But in the Battle of Marston Moor a great principle was
involved which depended en the issue. It was here that King and People
contended--the one for unlimited and absolute power, and the other for
justice and liberty. The iron grasp and liberty-crushing rule of the
Tudors was succeeded by the disgraceful and degrading reign of the
Stuarts. The Divine Right of Kings was preached everywhere, while in
Charles I's corrupt and servile Court the worst crimes on earth were
practised. Charles had inherited from his father his presumptuous
notions of prerogative and Divine Right, and was bent upon being an
absolute and uncontrolled sovereign. He had married Henrietta, the
daughter of the King of France, who, though possessed of great wit and
beauty, was of a haughty spirit, and influenced Charles to favour the
Roman Catholic Church as against the Puritans, then very numerous in
Britain, who "through the Bishop's courts were fined, whipt, pilloried,
and imprisoned, so that death was almost better than life."
[Illustration: JOHN HAMPDEN.]
A crisis had to come, and either one man must yield or a whole nation
must submit to slavery. The tax named "Ship Money," originally levied in
the eleventh century to provide ships for the Navy, was reintroduced by
Charles in 1634 in a very burdensome form, and the crisis came which
resulted in the Civil War, when Hampden, who resided in the
neighbourhood of the Chiltern Hills, one of the five members of
Parliament impeached by Charles, refused to pay the tax on the ground
that it was illegal, not having been sanctioned by Parliament.
Pages:
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586