think and write about dentrifices or cosmetics, for his wife and other ladies; played off the catholics against the protestants, and the protestants against the catholics; summoned a second session of his parliament to browbeat and cajole its members as before; and finally had the pleasure of addressing Laud with news that the privilege of impeachment had been wrested both from lords and commons; that certain complaints of the convocation had been emphatically silenced; that his majesty in the person of his humble deputy was now the uncontrolled disposer of the destinies of Ireland; and that all the promises and graces whereby he had ascended to the summit of his ambition, had been thrown to the winds, as though they had never been made or offered. He was also proceeding with a still mightier project; that of reducing Ireland to a conformity in religion. The portrait he draws of the state of protestantism there, goes quite far enough to explain its present opulence in revenue, and paucity in numbers, as well as the curse of any religious establishment whatsoever. He mentions an unlearned clergy, not more despised than cordially hated; even the walls of a majority of the churches falling into utter dilapidation; parsonages in venerable ruin, as void of inhabitants as the temples of worshippers; the people buried in ignorance through the non-residence of their appointed and salaried shepherds; the unlimited and shameful numbers of spiritual promotions with cure of souls, held by commendams; rites and 'ceremonies run over without decency of order or habit; bishops 'farming out their jurisdictions to mean and unworthy persons;' and catholics everywhere increasing. It must be remembered, that a century had elapsed since the European Reformation. His views of what the necessity of the case required were in many respects enlarged, and well suited to their object; standing out in magnificent and mountainous contrast with the pettifogging persecution and priestcraft of his correspondent the Archbishop of Canterbury. He brought prelates to account as well as laymen. The diocesan of Killala, having attempted to defraud his see for the benefit of his family, the Deputy cited him to the presence chamber, and told him with open and bitter severity, that he deserved to have his surplice pulled over his ears, and to 'be turned out of the church on a stipend of four nobles a year'! O si sic omnia. Even Pym would have suspended the axe, had Lord Wentworth proved a genuine Gideon, and only thus taught these right reverend men of Succoth with the thorns and briars of the wilderness.