preparations for a "Remonstrance," which they had begun on the day
they were threatened with a dissolution.

On Saturday, while they were still occupied on the "Remonstrance,"
unexpectedly, at four o'clock, the king came to parliament, and the
commons were called up. Charles spontaneously came to reconcile himself
to parliament. The king now gave his second answer to the "Petition of
Right." He said--"My maxim is, that the people's liberties strengthen
the king's prerogative; and the king's prerogative is to defend the
people's liberties. Read your petition, and you shall have an answer
that I am sure will please you."[314] They desired to have the ancient
form of their ancestors, "Soit droit fait come il est desyre," and not
as the king had before given it, with any observation on it. Charles now
granted this; declaring that his second answer to the petition in nowise
differed from his first; "but you now see how ready I have shown myself
to satisfy your demands; I have done my part; wherefore, if this
parliament have not a happy conclusion, the sin is yours,--I am free
from it!"

Popular gratitude is at least as vociferous as it is sudden. Both houses
returned the king acclamations of joy; everyone seemed to exult at the
happy change which a few days had effected in the fate of the kingdom.
Everywhere the bells rung, bonfires were kindled, an universal holiday
was kept through the town, and spread to the country: but an ominous
circumstance has been registered by a letter-writer; the common people,
who had caught the contagious happiness, imagined that all this public
joy was occasioned by the king's consenting to commit the duke to the
Tower!

Charles has been censured, even by Hume, for his "evasions and delays"
in granting his assent to the "Petition of Right;" but now, either the
parliament had conquered the royal unwillingness, or the king was
zealously inclined on reconciliation. Yet the joy of the commons did not
outlast the bonfires in the streets; they resumed their debates as if
they had never before touched on the subjects: they did not account for
the feelings of the man whom they addressed as the sovereign. They sent
up a "Remonstrance" against the duke,[315] and introduced his mother
into it, as a patroness of popery. Charles declared, that after having
granted the famous "Petition," he had not expected such a return as this
"Remonstrance." "How acceptable it is," he afterwards said, "every man
may j