style of pedantic simplicity, and abounding in allusions to ancient Greek and Roman histories.

This case is the only instance in the Journals (it would be well if there were none), before the Long Parliament in 1640, in which the House of Commons proceeded judicially on complaint against any person for printing and publishing matters derogatory from what they deemed their honour and privileges. The House, having once tasted blood, became eager in its thirst for punishment. Mr. Dale was threatened to be sequestered for plucking a member by the sleeve, to stay him from going forth in a division, Secretary Cecil gravely remarking, "This I wish may be inflicted on him, that he whose voice may be drawn either forwards or backwards by the sleeve, like a dog in a string, may be no more of this House."y To please the bonnie King James, a rough Buckinghamshire knight, Sir Charles Piggot, was sent to the Tower, and dismissed from his place of knight of the shire, for using many words of scandal and obloquy against the Scots. Adverse to the proposed union, with a pure John Bull feeling, he exclaimed, "Let us not join murderous thieves and the roguish Scots with the well-deserving Scots. As much difference between them as between a judge and a thief! They have not suffered above two kings to die in their beds these two hundred years." Instead of noticing the knight's historical invective at the time, his brother members sat lost in mute amazement, according to their apology to the king, and only bethought themselves of punishment three days afterwards, on a royal message taxing them with neglect.

In the exuberance of puritan zeal, they removed from the service of the House, as too unworthy, Mr. Shepherd, one of the burgesses for Shaftesbury, who ventured to utter some pour but harmless jokes against the second reading of an act for the keeping of the Sabbath, otherwise called Sunday. "The title is wrong," quoth the anti-puritan. "Every one knoweth that dies Sabbati is Latin for the Sabbath-day, and dies Sabbati is Saturday, as it is taken in all writs, returns, and amongst lawyers. It is no otherwise than if it should be titled 'An Act for the observing of Saturday, otherwise called Sunday.' The body is no better than the head. This is an act made in despite of the face and teeth of the King's book, which allows of dancing on the Sundays, and King David says, 'Let us praise God in a dance.""

The modern cry of "Oh! oh!" would surely have been sufficient chastisement for this mauvaise plaisanterie; but the pious Mr. Pym thought that such profaneness, comparing the dancing about Maypoles, which was forbidden by the statute, to the dancing before the ark, ought to be visited with the further infliction of imprisonment and £100 fine. It peeped out in the debate that Mr. Shepherd had given dire umbrage, by saying, "We made guns, engines, and barricades against papists, and not so much as a mouse-trap against a puritan !"

The House had better warrant for dismembering, in the same reign, Sir Giles Mompesson, (the Sir Giles Overreach of Massinger,) for extortion, and Sir J. Bennet, the judge of the Prerogative Court, and member for the university of Oxford, for an itching palm.' Unless cut off, such morbid members would have tainted the whole frame of parliament. Their

disabling the eldest sons of peers from continuing members, for fear of undue influence, and the attorneygeneral as too immediately under the control of the King, and by his office an assistant of the House of Lords, his eye enduring no colours but one, the king's livery hindering his sight,' might also admit of apology; though the inconvenience of their exceptions was soon found to be so great, as to require a total abandonment of their indiscreet order. The future peer could have no better training than in the free school of the Commons' House; and what lawyer, in ability and information, ought to be more useful, whether discussing old statutes, or inventing new, than the first law officer of the Crown!

The first expulsion in the reign of Charles I. betrays great but honest severity. Mr. John Barbour, a lawyer, and recorder of Wells, for subscribing a warrant, (3 Charles I. for quartering of soldiers,) was brought to the bar, and pleaded that he acted from fear; yet, "because he would rather not lose his place than do justice, he was thought unfit to make laws that violates the laws, his faults being aggravated by his profession: he had done well," said his quaint accuser, "to have remembered 11 Richard II., when Belknap, amongst other judges, gave his opinion for fear, unwilling to lose his cushion; when he came home he could not sleep, but said I deserve three H. H. H.-a hurdle, a halter, and a hangman. In 1 Henry IV., a law was made that fear should be no good plea, there being no hope of a coward." That terrible letter H. prevailed, and the homo trium literarum was ordered to be suspended the House, and sequestered.

Petyt's Miscellanea:

For the constant, capricious, and tyrannical abuse of vindictive privilege, which branded, on worthless and frivolous pretexts, so many members with the stigma of expulsion, during the dark and bitter closing days of Charles I., there can be no justification and very slight excuse. Sir Edmund Sawyer was sent to the Tower and excluded the House for ever, for having advised Mr. Dawes, if sent for to the bar, not to be examined on oath—constitutional advice undoubtedly, as the House had no power to administer an oath. We have seen how, in the petulance of conscious guilt, a despotic majority punished Mr. Gervas Hollis, Mr. Taylor, M. P. for Windsor, Mr. Trelawny, and Lord Digby, for having the manliness to avow their conviction, when they reflected on the sweet voices of those who loved (to borrow Laud's phrase) going thorough, the root and branch Parliament-men, who sentenced not merely for words spoken in the House, but for telling the whole truth from their heart in private conversation. "I have a blunt way in speaking my mind," said Mr. Holles, and the truth of what he said would, with a fair auditory, have gone far to excuse him. "It may be, peradventure, a folly in me, but it is a folly I love so well I will not part with it. I fear we have nourished in our bosoms those that will sting us to death."

Sir Edward Dering, a busy speech-maker on the popular side, till their aims too glaringly exceeded his own, had the mortification to find that even his harangue for abolishing the order of bishops would not atone for looking back with regret on the old paths of constitutional monarchy. For the alleged offence of printing a collection of speeches, which the b The Parliaments and Councils of England.

House voted to be scandalous, and to be burnt by the common hangman, he paid the forfeit of being disabled from sitting any more, and was committed to the Tower.

Of the king's honour, as it might naturally be expected, the Long Parliament appear to have been far less provident than of their own. When the merry republican, Harry Martin, said, "It was better that one family should perish than the whole people," and, being taxed with his meaning, declared hardily that he meant the king, he was, in the indignation of the moment, disabled from sitting in parliament, and lay for a fortnight in the Tower; but, upon a rehearing, January 6, 1645, the censure against him was annulled, and ordered to be rased out of the Journal, and he was re-admitted in triumph.

In order to weed the House of royalist members, the Long Parliament, at the very commencement of their sittings, came to a convenient resolution of comprehensive tyranny, "That all projectors and monopolists whatsoever, or that have any share, or lately have had any share, in any monopolies, or that do receive or lately have received, any benefit from any monopoly or project, are disabled by order of this House to sit here; and if any man here knows any monopolist, that he shall nominate him. That any member of this House that is a monopolist or projector, shall repair to Mr. Speaker, that a new warrant may issue forth, or otherwise that he shall be dealt with as with a stranger that hath no power to sit here." Diffusely as this inquisitorial vote was worded, its provisions must have been evaded, for only four members, Sir John Jacob and three others, received their dismissal in consequence.

Forster's Statesmen.