Laud proposed that the council should recommend to the king the calling of a Parliament. At the same time, they passed a resolution that, in case the Parliament "should prove peevish, and refuse to grant supplies, they would sustain the king in the resort to extraordinary measures." This was regarded as a threat, and did not help to prepossess the members favorably in regard to the feeling with which the king was to meet them. The king ordered the Parliament to be elected in December, but did not call them together until April. In the mean time, he went on raising an army, so as to have his military preparations in readiness. He, however, appointed a new set of officers to the command of this army, neglecting those who were in command before, as he had found them so little disposed to act efficiently in his cause. He supplied the leader's place with Strafford. This change produced very extensive murmurs of dissatisfaction, which, added to all the other causes of complaint, made the times look very dark and stormy. [Sidenote: Meeting of Parliament.] [Sidenote: The king's speech.] The Parliament assembled in April. The king went into the House of Lords, the Commons being, as usual, summoned to the bar. He addressed them as follows: "My Lords and gentlemen,--There was never a King who had a more great and weighty Cause to call his People together than myself. I will not trouble you with the particulars. I have informed my Lord keeper, and now command him to speak, and I desire your Attention." The keeper referred to was the keeper of the king's seals, who was, of course, a great officer of state. He made a speech, informing the houses, in general terms, of the king's need of money, but said that it was not necessary for him to explain minutely the monarch's plans, as they were exclusively his own concern. We may as well quote his words, in order to show in what light the position and province of a British Parliament was considered in those days. "His majesty's kingly resolutions," said the lord keeper, "are seated in the ark of his sacred breast, and it were a presumption of too high a nature for any Uzzah uncalled to touch it. Yet his Majesty is now pleased to lay by the shining Beams of Majesty, as Phœbus did to Phaeton, that the distance between Sovereignty and Subjection should not bar you of that filial freedom of Access to his Person and Counsels; only let us beware how, with the Son of Clymene, we aim not at the guiding of the Chariot, as if that were the only Testimony of Fatherly Affection; and let us remember, that though the King sometimes lays by the Beams and Rays of Majesty, he never lays by Majesty itself." [Sidenote: Address of the lord keeper.] [Sidenote: Grievances.] [Sidenote: Messages.]