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Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1640-1642 1640-1642; Part 4 |
1640-1642; Part 4Charles to be guilty. But it also contained a scheme of reform for the future which was much too advanced for many at that period. It proposed, for instance, that only ministers should be appointed of whom the House of Commons should approve, and that a Synod of Divines should be summoned to make religious changes. Such proposals would, in the opinion of many, have shattered the power of king and bishop alike. The debates upon them were keen and protracted. Churchman was ranged against Puritan, and constitutional Royalists like Falkland and Hyde, who still wished the king to direct the Government, against those like Pym, who were grasping at sovereignty, and wished Parliament to exercise direct control over the ministers. The Remonstrance was finally carried, long after midnight, in the early morning of November 23, but only by eleven votes. In the excitement members clutched their swords. "I thought," said one, "we had all sat in the Valley of the Shadow of Death." The Civil War was not far off.To attempt a coup d'etat and to fail is fatal. Yet this was the fortune of Charles. On January 4, 1642, hearing that the House of Commons intended to impeach the queen, he decided to forestall such an action by accusing the five leading members of the House of high treason for intrigues with the Scots. Included in this number were Pym and Hampden. Charles determined to arrest the five members himself, and went down to the House of Commons accompanied by a guard of some 400 men (It is said that Charles hesitated on the morning of the 4th to carry out his design, but the queen urged him on. "Go, you coward," she cried, "and pull out these rogues by the ears, or never see my face more). But, through an indiscreet friend of the queen's, the five members had learnt the king's intention, and when Charles entered the House he found, to use his own words, that " the birds had flown ". For the king to enter the House of Commons in this fashion was, of course, a scandalous breach of its privileges, and when he left it there were loud and angry cries of "Privilege! Privilege!" There is no need to detail the history of the next seven months. Both sides tried to obtain control of the militia, and ParÂliament passed a Bill with this object, which Charles vetoed. Both sides made preparations for war. In April Hotham, the Governor of Hull, went so far as to refuse the king admittance to that town. And on August 22, at Nottingham, the king's standard was set up (According to Clarendon, it was blown down the same night by a very strong and unruly wind—an inauspicious beginning). The great Civil War had begun. |
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