this particular, for grief is eased being told to a friend ;" &c. But the most detailed account we have of his grievances, from the unfortunate husband, is in a letter of instructions despatched by him from Wanstead, on the 12th of July, in this same year, to Lord Carlton, then English ambassador at the French court, a copy of which was found in his own hand among his papers taken by the parliamentary army at Naseby, in 1645, and soon after printed under the title of The King's Cabinet Opened.' This curious statement is far too long to be given in full; but two or three sentences may be quoted. His majesty begins by referring to the knowledge which both the French king and his mother already have of the unkindness and distastes which had fallen out between his wife and himself, "which hitherto," he continues, "I have borne with great patience (as all the world knows), ever expecting and hoping an amendment; knowing her to be but young, and perceiving it to be the ill crafty counsels of her servants for advancing of their own ends, rather than her own inclination." Their quarrelling began a very short time after their marriage. "Madame St. George," says his majesty, "taking a distaste because I would not let her ride with us in the coach, when there was women of better quality to fill her room, claiming it as her due (which in England we think a strange thing), set my wife in such an humour of distaste against me, as, from that very hour to this, no man can say that ever she used me two days together with so much respect as I deserved of her." And then he relates various instances of her contumacy and violence; concluding, "Thus having so long patience with the disturbance of that that should be one of my greatest contentments, I can no longer suffer those that I know to be the cause and fomenters of these humours to be about my wife any longer; which I must do, if it were but for one action they made my wife do, which is, to make her go to Tyburn in devotion to pray; which action can have no greater invective made against [it] than the relation." The affair here referred to was a pilgrimage which Queen Henrietta's confessor made her perform one morning, barefoot, all the way across Hyde-park, to the gallows at Tyburn, on arriving at which she knelt and prayed to the Roman Catholic sufferers who had been executed there in the two preceding reigns, as so many saints and martyrs.* It was an act certainly for which Charles might have been justified in locking her up as gone out of her senses. But he satisfied himself with a milder course. He had already, on the 1st of July, gone to Somerset House, where the queen's foreign establishment was lodged, and had told the monsieurs and madames that he neither could nor would any longer endure their conduct; but finding they would take no hint, he was obliged a few weeks after to employ stronger measures. We find him on the 7th of August writing to Buckingham, in a letter printed by Sir Henry Ellis, "Force them away, drive them away, like so many wild beasts, and so the devil go with them." Accordingly they were all sent off a few days after in a string of about forty coaches to Dover, which they reached after a journey of four days, and whence they were transported to France on the 12th of August. The Roman Catholic account is that there were only sixty of them, and this appears to have been their original number; but they are said to have received large accessions while here, and one enumeration makes them to have amounted, when they were turned off, to four hundred and forty in all, besides children. -affirmed that the keeping of them cost 2407. a day; and that the payment of their debts, and of some presents and pensions bestowed upon them at their departare, absorbed not less than 50,000l. Queen Henrietta became a manageable wife after she was thus taken out of the hands of her French priests and waiting-women; nay, she came, as was generally believed, to manage her husband, who acquired for the rest of his life the reputation It is * Dr. Lingard, after professing, in a note, to examine the evidence upon which this charge rests, comes to the conclusion that it was a mere fiction invented by the enemies of the queen and her religion; but he takes no notice of the pas sage quoted in the text from the king's own letter of extreme uxoriousness, or obsequiousness to the counsels and wishes of his wife. But in how far she is chargeable with having been, as has been represented, the instigator of some of his worst mistakes, or of those parts of his conduct which would seem to have principally occasioned his misfortunes and eventual ruin, may be doubted. There was enough in Charles's own character, and indeed almost in his position, whatever his character had been, to occasion and to account for all that happened. At his accession circumstances and the minds of men were ripe for a renewal of that struggle between the popular and the monarchical principles of the constitution, which his predecessor had with difficulty put down when it broke out in the parliament assembled in 1621. Charles began his reign by retaining as his chief adviser the unpopular, unprincipled, and incapable Buckingham. And Buckingham's first proceeding was to commence hostilities against Spain, and thus to involve his master in pecuniary difficulties, which offered to the popular party an opportunity of pursuing their objects too promising to be neglected. The reign commenced accordingly with a contest between the king and the parliament, the latter firmly refusing to grant the supplies demanded by his majesty until they had obtained both a redress of grievances and a limitation of the prerogative. Charles on his part met the resistance of the parliament both by insisting upon preserving the prerogative entire and by boldly putting it in force. In the course of this first contest three parliaments were successively called together and dismissed. The first met on the 18th of June, 1625, and was dissolved the 12th of August, in the same year; the second met the 6th of February, 1626, and was dissolved, before it had passed a single act, the 15th of June; the third met the 17th of March, 1628, was suddenly prorogued the 26th of June, was called together for a second session the 20th of January, 1629, and was finally dissolved the 10th of March of the same year. All this time the proceedings of the king continued to be of the most arbitrary character. Money was collected from the people by force; the influence of the crown was exercised in the most open manner to overawe the judges, in cases in which the liberty of the subject was concerned; the first privilege of parliament itself was violated by the seizure of members of the House of Commons, and their commitment to prison, for words alleged to have been spoken by them in debate. Nor is Charles free from the charge of having resorted to manoeuvring and subterfuge to escape from the demands with which he was pressed. He is especially exposed to the charge of such insincerity and indirectness by his conduct in the affair of the Petition of Right, which was passed in the first session of his third parliament, and to which he was eventually compelled to give his assent. This was the greatest, indeed it may be said the only, victory obtained by the popular party in the course of the struggle; and it was rendered ineffectual for the present, by the temporary success of the king in the plan which he at length adopted of governing without parliaments. Immediately before entering on this line of policy, he wisely made peace, first, on the 14th of April, 1629, with France, with which power he had entered (in July, 1626) into a foolish war, every operation in which was a disgraceful failure; and secondly, on the 5th of November, 1630, with Spain, the war with which had not been more creditable to his arms. Meanwhile also, the assassination of Buckingham, on the 23rd of August, 1628, had rid him of that evil adviser. His principal advisers now were the queen, Bishop Laud, and Wentworth, created Earl of Strafford. The state of things now established, and which may be described as the complete subjugation of the constitution by the prerogative of the crown, lasted for nearly eight The only memorable attempt at resistance was that made by Hampden, who refused to pay his assessment of ship-money, and whose case was argued before the twelve judges, in April, 1637, and decided in favour of the crown. Meantime, however, the opposition of years. the people of Scotland to the episcopal form of church government, which had for some time been established among them, suddenly burst out into a flame. The first disturbances took place at Edinburgh, in the end of July, 1637; and by the beginning of the following year the whole country was in a state of insurrection against the royal authority. In these circumstances Charles called together his fourth parliament, which met on the 13th of April, 1640. The temper which the members showed, however, induced him to dissolve it on the 5th of May following. But the Scotch army having entered England on the 20th of August, he again found himself forced to have recourse to the representatives of the people. The result was, the meeting, on the 3rd of November, of a fifth parliament, which is generally known under the name of the Long Parliament. The first proceedings of this assembly amounted to entering into a complete alliance with the Scottish insurgents. By one bill after another, the king was stripped of all the most objectionable of his prerogatives. The commons also voted that no bishop should have any vote in parliament nor bear any sway in temporal affairs, and that no clergyman should be in the commission of the peace. Of his advisers, Laud was sent to the Tower, and Strafford was executed, in conformity with an act of attainder, his assenting to which has always been regarded as one of the greatest stains on the character of Charles. Laud also, as is more particularly related in a subsequent page, was executed after he had remained a prisoner in the Tower more than four years. After having yielded everything else, however, Charles refused his assent to the Militia Bill, which was presented to him in February, 1642, the object of which was to transfer all the military power of the kingdom into the hands of the parliament. The first blood drawn in the civil war which followed was at the indecisive battle of Edgehill, fought on Sunday, the 23rd of October, in that year. After this the war extended itself over the whole kingdom. For some time success seemed to incline to the royal side, and at the beginning of the year |