After redressing internal grievances, the Commons proceeded to take into considera. tion the state of Europe. The king flew into a rage with them for meddling with such matters, and, with characteristic judgment, drew them into a controversy about the origin of the House and of its privileges. When he found that he could not convince them, he dissolved them in a passion, and sent some of the leaders of the Opposition to ruminate on his logic in prison.

best and greatest man. Their effect, however, | convenient to leave England. A greater name was to make James and his office objects of is to be added to the ignominious list. By this contempt; and to dissolve those associations Parliament was brought to justice that illuswhich had been created by the noble bearing trious philosopher, whose memory genius has of preceding monarchs, and which were in half redeemed from the infamy due to servility, themselves no inconsiderable fence to royalty. to ingratitude, and to corruption. The sovereign whom James most resembled was, we think, Claudius Cæsar. Both had the same feeble and vacillating temper, the same childishness, the same coarseness, the same poltroonery. Both were men of learning; both wrote and spoke-not, indeed, well-but still in a manner in which it seems almost incredible that men so foolish should have written or spoken. The follies and indecencies of James are well described in the words which Suetonius uses respecting Claudius: "Multa talia, etiam privatis deformia, necdum principi, ne- During the time which elapsed between this que infacundo, neque indocto, immo etiam dissolution and the meeting of the next Parliapertinaciter liberalibus studiis dedito." The ment, took place the celebrated negotiation redescription given by Suetonius of the manner specting the Infanta. The would-be despot was in which the Roman prince transacted busi- unmercifully browbeaten. The would-be Soloness, exactly suits the Briton. "In cogno- mon was ridiculously overreached. "Steenie," scendo ac decernendo mira varietate animi in spite of the begging and sobbing of his dear fuit, modo circumspectus et sagax, modo in- "dad and gossip," carried off "baby Charles" consultus ac præceps, non nunquam frivolus in triumph to Madrid. The sweet lads, as amentique similis." Claudius was ruled suc-James called them, came back safe, but withcessively by two bad women; James success-out their errand. The great master of kingively by two bad men. Even the description of the person of Claudius, which we find in the ancient memoirs, might, in many points, serve for that of James. "Ceterum et ingredientem destituebant poplites minus firmi, et" remisse quid vel serio agentem multa dehonestabant: risus indecens; ira turpior, spumante ictu, præterea linguæ titubantia."

The Parliament which James had called soon after his accession had been refractory. lis second Parliament, called in the spring of 1614, had been more refractory still. It had been dissolved after a session of two months; and during six years the king had governed without having recourse to the legislature. During those six years, melancholy and disgraceful events, at home and abroad, had followed one another in rapid succession;-the divorce of Lady Essex, the murder of Overbury, the elevation of Villiers, the pardon of Somerset, the disgrace of Coke, the execution of Raleigh, the battle of Prague, the invasion of the Palatinate by Spinola, the ignominious flight of the son-in-law of the English king, the depression of the Protestant interest all over the Continent. All the extraordinary modes by which James could venture to raise money had been tried. His necessities were greater than ever; and he was compelled to summon the Parliament in which Hampden made his first appearance as a public man.

This Parliament lasted about twelve months. During that time it visited with deserved punishment several of those who, during the preceding six years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Michell, one of those grasping patentees, who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's "Overreach," was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Viliers. the brother of Buckingham, found it

craft, in looking for a Spanish match, found a Spanish war. In February, 1624, a Parlia ment met, during the whole sitting of which James was a mere puppet in the hands of his 'baby," and of his "poor slave and dog." The Commons were disposed to support the king in the vigorous policy which his son and his favourite urged him to adopt. But they were not disposed to place any confidence in their feeble sovereign and his dissolute courtiers, or to relax in their efforts to remove public grievances. They therefore lodged the money which they voted for the war in the hands of parliamentary commissioners. They impeached the treasurer, Lord Middlesex, for corruption, and they passed a bill by which patents of monopoly were declared illegal.

Hampden did not, during the reign of James, take any prominent part in public affairs. It is certain, however, that he paid great attention to the details of parliamentary business, and to the local interests of his own county. It was in a great measure owing to his exertions, that Wendover and some other boroughs, on which the popular party could depend, recovered the elective franchise, in spite of the opposition of the court.

The health of the king had for some time been declining. On the 27th of March, 1625, he expired. Under his weak rule, the spirit of liberty had grown strong, and had become equal to the great contest. The contest was brought on by the policy of his successor. Charles bore no resemblance to his father He was not a driveller, or a pedant, or a buf foon, or a coward. It would be absurd to deny that he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of exquisite taste in the fine arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business were respectable; his demeanour was kingly. But he was false, imperious, obstinate, narrowminded, ignorant of the temper of his people, unobservant of the signs of his

times. The whole principle of his government | pelled to serve in the army. Money, however, was resistance to public opinion; nor did he make any real concession to that opinion till it mattered not whether he resisted or conceded; till the nation, which had long ceased to love him or to trust him, had at last ceased to fear him.

came in slowly: and the king was compelled to summon another Parliament. In the hope of conciliating his subjects, he set at liberty the persons who had been imprisoned for refusing to comply with his unlawful demands. Hampden regained his freedom; and was immediately re-elected burgess for Wendover.

of offences to the ordinary tribunals.

In the summer this memorable Parliament was prorogued. It met again in January, 1629. Buckingham was no more. That weak, violent, and dissolute adventurer, who, with no talents or acquirements but those of a mere courtier, had, in a great crisis of foreign and domestic politics, ventured on the part of prime minister, had fallen, during the recess of Parliament, by the hand of an assassin. Both before and after his death, the war had been feebly and unsuccessfully conducted. The king had continued, in direct violation of the Petition of Right, to raise tonnage and poundage, without the consent of Parliament. The troops had again been billeted on the people; and it was clear to the Commons, that the five subsidies which they had given, as the price of the national liberties, had been given in vain.

His first Parliament met in June, 1625. Hampden sat in it as burgess for Wendover. Early in 1628 the Parliament met. During The king wished for money. The Commons its first session, the Commons prevailed on the wished for the redress of grievances. The king, after many delays and much equivocawar, however, could not be carried on without tion, to give, in return for five subsidies, his funds. The plan of the Opposition was, it full and solemn assent to that celebrated inshould seem, to dole out supplies by small strument, the second great charter of the liber. sums in order to prevent a speedy dissolution. ties of England, known by the name of the They gave the king two subsidies only, and Petition of Right. By agreeing to this act, the proceeded to complain that his ships had been king bound himself to raise no taxes without employed against the Huguenots in France, the consent of Parliament, to imprison no man and to petition in behalf of the Puritans who except by legal process, to billet no more sol were persecuted in England. The king dis-diers on the people, and to leave the cognisance solved them, and raised money by letters under his privy seal. The supply fell far short of what he needed; and, in the spring of 1626, he called together another Parliament. In this Parliament, Hampden again sat for Wendover. The Commons resolved to grant a very liberal supply, but to defer the final passing of the act for that purpose till the grievances of the nation should be redressed. The struggle which followed far exceeded in violence any that had yet taken place. The Commons impeached Buckingham. The king threw the managers of the impeachment into prison. The Commons denied the right of the king to levy tonnage and poundage without their consent. The king dissolved them. They put forth a remonstrance. The king circulated a declaration vindicating his measures, and committed some of the most distinguished members of the Opposition to close custody. Money was raised by a forced loan, which was apportioned among the people according to the rate at which they had been respectively assessed to the last subsidy. On this occasion it was that Hampden made his first stand for the fundamental principle of the English constitution. He positively refused to lend a farthing. He was required to give his reasons. He answered, inat he could be content to lend as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." For this noble answer the Privy Council committed him close prisoner to the Gate-House. After some time, he was again brought up; but he persisted in his refusal, and was sent to a place of confinement in Hampshire.

The government went on, oppressing at home, and blundering in all its measures abroad. A war was foolishly undertaken against France, and more foolishly conducted. Buckingham led an expedition against Rhé, and failed ignominiously. In the mean time, soldiers were billeted on the people. Crimes, of which ordinary justice should have taken cognisance, were punished by martial law. Nearly eighty gentlemen were imprisoned for refusing to contribute to the forced loan. The bwer people, who showed any signs of insubrdination, were pressed into the fleet, or com

They met accordingly in no complying humour. They took into their most serious consideration the measures of the government concerning tonnage and poundage. They summoned the officers of the custom-house to their bar. They interrogated the barons of the exchequer. They committed one of the sheriffs of London. Sir John Eliot, a distinguished member of the opposition, and an intimate friend of Hampden, proposed a resolution condemning the unconstitutional imposition. The speaker said that the king had commanded him to put no such question to the vote. This decision produced the most violent burst of feeling ever seen within the walls of Parliament. Hayman remonstrated vehemently against the disgraceful language which had been heard from the chair. Eliot dashed the paper which contained his resolu tion on the floor of the House. Valentine and Hollis held the speaker down in his seat by main force, and read the motion amidst the loudest shouts. The door was locked; the key was laid on the table. Black Rod knocked for admittance in vain. After passing several strong resolutions, the House adjourned.-On the day appointed for its meeting, it was dissolved by the king, and several of its most eminent members, among whom were Hollis and Sir John Eliot, were committed to prison.

Though Hampden had as yet taken little part in the debates of the House, he had been a member of many very important committees, and had read and written much concerning the law of Parliament. A manuscript volume of Parliamentary Cases, which is still in existence, contains many extracts from his notes.

He now retired to the duties and pleasures of a rural life. During the eleven years which followed the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628, he resided at his seat in one of the most beautiful parts of the county of Buckingham. The house, which has, since his time, been greatly altered, and which is now, we believe, almost entirely neglected, was then an old English mansion, built in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. It stood on the brow of a hill which overlooks a narrow valley. The extensive woods which surround it were pierced by long avenues. One of those avenues the grandfather of the great statesman cut for the approach of Elizabeth; and the opening, which is still visible for many miles, retains the name of the Queen's Gap. In this delightful retreat Hampden passed several years, performing with great activity all the duties of a landed gentleman and a magistrate, and amusing himself with books and with fieldsports.

He was not in his retirement unmindful of his prosecuted friends. In particular, he kept up a close correspondence with Sir John Eliot, who was confined in the Tower. Lord Nugent has published several of the letters. We may perhaps be fanciful; but it seems to us that every one of them is an admirable illustration of some part of the character of Hampden which Clarendon has drawn.

will, in the intermissions of action, add study to practice, and adorn that lively spirit with flowers of contemplation, he will raise our expectations of another Sir Edward Vere, that had this character-all summer in the field, all winter in his study-in whose fall fame makes this kingdom a great loser; and, having taken this resolution from counsel with the highest wisdom, as I doubt not you have, I hope and pray that the same Power will crown it with a blessing answerable to our wish. The way you take with my other friend shows you to be none of the Bishop of Exeter's converts;* of whose mind neither am I superstitiously. But had my opinion been asked, I should, as vulgar conceits use to do, have showed my power rather to raise objections than to answer them. A tempert between France and Oxford might have taken away his scruples, with more ad vantage to his years. For although he be one of those that, if his age were looked for in no other book but that of the mind, would be found no ward if you should die to-morrow; yet it is a great hazard, methinks, to see so sweet a disposition guarded with no more, amongst a people whereof many make it their religion to be superstitious in impiety, and their behaviour to be affected in ill manners. But God, who only knoweth the periods of life and opportunities to come, hath designed him, I hope, for his own service be time, and stirred up your providence to husband him so early for great affairs. Then shall he be sure to find Him in France that Abraham did in Sechem and Joseph in Egypt, under whose wing alone is perfect safety."

Sir John Eliot employed himself, during his imprisonment, in writing a treatise on govern Part of the correspondence relates to the ment, which he transmitted to his friend. two sons of Sir John Eliot. These young Hampden's criticisms are strikingly charac men were wild and unsteady; and their father, teristic. They are written with all that "flow who was now separated from them, was na-ing courtesy" which is ascribed to him by turally anxious about their conduct. He at Clarendon. The objections are insinuated Length resolved to send one of them to France, with so much delicacy, that they could scarceand the other to serve a campaign in the Lowly gall the most irritable author. We see, too, Countries. The letter which we subjoin shows how highly Hampden valued in the writings that Hampden, though rigorous towards him- of others that conciseness which was one of self, was not uncharitable towards others, and the most striking peculiarities of his own elothat his puritanism was perfectly compatible quence. Sir John Eliot's style was, it seems, with the sentiments and the tastes of an accom- too diffuse, and it is impossible not to admire plished gentleman. It also illustrates admi- the skill with which this is suggested. "The rably what has been said of him by Clarendon: piece," says Hampden, "is as complete an "He was of that rare affability and temper in image of the pattern as can be drawn by lines debate, and of that seeming humility and sub-—a lively character of a large mind-the submission of judgment, as if he brought no opinion of his own with him, but a desire of information and instruction. Yet he had so subtle a way of interrogating, and, under cover of doubts, insinuating his objections that he infused his own opinions into those from whom he pretended to learn and receive them."

The letter runs thus: "I am so períetly acquainted with your clear insight ir to the dispositions of men, and ability to .t them with courses suitable, that, had you Destowed sons of mine as you have done your own, my judgment durst hardly have called it into question, especially when, in laying the design, you have prevented the objections to be made against it. For if Mr. Richard Eliot

jec', method, and expression, excellent and
homogenial, and to say truth, sweetheart,
somewhat exceeding my commendations. My
vords cannot render them to the life. Yet
to show my ingenuity rather than wit-would
not a less model have given a full representa
tion of that subject-not by diminution but by
contraction of parts? I desire to learn. I
dare not say. The variations upon each par

* Lord Nugent, we think, has misunderstood this pas satire, in which the custom of sending young men sage. Hampden seems to allude to Bishop Hall's sixth abroad is censured, and an academic life recommended. We have a general recollection that there is something to the same effect in Hall's prose works; but we hav

not time to search them.

+"A middle course-a compromise."

ticular seem many-all, I confess, excellent. every thing that seemed likely to stunt it, struck The fountain was full, the channel narrow; its roots deep into a barren soil, and spread its that may be the cause; or that the author re- branches wide to an inclement sky. The mul sembled Virgil, who made more verses by titude thronged round Prynne in the pillory many than he intended to write. To extract with more respect than they paid to Mainwar a just number, had I seen all his, I could easily ing in the pulpit, and treasured up the rags have bid him make fewer; but if he had bade which the blood of Burton had soaked, with a me tell which he could have spared, I had been veneration such as rochets and surplices had posed." ceased to inspire.

For the misgovernment of this disastrous period, Charles himself is principally responsible. After the death of Buckingham, he seemed to have been his own prime minister. He had, however, two counsellors who se conded him, or went beyond him, in intolerance and lawless violence; the one a superstitious driveller, as honest as a vile temper would suffer him to be; the other a man of great valour and capacity, but licentious, faithless, corrupt, and cruel.

This is evidently the writing, not only of a man of good sense and good taste, but of a man of literary habits. Of the studies of Hampden little is known. But as it was at one time in contemplation to give him the charge of the education of the Prince of Wales, it cannot be doubted that his acquirements were considerable. Davila, it is said, was one of his favourite writers. The moderation of Davila's opinions, and the perspicuity and manliness of his style, could not but recommend him to so judicious a reader. It is not improbable Never were faces more strikingly characterthat the parallel between France and England, istic of the individuals to whom they belonged, the Huguenots and the Puritans, had struck than those of Laud and Strafford, as they still the mind of Hampden, and that he already felt remain portrayed by the most skilful hand of within himself powers not unequal to the lofty that age. The mean forehead, the pinched part of Coligni. While he was engaged in features, the peering eyes of the prelate suit these pursuits, a heavy domestic calamity fell admirably with his disposition. They mark on him. His wife, who had borne him nine him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic, children, died in the summer of 1634. She differing from the fierce and gloomy enthulies in the parish church of Hampden, close to siast who founded the Inquisition, as we might the manor-house The tender and energetic imagine the familiar imp of a spiteful witch to language of her epitaph still attests the bitter-differ from an archangel of darkness. When ness of her husband's sorrow, and the consolation which he found in a hope full of immortality.

In the mean time, the aspect of public affairs grew darker and darker. The health of Eliot had sunk under an unlawful imprisonment of several years. The brave sufferer refused to purchase liberty, though liberty would to him have been life, by recognising the authority which had confined him. In consequence of the representations of his physicians, the severity of restraint was somewhat relaxed. But it was in vain. He languished and expired a martyr to that good cause, for which his friend Hampden was destined to meet a more brilliant but not a more honourable death.

All the promises of the king were violated without scruple or shame. The Petition of Right, to which he had, in consideration of moneys duly numbered, given a solemn assent, was set at naught. Taxes were raised by the royal authority. Patents of monopoly were granted. The old usages of feudal times were made pretexts for harassing the people with exactions unknown during many years. The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy Office. They were forced to fly from the country. They were imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron. But the cruelty of the oppressor could not tire out the fortitude of the victims. The mutilated defenders of iberty again defied the vengeance of the StarChamber, came back with undiminished resolution to the place of their glorious infamy, and manfully presented the stumps of their ears to be grubbed out by the hangman's knife. The nardy sect grew up and flourished, in spite of

we read his judgments, when we read the report which he drew up, setting forth that he had sent some separatists to prison, and imploring the royal aid against others, we feel a movement of indignation. We turn to his Diary, and we are at once as cool as contempt can make us. There we read how his picture fell down, and how fearful he was lest the fall should be an omen; how he dreamed that the Duke of Buckingham came to bed to him; that King James walked past him; that he saw Thomas Flaxage in green garments, and the Bishop of Worcester with his shoulders wrapped in linen. In the early part of 1627, the sleep of this great ornament of the church seems to have been much disturbed. On the 5th of January, he saw a merry old man with a wrinkled countenance, named Grove, lying on the ground. On the fourteenth of the same memorable month, he saw the Bishop of Lincoln jump on a horse and ride away. A day or two after this, he dreamed that he gave the king drink in a silver cup, and that the king refused it, and called for a glass. Then he dreamed that he had turned Papist-of all his dreams the only one, we suspect, which came through the gate of horn. But of these visions, our favourite is that which, as he has recorded, he enjoyed on the night of Friday the 9th of February, 1627. "I dreamed," says he, "that I had the scurvy; and that forthwith all my teeth became loose. There was one in especial in my lower jaw, which I could scarcely keep in with my finger till I had called for help." Here was a man to have the super intendence of the opinions of a great nation!

But Wentworth-who ever names him with out thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by their expressions into more than the

majesty of an antique Jupiter; of that brow, scribed even by the partial Clarendon as pow that eye, that cheek, that lip, wherein, as in a erful acts-acts which marked a nature exceschronicle, are written the events of many sively imperious-acts which caused dislike stormy and disastrous years; high enterprise and terror in sober and dispassionate persons accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power-high acts of oppression. Upon a most friunsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety; of deep thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and defy a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvass of Vandyke? Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned before the tribunal of history, which he excited at the bar of the House of Lords. In spite of ourselves, we sometimes feel towards his memory a certain relenting, similar to that relenting which his defence, as Sir John Denham tells us, produced in Westminster Hall.

volous charge, he obtained a capital sentence from a court-martial against a man of high rank who had given him offence. He debauched the daughter-in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and then commanded that nobleman to settle his estate according to the wishes of the lady. The chancellor refused. The Lord-Lieutenant turned him out of office, and threw him into prison. When the violent acts of the Long Parliament are blamed, let it not be forgotten from what a tyranny they rescued the nation.

Among the humbler tools of Charles, were Chief-justice Finch, and Noy, the attorneygeneral. Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the cause of liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, abandoned that cause for the sake of office. He devised, in conjunction with Finch, a scheme of exaction which made the alienation of the people from the throne complete. A writ was issued by the king, com

This great, brave, bad man entered the House of Commons at the same time with Hampden, and took the same side with Hampden. Both were among the richest and most powerful commoners in the kingdom. Both were equally distinguished by force of charac-manding the city of London to equip and man ter and by personal courage. Hampden had more judgment and sagacity than Wentworth. But no orator of that time equalled Wentworth in force and brilliancy of expression. In 1626, both these eminent men were committed to prison by the king; Wentworth, who was among the leaders of the Opposition, on account of his parliamentary conduct; Hampden, who had not as yet taken a prominent part in debate, for refusing to pay taxes illegally imposed.

Here their paths separated. After the death of Buckingham, the king attempted to seduce some of the chiefs of the opposition from their party; and Wentworth was among those who yielded to the seduction. He abandoned his associates, and hated them ever after with the deadly hatred of a renegade. High titles and great employments were heaped upon him. He became Earl of Strafford, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, President of the Council of the North; and he employed all his power for the purpose of crushing those liberties of which he had been the most distinguished champion. His counsels respecting public affairs were fierce and arbitrary. His correspondence with Laud abundantly proves that government without Parliaments, government by the sword, was his favourite scheme. He was unwilling even that the course of justice between man and man should be unrestrained by the royal prerogative. He grudged to the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas even that measure of liberty, which the most absolute of the Bourbons have allowed to the Parliaments of France.

ships of war for his service. Similar writs were sent to the towns along the coast. These measures, though they were direct violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show of precedent in their favour. But, after a time, the government took a step for which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent writs of shipmoney to the inland counties. This was a stretch of power on which Elizabeth herself had not ventured, even at a time when all laws might with propriety have been made to bend to that highest law, the safety of the state. The inland counties had not been required to furnish ships, or money in the room of ships, even when the Armada was approaching our shores. It seemed intolerable that a prince, who, by assenting to the Petition of Right, had relinquished the power of levying ship-money even in the outports, should be the first to levy it on parts of the kingdom where it had been unknown, under the most absolute of his predecessors.

Clarendon distinctly admits that this tax was intended, not only for the support of the navy, but "for a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an everlasting supply of all occasions." The nation well understood this; and from one end of England to the other, the public mind was strongly excited.

Buckinghamshire was assessed at a ship of four hundred and fifty tons, or a sum of four thousand five hundred pounds. The share of the tax which fell to Hampden was very small; so small, indeed, that the sheriff was blamed for setting so wealthy a man at so low a rate. In Ireland, where he stood in the place of But though the sum demanded was a trifle, the the king, his practice was in strict accordance principle of the demand was despotism. Hampwith his theory. He set up the authority of the den, after consulting the most eminent constiexecutive government over that of the courts tutional lawyers of the time, refused to pay the of law. He permitted no person to leave the few shillings at which he was assessed; and island without his license. He established determined to incur all the certain expense. vast monopolies for his own private benefit. and the probable danger, of bringing to a He imposed taxes arbitrarily. He levied them solemn hearing this great controversy between by military force. Some of his acts are de- the people and the crown. "Till this time,"