A.D. 1637.] TRIAL AND SENTENCE OF PRYNNE. 161 blazing hotly in their faces all the time, he was near fainting, when he was carried into a house in King Street, saying, "It is too hot! Too hot, indeed!" This most disgraceful exhibition made a terrible impression on the spectators, of whom the king was informed that there were one hundred thousand; whilst the executioner sawed at the ears of the prisoners they assailed him with curses, hisses, and groans. Both Charles and Laud were unpleasantly surprised at the effect produced; and to remove the pestilent satirist, but the lawyers had defeated him by injunctions from Westminster Hall. But the third time, by accusing him more exclusively of reflecting on the king and queen by his strictures on dancing, he obtained an order for the attorney-general Noye to indict him in the star-chamber. There he was condemned to be excluded from the bar and from Lincoln's Inn, to be deprived of his university degree, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, to have his book burnt before his face by the hangman, to stand in the pillory at Westminster and in Cheapside, at each place to lose an ear, and after-sufferers from public sympathy, they determined to send wards to be imprisoned for life. This most detestable sentence was carried into effect in May, 1634, with brutal ferocity, although the queen interceded earnestly in his favour, and the nation denounced the barbarity in no equivocal language. Prynne, undaunted, nay, exasperated to greater daring by this cruelty, resumed the subject in his prison, whence he issued a tract styled "News from Ipswich," in which he charged the prelates with being the bishops of Lucifer, devouring wolves, and execrable traitors, who had overthrown the pure simplicity of the Gospel to introduce afresh the superstitions of popery. He had found in prison a congenial soul, Dr. Bastwick, a physician, who had written a treatise against the bishops, called "Elenchus papismi et flagellum episcoporum Latialium," for which he had been condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds to the king, to be imprisoned two years, and to make recantation. He now, that is in 1639, wrote a fresh tract: "Apologeticus ad præsules Anglicanos," and the "Litanie of John Bastwick, doctor of physic, lying in Limbo patrum," in which he attacked both the bishops' and Laud's service books. A third person was Henry Burton,. who had been chaplain to Charles when on his journey to Spain; but being now incumbent of St. Matthew, in London, he had preached against the bishops as "blind watchmen, dumb dogs, ravening wolves, anti-Christian mushrooms, robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of antichrist." These zealous religionists, whom the cruelties and follies of Laud and his bishops had driven almost beside themselves, were condemned in the star-chamber to be each fined five thousand pounds, to stand two hours in the pillory, where they were to have their ears cut off, to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S.L., for seditious libeller, and then imprisoned for life. This sentence, than which the Spanish inquisition had nothing worse to show, was fully executed in Old Palace Yard, on the 30th of June, 1637. Prynne from the pillory defied all Lambeth, with the pope at its back, to prove to him that such doings were according to the law of England; and if he failed to prove them violators of that law and the law of God, they were at liberty to hang him at the door of the Gate House prison. On hearing this the people gave a great shout; but the executioner, as if incited to more cruelty, cut off their ears as barbarously as possible, rather sawing than cutting them. Prynne, who is said to have had his ears on the former occasion sewed on again, had them now gouged out, as it were; yet as the hangman sawed at them he cried out, "Cut me, tear me, I fear thee not. I fear the fire of hell, but not thee!" Burton, too, harangued the people for a long time most eloquently; but the sun them to distant and solitary prisons, far separate from each other-to Launceston, Carnarvon, and Lancaster, But the king and his high priest were still more amazed and alarmed when they found on the removal of the prisoners the crowds were equally immense, and that they went along from place to place in a kind of triumph. To attend Burton from Smithfield to two miles beyond Highgate, there were again at least one hundred thousand people, who testified their deep sympathy, and threw money into the coach to his wife as she drove along. Money and presents were also offered to Prynne, but he refused them. Gentlemen of wealth and station pressed to see and condole with the prisoners, whom they honoured and applauded as martyrs. When Prynne reached Chester, on his way to Carnarvon, one of the sheriffs, attended by a number of gentlemen, met him, invited him to a good dinner, discharged the cost, and gave him some hangings to furnish his dungeon with in Carnarvon Castle. This popular demonstration still more startled Laud, who summoned the sheriff, as well as the other gentlemen, before the High Commission Court at York, where they were fined in sums varying from two hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds, and condemned to acknowledge their offence before the congregation in the cathedral, and the corporation in the town hall of Chester. The prisoners themselves were ordered to be removed farther still, and accordingly Bastwick was sent to the isle of Scilly, Burton to the castle of Cornet in Guernsey, and Prynne to that of Mount Orgueil in Jersey. But the king and archbishop had now roused a spirit, by their cutting off of ears, which would be satisfied ere long with nothing less than their whole heads. To stop the outcry against their cruelties, they next determined to gag the press. An order was therefore issued by the star-chamber, forbidding all importation of foreign books, and the printing of any at home without licence. All books on religion, physic, literature, and poetry, must be licensed by the bishops, so that all truths unpleasant to the church would thus be suppressed. There were to be allowed only twenty master printers in the kingdom, except those of his majesty and the universities; no printer was to have more than two presses nor two apprentices, except the warden of the company. There were to be only four letterfounders; and whoever presumed to print without licence was to be whipped through London, and set in the pillory. All this time the High Commission Court kept pace with the star-chamber in its prosecutions and arbitrary fines, under pretence of protecting public morals. Laud soon had delinquents against the atrocious order for gagging the press. In about six months after the infliction of the savage sentence on Prynne and his associates, he called into the star-chamber John Lilburne and John Warton, for printing Prynne's "News from Ipswich," and other books called libellous. The accused refused to take the oath proposed to them, protesting against the lawfulness of the court. Being called up several times, and still obstinately refusing, they were condemned to be fined five hundred pounds apiece, Lilburne to be whipped from the Fleet to the pillory, and both bound to their good behaviour. Lilburne was one of the most determined men that ever To complete Laud's attacks on all persons and parties, there lacked only an onslaught on the episcopal bench, and there he found Williams, formerly lord keeper, and still bishop of Lincoln, for a victim. Williams, with all his faults, had been a true friend of Laud's at a time when he had very few, and the wily upstart had declared that his very life would be too short to demonstrate his gratitude: but he took full occasion to display towards him his ingratitude. From the moment that Laud was introduced to the lived. John Hampden. From an original Portrait. He continued to declaim violently against the tyranny of Laud and his bishops whilst he was standing in the pillory and was undergoing his whipping. He drew from his pockets a number of the very pamphlets he was punished for printing, and scattered them from the pillory amongst the crowd. The court of star-chamber being informed of his conduct, sent and had him gagged; but he then stamped with his feet to intimate that he would still speak if he could. He was then thrown into the Fleet, heavily ironed and in solitude. king, Williams could ill conceal his disgust at the clerica adventurer's base adulation. But Laud continued to ascend and Williams to descend. Williams having lost the seals, retired to his diocese, where he made himself very popular by his talents, his agreeable manners, his hospitality and still more by his being regarded as a victim of the arbitrary spirit of the king and of Laud. Williams, who ha a stinging wit, launched a tract at the head of the primate called the "Holy Table," in which he unmercifully satirise Laud's parade of high altars and popish ceremonies. Th primate very speedily had him in the star-chamber, where he greatly alarmed by the rumours that the king would lay received private information that if he would give up to Laud claim to the greater part of every county in England except his deanery of Westminster, that disinterested prelate would | Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, but the whole public was struck let the prosecution slip. Williams refused, and then com- with consternation at the additional project of the attorneymenced one of the most disgraceful scenes in history. Laud, general. As he had been always of a surly and morose Windebank, and the king were determined to force the disposition, he carried this ungracious manner with him into deanery and a heavy fine from him. They brow-beat his his apostacy. Formerly he had acted like a rude ill-tempered witnesses, threw them into prison to compel them to swear patriot, now he was the more odious from being at once falsely; removed chief justice Heath to put in a more pliant obsequious to the crown, and coarsely insolent to those man, and at length, through the medium of lord Cottington, whose rights he invaded. induced Williams, from terror of worse, to give up the deanery and pay a fine of ten thousand pounds. His servants and agents, Walker, Catlin, and Lunn, were fined three hundred pounds a-piece, and Powell two hundred pounds. This being done, Laud uttered a most hypocritical speech, professing high admiration of the talents, wisdom, learning, and various endowments of Williams, and his sorrow to see him thus punished, declaring that he had gone five times on his knees to the king to sue for his pardon. But even so Williams was not destined to escape. The officers who went to take possession of his effects, found amongst his papers two letters from Osbaldeston, master of Westminster school, in one of which he said that the great leviathan the late lord treasurer, Portland and the little urchin, Laud, were in a storm; and in the other that "there was great jealousy between the leviathan and the little meddling hocus-pocus." This, which was no crime of Williams, but of Osbaldeston, was, however, made a crime of both. Williams was condemned on the charge of concealing a libel on a public officer, and fined eight thousand pounds more, and to suffer imprisonment during the king's pleasure. The chief offender, Osbaldeston, could not be found; he had left a note saying he was "gone beyond Canterbury;" but he was sentenced to deprivation of his office, to be branded, and stand opposite to his own school in the pillory, with his ears nailed to it. He took good care, however, not to fall into such merciless hands. Such was Laud up to this point. One of those awful exhibitions which the history of the church, ever and anon, has presented. Professing the meek and benevolent gospel of Christ, but acting the unmitigated gospel of the devil; ambitious beyond the stretch of imagination, cruel as death, insatiable as the grave. There are those who have pronounced him honest, pious, and a pattern of ecclesiastical eminence. We leave his actions to speak for themselves. The press was now in his hands; he had made terrible examples of such as dared to differ in opinion from him; yet instead of having in reality reached a secure precminence, he had created ten thousand implacable enemies, who only bided their time. We must now turn our attention to his brother in the "thorough," the equally insane despot Wentworth. Amongst those means of raising a permanent revenue for the crown, independent of parliament, which we have already detailed, as tonnage and poundage, the fees on compulsory knighthood, and the resumption of forest lands, there was discovered another which was owing to the ingenuity of attorney-general Noye. The landed proprietors had been In the records of the Tower he discovered writs compelling the ports and maritime counties to provide a certain number of ships during war, or for protecting the coasts from pirates, It was now declared that the seas were greatly infested with Turkish corsairs, who not only intercepted our merchantmen at sea, but made descents on the coast of Ireland, and carried off the inhabitants into slavery. The French and Dutch mariners, it was added, were continually interrupting our trade, and making prizes of our trading vessels, and that it was necessary to assert our right to the sovereignty of the narrow seas, which it was contended "our progenitors, kings of England, had always possessed, and that it would be very irksome to us if that princely honour in our time should be lost, or in anything diminished.” But the real cause was that Charles was at that time, 1634, engaged in the treaty with Spain to assist him against the United Provinces of Holland, on condition that Philip engaged to restore the palsgrave. Noye's scheme was highly approved and supported by the lord keeper Coventry. On the 20th of October, 1634, a writ was issued by the lords of the council, signed by the king, to the city of London, commanding it to furnish before the 1st of March next, seven ships, with all the necessary arms, stores, and tackling, and wages for the men for twenty-six weeks. One ship was to be of nine hundred tons, and to carry three hundred and fifty men; another eight hundred tons, with two hundred and sixty men; four ships of five hundred tons, with two hundred men each; and one of three hundred tons, with one hundred and fifty men. The common council and citizens humbly remonstrated against the demand as one from which they were exempt by their charters, but the council treated their objections with contempt, and compelled them to submit. In the spring of 1635 similar writs were issued to the maritime counties, and even sent into the interior, a most unheard of demand; and instructions were forwarded to all parts, signed by Laud, Coventry, Juxton, Cottington, and the rest of the privy council, ordering the sheriffs to collect the money which was to be levied instead of ships, at the rate of three thousand three hundred pounds for every ship. They were to distrain on all who refused, and take care that no arrears were left to their successors. The demand occasioned both murmuring and resistance. The deputy-lieutenants of some inland counties wrote to the council, begging that the inhabitants might be excused this unprecedented tax; but they were speedily called before the council, and severely reprimanded. The people on the coasts of Sussex absolutely refused to pay, but they were soon forced to submit by the sheriffs. Noye died before this took place, and squibs regarding A.D. 1634,] HAMPDEN RESISTS PAYMENT OF SHIP-MONEY. him were publicly placarded, saying that his body being opened, a bundle of proclamations were found in his head, worm-eaten records in his stomach, and a barrel of soap, alluding to the enforcement of the monopoly on that article, in his paurch. Thomas Carlyle has aptly styled this turncoat lawyer, so extolled for his genius and learning by the royal party, "an amorphous, cynical law-pedant, and invincible living heap of learned rubbish." He found plenty like him to carry out his plans, farther than he ever dreamed of, or themselves either. These illegal writs returned a sum of two hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred pounds to the royal treasury. 165 fence; and afterwards, in his charge to the grand jury at York, described ship money as the inseparable flower of the crown But they were not so easily to override the rights of the people of England. There were numbers of stout hearts only waiting a fitting opportunity to unite and crush the spirit of despotism now growing so rampant. One of the most distinguished of these patriots was John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, whose name has become a world-wide synonyme for sturdy constitutional independ ence. this gentle exterior, and a great love of literature and retirement, he bore a mind of singular sagacity, glowing with the light and fervour of the ancient champions and historians of liberty, of sensitive perception of the approaches of tyranny, and a conscience which forbade him alike to co-operate with any attempts against the just rights of others, or to suffer their diminution by a weak compliance. Hampden was distinguished alike for his ancient descenttracing in a clear direct line from the Saxon period--for his To put an end to all murmurs or resistance, Charles great estate, and his mild and courteous manners. He was determined to have the sanction of the judges, knowing that the last man to all appearance who would assume the chahe could not have that of parliament. He therefore re-racter of a demagogue or vehement reformer. But under moved chief justice Heath on this and other accounts already noticed, and put in his place the supple Sir John Finch, lately conspicuous as speaker of the commons. The questions submitted to the judges were whether, when the good and safety of the realm demanded it, the king could not levy this ship-money, and whether he was not the proper and sole judge of the danger and the necessity. Finch canvassed his brethren of the bench individually and privately. The judges met in Serjeant's Inn on the 12th of February, 1636, when they were all perfectly unanimous except Croke and Hutton, who, however, subscribed, on the ground that the opinion of a majority settled the matter. To obtain this opinion Charles had let the judges know through Finch, that he only required their decision for his private satisfaction; but they were startled to find their sanction immediately proclaimed by the lord keeper Coventry in the star-chamber, order given that it should be enrolled in all the courts at Westminster, and themselves required to make it known from the bench on their circuits through the country. Nor was that all, for Wentworth, now become a full-fledged agent of despotism, contended that "since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax towards the equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army; and the same reason which authorises him to levy an army to resist, will authorise him to carry that army abroad, that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law in England is also law in Ireland and Scotland. This decision of the judges will, therefore, make the king absolute at home, and formidable abroad. Let him," he observed, "only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to the payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors." Such were the principles of Wentworth, ready on the smallest concession to grant a dozen other assumptions upon it, and such the counsellors, himself and Laud, who encouraged the already too fatally despotic king to his destruction. The judges were, for the most part, equally traitorous to the nation, and preached the most absolute doctrines, and passed the most absolute sentences. Richard Chambers, the London merchant, who had already suffered so severely for resisting the king's illegal demands, also refused payment of this, and brought an action against the lord mayor for imprisoning him for his refusal. But judge Berkeley would not hear the counsel of Chambers in his de He was born in 1594, and his father dying in his childhood, he came early into his estates. He was a student at Oxford when Laud was master of St. John's, and he afterwards studied law in the Inner Temple. Whilst he was a mere youth, his mother was very anxious that he should take advantage of king James's creation of peerages to become a lord; but he had the good sense steadily to decline honours given as the wages of court slavery, or sold to the highest bidder. He entered parliament in 1621, at the same time with Wentworth, who for awhile was equally ranged on the side of liberty, and a much more forward and noisy champion of it than himself. In 1626, when Charles was illegally levying his forced loan, Hampden refused to contribute. He had during each successive parliament firmly supported the efforts of the patriots in the house-Pym, Selden, Elliot, and the rest, and he now declared that “he could be content to lend like others, but he feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." He was sent prisoner to the Gate House, and thence released, but ordered to confine himself to one of his manor-houses in Hampshire. He had, however, in parliament borne a decided share in the determined opposition to the king's proceedings, along with Selden, Elliot, Pym, St. John, Croke, and others. After the defection of Wentworth, Noye, Finch, and others, Hampden became still more prominent in his public support of the patriotic opposition. Amid the fierce bigotry of those dauntless but intolerant men, he was almost the only one who had arrived at the true idea of Christianity, that it was a tolerant and forbearing religion, allowing to others the same freedom of conscience that he claimed for himself. He was greatly annoyed at the religious acrimony which prevailed, and declared that he would renounce the church of England on the spot "if it obliged him to believe that any other Christians should be damned; and that nobody would conclude another man to be damned who did not wish him so." In 1634, Hampden having lost his wife, to whom he was |