dent to retain them, ordered their release a few days before the opening of the session.

The special object for which Parliament had been called by the King was the granting of money; but the members were in no mood to let the opportunity pass without securing from the monarch an acknowledgment of their rights in definite form. Accordingly, they appointed Sir Edward Coke, the most distinguished lawyer of the time, to draw up a petition to the King that should embody a declaration of the constitutional privileges on which they reposed their rights. The result was the famous "Petition of Right," an instrument which, in the history of English liberty, has been only second in importance to the Great Charter itself. The petition asked the King's assent to a number of propositions, the most important of which were that no loan or tax should be levied without the consent of Parliament; that no man should be imprisoned except by legal process; and that soldiers should not be quartered upon the people without the people's consent. These

propositions introduced nothing new into the Constitution. They professed simply to ask the King's approval of principles and methods that had been acknowledged and acted upon for hundreds of years. The great significance of the Petition of Right was that it designed to secure the assent of the monarch to a reign of law instead of a reign of arbitrary will. The object of Parliament was to put into 'definite form a clear expression of the King's purpose. They desired to know whether his intention was to rule according to the precedents of the English Constitution that had been taking definite form for centuries, or whether, on the contrary, he was determined to build up a system of absolutism similar to that which was very generally coming to prevail on the Continent. The petition passed the two Houses and went to the King for his approval. He gave an evasive answer.1 * Parliament was taken by surprise and seemed likely to be baffled. It was

* Numerals inserted in the course of the work refer the reader to corresponding Illustrative Notes at the end of each volume.

a crisis of supreme danger. Sir John Eliot was the first to see that if they were now to thwart the King's purpose it must be done by availing themselves immediately of the responsibility of Buckingham. He determined that the proper course was a remonstrance to the King; and it was in moving this remonstrance that his great speech was made.

On hearing the King's answer, Parliament, in great perplexity and despondency, immediately adjourned till the next day. When, on the morning of June 3, 1628, the Commons came together, "the King's answer," says Rushworth, "was read, and seemed too scant, in regard to so much expense, time, and labor as had been expended in contriving the petition. Whereupon Sir John Eliot stood up and made a long speech, and a lively representation of all grievances, both general and particular, as if they had never before been mentioned.” 2

Throughout the speech there is a compactness and an impetuosity truly remarkable. No one at all familiar with the history and condi

tion of the time, will fail to see that it was a masterly presentation of the issues at stake. It is pervaded with a tone of loyalty—even of affection-toward the King. The argument was founded on the theory that even under the best of kings, with an irresponsible form of administration, there can be no security against selfish and ambitious ministers, and that under any government whatever there can be no adequate guarantees against such abuses except in the provisions of law. The orator introduces no grievance personal to himself, though he had already twice suffered imprisonment for words spoken in debate. His entire object seems to have been to expose abuses that had oppressed the people during the ten years under Buckingham's rule, and to show how, by means of his duplicity and incompetency, the honor of the country had been sacrificed, its allies betrayed, and those necessities of the King created which gave rise to the abuses complained of in the Petition of Right.

Aside from the striking oratorical merits of the

speech and the light it throws on the all-important struggles of the time, there are two circumstances that tend to give it peculiar interest. It is the earliest parliamentary speech of real importance that has been preserved to us. The age in which it was delivered is enough to account for the antique air of the orator's style

-a style, however, which will be especially relished by all those who have learned to enjoy the quaint literary flavor of our early masters of English prose. The other circumstance of especial interest is the fact that soon after the delivery of the speech, and in consequent of it, Eliot was thrown into prison, where, after an ignominious confinement and a brutal treatment of two and a half years, he died a martyr's death. His earnest plea not only cost him his life, but it cost him a long period of ignominy that was far worse than death. But he kept the faith, and calmly underwent his slow martyrdom. The last word that he sent out from his prison was an expression of belief that upon the maintenance or the abandonment of the