are the clergy, and the commons. The king is not one of the three estates, as some would have it, [take heed of that], for then if two agree, the third is involved; but he is king of the three estates.

6. The king has a seal in every court; and though the great seal be called sigillum Angliae, the great seal of England, yet 'tis not because 'tis the kingdom's seal, and not the king's, but to distinguish it from sigillum Hiberniae, sigillum Scotiae.

7. The court of England is much altered. At a solemn 10 dancing, first you had the grave measures, then the corantoes, and the galliards, and all this is kept up with ceremony; at length they fall to Trench-more1, and so to the cushion dance, and then all the company dance, lord and groom, lady and kitchen-maid, no distinction. So in our court in Queen Elizabeth's time, gravity and state was kept up; in King James's time things were pretty well;

1 Trenchmore] Frenchmore, MSS.

Nalson, in his remarks on Lord Say and Seal's speech (1641) against Bishops, points out, as Selden does, the consequence which would follow from counting the King as one of the three estates. The opinion, he says, that the Bishops are not one of the three estates, in Parliament, has been deservedly exploded by all persons of sense and honour'except such as would therefore have the King to be the third estate, that so by bringing in a co-ordinancy of power, they may the better accomplish their anti-monarchical designs, or at least reduce the ancient and imperial Crown of these realms to the condition of a Venetian seigniory.' Collections, ii. 269.

1. 13. Trench-more] A kind of lively dance, in triple time, to which it was usual to dance in a rough and boisterous manner. Nares, Glossary.

The reading in the MSS. is 'Frenchmore,' but there is no dance so named, while Trenchmore,' the reading in the early printed editions, is, as Nares shows, a name in common use.

1. 14. cushion dance] 'A dance of a rather free character, used chiefly, it would appear, at weddings.' Its character is distinctly shown by a passage which Nares quotes from Taylor (1630):-' There are many pretty provocatory dances, as the kissing dance, the cushion dance, the shaking of the sheets, and such like.' Nares, Glossary.

but in King Charles's time, there has been nothing but Trench-more and the cushion dance, omnium gatherum, tolly polly, hoyte cum toyte.

LXXII.

THE KING.

I. 'Tis hard to make an accommodation betwixt the king and the parliament. If you and I fell out about money, you said I owed you twenty pounds, I said I owed you but ten pounds, it may be a third party allowing me 20 marks, might make us friends. But if I said, 10 I owed you twenty pounds of silver, and you said I owed you twenty pounds of diamonds, which is a sum innumerable, 'tis impossible we should ever agree; this is the case.

ΙΟ

2. The king using the House of Commons, as he did in Mr. Pym and his company; that is, charging them with treason, because they charged1 my lord of Canterbury and Sir George Ratcliffe, it was just as much logic as the boy, that would have lain with his grandmother, used to his father: You lay with my mother, why should not I lie 20 with your's?

3. There is not the same reason for the king's accusing men of treason, and carrying them away, as there is for the houses themselves, because they accuse one of themselves. For every one that is accused, is either a peer or a commoner; and he that is accused has his consent going along with them; but if the king accuses, there is nothing of this in it.

4. The king is equally abused now as before; then they flattered him, and made him do ill things, now they would 30 force him against his conscience. If a physician should tell me that every thing I had a mind to was good for 1 Because they charged] 'because' omitted in MSS.

me, though in truth 'twas poison, he abused me; and he abuses me as much, that would force me to take something whether I will or no.

5. The king, so long as he is our king, may do with his officers what he pleases; as the master of the house may turn away all his servants, and take whom he please.

6. The king's oath is not security enough for our property, for he swears to govern according to law; now the judges they interpret the law; and what judges can be made to do we know.

1. 9. what judges can be made to do we know.] Selden had good reason to know this. He was one of the members committed to prison after Charles' third Parliament, having been refused bail by the judges unless he would find sureties for his future good behaviour. This he and the others rightly and manfully refused to do, and were remanded to the Tower. Whitelock, Memorials, pp. 13, 14.

Again, in 1635 the King was advised by the Lord Chief Justice Finch and others to require the opinion of his judges (on ship-money), which he did, stating the case in a letter to them.

'After much solicitation by the Chief Justice Finch, promising preferment to some, and highly threatening others whom he found doubting (as themselves reported to me) he got from them in answer to the King's letter and case, their opinion . . . that when . . . the whole kingdom is in danger, your Majesty may by writ command all your subjects to furnish ships with men, victuals and ammunition, and may compel the doing thereof. And that in such case your Majesty is the sole judge both of the dangers and when and how the same is to be prevented and avoided. This opinion was signed by twelve judges.' Whitelock, Memorials, p. 25.

Clarendon remarks on this that 'The damage and mischief cannot be expressed that the Crown and State sustained by the deserved reproach and infamy that attended the judges, by being made use of in this and other like acts of power.' Men heard the payment of ship-money 'demanded in a court of law as a right, and found it, by sworn judges of the law, adjudged so upon such grounds and reasons as every stander-by was able to swear was not law.' He traces the disregard of law afterwards as due very largely 'to the irreverence and scorn the judges were justly in.' History, pp. 108, 109.

But the day of reckoning was at hand. In 1640, Judge Berkley, one of the twelve, was impeached by the Commons for his opinion

IO

7. The king and the parliament now falling out, are just as when there is foul play offered betwixt gamesters; one snatches the other's stake, they seize what they can of one another's. 'Tis not to be asked whether it belongs not to the king to do this or that: before, when there was fair play, it did, but now they will do both what is most convenient for their own safety. If two fall to scuffling, one tears the other's band, the other tears his; when they were friends they were quiet, and did1 no such thing; they Io let one another's bands alone.

ΙΟ

8. The king calling his friends from the parliament, because he had use of them at Oxford, is as if a man had use of a little piece of wood, and he runs down into

1 They were quiet, and did, H. 2] and were quiet and did, H. The second

'and' is written over the original 'they.'

in favour of ship-money, and was taken from his seat to prison by black-rod 'which,' says Whitelock, ' struck a great terror in the rest of his brethren.' Memorials, p. 40. Their turn came next, p. 47.

...

1. 11. The king calling his friends &c.] In 1643 the King . summoned all the members of both Houses of Parliament (except only such as, having command in His Majesty's armies, could not be absent from their charges) to attend upon His Majesty at Oxford, upon a day fixed in January next. Clarendon, Hist. ii. 622.

Thither, accordingly, the King's friends went, and a Parliament at Oxford was opened in due form. Meanwhile work of a different kind was in progress elsewhere; so that the Earl of Essex, in reply to a long letter from the absentees, written in the interest of peace and assuring him of the King's gracious purposes and general good-will to his subjects, was able to enclose with his curt answer a copy of 'a national covenant solemnly entered into by both the kingdoms of England and Scotland, and a declaration passed by them both together with another declaration by the kingdom of Scotland.' Clarendon,

Hist. ii. 666.

These documents, the effect of which was to bind the signatories to keep firm in their armed resistance to the King, are given by Clarendon-the first at full length, the others (passed and published about the very time that the overture for peace came from Oxford) in substance; pp. 560, 667, ff.

So true did Selden's words prove, that 'when his friends are absent, the King will be lost.'

the cellar, and takes the spiggot, in the meantime all the beer runs about the house. When his friends are absent, the king will be lost.

LXXIII.

KNIGHT'S SERVICE.

KNIGHT'S service in earnest means nothing, for the lords are bound to wait upon the king when he goes to war with a foreign enemy, with, it may be, one man and one horse; and he that does not, is to be rated so much as shall seem good to the next parliament. And what will that be? So 'tis for a private man that holds of a gentleman.

ΤΟ

LXXIV.

LAND.

I. WHEN men did let their lands under foot, the tenants would fight for their landlords, so that way they had their retribution; but now they will do nothing for them; nay, be the first, if but a constable bid them, that shall lay the landlord by the heels; and therefore 'tis vanity and folly not to take the full value.

2. Allodium is a law-word contrary to feudum, and it signifies land that holds of nobody. So regna allodiata are kingdoms that are not held in fee of any body. We 20 have no such lands in England. 'Tis a true proposition; all the land in England is held, either immediately or mediately, of the king.

1. 12. under foot] i. e. for less than their value. See Bacon, Essay 41, Of Usury: 'they would be forced to sell their means, be it lands or goods, far under foot.'

H