and Episcopacy abolished, with every other existing institution which could interfere with the joyful deliverance of Scotland from the absorbing terror of "popish and prelatic tyranny."

Naturally concluding that the king would seek by force to suppress the rebellion, the Covenanters now began to make warlike preparations. Troops were levied, arms purchased, the Scottish soldiers of fortune serving on the Continent invited home. Encouragement was not wanting from the discontented party in England; from France came the not less important aid of money. Lesley, a veteran from the wars of Germany, was appointed to the chief command; and forthwith began hostilities by seizing the castles of Edinburgh and Dumbarton. The king, on his part, proceeded with as much alacrity as his want of resources permitted. At York, in which point the royal forces were concentrated, he was met by a brilliant feudal gathering of the nobility and chief gentry of the realm; from thence he advanced to the vicinity of Berwick. Thither Lesley drew his Covenanters-twenty thousand men, indifferently equipped, but inspired with zeal which was kept constantly at a boiling temperature by the unwearied vehemence of pulpit oratory. Charles's troops were equal in number, and far better provided; but without heart for the quarrel. Conscious of the unpopularity of his cause, and reluctant to shed his subjects' blood, he readily admitted commissioners from the Scottish camp; with whom was presently concluded, on the basis of the conditions before proposed at Edinburgh by Hamilton, the miserable armistice known in the history of the time as the Pacification of Berwick.

It was a fatal hour for England, when-whoever might be its true author-the attempt was made to force religious uniformity on the associated kingdom. The temper in which that measure was long pursued was plainly contempt-contempt for the independence of the kirk, and for the spirit of Scotchmen. But it is a dangerous thing to despise a nation -even for a great nation to despise a mean one. Scotland became powerful, less in her own deep sense of wrong endured, than in England's consciousness of wrong inflicted; unnerved by a sympathy half magnanimous, half traitorous, England became the dupe and the victim of her wily sister, in requital for having treated her in a delicate point as her vassal.

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CHAPTER II.

STRAFFORD.

WHILE that hapless arrangement, the Pacification of Berwick, was looked upon as dishonourable in England, by the Scots its stipulations were disregarded. Instead of disbanding their army, which they had engaged to do, the Covenanters dismissed a part only of the troops, and kept in pay all the officers; nor were the lawless proceedings of the unarmed revolters abated.

Already, in Scotland, Wentworth's was a name of hatred and of terror. A report that he intended to cross the Channel at the head of a body of troops, was among the earliest pretexts of the Covenanters for flying to arms. This report had no foundation in fact; yet the energy of his government awed into stillness and inaction their numerous countrymen settled in Ireland, who had begun to take the Covenant, and had shown an eager disposition to join the insurgents. Wentworth, however, was not blinded, either by the boldness of his temper or by the readiness of his resources, to the delicacy of the king's position; he well knew the financial difficulties of the government, and its want of support in public opinion; and justly apprehended the odium that would attach to the side which should be the foremost to shed blood in civil strife. Though not directly consulted, it is probable that to the lord-deputy's earnest advice, in his correspondence with the king, to remain on the defensive, was chiefly owing the facility with which Charles yielded to an accommodation.

Foreseeing-perhaps designing-in that measure, a delay merely of the war, Charles now sent for the sole minister on whose counsels he could depend for its conduct. Preceded in the atmosphere of the court by dread of his paramount influence, in the nation by anxious curiosity respecting its probable results, Wentworth hurried over; scarcely, in his zeal to serve his master, allowing himself to be retarded by a terrible attack of one of his habitual diseases, which at that time weighed him down. Of several honours conferred on him by the king at his arrival, the most distinguished was an earldom, by the title-which his greatness and misfortunes afterwards impressed so deeply on the national memory-of Strafford. The Earl of Strafford's advice decided the renewal of the war, and the assembling of a parliament. Laying down a munificent contribution towards the expense of raising an army, he again, though severe illness continued to press on him, hastened to Ireland; and, in an incredibly short space of time, returned once more, with a large subsidy from the parliament of that country, having besides secured for the king a levy of eight thousand horse and foot.

Not so obsequious was the parliament which now met in England. Although, of the great popular orators of 1628 some were wanting, and with them was absent the fervid

excitement of that period, yet the same spirit was there-only calmer, because more assured; more cautious, because too confident to risk anything by prematurely advancing. The manifest wants of the king were coldly put aside, on the old ground of precedence being due to the people's grievances. In vain Charles, among other arguments to enforce his assertion that delay was ruin, brought forward the celebrated letter, in which the Scotch had traitorously solicited aid of the French king. The opposition were in no haste to put down a movement, which, they had long foreseen, was to be their most effecttive auxiliary. Already an interchange of friendly offices and familiar counsels had been established. It is said, that Scotch intrigue had carried the election of more than one member: that the commissioners of the Covenanters, now in London, were in the full confidence of the English party, is certain. To none were the doors of the Lords Dunferline and Loudon more familiarly thrown open than to Essex, Bedford, and Holland, to Say, to Hampden, and to Pym. Hither came the representatives of every class in England who felt, or fancied, any oppression, or indulged a hope of change; those who had been taxed without law, and those who had been imprisoned without mercy; the haters of bishops, and the friends of the presbytery; the restless patriot, who was seeking reformation of the state by any means; the sullen or the smooth republican, who by any means had vowed its overthrow.

The sudden dissolution of this parliament was followed by the regret of most honest and unsuspicious men; and by the rage of the populace, who had been prematurely taught that the day of its assembling was their time of promise. Those in the secret, who saw farther, smiled-as the usurer smiles, his finger on the bond, and his eye turned to the day of reckoning, when the prodigal flings over to him all but his last possession. The blame of the dissolution has been unfairly divided between the elder Vane, whose weakness, or treachery, was really in fault; and Laud, who had as little share in it as any other of the king's ministers, popular odium, however, fixed it, as it did every sinister occurrence in church or state, upon the archbishop; and this imputation nearly cost the aged primate his life, in a tumultuous assault upon his palace at Lambeth.

Meantime, in the north "rebellion prospered." Lesley's army had been ready to march towards the inviting south, whenever the crisis might be judged meetest for " promoting," by their presence beyond the border, "the peace of both nations and the honour of the king." The king, on the contrary, had to contend with two fatal difficulties in raising the means to receive, as he thought became him, this armed visit of his northern subjects—want of money, and a more than unwilling disposition in his levies. At length, by order of Strafford-who, with the title of Lieutenant-General, had taken the chief command, Lord Conway, with three thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, but in a state bordering on mutiny, advanced to dispute the passage of the Tyne. "When,” says M. Guizot," the army came in sight of the Scots, the insubordination increased. The soldiers beheld the Covenant float on their banners; they heard the drum summon the troops to sermon, and their camp at sunrise resound with the voice of prayer and psalmody. At this spectacle, at the accounts which had reached them of the pious ardour and friendly dispositions of Scotland for the English people, by turns softened to tender

ness and stung with indignation, they cursed the impious war, and were already vanquished, for they conceived themselves brought to fight against their brethren and their God." The Scots, with little resistance, passed the river at Newbourne; the English retreating before them towards Yorkshire: not, perhaps, so sentimentally affected, as in the preceding extract they are described; but, certainly, with such a remarkable melting away of the ancient contemptuous valour of Englishmen, when opposed to their northern neighbours, as can be explained only on the supposition of a strong sympathy, whether the consequence of mutual misrepresentation, or of a sense of common injuries.

Indignation at the novel pusillanimity of his countrymen, mingling with scorn for the rebel Scots-which that people repaid with an animosity that nothing less than his blood could assuage-Strafford wasted himself in strenuous efforts to inspire his officers with the same spirit of loyalty that animated his own bosom, and to put the retreating army in a condition to chastise the invaders. Vain were all his exertions: in spite of threats and blandishments, he was borne back upon York, leaving the northern counties in the undisputed possession of the enemy.

No longer able to forego the aid of his people, Charles, as an alternative at once readier and less galling than a parliament, now summoned, at York, a great counsel of peers, in conformity with the feudal practice of some of his predecessors. An interval of fifteen days, which elapsed between the issuing of the proclamation and the assembling of the counsel, was employed by Pym, Hampden, and St. John, in procuring the signatures of twelve noblemen to a petition for a parliament. A second petition, with the same prayer, subscribed by ten thousand citizens of London, was quickly followed by others; all set on foot by the same untiring band of patriots. Charles found it impossible to consider the assembly at York in any other light than as an expedient to supply the instant emergency. In his opening speech he announced a parliament for the ensuing November, and, at the same time, the actual commencement of negotiations with the Scots; the management of the treaty he consented to intrust to sixteen peers, every one of whom was connected with the popular party. The king desired to have it conducted at York; but to this the Covenanters, who had now the game in their own hands, objected, on the pretence that Strafford, their grand enemy, the chief "firebrand" of the commonwealth, held the government of that city: it was, in consequence, opened at Ripon.

Strafford now felt that the cause was lost, for which he had so long toiled and suffered. Yet, before finally sheathing his sword from so fatal and inglorious a campaign, he resolved to justify the confidence he had already put on record: that if the king could be persuaded even then to try his fortune in a battle, he would undertake, on peril of his head, to drive the Scots beyond their borders. A cessation of arms had not yet been formally agreed upon; Strafford, therefore, judged it no breach of faith to the invader to dispatch an officer with a troop of horse to attack his quarters in Durham. The expedition was successful; many of the Covenanters were slain, and their officers taken prisoners. This action brought, however, no advantage to the king, while it farther exasperated the earl's enemies against himself. Loud was the outcry of the Scots; the English commissioners complained that they were compromised; finally, the king was constrained, by a strict

order to Strafford to forbear, to tie up the only hands that were willing to strike for his cause. A second disgraceful treaty secured the grand object of the Covenanters, and entailed on England a fatal civil war, with the overthrow of the church and the monarchy. Charles, wholly without the means of paying his own troops, agreed to maintain, at an enormous cost, the army of the invaders, on the soil of England; and, when prudence would have dictated the assembling of the parliament anywhere rather than in the capital, whose disaffection was notorious, he not only convened his parliament in London, but transferred to that city the completion of the treaty with the Scots. Thither their commissioners hastened, elated by success, and secure of being surrounded with friends and partisans, and with facilities of adding to their numbers and their consequence.

The steps of the patriot leaders while these events were passing, though secret, have not escaped the search of history. Pym, their acknowledged head, is said by Lord Clarendon to have continued, after the unhappy dissolution, for the most part in and about London, industriously improving the prevalent jealousies and discontents. The correspondence of the party with the Covenanters, established long before, was now securely and diligently kept up by means of the Scotch commissioners. In London their meetings were held at the house of Pym, in Gray's Inn Lane. In the country, Lord Say's house at Broughton, in Oxfordshire, and Sir Richard Knightley's at Fawsley, in Northamptonshire, were the scenes of frequent consultation. At Fawsley they had a private press in active employment. It was in the convenient seclusion of those mansions-to which tradition has attached several anecdotes connected with events so deeply interesting that those great designs received a mature shape, which were brought forward at the beginning of the Long Parliament.

The issuing of the writs for that memorable convention became the signal of fresh activity. Pym and Hampden, we are told, "in the discharge of their great duty, as chiefs and advisers of the people" in this stirring crisis, made the circuit of all the counties of England. Other members of the party were not less diligent, in the respective districts where their influence was strongest. Their success, in general, may be inferred from the report of the Earl of Warwick; who, writing from York, so lately the residence of the king, and still the head-quarters of Strafford, assures them that "the game was well begun."

Though occupied with the affairs of the army, Strafford had too high a stake in that game to remain an inattentive spectator of the march of public events. Magnanimous as he was, his keen eye could not but rest with anxiety on that dark spot of the cloud now hanging over the king's affairs, which threatened his own personal safety. Perhaps, amidst the presageful thoughts which swept frowningly across that bright but troubled sphere-the intellect of Wentworth, was the parting threat of the man whom he now saw every day developing larger capacities to "ride on and direct" the coming "whirlwind." He sought permission to return to Ireland; alleging, that while the absence from parliament of a minister so obnoxious would remove an obstacle to the settlement of the king's affairs, and enable him to provide for his own safety, his services would at the same time be more available in that kingdom to the royal cause. But Charles, who