vested in himself; in particular, that he used his simple arbitrary will in endeavouring to reform the religious opinions of one whole state. Countenanced by the liberal principles which had been gradually spreading in the meantime throughout the popula tion of England, this nation had fairly rebelled; had overawed the king; had then reduced him to a sort of obedience to his subjects; and finally, by its victorious army, had extorted from him such concessions of his prerogative as might almost be said to have discrowned him.

So far all was well; and, if the king had then died, and some collateral relation succeeded, it is probable that the state would have flourished more than ever under the new limitations of the royal power. But the misfortune was, that the king, from whom these concessions had been wrested; was naturally supposed willing not only to seize the first opportunity of reasserting his pristine rights, but also to revenge upon his insurgent subjects the insults and injuries which they had seen it to be their duty to offer to him. Fearing the possibility of a rebound, they were obliged, for their own safety, to press him harder and harder, and bind him faster and faster, in the hope of at length see→ ing themselves placed in a condition of complete security. This of course drove him to desperation; and, though unwilling to enter into war, he was at last compelled, for the safety of himself and his family, and for the salvation of the frame of government, to resort to that last argument.

The reader has seen that, during the years 1639 and 1640, when the Scottish Covenanters appear. ed in arms before him, there seemed to be scarcely such a thing in England as a party willing to espouse the interests of loyalty. This, however,

was only occasioned by the general apathy of the nation towards the subject in dispute. The matter of contention was now (1641) one of more general and more exciting interest. A strong English party was now banded against the king. "The five hundred kings of the House of Commons," as King James VI. used to call them, had now arrayed themselves in the front of majesty; and the two parties seemed to be committed for a mortal struggle. The very danger of the king, his helplessness, his wretchedness, then gained him friends, whom substantial pay and glittering honour could not have formerly brought around him.

The king's friends were chiefly country gentlemen; men of ancient and honourable families, who feared that, if his interest fell, their own must fall likewise, and who, moreover, were generally attached to the object which he had always professed to patronise with most distinction, and for which he might now be said to be about to do battle, the Church of England, and its far-extended privileges. The friends of parliament were, on the other hand, mostly citizens; men bred to mercantile employments, who felt their sympathies excited, as is customary with men of that order, in favour of any political or religious movements that promised to equalise more nearly the various ranks of mankind. The king had endeavoured, with some success, to gain back his Scottish subjects, and he calculated upon the hearty assistance of almost all ranks and persuasions of the gentry of England. The parliament trusted chiefly to the inhabitants of the city where they were assembled ; the wealthy, the numerous, the zealous population of London.

When Charles returned from Scotland, he found

the House of Commons making a prodigious outcry about the late conspiracy in Scotland, about the Irish massacre, and about the designs against them which they professed to be daily discovering among the Papists and friends of absolute royalty. They endeavoured to make their alarms the pretext for drawing a strong body-guard around them, and even for taking out of the king's hands the power of raising the militia of the kingdom, and nominating officers to the army. Charles, on his part, was not inactive in his designs against them. He had endeavoured, when in Scotland, to collect from Montrose and others such a body of evidence against certain of the most violent of these demagogues, regarding their underhand transactions with the Covenanters, as might seem sufficient to convict them of high treason; in which case, he hoped, their fate would terrify the remainder into more moderate measures. He even adopted the daring resolution of seizing five members of the Commons and one of the Lords, with his own hand, while they were in the very place of their pride, in the very throne of their successful sedition. He attempted to put this design into practice on the 3d of January, 1642; but the obnoxious individuals escaped as he entered the House, and he was at once disappointed in a favourite object, and overwhelmed with popular opprobrium for so violent and so unkingly an attempt.

Soon after this, preparations might be said to have commenced on both sides for putting the argument to the arbitration of the sword. The parliament were, perhaps, fully best fitted for entering into war; for they possessed, in consequence of the late concessions, almost all the resources of the kingdom. The king was proportionally unfit

for a campaign: he, however, took the opportunity afforded by his daughter Mary's sailing for Holland, where she was to be married to the Prince of Orange, to send over his consort to that country, with the crown-jewels, to purchase arms and ammunition. He attempted to gain the Tower of London by substituting a new lieutenant of his own party for one of the parliamentary complexion; he dispatched the Earl of Newcastle to take possession of Hull, where all the stores prepared for the two Scottish campaigns had been deposited; and he unguardedly disclosed that he had a similar design upon Portsmouth. But the parliament anticipated or thwarted all these schemes. He had now retired from London, where the mob and the parliament together had at length rendered it impossible for him to live longer. He fixed his residence at York, as a commanding point of rendezvous for his friends; and on the 25th of August, 1642, after many vain attempts at negotiation had been made on both sides, he set up his standard at Nottingham; "the open signal," as Hume expresses it," of discord and civil war throughout the kingdom."

At this crisis, Scotland stood in a perfectly neutral situation. It owed, indeed, great obliga❤ tions to the English parliament, which had not only bestowed upon it a direct douceur of money, but, by pressing upon the king, compelled him to gratify it in all its religious and political desires. Yet the king had been their last benefactor; and, with whatever reluctance or hollowness of inten tion he might be supposed to have conferred his favours, he had certainly a right to expect from the country an obedience which he had regularly purchased. The affections of the people were, per,

haps, equally balanced between both parties. The cause of the parliament was in some measure identified with one they themselves had recently entertained, was the cause of civil liberty, and was supposed to involve their favourite point, the destruction of the hierarchy; that of the king appealed to their ancient feelings of loyalty, which were then, and have ever since continued, very strong. It only remained to be seen whether their fears for the security of their religion would make them incline to the parliament, or their anxiety for the honour of the crown would sway them towards the king.

It is probable that, if the king had been unsuccessful in his first conflicts with the parliamentary forces, the Scots would have been urged, by their affection for him, and for the abstract spirit of monarchy, to fly to his relief. It seems to have been the good fortune which attended him in his first campaigns that chiefly determined them in the opposite course. His forces, during the first twelvemonth of the war, behaved with so much spirit and gallantry, that he was victorious in almost every action. At the end of that period, (about July 1643,) the whole of the west and north of England was reduced under his authority, and the forces of the parliament were so much broken, that, if he had marched forward to London at once, it was supposed that the turbulent senators of Westminster would have come out to submit to him with ropes about their necks. When the Scots saw him so nearly triumphant, they trembled lest, becoming more powerful than ever by the suppressed rebellion, he would retract all the concessions they had wrung from him in his evil days, and perhaps even punish them for the opposition they had so long shown to his will. The Scots