tolerance, and placing a protestant emperor on the throne, though he received the palsgrave kindly, gave him no immediate hope of restoration. The English ambassador was there, pressing this vehemently on Gustavus; but the Swede told him he regarded him only as a Spaniard in disguise, and said bluntly, "Let the king of England make a league, with me against Spain. Let him send me twelve thousand men, to be maintained at his own cost, and which shall be placed entirely at my command, and I will engage to compel from both Spain and Bavaria full restoration of the palsgrave's rights."
Gustavus was perfectly right. Had Charles dealt honourably and politicly with his parliament and people, and husbanded his resources, here was the great opportunity to have re-established his sister and brother-in-law, and have had a glorious share in the victory of protestantism on the Continent. Gustavus recovered Darmstadt, Oppenheim, and Mainz, and then took up his winter quarters. Meantime, the Saxon field-marshal, von Arnim, invaded Bohemia, and took Prague, whilst the landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and duke Bernhard of Weimar, defeated several bodies of Tilly's troops in Westphalia and the Upper Rhine lands.
This sweeping reverse compelled the emperor to recall Wallenstein to the chief command; who, assembling forty thousand men at Znaim, in Bohemia, marched on Prague, and drove the Saxons not only thence, but out of Bohemia altogether. Meantime, Gustavits issuing from his winter quarters on the Rhine, directed his course to Nuremberg, and so to Donauwerth, and at Rain on the Lech fought with Tilly and the duke of Bavaria. Tilly was killed; and Gustavus advanced and took Augsburg in April, Munich on the 27th of May, and after in vain attacking Wallenstein before Nuremberg, he encountered him at Lutzen, in Saxony, and beat him, but fell himself in the hour of victory. He had, however, saved protestantism. Wallenstein lost favour after his defeat, was suspected by the emperor, and finally assassinated by his own officers. The generals of Gustavus, under the orders of Gustavus's great minister Oxeustjerna, continued the contest, and enabled the German protestant princes to establish their power, and the exercise of their religion, at the peace of Westphalia, in 1648.
Charles, shamed into some degree of co-operation, had despatched the marquis of Hamilton with six thousand men to the assistance of Gustavus; but the whole affair was so badly managed, the commissariat and general care of the men were so miserable, that the little army speedily became decimated by disease, and was of no service. Hamilton returned home, and the remains of his forces were routed under the command of the prince Charles Louis, son of the elector Frederick, in Westphalia. Frederick himself, deprived of all hope by the fall of Gustavus, only survived him about a fortnight; and thus ended the dream of the restoration of the Palatinate.
At home Charles had determined to rule without a parliament, but this necessarily drove him upon all those means of raising an income which parliament had protested against, and which must, therefore, continue to exasperate the people. Between the dissolution of the parliament, in 1629, and the summons of another, in 1640, these proceedings had wonderfully advanced the apparent cause of despotism, but the real cause of liberty; the nation had been scourged into a temper which left no means but the sword of appeasing it. The first unceremonious violation of his pledge to the public by the granting the Petition of Right, was levying as unscrupulously as ever the duties of tonnage and poundage; and the goods of all such as refused the illegal payment were immediately distrained upon and sold.
He next appointed a committee to inquire into the encroachments on the royal forests, a perfectly legitimate and laudable object, if conducted in a spirit of fairness and liberality. In all ages, gross encroachments have been made on these crown lands, and no doubt had been so extremely in the reckless reign of James. But it would seem that the commissioners proceeded in an arbitrary spirit, and relying on the power of the crown, often ruined those who resisted their decisions by the costs of law. The earl of Holland, a noted creature of the king's, was made head of this commission, and presided in a court established for the purpose. Under its operations vast tracts were recovered to the crown, and heavy fines for trespasses levied; Rockingham Forest was enlarged from a circuit of six miles to one of sixty, and the earl of Southampton was nearly ruined by the resumption of a large estate adjoining the New Forest. Even where these recoveries were made with right, they exasperated the aristocracy, who had been the great encroachers, and injured the king in their goodwill. Clarendon says, "To recompense the damage the crown sustained by the sale of old lands, and by the grant of new pensions, the old laws of the forest are revived; by which not only great fines are imposed, but great annual rents intended, and like to be settled by way of contract, which burden lighted most upon persons of quality and honour, who thought themselves above ordinary oppressions, and therefore, like to remember it with more sharpness."
Besides the tonnage and poundage, obsolete laws were revived, and other duties imposed on merchants' goods, and all who resisted were prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned. But a still more plausible scheme was hit upon for extorting money. The old feudal practice introduced by Henry II. and Edward I., of compelling all persons holding lands under the crown worth twenty pounds per annum, to receive knighthood, or to compound by a fine, had been enforced by Elizabeth and James, and was not likely to be passed over in this general inquisition after the means of income independent of parliament. All landed proprietors worth forty pounds a year were called on to accept the title of knight, and pay the fees, or were fined, and in default of payment, thrown into prison. "By this ill-husbandry," says Clarendon, "which, though it was founded in right, was most grievous from the mode of proceeding, vast sums were drawn from the subject. And no less unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot, the damage and reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men; inasmuch as, of twenty thousand pounds a year, scarcely one thousand five hundred pounds came to the king's use or account."
A great commotion was raised by the king depriving
