THE

ENGLISH REVIEW.

SEPTEMBER, 1849.

ART. I.-Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, including their private Correspondence, now first published from the Original Manuscripts. By ELIOT WARBURTON, Author of "The Crescent and the Cross." 3 vols. London: Richard

Bentley. 1849.

A THEME of abiding interest, ever kindling the strongest sympathies and awakening the most ardent controversies, is that of our great Civil War. Of all wars it is that, perhaps, which comes most home to us, and the memory of which is still calculated most keenly to excite our passions. Yet, whilst proclaiming this, we are far from maintaining or avowing that that terrible domestic conflict has wrought any very lasting effects among us, or that we are justified in attributing the freedom of our constitution, or the stability of its wisest institutions, to that ill-starred Rebellion which swept like the blast of the Sahara over the fertile glades of England, blighting the promise of a genial summertide, and at last passed from the face of earth, leaving, however, the old sound genial soil behind it, where the old world of order and beauty in due time bloomed again and ripened toward the harvest. We are intimately persuaded that the only real effect of the Great Rebellion was to retard the genuine development of our constitution in Crown, Lords, and Commons, as at present possessed by us, for the better part of a century, and at the same time to set the example of stubborn and lawless disobedience to "the powers that be," to be followed in other lands and other times by still more deluded and suicidal nations, impelled on their course by more unprincipled demagogues-men, without that fire of puritanic zeal, however misdirected, which serves in some degree to modify our condemnation of the worst of Roundhead excesses. Seriously, we believe, that our constitution, as at present possessed by us, was gradually, yet surely, developing throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First; so that the royal martyr, on coming to his throne, was prepared, and even anxious, to recognise that element of power which was already embodied in his Commons, though he was also resolved not to allow that one branch of the legislature to overrule and absorb both the others, and thus concentrate power in one despotic middle-class majority. We need not here record the pertinacity in unreasonable disloyalty, (we cannot employ a milder term,) which characterized the first parliaments of Charles's reign,—at least, the houses of VOL. XII.—NO. XXIII.—SEPT. 1849.

B

Commons in each Parliament. Almost all historians of credit are agreed upon this head. We may safely leave Mr. Macaulay's opinions on one side in discussing this question; for so bitter is his animosity to the royal martyr, that he almost appears to lose his reason when approaching the subject, and actually condescends to furbish up anew every absurd calumny ever forged by puritanic rancour, for the delectation of his liberal and enlightened readers of the nineteenth century. We repeat, that by the concurrent testimonies of all dispassionate historians, not only Hume and Disraeli, but even Guizot and Hallam,-why should we not add Miss Strickland ?-the first houses of Commons in Charles's reign have been convicted of most unreasonable, and we may add, up to that period totally unprecedented, disaffection to their youthful sovereign. They refused to vote money for wars to which they themselves had urged the last monarch; they made the most violent attacks on the first ministers of state, and finally showed a strong disposition to revolutionize the Church, if possible, and remodel its faith and ceremonies after the fashion of Calvinistic Geneva.

No doubt, many readers may here feel inclined to exclaim with some degree of surprise, "But why was the Church thus powerless in her country's halls of legislation? Did this puritanic spirit of disaffection prevail so generally that the monarch was compelled to exert this severe repressive influence in order to keep the spirit of democracy in Church and State within due bounds?" The correct answer to this question may appear self-contradictory: the Puritan party, though not inconsiderable in numbers, still constituted but a small minority, when contrasted with the whole body of the English nation; and yet, in the country's legislature, its influence was all but supreme. How did this arise? Truly, from the very same cause for which we have reason to apprehend the possible spoliation of the Church, and ruin of the State, even in this our day. Then, as now, certain active, turbulent, audacious spirits were prominent in the ranks of disloyalty and disaffection,-men corresponding but too faithfully to our present Brights and Cobdens; then, as now, the standard-bearers of Church and State were deficient in genius, energy, and moral courage-were wanting to themselves and their cause. In the days of Charles the First, he, the king, stood for a long time alone, or worse than alone; even Strafford, when he became his friend, was probably more calculated to injure than advance his cause, every thing he advised or performed being in the highest degree stern, unconciliatory, and unpopular. Laud also, though an admirable Churchman after his fashion, was the very worst of supporters, being endowed with such an overbearing manner and

with so petulant a temper as constantly to irritate his best wishers, and thus effect, despite his good intentions, a very "world of harm." Buckingham, also, was an unfortunate legacy bequeathed to the young monarch by his dying father, and of course not to be cast off, like an old cloke, at any moment; though it must be confessed that our more recent historians are inclined to bear much too heavily upon this elegant statesman, whose character has been placed by Clarendon (who knew him well) in a far more favourable light. Still what were these supporters, backed by the irritable and superstitious queen, to the array of talent and audacity brought into the parliamentary field against the unfortunate monarch? Who can wonder that, without a single sufficient exponent of the royal policy in either house, and especially among the Commons, those few active and designing men who pertained to the Puritan phalanx were enabled to win the ears of the majority, and obstruct the business of the State? The king was positively driven to dissolve his parliaments from the lack of constitutional representatives within their halls: not that his cause was monstrous or unjust, as almost all men must now admit, but because talent and resolution were only to be found amongst the foes of royalty and order. Can we wonder that, under such circumstances, King Charles should have recourse to almost forgotten precedents to raise the funds indispensable to the safety of the State, rather than lay himself at the feet of a Puritan faction, which soon found occasion to prove that nothing less would satisfy it than the spoliation and temporal destruction of the Church? It is well to say, that the king should have submitted to the course of events, and allowed Puritanism to triumph, if the Commons so willed, or rather if the audacity of a few demagogues, and the pusillanimity or supineness of the Church's supporters, led (as they must naturally have done) to such a catastrophe. It was not proved at that time-and, we may be permitted to add, it is not proved now that the royalty of England was nothing but a shadow. It may be urged, indeed, that the king might have reserved the exercise of his royal prerogative to the very last moment when these revolutionary measures had received the assent of both houses, and have then placed his veto upon their execution; but he was well aware that, when puritanism had attained this parlia mentary triumph, the temporal doom of the Church would probably be sealed, whatever might be the royal resolution. We cannot therefore wonder at, we cannot find it in our hearts to blame, the monarch, who preferred the having recourse to such a sad expedient as the ship-money, rather than expose his beloved Church to the inveterate fury of her foes.

In the Long Parliament, how wanting were the Church's