All three were country gentlemen, of good estate, high principle, and religious convictions[51]--men of courage and resolution, and of blameless personal character.

Eliot died in prison, in the cause of good government, in 1632; Hampden fell on Chalgrove Field in 1643.
As in earlier centuries the struggle in the seventeenth century between the King and the Commons turned mainly on the questions of taxation.

(At the same time an additional cause of dispute can be found in the religious differences between Charles I.and the Parliamentarians.

The latter were mainly Puritan, accepting the Protestantism of the Church of England, but hating Catholicism and the high-church views of Laud.

The King was in full sympathy with high Anglicanism, and, like his father, willing to relax the penal laws against Catholics.) "By the ancient laws and liberties of England it is the known birthright and inheritance of the subject that no tax, tallage, or other charge shall be levied or imposed but by common consent in England, and that the subsidies of tonnage and poundage are no way due or payable but by a free gift and special Act of Parliament." In these memorable words began the declaration moved by Sir John Eliot in the House of Commons on March 2nd, 1629.