CHAP. IX.

From the Impeachment of the Earl of STRAFFORD, to the Recess of the Parliament upon the KING's progress in

Scotland.

IT is impossible to account for the prodigious changes of this and the years immediately succeeding, without taking a short view of some civil occurrences that paved the way for them. In pursuance of the design of bringing corrupt ministers to justice, the parliament began with Thomas Wentworth earl of Strafford, an able statesman, but a most dangerous enemy of the laws and liberties of his country, whom they impeached of high treason, Nov. 11, 1640, and brought to his trial the 22d of March following. The grand article of his impeachment* was, For endeavoring to subvert the fundamental laws of England and Ireland, and to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government. This was subdivided into several branches, supported by a multiplicity of facts, none of which were directly treason by law, but being put together were construed to be such by accumulation. The earl's reply to the facts consisted partly in excuses and evasions; with an humble acknowledgment that in some things he had been mistaken; but his principal defence rested upon a point of law, Whether an endeavor to subvert the fundamental form of government, and the laws of the land, was high treason at common law, or by any statute in force? Mr. Lane the counsel for the prisoner maintained, (1.) That all treasons were to be reduced to the particulars specified in the 25th Edw. III. cap. 2. (2.) That nothing else was or could be treason;

* When the earl of Strafford was impeached, the king came into the house of lords, and desired that the articles against him might be read; which the lord keeper ordered to be done, while many lords eried out Privilege! privilege! When the king was departed, the house ordered that no entry should be made of the king's demand of hearing the articles read, or of the keeper's compliance with it. A MSS. memorandum of Dr. Birch in the British Museum, and quoted in Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii. p. 186. Ed.

and that it was so enacted by the 1st Henry IV. cap. 10. (3.) That there had been no precedent to the contrary since that time. And (4.) That by 1 Mary, cap. 12, an endeavor to subvert the fundamental laws of the land is declared to be no more than felony.

The commons felt the weight of these arguments; and not being willing to enter into debate with a private barrister, changed their impeachment into a bill of attainder, which they had a right to do by virtue of a clause in the 25th Edw. III. cap. 2d,* which refers the decision of what is treason in all doubtful cases to the king and parliament.† The attainder passed the commons April 10, yeas 204, noes 59; but it is thought would have been lost in the house of lords had it not been for the following accident, which put it out of the power of the earl's friends to save him.

The king, being weary of his parliament and desirous to protect his servant, consented to a project of some persons in the greatest trust about the court, to bring the army that was raised against the Scots up to London, in order to awe

The words of the statute are,

"And because that many other like cases of treason may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think or declare at this present 'time, it is accorded, that if any other case, supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any justice, the justices shall tarry without any going to judgment of the treason till the cause he shewed and declared before the king and his parliament, whether it ought to be judged treason or felony."

The bill of attainder against the earl of Strafford being formed on this principle and authority, there was a great propriety in the following clause of it: viz "That no judge or judges, justice or justices 'whatsoever, shall adjudge or interpret any act or thing to be treason, nor hear or determine treason, in any other manner than he or they 'should or ought to have done before the passing of this net." This clause has been considered as a reflection on the bill itself, and as an acknowledgment, that the case was too hard and the proceedings too irregular to be drawn into a precedent. But this is a misconstruction of the clause, which did not intimate any consciousness of wrong in those who passed it; but was meant to preserve to parliament the right, in future, which is exercised in this instance, of determining what is treason in all doubtful cases; and was intended to restrain the operation of the bill to this single case. It shewed, observes Mrs. Macaulay, a very laudable attention to the preservation of public liberty. Macaulay's History, vol. ii. 8vo p. 444, note (†) and Dr. Harris's Life of Charles I. p. 324-5. Ed.

the two houses, to rescue the earl, and to take possession of the city of London. Lord Clarendon says,* the last motion was rejected with abhorrence, and that the gentleman who made it was the person that discovered the whole plot. The conspirators met in the queen's lodgings at Whitehall, where a petition was drawn up for the officers of the army to sign, and to present to his majesty; with a tender of their readiness to wait upon him in defence of his prerogative against the turbulent spirits of the house of commons; the draught was shewn to the king, and signed in testimony of his majesty's approbation C. R. but the plot being discovered to the earl of Bedford, to the lords Say and Kimbolton, and to Mr. Pym, with the names of the conspirators; all of them absconded, and some fled immediately into France.

Mr. Pym opened the conspiracy to the house of commons, May 2, 1641,† and acquainted them, that among other branches of the plot, one was to seize the Tower, to put the earl of Strafford at the head of the Irish army of papists who were to be transported into England, and to secure the important town of Portsmouth, in order to receive succors from France; sir William Balfour, lieutenant of the Tower, confessed that the king had sent him express orders to receive a hundred men into that garrison under the command of captain Billingsly, to favor the earl's escape; and that the earl himself offered him twenty thousand pounds in money, and to advance his son in marriage to one of the best fortunes in the kingdom. Lord Clarendon has used all his rhetoric to color over this conspiracy, and to make posterity believe it was little more than the idle chat of some officers at a tavern; but they who will compare the depositions in Rushworth, with his lordship's account of that matter, (says bishop Burnet) will find, that there is a great deal more in the one, than the other is willing to believe. Mr. Eachard confesses that the plot was not wholly without a foundation. The court would have disowned it, but their keeping the conspirators in their places, made the parliament believe that there was a great

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 248.

May's Hist. p. 97, 98, 99.

† Rapin, vol. ii. p. 369, folio. Rushworth, part 3, vol. i. p. 291.

deal more in it than was yet discovered; they therefore sent orders immediately to secure the town and haven of Portsmouth, and to disband the Irish army; they voted that all papists should be removed from about the court and directed letters to sir Jacob Ashley, to induce the army to a dutiful behavior, and to assure them of their full pay.

The consequences of this plot were infinitely prejudicial to the king's affairs; the court lost its reputation; the reverence due to the king and queen was lessened; and the house of commons began to be esteemed the only barrier of the people's liberties; for which purpose they entered into a solemn protestation to stand by each other with their lives and fortunes; the Scots army was continued for their security; a bill for the continuance of the present parliament was brought in and urged with great advantage; and last of all, by the discovery of this plot, the fate of the earl of Strafford was determined; great numbers of people crowded in a tumultuous manner to Westminster, crying Justice! justice! and threatning violence to those members of the house of commons who had voted against his attainder. In this situation of affairs, and in the absence of the bench of bishops, (as being a case of blood) the bill passed with the dissent only of eleven peers. The king had some scruples about giving it the royal assent, because, though he was convinced the earl had been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, he did not apprehend that an endeavor to subvert the fundamental form of government, and to introduce an arbitrary power, was high treason; his majesty consulted his bishops and judges, but was not satisfied till he received a letter from the earl himself, beseeching his majesty to sign the bill, in order to make way for an happy agreement between him and his subjects. Mr. Whitlocke insinuates,* that this letter was but a feint of the earl's; for when secretary Carlton acquainted him with what the king had done, and with the motive, which was his own consent, he rose up in a great surprise, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation. Two days after this [May 12,] he was executed upon Towerhill, and submitted to the ax with a Roman bravery and

* Memorials, p. 44.

courage; but at the restoration of king Charles II. his attainder was reversed, and the articles of accumulative treason declared null, because what is not treason in the several parts cannot amount to treason in the whole.*

This was the unhappy fate of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, once an eminent patriot and asserter of the liberties of his country, but after he was called to court, one of the most arbitrary ministers that this nation ever produced. He was certainly a gentleman of distinguished abilities, as appears by the incomparable defence he made on his trial, which gained him more reputation and esteem with the people, than all the latter actions of his life put together; but still he was a public enemy of his country, and had as great a share in those fatal counsels that brought on the civil war as any man then living. "The earl (says Mr. Eachard) 'was of a severe countenance, insufferably proud and haughty, having a sovereign contempt of the people, whom he never studied to gratify in any thing; the an'cient nobility looked upon his sudden rise, and universal influence in public affairs, with envy; so that he had but 'few friends and a great many enemies."

Lord Digby, in his famous speech against the bill of attainder, wherein he washes his hands of the blood of the earl of Strafford, has nevertheless these expressions: "I 'confidently believe him the most dangerous minister, and the most insupportable to free subjects, that can be char'actered. I believe his practices in themselves have been as high and tyrannical as any subject ever ventured upon; and the malignity of them are greatly aggravated by "those abilities of his, whereof God has given him the use, but the devil the application. In a word, I believe him still that grand apostate to the commonwealth, who must 'not expect to be pardoned in this world, till he be dis'patched to the other."

Lord Falkland says, "That he committed so many 'mighty and so manifest enormities and oppressions in the 'kingdom of Ireland, that the like have not been committed by any governor in any government since Verres left Sic'ily; and after his lordship was called over from being * Nalson's Collections, vol. ii. p. 203. 56

VOL. II.