g to the Forster-Browning Life, "There is no doubt
that a close correspondence with the Scotch commissioners, headed by
Lords Loudon and Dumferling, was entered into under the management of
Pym and Hampden. Whenever necessity obliged the meetings to be held in
London, they took place at Pym's house in Gray's Inn Lane." In the talk
between these men the political situation in England at the time from
the point of view of the liberal party is brought vividly before the
reader.

There has been no Parliament in England for ten years, hence the people
have had no say in the direction of the government. The growing
dissatisfaction of the people at being thus deprived of their rights
focussed itself upon the question of "ship-money." The taxes levied by
the King for the maintainance of a fleet were loudly objected to upon
all sides. That a fleet was a necessary means of protection in those
threatening times is not to be doubted, but the objections of the people
were grounded upon the fact that the King levied these taxes upon his
own authority. "Ship-money, it was loudly declared," says Gardiner, "was
undeniably a tax, and the ancient customs of the realm, recently
embodied in the Petition of Right, had announced with no doubtful voice
that no tax could be levied without consent of Parliament. Even this
objection was not the full measure of the evil. If Charles could take
this money without the consent of Parliament, he need not, unless some
unforeseen emergency arose, ever summon a Parliament again. The true
question at issue was whether Parliament formed an integral part of the
Constitution or not." Other taxes were objected to on the same grounds,
and the more determined the King was not to summon a Parliament, the
greater became the political ferment.

[Illustration: Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford]

At the same time the religious ferment was centering itself upon
hatred of Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was to silence
opposition to the methods of worship then followed by the Church of
England, by the terrors of the Star Chamber. The Puritans were smarting
under the sentence which had been passed upon the three pamphleteers,
William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick, who had expressed their
opinions of the practises of the church with great outspokenness. Prynne
called upon pious King Charles "to do justice on the whole Episcopal
order by which he had been robbed of the love of God and of his pe