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Wentworth and Laud, with their associates, when they tried to govern on such terms, were continually clashing with the people. A government thus carried on naturally aroused resistance, which often itself took unjustifiable forms; and this resistance was, in its turn, punished with revolting brutality. Criticism of Laudian methods, or of existing social habits, might take scurrilous shape; and then the critic’s ears were hacked off as he stood in the pillory, or he was imprisoned for life.

Archbishop Laud.

From the portrait at Lambeth Palace, painted by Vandyke.

By permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The great fight was made, not on a religious, but on a purely political question—that of Ship Money. The king wished to go to war with the Dutch, and to raise his fleet he issued writs, first to the maritime counties, and then to every shire in England. He consulted his judges, who stated that his action was legal: as well they might, for when a judge disagreed with him on any important point, he was promptly dismissed from office. But there was one man in the kingdom who thought differently, John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire ’squire, who had already once sat as a silent member in Parliament, together with another equally silent member of the same social standing, his nephew, Oliver Cromwell. Hampden was assessed at twenty shillings. The amount was of no more importance than the value of the tea which a century and a half later was thrown into Boston Harbor; but in each case a vital principle—the same vital principle—was involved. If the King could take twenty shillings from Hampden without authority from the representatives of the people in Parliament assembled, then his rule was absolute: he could do what he pleased. On the other hand, if the House of Commons could do as it wished in granting money only for whatever need it chose to recognize in the kingdom, then the House of Commons was supreme. In Hampden’s view but one course was possible—he was for the Parliament and the nation against the King; and he refused to pay the sum, facing without a murmur the punishment for his contumacy.