This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...one toward the other, than accompanies persons who never meant to meet but in their own defence, ... and whoever considers the acts of power and injustice in the intervals of Parliaments will not be much scandalized at the warmth and vivacity of those meetings." Moreover, the historian well indicates how the plan ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...one toward the other, than accompanies persons who never meant to meet but in their own defence, ... and whoever considers the acts of power and injustice in the intervals of Parliaments will not be much scandalized at the warmth and vivacity of those meetings." Moreover, the historian well indicates how the plan defeated itself; it made people consider the power of Parliaments to be much greater than in Clarendon's own later view it legally should have been, "since the sovereign power seemed to be compelled to that rough cure dissolution, and to determine their being, because it could not determine their jurisdiction." But Eliot had appealed to the country beyond the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel, and the first period of King Charles' reign was at an end. CHAPTER XIII THE BLINDNESS OF KING CHARLES The period now before us, from March, 1629, till April, 1640, contains the longest interval between two Parliaments known in English history. It is often called 'the period of despotism, ' but I do not imagine that Charles had, during these years, any more consciousness that he was ruling despotically than he had had before. The fact seems simply to be that, as long as he could make shift in one way or another to get money enough to live on and govern with, without driving his longsuffering people into open rebellion, there seemed to be no particular reason why he should call a Parliament at all. There were, from his point of view, a great many reasons why he should not. I suppose that he was too stupid to realize that discontent was bound to go on increasing every year, and that the bill of reckoning, when presented, would be heavier for every year of delay. The same excuse may probably be made for Laud, with whom he took frequent counsel, and not u...
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