grievous tyranny than Charles's
most arbitrary rule, and the downfall of the church seen to make room
only for a sectarian despotism as intolerable as the Laudian. The
natural inference might be that both conceptions of government had much
to support them, that they were bound sooner or later to come into
collision, and that the actual individuals in the drama, including the
king himself, were rather the victims of the greatness of events than
real actors in the scene, still less the controllers of their own and
the national destiny. A closer insight, however, shows that biographical
more than abstract historical elements determined the actual course and
issue of the Rebellion. The great constitutional and religious points of
dispute between the king and parliament, though doubtless involving
principles vital to the national interests, would not alone have
sufficed to destroy Charles. Monarchy was too much venerated, was too
deeply rooted in the national life, to be hastily and easily extirpated;
the perils of removing the foundation of all government, law and order
were too obvious not to be shunned at almost all costs. Still less can
the crowning tragedy of the king's death find its real explanation or
justification in these disputes and antagonisms. The real cause was the
complete discredit into which Charles had brought himself and the
monarchy. The ordinary routine of daily life and of business cannot
continue without some degree of mutual confidence between the
individuals brought into contact, far less could relations be maintained
by subjects with a king endowed with the enormous powers then attached
to the kingship, and with whom agreements, promises, negotiations were
merely subterfuges and prevarications. We have seen the series of
unhappy falsehoods and deceptions which constituted Charles's
statecraft, beginning with the fraud concerning the concessions to the
Roman Catholics at his marriage, the evasions with which he met the
Petition of Right, the abandonment of Strafford, the simultaneous
negotiation with, and betrayal of, all parties. Strafford's reported
words on hearing of his desertion by Charles, "Put not your trust in
princes," re-echo through the whole of Charles's reign. It was the
degradation and dishonour of the kingship, and the personal loss of
credit which Charles suffered through these transactions--which never
appear to have caused him a moment's regret or uneasiness, but the fatal
conseque