made his own—the execution of the penal laws against the catholics. On 27 June he was appointed by the sub-committee on religion to draw up, in conjunction with Sandys, the articles against papists, which were ultimately adopted with some modifications (Commons' Debates, 1625, p. 18, Camden Soc.). On 9 Aug. he appeared as a reporter of the lord treasurer's financial statement, but he does not appear to have taken part in the subsequent attacks on Buckingham in the course of the Oxford sittings. In 1626 Pym, who again represented Tavistock, appeared on 17 April as the reporter of the charges against Richard Montagu [q. v.] (ib. p. 179). The ability and persistency with which Pym had carried on the campaign against the catholics commended him to the house, and on 8 May he took his place as one of the managers of Buckingham's impeachment. The articles entrusted to him were the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, dealing with the sale by the duke of titles of honour and places of judicature, and with the lavish distribution of honour among his own kindred (Rushworth, ed. 1721, ii. 335). Pym's handling of the financial questions involved finally established his reputation as a man of business.
During the interval between the second and third parliaments of Charles I nothing is heard of Pym. He seems to have adopted Wentworth's principle, that it was not well to contend with the king out of parliament. At all events, his name does not occur among those who suffered for refusing to pay the forced loan. In the third parliament of Charles I, which met in 1628, Pym again sat for Tavistock. At a conference of the leading members, held before the opening of the session, he seems to have declared against reviving Buckingham's impeachment (Forster, Life of Eliot, ii. 1, from a memorandum at Port Eliot). During the earlier part of the session, when Wentworth was attempting to bring about a compromise between the king and the House of Commons, Pym was not a frequent speaker (Nicholas's ‘Notes,’ State Papers, Dom. vol. xcvii.). On 6 May, when Wentworth's leadership had broken down, Pym was one of those who took objection to Charles's offer to renew Magna Charta and six other statutes, together with a general assurance of good intentions, in the place of an act for the redress of grievances. ‘They did not want the king's word,’ said Pym, ‘for it could add nothing to his coronation oath. What was wanted was a rule by which the king's action should in future be guided.’ Later in the session Pym warmly supported the petition of right. On 20 May he opposed the addition of a clause, sent down from the lords, with the object of safeguarding the king's sovereign power. His interest in the constitutional questions now opening out did not lead him to neglect those matters of religion in which he had formerly taken so deep an interest. On 9 June he carried up to the Lords the articles of impeachment against Roger Manwaring [q. v.], who was accused of enforcing in a sermon the duty of obeying the king on pain of damnation. On 14 June Pym, in conducting the case against Manwaring, laid down his own constitutional principles. History, he argued, ‘was full of the calamities of nations in which one party sought to uphold the old form of government, and the other part to introduce a new.’ His own solution of the difficulty was that, though from time to time reformation was necessary, it could only be safely conducted according to the original principles under which the government of each nation had been founded. The remedy for present evils, therefore, was the acknowledgment by the king of ‘ancient and due liberties,’ implying thereby that it was not by the establishment of an arbitrary power in the king for the redress of grievances. In estimating Pym's mental position it is well to compare this utterance with that which he gave in 1621 on the recusancy laws. In both of them appears the philosophising statesman rather than the political philosopher. Pym starts with a recommendation which he deems practically advisable, and strives to reconcile it with general considerations. He does not seek to defend his view against the objections of his antagonists. His eyes were opened to the value of a system which enthroned parliaments in the seat of judgment in ecclesiastical matters. He was not sufficiently in advance of his age to deprecate the infliction of penalties for such differences of opinion as appeared likely to lead to practical evils.
In the final attack on Buckingham, Pym bore his share. He had given his voice in the last parliament, he said, on 11 June, ‘that the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all these grievances, and hath seen nothing ever since to alter his opinion’ (ib. vol. xci.). In the session of 1629 Pym's most notable appearance was in opposition to Eliot's proposal to treat the question of tonnage and poundage as a question of privilege, and to punish the officers who had exacted the duties from a member of the house, instead of joining issue on the main question with the king. ‘The liberties of this House,’ he said on 19 Feb., ‘are inferior to the liberties of this kingdom. To determine the privilege of this House is but a mean matter, and the main
