THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND THE KING, DOWN TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR. In a sense quite different from that in which James I thought to achieve the union of the two crowns and kingdoms, was that union destined to be accomplished; and already everything was smoothing the way thereto. The special object of the first two Stuart kings was to complete, on Tudor principles, the institutions of Church and State in England, and to extend the same to Scotland. But they had thereby awakened in the land of their birth a spirit of resistance at once aristocratic and religious. In direct opposition to the King, the Scots took up an attitude of ecclesiastical and political independence, which never was paralleled in any other monarchy. The King hoped to crush the Scottish movement by the strength of royal influence in England; but the consequences were the very opposite, for the movement spread into England also. When the Scots entered England their first and chief demand was that the King should settle the home affairs of Scotland; but they added two other demands which concerned England as much as Scotland. They pressed for the punishment of those who had caused the troubles, that is to say, of the chosen counsellors of the King in matters both spiritual and temporal, and also for the summoning of an English Parliament, in which peace might be arranged. They thus fully expressed the wishes of all the domestic opponents of Charles I: no further extension of them was necessary to imply the overthrow in England also of the political system that had hitherto prevailed. On the question how far the King would yield depended the future of his government, of his own life, and of the two nations. CHAPTER I. SUMMONING OF THE PARLIAMENT. It seemed to be going back to an ancient long-forgotten state of things, when in the English Privy Council, which continued its sittings in the King’s absence, and was anxiously discussing means of escape from existing difficulties, the Earl of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, a man of great age and strong sense, though somewhat too fond of precedent, proposed to renew at this juncture the old institution of the Magnum Concilium, which had preceded the formation of Parliament[193]. He recalled the times when the advice of the peers, as the born counsellors of the King, had roused the nation to great efforts. The objection was urged that no assembly of the kind had taken place for fully three hundred years: moreover that it would merely be leading indirectly to what the Scots had demanded, the summoning of a Parliament. Archbishop Laud did not like the prospect, but, considering the probable results of calling a Parliament, declared for the assembly of peers. The King without hesitation accepted the proposal, and on September 7 issued writs, whereby he summoned the Peers of the realm to York, ‘to take counsel with them about weighty and serious matters touching the condition of the kingdom.’