The present house of commons, being entirely composed of country gentlemen, who came into parliament with all their native prejudices about them, and whom the crown had no means of influencing, could not fail to contain a majority of these stubborn patriots.
Affairs likewise, by means of the Scottish insurrection and the general discontents in England, were drawing so near to a crisis, that the leaders of the house, sagacious and penetrating, began to foresee the consequences, and to hope that the time so long wished for was now come, when royal authority must fall into a total subordination under popular assemblies, and when public liberty must acquire a full ascendant.

By reducing the crown to necessities, they had hitherto found that the king had been pushed into violent counsels, which had served extremely the purposes of his adversaries: and by multiplying these necessities, it was foreseen that his prerogative, undermined on all sides, must at last be overthrown, and be no longer dangerous to the privileges of the people.

Whatever, therefore, tended to compose the differences between king and parliament, and to preserve the government uniformly in its present channel, was zealously opposed by these popular leaders; and their past conduct and sufferings gave them credit sufficient to effect all their purposes.
The house of commons, moved by these and many other obvious reasons, instead of taking notice of the king's complaints against his Scottish subjects, or his applications for supply, entered immediately upon grievances; and a speech which Pym made them on that subject was much more hearkened to, than that which the lord keeper had delivered to them in the name of their sovereign.

The subject of Pym's harangue has been sufficiently explained above; where we gave an account of all the grievances, imaginary in the church, more real in the state, of which the nation at that time so loudly complained.[*] The house began with examining the behavior of the speaker the last day of the former parliament; when he refused, on account of the king's command, to put the question: and they declared it a breach of privilege.

They proceeded next to inquire into the imprisonment and prosecution of Sir John Elliot, Hollis, and Valentine:[**] the affair of ship money was canvassed: and plentiful subject of inquiry was suggested on all hands.
Grievances were regularly classed under three heads; those with regard to privileges of parliament, to the property of the subject, and to religion.[***] * Clarendon, vol.i.