members-of-the-parliament-of-england

"Holding up his right hand, [he] said: "This hand did I put to the plow and got my living by it many years. If it would have pleased Her Highness to have pardoned it and have taken my left hand, or my life, she had dealt more favorably with me, for now I have no means to live; but God, which is the father of us all, will provide for me. I beseech you all to pray for me that I may take this punishment patiently." And so [he] laid his hand upon the block and prayed the executioner quickly to dispatch him; and so at two blows his hand was smitten off, and so, lifting up the stump, [he] said to the people, "I have left there a true Englishman's hand," and so went from the scaffold very stoutly and with a very great courage."

"So you, great lord, that with your counsel sway The burden of this kingdom mightily, With like delights sometimes may eke delay The rugged brow of careful policy."

"If any tongues more malicious, then discreet, will disable our martialists, and defame our souldiours, and then make a false conclusion, against the profession it selfe: let those malignant spirites confesse the renowmed value of our nation in the olde time, and grant (in spight of their beards) that we are the sonnes of those our Fathers, whose strength and courage in martiall actiuitie, neither Scots, French, nor Spanyards, were able to resist...And as all Souldiers of worthinesse and knowledge are to bee highly estéemed and mainteined, so are the gentlemen, and worthie people of our nation that haue pursued the defensory warres in the lowe Countrie, specially to be praised: for they haue approued that the olde English valiancy is not so extinguished in the English nation through long securitie, and corrupt idlenesse, but it is soone stirred vp to a double force, when it hath a while acquainted it selfe with the exercise of the fielde."

"England hath been accounted hitherto the most renowned kingdom for valour and manhood in all Christendom; and shall we now lose our old reputation? If we should, it had been better for England we had never been born."

"The kingdome of Benin [has] a very proper towne of that name, and an haven called Gurte. The inhabitants live in idolatry, and are a rude and brutish nation; notwithstanding that their prince is served with such high reverence, and never commeth in sight but with great solemnity, and many ceremonies: at whose death his chiefe favorites count it the greatest point of honour to be buried with him, to the end (as they vainly imagine) they may doe him service in another world."

"The cause of undertaking a work of this kind was a good will in this scribling age not to do nothing, and a disproportion in the powers of my mind, nothing of mine owne invention being able to passe the censure of mine owne judgement, much less, I presumed, the judgement of others.... If thy stomacke be so tender as thou canst not disgest Tacitus in his owne stile, thou art beholding to one who gives thee the same food, but with a pleasant and easie taste."

"STRANGER, Ere thou pass, contemplate this cannon, Nor regardless be told That near its base lies deposited the dust Of John Bradshaw; Who, nobly superior to selfish regards, Despising alike the pageantry of courtly splendor, The blast of calumny, And the terrors of royal vengeance, Presided in the illustrious band of Heroes and Patriots, Who fairly and openly adjudged CHARLES STUARD Tyrant of England To a public and exemplary death; Thereby presenting to the amazed world, And transmitting down through applauding ages, The most glorious example Of unshaken virtue, Love of Freedom, And impartial justice, Ever exhibited on the blood-stained theatre Of human actions. Oh, Reader, Pass not on, till thou haft blest his memory! And never, never forget, That REBELLION TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD."

"This is evidently the writing not only of a man of good sense and natural good taste, but of a man of literary habits. Of the studies of Hampden little is known. But, as it was at one time in contemplation to give him the charge of the education of the Prince of Wales, it cannot be doubted that his acquirements were considerable. Davila, it is said, was one of his favourite writers. The moderation of Davila's opinions and the perspicuity and manliness of his style could not but recommend him to so judicious a reader. It is not improbable that the parallel between France and England, the Huguenots and the Puritans, had struck the mind of Hampden, and that he already found within himself powers not unequal to the lofty part of Coligni."

"The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave."

"Poor Hampden is dead, and I profess to you I have scarce strength to pronounce that word. Never kingdom received a greater loss in one subject. Never man a truer and faithfuller friend."

"Mr. John Hambden was one that Friends and Enemies acknowledged to be most Eminent, for Prudence, Piety, and Peaceable Counsels, having the most universal Praise of any Gentleman that I remember of that Age. I remember a moderate, prudent aged Gentleman, far from him but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, That if he might choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hambden."

"He was not a man of many words, and rarely began the discourse, or made the first entrance upon any business that was assumed; but a very weighty speaker, and, after he had heard a full debate and observed how the House was like to be inclined, took up the argument, and shortly and clearly and craftily so stated it that he commonly conducted it to the conclusion he desired; and if he found he could not do that, he never was without the dexterity to divert the debate to another time, and to prevent the determining any thing in the negative which might prove inconvenient in the future."

"He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been made a friend, and as much to be apprehended where he was so as any man could deserve to be. And therefore his death was no less congratulated on the one party than it was condoled on the other. In a word, what was said of Cinna might well be applied to him; Erat illi consilium ad Jacimis aptum; consilio aulem, neque lingua neque manu[s] deerat; he had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischieve. His death therefore seemed to be a great deliverance to the nation."

"We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned, so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties, so easily expanding itself to the highest, so contented in repose, so powerful in action. Almost every part of this virtuous and blameless life which is not hidden from us in modest privacy is a precious and splendid portion of our national history."

"He was certainly a person of the greatest abilities of any of that Party. He had a great knowledge both in Scholarship and in the Law. He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest, speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it, as first put. He was very well read in history; and I remember the first time I ever saw that of D'Avila of the Civil Warrs of France, it was lent me under the title of Mr. Hambden's Vade mecum; and I beleive no copy was liker an originall, than that rebellion was like ours."

"The loss of Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that loves the good of his king and country, and makes some conceive little content to be at the army now he is gone... The memory of this deceased colonel is such that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and esteem."

"He was rather of reputation in his own country than of public discourse or fame in the kingdom before the business of ship-money: but then he grew the argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who and what he was that durst at his own charge support the liberty and property of the kingdom, and rescue his country from being made a prey to the Court. His carriage throughout that agitation was with that rare temper and modesty that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony."

"All his thoughts and endeavours of his life was zealously in for this cause of Gods, which he continued in all his sickness, even to his death; for all I can heere the last words he spake was to mee, though he lived six or 7 howers after I came away as in a sleepe: truly Jenny (and I know you may easily be persuaded to it) he was a gallant man, an honest man, an able man, and take all, I know nott to any man liveinge second, God now in mercy hath rewarded him."

"Mr. Hambden is a great Brother, and the very Genius of that Nation of People leads them always to oppose as well civilly as ecclesiastically all that ever Authority ordains for them; but in good faith were they right served, they should be whipt Home into their right Wits, and much beholden they should be to any that would thoroughly take Pains with them in that Kind."

"Perish may that man and his posterity that will not deny himself in the greatest part of his fortune (rather than the king shall want) to make him both potent and beloved at home, and terrible to his enemies abroad, if he will be pleased to leave those evil counsells about him, and take the wholesome advice of his great counsell the parliament."

"After he was amongst those members accused by the King of high treason, he was much altered, his nature and carriage seeming much fiercer than it did before. And without question, when he first drew his sword he threw away the scabbard; for he passionately opposed the overture made by the King for a treaty from Nottingham, and, as eminently, any expedients that might have produced an accommodation in this that was at Oxford; and was principally relied on to prevent any infusions which might be made into the earl of Essex towards peace, or to render them ineffectual if they were made; and was indeed much more relied on by that party than the general himself."

"When this Parliament began, (being returned knight of the shire for the county where he lived,) the eyes of all men were fixed on him as their Patriæ pater, and the pilot that must steer their vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. And I am persuaded his power and interest at that time was greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or, than any man of his rank hath had in any time: for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided that no corrupt or private ends could bias them."

"So in this way of writing without thinking, Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking."

"And sorrowing I to see the sommer flowers, The lively greene, the lusty lease, forlorne, The sturdy trees so shattred with the showers, The fieldes so fade, that florisht so beforne: It taught mee well, all earthly things be borne To dye the death: for nought long time may last: The sommer's beauty yeeldes to winter's blast."

"The wrathfull winter proching on apace, With blustering blasts had all ybarde the treene, And olde Saturnus, with his frosty face With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene."

"His drinke, the running streame, his cup, the bare Of his palme cloasde, his bed, the hard cold ground: To this poore life was Misery ybound."

"Crookebackt hee was, toothshaken, and blere eyed, Went on three feete, and somtyme, crept on fowre, With olde lame boanes, that ratled by his syde, His scalpe all pild, and hee with eld forlore: His withred fist still knocking at Death's dore, Fumbling, and driveling, as hee drawes his breath, For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death."

"Of justice yet must God in fine restore, This noble crowne unto the lawful heire For right will alwayes live, and rise at length, But wrong can never take deepe roote to last."

"On all counts his memory is entitled to our respect. He was a faithful public servant, a sound Tory, the vivid painter of a vivid age."

"In the same month of May [1702], Rochester issued from the Oxford University Press the first folio volume of his father Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, doing thereby a greater service to High Tory principles than any he was ever likely to do by direct intervention in politics. That epic record of great events, written by one of the chief actors, in the grave and stately speech of an elder world, has a perennial value for all Englishmen, not to be touched by the changing tides of time and faction. But when it first appeared in the early months of the reign of the Tory Queen, it was bound to have a political effect, stimulating the cult of King Charles and Martyr, stirring up anger against the Dissenters as the heirs of the Puritan fanatics, and against the Whigs as the heirs of the Roundhead rebels."

"Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason."

"He stood for strong executive government, exclusive Anglicanism and a pacific foreign policy, since he felt this would make it easier for Charles to bring "his own dominions into that temper of obedience, they ought to be in". But events were greater than the man, and Clarendon was the ironic witness of the war against the Dutch, and associated with its failure. The nation demanded a sacrifice and so did the politicians."

"At the restoration the same virtuous statesman protected the constitution against the blind or interested zeal of excessive loyalty: and, if Monk had the glory of restoring the monarchy of England, to Clarendon is ascribed the merit of re-establishing her laws and liberties. A service no less advantageous to the crown than honourable to himself; but which was numbered among the chief of those offences for which he was afterwards abandoned, sacrificed, and persecuted by his unfeeling, corrupt, and profligate master."

"I am mad in love with my Lord Chancellor, for he do comprehend and speak out well, and with the greatest easiness and authority that ever I saw man in my life. I did never observe how much easier a man do speak, when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him; for, though he spoke, indeed, excellent well, yet his manner and freedom of doing it, as if he played with it, and was informing only all the rest of the company, was mighty pretty."

"We can judge the intent of the parties only by their words."

"The truth is, his behaviour and humour was growne so insupportable to my self, and to all the world else, that I could not longer endure it, and it was impossible for me to live with it and do those things with the Parliament that must be done, or the Government will be lost."

"He was apt to talk very imperiously and unmercifully, so that his manner of dealing with people was as provoking as the hard things themselves were; but upon the whole matter he was a true Englishman and a sincere protestant, and what has passed at court since his disgrace has sufficiently vindicated him from all ill designs. In one thing it appeared that he had changed his mind much; he penned the declaration at Breda, in which the king promised indulgence and ease to tender consciences, and pursuant to that he penned a long declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs after the king was restored, which was drawn up with that prudence and temper, that by all appearance, if the king had stuck to it, both church and state had been very quickly happy; but it was observed that immediately after the duke's marriage broke out Clarendon changed his measures, and set on his own creatures to arraign that declaration in the house of commons, of which this account was given me: the bishops had stuck to him in the matter of that marriage, by letting the king know, that it could not be broken neither by the laws of God nor man, that he thereupon delivered himself up to their counsels in the affairs of the church and so did whatever they had mind to do."

"It is true he was of a jolly temper, after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation."

"If we turn to historians of the more ordinary type, the most notable name is that of Clarendon. His work suggests a comparison with Thucydides, in that he was himself a prominent actor in the events that he describes; and there are, especially in his character-sketches, passages that will bear comparison with the great Athenian master. As with Thucydides, too, banishment from his native country gave him an opportunity for calm and detached contemplation of the events through which he had lived. But there the comparison ends. The inner spirit of the two men is entirely different. Neither his double exile nor advancing years brought philosophic calm or intellectual fairness to Clarendon. He writes now as a partisan of the monarchy, now of the Church, now of his own administration, and the later books are mainly autobiographical. But none the less Clarendon's work is epoch-making in the development of English historical writing. Here the nation's story is told by a man of practical knowledge, in language well suited to the subject, and in a tone of honest conviction. For a century and a half it fixed the ideas of Englishmen with regard to the prominent actors in the great Puritan revolution. Its prestige was destroyed, as by a sledge-hammer, by the publication of Carlyle's Cromwell; but the book remains one of the foremost of English historical classics."

"Clarendon was unquestionably a lover of truth, and a sincere friend to the free constitution of his country. He defended that constitution in parliament, with zeal and energy, against the encroachments of prerogative, and concurred in the establishment of new securities necessary for its protection. He did indeed, when these had been obtained, oppose with equal determination those continually increasing demands of parliament, which appeared to him to threaten the existence of the monarchy itself: desirous, if possible, to conciliate the maintenance of public liberty with the preservation of domestic peace, and to turn aside from his country all the evils, to which those demands immediately and manifestly tended."

"I cannot think that the temperate and constitutional language of the royal declarations and answers to the house of commons in 1642, known to have proceeded from the pen of Hyde, and as superior to those on the opposite side in argument as they are in eloquence, was intended for the willing slaves of tyranny."

"Clarendon was a great historian. His profound social insight, tempered by acute penetration in analysing individual character; his lack of illusions, his scepticism, tempered by recognition of the fact of human progress even if he disliked the means which brought it about: all this fitted him to understand the conflicts of his age better than any contemporary, and most later, historians. But above all it is his style that we remember: that style which again reflects the idealised feudal society of his youth. It lacks the conversational urgency and directness, the utilitarian values, of the Parliamentarian pamphlets (especially the Levellers' and Diggers') whose forthright appeal to the man in the street prepared for the prose of Bunyan and Defoe. Clarendon's prose is thoroughly conservative – stately, leisured, opulent, hospitable, with a tang of allusive humour possible because the only readers he envisages are cultured gentlemen certain of their superiority to the common herd. Like the man himself, Clarendon's style is the old world, the world of Sir Thomas Browne and Hooker, looking back to the Middle Ages: the future, in prose as in politics, lay with the ex-Parliamentarian civil servants Samuel Pepys and Andrew Marvell, and with the ex-Cromwellian soldier John Bunyan."

"I first read Clarendon at home in an old Boehm edition and then found the majestic folio edition in the public library. Through the long summer of 1927 I read it day after day. It was like wandering in a cathedral – majesty everywhere, not only in the prose but in the thought, in the almost superhuman capacity for empathy and distance which are perhaps Clarendon's greatest qualities both as man and writer."

"Clarendon displayed a political strength and rectitude rare if not unique amongst British statesmen, and by so doing made the Restoration possible... In exile he wrote the History wherein is displayed the true greatness of Clarendon: his astonishing capacity to take an even and magnanimous view of the men of his age – Cromwell as well as Charles I; his deep and equally remarkable sense of the tides and turns of political feeling not only in Parliament but in the nation at large. Few men have possessed larger or better judgments when confronted with critical political issues. Few, if any, can doubt that Clarendon is one of Britain's greatest men."

"The most unpopular Ministers in England, were the Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Robert Walpole, during their respective Administrations; the former a true, a steady, and equal Friend to a limited Monarchy, and the just civil Rights of the People; and the latter the best commercial Minister this Country ever had, and the greatest Promoter of its real Interests."

"Eminent as he was in council, it is as the historian of his time that Clarendon will be ever remembered. His book has its faults and limitations, no less than the masterpieces of Thucydides and Tacitus. Those who look upon history as a mere means of strengthening the Whig position will doubtless convict Clarendon of monstrous partiality, and it may be confessed that he thought it no part of his duty to look back upon events with the eyes of a Roundhead. It has been pointed out that he had little sense of natural scenery or of history's dramatic elements. He did not set the persons of his drama against any background, natural or artificial. His world has not houses, nor courts, nor fields. The personages of his drama seem to move hither and thither in vast, vacant spaces. He was interested supremely in men, not things, in the conflict of wills and the passions of the mind. Above all, he was interested in character. History for him was ‘character in action,’ and as he had known all the actors in the drama which unfolded itself before his eyes, and in which he had played a foremost part, he could measure their motives and discern their traits."

"[H]e spake well, his style had no flaw in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he sometimes shewed more wit than discretion."

"He many times cast himself upon the ground, with a desperate and obstinate resolution to rest there till the morning, that he might shift with less torment, what hazard soever he run."

"[H]e was a man that knew England well, and was lawyer good enough to be an able chancellor, and was certainly a very incorrupt man."

"King and minister held fundamentally different views as to religious policy. Charles II desired to make toleration for Catholics and Nonconformists an integral part of the restoration settlement, partly because it seemed essential to the peace of the nation, and partly because he was a Catholic at heart. In the Church as in the State, Clarendon's one aim was to re-establish the state of things which existed before the war began. The Church was to be restored unconditionally as well as the monarchy. This policy the minister successfully carried out. In a few months, almost before the King realised what was happening, the bishops were in possession of their old power, and the Catholics and Nonconformists were under their feet again... In political as in religious matters Clarendon was more conservative than his master, and this conservatism had been increased by the fourteen years he had passed out of England... He never realised the new conditions the Rebellion had created, or the new forces which had grown up during the Interregnum. And, above all, he failed to appreciate the change which had taken place in the position of the House of Commons."