So slipped the years away, broken only by an echo from cousin John Hampden, who refused to pay "ship-money." This ship-money meant that if you didn't pay so much--twenty shillings or ten pounds, according to the needs of the exchequer--you could be drafted into His Majesty's service and sent to sea. The money you paid was nominally to hire a substitute, but no one but King Charles and Attorney-General Noy, who fished out the precious precedent from the rag-bag of the past, knew what became of the money. Noy was a close-running mate of Archbishop Laud, who hunted heretics and cropped the ears of a thousand Puritans. Noy is described for us as a law-pedant, finding legal precedent for anything that royalty wished to do. Noy devised the ship-money scheme, and then died before his law went into effect: killed by the hand of Providence, the Puritans said, who uttered prayers of thankfulness for his taking off, all of which was quite absurd, since the law lives, no matter who devised it. Rulers who wish to tax their subjects heavily should do it by indirection--say by means of the tariff. The affection in which Noy was held is shown in that he was known as Monster to the King, the domdaniel of attorneys. When he died the result of the autopsy was that "his brains were found to be two handfuls of dry dust, his heart a bundle of sheepskin writs, and his belly a barrel of soft soap." He wasn't a man at all. John Hampden was tried for refusal to pay ship-money. The trial lasted three weeks and three days. The best legal talent in England had a hand in it, and one man made a speech eleven hours long, without sipping water. The verdict went against Hampden--he must pay the twenty shillings. I believe, however, he did not; neither did John Milton, who wrote a pamphlet on the subject; neither did Oliver Cromwell. * * * * * There is a tale in that good old classic, McGuffy's Third Reader, to the effect that a man once punished one of his children, and a minute after had his own ears violently boxed by his mother, with the admonition, "You box the ears of your child, and I'll box the ears of mine!" This story, which once much delighted the rosy children of honest farmers, was told by Charles Dickens, with Oliver Cromwell in the title role. That Cromwell inherited his mother's leading traits of character, all agree. She lived to be ninety, and to the day of her death took a deep interest in political and theological history. She believed in her boy even more than she believed in God, and took a deep delight in "that heaven has used me as an instrument in bringing about His will." In her nature she combined the attributes of Quaker, Dunkard and Mennonite. She was a come-outer before her son was, and ever appealed in spirit to the God of Battles for peace.