This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ... Money: a formal attempt by the King, for which he had been long prepared, to form a government of the more moderate portion of the parliamentary party. I cannot believe that the death of the Earl of Bedford could alone have occasioned the failure of this intended arrangement: it is more probable that the dissensions which soon broke out in the great body of the Commons had already covertly appeared. The Parliament, although both Houses, and the vast majority of the Lower, had been previously opposed to the King, for we must not forget that even Hyde and Falkland were originally members of opposition, had now become divided into two parties, the Constitutional Reformers, and the Root and Branch Reformers: Pym and Hampden headed the latter. The Constitutional Reformers were alarmed by the attack on the Church: the Lords threw out the Bill which sought to deprive the Bishops of their Parliamentary suffrage. This was the first check that the Commons had received from the Upper House. Pym and Hampden, deserted by the Constitutional Reformers, had thrown themselves into the hands of the Puritans DEGREESRoot and Branch men. Instead of political unions, they appealed to the city apprentices, and the trained bands; mobs were hired, petitions forged, all the arts of insurgency practised. The Peers were daunted, the King frightened; Strafford was executed, the Bishops expelled the House of Lords, the House of Commons itself rendered independent of the King and its constituents by the act which made its dissolution consequent on its own pleasure. At length, by the Remonstrance and the Propositions, the very abrogation of the monarchy being attempted, the king raised his standard, and so completely had the unhappy monarch by his conduct placed the