almost of his century. In that century of oratory two speeches stand out-Eliot's on the occasion of Buckingham's impeachment, and Halifax's on the Exclusion Bill.1 Halifax's speech we only know by hearsay, of Eliot's we have a full report. Nothing can surpass its fire, its terse eloquence, and its burning indignation. The man who could make such a speech upon such a topic could expect no mercy from such a king as Charles. As he truly said in his Apology for Socrates, he died a lingering death for the service of the people, to preserve for them and their posterity the rights and liberties which had been handed down to them from their fathers.2 The tragedy of Eliot's death in the Tower, and the eleven years of prerogative rule, drew attention to the defects of the purely legal opposition to the crown, which had characterized the first stage of the constitutional conflict. These defects can be summarized as follows:-Firstly, the Parliamentary leaders did not and could not quite consistently carry out the theory upon which they based their opposition. They professed to desire no change in the law-simply the clear ascertainment and carrying out of the existing law. But it was quite impossible to apply medieval rules in the seventeenth century with no modifications; and, on many points, these mediæval rules gave no clear answer to the problems which they were expected to solve. No doubt the Parliamentary statesmen interpreted them in such a way that they gave a solution; but the Parliamentary interpretation was often quite as strained as the king's. Both parties were seeking to adapt mediæval rules to a modern environment. Both read into these rules meanings which, historically, were ridiculous. Secondly, the view of the Parliamentary statesmen that they were not changing the law, but merely maintaining it, though not wholly true in fact, exercised an unfortunate influence upon their political programme. They represented themselves as the advocates of a very medieval body of law, which was, they asserted, fully capable of providing for 1 Below 187 and n. 8. "I will not enumerat his passions to tell you what he suffered; what he suffer'd in his fortune, what he suffered in his person, in his liberty, in his life: to be made poore and naked; to be imprisoned and restrain'd; nay not to be at all; not to have the proper use of anythinge, not to have knowledge of Societie; not to have beinge and existence: his faculties confiscat; his frendes debarr'd his presence; himselfe deprived the world: I will not tell you of all this suffer'd by your Socrates, all this suffer'd for your service . . . for your children, your posteritie, to preserve your rights and liberties that as they were the inheritance of your fathers, from you likewise they may againe devolve to them," p. 30. 3 Redlich, op. cit. i 44, says quite truly that in the seventeenth century, "the new spirit of the House of Commons born of its resistance to absolutism, did, on questions of procedure as well as in other matters, often put new wine into old bottles"; for instances see above 91, 92, 100. all the needs of a modern state. Hence they refused to consider any lessons that might be drawn from the experience of foreign countries-" Some worthy members of this house," said Coke in 1628, "have spoken of foreign states, which I conceive to be a foreign speech." They almost refused to admit a discretionary power in the executive to take measures for the security or wellbeing of the kingdom-" our rule in this plain commonwealth of ours," said Whitelocke in 1610, "is oportet neminem esse sapientiorem legibus-if there be an inconvenience, it is fitter to have it removed by a lawful means, than by an unlawful "; 2 and we have seen that the Commons would not allow any sort of saving clause, designed to give the king a discretionary power, to be inserted in the Petition of Right. After events were to show that martial law, restricted as the House considered it should be restricted, by the medieval statutes, was wholly inadequate for the government of a modern army. Thirdly, this same point of view had induced the Commons in 1628, not to accept Wentworth's plan of a new law, but on the contrary to give the Petition of Right a declaratory form. But this made it easy for the king and his advisers to evade it. "There was 3 4 no new thing granted," said Finch, C.J., in the Case of Ship Money, "but only the ancient liberties confirmed." This argument had been foreshadowed in the king's speech at the prorogation of 1628,7 and was constantly urged by the royalist lawyers.8 It was becoming clear that the House of Commons must do something more than oppose the policy of the king by means of remonstrances, impeachments, and appeals to the existing law. Their declarations of right were insufficient-Eliot's blood still cried for vengeance. New laws must be passed to curtail the royal power, and to make it impossible for the future to rule without a Parliament. The eleven years of prerogative rule made all these facts very evident to a large number of the leaders of the Parliamentary opposition. They were the decisive facts which guided the policy of Pym in his leadership of the Long Parliament during its first years; and it was under his leadership that the legislation, which effectively carried out this new programme, was passed. 1 3 S.T. 68. * Vol. v 451-452. Vol. v 451-452, 454. 22 S.T. 518. 4 Vol. i 576-577; below 225-229, 241. 7" The profession of both houses in the time of hammering this Petition, was no way to trench upon my Prerogative, saying, they had neither intention or power to hurt it. Therefore it must needs be conceived, that I have granted no new, but only confirmed the ancient liberties of my subjects," ibid at p. 231. See Heath's argument in Strode's Case (1629), ibid at p. 281; above 39 n. 6. (ii) The legislation of the Long Parliament. Eliot was England's first Parliamentary statesman; but he was not a Parliamentary statesman of the modern type. Like the other Parliamentary leaders of his period, he wished to see a revival of the Tudor constitution, with the sphere of Parliamentary control somewhat enlarged. In his speeches he always glorified and idealized the constitution as it existed under Elizabeth. There is no hint in his speeches or writings that he desired to see the Parliament, much less the House of Commons, the ruler of the state. Pym, in his earlier days, had the same views: "The form of government," he said in 1628,2 “is that which doth actuate and dispose every part and member of a state to the common good; and as those parts give strength and ornament to the whole, so they receive from it again strength and protection in their several stations and degrees. If this mutual relation and intercourse be broken, the whole frame will quickly be dissolved. . . . It is true that time must needs bring some alterations". . . but "those commonwealths have been most durable and perpetual, which have often reformed and recomposed themselves according to their first institution and ordinance." And, even in 1640, in his speech at the opening of the Short Parliament," in which he detailed the religious and political grievances of the nation, we see no departure from this point of view. He attacked no individual minister, but concluded simply by proposing that the House of Lords should be asked to join with the House of Commons in searching out the causes of these grievances, and in petitioning the king for their redress. As Clarendon remarks, it would have been well if Pym, and other 1 See his speech in the Oxford Parliament of 1625. printed in Negotium Posterorum i 141-142, "Now Mr. Speaker soe longe as those attended about our Soveraigne Master nowe with God as had served the late Queene of happie memorie, Debtes of the Crowne were not soe greate, Commissions and Grantes not so oft complayned of in Parliament, Trade florished, Pentions not soe many though more than in the late Queen's time. . . All thinges of moment carried by publique debate at the Councell Table. Noe Honors sett to sale or places of judicature, lawes against Priestes and Recusantes unexecuted, Resorte of Papists to Ambassadors houses barred and punished. His Majestie both by dayly direction to all his ministers, and by his owne Penn declaringe his dislike of that profession. Noe waste expences in fruitless Ambassadges. Nor any transcendent power in any one minister for matters of state. The Councell Table holdinge upp ye fitt and auncient dignity." 2 Proceedings against Dr. Manwaring, 3 S.T. 341. 3 See Gardiner's summary, History of England ix 102-105; cp. S.P. Dom. 1640 46-48, ccccl 108 for another version of the speech; and see Gardiner, op. cit. ix 105 n. 1. for the various versions of this speech. History of the Rebellion (ed. 1843) 129, "If that stratagem . . . of winning men by places, had been practised, as soon as the resolution was taken at York to call a Parliament . . . and if Mr. Pym, Mr. Hambden, and Mr. Hollis, had been then preferred with Mr. Saint John, before they were desperately embarked in their desperate designs, and had innocence enough about them, to trust the king, and be trusted by him; having yet contracted no personal animosities against him; it is leaders of the opposition who thought with him, had been given office before the Long Parliament assembled. The dissolution of the Short Parliament showed that this moderate policy was neither possible nor expedient. St. John was right in his view that it was wholly inadequate.1 Pym and all the other leaders of the opposition were now agreed that Parliament must pursue a more active policy, that it must get rid of the agents of prerogative rule, and that it must pass legislation which would make such rule impossible. Pym had helped to secure the summoning of the Long Parliament. He had had a hand in drafting the petition of the twelve peers for the summoning of a Parliament; and that petition had led, first to the assembly of the Great Council of the peers at York, and then to the assembly of the Long Parliament. He soon became the leader of the House of Commons,3 and as its leader was mainly responsible for shaping its policy. This was no easy task. In the first place, it was necessary to keep the House together and to direct its energies in the right direction. Though at first it was practically unanimous, it might easily, amidst the multitude of religious and political grievances, have frittered away its energies. In the second place, it was necessary to provide against the danger of violence from without. The various plots which the royalist party set on foot to get rid of the leaders of the House of Commons, or to coerce the Parliament, must be sifted, and measures taken to frustrate them. That Pym accomplished both these objects is due both to his intellectual qualities, and to the manner in which those qualities developed under the stress of the new position in which he was placed. Pym had not, like Eliot, the temperament of an idealist: on the contrary he had the temperament of a practical man of business. He was a born organizer. In 1621 he had proposed an association for the defence of the king and the execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics; he organized the machinery by which Parliament, at the outbreak of the war, took over the very possible that they might either have been made instruments to have done good service; or at least been restrained from endeavouring to subvert the royal building, for supporting whereof they were placed as principal pillars." 1 Oliver St. John understood better what the facts of the case really were, when he said that all was well, and that it must be worse before it could be better; and that this Parliament would never have done what was necessary to be done," Gardiner, op. cit. ix 118. 2 S.P. Dom. 1640-1641 vi. 3 Gardiner points out, op cit. ix 223, that Pym did not at once become the leader of the House "in the sense in which he became its leader after some months of stormy conflict. . . . But he was securely established as the directing influence of a knot of men who constituted the inspiring force of the Parliamentary Opposition." 5 Gardiner, op. cit. iv 243. Above 77; below 115-117. executive government; and he played a large part in organizing the Parliamentary forces, and later in organizing the alliance with the Scottish Presbyterians.1 "Honourable combination," says Gardiner, "with men of good will to the cause which they reverenced was Pym's defence against the shifty politics of Charles; "2 and he points out that it was from this idea of "mutual association in defence of a principle as better than mutual association in defence of a person," that "party government would eventually grow."3 Pym had held a post in the Exchequer; and this gave him the practical acquaintance with finance which was essential to the leader of an assembly which controlled absolutely the finance of the country. His Parliamentary experience had enabled him to acquire a thorough knowledge of the forms of the House of Commons; and this knowledge made him "a consummate Parliamentary tactician.” ī Seeing that this knowledge was necessary both to guide the House of Commons, and to defend it from external enemies, its possession was an advantage of the highest importance, and its skilful use demanded real statesmanship. Such knowledge was not then, as it is too often in modern times, a mere cloak for the absence of all the qualities that go to make a statesman. His control of the House was strengthened by the fact that he shared the prejudices and feelings of the majority of its members. Like all effective orators he won applause largely because he could give eloquent and pointed utterance to the inarticulate feelings and aspirations of his audience. In addition he had the tact which all successful leaders of men must possess." It was natural that a man of this kind, at the centre of affairs during this exciting period, should be educated by the quick movement of events. He knew all about the royalist plots and schemes. 10 He knew therefore the dangers to which Parliamentary government was exposed. It was therefore only to be expected that, when the early unanimity of the Long Parliament 1 See Gardiner's article in Dict. Nat. Biog. 2 History of the Civil War i 258. 4 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion 74 Ibid 257. 5. When the resources of the City began to fail, John Pym, who . . . was by nature a distinguished financier, developed a novel source of supply by rendering the Excise a general impost, whereas formerly it had been confined to a few commodities, and those chiefly of foreign import," S.P. Dom. Introd. xlii; and see ibid 484-485, ccccxcviii Sept. 11th. 6 Clarendon, op. cit. 53, 74. 7 Gardiner, op. cit. x 223. 8 Ibid iv 244," He was strong with the strength, and weak with the weakness of the generation around him. But if his ideas were the ideas of ordinary men he gave to them a brighter lustre as they passed through his calm and thoughtful intellect. Men learned to hang upon his lips with delight as they heard him converting their crudities into well-reasoned arguments." 10 Below 115-117. 9 Ibid vii 36. |