present themselves, and from them, broken and mutilated though they be, will be deduced immutable laws which it is not possible for error to withstand. It is amongst such fragments and relics that the present volume must take its place. It is a plank saved from a wreck; but whoever will consider and study it, will find, that it contains a clue to the nature of the whole of which it is but a part.

With the exception of some few single speeches, and the brief minutes in the journals, we have little to which we may appeal, with any thing like an assurance of its fidelity, as a representation of the actual proceedings of the long parliament. The feeling of the house was against allowing any one to record what took place. Rushworth, the clerk-assistant, was prohibited from writing any thing but what was usually entered on the journal, and even the practice of members taking notes was discouraged, and, on special occasions, was controlled or put a stop to. The present volume, in its accounts of the cases of lord Digby and sir Edward Deering, bears testimony to the perils which environed members who dared to publish their speeches without leave of the house.

The notes now published are written upon sheets, or parts of sheets, of foolscap paper, so folded as to be placed conveniently on the knee, and carried in the pocket. With three exceptions, consisting of notes taken in committees, they are written in pencil. They are full of abrupt terminations, as if the writer occasionally gave up the task of following a rapid speaker who had got

beyond him, and began his note afresh. When they relate to resolutions of the house, they often contain erasures, alterations, and other marks of the haste with which the notes were jotted down, and of the changes which took place in the subject-matter during its progress towards completion. On several important occasions, and especially in the instance of the debate on the protestation, the confusion and irregularity of the notes give evidence (as I have remarked at p. 66,) to the excitement of the house; and when the public discord rose higher, the notes become more brief and less personal, and speeches are less frequently assigned to their speakers, either from greater difficulty in reporting, or from an increased feeling of the danger of the times and the possible use which might be made of notes of violent remarks. On several of the sheets there are marks evidently made by the writer's pencil having been forced upwards suddenly, as if by some one, in a full house, pressing hastily against his elbow whilst he was in the act of taking his note.

These minute circumstances constitute undesigned and most valuable marks of genuineness, and the character of the handwriting, as well as the orthography, (which latter is preserved in the following impression,) are further and corroborating evidences that these notes are of the period assumed, and are actual memoranda made in the house during the progress of the businesses to which they relate.

No writer's name, nor any thing which indicates the

writer, appears in the MSS., but they have long formed part of a very large collection of family papers preserved at Claydon-house in Buckinghamshire, the seat of the family of Verney. Two members of that family sat in the long parliament; sir Edmund Verney, knight, a gentleman of the privy chamber and knight marshal, who was member for Wycombe, and his eldest son, sir Ralph Verney, knight, member for Aylesbury. These notes were at one time attributed to sir Edmund Verney; but a comparison of handwriting places it beyond all possibility of dispute, that they were not written by sir Edmund, and renders it equally clear that they were written by sir Ralph. This fact is so entirely incontrovertible that the notes are assigned to sir Ralph Verney without question or hesitation.

It is proposed at a future time to publish a selection from the valuable letters of sir Edmund Verney, sir Ralph, and several other members of the same family, which will afford an opportunity for throwing together the materials which exist for biographical notices both of the father and the son. In expectation of that opportunity, I will at present only add a few sentences in reference to their position in the political struggles of the period, which may have influenced sir Ralph a little in his work of taking

notes.

Sir Edmund Verney's offices in connexion with the royal household attached him personally to the service of the crown, and thus placed him, in public affairs, in a

0

position of peculiar difficulty, for in many respects his own opinions and predilections were in direct opposition to those of his royal master. Sir Edmund was one of that numerous party of English gentlemen who dreaded the restoration of the supremacy of Rome as the greatest of all possible calamities. In the then existing state of the country, two circumstances excited their alarm and indignation: i. The Romish tendency of the ceremonial innovations of the "church papists," and, ii. The harsh sentences by which the star-chamber, the high-commission, and the ecclesiastical courts endeavoured to enforce religious uniformity. It was the object of the great party to which I have alluded to remedy these grievances, i. By removing from the service of the king those semi-popish counsellors by whom he was surrounded through the influence of the queen, and, ii. By transferring the temporal authority of the bishops to the church at large. But, whilst such were sir Edmund Verney's aims as a politician, and a member of parliament, a conscientious feeling of personal duty attached him individually to the service of his royal master. Although "known," as principal Baillie remarks,a

66

to be a lover of our nation," he followed Charles into the field against the covenanting Scots, and overwhelmed his family with anxiety by daring all hazards to defeat the army which they brought against their sovereign. In like manner, although he remained in the house

Baillie's Letters and Journals, i. 215. Laing's edit.

of commons, and acted with the popular party, until war became almost inevitable, no sooner did the king summon his adherents to York than sir Edmund obeyed the call. "I do not like the quarrel,' he remarked to Hyde the future lord Clarendon, “and do heartily wish the king would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and in gratitude to follow my master. I have eaten his bread, and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him; and choose rather to lose my life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things which are against my conscience to preserve and defend: for, I will deal freely with you, I have no reverence for the bishops for whom this quarrel subsists." a

The melancholy forebodings of this honourable and chivalrous gentleman, " a man," says Clarendon, " of great courage" and " of a cheerful and generous nature,” were too soon realised. He raised the king's standard at Nottingham on the 22d of August 1642, and fell bravely fighting in its defence at Edgehill on the following 23d October. The hand which grasped the standard was severed from his body, and was afterwards found on the field of battle, with some rings upon the fingers, which still remain in the possession of sir Harry Verney.

Sir Ralph Verney's political opinions were of the same