this very time an order was issued to the Treasury, and to the
collectors of customs at the ports that tonnage and poundage should be
henceforth levied, just as it had been in the latter years of James I;
and that every one who refused payment should be punished.

In this way the King embarked afresh on a course of the most
unequivocal hostility towards his Parliament. But that body did not
intend to give way. It would not be deterred from drawing up a fresh
remonstrance, in which it made use of the strongest expressions to
give point to its claims. In this it was said, that whoever furthered
Popery or Arminianism, whoever collected or helped to collect tonnage
and poundage before it was granted, or who even paid it, the same was
an enemy of the English realm and of English liberty. This was a
strange combination of ecclesiastical and financial grievances and
pretensions. But the course of the transactions had established an
intimate relation between them. In regard to both the Commons again
took up as hostile an attitude towards the ministers of that day, as
they had formerly taken up towards the Duke of Buckingham. The Lord
Treasurer Weston was the special object of their hatred on both
accounts. For it was said that he was a rebellious Papist--nay even a
Jesuit:--did not his nearest kinsmen belong to that order?--and that
he was now giving the King pernicious advice, hostile to the rights of
the country and the dignity of Parliament. Proceeding on the principle
that the collection of tonnage and poundage was a breach of the
constitution, preparations were made for calling to account the
officers engaged in this process. Nor would men have been content to
stop at the subordinates; they would have reached even the highest.

In this session the moderation which had been for some time exhibited
in the former dropped out of sight: the contempt shown to the Petition
of Right had called forth a spirit of bitter, violent, and unbounded
opposition. When the King, in order to prevent the formal passing of
the Remonstrance, proceeded in the first instance to have the session
adjourned, a scene of tumult and violence was witnessed, to which the
annals of former Parliaments offered no parallel.

The Speaker of the House, Sir John Finch, one of those men who had
passed over from the side of the Commons to that of the King,
announced to the assembled members after the opening of the sitting on
the 2nd of March, that the King adjo