crown were much less obnoxious to the Protestants, and less agreeable to
the Catholics, than the alliance formerly projected with Spain, and were
therefore received rather with pleasure than dissatisfaction.

To all these causes we must yet add another, of considerable moment. The
house of commons, we may observe, was almost entirely governed by a set
of men of the most uncommon capacity and the largest views; men who were
now formed into a regular party, and united, as well by fixed aims
and projects, as by the hardships which some of them had undergone in
prosecution of them. Among these we may mention the names of Sir Edward
Coke, Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Robert Philips, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir
Dudley Digges, Sir John Elliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Mr. Selden, and
Mr. Pym. Animated with a warm regard to liberty, these generous patriots
saw with regret an unbounded power exercised by the crown, and were
resolved to seize the opportunity which the king's necessities offered
them, of reducing the prerogative within more reasonable compass.
Though their ancestors had blindly given way to practices and precedents
favorable to kingly power, and had been able, notwithstanding, to
preserve some small remains of liberty, it would be impossible, they
thought, when all these pretensions were methodised, and prosecuted by
the increasing knowledge of the age, to maintain any shadow of popular
government, in opposition to such unlimited authority in the sovereign.
It was necessary to fix a choice; either to abandon entirely the
privileges of the people, or to secure them by firmer and more precise
barriers than the constitution had hitherto provided for them. In this
dilemma, men of such aspiring geniuses, and such independent fortunes,
could not long deliberate: they boldly embraced the side of freedom,
and resolved to grant no supplies to their necessitous prince, without
extorting concessions in favor of civil liberty. The end they esteemed
beneficent and noble; the means, regular and constitutional. To grant or
refuse supplies was the undoubted privilege of the commons. And as all
human governments, particularly those of a mixed frame, are in continual
fluctuation, it was as natural, in their opinion, and allowable, for
popular assemblies to take advantage of favorable incidents, in order
to secure the subject, as for monarchs, in order to extend their own
authority. With pleasure they beheld the king involved in a foreign war,