1640, more than to any other body of men in English history, that our country is indebted for that growing spirit of freedom by which it has high rank to which it has attained What has been since done in the scarcely important when compared

been distinguished, and for that among the nations of the earth. cause of our political privileges, is with what was then accomplished. On a superficial view of affairs, the Restoration may appear to have rendered all the labours of the Long Parliament even worse than useless; but a more attentive comparison of the reigns of the two last Stuarts with those of their father and their grandsire, will lead to a very different conclusion. Even Hume admits, that the conduct of the parliamentary leaders to this period was such, with one exception only, " as to entitle them to praise from all lovers of liberty." The exception thus made respects their conduct toward the earl of Strafford.

Conduct of

Among the immediate rewards bestowed on that "grand apostate from the cause of the people," was the honour of a peerage ; Strafford. the acknowledgment of a claim which he made to royal blood, through Margaret, the grandmother of Henry the Seventh; and the office of president of the council of York, which, with its enlarged jurisdiction as placed in his hands, gave him a sort of delegated sovereignty, freed from the checks of the common law, and extending to no mean portion of the kingdom. All men looked with astonishment on these events, and not a few with feelings which were no good omen for the peace of the new courtier. No space had intervened between what by profession he had been, and what he had become, to leave any room for the most abundant charity to suggest the possible sincerity of the apparent change. His pretensions to a royal lineage exposed him to derision; his reconciliation with Buckingham, after the treatment he had received from that minion, and after being one of the many who denounced him as a traitor, was adverted to as betraying a surprising meanness of temper; while his avowal of principles so opposite to those of which he had lately been so loud an advocate, was dwelt upon as showing that he had ceased to value even the appearances of honesty.

Persons who were at all slow to receive this unfavourable view of his character, were reminded of the nature of that court of which he had become the president: a tribunal as little subject to the rules of law as the star-chamber, and one the powers of which had been stretched beyond their former limits on the election of its new president, as though for the purpose of affording him greater opportunities to trample on that law and liberty of which he had recently declared himself to be so zealous a guardian. It was during this state of public feeling that Pym happened to meet Wentworth at Greenwich: they conversed on public affairs, but not to Pym's satisfaction; and in parting from the man who had recently been his fellow-patriot, he addressed him in these

long-remembered words :-"You are going to leave us, but I will never leave you while your head is upon your shoulders *!"

Wentworth had ruled the north of England about four years, through the medium of the court of York, when called to the dignity of viceroy of Ireland; and the system of intimidation on which he had acted with some appearance of success in this country was then extended to the sister kingdom. There, indeed, his sway was even less impeded than at York.

It is certain, from many parts of his conduct which drew upon him the attention and resentment of his contemporaries, and from documents which have since come to light, that the great policy of Wentworth from the time of quitting his connexion with the patriots was to dispense with the laws wherever they were found to be a restraint on the pleasure of the sovereign. When writing to the king about the plans which he had devised with respect to Ireland, he remarks:-" But in all these things the benefit of the crown must, and shall, be my principal, nay, my sole object." The method and firmness with which this object was pursued in that kingdom were such, that in little more than twelve months he could declare exultingly-" The king is as absolute here as any prince in the world can be." Parliaments, indeed, were allowed to assemble, but they were always made to be the mere tools of the power which convened them. It was the same with the convocations. Still the country was prosperous, compared with what it had been under the more lenient, but less able, policy of his predecessors. On returning to England after an absence of three years, his account of proceedings in the sister island procured him much applause from the court +.

This visit led to Wentworth's more active interference with the question of ship-money. As president of the council of York he enforced the payment of that tax with his usual promptitude, and assured the king there would be little difficulty in obtaining it in future from the northern counties.. So much was Charles elated with the partial success of this scheme, that he began to meditate a rupture with Spain; but before committing himself on so important a matter, it was deemed proper to obtain the opinion of the lord deputy. The answer of Wentworth was an urgent dissuasive from the enterprise; but one founded on the consideration that a war must bring on expense; that expense must make it necessary to convene a parliament; and that the necessity of convening a parliament must be the destruction of those plans by which it was hoped to render his majesty the most considerable monarch in Christendom, and "for ever to vindicate royalty at home from the conditions and restraints of subjects." His advice, accordingly, was to avoid every measure that might possibly lead to a dependence on parliaments.

*Rushworth, ii. 158, 162-165. Macdiarmid, Life of Strafford, ubi supra, Strafford Papers, i. 341, 343, 344; ii. 13-22, et alibi.

He also strongly recommended, that ship-money should be made to fall for a time as lightly as possible upon the people, until the habit of rendering such payments should be considerably formed, and a precedent of some force should be thus obtained in its favour. It was then to become the groundwork of other measures, of which, until the season for adopting them should arrive, it would be better to meditate than speak *.

But it is in his correspondence with Laud that we find the lord deputy expressing his sentiments and purposes most freely with regard to affairs in England. This correspondence extends to the whole interval from 1629 to 1640, and contains references to the severities in the courts of star-chamber and high-commission, to the corrupt judgments extorted from the judges, and to those arbitrary proceedings in general by which the government was characterized during that period. But in the judgment of Laud and Wentworth, little was done at that time by the king, the clergy, or the courts of law, towards elevating royalty above "the conditions and restraints of subjects," compared with what should have been done. In these letters, the word "thorough" recurs as the term used to denote that spirit of uncompromising hostility to all popular right which these correspondents had imbibed, and the impress of which they would freely have given to all the proceedings of the government. Making allusion to the very reasonable discontents of the time, Wentworth says, "It is a grievous and overspreading leprosy. Less than thorough will not overcome it. There is a cancerous malignity in it that must be cut forth, which long since hath rejected all other means. So long as I do serve I will thorough, by the grace of God, follow after what shall please him to send+."

The manner in which he would have dealt with the class of persons adverted to is indicated in the language which he employed with respect to one of their leaders. "Mr. Hampden," he writes, " is a great brother, (a puritan,) and the very genius of that people leads them always to oppose, as well civilly as ecclesiastically, all that authority ordains for them. But in good faith were they right served, they would be whipped home into their right wits, and much beholden they should be to any man that should thoroughly take pains with them in that kind. In truth, I still wish Mr. Hampden, and others to his likeness, were well whipped into their right senses, and if that the rod be so used that it smarts not, I am the more sorry ‡." On another occasion he says, “I know no reason but you may as well rule the common lawyers in England as I, poor beagle, do here; and yet that I do, and will do, in all that concerns my master, at the peril of my head. I am confident that the king being pleased to set himself to the business, is able, by his wisdom and ministers, to carry any just and honourable action, through * Strafford Papers, ii. 60-64. Ibid. ii. 136, 250.

Ibid. i. 345.

all imaginary opposition, for real there can be none.

To start aside for

such panic fears as a Prynne or an Eliot may set up, were the meanest folly in the whole world. The debts of the crown being taken off, you may govern as you please *. "

It would be easy to multiply passages of this description, but these will suffice to show the extent to which this species of warfare against the liberties of the English people was carried by these men. It is manifest that the change which they contemplated embraced the total overthrow of the constitution; and the substitution of that "sovereign power," which Wentworth had once declared to be unknown to our laws, in the place of all law t.

While prosecuting his plans in Ireland, Wentworth was summoned to aid the king in providing against the evils threatened by the Scottish invasion. When it was determined that another parliament should be assembled, the lord deputy became so far sensible of his danger as to request that he might be permitted to return to Ireland; but Charles was anxious to secure his assistance at this crisis, and commanded his attendance, assuring him "that not a hair of his head should be touched." Beside the enemies with which Wentworth had surrounded himself by his apostacy, and by his course of proceeding consequent on that event, there were others hardly less formidable in the very court which he had so much laboured to propitiate. The queen appears to have been at the head of this party, which included the marquis of Hamilton, lord Holland, sir Harry Vane, and the earls of Essex and Arundel. He had in consequence experienced, since his arrival, several mortifying instances of exclusion from the most important deliberations of the council. It was at this juncture, however, that Charles conferred upon him the title of earl of Strafford, a distinction which he had more than once descended to solicit §.

We have seen, that on the second day after his arrival in London, the earl was impeached. Some days later, a charge con- Strafford's sisting of nine articles was presented by the commons: impeachment but the committee appointed to prepare the impeachment and trial. extended their investigations during three months, and the articles contained in their last charge were twenty-eight in number. The point which it was the grand object of the commons to establish against the accused was, an attempt to subvert the fundamental laws of the country. Having made this appear, it would remain for them to show that traitorous designs against the sovereign were necessarily included in this meditated inroad on the securities of the state.

Strafford Papers, i. 173.

"Our laws are not acquainted with sovereign power." Rushworth, i. 554. Whitelocke, 37.

See some notices of the neglects to which Strafford was exposed by the conduct of the king and the court in his Letters, i. 128, 138, 142-144; ii. 42, 83, 103, 111, 127, 133, 201, 265, 284.

The place appointed for this memorable trial was Westminster-hall, and many writers of the time speak with admiration of the stately preparations which were there made in prospect of this grand inquest. On either side the hall stages were raised, eleven in succession, each divided by rails, and the whole reaching nearly to the roof. In the highest range were the commissioners of Scotland, and the lords of Ireland, parties to this process, with the commons of England who were seated below them. The peers, to whose solemn arbitration the questions at issue were to be submitted, occupied the centre, in their state dresses; and with them were the lord keeper and the judges on the woolsacks, in their robes of scarlet. At the upper end, and somewhat above the space where the peers were seated, was a chair placed upon an elevation, and covered with a canopy of state. There was also a second chair for the prince but both were vacant, as no judicial act could be legally proceeded with so long as the king was supposed to be present. But two galleries, partly concealed by trellis-work, rose on each side the throne, one of which was allotted to the foreign nobility and others, and the king, the queen, and their court occupied the other. At the foot of the state canopy was an elevated space, into which many ladies of rank were admitted. At the lower end of the hall were temporary apartments, to which the accused or his accusers alternately retired for half an hour to prepare their matters of charge or defence. Between this lower part of the hall, and the centre filled by the lords, was a small desk, at which the earl stood or sat, four secretaries being in waiting, and the governor of the Tower at his side. The earls of Arundel and Lindsey discharged the duties, the former of high steward, the latter of high constable of England. Before this assembly," the most glorious," says an eye-witness, "the isle could afford," Strafford appeared, day after day, brought in by a guard from the train-bands. He wore a deep mourning suit, and his George, an ornament which bespoke his rank. His dark countenance, now paled with sickness, and his body, somewhat bent from its long-continued infirmities, but through which the dignified self-possession of his mind was still visible, tended to increase the sympathy which the appearance of any man in such circumstances could not fail to awaken *.

No indifferent persons were found in that great assembly. There was enough in the countenance and gestures of all, and in their loud talkings during the cessation of the speeches, to bespeak the interest which every one felt in the shifting appearances of the struggle. Charles looked on the fate of Strafford as involving that of the plan of govern

*Baillie's Letters, ubi supra. Baillie was present as one of the Scotch commissioners. He informs us that the king broke down the screen from before him with his own hands, but the royal auditors, though sitting "in the eyes of all, were no more regarded than if they had been absent, for the lords sat uncovered.”— May's Hist. 61.