"[25:2] Having thus flung their defiance in the face
of the King, the House then voted its own adjournment.
From that time events had marched quickly. Those who had played the most
prominent parts in that momentous scene, including Holles, Selden, and
Eliot, had been thrown into prison, the last-named to die there, the
first martyr to the growing cause of civil freedom and religious
liberty. In 1637, the year of the publication of Chillingworth's work,
the whole question of the right to levy taxation was revived by the
demand on the inland counties for ship-money, and the attention of the
whole country attracted to it by the trial of Hampden on his refusal to
pay same. Later in the year, Charles' attempt to alter the
ecclesiastical constitution and form of public worship in Scotland led,
first to discontent, then to riot, and finally to open rebellion. As a
direct consequence, the King, in April 1640, was compelled to call what
from its brief duration is known as the Short Parliament, in which,
thanks to the Parliamentary tactics of Hampden, the design of the Court
Party, to obtain supplies without redressing grievances, was
constitutionally thwarted. On the manifestation of its determination to
redress wrongs and to vindicate the laws, this Parliament was at once
dissolved. The end of the tyranny, however, was fast approaching. In
August of the same year the King marched northward; the Scotch crossed
the border to meet him; on their approach the disaffected English army
was well pleased to fly rather than to fight those whom they were
inclined to regard as deliverers rather than as enemies; a truce was
patched up, and to meet the critical situation the King, in November
1640, found himself compelled to summon his last and most famous
Parliament, known in history as the Long Parliament.
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