council of peers, and, according to Clarendon, asked leave to travel. "If," says this historian, "the marquis of Hamilton had been then weighed in the scales of the people's hatred, he was at that time thought to be in greater danger than any of the others, for he had more enemies and fewer friends in court and country, than either of the others." He had been the sole manager in Scotland, and had advised the king's agreement with the people, and then, says Clarendon, had advised his breaking it. He had obtained profitable monopolies in iron and wine, and had "outfaced the law in bold projects and pressures upon the people." He now came to the king with great professions of service, yet represented that his presence might be prejudicial to the king's interests. Charles expressed his surprise and unwillingness that he should leave him, and assured him that he would protect him through all. He hesitated, saying, "that he knew there were no less fatal arrows aimed at the archbishop of Canterbury and the earl of Strafford than at himself; and that he had advertised the first and advised the last to take the same course he meant to secure himself by withdrawing; but he said the earl was too great-hearted to fear, and he doubted the other was too bold to fly."
The king being unwilling to hear of his retirement, Hamilton then said there was only one other come that he could adopt to save himself and serve the king, and that was by pretending service to the other party, by which means he should learn all their intentions, and could apprise the king in time of them, and might otherwise sway matters to his advantage. In other words, he proposed to be a spy under the garb of a friend to the reformers. Charles caught at the idea, and from this moment we are to regard Hamilton in this light.
This, then, was the marvellous state of affairs at this moment. "Within less than six weeks," says Clarendon, "these terrible reformers had caused the two greatest counsellors of the kingdom—Laud and Strafford, whom they most feared, and so hated—to be removed from the king, and imprisoned under an accusation of high treason; and frightened away the lord keeper of the great seal of England and one of the principal secretaries of state into foreign kingdoms for fear of the like, besides preparing all the lords of the council, and very many of the principal gentlemen throughout England, who had been sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants, to expect such measure of punishment from their general votes and resolutions as their future demeanour should draw upon them for their past offences." And thus ended the ever memorable year 1640, in which the parliament had secured the ascendancy after fifteen years determined struggle with the present king, and many more with his father; had humbled the proud and obstinate monarch; imprisoned his two arch-counsellors; impressed a salutary terror on the whole royal party; and initiated changes of the most stupendous kind.
The house of commons commenced the year 1641 with an endeavour to secure annual parliaments, and succeeded in obtaining triennial ones. They proposed that the issuing of the writs should take place at a fixed time, and to prevent the crown defeating this intention, they demanded, in case the king did not order the writs at the regular time, it should be imperative on the lord keeper or lord chancellor to do it; in case they neglected it, it should become the duty of the house of lords to do so; if the lords failed, then the sheriffs, and if the sheriffs neglected or refused, the people should proceed to elect their own representatives without any writs at all. To frustrate in future any hasty prorogations, by which the house of commons was liable at any moment to be stopped by the crown, they proposed that the king should not have power to prorogue or dissolve parliament within fifty days of its meeting without its own consent.
At one time Charles would have resented so bold a measure most indignantly, and would have dissolved the audacious body at once; but now he condescended to reason with them in a far different tone. He protested against the measure as a direct encroachment on his prerogative, by which sheriffs and constables were to be endowed with powers that hitherto had been only kingly; but he was fain at last to give way, and the bill, so far as regarded triennial parliaments, was passed, and a bill securing the houses from hasty prorogation followed in May. By that act Charles tied up his hands from dissolving parliament at all without its own consent, so that he could no longer defeat its measures as he had done. Thus a real and most momentous infringement on the prerogative was made, being brought about by the king's resistance to the cession of real rights. In obstinately claiming the people's privileges, he was driven to forfeit his own. He was now in a cleft-stick. The army of the Scots still lay in the north, and both the English commons and the Scottish commissioners in London were in no hurry to have it disbanded. Whilst it lay there well supported by parliamentary allowance, the king and his friends were overawed and powerless, and both parties, the commons of England and the covenanters of Scotland, were the better able to press their claims and support each other. Both parties were bent on abolishing or reducing episcopacy.
The Scottish commissioners exerted themselves with the leaders of the English commons to move for the thorough abolition of episcopacy in England, and the establishment of presbyterianism; but this led only to the development of a variety of views in the commons. Some of the members favoured the Scottish proposal, and of these were the supporters of the petition with fifteen thousand signatures, brought in from London by alderman Pennington, called the "root and branch petition." Others, as the lords "Wharton, Say, and Brooke, preferred the still more levelling system of the independents. On the other hand, some of the most prominent reformers, the lords Digby and Falkland, and Selden and Rudyard, were opposed to the extinction of the bishops. Digby compared the London petition to a comet portending nothing but anarchy, and with its tail pointing to the north, meaning that it was a Scottish comet; and lord Falkland was for relieving the bishops of their temporal cares, but not removing them from the church altogether. The question was warmly debated for two days, but the fate of the bishops was deferred awhile by that of Strafford.
The catholics, however, did not go without a fresh proof of the bitter hostility of the zealous puritans. There were great complaints sent from both houses about seminary priests remaining in the country contrary to the statutes, and especially
