The time had now arrived however, when the popular cause was to be taken up by the wealthy and powerful. John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire gentleman, refused to pay the tax of ship-money. He was not the first by many who had murmured against its levying, as an illegal act, because unsanctioned by Parliament; but he was the first to contest the question in open court. The Crown lawyers, on the other side, proved that the impost was of ancient origin, reaching as far back as the days when the Danes ravaged the English coasts in their dragon-prowed warships, and the people had contributed to the fitting-up and manning of vessels to keep them at bay. From time to time, as occasion had demanded in the interval of centuries, the tax had been revived, and dropped again when the requirement no longer existed. That this did now actively exist, the King’s party maintained; since the navy in James’s time had been criminally neglected, and the protection against foreign invasion was inadequate. The victory was to the King. Hampden was condemned, and suffered. But the victory was a losing one. Hampden was hailed as the champion of the people, and the greatest patriot of the time. Henceforth all was contention between the royal party and the popular party. No action on the part of Charles and his advisers went uncanvassed and uncontested. The spirit of religious and political freedom waxed fierce; Laud’s high churchmanship in England, Strafford’s high-handed government in Ireland, the King’s endeavour to propagate Protestantism in Ireland, and his attempt to force Episcopacy on Scotland, heaped fuel on fuel. The King’s accusation of high treason against the five members, with his command for their arrest, kindled the blaze of war. Mutual open defiance between the King and his subjects first reared its ugly head at Nottingham. Royalist and Roundhead fought a drawn battle at Edgehill, and henceforth bloodshed and strife ruled the country. Many moderate-minded men, before events reached this point, had withdrawn from the Parliamentary party. They foresaw with apprehension the lengths to which the “Reformers” were rushing; and, as it were, pausing to consider, remained to rally round the King, his truest, ablest advisers. Among these were Hyde, Lord Clarendon, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, the hero, as he has been called, of the great Chancellor’s epic.[10] And it is at this crisis that Lord Strange, not as yet Earl of Derby, first steps into prominence in the tragic scenes enacting in the drama, which only finds its parallel in the chronicles of modern times, in France, nearly a century and a half later. Footnote 10: Walpole.