THIS WEEK’S GREAT DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18938, 7 December 1929, Page 24 (Supplement)

THIS WEEK’S GREAT DAY.

MEMORABLE EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE

By

Charles Conway.

’ DECEMBER 8: DEATH OF JOHN PYM.

TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX YEARS AGO, on December 8, 1643, John Pym, the famous statesman and orator, who was one of the greatest leaders that the British House of Commons has produced, died at the age of fifty-nine. He was a member of an old Somersetshire County family, and after he £ad completed his education at Oxford University he studied law, but never practised. For a time he held the post of Receiver-General of the Royal revenue in Wiltshire, and at the age of thirty he entered the House of Commons, where he soon became a conspicuous figure, as a result of his vigorous resistance to the arbitrary rule of James I. He was one of the twelve members who waited upon the King with a vindication of the privileges of Parliament, and on the dissolution of the Assembly, which immediately followed, he was arrested, but his imprisonment was nothing more than a period of confinement in his own house. In 1626, after the accession of Charles 1., he played a prominent part in the impeachment of the King’s favourite, the unscrupulous of Buckingham, whom he regarded as the main cause of all the many grievances of the people, but during the eleven years in which the country was governed without a parliament there is no record of Pym having offered any active resistance to the arbitrary rule of the King. It was during this perind that he seriously contemplated settling in America with Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden, but all three men changed their minds. When Parliament met again in 1640 he became the recognised leader of the Constitutional Party, and, owing to the great influence which he exercised over the House of Commons, his opponents gave him the nickname of “ King Pym.” It w*as he who denounced the Earl of Strafford i as “ the greatest enemy to the liberties of the country, and the greatest promoter of tyranny that any age had produced,” and, after he had im- , peached the ill-fated nobleman at the bar of the House of Lords for treason, he persisted in his attacks upon him until he had secured the sentence of death against him. At one time he and Strafford had been on terms of friendship, but when the latter deserted the patriotic party Pym declared that he would hunt the renegade until he had removed his head from his shoulders, a threat which was duly fulfilled. Pym was also largely responsible for the impeachment of Archbishop Laud, and, having disposed of the two most powerful supporters of the arbitrary policy of Charles 1., he carried through a series of important reforms, which were designed to compel the King to govern the country according to law. On the outbreak of the Great Civil "War Pym remained in London, where he took control of the executive government, and thereby rendered services to the Parliamentary cause which were as important as those of his colleagues who took to the field. As the head of th£ Committee of Safety he w'as successful in calming the fears of the people, and counteracting the many plots of the Royalists, while a month before his death j he undertook the duties of Master of Ordnance. He died somewhat suddenly, and was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, but at the Restoration of the Monarchy his remains were distinterred and flung ignominiously into a pit outside the walls of the historic; edifice. {Copyrighted.]