The Arrest of the Five Members
AT the door of the House he left his guard commanded by the Lord Roxberry,* ent’ring accompanied only by the Prince Palatine;* where taking possession of the Speaker’s chair, and not seeing those that he looked for, he said, ‘The birds are flown.’
For upon notice given by a lady of the court of the King’s intention, they were retired into the City. The King then demanded of the Speaker* where such and such were, naming the five members: to which he answered in these words: ‘I have neither eyes to see, ears to hear, nor tongue to speak in this place, save what this House gives me.’
The King replied, ‘I think you are in the right’: and then addressing himself to the House, said; that he was sorry he had been necessitated to come thither: that no King of England had been more careful to preserve the privileges of Parliament than he desired to be; but that those five members being dangerous persons, he had been obliged to pursue them, not by force, but by the ordinary forms of justice: that he hoped the Parliament would send them to him, to justify themselves, if they could; if not, he knew how to find them.
abridged
* Robert Ker (?1570-1650), 1st Earl of Roxburghe, Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland from 1637 to 1649 when he was deprived of his office for the role he played on this day in 1642. Ludlow’s spelling of his name indicates how Roxburghe was pronounced at the time. The Scottish town is written Roxburgh and pronounced rocks-brer.
* Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682) was Charles’s nephew, and a dashing if rather headstrong cavalry and naval commander on the Royalist side during the English Civil War. His mother was Charles’s sister Elizabeth Stuart, known as The Winter Queen, and his father had been Frederick V of the Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire and (albeit briefly) King of Bohemia. Charles created Rupert Duke of Cumberland in 1644.
* The Speaker of the House of Commons is responsible for managing and moderating the debates of the Members and for safeguarding the customs, procedures and privileges of the House. At this time, the office was held by William Lenthall (1591-1662), who served a total of five terms in the role between 1640 and 1660. The stand-off with King Charles I marked two historic moments for democracy in Britain and indeed anywhere else. No Speaker before this (the office dates back to 1376) had ever declared that his responsibility to the Commons stood higher than his allegiance towards the Monarch; and no English monarch has ever set foot in the Commons since that day.