That appeal, of course, was made in vain; but the peers. secured the co-operation of a body of men quite as influential, at that moment, as the Privy Council, namely, of the whole city of London; for 10,000 citizens, imitating them, signed a petition to the King, that contained all that was in the Lords' petition, with an addition of divers other griefs.'* Upon these features of the crisis of August and September, 1640, we need not dwell; as it is well known, that, compelled by the Lords' petitioning, and the general voice of the people almost hissing him and his ill-acted regality off the stage,' t King Charles summoned the Long Parliament. It is to what provoked that outery that we would call attention. Both long before, and long after the year 1640, nervous terror of popish outbreak possessed Englishmen with intensity. Of all the actions that wrought the downfall of James II., the most potent was the introduction of Irish papist soldiers into this country; the alarm they caused provoked the panic of the Irish night,' in the winter of 1688, the strangest and 'most terrible that England had ever seen; ' a terror of such long duration, that nearly a quarter of a century after the occurrence, it was referred to as still fresh in most peoples' memories.'§ And papists and Irishmen, in 1640, were certainly not less terrible to us than in 1688. If so, the thousands who read the Declaration of the Scottish nation, or the copies of the Lords' Remonstrance, or who resorted by companies of twenty or thirty in a company, to consult and to subscribe' the Londoners' petition, must have discussed the intention 'credibly reported,' of the landing here of the Irish army; a mere word, on such a motive for quick alarm, must have sent the rumour flying fast and strong throughout England; the very whisper of such a project would have sufficed to drive the country into madness.T * Information sent to Archbishop Laud, 10 September, 1640. Rolls Office. † Milton's Eikonoclastes.' Ed. 1848, vol. i. p. 380. Macaulay's Hist.,' iii. 305. The Spectator' for 8 April, 1712. Information sent to Archbishop Laud, 10 September, 1640. Rolls Office. Strafford's project was suspected from its outset. His army was raised in March 1640; and, according to one living at the time, 'a general damp' was cast on the proceedings of the Short Parliament, during the following April, because the most active and disaffected 'members were enabled, by Vane, to affright the more sincere with the Irish army, and the ill consequences of successes against the Scots.' Nor were the King's English subjects warned that Strafford was coming here, at the head of his Irish-popish army, by any indirect and uncertain method, but by the solemn assurance of the whole Scottish nation, and of the most eminent among our own nobles and statesmen. When once it is considered, what an agitation was thus deliberately set on foot, and how it must have affected the King, and Strafford, and every inhabitant of the three kingdoms, it may well seem surprising that historians should have entirely overlooked such a remarkable feature in the crisis of September 1640. And yet the panic this terror struck upon England must have been the key-note of the storm that compelled the King to summon the Long Parliament; the general knowledge, that the royal master was himself a principal' in that crime, and its chief author,'* for which a too devoted servant was to die, was the key-note of public feeling about Strafford during his trial. It was the universal belief that plotters had enforced a war between Scotland and us, that when we had well wearied one another we might be brought to what scorn they pleased,' and that the Irish army is to bring us to a better order,' † that made England refuse to aid King Charles to expel the invader from our country. It was the despair this belief created that made Englishmen content to let the blood shed at Newburn rest unavenged; that made us willing to suffer the accomplishment of that old prophecy, then rife in England, that we should be overcome by the 'Scottes,' an enemy we held most wretched, and least worth,'t than either Dane or Norman; events so hateful, that, when months of agitation had dimmed the memory of our infamous 'defeat,' Westminster Hall echoed back shouts, applauding the opinion that peace between England and Scotland was the 'worst of evils.' § This feeling overcame even the dispassionate Selden, for he surprised the House of Commons by speaking 'long and vehemently' to dissuade them from any dealing with (Sir P. Warwick's Memoirs, p. 146.) The origin of that rumour' was sinister language used by Strafford himself, and by his brother George, at that time in Dublin (Rushworth, viii. 538), and reported in London almost immediately, as is fully explained in D'Ewes, MS. Diary. Debate, Nov. 11, 1640. * Milton's 'Eikonoclastes.' Ed. 1848, vol. i. p. 333. † Pym's words in the House of Commons, 7 November, 1640. Sanford's 'Great Rebellion,' p. 302. Rous's Diary, p. 104. Strafford's Trial. Rushworth, viii. 578. their Scotch fellow-subjects coming in with sword in hand; implying that such a step was complicity with their treason. 6 6 What new, deep, and tragic interest is imparted to Strafford's trial by the thought, that not one of the vast crowd inside Westminster Hall, or of the crowd outside, but knew that the King was the arch-plotter against his people, that he had enforced the wicked counsels' of his Minister. This accounts for the sympathy which one guilty of so cruel a treason against his fellow-subjects, attracted towards himself; Strafford was a master of persuasion,' but the knowledge that he was to be sacrificed to save the chief criminal, spoke for him more eloquently even than that eloquence which was his own. Nor was sympathy the only advantage Strafford thus gained; the position in which he and the King stood towards each other affected the whole course of the trial. notoriety that Strafford's advice to turn the Irish army against England had passed into action, almost barred all proof of that advice, lest too much should be proved not against him, but against the King; and hence appeal to the voice of the people,' else so powerful in such cases, became a horrid witness' to be avoided at all risk. < The It may be presumed that the same necessity, the necessity to screen the King, led Strafford's accusers to enfold amongst a mass of minor charges which affected him alone, that one chief accusation on which they could so surely rely, but in which Charles and he alike were involved. It must have been some strong cause which required that attempt purposely made' to procure the death of so notorious a criminal upon accumulative treason, none of his pretended 'crimes being treason apart;' which exposed the House of Commons to that countercharge of injustice then so loudly urged, and which is heard even to this day.§ Insight, also, is gained into the strange conflict of passion that attended the change of procedure against Strafford from an impeachment to the bill of attainder. That change was resisted by Pym and Hampden, but it was advocated, even by men devoted to the King and Strafford, such as Culpepper and Tomkins ; || and surely it is not unreasonable to account for so singular a 580. Debate, 3 February, 1641. D'Ewes' MS. Diary. Glyn's Reply to Strafford's defence to art. 23. Rushworth, viii. Act for reversing the Earl of Strafford's Attainder. § Mr. Gladstone, Parliamentary Debate, Feb. 1872. D'Ewes' Diary of the Long Parliament,' quoted by Forster; The Grand Remonstrance,' pp. 136–140. VOL. CXXXVII. NO. CCLXXIX. collision of votes by this motive, namely, because trial by impeachment left final judgment to the House of Lords, while to use the language of that House in a protest against proceeding by an attainder, the bill brought in the King as judge.' 6 6 Truly if Charles, in the face of the notoriety of his guilt, could, by his own act and deed, send his accomplice to the block, Pym might rightly say, then he can deny us nothing,' but equally Strafford's friends might expect such a deed to be impossible. But it was possible-and now we see why the King sought public justification of his assent to the attainder bill by an open appeal for sanction to the troop of bishops and judges he summoned for that purpose to Whitehall; and why he registered that ghastly letter on the journals of the House of Lords, which threw the blame of his action on Parliament and the English people. Fruitless efforts! Within a few hours of his own death, the King still bewailed the death of Strafford; lamentations continued in his name in that Image of a King'; his would-be protraiture. † Even to all time Parliament and his son carried on this confession, and declared by statute that Charles I. ever remembered, with unexpressible grief of heart,' his assent to Strafford's death, as he did publicly express it when his own sacred life was taken away.' 6 Surely contrition made so solemnly conspicuous, was designed to atone for a shame that was obvious to all. But the King's true guilt towards Strafford, as yet, rests unexplained. It was he, and he alone, who excited the people to such fury of alarm, that to that noble victim quarter was no more possible than to wolves and beasts of prey.' That fear from Ireland,' which the Commons felt in April, 1640, which all England felt soon after, was, in May 1641, as rife as ever. Though Strafford's fate was visible, the Attainder Bill being then before the Lords, still that fear the King would not allay; he would not disband that Irish army which still lay ready for immediate action round the port of Carrickfergus, where Strafford had stationed it a year before.§ *At evening the Lords sent a message to the House of Commons' that, in their opinion, it was 'the safest way to lay the bill of at'tainder aside, for that it brought in the king as judge.' (Husband's Diurnal, May 5, 1641, p. 93.) † Eikon Basiliké, quoted Nal. ii. 193. Act for reversing Strafford's Attainder. The King's answer to an Address of Parliament on this subject (30 April, 1641) caused much grief,' and struck a long silence' upon the House of Commons, 'in respect it gave so little hope of disbanding That army on foot, and Strafford still general of that army, how could the King's promise be trusted, that if the Earl's life was spared, he would not employ him in any place of trust, 'no not so much as of a constable'? And so, the panic of the preceding autumn was awakened to tenfold agitation. The wildest rumours disturbed the people; but they all circled round that old fear from Ireland,'-that Strafford was to be freed from the Tower of London, that a ship lay ready in the river to waft him back to the Irish army. Verses written at the time, ascribed to the royalist poet Cleaveland, afford a clear reflection of the light in which Strafford's death was regarded, even by an adherent of King Charles. These lines exhibit gloomy displeasure, though not directed against Parliament or the people-a confession that the sacrifice of Strafford was a necessity, but not a necessity of his own creation; deep and sullen regret overpowers the writer's sorrow.* 'Here lies wise and valiant dust, 'the Irish army.' (D'Ewes' MS. Diary, British Museum.) The King against his own mind, to serve his ends, gave up' Strafford 'to death.' (Mrs. Hutchinson, Mem., ed. 1863, p. 91.) Copy of the verses in the Rolls Office. Nalson, ii. p. 204. |