may be observed, indeed, a few names of families which had levied war against the Plantagenets. But the names are but shadows-nominum umbra. Besides these, there were titles in that list that sounded like those which had once formed the Norman war-cry; but they were only mock titles; bought by money, or earned by baseness and indelible infamy, from those who had debased both nobility and knighthood in England.

A glance at the state of the peerage at the time of the meeting of the Long Parliament is nearly as suggestive of the effect of the government of the Stuarts upon the ancient institutions of England, as the cruellest acts of oppression they had exercised upon the humblest and poorest of their subjects. The list of the peers consists of 1 duke, 1 marquis, 63 earls, 5 viscounts, and 54 barons; in all 124. Now, the list of peers summoned to the first Parliament of James, consists of 1 marquis, 19 earls, 1 viscount, and 21 barons; in all 42. And the list of all the peers summoned to the first Parliament of Charles the First, consists of 1 duke, 1 marquis, 37 earls, 11 viscounts, and 47 barons; in all 97. And the list of all the peers at the opening of the fifth Parliament of Charles, the Long Parliament, consisting of 124; while the number of peers created or advanced in peerage, between the opening of the Long Parliament in 1640, and the battle of Naseby in 1645, amounted to 43; it appears that James more than doubled the number of peers during his reign of some twenty years; and that Charles in the space of twenty years, again nearly doubled them.' Of the peers made by James, it may be said with truth, in the words of Mrs. Hutchinson, "the nobility of the land was utterly debased

1 State of the Peerage, in Parl. Hist., vol. ii. pp. 591-597, extracted from the

Leeds Journals, Dugdale's Baronage, and other authorities.

by setting honours to public sale, and conferring them on persons that had neither blood nor merit fit to wear, nor estates to bear up their titles, but were fain to invent projects to pillage the people, and pick their purses for the maintenance of vice and lewdness."1 Even the peerage of

Francis Bacon was conferred, not for his merits, but for his demerits, for acts of servile baseness to that hideous court that have left behind them a stain as immortal as his name. "My seat," said Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed, "is the seat of kings, and I would have none but a king fill it after me." If the spirit of the great queen could have beheld what these Stuarts had been doing in that royal seat of hers for the last forty years, the spectacle would have provoked no ordinary amount of indignation, as well as astonishment-the spectacle of that ancient monarchy, which, for 600 years, had been, on the whole, supported with so much wisdom and valour, fallen into such a depth of decrepitude and dishonour. In all history there could hardly be found a contrast more striking than that between Queen Elizabeth and her immediate successors.

Of the English peerage at the opening of the Long Parliament in 1640, since two-thirds could not date their nobility farther back than the accession of James, that is, thirty-seven years; and, of the remaining third, hardly onehalf could date their nobility as far back as the time of the Plantagenets, the English nobility must certainly be con

1 Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson, p. 78, Bohn's edition, London, 1854. This statement is borne out fully by other contemporary evidence. Thus, in a letter dated March 21, 1628, in the Sloan MSS., and cited in Mr. Forster's Life of Sir John Eliot, p. 57, note, the writer says "The House of Commons was, both yesterday and to-day, as full as one could sit by another; and

they say it is the most noble and magnanimous assembly that ever these walls contained. And I heard a lord intimate they were able to buy the Upper House (his Majesty only excepted) thrice over, notwithstanding there be of lords temporal to the number of 118. And what lord in England would be followed by so many freeholders as some of these are?"

sidered to have been at that time a new nobility.

But

there was a class in England, known by the name of "gentry," and composing a considerable portion of the House of Commons, which, from the great length of time that many of their members had held their lands, by free and military tenure, must be considered not new, but ancient in lineage, as well as in rank and position. This class, besides many who had never belonged to the great barons or peerage, but had held their lands, if not so long as the heralds assert, still, a very long time, comprehended also many of the younger branches of the great Norman families, the elder branches of which had become extinct. And yet, it is not unimportant to remark that while many members of this class might represent counties in the House of Commons, and were, in that character, denominated knights of the shire, others might represent boroughs, and were, in that capacity, denominated burgesses; though strictly, the burgess for any town was understood to be one of the burgesses or burghers of that town, sent by them as their representative in the House of Commons. And not unfrequently they really were so, being men who were, or had been engaged in trade in that town. Such men might still be connected with, or descended from, the class of gentry as Oliver Cromwell, the burgess for Huntingdon, was. There were, also, undoubtedly many men of humble birth, and who had been of humble occupation, among the eminent officers of the Parliament. Denzil, Lord Holles, describes them as being "all of them from the general (Sir Thomas Fairfax), except what he may have in expectation after his father's death, to the meanest sentinel, not able to make a thousand pound a-year lands, most of the colonels and officers mean tradesmen, brewers, tailors, goldsmiths, shoemakers and the like; a notable

dunghill, if one would rake into it to find out their several pedigrees." I have not the least wish to prove that these men were not what Denzil Holles and other Presbyterian and royalist writers have represented them as being; but I wish to ascertain the truth, if possible, whatever it may be; and it is well known to any one who has studied this period of English history, that to find out the truth in these matters is extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, since writers that have been cited by some modern historians as good or sufficient authorities, such as Walker, Bates, Noble, and the author or authors of "The Mystery of the Good Old Cause," are all violent royalist or Presbyterian partizans. And I believe that the pedigrees of many of the Ironsides, even the humblest born of them, would bear "raking into" quite as well as those of the Stuart peers. The pedigree of Oliver Cromwell, whom Lord Holles classes among "mean tradesmen," because he was a brewer, was at least better, though Oliver cared little for such things, than that of Lord Holles, whose father's nobility went no farther back than James's reign of infamy.

It is, however, beyond a doubt, that in the earlier stages of the struggle between the King and the Parliament, it was to members of the class of gentry, such as Hampden and Fairfax,2 that the nation looked with confidence, as the men best fitted to lead her councils and command her armies. Such men, with the ancient lineage,

1 Holles's Memoirs, p. 149. London, 1699.

2 The fact of Sir Thomas Fairfax's father having, in 1627, been created a Scotch peer can hardly be considered as taking the Fairfaxes out of the class of gentry to which they had belonged for so many ages. Indeed, Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, the father of Sir Thomas Fairfax, sat in the Long Parliament for

Yorkshire; as Lucius Carey, Viscount Falkland, also a Scotch peer, sat for the borough of Newport-sat, therefore, in Parliament as a burgess, and in that character was strictly included in the designation "Goodman Burgess," which the doorkeeper of the House of Lords, to be mentioned presently, probably, however, meant to apply to the whole House of Commons.

inherited also a large portion of the territorial wealth, the military character, and the high spirit of that old Norman aristocracy, which had so often resisted the encroachments of their kings, and had once filled Europe and Asia with their victories and their renown. In looking over the list of the House of Commons, at the opening of the Long Parliament, we are struck with many indications, from the names of the members in connection with the counties or places they represent, of the ancient establishment of this class in England, and even of its continuance down to our own times-for some of the places are represented in 1860 by men bearing the same names as those who sat for them in 1640. There are the ancient names of Hampden, of Godolphin, of Trevanion, of Percy, of Montague, of Basset, of Glanville, of Grenville, associated with places which had known them for twenty generations.

To the class of gentry also belonged the lawyers, at least the members of the Inns of Court; who, in England, did not, as in France, constitute a nobility of the gown, distinct from, and inferior to, the nobility of the sword, but were, upon all fitting occasions, able and ready to prove themselves men of the sword as well as men of the gown; and furnished, indeed, almost all the best officers of the Parliamentary armies. Ireton, Lambert, Ludlow, Michael Jones,' were members of the Inns of Court; and though Oliver Cromwell's name is certainly not to be found now in the books of Lincoln's Inn, it appears to be beyond a doubt that he was sent up to London for the purpose of being entered as a member; and that whether or not his name was ever actually entered on the books of that society, he occupied chambers

1 Whitelock's speech in favour of lawyers being elected members of Par

liament, in Parl. Hist., vol. iii. p. 1341.