Charles finding the Parliament in a very unaccommodating humour, desired Sir John Finch, the Speaker, to adjourn the House, but the House refused to be adjourned, and when he was about to leave the chair, he found himself suddenly knocked back into it, with his arms pinioned, which rendered him incapable of putting any motion whatever, for he was quite motionless. A few privy councillors rushing in, endeavoured to release him, but the opposite party bound him again to the chair, and the trial of strength between the two factions ended in a tie—as far as poor Finch was concerned—for he remained fastened in the seat of dignity. At length the Speaker, who could not dissolve the House, began dissolving himself in tears, and the king who had been waiting for him to come and tell the news, was so impatient, that messengers were dispatched to know what had become of him. Hearing that Finch was caged, or in other words locked in, the king could only leave the poor bird to his fate; but he despatched a messenger to tell the sergeant to slip out of the House quietly with his mace, which would dissolve the sitting. The sergeant may perhaps have forgotten the right cue, but he had got the right mace, and had walked nearly to the door, when he was stopped and pushed back, the key of the House taken from him and placed in the hands of one of the members, who promised to keep tight hold of it.
Charles, hearing that the door was bolted, went down, determined to force it open; but happily, he found the Commons had bolted instead of the door, or at least, they were on the point of doing so. The king, nevertheless, ordered several of the ringleaders to be arrested, and he intimated pretty plainly to the Commons that he would not trouble them again for a very considerable period. He had, in fact, resolved to take all matters of Government entirely into his own hands; and though Magna Charta, with a few other trifles of the kind, stood in his way, he did not scrapie to trample on rights and liberties, which he knew were being continually renewed, as occasion required.
On the 10th of March, 1629, the day to which the Commons had adjourned themselves, Charles came down to the House of Lords with the proclamation of dissolution in his pocket. His majesty began by saying, that this was "really a very unpleasant business," that "he had no fault to find with the Lords," but "there were some vipers among the Commons"; whom, according to the unhappy Strype, he expressed his determination of "viping out"—observe the paltry evasion of the W for the sake of the pun—"with the utmost energy." Thus, by flattering the Lords and threatening the Commons, or, to continue the language of Strype, "soaping the Upper House, and lathering the Lower," did Charles dissolve his Parliament. Several members had already been placed in custody, among whom were Eliot, Holies, and Selden, the last of whom was such an inveterate table-talker, that his tongue was always getting him into scrapes of the most serious character. An information was exhibited against them in the Star-Chamber, but they were subsequently offered their release, on promising to be of good behaviour, which they refused to do, for they felt they would have been good for nothing had they entered into such a disgraceful compact. Eliot died in prison, and the rest were adjudged to be detained during the pleasure of the king, and as he took great pleasure in persecuting his refractory Commons, there was every chance that their "durance vile" would be unpleasantly durable.
The 29th of May, 1630, was signalised by the birth of Prince Charles, and it is said that a bright star shone in the east at midday, which some have considered ominous. To us, the appearance of the star by daylight, on the birth of this dissolute scapegrace, denotes nothing more than a propensity for not going home till morning, or till daylight did appear. About the same time that severities were being practised on the Commons, one Richard Chambers refused to pay more than legal duty on a bale of silk, and the Custom-house officers going at him rather fiercely, he declared that "merchants were more screwed in England than they were in Turkey." His audience hearing him use the word "screwed," at once nailed him to the expression, and he was fined £2000 for the lapsus lingua he had fallen into. Unhappily, political martyrdom was not, in those days, so good a trade as it has subsequently become, and poor Chambers had neither a subscription opened to pay his fine, nor a testimonial to reimburse him for the expense of resistance. A struggle for principle was then a struggle indeed, and not an eligible medium for advertisements. A Chambers of the present day would have made his principles pay him an enormous percentage, and would have made a handsome fortune for himself by what he would have termed his exertions for the happiness and liberty of the people. Poor Chambers, however—the real martyr of 1630—died in a prison at last, after waiting for redress from the Long Parliament, which was a little too long in making reparation to the victim of oppression, Charles had apparently made up his mind to get on as well as he could without any Parliament at all, and having bribed some of the cleverest fellows in the kingdom, he thought that as one fool proverbially makes many, one or two knaves would also be found to fructify. Among the shameless apostates of that day were of course many who had been mouthing most energetically on the popular side; and Wentworth, who had been originally one of the very noisiest of the people's friends, became the meanest and most inveterate of the people's enemies. Having brawled for some years against aristocracy, his purpose at length peeped out in his acceptance of a peerage for himself, and the man who had been continually bullying the Court, became its fawning favourite. Digges, who had been, as we have already intimated, digging away most energetically at the constituted authorities, accepted the post of Master of the Bolls, for he had, as he said, made the discovery on which side his bread was buttered.
It would be tedious to the reader, and difficult to ourselves, to give a catalogue of the exactions and impositions which were practised by Charles between the years 1629, when the Parliament was dissolved, and 1640, the year marked by the assembly of a new one. He revived, among other cruelties, the old practice of making knights of all persons possessing forty pounds a year, and either charging ruinous fees for imposing the so-called honour, or imposing a heavy fine for declining it. Knighthood became such a fearful drug in the market of dignities, that it is not surprising it should even up to this day have failed to recover its position. The cry of "Dilly, dilly," was never more ferociously addressed to the ducks who were invited to "come and be killed," than was the command to "come and be knighted," enforced against the unwilling victims, who were selected either to pay the penalty for declining, or the fees on receiving this unenviable distinction.
While guilty of wholesale persecution, Charles did not, however, neglect the retail branch, and a Puritan preacher named Leighton—a blind fanatic, but, notwithstanding his blindness, no relation we believe to Leighton Buzzard—was exposed to the utmost cruelty for writing some ad captandum trash against the queen and the bishops; a bombastic little work, which neither repaid perusal, nor repaid the printer who brought it forward. Poor Leighton was fined for his coarseness, and flogged for his flagellation of the authorities, besides being compelled to undergo a variety of other barbarisms, the narration of which we would have attempted, but we found our very ink turning pale at the bare prospect of our doing so. The Puritans now began to emigrate in great numbers to America, and they no doubt laid the foundation of that drawl which has ever since distinguished the tone of the model republicans.
We now arrive at the tragical story of poor Mr. William Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who, in the utter absence of briefs, finding himself at a dead stand-still for want of a motion, had started a trumpery little work with one Sparkes, a publisher. The volume had the unattractive title of "Histrio Mastric, the Players' Scourge, or Actors' Tragedie," in which he made an attempt to write down the stage in particular, and all amusements in general. He denounced all who went to the play as irredeemably lost, and he neither exempted the free list, the half-price, or those who went in with the orders of the Press, from the anathema, which he hurled indiscriminately against the "brilliant and crowded audiences" nightly honouring such-and-such an establishment with a succession of overflows. The queen not only patronised the drama, but sometimes appeared herself as a distinguished amateur, and the whole of Prynne's book was taken to apply to her, though she was not even mentioned in any part of it. Poor Prynne was declared to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and, considering that he was a barrister who had turned author, the alleged mixture of wolfishness and sheepishness may be fairly attributed to his character. He was found guilty, of course, and upon sentence being passed, the Chief Justice expressed his regret that a gentleman, who had handed in on two or three occasions a compute, and was a promising junior of twenty years' standing—without ever being on his legs—should have brought himself into such an unpleasant predicament.
He was condemned to be degraded from the profession, or in fact to be dishonoured; to pay a fine of £5000, which was by no means feasible, when we consider his fees, and to be kept from the use of pen, ink, and paper, which was perhaps the most humane part of the sentence, for he was thus prevented from proceeding with his wretched trade of authorship. The poor fellow, however, contrived to write humorous articles on the soles of his boots; and "Prynne on the Understanding," though it was rubbed out as mere rubbish by the man who cleaned his boots, might have taken its place by the side of many more lofty productions of the period. His sentence was exceedingly cruel, and comprised "branding on the forehead," as if his enemies would have it believed "there was nothing inside to hurt," while his nose was savagely maltreated, to prevent its being again poked into that which did not concern its owner. His ears were cropped under the pretext of their being a great deal too long, and indeed Prynne was so altered, as a punishment for rushing into print, that his own clerk would not have known him again in the abridged edition which the Government reduced him to.
We have now to treat of the great civil war; but the magnitude of the subject requires us to take breath, which we cannot do unless we break off and begin a fresh chapter.