Parliament met March 21, 1681. Of its short existence of eight days, three were consumed in formalities, the choice of a Speaker, and other preliminaries. The course of the action of the members was predetermined. They were to insist on the banishment and exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession. The impeachment was to be proceeded with of Fitz-Harris, who was imprisoned and awaiting trial, on an information of Everard, for being the author of a treasonable libel; it was understood, or at least expected, that the Duchess of Portsmouth and others of the Court would be implicated in his confession. The Lords voted that he should be proceeded against at Common Law, by which decision the Commons were craftily involved in a struggle for privilege and power with the Peers, who were also less impatient than themselves to carry the Exclusion Bill, the Lower House resolving that “it is the undoubted right of the Commons in parliament assembled to impeach before the Lords in parliament any Peer or Commoner for treason or any other crime or misdemeanour; and that the refusal of the Lords to proceed in parliament upon such impeachment is a denial of justice and a violation of the constitution.”[26] This squabble between the two branches of the legislature exactly answered the king’s occasions; he made this a pretence for again dissolving the parliament, thus saving his brother and the Duchess of Portsmouth from the designs of the Commons. As it was, Charles coolly dismissed them as impracticable and useless, telling them, “he perceived there were great heats between the Lords and Commons, and their beginnings had been such as he could expect no good success of this parliament, and therefore thought fit to dissolve them.” This was on the 28th of March. On this point the Rev. J. W. Ebsworth, M.A., who has edited the “Bagford Ballads,” which illustrate the last years of the Stuarts, remarks-- “Had they been in London, there can be no doubt they would have resisted, calling the City to support them, and voted themselves permanent, to the defiance of the King and a commencement of civil war. He saw their plan, and conquered them.” It was the lesson of “forty-one” to be taught again, as was prophetically hinted by “the ghost of the late Parliament to the New One to meet at Oxford.” In reference to the tyranny of the Commons, as opposed to the absolutism of the Crown, we find a _Loyal Poem_, entitled-- “THE PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED AT OXFORD. MARCH 28, 1681. “Under five hundred kings Three Kingdoms grone: Go, Finch,[27] Dissolve them, Charles is on the throne, And by the grace of God, will reign alone. “The Presbyterians, sick of too much freedom, Are ripe for Bethle’m, it’s high time to bleed ’em, The Second Charles does neither fear nor need ’em. “I’ll have the world know that I can dissipate Those _Impolitick Mushrooms of our State_, ’Tis easier to _dissolve_ than to _create_.