Chapter XX: THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. (continued) (4)

Strafford was so well aware of the readiness of the Scots, and the unreadiness and disaffection of the English soldiery, that he issued strict injunctions to Conway not to attempt to cross the Tyne, and expose his raw and wavering recruits in the open country between that river and the Trent, but to fortify the passage of the Tyne at Newburn, and prevent the Scots from crossing. The Scots, however, did not leave him time for his defences. On the 20th of August, Leslie crossed the Tweed with twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. He had been strongly advised to this step by the leaders of the English opposition themselves, and "the Earls of Essex, Bedford, Holland, the Lord Say, Hampden, and Pym," says Whitelock, "were deeply in with them." No sooner were the Scots on English ground, than the preachers advanced to the front of the army with their Bibles in their hands, and led the way. The soldiers followed with reversed arms, and a proclamation was issued by Leslie that the Scots had undertaken this expedition at the call of Divine Providence, not against the people of England, but against the "Canterbury faction of Papists, Atheists, Arminians, and Prelates." God and their consciences bore them witness that they sought only the peace of both kingdoms by putting down the "troublers of Israel, the fire-brands of hell, the Korahs, the Balaams, the Doegs, the Rhabshakehs, the Hamans, the Tobiahs, the Sanballats of the times," and that done, they would return with satisfaction to their own country.

On the 27th of August they arrived at Heddon-law, near Newburn, on the left bank of the Tyne, and found Conway posted on the opposite side, between Newburnhaugh and Stellahaugh. The Scots kindled that night great fires round their camp, thus giving the English an imposing idea of its great extent; and we are told that numbers of the English soldiers went over during the night amongst them, and were well received by them, for they assured them that they only came to demand justice from the king against the men who were the pest of both nations. The next day the Scots attempted to ford the river, but were driven back by a charge of six troops of horse; these horse were, however, in their turn repulsed by the discharge of artillery, and a second attempt of the Scots succeeded. "As for Conway," says Clarendon, "he soon afterwards turned his face towards the army, nor did anything like a commander, though his troops were quickly brought together again, without the loss of a dozen men [the real loss was about sixty], and were so ashamed of their flight, that they were very willing, as well as able, to have taken what revenge they could upon the enemy."

This was not true, for though "our whole army made the most shameful and confounding flight that was ever heard of," they had no chance of taking revenge with such a commander, being only about four thousand five hundred altogether, horse and foot, while the Scots were twenty-six thousand strong. Moreover, the English had no heart for the work, while the Scots were resolute as one man, and commanded by officers who had grown grey in the service of the victorious Swede, the great Gustavus Adolphus. When the English forces reached Newcastle, they did not feel able to defend it against such an army, and they fled on to Durham. The Scots could scarcely believe their eyes when they found Newcastle evacuated.

The retreating English army, under the panic-stricken Conway, meantime dared not even stop at Durham, but continued their flight to Darlington, where they met Strafford coming up with reinforcements. He was suffering from gout and stone, and in a marvellously bad humour at the late scandalous disaster; and he must have seen enough of the demoralisation of Conway's troops, for he turned back with him to Northallerton, where Charles was lying with the bulk of his army. Altogether, Charles had now twenty thousand men and sixty pieces of cannon wherewith to face the Scots; but the disaffection became so manifest, the desertions so frequent, and the whole condition of the force so unsatisfactory, that though Strafford professed to speak with contempt of the Scots, he assured Charles that it would require two months to put his army into fighting order. They therefore fell back upon York, intending to entrench a camp under its walls, and to send the cavalry to Richmond or Cleveland to guard the passes of the Tees.

The Scots had meanwhile taken unopposed possession of Newcastle, Durham, Shields, Tynemouth, and other towns, and were masters of the four northern counties of England, without having lost twenty men. In this position it has been matter of wonder that they did not still advance, and drive the king before them; but those writers who have thus imagined have greatly mistaken the whole business. The object of the Scots was not, as of old, to annoy and devastate, much less to conquer England; it was simply to force from the king and his evil ministers the recognition and the guarantee of their just national rights. They had advanced into England with this plain declaration; they had attempted not to fight except so far as to force their way to the king's presence. To this they were, in fact, now come. They had achieved a vantage-ground from which to treat, and, though strongly posted, and possessed of the whole country north of the Tees, they had refrained from all ravages and impositions on the people with whom they had no quarrel, paying for whatever they needed. To have done otherwise, would have broken faith with the people of England, who were seeking the same redress of grievances as themselves, and have at once roused the jealousy of the English public, who would have regarded them as invaders instead of friends, and thus strengthened the hands of the king. The Scots knew perfectly well what they were about, and how best to obtain their just demands. They now therefore sent Lord Lanark, Secretary of State for Scotland, and brother of the Marquis of Hamilton, to present the petition of the Covenanters to the king, who was plainly in a strait and therefore compelled to listen to it. They respectfully repeated their pacific designs, and implored the king to assemble a Parliament, and by its wisdom to settle peace between the two kingdoms. This was precisely what the people of England were earnestly seeking, and demonstrates the perfect concert between the leaders of the two nations. To assemble a Parliament was of all things the last which Charles was disposed to consent to, but he was in no condition to refuse altogether. He therefore took three days to consider their request, and on the 5th of September returned to Lord Lanark the answer, that he would assemble a great council of English Peers in York to settle the matters in dispute between them, and that he had already summoned this Assembly for the 24th of that month. By this means Charles endeavoured to escape the necessity of calling a Parliament, but his hesitation did not avail him. All parties were too much interested to let this opportunity slip. Twelve peers--Bedford, Essex, Hertford, Warwick, Bristol, Mulgrave, Say and Sele, Howard, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Brooke, and Paget--presented a petition, urgently representing the necessity of a Parliament, and describing the sufferings of the nation from the lawlessness of the soldiers, the damage done to trade by the arbitrary levies on merchants, and the danger of bringing in wild Irish troops. The citizens of London prepared a similar one, which Laud endeavoured to quash, but in vain; they obtained ten thousand signatures, and despatched some of the Aldermen and members of the Common Council to present it at York. The gentry of Yorkshire presented another, detailing their sufferings from the support of the army, and their cry, too, was for a Parliament. Strafford, who was desired to present it, endeavoured to persuade them to leave the prayer for a Parliament out, on pretence that he knew the king meant to call one; but they would on no account omit it. Thus pressed on all sides, Charles was reluctantly compelled to promise, and on the meeting of the great council of Peers on the 24th, announced to them that he had issued the writs for the meeting of a Parliament on the 3rd of November.

The Scots had comprised their demands under seven heads, the chief of which were the full and free exercise of their religion; the total abolition of episcopacy; the restoration of their ships and goods; the recall of the offensive epithet of traitors; and the punishment of the evil counsellors who had created all these troubles. The Lords, delighted at the prospect of a Parliament, saw no difficulty in coming to terms with the Scots. They named sixteen of their own body to meet with eight Commissioners of the Covenanters at Ripon, to negotiate the terms of a peace, and sent a deputation of six other lords to London, to raise for the king a loan of two hundred thousand pounds, on their own securities. Charles would have drawn the Conference from Ripon to York, where his army lay, but the Scots were too cautious to be caught in such a snare. They represented the danger of their putting their Commissioners into the power of an army commanded by Strafford, one of the very incendiaries against whom they were complaining, and who termed them rebels and traitors in the Parliament in Ireland, and had recommended the king to subdue and destroy them. The Conference was opened at Ripon, but got no further from the 1st to the 16th of October, than the settlement of the question of the maintenance of the Scottish army till all was concluded. Charles offered to leave them at liberty to make assessments for themselves, but this they declined, as looking too much like plundering; and it was finally agreed that they should retain their position in the four northern counties, and receive eight hundred and eighty pounds for two months, binding themselves to commit no depredations on any party; and the time for the meeting of Parliament approaching, the Conference was adjourned to London on the 24th.

The last Parliament had been called the Short Parliament; this was destined to acquire the name of the Long Parliament, never to be dissolved till it had dissolved the monarchy--the most memorable Parliament that ever sat. "The Parliament," says Clarendon, "met on the 3rd of November, 1640. It had a sad and a melancholie aspect upon the first entrance, which presaged some unusual and unnatural events. The king himself did not ride with his accustomed equipages, nor in his usual majesty to Westminster, but went privately in his barge to the Parliament stairs, and so to the church, as if it had been a return of a prorogued or adjourned Parliament. There was likewise an untoward, and, in truth, an unheard of accident, which broke many of the king's measures, and infinitely disordered his service beyond a capacity of reparation."

This was the defeat in the City of the man on whom he had fixed as Speaker of the Commons, Sir Thomas Gardiner, the Recorder of London, a lawyer on whom Charles greatly calculated for managing the House. But that very morning he learned that Gardiner had been thrown out as one of the four members, and he was so confounded that it was afternoon before he could go to the House. There Lenthall, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, was immediately elected Speaker, and Charles, believing him well affected to the Church and State, when two days afterwards he was, according to custom, presented to him, confirmed the choice, which he afterwards most bitterly repented. But it was not only in the case of the Speaker that the king was doomed to see himself disappointed. The whole body of the House was of a new character and spirit. "There was," says Clarendon, "observed a marvellous elated countenance in most of the members of Parliament before they met together in the House. The same men, who six months before were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied without opening the wound too wide and exposing it to the air, and rather to excuse what was amiss than too strictly make inquisition into the causes and origin of the malady, talked now in another dialect both of things and persons. Mr. Hyde, who was returned to serve for a borough in Cornwall, met Mr. Pym in Westminster Hall some days before the Parliament, and conferring together on the state of affairs, Pym told Hyde that 'they now must be of another temper than they were the last Parliament; that they must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down the cobwebs which hung on the tops and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter. That they had now an opportunity to make their country happy by removing all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their duties;' and used much other sharp discourse to the same purpose, by which it was discerned that the warmest and boldest counsels and overtures would find a much better reception than those of a more temperate allay, which fell out accordingly."

Charles opened Parliament, as usual, by promising freely redress of grievances on the granting of the necessary subsidies, and called on the two Houses to abandon all suspicions, and put confidence in him; but, after fifteen years of constant struggle and constant breaches of faith, this was impossible. The Commons saw the certainty at length of achieving their objects, not from any goodwill towards constitutional freedom in the king, but from the stringent necessity in which he had placed himself. His creeping into Parliament, as it were, by the back door, instead of coming there in the usual state, showed that he was anxious and depressed, and his advisers were in an equal state of terror. His latest hope--the selection of the Speaker--had failed him, and he saw the Commons commence their work by passing altogether over the question of supplies, and falling in ominous earnestness on the grievances.

On the fourth day of their session they proceeded from acts to deeds. They passed an order that those victims of the Star Chamber, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, whose horrible mutilations had revolted the whole civilised world, putting the Reformed Church of England on a par with persecuting and murdering Rome in her worst days, should be sent for from their distant prisons, and called on to state by whose authority they had been thus mutilated, branded, and imprisoned. This order spread a wonderful joy amongst the Reformers everywhere. The three lopped and tortured men were welcomed with acclamations at all places on their journey, and on the 28th of November they entered London attended by hundreds of carriages, and by five thousand people on horseback, both men and women, all wearing in their hats and caps bays and rosemary, and followed by great multitudes, with boughs and flowers, and strewing flowers and herbs as they passed. This was a change from the day when Laud pulled off his cap at the passing of Prynne's horrible sentence, and thanked God for it. The House of Commons, after hearing their statement, voted them damages to the amount of six thousand pounds to Burton, and five thousand pounds each to Prynne and Bastwick, which was to be paid by Archbishop Laud and his associates in the High Commission and Star Chamber.

But they did not stop there; from compensating the sufferers they passed on to the punishment of the oppressors. The Committee of Religion proceeded to inquire into the loose lives of the clergy, their cruelties towards the Puritans, and their introduction of papistical ceremonies. "Their first care," says May in his "History of Parliament," "was to vindicate distressed ministers, who had been imprisoned or deprived by the bishops, and all others who in the cause of religion had been persecuted by them. Many of those ministers were released from durance and restored to their livings, with damages from their oppressors. Many doctors and divines that had been most busy in promoting the late church innovations about altars and other ceremonies, and therefore most gracious and flourishing in the State, were then questioned and committed, inasmuch as the change, and the suddenness of it, seemed wonderful to own, and may serve worthily as a document to all posterity, _quam fragili loco starent superbi_--how insecure are the proud." On the 18th of December, Denzil Holles was sent to the Upper House to demand the impeachment of Laud. On hearing this the Archbishop rose, and, with his usual warmth declaring his own innocence, was proceeding to charge his accusers with various offences, when he was promptly called to order by the Earl of Essex and the Lord Say, and was stopped by the House and consigned to the Usher of the Black Rod. He apologised, and obtained leave, under surveillance of the gentleman usher, to fetch some papers from his house, necessary to his defence; and after remaining in the custody of the Black Rod for ten weeks he was committed to the Tower (February 24, 1641).

But the Commons had been all this time more deeply engaged in securing the most daring and dangerous offender of all, the Earl of Strafford. Laud, who was generally in London, was more safely within their power at any moment; but Strafford was left in the North, where he was lieutenant-general of the army, Lord President of the Council of the North, and could at any instant slip away to Ireland, where he had still more authority, and a considerable army. Laud, once caged, could wait; but Strafford must be both secured and promptly dealt with. His own friends in London, and his own sagacity, sufficiently apprised Strafford of the danger which awaited him if he came to town. He represented to the king that it were much better on all accounts that he should remain where he was; that in London he should by his presence remind the opposition of their enmity towards him; and that he would only further embarrass the king's affairs if he came, whilst he could be of service with the army, and, if necessary, escape to Ireland, where he might do the king real service. But Charles, who felt his weakness without Strafford, in whose judgment and power of overruling men he had the highest faith, would not hear of it, but insisted on his coming to London: and pledged himself to guarantee his safety, reminding him that he was King of England, and that Parliament should not touch a hair of his head. Strafford was rather bound to obey as a subject and servant of the Crown, than assured of his safety by those solemn pledges. He went to town, and on the third day after his arrival he was arrested, and placed in the custody of the Keeper of the Black Rod.

On the 11th of November, 1640, assuming an outward air of unconcern, Strafford went to take his seat in the House of Lords. The Earl of Northumberland, writing to the Earl of Leicester on the 13th, declared that "a greater and more universal hatred was never contracted by any person than he has drawn upon himself, yet he is not at all dejected." Before he appeared in the House, the impeachment had been carried thither from the Commons. Strafford at once hastened to meet his enemies. Baillie, who was one of the Scottish commissioners, gives this striking account of his arrest:--"He calls rudely at the door: James Maxwell, Keeper of the Black Rod, opens. His lordship, with a proud, gloomy countenance, makes towards his place at the board head; but at once many bid him avoid the House, so he is forced in confusion to go back till he is called. After consultation, being called in, he stands, but is commanded to kneel, and on his knees to hear the sentence. Being on his knees he is delivered to the Keeper of the Black Rod, to be prisoner, till he was cleared of these crimes the House of Commons had charged him with. He offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone without a word. In the outer room James Maxwell, required him, as prisoner, to deliver his sword. When he had got it, he cries with a loud voice for his man to carry my Lord-lieutenant's sword. This done, he makes through a number of people towards his coach, all gazing, no man capping him, before whom, that morning, the greatest of England would have stood uncovered, all crying, 'What is the matter?' He said, 'A small matter, I warrant you.' They replied, 'Yes, indeed, high treason is a small matter.' Coming to his place where he expected his coach, it was not there, so he behoved to return the same way, through a crowd of gazing people. When at last he found his coach, and was entering, James Maxwell told him, 'Your lordship is my prisoner, and must go in my coach;' so he behoved to do." In a few days he was committed to the Tower, and the Commons proceeded to deal with those next in degree. But Windebank, Secretary of State, and Finch the Lord Keeper, fled from the reach of their vengeance.

This, then, was the marvellous state of affairs at this moment. "Within less than six weeks," says Clarendon, "these terrible Reformers had caused the two greatest councillors of the kingdom--Laud and Strafford, whom they most feared, and so hated--to be removed from the king, and imprisoned under an accusation of high treason; and frightened away the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and one of the principal Secretaries of State into foreign kingdoms for fear of the like, besides preparing all the Lords of the Council, and very many of the principal gentlemen throughout England, who had been sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants, to expect such measure of punishment from their general votes and resolutions as their future demeanour should draw upon them for their past offences." And thus ended the ever memorable year 1640, in which the Parliament had secured the ascendency after fifteen years' determined struggle with the present king, and many more with his father; had humbled the proud and obstinate monarch; imprisoned his two arch-counsellors; impressed a salutary terror on the whole royal party; and initiated changes of the most stupendous kind.

The House of Commons commenced the year 1641 with an endeavour to secure annual Parliaments, and succeeded in obtaining triennial ones. They proposed that the issuing of the writs should take place at a fixed time, and to prevent the Crown from defeating this intention, they demanded, in case the king did not order the writs at the regular time, it should be imperative on the Lord Keeper or Lord Chancellor to do it; in case they neglected it, it should become the duty of the House of Lords to do so; if the Lords failed, then the sheriffs, and if the sheriffs neglected or refused, the people should proceed to elect their own representatives without any writs at all. To frustrate in future any hasty prorogations, by which the House of Commons was liable at any moment to be stopped by the Crown, they proposed that the king should not have power to prorogue or dissolve Parliament within fifty days of its meeting without its own consent.

At one time Charles would have resented so bold a measure most indignantly, and would have dissolved the audacious body at once; but now he condescended to reason with them in a far different tone. He protested against the measure as a direct encroachment on his prerogative, by which sheriffs and constables were to be endowed with powers that hitherto had been only kingly; but he was fain at last to give way, and the Bill, so far as regarded triennial Parliaments, was passed, and a Bill securing the Houses from hasty prorogation followed in May. By that act Charles tied up his hands from dissolving Parliament at all without its own consent, so that he could no longer defeat its measures as he had done. Thus a real and most momentous infringement on the prerogative was made, being brought about by the king's resistance to the cession of just rights. In obstinately claiming the people's privileges, he was driven to forfeit his own. He was now in a dilemma. The army of the Scots still lay in the North, and both the English Commons and the Scottish Commissioners in London were in no hurry to have it disbanded. Whilst it lay there well supported by Parliamentary allowance, the king and his friends were overawed and powerless, and both parties, the Commons of England and the Covenanters of Scotland, were the better able to press their claims and support each other. Both parties were bent on abolishing or reducing episcopacy.

The Scottish Commissioners exerted themselves with the leaders of the English Commons to move for the total abolition of episcopacy in England, and the establishment of Presbyterianism; but this led only to the development of a variety of views in the Commons. Some of the members favoured the Scottish proposal, and of these were the supporters of the petition with fifteen thousand signatures, brought in from London by Alderman Pennington, called the "root and branch petition." Others, as the Lords Wharton, Say, and Brooke, preferred the still more levelling system of the Independents. On the other hand, some of the most prominent Reformers--the Lords Digby and Falkland, and Selden and Rudyard--were opposed to the extinction of the bishops. Digby compared the London petition to a comet portending nothing but anarchy, and with its tail pointing to the North, meaning that it was a Scottish comet; and Lord Falkland was for relieving the bishops of their temporal cares, but not removing them from the Church altogether. The question was warmly debated for two days, but the fate of the bishops was deferred awhile by that of Strafford.

All being prepared, Strafford was brought from the Tower on the 22nd of March, 1641, and placed before the tribunal appointed to try him in Westminster Hall. He had been about three months in prison, and meanwhile a deputation had arrived from Ireland. They brought a petition, calling on the Commons of England to join them in obtaining his condign punishment. They enumerated their grievances and sufferings from his lawless violence under sixteen heads. The Commons welcomed the deputation, as may be supposed, and to obtain full evidence of Strafford's doings in Ireland, not only accused his most active instrument--Sir George Ratcliffe--of high treason, too, but almost every one of his willing subordinates, and secured all of them that they could, and kept them in readiness to be questioned, by which means they also prevented them from doing mischief with the army. The Scottish Commissioners were equally vehement in demanding justice against him for having counselled the king to put down their religion and government by force, and for offering to supply an army of Irish for the purpose. Thus all three kingdoms were arrayed against the common enemy.

After much debate, it had been concluded that the trial should take place in Westminster Hall, before the Lords and Commons. The Earl of Arundel was appointed to preside as Lord High Steward. On each side of the throne was erected a cabinet, where the king, queen, and Prince of Wales could sit without being seen, these cabinets having trellis work in front, and being hung with arras. Before the throne ran lines of seats for the peers, and woolsacks for the judges, and on each side of the peers were ranged seats for the Commons, who consented to sit uncovered there. Near them were the Scottish and Irish deputies, and there was a desk or dock enclosed for the prisoner and his counsel. One-third of the Hall was left open to the public, the rest being defended by a bar; and there was a gallery near for ladies, which was crowded by those of highest rank. There was an intense interest, indeed, felt by all classes, and the hall was daily so crowded, that Mr. Principal Baillie, minister of Kilwinning, whom we have already mentioned, says in the quaint manner of his time, "We always behoved to be there before five in the morning: the house was full before seven."

Strafford was brought from the Tower guarded by a hundred soldiers, who filled, with the officers, six barges; and on landing at Westminster he was received and conducted forward by two hundred of the train-band. All cross streets and entries were occupied by a strong force of constables and watchmen, placed there as early as four in the morning. The king, queen, and prince arrived about nine o'clock, and about the same time the prisoner was conducted into the Hall. On his appearance the porter demanded of the Usher of the Black Rod whether the axe should be borne before him; but the Usher said no, the king had expressly forbidden it.

The bishops did not appear amongst the lords, for their presence had been strongly objected to by the House of Commons, on the plea that the canons forbade their taking part in any trial which involved bloodshed--"_clericus non debet interesse sanguini_." But the real fact was that they were supporters of Laud, and Williams, of Lincoln, very adroitly volunteered a motion as from the prelates themselves, that they should be excused. The Commons had objected to those who had been made peers since Strafford had been impeached, as they were his avowed friends. All, except Lord Lyttelton, who had been made a baron and Lord Keeper in the place of the fugitive Finch, refused to comply and took their seats; and so says Clarendon, might the bishops, too, had they had the same spirit.

All being ready, the impeachment was read, consisting of twenty-eight capital articles, and then Strafford's reply to it, which filled two hundred sheets of paper. This occupied the first day. The court rose about two o'clock, and the prisoner was reconducted to the Tower. This was the routine of each day during the trial, which lasted eighteen days. On entering the court at nine o'clock, Strafford made three obeisances to the Earl of Arundel, the High Steward, two of which might be interpreted as intended for the king and queen, though they were not at first visible, nor during the whole time were supposed to be so; but the interest of the proceedings quickly made the king impatient of the trellis work, and, according to Baillie, he pulled it down with his own hands. "It was daily the most glorious assembly," continues Baillie, "that the isle could afford; yet the gravity was not such as I expected. After ten, much public eating, not only of confections, but of flesh and bread; bottles of beer and wine going thick from mouth to mouth without cups, and all this in the king's eye.... There was no outgoing to return, and often the sitting was till two, three, or four o'clock at night."

As Strafford went and came, the crowd conducted themselves towards him with forbearance and courtesy, and he returned their greetings with humility and politeness. Few of the lords at first returned his obeisances, and the managers, thirteen in number, showed him no favour. When the Lord Steward ordered the Committee of Management to proceed on the second morning, Pym opened the case with an eloquent charge, commencing with these words:--"My lords, we stand here by the commandment of the knights, citizens, and burgesses, now assembled for the Commons in Parliament, and we are ready to make good that impeachment whereby Thomas, Earl of Strafford, stands charged in their name, and in the name of all the Commons of England, with high treason. This, my lords, is a great cause, and we might sink under the weight of it, and be astonished with the lustre of this noble assembly, if there were not in the cause strength and vigour to support itself, and to encourage us. It is the cause of the king; it concerns his majesty in the honour of his government, in the safety of his person, in the stability of his crown. It is the cause of the kingdom: it concerns not only the peace and prosperity, but even the being of the kingdom. We have that piercing eloquence, the cries, and groans, and tears of all the subjects assisting us. We have the three kingdoms, England, and Scotland, and Ireland, in travail and agitation with us, bowing themselves, like the hinds spoken of in Job, to cast out their sorrows. Truth and goodness, my lords, they are the beauty of the soul, they are the perfection of all created natures, they are the image and character of God upon the creatures. This beauty, evil spirits and evil men have lost; but yet there are none so wicked, but they desire to march under the show and shadow of it, though they hate the reality of it. This unhappy earl, now the object of your lordships' justice, hath taken as much care, hath used as much cunning, to set a face and countenance of honesty in the performance of all these actions. My lords, it is the greatest baseness of wickedness, that it dares not look in its own colours, nor be seen in its natural countenance. But virtue, as it is amiable in all aspects, so the least is not this, that it puts a nobleness, it puts a bravery upon the mind, and lifts it above hopes and fears, above favour and displeasure: it makes it always uniform and constant to itself. The service commanded to me and my colleagues, is to take off those vizards of truth and uprightness, which hath been sought to be put upon this cause, and to show you his actions and intentions in their own natural blackness and deformity."

Pym, after this passage, went one by one through the pleas of Strafford in his reply, and rent away ruthlessly the arguments by which he endeavoured to veil the flagrancy of his actions; but he dwelt for this time more especially on his conduct in Ireland, representing him there as treading on all the rights, privileges, and property of the people in a manner utterly regardless of any constitution or compacts. He then produced as witnesses Sir Pierce Crosby, Sir John Clotworthy, Lord Ranelagh, Lord Mountnorris, and Mr. Barnwell, who had suffered insult, loss of office and honour from the Lord-Lieutenant's overbearing despotism. To this Strafford replied in a long and able speech. The subject of Ireland was resumed the next day, and then from day to day.

After the Managers had gone through some particular charge, and produced their witnesses, the court adjourned for half an hour, when Strafford made his defence and produced his witnesses; the Managers then commented on the evidence, and the court closed for the day. Thus it went on for thirteen days. "All the hasty and proud expressions that he had uttered at any time," says Clarendon, "since he was first made a privy councillor; all the acts of passion or power that he had exercised in Yorkshire, from the time that he was first President there; his engaging himself in projects in Ireland, as the sole making of flax and selling tobacco in that kingdom; his extraordinary proceedings against Lord Mountnorris and the Lord Chancellor Loftus; his assuming a power of judicature at the Council table to determine private interest, and matter of inheritance; some rigorous and extrajudicial determinations in cases of Plantations; some high discourses at the Council table in Ireland; and some casual and light discourses at his own table and at public meetings; and, lastly, some words spoken in secret Council in this kingdom, after the dissolution of the last Parliament, were urged and pressed against him to make good the general charge of an endeavour to overthrow the fundamental government of the kingdom, and to introduce an arbitrary power." "In his defence," continues the same historian, "the earl behaved himself with great show of humility and submission, but yet with such a kind of courage, as would lose no advantage; and, in truth, made his defence with all imaginable dexterity, answering this and evading that with all possible skill and eloquence; and though he knew not till he came to the bar upon what parts of his charge they would proceed against him, or what evidence they would produce, he took very little time to recollect himself, and left nothing unsaid that might make for his own justification."

Though this is the language of the royalist historian, it is borne out by all accounts of this extraordinary trial. Strafford was one of the most eloquent, able, and imposing men of any age. His commanding person, and persuasive and impressive manner, had made his influence paramount wherever he had appeared. He had the faculty vastly developed of making the worse appear the better reason; and never had his splendid talents been so successfully displayed as on this great occasion, when all the ability, the patriotism, and the elocution of the time were arrayed against him. The very weight and vastness of the opposition bearing upon him acted in his favour. There he stood, alone, as it were, against the three kingdoms, dauntless, and unsubdued; laden with growing infirmities, and the deadly hatred of innumerable hosts, yet disdaining to succumb to them; and with a readiness of wit, a promptness of reply, an adroitness of application or of evasion, a keenness of ridicule, a weight of reason, and a rich eloquence, that raised admiration even in those who most loathed him. The sympathies of the ladies were every day more and more enlisted in his cause. They were seen--those of the highest rank--taking notes, discussing the proceedings, and discovering their vivid interest in him by a thousand signs. The courtiers were enraptured; the lords, even the sternest, rapidly relaxed, and at length were almost all on his side. The clergy were unanimous in their plaudits of him, and the Managers saw with dismay a change which threatened their defeat.

Maynard and Glynne, two acute lawyers, were the Managers who chiefly brought forward the accusations, and directed the evidence against him; but they appeared no match for Strafford's intellect and address. They endeavoured to establish a charge of constructive treason, that is, of treason not founded on one clear and palpable act, but on accumulated evidence, the aggregate of many offences; but the prisoner's answer to this was triumphant. They had not his letters, which we have; and though they could point to a long course of arbitrary and unconstitutional conduct, amounting to high misdemeanours, they could not lay their fingers on the damning proofs of his avowed intentions under his own hand, as we now can in the Strafford Papers. But even had they possessed these, it would still have been technically impossible to establish a charge of high treason according to any definition of law, or idea of treason then existing. All the statutes of high treason had heretofore been directed against designs or attempts to injure or remove the king, or any of his family; to subvert the Government, or change the possession of the Crown. That there might be such a thing as treason against the people and their rights had never entered into governing heads.

In vain would Pym or Selden then search Coke upon Littleton, or the statutes at large, for any definition of a treason that would serve them. The statute of 25 Edward III. c. 2 was the great landmark of English history in those matters, and amongst the seven distinct declarations of treasonable offences, they would look in vain for one to fit Wentworth, for most assuredly against none of them had Strafford offended. He was working with the king and his officers; his acts and intentions pointed in a totally different direction. His object was to strengthen the king's government beyond all precedent; to make him, as we now have it under his own hand, the most absolute and independent monarch that ever lived. True, from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Queen Mary, many other species of high treason had been created by the Crown, and especially by Henry VIII. But in none of these reigns, when almost every imaginable or unimaginable thing affecting kingship was made treason, had it ever entered the royal or legal head to conceive of the possibility of treason against the people. Therefore, had all these descriptions of treason been yet existent, none of them would have availed against Strafford, who was most loyal to the king and his government.

The matter was too palpable to be denied, but at this crisis an event occurred which gave fresh hope to the accusers. The younger Sir Henry Vane communicated to Pym a paper which he had discovered in the cabinet of his father, the Secretary of State. The account which he gave of the occurrence, according to Whitelock, was this:--His father being out of town, had sent him the key of his study, desiring him to search for some papers which he wanted. In this search he came upon one paper of such extraordinary contents, that he held himself bound in duty to secure it. The paper was a minute of what had passed in the Privy Council on the morning of the day on which the last Parliament had been dissolved. The question before the Council was offensive or defensive war with the Scots. The king said, "How can I undertake a war without money?" And Strafford was made to reply, "Borrow one hundred thousand pounds of the City. Go rigorously on to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loosed from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Having tried all ways, you shall be acquitted before God and man. You have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience, for I am confident the Scots cannot hold out five months." Laud and Cottington declared with similar vehemence that the king was absolved from all law.

Pym, having obtained from young Vane a copy of this paper, on the 10th of April informed the Commons of the fact. After hearing it read, Vane the younger rose and confirmed the relation, excusing himself on the ground that it had appeared his bounden duty to make the matter known, and that Mr. Pym had confirmed him in this opinion. After giving Mr. Pym the copy, he had returned the original paper to its proper place in the cabinet. Sir Henry Vane, the father, here rose, and remarked, with much sign of resentment against his son, that he now saw whence all this mischief came, and that he could give no further particulars of the matter but found himself in an ill condition from its testimony.

On the 12th, charge was made against Strafford in court, who replied that old Vane was his most inveterate enemy; that, as was most probable, if he had delivered this paper to his son, he had been guilty of an unpardonable breach of his oath as a Privy Councillor, to preserve the king's secrets, and was therefore totally unworthy of credit; that he had been strictly examined on what passed at that Council, and at first denied all memory of any such words spoken by him, Strafford, on that occasion; and even on his third examination, after having been shown this paper, he had only recollected he had spoken these words, or some like them; that such words and such counsel were not likely to be soon forgotten; yet, of eight Privy Councillors then present, none of those whose evidence could be obtained could remember any such words, except the Earl of Northumberland, who thought he recollected such words as those--"of being absolved from all rules of government." The Archbishop of Canterbury and Windebank were not present to give their evidence; but the Marquis of Hamilton, Bishop Juxon, and Lord Cottington, could remember no such words. Even had he used the words, it depended much on whether the phrase "this kingdom" meant England or Scotland; that the country under debate was Scotland, and he had demanded of Vane, whether the word used was really "this" or "that." And further, could the authority of this paper be established, it would not establish a charge of treason, for the law demanded the evidence of two witnesses, and this was but the evidence of one.

Pym therefore put in the verified copy of the paper, for the paper itself having been laid on the table of the Committee of Commons, had been purloined, and was never afterwards recovered. That in the possession of Charles was in the handwriting of Digby, which brought him under suspicion. Pym contended that the evidence of the minute itself, and that of Sir Henry Vane, amounted to the required proofs of the law, being two witnesses against the earl. The Lord Steward, Arundel, then called on Strafford to say whether he had any observations to make on this additional proof, and he replied most eloquently:--

"Where has this species of guilt lain so long concealed? Where has this fire been so long buried during so many centuries, that no smoke should appear till it burst out at once, to consume me and my children? Better it were to live under no law at all, than to fancy we have a law on which we can rely, and find at last that this law preceded its promulgation, and try us by maxims unheard of till the moment of the prosecution. If I sail on the Thames, and split my vessel on an anchor, in case there be no buoy to give warning, the party shall pay me damages; but if the anchor be marked out, then is the striking on it at my own peril. But where is the mark set upon this crime? Where the token by which I should discover it?

"It is now full two hundred and forty years since treasons were defined, and so long has it been since any man was touched to this extent upon this crime before myself. We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves at home; we have lived gloriously abroad in the world; let us be content with what our fathers have left us; let not an ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive acts. My lords, be pleased to give that regard to the peerage of England, as never to expose yourselves to such moot points, such constructive interpretations of law. If there must be a trial of wits, let the subject matter be of somewhat else than the lives and honours of peers. It will be wisdom for yourselves, for your posterity, and for the whole kingdom, to cast into the fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of constructive and arbitrary treason, as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts, and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the statute, which tells you where the crime is, and points out the path by which you may avoid it....

"My lords, I have now troubled your lordships a great deal longer than I should have done, were it not for the interest of these pledges which a saint in heaven left me. I should be loth----" here he pointed to his children, and his weeping stopped him. "What I forfeit for myself is nothing, but that my indiscretion should extend to my posterity, I confess, wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my importunity. Something I should have said, but I see I shall not be able, and therefore I shall leave it. And now, my lords, I thank God that I have been by His blessing sufficiently instructed in the vanity of all temporary enjoyments, compared to the importance of an eternal duration. And so, my lords, even so with all tranquillity of mind, I submit clearly and freely to your judgment; and whether that righteous doom shall be life or death, I shall repose myself, full of gratitude and confidence, in the arms of the great Author of my existence--'_In te Domine confido: non confundar in æternum_.'"

What the effect of this address must have been, may be inferred from the observations of Whitelock, the chairman of the Committee which was conducting the prosecution:--"Certainly, never any man acted such a part on such a theatre, with more wisdom, constancy, and eloquence; with greater reason, judgment, and temper; and with a better grace in all his words and actions, than did this great and excellent person, so that he moved the hearts of all his auditors, some few excepted, to remorse and pity."

The Commons were alarmed at the effect of the trial. The production of Vane's paper had been a blow enough to have sunk another man, but the extraordinary eloquence and address of Strafford seemed to have effaced even that; they had little faith in procuring a verdict from the Lords in their present course, and they resolved to change their plan, and proceed against the offender by a Bill of Attainder. They have been accused of adopting the arbitrary measures of Henry VIII. in so doing, and of depriving Strafford of the fair influence of his trial; but we, who enjoy the benefit of their deed, ought not to join in that cry. Strafford was guilty, if ever man was, of the most atrocious attempt that a man can entertain--that of destroying the liberties of his country. The laws had been so framed, from royal bias, as not duly to designate his crime; but not for that, nor for any temporary feeling of pity raised by his admirable defence, did these patriots mean to allow of his escape. But in the House of Commons the Bill of Attainder met with unexpected opposition from one of the most zealous of the Reformers, Lord Digby. He saw, like the rest, that technically they could not condemn Strafford for high treason as the law then stood, and he feared the precedent of condemning men under a show of law that did not exist. It was, in fact, too much imitating the king. It was a real difficulty, which the patriots had not sufficiently foreseen. Instead of charging him with treason, as it was then defined, they should first have remodelled the law, or have charged Strafford with the violation of the national guarantee of Magna Charta, on which there could be no doubt, and for which he was well worthy of death; but it was too late to retrace their steps, and they were obliged to condemn him for the unquestionable crime of treason against the nation, making the act of the Legislature in all its branches an extension of the law. Digby himself did not question his guilt. He said "he believed him still that grand apostate to the commonwealth, who must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be despatched to the other;" but he pleaded that on the ground of law he should have his life spared. But the Commons knew that while he lived there was no security. On the first occasion the king would pardon and restore him, and all their labour would be thrown away. They sought, therefore, to erect Parliament in so great an emergency into a court of equity as well as of law, believing that what was decreed by both Houses, and had the sanction of the Crown, was and would be a law of itself. They did not, like the Tudors and the Stuarts, seek to condemn him by setting aside the established courts and trial by jury; they gave him the highest court in the realm, and a full trial by his peers, and by their Bill they now called for a verdict.