And yet this famous Remonstrance was only carried by a majority of nine, according to Clarendon; according to others, by eleven. It was, as Clarendon describes it, "a very bitter representation of all the illegal things that had been done from the first hour of the king's coming to the crown, to that minute." It consisted of two hundred and six clauses, and dealt among other matters with the war against the French Protestants; the innovations in the Church; the illegal imposition of ship-money; forced loans; the cruelties of the Star Chamber and High Commission; the forcing of episcopacy on Scotland; the forcing of it on the Irish by Strafford, and all the other illegal proceedings there; the opposition of the king and his ministers to necessary reforms; and the plotting of the queen with the Papists at home and abroad. It went on to remind the king of what they had done in pulling down his evil counsellors, and informed him that other good things were in preparation.

THE CLOCK TOWER, DUBLIN CASTLE.

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The king the next day delivered his answer in the House of Lords, protesting, as usual, his good intentions, telling the Commons, before he removed evil counsellors, they must point out who they were and bring real facts against them; at the same time he significantly reminded them that he had left Scotland in perfect amity with him, so that they might infer that they were not to look for support against him there, and calling on them to stir themselves in aiding him to put down the rebellion in Ireland. Matters continued getting worse every day between the king and Parliament. From the 8th to the 20th of December there was a sullen humour between them. So far from granting the Parliament the usual guard, Charles had posted a guard of his own near the Commons. They summoned the commander of the guard before them, pronounced its being placed there a breach of their privileges, and demanded that it should be removed. On the 14th of December Charles objected to their ordering the impressment of soldiers from Ireland, that being his prerogative, but that he would permit it for the time on the understanding that his right was not thereby affected. The next day the Commons passed an order for the printing and publishing of their Remonstrance, which measure they had failed to carry at the same time as the Remonstrance itself. This had a great effect with the public, and the king, in a restless, angry humour, prevailing in nothing against the House, sought to strengthen himself by getting into the Tower a lieutenant of his own party. But in this movement he was equally injudicious and equally unfortunate. Charles dismissed Sir William Balfour, who had honestly resisted his warrant and refused a bribe of Strafford to permit his escape; but to have deprived the Commons of any plea for interfering in what was unquestionably his own prerogative, he should have replaced him by a man of character. Instead of that, he gave the post to Colonel Lunsford, a man of desperate fortunes and the most unprincipled reputation; outlawed for his violent attacks on different individuals, and known to be capable of executing the most lawless designs. The City immediately petitioned the Commons against the Tower being in the hands of such a man; the Commons called for a conference with the Lords on the subject, but the Lords refused to meddle in what so clearly was the royal prerogative. The Commons then called on them to enter the protest they had made on their books; but the Lords took time to consider it. On Thursday, December 23rd, a petition was addressed to the Commons, purporting to be from the apprentices of London, against Papists and prelates, who, they contended, caused the destruction of trade by their plots, and the fears which thence unsettled men of capital; whereby they, the apprentices, "were nipped in the bud," on entering the world. The Corporation waited on his Majesty on Sunday, the 26th, to assure him that the apprentices were contemplating a rising, and meant to carry the Tower by storm, unless Lunsford were removed; and that the merchants had already taken away their bullion from the Mint for fear of him, and the owners of ships coming in with new would not carry it there. That evening Charles took the keys from his new lieutenant, and appointed Sir John Byron in his place.

And now, notwithstanding their reluctance, the Lords were compelled to entertain this question, for they found Lord Newport, the Constable of the Tower, also brought into controversy by the king. It appeared that during Charles's absence in Scotland, at a meeting of a number of the peers and members of the Commons at Kensington, regarding some rumour of plots against Parliament, Lord Newport was reported to have said, "Never mind, we have his wife and children." Newport stated in the House that he had waited on the queen at the time, and assured her that no such words had been spoken; yet on Friday last the king had reminded him of it, and intimated his belief of it. It was now the turn of the Lords to call for a conference with the Commons. This was granted on Monday, and whilst it was sitting, the House of Parliament was surrounded by tumultuous mobs, crying, "Beware of plots! No bishops! no bishops!"

Poor Williams, made Archbishop of York on the 4th of this month, was surrounded by this mob and much frightened; but he got away unhurt, any further than in his feelings, from the execrations heaped on the bishops. One David Hide, however, a ruffian officer, who had been in the army in the north, and was now appointed to the service in Ireland, drew his sword, and swore that "he would cut the throats of those roundheaded dogs that bawled against bishops," and by that expression, says Clarendon, gave the first utterance to the name "roundheads," which was at once universally applied to the Parliamentary party; the term "cavaliers" soon being introduced to designate the Royalists. The same day Lunsford had the insolence to go through Westminster Hall with thirty or forty of his partisans at his back. The mob fell on them, and they drew their swords and cut right and left among the crowd. Presently there came pouring down to Westminster hundreds of fresh apprentices, with swords, cudgels, and other weapons, crying, "Slash us now! Slash us now!" And this was renewed by thousands the next day, December 28th, with the same "Slash us now, whilst we wait on the honourable House to request an answer to our petition." Some of the youths were shut into the abbey and brought before Williams, whilst those without cried that if they were not released, they would break in and pull down the organs. This, however, they were prevented from doing, by numbers of the bishop's men coming out on the abbey leads, and flinging down stones upon them, by which many were injured; and Sir Richard Wiseman, who happened to be passing, was so much hurt that he died of his injuries.

Williams, the archbishop, was so incensed at the cry against the bishops, that he forgot his usual cunning, and got eleven other bishops to join him in an address to the king, declaring that the bishops could not get to their places for the riotous crowds, and from fear of their lives from them; and therefore, as bishops had at all times formed part and parcel of the Upper House, that House, so long as they were detained from it, was no longer a competent House, and that all its acts, of whatever kind, would be utterly invalid. This was supposed to be a manœuvre of the king's to get rid of the authority of Parliament for the present, and thus of his unfortunate surrender of the powers of adjournment; but the Lords, taking no notice of the protest of the bishops, desired a conference with the Commons, and then denounced the protest of the bishops as subversive of the fundamental rights of Parliament. The Commons, on their part, instead of contenting themselves with passing a resolution condemnatory of the folly of the bishops, at once declared them guilty of high treason, and called on the Lords to apprehend them, which was at once done, and ten of the bishops were committed to the Tower, and two, on account of their age, to the custody of the Usher of the Black Rod.

On the last day of this eventful year, Denzil Holles waited on his Majesty, by order of the Commons, to represent to him, that whilst his faithful Parliament was ready to shed the last drop of its blood in defence of his Majesty, it was itself daily exposed to the danger of plots and ruffians who had dared to shed the blood of the people coming to petition at the very doors of the House. They demanded, therefore, a guard. Charles had taken care to surround his own palace day and night since the commotions. Such a guard was reluctantly granted three days after.

But if 1641 had been an astonishing year, 1642 was destined to cast even it into the shade, and its very opening was with nothing short of the first trumpet note of civil war. On the 3rd of January Charles sent his answer to the Commons respecting the guard, acceding to the request, but immediately followed it up by a demand that electrified the Houses, and was soon to electrify the nation. Whilst the Commons were debating on the royal message, the king's new Attorney-General, Herbert, appeared at the bar of the House of Lords, and presented articles of high treason against six leading Members of Parliament, one peer and five commoners. These members were, Lord Kimbolton in the Peers, and Holles, Hazelrig, Pym, Hampden, and Strode, in the Commons. There were seven articles exhibited against them of high treason and other misdemeanour. These were stated in the following words:—"1st. That they have traitorously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom of England, to deprive the king of his royal power, and to place in subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his Majesty's liege people. 2nd. That they have traitorously endeavoured, by many foul aspersions upon his Majesty and his Government, to alienate the affections of his people, and to make his Majesty odious unto them. 3rd. That they have endeavoured to draw his Majesty's late army to disobedience to his Majesty's commands, and to side with them in their traitorous designs. 4th. That they have traitorously invited and encouraged a foreign power to invade his Majesty's kingdom of England. 5th. That they have traitorously endeavoured to subvert the rights and the very being of Parliaments. 6th. That for the completing of their traitorous designs, they have endeavoured, so far as in them lay, by force and terror, to compel the Parliament to join with them in their traitorous designs, and to that end have actually raised and countenanced tumults against the king and Parliament. 7th. And that they have traitorously conspired to levy, and actually have levied war against the king."