ace,
economy, and arbitrary taxation were to solve the great problem of his
policy, how to get money, yet not account for it. Not that Charles cared
for money in itself, or had far-reaching projects of tyranny (he failed
to enter into Stafford's scheme); but he had inherited a boundless
egoism, and content with his own petty self, had little sympathy with
the dead heroism of the Tudor age, none at all with the nascent ardor of
democracy. The extension of the ship-tax to the inland counties was met
by Hampden's passive resistance (1637); Laud's attempt to Anglicize the
Scottish Church, by the active resistance of the whole northern nation.
Once more Charles had to call a Parliament; two met in 1640--the Short
Parliament, which lasted but three weeks, and the Long, which outlasted
Charles.

It met to pronounce Stafford's doom; and his plot with the army
detected, Charles basely sacrificed his loyal servitor, his own kingly
word, to fears for the queen's safety; no act weighed heavier on him
afterward. The same signature that sent Stafford to the block gave
assent to a second bill, by which the existing Parliament might not be
dissolved without its own consent. That pledge, as extorted by force,
Charles purposed to disregard; and during his visit to Edinburgh, in the
autumn of 1641, he trusted by lavish concessions to bring over the Scots
to his side. Instead, he got entangled in dark suspicions of plotting
the murder of the covenanting lords, of connivance even in the Ulster
massacre. Still, his return to London was welcomed with some enthusiasm,
and a party was forming in the Commons itself, of men who revolted from
the sweeping changes that menaced both church and state. Pym's "Grand
Remonstrance" justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the
"Grand Remonstrance" by his attempt to arrest the five members (January
4, 1642); but that ill-stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an
impending impeachment of the queen herself. On August 22d he raised the
royal standard at Nottingham; and the four years civil war commenced, in
which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of physical courage, and which
resulted at Naseby in the utter annihilation of his cause (June 14,
1645).

No need here to track him through plot and counterplot with Catholics,
Presbyterians, and Sectaries, with the Scots and the Irish, with the
Parliament and the Army; enough that, quitting his last refuge, Oxford,
he surrendered himself on May