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make him chancellor of the exchequer; St John accepted the post of solicitor-general, but continued as hostile to the prerogative as before,

In the meantime the Commons went on pressing their reforms. A bill was passed to deprive the bishops of their seats in the Upper House, which made slow progress through the Lords. The bishops were insulted by the mob when they passed through the streets. Some of the disbanded officers drew their swords to protect them, which led to frays and riots. The bishops claimed the protection of parliament which the Commons were slow of according. Assembling in the house of Williams, the newly made Archbishop of York, they hastily drew up a protestation that they dare not sit or vote in the House of Peers till secure from affronts and danger. They protested that all laws and resolutions made in their absence from the December 27 were null and of none effect. This protest was promptly taken by the archbishop to the king, who handed it to the lordkeeper to be read to the Lords. Every one was amazed that, while the fate of their order was trembling in the balance, the bishops should proclaim that important measures done in their absence were not legal or binding. The protestation was sent to the Lower House. The root and branch men at once took advantage of the imprudent action of the bishops: they ordered them to be impeached for high treason, and before the prelates knew that the petition had been given to the king, they found themselves kneeling at the bar of the House of Lords. Archbishop Williams, persecuted by Laud, had been for three and a half years in prison; he had got out of the Tower about

the same time as Laud had been put in. Now he was back to prison with his bishops. A caricature representing Williams, first bishop of Lincoln, in the fen country, acting as a decoy duck to lure eleven prelatic birds into captivity, much amused old Laud, then a fellow-prisoner in the Tower. The bill depriving the bishops of their seats in the House of Peers was now speedily passed. The king gave his assent to it on February 14 by commission, one of the last concessions to the demands of the parliament. After which the bishops were released.

The Commons became anxious when the king, on his return from Scotland, withdrew the guard from the Parliament House. Charles, believing that he had proofs of the correspondence between the Scots and some of the parliamentary leaders, ordered the attorney-general to inform the Lords that he meant to impeach Lord Kimbolton, Pym, Hampden, Holles, and Strode, of high treason. The Commons resented this as a breach of their privileges, and a lawless exertion of the prerogative, for the legal way would have been to get a case against them before a grand jury to be tried by a petty jury. The Commons requested a conference with the Lords to acquaint them that a scandalous paper, meaning the articles of impeachment, had been published, and that the king's guard at Whitehall was a breach of their privileges and an interruption to the freedom of debate. Nathaniel Fiennes, Glyn, the younger Vane, and Hotham, were named managers of this conference.

As the House refused to attend to his summons to deliver up the accused members, Charles made the well-known attempt to arrest them with about 400

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armed followers. The members, warned in time by Lady Carlisle, had withdrawn, and took refuge in the city, which rose to protect them. When the king next day visited Guildhall in the hopes of getting the Common Council to give them up, he was greeted with shouts of "privilege of parliament." Bands of yeomanry flocked in from the neighbouring counties to join in the defence of the members. The king's offer to abandon the prosecution and grant a free pardon to the accused only increased his humiliation. His wisest councillors holding aloof, his guards powerless amidst a city in revolt, trembling for his own safety, the king with his wife and children, left London for Hampton Court on January 10. Next day the five members, escorted by the train-bands, entered the House in triumph. The two parties already formed stood opposing one another.

The king soon left Hampton Court for Windsor, where his partisans gathered around him eager to strike the first blow. He made a proposal of redressing any farther grievances in order to gain time, and much against his conscience, agreed to the bill depriving the bishops of their seats, under the reserve that concessions extracted by violence might be taken back on a favourable occasion. The Lords were disposed to welcome the king's proposals; but the Commons, more deeply involved in the struggle, and more clear-sighted, demanded that the command of the royal fortresses and of the militia should be consigned to men who possessed the confidence of the parliament. Charles saw that this was wresting from him the sword which he was prepared to draw. He commenced a journey to York, there to gather his

forces for a resort to arms. There were parleyings on the way, and messages from parliament entreating him to return to his capital with refusals and remonstrances on the king's part, but all in vain.

And now began a struggle such as the world had never seen before. At the outset the parliament had only dreamed of a redress of manifest evils in the church and state; but under the sway of causes dimly discerned, every day made them take up a new position. As May, a close watcher of these events, thoughtfully observed: "Such an unhappy genius ruled those times (for historians have observed a genius of times as well as of climates or men) that no endeavours proved successful; nor did any actions produce the right though probable effects."

CHAPTER XI

Charles attempts to seize Kingston-upon-Hull. Collects his Adherents at York. The Fleet sides with the Parliament. Vane's Work in Organising the Navy. The Strength of the Parliamentary Party. The Cavaliers. England not prepared for War. Essex made Commander of the Forces of the Parliament.

KINGSTON-UPON-HULL was the most important seaport in Yorkshire; its fortifications had been lately repaired, and it contained a large magazine of arms from the discharging of the northern army. The Earl of Strafford had sought to put a royalist governor, Sir Thomas Glemham, in the town,' but the mayor and corporation had refused to give up the keys to him, and the parliament had intrusted the defence of the stronghold to Sir John Hotham, a wealthy knight of the East Riding, M.P. for Scarborough, leader of "the obstinate northern men," who had been recently imprisoned for resistance to the king's illegal acts. Riding from York, Charles appeared on April 23 with 300 horsemen and demanded admittance. The mayor would have let in his majesty; but Hotham ordered the gates to be shut, and falling on his knees on the rampart, excused himself to the king that he had taken an oath to hold the place for the parliament.

1 See The Hull Letters, from a collection of original documents found among the Borough Archives in the Town Hall, Hull, edited by T. F, Tindall Wildridge, Hull, 1886, pp. 19, 21, 29, 30,