e, and Laud resolved to find a permanent revenue in the
conversion of the "ship-money," till now levied on ports and the
maritime counties, into a general tax imposed by the royal will upon the
whole country. The sum expected from the tax was no less than a quarter
of a million a year. "I know no reason," Wentworth had written
significantly, "but you may as well rule the common lawyers in England
as I, poor beagle, do here"; and the judges no sooner declared the new
impost to be legal than he drew the logical deduction from their
decision. "Since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax for the
equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army:
and the same reason which authorizes him to levy an army to resist, will
authorize him to carry that army abroad that he may prevent invasion.
Moreover what is law in England is law also in Scotland and Ireland. The
decision of the judges will therefore make the king absolute at home and
formidable abroad. Let him only abstain from war for a few years that he
may habituate his subjects to the payment of that tax, and in the end he
will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his
predecessors." "The debt of the Crown being taken off," he wrote to
Charles, "you may govern at your will."

[Sidenote: John Hampden.]

But there were men who saw the danger to freedom in this levy of
ship-money as clearly as Wentworth himself. The bulk of the country
party abandoned all hope of English freedom. There was a sudden revival
of the emigration to New England; and men of blood and fortune now
prepared to seek a new home in the West. Lord Warwick secured the
proprietorship of the Connecticut valley. Lord Saye and Sele and Lord
Brooke began negotiations for transporting themselves to the New World.
Oliver Cromwell is said, by a doubtful tradition, to have only been
prevented from crossing the seas by a royal embargo. It is more certain
that John Hampden purchased a tract of land on the Narragansett. No
visionary danger would have brought the soul of Hampden to the thought
of flight. He was sprung of an ancient line, which had been true to the
House of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses, and whose fidelity had been
rewarded by the favour of the Tudors. On the brow of the Chilterns an
opening in the woods has borne the name of "the Queen's Gap" ever since
Griffith Hampden cleared an avenue for one of Elizabeth's visits to his
stately home. His grandson, John, was