strous, a prodigious birth of a licentious conception, for so all would become either all head or all members. Yet, God be praised, human wisdom, common experience, the Christian religion, taught them far otherwise. "Princes," he cried, "are to be indulgent, nursing fathers to their people; their modest liberties, their sober rights, ought to be precious in their eyes, the branches of their government be for shadow, for habitation, the comfort of life. They repose safe and still under the protection of their sceptres. Subjects, on the other side, ought with solicitous eyes of jealousy to watch over the prerogatives of a crown. The authority of a king is the keystone which closeth up the arch of order and government, which contains each part in due relation to the whole, and which once shaken, and infirmed, all the frame falls together into a confused heap of foundation and battlement, of strength and beauty."*

In the stern hands of Wentworth the fabric of the Prerogative was to be rigidly upheld. He presided over the Council with his usual concentration of energy and determination. As the representative of royalty he demanded the most profound reverence and respect from the haughtiest as well as the humblest. He permitted no appeal to the courts at

* "The Personal Government of Charles I.," by S. R. Gardiner,, vol. i. p. 40.

Westminster.

He enforced the rigid payment of all taxes, fines, and Government exactions, so that the annual revenue drawn from the north was wellnigh increased five-fold. Papist, knight, and country gentleman, all felt the full weight of his iron rule, and bitterly mourned that the easy sway of his predecessor had been exchanged. Never had the north contributed so handsomely to the Treasury; never had its people been cowed into such a spiritless, terror-stricken condition.

Yet there had been opposition, only the despotic will of Thorough had met it boldly and speedily stamped it out. Peter Smart, one of the prebendaries of Durham Cathedral, had opposed the ritualistic tendencies of the day, and had denounced them as but copies of "that painted harlot, the Church of Rome." He was heavily fined and forced to resign his preferment. Henry Bellasis, the son and heir of Lord Falconberg, had failed to show due reverence to the Lord President whilst the Council was sitting; he was commanded to kneel whilst sentence was pronounced upon him, and imprisoned until he had written an abject apology bewailing his rudeness. Sir David Foulis, a man of high position in his county, was treated with greater, but scarcely with undeserved, severity. At a public meeting he had said that the people of Yorkshire, who in times past

had been accounted stout-spirited men, and held to be the worthiest of all other shires in the kingdom, were now the most degenerate and cowardly; they adored Lord Wentworth, and were so timorous and fearful to offend his lordship, that they would undergo any charge rather than displease him. "His lordship," he sneered, " was much respected in Yorkshire, but at Court he was no more respected than an ordinary man," and he concluded by hinting that many of the fines which had been exacted by virtue of the Lord President's commission had been appropriated by Wentworth for his own personal use. Such unpardonable language merited the punishment it incurred, and the delinquent, fearful of the consequences, in vain endeavoured to compromise matters. Foulis was committed to the Fleet during the King's pleasure, fined £5,000 to be paid to the King and £3,000 to be paid to Wentworth, pronounced incapable of holding any of the offices he formerly filled, and ordered to confess his offences both to the King and to the Lord President at the Court of York, where the sentence passed upon him was to be publicly read. His son, who had repeated the calumnies, was also fined and imprisoned.

It was useless for the Papists groaning under the exactions imposed upon them, for the knights who objected to the knighthood fines, or for

the heavily taxed squires and yeomen, to appeal against the judgments of the Council. Parliament had been dissolved, not to be assembled for many years, and the King ruled the land by the strength of his own personal will, unfettered by control or opposition. The despotic course pursued by his minister in the north met with his warmest approval, and so far from being inclined to limit the authority of the Lord President, Charles sent down from Whitehall new instructions, giving Wentworth carte blanche to act as he pleased. He was empowered to hear and determine all "offences, misdemeanours, suits, debates, controversies, demands, causes, things, and matters whatsoever therein contained," within certain districts in the north. He was directed to hear and determine divers offences according to the course of the Star Chamber, "whether provided for by Act of Parliament or not;" whilst he was informed that from his court no appeals would lie to the courts at Westminster.

Thus to Wentworth was permitted a freedom of action and an amount of absolute authority such as no English judge has ever before or since possessed. His decisions could not be reversed. His conduct could not be impeached, for Parliament was not sitting. In the ruling of his judgments he was not compelled to be guided by previous statutes, for he could lay down

the law as he chose to interpret it. His Court of Appeal, his Parliament, his judicial authority, was the King, and only the King. It was true that lawyers occasionally resisted his high-handed proceedings, but he treated their objections with undisguised contempt. Throughout his correspondence we see how frequent are the sneers he directs at the bar and the bench. "These lawyers," he writes to the Lord Marshal, "would monopolize to themselves all jurisdiction, as if no honour or justice could be rightly administered but under one of their bencher's gowns." One, Mr. Justice Vernon, an able and fearless judge, had the courage, in his charge at the York assizes, to disapprove of the Lord President's encroachments upon the ancient laws of the land. Wentworth strongly objected to these judicial remarks, recommended Vernon's removal from the bench, called him "a peevish, indiscreet piece of flesh," and then concluded by saying, "I confess I disdain to see the gownsmen in this sort hang their noses over the flowers of the Crown, blow and snuffle upon them till they take both scent and beauty off them, or to have them put such a prejudice upon all other sorts of men, as if none were able or worthy to be intrusted with the honour and administration of justice but themselves."

These free comments upon the gentlemen of the