closes with the events of the next day at
Limmeridge House.

The following particulars comprise all that
Miss Halcombe was able to discover.

COMMONS AND KING.

ON the 4th of January, 1642, a certain royal
gentleman, to whom a romantic posterity has
accorded high moral honours, and who, by virtue
of plots that always failed, rose gradually to the
place and rank of martyrdom, began that great
civil war of ours, which resulted in the scaffold
for him and the Protectorate for ourselves. He
began it, by one of the craftiest attempts against
the liberties of Parliament which even he had
ever ventured on; an attempt made, not in the
heat of sudden passion and unadvisedly, as his
partisans would have it, but as the result of
mature deliberation, and with distinct and settled
purpose. Ever since the death of Strafford,
Charles the First had resolved to revenge himself
on the insolent Commons, who had not only slain
his friend, but opposed his own authority; and
his impeachment of the Five Members was the
latest form which this resolution took after it
had taken not a few others.

This is the great point in Charles's career which
Clarendon, Hume, and his partisans generally
have always misstated, and which now, for the
first time, Mr. JOHN FORSTER, in a noble book,
The Arrest of the Five Members, has presented
in its true light. From the Journal kept by
D'Ewes, and from other records of the State
Paper-office, Mr. Forster clearly and indisputably
proves the king's resolution to break with the
Commons, and force on them either annihilation
as a representative and independent body, or the
quarrel which ended in their victory. The arrest
was but one of the means of the struggle which
Strafford began and Charles continued, and
which had a far deeper significance than
personal enmity or momentary passion.

The troubles now at hand, when the Commons
and the king were to stand foot to foot,
and measure swords together, immediately
followed on the gorgeous City banquet which the
Royalist Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Gournay, gave
to Charles on his return from Scotland: when
Royalist matters looked so bright, and when the
Royalist party showed so strong, that the king
made sure he had weathered the storm for good
and all, and had nothing to do but sail into port,
colours flying and yards manned, like the
triumphant prince he was. But suspicions soon got
afloat that all was not so fair for him as it looked,
and, that the glittering pageant which monarchy
took as born of the eternal veracities, was but
a flimsy matter of lath and plaster—nothing
more. Many people began to fear for the future.
One Mr. Sidney Bere, not a very notorious
personage in history, wrote thus: "I pray God we
find not that we have flattered ourselves with
an imaginary strength and partie in the citty
and elsewhere, which will fall away if need
would be;" and a Mr. Slingsby, another
personage doubtless of great importance at
the time, but now of historical insignificance,
wrote many bewailings to Pennington— that
Pennington who was soon to do Charles the
service of carrying across Channel his queen,
the crown jewels, and Lord Digby; and whom
the king had secretly made Lord Admiral on the
dismissal of Lord Northumberland. Parliament,
however, finding out that royal dodge,
cancelled the appointment; not willing to trust the
four seas into the keeping of one of the most
thorough-going Royalists afloat. But Pennington
did good service to his cause nevertheless.
There was another terrified soul, failing sadly in
the presence of possible danger. Mean-spirited,
craven-hearted, Mr. Speaker Lenthal, foreseeing
evil days between the king's majesty and the
people's House, wrote a letter full of whine
and whimper, desiring to be relieved from his
office, which might bring him into unpleasant
collision with one or both, in the clash so sure
to come. He was kept in, sorely against his
will; and strangely enough, when the time came,
rose to the height of the situation like a nobler
man. But a great time, directed by great men,
may bear up small men for the nonce: as a great
water may.

The last dish of the grand City banquet,
which made Charles forget his danger and act
as if his power were eternal and immutable, was
scarcely cold, when the citizens began again to
throng round Westminster, with swords by their
sides, and settled wrath in their faces, crying
out against Episcopacy. But the king's code
of kingcraft was coercion, not conciliation.
The best manner that occurred to him of
answering those rough cries, so hoarsely uttered,
was by removing the popular train bands on
guard at the two Houses, and substituting
companies officered by his own adherents; by making
an offensive order on the matter of religious
worship; by recasting the list of court officers,
so that he might make privy councillors of the
most notorious opponents of the Great Remonstrance;
by assailing the privileges of the House
of Commons, in sending them an angry
message disapproving their discussion of a bill for
raising soldiers by impressment; by proclaiming
the severest execution of the statutes against
all who should question or impugn the Book
of Common Prayer, on the very day after the
citizens had presented a petition against the
bishops; and, finally, while pressing hard against
Puritan offenders, remitting their pains and
penalties against certain Roman Catholics who
had transgressed the existing law. These were
either the acts of a madman, as Mr. Forster
says, or the acts of a despot, determined at all
hazards to override justice, legality, and the
popular will.

Another point of disagreement between the
king and the people lay in the governorship
of the Tower—the Bridle of the City, as
it was called. Honest Balfour was suddenly
removed from his command by the king's
orders, and the keys were given to Colonel
Lunsford, a dissolute " young outlaw, who feared
neither God nor man." The Commons