The method of keeping accounts practised in the exchequer, was confessedly the exactest, the most ancient, the best known, and the least liable to fraud. The exchequer was for that reason abolished, and the revenue put under the management of a committee, who were subject to no control.[****]
The excise was an odious tax, formerly unknown to the nation; and was now extended over provisions, and the common necessaries of life. Near one half of the goods and chattels, and at least one half of the lands, rents, and revenues of the kingdom, had been sequestered. To great numbers of loyalists, all redress from these sequestrations was refused: to the rest, the remedy could be obtained only by paying large compositions, and subscribing the covenant, which they abhorred. Besides pitying the ruin and desolation of so many ancient and honorable families, indifferent spectators could not but blame the hardship of punishing with such severity actions which the law, in its usual and most undisputed interpretation, strictly required of every subject.
The severities, too, exercised against the Episcopal clergy naturally affected the royalists, and even all men of candor, in a sensible manner. By the most moderate computation,[v] it appears, that above one half of the established clergy had been turned out to beggary and want, for no other crime than their adhering to the civil and religious principles in which they had been educated, and for their attachment to those laws under whose countenance they had at first embraced that profession.
* Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 3, 166.
** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p, 8.
*** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 8.
**** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 8.
v See John Walker’s Attempt towards recovering an Account of
the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy. The parliament
pretended to leave the sequestered clergy a fifth of their
revenue; but this author makes it sufficiently appear that
this provision, small as it is, was never regularly paid the
ejected clergy.
To renounce Episcopacy and the liturgy, and to subscribe the covenant, were the only terms which could save them from so rigorous a fate; and if the least mark of malignancy, as it was called, or affection to the king, who so entirely loved them, had ever escaped their lips, even this hard choice was not permitted. The sacred character, which gives the priesthood such authority over mankind, becoming more venerable from the sufferings endured for the sake of principle by these distressed royalists, aggravated the general indignation against their persecutors.
But what excited the most universal complaint was, the unlimited tyranny and despotic rule of the country committees. During the war, the discretionary power of these courts was excused, from the plea of necessity; but the nation was reduced to despair, when it saw neither end put to their duration, nor bounds to their authority. These could sequester, fine, imprison, and corporally punish, without law or remedy. They interposed in questions of private property. Under color of malignancy, they exercised vengeance against their private enemies. To the obnoxious, and sometimes to the innocent, they sold their protection. And instead of one star chamber, which had been abolished, a great number were anew erected, fortified with better pretences, and armed with more unlimited authority.[*]
* Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 5. Hollis
gives the same representation as Walker, of the plundering,
oppressions, and tyranny of the parliament; only, instead of
laying the fault on both parties, as Walker does, he
ascribes it solely to the Independent faction. The
Presbyterians, indeed, being commonly denominated the
moderate party, would probably be more inoffensive. See
Rush. vol. vii. p. 598: and Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 230.
Could any thing have increased the indignation against that slavery into which the nation, from the too eager pursuit of liberty, had fallen, it must have been the reflection on the pretences by which the people had so long been deluded. The sanctified hypocrites, who called their oppressions the spoiling of the Egyptians, and their rigid severity the dominion of the elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and fervent prayers, saved themselves from blushing by their pious grimaces, and exercised, in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men. An undisguised violence could be forgiven: but such a mockery of the understanding, such an abuse of religion, were, with men of penetration, objects of peculiar resentment.
The parliament, conscious of their decay in popularity, seeing a formidable armed force advance upon them, were reduced to despair, and found all their resources much inferior to the present necessity. London still retained a strong attachment to Presbyterianism; and its militia, which was numerous, and had acquired reputation in the wars, had, by a late ordinance, been put into hands in whom the parliament could entirely confide. This militia was now called out, and ordered to guard the lines which had been drawn round the city, in order to secure it against the king. A body of horse was ordered to be instantly levied. Many officers, who had been cashiered by the new model of the army, offered their service to the parliament. An army of five thousand men lay in the north under the command of General Pointz, who was of the Presbyterian faction; but these were too distant to be employed in so urgent a necessity. The forces destined for Ireland were quartered in the west; and, though deemed faithful to the parliament, they also lay at a distance. Many inland garrisons were commanded by officer: of the same party; but their troops, being so much dispersed, could at present be of no manner of service. The Scots were faithful friends, and zealous for Presbytery and the covenant; but a long time was required ere they could collect their forces and march to the assistance of the parliament.
In this situation it was thought more prudent to submit, and by compliance to stop the fury of the enraged army. The declaration by which the military petitioners had been voted public enemies was recalled, and erased from the journal book.[*] This was the first symptom which the parliament gave of submission; and the army, hoping by terror alone to effect all their purposes, stopped at St. Albans, and entered into negotiation with their masters.