Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

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.

WESTMINSTER HALL AND PALACE YARD, IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I.

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.