when the people and the Parliament were so much more alive to their rights. A general discontent spread over the nation. The Commons, seeing that if the king could support the state by self-raised taxes, he would soon become independent of all control from his Parliaments, resolved to take every measure in their power to check his proceedings. They also assailed him respecting a right which he assumed to imprison his subjects upon his own warrant, and to detain them as long as he pleased. Having made an inquiry into the ancient powers of the crown, before these powers had been vitiated by the tyrannical Tudors, they embodied the result in what was called a Petition of Right, which they presented to him as an ordinary bill, or rather as a second Magna Charta, for replacing the privileges of the people, and particularly their exemption from arbitrary taxes and imprisonment, upon a fixed basis. With great difficulty Charles was prevailed upon to give his sanction to this bill (1628); but his disputes with Parliament soon after ran to such a height, that he dissolved it in a fit of indignation, resolving never more to call it together. About the same time his favorite minister, the Duke of Buckingham, was assassinated at Portsmouth, and Charles resolved thenceforward to be in a great measure his own minister, and to trust chiefly for the support of his government to the English hierarchy, to whose faith he was a devoted adherent, and who were, in turn, the most loyal of his subjects. His chief counselor was Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of narrow and bigoted spirit, and who made it his duty rather to increase than to diminish the ceremonies of the English church, although the tendency of the age was decidedly favorable to their diminution. For some years Charles governed the country entirely as an irresponsible despot, levying taxes by his own orders, and imprisoning such persons as were obnoxious to him, in utter defiance of the Petition of Right. The Puritans, or church reformers, suffered most severely under this system of things. They were dragged in great numbers before an arbitrary court called the Star-Chamber, which professed to take cognizance of offenses against the king's prerogative, and against religion; and sometimes men venerable for piety, learning, and worth, were scourged through the streets of London, and had their ears cut off, and their noses slit, for merely differing in opinion, on the most speculative of all subjects, with the king and his clergy. The great body of the people beheld these proceedings with horror, and only a fitting occasion was wanted for giving expression and effect to the public feeling.
THE LONG PARLIAMENT—THE IRISH REBELLION.
The English Parliament met in November, and immediately commenced a series of measures for effectually and permanently abridging the royal authority. There was even a party who, provoked by the late arbitrary measures, contemplated the total abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic. The Earl of Strafford was impeached of treason against the liberties of the people, and executed (May 12, 1641), notwithstanding a solemn promise made to him by the king that he should never suffer in person or estate. Archbishop Laud was impeached and imprisoned, but reserved for future vengeance. The remaining ministers of the king only saved themselves by flight. Some of the judges were
