er shameful
impositions, our houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned. Then was the
steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men.
Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls.
Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn,
to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery of Laud, to curse under our
breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly
said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his
thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts
as much slaves as ourselves. To sneer at a Romish pageant, to miscall a
lord's crest, were crimes for which there was no mercy. These were all
the fruits which we gathered from those excellent laws of the former
Parliament, from these solemn promises of the king. Were we to be
deceived again? Were we again to give subsidies, and receive nothing but
promises? Were we again to make wholesome statutes, and then leave
them to be broken daily and hourly, until the oppressor should have
squandered another supply, and should be ready for another perjury? You
ask what they could desire which he had not already granted. Let me
ask of you another question. What pledge could he give which he had not
already violated? From the first year of his reign, whenever he had need
of the purses of his Commons to support the revels of Buckingham or the
processions of Laud, he had assured them that, as he was a gentleman
and a king, he would sacredly preserve their rights. He had pawned
those solemn pledges, and pawned them again and again; but when had
he redeemed them? 'Upon my faith,'--'Upon my sacred word,'--'Upon the
honour of a prince,'--came so easily from his lips, and dwelt so short
a time on his mind that they were as little to be trusted as the 'By the
hilts' of an Alsatian dicer.

"Therefore it is that I praise this Parliament for what else I might
have condemned. If what he had granted had been granted graciously and
readily, if what he had before promised had been faithfully observed,
they could not be defended. It was because he had never yielded the
worst abuse without a long struggle, and seldom without a large bribe;
it was because he had no sooner disentangled himself from his troubles
than he forgot his promises; and, more like a villainous huckster than a
great king, kept both the prerogative and the large price which had been
paid to him to forego it; it w