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against Charles I., who, we may observe, may have had something to do
with the death of his father, just as Marie de Medicis may have had
something to do with the death of her husband. There was a rupture
between Charles I. and the peerage. The lords who, under James I., had
tried at their bar extortion, in the person of Bacon, under Charles I.
tried treason, in the person of Stratford. They had condemned Bacon;
they condemned Stratford. One had lost his honour, the other lost his
life. Charles I. was first beheaded in the person of Stratford. The
Lords lent their aid to the Commons. The king convokes Parliament to
Oxford; the revolution convokes it to London. Forty-four peers side with
the King, twenty-two with the Republic. From this combination of the
people with the Lords arose the Bill of Rights--a sketch of the French
Droits de l'homme, a vague shadow flung back from the depths of
futurity by the revolution of France on the revolution of England.
Such were the services of the peerage. Involuntary ones, we admit, and
dearly purchased, because the said peerage is a huge parasite. But
considerable services, nevertheless.
The despotic work of Louis XI., of Richelieu, and of Louis XIV., the
creation of a sultan, levelling taken for true equality, the bastinado
given by the sceptre, the common abasement of the people, all these
Turkish tricks in France the peers prevented in England. The aristocracy
was a wall, banking up the king on one side, sheltering the people on
the other. They redeemed their arrogance towards the people by their
insolence towards the king. Simon, Earl of Leicester, said to Henry
III., "King, thou hast lied!" The Lords curbed the crown, and grated
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