and in satisfying nobody, not even himself; a king whose love was far
more dangerous than his hate, a worthy patron of a Buckingham, a Goring,
or of a Laud, but unworthy the genius of a Shaftesbury or the loyal
services of a Verney, a Montrose, or a Worcester; a king, in short,
treacherous to his friends, faithless to his word, who went to his
wedding and came to his throne with a lie on his lips,[24:1] whom, again
to use the words of Macaulay,[24:2] "no law could bind, and whose whole
government was one system of wrong," of whom even the conservative and
partial Hallam is forced to admit[24:3] that "it would be difficult to
name any violation of law he had not committed." Even the famous
Petition of Right, to which some nine years previously, in 1628, he had
given a solemn, though reluctant, consent, had been ruthlessly violated.
Taxes had been levied by the Royal authority; patents of monopoly had
been granted; the course of justice had been tampered with, and judges
arbitrarily deposed; troops had been billeted upon the people; old
feudal usages had been revived for the express purpose of harassing and
defrauding the citizens; and, as if to exhaust every means to sap the
loyalty and wear out the patience of the people, Puritans of every shade
of opinion had not only been silenced but relentlessly persecuted, while
High Church bishops preached passive obedience, declaring the persons
and the property of subjects to be at the absolute disposal of the
sovereign, and in the name of religion inaugurating a systematic attack
on the rights and liberties of the nation.

The people whose representatives a quarter of a century previously, in
1604, had met the insolent claims of James the First with the dignified
rejoinder, that "your Majesty should be misinformed if any man should
deliver that the kings of England have any absolute power in themselves
either to alter religion, or to make any laws concerning the same,
otherwise than in temporal causes by consent of Parliament,"[25:1] were,