imprisoning on his circuit parties who appeared in arms against the king, and by himself drawing his sword in the royal cause. Several attempts had been made to crush this dangerous and indefatigable adversary, by means of fine and imprisonment, inflicted under a show of law, previously to his being brought, in February, 1647, before the House of Commons, in company with one Sir Francis Butler. When the two delinquents appeared at the bar, Butler knelt as he was directed, but Judge Jenkins refused. In the reprimand which followed, Lenthall, the speaker, addressing both as notorious delinquents, particularly referred to the elder prisoner's omission of the usual mark of respect to the house, “which," he said, "was the greater fault in him, seeing he pretended to be knowing in the laws of the land." During these animadversions, the judge, in a low voice, desired his companion not to say much. "Let all their malice," he said, "light upon me: I am an old man, and you comparatively young." The speaker having concluded, Judge Jenkins asked if he might now have liberty to speak? "Yes," answered Lenthall, "so you be not very long." "No," continued the judge, "I will not trouble either myself or you with many words. In your speech, Mr. Speaker, you said the house was offended at my behaviour in not making any obeisance to you at my coming here; and that this was the more wondered at, because I pretended to be knowing in the laws of the land. I answer, that, I thank God, I not only pretend to be, but am, knowing in the laws of the land (having made it my study for these five-and-forty years;) and that I am so is the cause of my behaviour. For as long as you had the king's arms engraven on your mace, and that your great seal was not counterfeit, had I come here I would have bowed in obedience to his writ and authority, by whom you were first called. But, Mr. Speaker, since you and this house have renounced your duty and allegiance to your sovereign liege lord, and are become a den of thieves, should I bow myself in this house of Rimmon, the Lord would not pardon me in this thing."

This dauntless outburst of honest indignation instantly threw the whole assembly into an uproar. It was half an hour before any order could be restored; during all which time ten or even twenty members would be haranguing confusedly together, with furious looks and gestures. At length the tumult a little abated. The house voted the prisoners guilty of high treason, without any form of trial; and calling for the keeper of Newgate, inquired what were the usual days of execution for treason. "Wednesdays and Fridays," was the answer of that functionary. And it was only in consequence of a remark of Marten, on the question whether the execution should take place on the following Wednesday or Friday, that this monstrous purpose was suspended. That republican suggesting, in terms ludicrously contemptuous, that the old man courted death as a martyr for the laws, in the hope that his execution would produce a great effect on the people, the house, tranquillized by this wholesome fear, and by the humour of its buffoon, agreed to remand the prisoners. On their return to prison, Butler asked his intrepid companion he had not been too hardy in his language to the house? "Not at all," replied the judge. "Rebellion has been so successful in this kingdom, and has gotten such a head, that weak loyal persons will be allured to comply with it, if some vigorous and brave resistance be not made against these men, even to their faces. This was the cause why I said such

if

home-things to them. And whenever the day of my execution come, I shall be like Samson, and destroy more Philistines that I have ever hitherto done in all my life. And in this thought of mine I am so wrapped up, that I hope they will not long defer my execution."

Perceiving Butler's wonder to be excited by this extraordinary declaration, the judge proceeded: "I will tell you all that I intended to do and say at that time. First, I will eat much liquorice and gingerbread to strengthen my lungs, that I may extend my voice far and near; for no doubt great multitudes will come to witness the old Welsh judge's death. Then will I come with venerable Bracton's book hung on my left shoulder, and the Statutes at Large on my right shoulder, and the Bible with a ribbon put round my neck, hanging on my breast. I will then tell the people that I am brought there to die for being a traitor, and in the words of a dying man I will tell them that I wish all the traitors in the kingdom might come to my fate. But indeed I am no traitor; and the better to inform you that I am none, the house of Commons never thought me a traitor; for had they believed me such, they would have had me tried in a legal manner, according to the customs of this kingdom for a thousand years. For this cause they debarred me of my birthright—a trial by my peers, that is, by a jury; because they well knew no honest jury would ever have found me guilty of treason for only being loyal and true to our lawful and rightful sovereign. But since they will have me a traitor, right or wrong, I thought it was but just to bring my counsellors with me, who have all along advised me in what I have done. Then shall I open Bracton, to show them that the supreme power is in the king—the statute-book, to read the oath of allegiance the Bible, to show them their duties to the lawful authority." (The judge, as he proceeded, read at full length the passages he referred to, and then continued his imaginary address.) "This book, these statutes, this holy and sacred volume, have all been my evil counsellors, and therefore shall be hanged with me! So when they shall see me die affirming such things, thousands will be incited to inquire farther into this matter; and having found all I told them to be true, they will learn to loathe and detest the present tyranny."

But, for the execution of this scheme-the most romantic, surely, that was ever conceived in a lawyer's brain-no opportunity was given. The house, in fact, comprised not a few men who understood the weight which the decisions of such a venerable expounder of the law would attach to their proceedings. A committee of members visited Judge Jenkins in Newgate, and offered, that if he would own the power of the parliament to be lawful, they would not only take off the sequestration from his estate, which was about £500 per annum, but would besides settle on him a life-annuity of £1,000. "Far be it from me," he answered, "to own rebellion, however successful, to be lawful; leave me." The leader of the party persisted: he should enjoy the same, if he would only suffer them to print that he acknowledged their power to be lawful. "Not for all the money you have robbed the kingdom of," was the judge's indignant reply, "would I connive at your so doing. And should you impudently put any such matter in print, I would sell my doublet and coat, to buy pens, ink, and paper, to set forth the house of Commons in their proper colours." One argument yet remained to the tempters. "You have a wife

and nine children, who will all starve, if you refuse this offer." "What! did they desire you to press me in this matter?" "I will not say they did; but I think they press you to it without speaking at all." The old man's anger was now raised to the highest pitch; and with an answer too vehement for these pages, but glowing with the incorruptible integrity of his soul, he rid himself of his tormentors. In various gaols, the Welsh judge continued, during eleven years, to suffer captivity, with the same constancy with which he expounded the violated laws of his country.

The surrender of so many garrisons brought large sums into Goldsmith's Hall, for compositions; a source of revenue which the needs of the victorious party induced them to encourage, though at the risk of surrounding themselves with royalists. The entire property of such among the king's friends as were expressly excepted from pardon, with that of other delinquents deemed incorrigible, was mercilessly confiscated. With reference to the practice of compounding for delinquency, so generally adopted, we find on record the following manly sentiments of Hyde: the passage occurs in a letter to Secretary Nicholas. "I am very glad your patrons at London are constant in their unmercifulness to the excepted, among whom I will not leave my place to be listed amongst the compounders. For my part, let him want mercy that will ask or take it from them. I remember my old acquaintance Cato, when he was told that Cæsar had a desire to have friendship with him, and was willing to give him a pardon, grew into a passion, and said, he was a tyrant to offer him a pardon, for by it he assumed to himself a power over the lives of the citizens of Rome. I assure you, Mr. Secretary, I will not receive a pardon from the king and parliament when I am not guilty; and when I am, I will receive it only from him who can grant it."

Besides the two great military commanders, whose rewards have been noticed, a long list of claims by the Presbyterian leaders, upon the financial resources of the parliament, was at this time allowed. Waller was complimented with the title of a baron, with £2,500 per annum. To Haslerig and Stapleton was assigned, with the like rank, an income of £2,000 per annum each. Sir William Brereton had an annuity of £1,500 voted to him, and Skippon one of £1,000; with many more.

Charles himself also was now numbered with the parliament's pensioners. The vote that consigned the sovereign to Holdenby, was accompanied with a grant of £50 per diem for the maintenance of his court. The Duke of York, on the invitation of the houses, was brought to London, and consigned to the care of Northumberland (who had already two of the king's children in his charge), with an annuity, for his support, of £7,000. But the same liberality does not appear to have been extended to all the members of this unhappy family, now in their power. About the same day on which the duke was conducted to St. James's, the Lady Dalkeith, with whom the queen, when obliged to fly from Exeter, had left her infant daughter, secretly conveyed the princess from Oatlands (to which residence she had been taken on the surrender of that city, in April), leaving behind a statement of the causes of her flight: "After patiently expecting the pleasure of the parliament," she said, "she had found it impossible to obtain any justice to the princess, or favour to her highness, or her attendants." This lady was a person of spirit

and magnanimity, and succeeded in safely transporting the little object of her loyal and affectionate anxiety to St. Germain's.

There, the pensioner of a government which had assisted in precipitating her husband's ruin,―surrounded by relations who had small ability, and less will, to afford her effectual assistance, Henrietta kept up the flutter and intrigue of a court, without its dignity or magnificence. The disloyal assiduities of some of the nobles in her train, or her own anger and disappointment at the tremendous reverse in her fortunes, appear to have chilled the queen's affection towards her lord, and obliterated from her mind all regard for the country whose throne she had shared. Too indulgent to the lighter partners of her exile, she at the same time severely judged those measures which unexampled misfortune, or incessant importunity, had wrung from her afflicted husband. Davenant, to whose ill-judged embassy the king wanted patience to listen, hinted that the queen had thoughts of retiring into a monastery. The nerve of conjugal tenderness instantly quivered. To the envoy he made, on this point, no reply; but in his next letter to his correspondents at St Germain's, he thus distressingly alludes to the suggestion: "This, if it fall out, (which God forbid !) is so destructive to all my affairs-I say no more of it-my heart is too big; the rest being fitter for your thoughts than my expression. In another way I have mentioned this to the queen (my grief being the only thing I desire to conceal from her, with which I am as full now as I can be without bursting), commanding you to remember her to answer me, and help to conceal my sorrow from her as much as may be." The little court of Henrietta received, at this time, an important addition by the arrival of the Prince of Wales. In the orders issued by Charles, providing for the prince's safety, he had directed, that in case expatriation were found inevitable, the heir to the British throne should be placed under the care of his royal mother, "in all things except religion." But the council whom he had placed about the prince, in the exercise of that discretion with which they were invested, wished rather to retain him in Jersey. Their authority, however, was overruled by the positive command of the queen; and, against the strenuous protest of Capel and Hyde, the royal youth was transferred, under the care of Digby, Jermyn, and Wentworth, to a court from which his cause received no political benefits, to countervail the moral mischief of implanting in an apt disposition those seeds of libertinism and irreligion, by the growth of which England was afterwards corrupted and degraded.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

HOLDENBY.

THE authors of this great revolution were far from enjoying quiet satisfaction in their successes. The continuance of an unmitigated burden of taxation upon the people, while the individuals in power had grown rich at the public cost; the intolerant, yet inadequate character of the new church-establishment; the delay of an agreement with the king; the maintenance of a large military force in the heart of the kingdom, preying upon its resources, and diffusing around its own lawless and fanatical spirit, while not an enemy was to be seen or feared: these, and similar grievances, were beginning to cloud the popularity of the parliament. The citizens of London, once wholly subservient to their wishes, now ruffled the sittings of the houses with petition upon petition, for the disbanding of the army, and the settlement of the kingdom. Rejected, as interfering with the privileges of the supreme authority in the nation, these remonstrances were repeated in stronger terms, and presented at the doors with insolence and menace. Ordered to be publicly burnt in Westminster and at the Exchange, they were succeeded by others more formidable, from the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and by disturbance and violence in the metropolis. In the midst of these marks of disaffection without, the discords in the parliament itself, between the Independent and Presbyterian factions, though prudently permitted, on both sides, to slumber till the retirement of the Scottish army, were in reality becoming more than ever profound and unappeasable. The chase was over; the rich quarry lay bleeding at the feet of the hunters: but no principle, besides the robber-law of the strongest, presided over the distribution of the spoil. To which side, on that principle, appertained the lion's share, was the grand question now waiting to be decided.

At present, the superiority appeared wholly on the side of the Presbyterians. In numerical strength, that party had at no time ceased to have greatly the advantage, notwithstanding the open evasion, in recent elections, of the self-denying ordinance. Late events had likewise conspired to restore their pristine courage and enthusiasm. The sovereign, by putting himself in the power of the Scots, had, in effect, thrown the weight of his personal importance into the Presbyterian scale. His misfortunes, and the magnanimity with which he bore them, were, however, beginning to soften many bosoms that had been steeled against him in the days of his prosperity. The war was at an end; but its professed objects appeared to be as remote as ever. To what purpose had the people suffered and bled? If for nothing, or worse than nothing, then better were it the nation retraced its steps; better to endure the blows of the less ignoble arm, and to be at least able to claim the grace of submission to authority based on law, and venerable from