nounced his determination to make a journey into Scotland. The Parliament saw the reach of his design, and proceeded in all haste to secure the conclusion of the treaty between the two kingdoms, and the disbanding of both armies, and to adopt other measures, made necessary at that crisis. After the king had proceeded on his journey, commissioners from Parliament followed him, ostensibly to superintend the ratification of the treaty, but really to watch his movements and to see that a good understanding was kept up with the Scotch. The result was that the Scotch became in their own view, and in fact, of more consequence than ever; and their hope of being able to impose their own presbyterian uniformity upon the English people was greatly strength

ened.

While the king was in Scotland, a bloody insurrection was commenced in Ireland. Thousands upon thousands of the Protestant population of that unhappy country were massacred by the insurgents. A chill of horror at the announcement of so great and sudden a butchery, ran through England and Scotland. If the papists in Ireland were capable of such atrocities, who could tell how soon the papists of England might strike some sudden and secret blow equally dreadful? Suspicions which history has not to this day completely removed, rested upon the king, as to some extent implicated in the plans of the Irish insurgents. The panic of affright, of horror, of indignation, which seized upon the public, prepared all minds for the most desperate measures. The king returned in haste from Scotland, having pleased the people there by his concessions, but not having gained their confidence. And his next plan was to raise an army for the suppression of the Irish rebellion, which he might afterwards use for the suppression of the English Parliament.

The house of commons being thus diverted by the progress of events from the bill for reforming the government of the church, and knowing very well that while the bishops retained their places among the lords no measure of that kind could be carried, were watching for some opportunity to effect their removal from the house of peers. Thirteen of the twenty six bishops were impeached for their share in the late unlawful canons, but the impeachment was not prosecuted. At the close of the year 1641, twelve of the bishops, alarmed at the insults which they daily experienced from the rabble, signed a paper expressing their purpose to absent themselves from their seats, and protesting against the validity of any thing that might be done in their absence. On the reception of this pa per, the lords, who had been their fast friends, were indignant, and communicated it to the commons with an expression of their displeasure. The twelve protesters were impeached of treason and confined in the Tower. Another bill for preventing clergymen from exercising temporal jurisdiction, which had passed the commons sometime before, and had lain unnoticed in the house of lords, was called up by a message from the commons. After some delay the bill was passed, and on the 14th of February, 1642, it was sanctioned by the king.

But before the date just named, and while the affair of the twelve bishops was in progress, the king had taken that fatal step which may be regarded as the commencement of the war between him and the Parliament. From the time of his return from Scotland, the commons had been suspicious that some attempt would be made to subdue them, or break them up by violence. The guard with which they had surrounded themselves on the breaking out of the Irish insurrection, had been removed; and to their repeat

ed expostulations the king had answered by offering to surround them with a guard of his own appointingthe very thing against which they were most desirous of protection. Under these alarms, they had proceeded so far as to order halberts to be brought into the house, that in case of any sudden attack, they might defend themselves. At last, on Monday the 3d of January, 1642, the first business day of that year, the king sent a sergeant at arms to the bar of the house, to demand of the speaker five of the most distinguished members of that body, and to arrest them of high treason. The proceeding was entirely irregular, dispensing with all those legal formalities without which there is no security for justice; the king had no more right to arrest any man by such a process than to kill an offender with his own hands. Of course the individuals thus demanded-one of whom was the illustrious Hampden-were not surrender ed. The house appointed four of their members—one of whom, Lord Falkland, afterwards died in battle for that monarch-to inform his majesty that the matter was of great consequence, and that they would take it into serious consideration, holding the members ready to answer any legal charge made against them. The next day, the king put himself at the head of his household guard of gentlemen pensioners, and of an armed array of some hundreds of courtiers and disbanded soldiers and officers, who had been the night before enlisted and equip ped for the undertaking; and with this force he marched from his palace of Whitehall to the door of the house of commons. Leaving his followers without, he enters with only one or two attendants. Having cast one glance towards the place where Pym was usually seated, he proceeds to the speaker's chair; the speaker drops upon his knee; the king mounts the platform; the mace,

that badge of the speaker's authority, is removed; the members are all standing uncovered; the king from the speaker's chair, but without sitting down, looks earnestly over all the benches, to discover the individuals whom he has come to seize. What a moment was that! The king himself was not deficient in personal courage, and his followers at the door were rash enough and desperate enough for any bloody work. That old chapel of St. Stephen never saw a more exciting moment. There are arms within reach of the members, and at a moment's warning the house may flash with the glitter of steel. As the king's eye traverses those benches, it is met by glances as keen and fearless as his; and many a voice that is afterwards to cheer, as with a clarion tone, the wheeling squadrons at Edgehill and at Marston Moor, can hardly suppress itself from uttering defiance. Cromwell is there

the Cambridgeshire farmer, with that ill fitted country-made coat, with that soiled neckcloth, with that slouched hat held in a hand clenched with indignation; and perhaps it is the excitement of this very moment that is waking within him the mighty energies of which the world as yet has no suspicion. The first act of violence on the part of the king or his followers-the first movement towards seizing the person of any member, will make that floor a battle-ground; and Cromwell is one so little imposed upon by the chimera of royalty, that in a fight he would strike the king himself as quick and as hard as he would strike a peasant. But the commons have had information of the king's designs and movements; and to prevent the conflict which might take place, and at the same time to baffle the king most completely, the five members whom he expected to take by force out of their seats, have been sent away. The king, not seeing them, addresses a few words to the

house, and says, "I have come to know if any of those persons that I have accused for treason are here." "I have come to tell you that I must have them wheresoever I can find them." He then calls two of the accused persons by name," John Pym! Denzil Hollis!" But there is no answer. He turns to the speaker. "Are any of those persons in the house? Do you see any of them? Where are they?" The speaker on his knees replies that, in that place, he has neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, but as the house is pleased to direct him. 66 Well," says the king after survey ing the house once more, "I see the birds are flown;" and then with a few words more about his intention of doing justice, and his expectation of their obedience, he retires, taking off his hat till he comes to the door. As he goes out, the suppressed emotions of the members break forth in the cry of Privilege! Privilege!

From that day forward, all parties saw that the controversy must soon be tried by an appeal to arms. A week afterwards the king, in defeat and shame, left his palace of Whitehall, in London, to return no more till he returned a prisoner. He retired to the palace of Hampton court, about thirteen miles distant, leaving the Parliament in possession of all the influences that centered in the metropolis. And though he continued to hold intercourse with Parliament by the exchange of messages; and though he gave his assent to several bills, and particularly to that most distasteful one for taking away the votes of bishops in the house of lords, it was done only to gain time or some other advantage; and all men knew that at whatever moment he might feel himself strong enough, all these enactments would be absolutely disregarded, or set aside as null from the beginning. Both parties were arming as fast as possible.

On the 22d of August, the king made a formal commencement of war, by setting up his standard at Nottingham.

Of course, while these measures were in progress, the good will of the Scotch nation grew more im portant to the Parliament. And the more nearly balanced the parties were in England, the more did that nation enjoy the hope of imposing their admired uniformity upon their neighbors. Their commissioners offered to mediate between the king and Parliament. The king rejected the offer; but the house of commons thanked them for their kindness, and persuaded the Scotch to send an army into Ireland against the insurgents there, which was in effect relieving England and embarrassing the king. In April, both houses united in a declaration, in which they professed that they intended "a due and necessary re formation of the government and discipline of the church," "and for the better effecting thereof speedily to have consultation with godly and learned divines." In the same declaration they promised, that they would "use their utmost endeavors to establish learned and preaching ministers, with a good and sufficient maintenance, throughout the kingdom." Thus, without promising any thing more than what all Puritans united in demanding, and without committing themselves at all for the Scotch discipline, they gave room for the promoters of that disci pline to hope for ultimate success.

In accordance with this declaration, when the Parliament, as one of the last measures before the commencement of actual hostilities, sent the king their nineteen propositions, showing, in compliance with a request of his, the sum of all their desires for the reformation and security of church and state, one of their propositions was, that he should consent to such a reformation of the church government and

liturgy, as both houses should advise, after the consultation with divines of which they had spoken in their declaration; and that he should give his best assistance for the raising of a sufficient maintenance for preaching ministers throughout the kingdom.'

In the month of May, the Scottish council, the executive government of the kingdom, sent their chancellor to London to renew the offer of mediation. The result was the same as before. The king rejected the proposal; while the Parliament gave it a favorable reception, and even wrote to the general assembly of the kirk, desiring their advice and assistance in the reformation of religion. The assembly in their reply, insist on their "desires for unity of religion, that there might be one confession of faith, one directory of worship, one public catechism, and one form of church government," throughout the British empire. They advise the Parliament to begin with a uniformity of church government; for there is no hope, they say,

till

prelacy be plucked up root and branch, as a plant which God hath not planted." The Parliament in their reply, reciprocate the assembly's desire of a religious unity, that in all his majesty's dominions there may be but one confession of faith and form of church government. But careful not to entangle themselves by pledges, they add, that "though this is hardly to be expected punctually and exactly, they hope, since they are guided by the same spirit, they shall be so directed as to cast out every thing that is offensive to God, and so far agree with the Scots and other reformed churches in the substantials of doctrine, worship, and discipline, that there may be a free communion in all holy exercises and duties of public worship, for the attaining whereof, they intend an assembly of godly and learned divines as

soon as they can obtain the royal assent." They also declare to the assembly, not that episcopacy in every sense of the word is evil, but "that this government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on the hierarchy, is evil," and that they are resolved" the same shall be taken away." They conclude with desiring their brethren of Scotland to concur with them in petitioning the king for an assembly of divines, and to send some of their own ministers whenever the assembly should be called, in order to facilitate the attainment of the uniformity so much. desired. The king on the other hand, sent a remonstrance to the Scotch council, in which he assured them that the leaders of Parliament, whatever professions they might make, were at heart as much opposed to presbyterianism as Scotch were to episcopacy. But the king was one of those unfortunate persons, who are not believed even though they speak the truth.

Whatever may have been the intentions of Parliament respecting the presbyterianism on which their brethren of Scotland were insisting, they had no intention of retaining the established episcopacy of England. Accordingly, in the month of September, they redeemed their pledge on that point by passing a bill "for the utter abolishing and taking away of all archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries," &c. Unlike the former bill which had been dropped in the house, it made no provision for the introduction of a new system, but left that matter open for subsequent legislation. And that there might be time to provide a substitute, the abolition of the existing system was not to take effect till the 5th of November, 1643. The way was thus open for Scotland to unite with the Parliament, if they were willing to give

their aid on any terms short of actually imposing their uniformity on the people of England.

The battle of Edgehill on the Lord's day, October 23d, when the king, marching from the north towards London with fifteen thousand men, met the earl of Essex with nearly an equal force-was the first encounter of armies in the war, towards which all events had so long been tending. That Sabbath evening, four thousand Englishmen lay dead upon the bloody field. And the blood of thousands more must needs be shed, sometimes in battle, sometimes upon the scaffold, some times with a more dreadful atrocity under the gallows, before the axiom, that England with all its people was made for the king, could be superseded by the axiom, that England with its king and all its institutions was made for the people.

Such was England two hundred years ago the foundations of all her institutions shaken as by an earthquake-her ancient government resolved into warring elements -armies garrisoning her cities, or

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quartered upon her villages-the blood of fratricidal battles staining her fields and mingling with her streams-perplexity, distrust, anx iety, fear and wrath, in the palaces of her nobles and the cottages of her peasantry. War, civil war, had begun with all its horrors for the present, and all its perils for the future. What was to be the result of the conflict-whether new and adequate barriers were to be erected against absolute power; or whether laws, liberties, charters, were all to be overthrown in some disastrous battle-whether the ecclesiastical polity of the state was to be so reformed, as that the church with its endowments, instead of existing only to surround the throne with the pomp of a compliant hierarchy, should exist only for the moral instruction and spiritual illumination of the whole people; or whether the pure gospel was to be trampled down, and lost to England, in the triumphant return of dark and cruel superstitions-none could foretell from all the omens of that stormy sky.

THE History of Yale College by President Clap, published in 1766, contains the fullest account that we have seen, of Elihu Yale, the eminent benefactor of that institutionwith whose likeness we have embellished this number of the New Englander.

President Clap says: Presently after this, (in 1718), the Collegiate School at New Haven received sundry very large and generous donations, which were very acceptable at this difficult time. The greatest of which was from the Honorable ELIHU YALE, of London, governor of the East India Company. He was heir to a manor in Wales, of the value

of five hundred pounds sterling, per annum, besides the vast treasures he got by his personal industry while he was in the East Indies. The paternal estate (as it was said) being entailed to the male heir of the family, and he having no son, but three daughters, sent to his first cousin and next male heir, Mr. John Yale of New Haven, with whom he had been formerly acquainted in England, to send him one of his sons, to inherit the paternal estate. Accordingly, in the year 1712, he sent his son, Mr. David Yale, to London, who upon his return, was graduated at this College, 1724.

These things brought Governor