THE POPULAE EDUCATOR. 



to have seized the minds of men ; when the king was hurrying 

 forward headlong in a career of violent misgovernment, and no 

 one was found to stand in his way and styp his mad course ; 

 when oppression seemed to be triumphant, and right and justice 

 were openly trodden under foot; when honour had gone from 

 England, and the homes of her people were no longer pleasant 

 places, that Hampden, and Pym, and Hazelrig, and Cromwell 

 proposed to quit her shores and begin life anew in America. 

 The royal order, arbitrarily issued, prevented them as we have 

 seen. They returned to their homes and their duties, and when, 

 compelled as a last resource to summon Parliament, whose 

 advice he had not sought for eleven years, the king again ad- 

 dressed the House of Commons, these men were in their places, 

 resolved to do their duty to the uttermost, even to exceed it 



Earl of Strafford, the supporter of the impeachment of Land, 

 the life and soul of all the constitutional opposition which the 

 parliament made to the king. His name is not to the warrant 

 for the execution of Charles I. (January 30, 1648-49), though 

 with Hampden, Hazelrig, and two more, he was one of those 

 five members whose arrest the king in 1641 endeavoured to 

 effect in person (see " Historic Sketches," IV., page 120) ; but 

 his name stands out brilliantly among those advanced patriots 

 and purely disinterested men who in 1641, immediately after 

 the execution of Lord Strafford, wrung from the king a consent 

 to the abolition by statute of the courts of Star Chamber and 

 High Commission. 



Of Oliver Cromwell, the fourth man among the detained, 

 it is unnecessary now to write. Much has been said for him, 



JOHN PYM. BOEX 1584. DIED 1643. 



some will say. Be that as it may, of the men whom Charles's 

 order stopped from emigrating, Hampden in the same year 

 brought forward the question of the king's right to levy taxes, 

 when he resisted even to trial the demand which was made 

 on him for ship-money; and he fell subsequently, mortally 

 wounded, at Chalgrove, early in the war between the king and 

 the parliament. Sir Arthur Hazelrig was foremost among the 

 more intemperate enemies of the king in all the subsequent 

 troubles, but he did not identify himself remarkably with any of 

 the great questions upon which the sword had finally to pro- 

 nounce judgment. Of Pym much, but scarcely enough, has been 

 written. Unselfish, truly persuaded as to the course he was 

 pursuing, unswerving in his fidelity to that course, incorruptible, 

 calm amidst tumults, a fountain of wisdom in a sea of folly, he 

 was eminently fitted for the post which he a long while filled, 

 that of leader of the popular party in the House of Commons. 

 He waa the framer of the articles of impeachment against the 



much more, but less weighty, has been said against him ; but 

 his name and his character have brightened since the light of 

 honest, critical inquiry was turned upon him. Some there are 

 who cannot admire him enough for his policy, which raised the 

 foreign influence of England to a height it had not attained 

 since Henry the Fifth wa*s crowned in France, and which at 

 home brought order, albeit by a stern method, out of the chaos 

 into which the Great Rebellion had thrown all things. Others 

 there are who seem to think that nothing can atone for a usur- 

 pation which nevertheless declined to perpetuate itself by sta- 

 blishing a dynasty, and who can never forgive or forget the faot 

 that Cromwell's name appears among the first signatures on 

 Charles's death-warrant, and that but for him that death-warrant 

 would never have been written.* 



* For Synopsis of Events in the Life and Keign of Charles I., and 

 List of Contemporary Sovereigns, see page 122. 



