The system of Charles I consisted in making the royal prerogative the basis of government. He had no military forces however which he could employ to secure that object, such as at this time were used in France to maintain the supreme authority: on the contrary, foreigners were surprised to see how completely the King was in the hands of his people; that there were hardly any fortresses to which he could fly for safety in time of need; that everything depended on the laws and their interpretation. This was just what gave importance to the fact that some of the heads of the judicial body, and those too the very men who had formerly belonged to the Parliamentary party, such as Noy and Littleton, now became champions of the prerogative. Their change may have been due to altered convictions and lawyer-like attachment to one side, as there was much found in the laws which could be urged in favour of their present view; or it may have arisen from slavish ambition, animated by the desire to obtain the highest offices. Many persons in England as well as in France, and with the same zeal which was shown in that country, espoused the idea of the sovereignty of the crown; they thought that it was older than all Parliaments, and was acknowledged in the laws. From the duty of defending and ruling the kingdom they inferred the right of the King to demand from his subjects the means of fulfilling that duty. All the provisions of Magna [A.D. 1637.] Charta, or of the laws of Edward I to the contrary, or the doctrines of law-books, which in fact contained much that was indefinite and dependent upon the circumstances of the time, were of no account in their eyes in comparison with this right. And while the advocates of these views thus had a position which could be regarded as legal, the administration had already found in the Lord Deputy of Ireland a man who had the will and the capacity to develop government by prerogative to its full proportions. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had never wavered for a moment, so conducted the government of the Church as to uphold the King’s prerogative of supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. He appeared to aim at establishing, or rather, properly speaking, already to possess in substance a British patriarchate, such as that which long ago in Constantinople had stood beside the throne of the Greek emperors, and had promoted their views. Although different in procedure, and in the foundation on which they rested, these efforts had a general coincidence with the policy which was being carried out in other great monarchies in the name of the sovereign by ambitious ministers, obsequious tribunals, and devoted bishops. Where in England was the power which could have resisted it? In order to realise the dull dissatisfaction and the despair of the mother-country which was spreading in consequence, we must recollect that the colonisation of New England was due to emigration from English shores. Even at an earlier