the Lords and signed by all of them except Southampton and Robarts. Orders were given by the Commons alone, without other authority, that it should be subscribed by the whole nation. The protestation was in itself very inoffensive, even insignificant, and contained nothing but general declarations that the subscribers would defend their religion and liberties. But it tended to increase the popular panic, and intimated, what was more expressly declared in the preamble, that these blessings were now exposed to the utmost peril.

Alarms were every day given of new conspiracies; in Lancashire great multitudes of papists were assembling, secret meetings were held by them in caves and underground in Surrey: they had entered into a plot to blow up the river (!) with gunpowder in order to drown the city; provisions of arms were making beyond sea ; sometimes France, sometimes Denmark, was forming designs against the kingdom, and the populace, who are always terrified with present and enraged with distant dangers, were still further animated in their demands for justice against the unfortunate Strafford.

The king came to the House of Lords, and though he expressed his resolution, for which he offered them any security, never again to employ Strafford in any branch of public business, he professed himself totally dissatisfied with regard to the circumstance of treason, and on that account declared his difficulty in giving his assent to the bill of attainder. The Commons took fire and voted it a breach of privilege for the king to take notice of any bill depending before the Houses. Charles did not perceive that his attachment to Strafford was the chief motive for the bill, and that the greater proofs he gave of anxious concern for this minister, the more inevitable did he render his destruction. About eighty peers had constantly attended Strafford's trial; but such apprehensions were entertained on account of the popular tumults that only forty-five were present when the bill of attainder was brought into the house; yet of these, nineteen had the courage to vote against it. A certain proof that if entire freedom had been allowed, the bill had been rejected by a great majority.

In carrying up the bill to the Lords, St. John the solicitor-general advanced two topics well suited to the fury of the times; that though the testimony against Strafford was not clear, yet, in this way of bill, private satisfaction to each man's conscience was sufficient, even though no evidence at all be produced; and that the earl had no title to plead law, because he had broken law. "It is true," added he, we give law to hares and deer, for they are beasts of chase, but it was never accounted either cruel or unfair to destroy foxes or wolves wherever they can be found, for they are beasts of prey."

After popular violence had prevailed over the Lords, the same battery was next applied to force the king's assent. The populace flocked about Whitehall, and accompanied their demand of justice with the loudest clamours and most open menaces. Rumours of conspiracies against the parliament were anew spread abroad; invasions and insurrections talked of; and the whole nation was roused into such a ferment, as threatened some great and imminent convulsion. On whichever side the king cast his eyes, he saw no resource nor security. All his servants, consulting their own safety rather than their master's honour, declined interposing with their advice between him and his parliament. The queen, terrified with the appearance of so mighty a danger, and bearing formerly no goodwill to Strafford, was in tears, and pressed him to satisfy his people in this demand, which it was hoped would finally content them. Juxon alone, whose courage was not inferior to his other virtues, ventured to advise him, if in his conscience he did not approve of the bill, by no means to assent to it.

Strafford, hearing of Charles's irresolution and anxiety, took a very extraordinary

step.

He wrote a letter in which he entreated the king, for the sake of public peace, to put an end to his unfortunate, however innocent life, and to quiet the tumultuous people, by granting them the request for which they were so importunate. "In this," added he "my consent will more acquit you to God than all the world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury. And as, by God's grace, I forgive all the world with a calmness and meekness of infinite contentment to my dislodging soul; so, sir, to you I can resign the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness, in the just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours." Perhaps Strafford hoped that this unusual instance of generosity would engage the king still more strenuously to protect him; perhaps he gave his life for lost! and finding himself in the hands of his enemies, and observing that Balfour, the lieutenant of the Tower, was devoted to the popular party, he absolutely despaired of ever escaping the multiplied dangers with which he was everyway environed. We might ascribe this step to a noble effort of disinterestedness not unworthy the great mind of Strafford, if the measure which he advised had not been in the event as pernicious to his master, as it was immediately fatal to himself.

After the most violent anxiety and doubt Charles at last granted a commission to four noblemen to give the royal assent in his name to the bill; flattering himself probably, in this extremity of distress, that, as neither his will consented to the deed, nor was his hand immediately engaged in it, he was the more free from all the guilt which attended it. These commissioners he empowered at the same time to give his assent to the bill which rendered the parliament perpetual.

The Commons from policy rather than necessity, had embraced the expedient of paying the two armies by borrowing money from the city, and these loans they repaid afterwards by taxes levied on the people. The citizens, either of themselves or by suggestion, began to start difficulties with regard to a further loan which was demanded. "We make no scruple of trusting the parliament," said they, "were we certain that the parliament were to continue till our repayment. But in the present precarious state of affairs, what security can be given us for our money?" In pretence of obviating this objection a bill was suddenly brought into the house and passed with great unanimity and rapidity, that the parliament should not be dissolved, prorogued or adjourned without their own consent. It was hurried in like manner through the House of Peers, and was instantly carried to the king for his assent. Charles, in the agony of grief, shame, and remorse for Strafford's doom, perceived not that this other bill was of still more fatal consequence to his authority, and rendered the power of his enemies perpetual, as it was already uncontrollable.

In comparison of the bill of attainder by which he deemed himself an accomplice in his friend's murder, this concession made no figure in his eyes-a circumstance which, if it lessen our idea of his resolution or penetration, serves to prove the integrity of his heart and the goodness of his disposition. It is indeed certain that strong compunction for his consent to Strafford's execution attended this unfortunate prince during the remainder of his life, and even at his own fatal end, the memory of this guilt with great sorrow and remorse recurred upon him. All men were so sensible of the extreme violence done him, that he suffered the less both in character and interest from this unhappy measure; and though he abandoned his best friend yet was he able to preserve in some degree the attachment of all his adherents.

Secretary Carleton was sent by the king to inform Strafford of the final resolution which necessity had extorted from him. The earl seemed surprised, and starting up, exclaimed in the words of scripture, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men for in them there is no salvation." He was soon able, however, to collect ais courage, and he prepared himself to suffer the fatal sentence. Only three days' interval was allowed him. The king, who made a new effort in his behalf, and sent

by the hands of the young prince a letter addressed to the peers, in which he entreated them to confer with the commons about a mitigation of Strafford's sentence, and begged at least for some delay, was refused in both requests.

Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud's windows, with whom he had long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate dissolved in tears; and having pronounced with a broken voice a tender blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants. Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet, his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself and maintained its unbroken resolution amidst the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was full of decency and courage. "He feared," he said, "that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood." Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attended him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent: "And now," said he, "I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them all in all." Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I thank God," said he, "that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time as ever I did when going to repose."

With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner.

Thus perished in the 49th year of his age, the earl of Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice and an atonement for many violations of the constitution, it may safely be affirmed, that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties by which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply, were the result of measures previous to Strafford's favour; and if they arose from ill-conduct he at least was entirely innocent. Even those violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint that the constitution was subverted had been all of them conducted, so far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his private advice might be,* this salutary maxim he failed not often and publicly to inculcate in the king's presence, that if any inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws, this licence ought to be practised with extreme reserve, and, as soon as possible, a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury which it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first parliament after the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and even a few weeks after Strafford's execution, this very parliament remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence, as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been conducted.

That Strafford was secretly no enemy to arbitrary counsels, appears from some of his letters and despatches, particularly Vol. II., p. 60, where he seems to wish that a standing army were established.

THE LAST FAREWELL.

THOMAS, EARL OF STRAFFORD.

[Written by himself a little before his death, and printed on a broadsheet. London, 1641.]

Farewell, vain world! farewell, my fleeting joys,
Whose drop of music's but an echo's noise;
And all the lustre of your painted light,
But as dull dreams and phantoms of the night.
Empty your pleasures, too, nor can they last
Longer than air-blown bubbles or a blast.

Farewell, you fading honours, which do blind,
By your false mists the sharpest-sighted mind;
And having raised him to his height of cares,
Tumble him headlong down the slippery stairs.
How shall I praise or prize your glorious ills,
Which are but poison put in golden pills?

Farewell, my blustering titles; ne'er come back,
You've swelled my sails until my mastings crack,
And made my vessel reel against the rocks
Of gaping ruin, whose destructive knocks
Hath helpless left me, sinking, here to lie;
The cause? I raised my maintop sails too high.

Farewell, ambition, since we needs must part,
Thou great enchantress of man's greater heart:
Thy gilded titles that do seem so fair,
Are but like meteors hanging in the air:

In whose false splendour, falling thence, is found
No worth, but water-like shed on the ground.

Farewell the glory, from which all the rest
Derive the sweets for which men style them best,
That from one root in several branches spring;
I mean the favour of my gracious king;
This, too, hath led my wandering soul astray,
Like ignis fatuus from its righter way.

Farewell, my friends-I need not bid you go;
When fortune flies, you freely will do so;
Worship the rising, not the setting sun.
The house is falling. Vermin quickly run.
Bees from the withered flowers do make haste;
The reason? because they have lost their taste.

Farewell, the treasures of my tempting store,
Which of all idols I did least adore ;
Haste to some idiot's coffer, and he'll be
Thy slave, as I have master been to thee.
Heaven knows of all the suitors I have had,
I prized thee least, as counting none so bad.

Lastly, my foes, farewell; for such I have
Who do in multitudes wait for my grave;

'Mongst which I can't believe but some there be
That hate my vices only, and not me;

Let them pass o'er my fame without a blot,
And let the vulgar snatch, they know not what.

Let them besmear me by the chattering notes,
Poor, silly hearts, which echo through their throats;
I'll pass it o'er and pray, with patience, too;
"Father, forgive, they know not what they do."
Yet O! I could have wooed my treacherous fate;
T' have let me die without the public hate.

SETTING UP THE STANDARD.

ELIOT WARBURTON.

The king had left London for the North, and was only hesitating where he should raise that standard, which he had as yet scarcely an armed soldier to defend.

The queen sent for prince Rupert to the Hague, announced to him that the king designed for him the generalship of his horse, and enjoined him to proceed to England instantly with such supplies as she had then prepared. These were placed in a small vessel belonging to the king, and the prince himself embarked in the "Lion," but had scarcely put to sea when a gale of wind drove him back to the Texel, and at the same time sent the store ship ashore, where her cargo was saved with difficulty. Prince Rupert hastened to lay his condition before the stadtholder, who generously gave him a frigate of forty-six guns for his own conveyance, and a galliot for his stores. During the delay thus caused, prince Maurice obtained permission to join his brother, and henceforth affectionately fellowed him during the remainder of his brief existence.

*

At length the prince sailed for England, lord Digby being on board the galliot. The wind was fair, and "the seas contributed to the designes of the prince, yet his mind went faster than his vessell, and the zeale he had speedily to serve his majesty made him think diligence itself was lazy." Having narrowly escaped the parliamentary cruizers of Flamborough Head, they reached Tynemouth in safety. Hence they rode post for Nottingham, Daniel O'Neale, Somerset, Fox, and others being of their company. It was evening when they landed, but Rupert was not a man to wait upon the morning, and, immediately calling for horses, he set forth. It was the month of August, but, as his evil destiny would have it, there came on a sharp frost, and, his horse slipping in the dusk, the prince was thrown with violence and dislocated his shoulder. There happened to be a "bone setter" living within half a mile of where he fell, and the limb was set, but it was three days before prince Rupert was able to resume his journey. + When he reached Nottingham he found that the king had gone to Coventry, ‡ so, mounting again, he followed him. Before

* Lans. MS. which here breaks off *

It was evidently written by some person intimate with or attendant on the prince, and seems to have been written from time to time, as conversation brought old facts to light.

The bone-setter refused to take more than half the fee the prince offered him. It is pleasant to trace back this trait of humble honour through two hundred years.

An occurrence is here related in the MSS. which, as it gives a striking picture of the poverty of the king's resources, ought not to be omitted. Prince Rupert had scarce arrived at Nottingham, when lord Digby, the governor, came to him, saying he had received a dispatch from the king (who was then before Coventry), asking for two petards, a word which he could not understand. The prince hastily proceeded to examine the arsenal (as it was called by courtesy), but