GRAND REMONSTRANCE, a document of protest against misgovernment, drawn up by the House of Commons on 22 Nov. 1641 and presented to Charles I of England on 1 Dec. 1641. The causes leading up to this written protest were many, and its passage, by a ma jority of 11, by the House after a long, stormy debate, was undoubtedly hastened by the out break of rebellion in Ireland, and also the ab sence of the king, who at the time was in Scot land. The Puritan leaders had become dis gusted with the intrigues carried on by the king with the Earl of Montrose, and in this docu ment the grievances were set forth in such a manner that they were in fact an indictment of the whole governmental policy of the king. The imprisonment of members of Parliament without cause, the billeting of soldiers, the high-handed methods of the Star Chamber, High Commission and the Council of the North, the excessive abuses of the commercial monopolies and the unwarranted extension of the royal forests, as well as other minor griev ances, in all 204 sections, were the points dis cussed in the manifesto. In it were also asked
the appointment of new ministers, and that to a synod of learned divines be given the task of Church reform. King Charles ridiculed the document when it was presented for his consid eration; on 10 December gave an indirect reply to the criticisms contained therein in shape of a proclamation on religion; on 15 December it was published; on 23 December answered the peti tion in an extremely evasive manner; on 3 Jan. 1642, before the House of Lords, impeached the leaders in the Commons who were most opposed to him, and who had been most instru mental in the passage of the document; and on 4 January, attended by a body of armed men, went down in person to the House of Commons and invaded the House in an attempt to arrest five of its members. Consult Gardiner's 'Con stitutional Documents) (Oxford 1889).