The Long Parliament met at Westminster on November 3, 1640. Most of its members, even as Cromwell himself, had sat in the Parliament of the preceding May, but they came together now in a different temper, and with far greater power in their hands. Charles could not venture to dissolve them so long as the Scottish army was encamped on English soil. “No fear of raising the Parliament,” wrote a Scot, “so long as the lads about Newcastle sit still.”

There were three things which the Long Parliament was resolved to do. The first was to release the sufferers from arbitrary government; the second, to punish the men by whose hands the King had sought to establish his arbitrary power; the third, to amend the constitution so that arbitrary rule should be impossible hereafter. Pym’s long experience in Parliaments made him the undisputed leader of the popular party, and his maxim was that it was not sufficient to remove grievances, but necessary to pull up the causes of them by the roots.

A master of parliamentary tactics in days when party discipline was unknown, Pym retained his ascendancy until the day of his death. But he remained to the end a great party leader rather than a great statesman. He was too much of a partisan to understand the feelings of his opponents, too closely attached to precedents and legal formulas to perceive the new issues which new times brought. When it was necessary to leave the beaten road, he was incapable of finding fresh paths. Pym was the chief orator of his party as well as its guiding spirit. In long, methodical expositions of the grievances of the nation, he pressed home the indictment against arbitrary government with convincing force. But sometimes he rose to a grave and lofty eloquence, or condensed the feeling of the hour in brief, incisive phrases that passed current like proverbs.

Hampden came next to Pym in authority with the House and had a far greater fame outside it. Ship-money had made him famous. “The eyes of all men were fixed on him as their patriæ pater, and the pilot that must steer their vessel through the tempests and rocks that threatened it.” A poor speaker, but clear-sighted, energetic, and resolute, “a supreme governor over all his passions and affections,” he was a man who swayed others in council, and whom they would follow when it came to action.

JOHN PYM.
(From a miniature by Cooper.)

Next to these in importance came St. John—Hampden’s counsel in the Ship-money case, and the ablest of the opposition lawyers,—Holles and Strode,—men who had suffered for their boldness in the Parliament of 1629,—and Rudyard, whose oratory had gained him renown in still earlier Parliaments. Of the younger men, the most prominent were Nathaniel Fiennes and Sir Henry Vane, notorious for their advanced religious views, and Sir Arthur Haslerig and Harry Marten, equally notorious for their democratic opinions. The headquarters of the popular party was Sir Richard Manly’s house in a little court behind Westminster Hall, where Pym lodged. There, while Parliament was sitting, Pym, Hampden, and a few others kept a common table at their joint expense, and during their meetings much business was transacted. Cromwell, as the cousin of Hampden and St. John, was doubtless one of this group. Though he was known to the party in general only as a rather silent country squire who had been a member of the two last Parliaments, it is evident that he had some reputation for business capacity. During the first session of the Long Parliament, he was specially appointed to eighteen committees, not counting those particularly concerned with the affairs of the eastern counties, to which the member for Cambridge was naturally added. Cromwell’s first intervention in the debates of the House was on November 9, 1640, when the grievances of the nation and the wrongs of those who had suffered under Star Chamber and High Commission were being set forth at large. He rose to deliver a petition from John Lilburn, a prisoner in the Fleet, and how he looked and spoke is recorded in Sir Philip Warwick’s memoirs.

“The first time I ever took notice of him,” says Warwick, “was in the beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman; for we courtiers valued ourselves much on our good clothes. I came into the House one morning, well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean, and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar; his hat was without a hatband; his stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervour. For the subject matter would not bear much of reason, it being in behalf of a servant of Mr. Prynne’s, who had dispersed libels against the Queen for her dancing, and such like innocent and courtly sports; and he aggravated the imprisonment of this man by the Council-table unto that height that one would have believed the very government itself had been in great danger by it. I sincerely profess it much lessened my reverence unto that great council, for he was very much hearkened unto.”

When the grievances of the nation had been heard and the petitions of individual sufferers referred to committees, the Long Parliament turned to punish the King’s ministers. Charles himself was never mentioned but with great honour, as a King misled by evil counsellors, who had prevented him from following the dictates of his native wisdom and goodness. In the interests of both King and subjects, argued Rudyard, these evil advisers must be removed and punished. As the Bible said: “Take away the wicked from the king and his throne shall be established.”

Accordingly Strafford was arrested and impeached, just as he was himself about to accuse the parliamentary leaders of high treason for encouraging and aiding the invasion of the Scots (November 11th). A month later, Laud followed Strafford to the Tower. Windebank, the Secretary of State, and Lord Keeper Finch, likewise accused, fled beyond the seas. Two more bishops and six judges were impeached and imprisoned, while all monopolists were expelled from the House of Commons. It seemed “a general doomsday.” Strafford was the first to suffer, and his trial in Westminster Hall riveted all eyes.