The work of Pym and Hampden is conspicuous at the beginning of the Long Parliament. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts are abolished. Ship-money and all enforced taxation unauthorised by parliament are declared illegal. Oliver Cromwell’s motion for annual parliaments is amended into an act for triennial parliaments to be called with or without royal summons. Strafford--the only strong minister Charles had--perished on Tower Hill in May, both Pym and Hampden supporting impeachment instead of attainder, and voting for the fallen minister to be allowed the use of counsel at his trial. That Strafford was a criminal and a traitor ready to use his Irish army for the suppression of the English parliament Pym had no doubt. Still Charles would not admit the position lost, and still struggled to govern, not through parliament, but by personal rule. The death of Strafford, though approved by all supporters of the House of Commons, rallied the king’s friends. The House of Lords was no longer quite at one with the Commons in the contest. In the House of Commons a royalist party emerges to oppose Pym, and the beginning of party government is seen. Overtures are made by Pym to the queen--to be disregarded, of course; though the tide is setting towards revolution, yet Pym and Hampden are far from revolutionaries. They are willing to end the political power of the bishops by turning them out of the House of Lords, but have only moderate sympathy with the root-and-branch Puritans who would abolish episcopacy. In the Grand Remonstrance which Pym laid before the House of Commons in November, 1641, the case for the Parliament was stated with frankness, but the demands were not revolutionary. The main points were securities for the administration of justice, and insistence on the responsibility of the king’s ministers to parliament. The royalists fought the Remonstrance vigorously, and in the end it was only carried by a majority of eleven, 159 to 148. At the end of the debate the excitement was intense: “some waved their hats over their heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts, and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting the lower part on the ground.” Violence seemed inevitable, “had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it.”