"Let us sit in silence,"
quoth Sir Dudley Digges, "we are miserable, we know not what to do!"
Nay, cried Sir Nathaniel Rich, "we _must_ now speak, or forever hold our
peace." Then did grim Mr. Prynne and Sir Edward Coke mingle their words
with sobs, while there were few dry eyes in the House. Presently they
found their voices, and used them in a way that wrung from the startled
king his formal assent to the Petition of Right. [Sidenote: Remarkable
scene in the House of Commons]
There is something strangely pathetic and historically significant [6]
in the emotion of these stern, fearless men. The scene was no less
striking on the 2d of the following March, when, "amid the cries and
entreaties of the Speaker held down in his chair by force," while the
Usher of the Black Rod was knocking loudly at the bolted door, and the
tramp of the king's soldiers was heard in the courtyard, Eliot's clear
voice rang out the defiance that whoever advised the levy of tonnage and
poundage without a grant from Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid
those duties, was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer
of its liberties. As shouts of "Aye, aye," resounded on every side, "the
doors were flung open, and the members poured forth in a throng." The
noble Eliot went to end his days in the Tower, and for eleven years no
Parliament sat again in England.
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