in opposing arbitrary measures, shown so much eagerness and pertinacity as the Commons.  But still they had opposed those measures.  They had, at the beginning of the discontents, a common interest with the people.  If Charles had succeeded in his scheme of governing without parliaments, the consequence of the Peers would have been grievously diminished.  If he had been able to raise taxes by his own authority, the estates of the Peers would have been as much at his mercy as those of the merchants or the farmers.  If he had obtained the power of imprisoning his subjects at his pleasure, a Peer ran far greater risk of incurring the royal displeasure, and of being accommodated with apartments in the Tower, than any city trader or country squire.  Accordingly Charles found that the Great Council of Peers which he convoked at York would do nothing for him.  In the most useful reforms which were made during the first session of the Long Parliament, the Peers concurred heartily with the Lower House; and a large minority of the English nobles stood by the popular side through the first years of the war.  At Edgehill, Newbury, Marston, and Naseby, the armies of the Parliament were commanded by members of the aristocracy.  It was not forgotten that a Peer had imitated the example of Hampden in refusing the payment of the ship-money, or that a Peer had been among the six members of the legislature whom Charles illegally impeached.

Thus the old constitution of England was without difficulty re-established; and of all the parts of the old constitution the monarchical part was, at the time, dearest to the body of the people.  It had been injudiciously depressed, and it was in consequence unduly exalted.  From the day when Charles the First became a prisoner had commenced a reaction in favour of his person and of his office.  From the day when the axe fell on his neck before the windows of his palace, that reaction became rapid and violent.  At the Restoration it had attained such a point that it could go no further.  The people were ready to place at the mercy of their Sovereign all their most ancient and precious rights.  The most servile doctrines were publicly avowed.  The most moderate and constitutional opposition was condemned.  Resistance was spoken of with more horror than any crime which a human being can commit.  The Commons were more eager than the King himself to avenge the wrongs of the royal house; more desirous than the bishops themselves to restore the church; more ready to give money than the ministers to ask for it.

They abrogated the excellent law passed in the first session of the Long Parliament, with the general consent of all honest men, to insure the frequent meeting of the great council of the nation.  They might probably have been induced to go further, and to restore the High Commission and the Star-Chamber.  All the contemporary accounts represent the nation as in a state of hysterical excitement, of drunken joy.