reatly increased their confidence and their power,
and the king found, for some months afterward, that instead of being
satisfied with the concessions he had made, they were continually
demanding more. The more he yielded, the more they encroached. They
grew, in a word, bolder and bolder, in proportion to their success.
They considered themselves doing the state a great and good service by
disarming tyranny of its power. The king, on the other hand,
considered them as undermining all the foundations of good government,
and as depriving him of personal rights, the most sacred and solemn
that could vest in any human being.

It will be recollected that on former occasions, when the king had got
into contention with a Parliament, he had dissolved it, and either
attempted to govern without one, or else had called for a new
election, hoping that the new members would be more compliant. But he
could not dissolve the Parliament now. They had provided against this
danger. At the time of the trial of Strafford, they brought in a bill
into the Commons providing that thenceforth the Houses could not be
prorogued or dissolved without their own consent. The Commons, of
course, passed the bill very readily. The Peers were more reluctant,
but they did not dare to reject it. The king was extremely unwilling
to sign the bill; but, amid the terrible excitements and dangers of
that trial, he was overborne by the influences of danger and
intimidation which surrounded him. He signed the bill. Of course the
Commons were, thereafter, their own masters. However dangerous or
destructive the king might consider their course of conduct to be, he
could now no longer arrest it, as heretofore, by a dissolution.

He went on, therefore, till the close of 1641, yielding slowly and
reluctantly, and with many struggles, but still all the time yielding,
to the resistless current which bore him along. At last he resolved to
yield no longer. After retreating so long, he determined suddenly and
desperately to turn back and attack his enemies. The whole world
looked on with astonishment at such a sudden change of his policy.

The measure which he resorted to was this. He determined to select a
number of the most efficient and prominent men in Parliament, who had
been leaders in the proceedings against him, and demand their arrest,
imprisonment, and trial, on a charge of high treason. The king was
influenced to do this partly by the advice of the queen, and o