rnment as much as
"eminent citizens" nowadays, is said to have told the king, "If your
majesty had many such Chambers, you would soon have no Chamber left to
rest in." The merchant was tried before the "commissioners" at the
Star-Chamber, and fined L2,000, and condemned to make a "submission
for his great offence,"[28] which the stout Puritan refused to do, and
was kept in prison till the Court of King's Bench, faithful to the
law, on Habeas Corpus, admitted him to bail: for which they were
reprimanded. Laud and all the ecclesiastical members of the
"commission" wished his fine L3,000.

[Footnote 28: 3 St. Tr. 373; Franklyn, 361; 2 Hallam (Paris, 1841), 6
_ac etiam_ 13; 2 Mrs. Macaulay, 16, 45, 65.]

5. In his place in Parliament in 1629, Sir John Eliot, one of the
noblest men in England's noblest age, declared that "the Council and
Judges had all conspired to trample underfoot the liberties of the
subject." Gentlemen, the fact was as notorious as the advance of the
Slave Power now is in America. But a few days after the king (Charles
I.) had dismissed his refractory Parliament, Eliot, with Hollis, Long,
Selden, Strode, and Valentine, most eminent members of the commons,
and zealous for liberty and law, was seized by the king's command and
thrown into prison. The Habeas Corpus was demanded--it was all in
vain, for Laud and Strafford were at the head of affairs, and the
priests and pliant Judges in Westminster Hall--Jones was one of
them--clove down the law of the land just as their subcatenated
successors did in Boston in 1851. The court decreed that they should
be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and not released until
making submission and giving security for good behavior. Eliot was
fined L2,000, Hollis and Valentine in smaller sums. Eliot--the brave
man--refused submission, and died in the Tower. Thus was the attack
made on all freedom of speech in Parliament![29]

[Footnote 29: 3 St. Tr. 293; 1 Rushworth; 2 Hallam, 2; 2 Parl. Hist.
488, 504; Foster's Eliot, 100; 2 Mrs. Macaulay, ch. i. ii.]

6. In 1630, the very year of the first settlement of Boston, on the
4th of June, Rev. Dr. Alexander Leighton was brought before the Court
of High Commission, in the Star-Chamber, to be tried for a seditious
libel. He had published "An Appeal to the Parliament, or a Plea
against Prelacy," a work still well known, remonstrating against
certain notorious grievances in church and State, "to the end the
Parliament might t