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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

3rd-Attempted arrest of time five members, 1642

3rd-Attempted arrest of time five members, 1642.

It is difficult to find in the whole of England such an instance of tyranny, perfidy and folly. The Commons refused to surrender their members, and a contest began, in which violence and weakness were on one side, law and resolution on the other. The five members had time to withdraw before the arrival of Charles. He knocked, entered, darted a look towards the place which Pynn usually occupied, and, seeing it empty, walked up to the table. He looked round the House, but the five members were nowhere to be seen. As he passed along the benches to retire, several resolute voices called out audibly, "Privilege!" A violent and sudden revulsion of feeling was the effect of the proceeding of the King, London was in arms, and the citizens were inflamed to fury by the insult offered to the House of Commons. They resolved to bring back the champions of liberty before the windows of Whitehall, and the populace hooted and shouted all day before the royal residence. The tyrant could not bear to see the triumph of those he had destined to the gallows and the quartering-block. On the day which was fixed for the return of Hampden and his friends Charles fled from the palace, which he was never to see again till he he was led through it to the scaffold.

Macaulay.