SUCH an unfortunate sovereign as Charles is a melancholy subject to dwell upon, but we must not cut him short though his contemporaries cruelly served him so. With a melancholy forboding of what was to come, the king, on the 3rd of November, 1640, opened the Long Parliament. One of its earliest acts was to release from prison our learned friend Mr. Prynne, and to give him £5000 damages for his detention. On hearing the decision he declared he would live no longer like a Prynne, but like a prince; and by way of a beginning he came down one flight of stairs, and had "2 pair, Mr. Prynne," instead of "3 pair, Mr. Prynne," marked on the door-post of his chambers.
Strafford, who felt that his turn would very soon come, remained out of town as long as he could, under the idea that, in conformity with the proverb, "Out of sight out of mind," the Commons, if they did not see him, would never think of him. Charles, however, wrote to him, telling him that "to keep so long out of sight he must, indeed, be out of his mind," and insisted on his coming up to town to take his place in Parliament. He had scarcely entered the House of Lords before Mr. Pym appeared at the bar to impeach Thomas Earl Strafford in the name of all the Commons of England. The earl was taken to the Tower; and the chief secretary, Windebank, had he not discovered something in the wind, which caused him to take to flight, would assuredly have been obliged to follow the favourite, or even to come in with him neck and neck, which means, in this instance, neck or nothing. Finch, the Lord Keeper, was next proceeded against, but, having made one speech in his own defence, he availed himself of the natural qualities of the Finch family, by taking to flight, or to speak more characteristically, he "hopped the twig," and fled to Holland. Several others were threatened with Parliamentary vengeance, and Berkeley was actually arrested while sitting as a peer in his ermine, which he said had been done because the mob had resolved to undermine the Constitution.
On the 19th of January, 1641, Mr. Prideaux brought in a bill to regulate the holding of Parliaments. Its object was to provide for their being summoned by the Lords in case of the refusal of the king, or by the Sheriffs in default of the Lords, or on the failure of King, Lords, and Sheriffs, the thing was to be done by the people. There was, by this measure, to be a new Parliament once in three years, which was allowing rather amply for wear and tear; and though Charles was very reluctant, he ultimately gave his consent to the arrangement. Those very ill-used gentlemen, the bishops, who are always selected as a mark when the spirit of revolution is abroad taking random shots at everything venerable, were of course not allowed on this occasion to escape, and the Commons voted them most unceremoniously out of Parliament.
The great event of the session, however, was the trial of Lord Strafford, who on the morning of Monday, the 22nd of March, boated it, or rather barged it, up from the Tower to Westminster. Everything, even the tide was against him, and the Earl of Arundel, who was notoriously his enemy, acted as High Steward at the trial. The impeachment contained twenty-eight articles, every one of them being capital, so that if Strafford had possessed twenty heads, it is quite clear that the deep revenge of his accusers "had stomach for them all." Strafford's reply was written out on two hundred sheets of paper, but a good bold text hand must have been employed, for the two hundred sheets, as well as the articles of impeachment, were all got through on the first day of the trial.
It is rather a strange way of proceeding to take the reply before hearing evidence in support of the charge; but such was the practice on this momentous occasion. Arundel next called upon the managers of the Commons to bring forward their proofs, and Pym began a very roundabout address in the fashion of the period. The speech of Pym was a reiteration of the charges in the impeachment, served up with a garniture of his own eloquence. Strafford declared it was a conspiracy, of course, for it is a curious fact that the most flagrant criminals have always been—if they are to be believed, which we need scarcely say they are not—the victims of a cruel combination against injured innocence. Strafford asked for time to plead, but he had not taken out a summons in the regular way, and accordingly only half an hour was awarded him. He nevertheless made such good use of this short time, that he made a capital speech, and concluded with a puzzle almost as good as the old original inquiry, with reference to the red herring and the sack of coals. * "For if," said he, "the one thousand misdemeanors will not make a felony, how will twenty-eight misdemeanors make a treason?"
* Every one knows, or ought to know, the question of the
arithmetical enthusiast: "If a red herring costs three-
halfpence, what will a sack of coals come to?" Ans.—
Ashes..
The trial was continued from day to day, and on the 10th of April Pym walked knowingly up to the bar with a variety of nods and winks, to intimate that he had a matter of vast importance to communicate. The assembly having ordered the door to be locked to prevent intrusion—as if the housemaid might have wandered in with her broom—there was a general cry of "Now then, what is it? Let's have it out without all this mystery." Pym hereupon produced a copy of notes taken at a meeting of the privy council, in which Strafford was reported to have told the king that he was "'absolved and loosed from all rule and government.'" The point was considered a strong one; but if Strafford had told Charles he was the Emperor of Morocco, and might turn all his subjects into morocco slippers by trampling them under his feet, the ministers having merely said so would not have made the fact, and he could not have been liable for it unless it had really happened. Verba non acta seemed, however, to be the motto of his judges, who took the word for the deed in numerous instances. Strafford having made the best answer he could to this part of the charge, was told by Arundel, that if he had anything more to say, the sooner he said it the better, for his judges were very anxious to have the pleasure of condemning him. The fact was, that the customary sympathy of Englishmen for a poor fellow in a mess, was beginning to show itself, and the Commons feared that the trial would not "keep" a great deal longer if they did not speedily make an end of it. The matter was accordingly hurried on, and on the 21st of April, the bill of attainder passed the Commons by a very large majority. The numbers were 204 against 59, which of course did not include the "tellers," for if it had done so, Hume, Hallam, and the rest of us, must have been comprised, for we are all of us the "tellers" of this sad story.
When the bill went up to the peers, their lordships were not at all in a hurry to despatch it, and the Commons kept sending up messages to know "How about that little Bill?" and begging that the Upper House would immediately settle it. It was rumoured that Strafford intended to escape, but it was rather idle to speculate upon the intentions of a man who was utterly unable to accomplish them. He offered a bribe of £22,000 to Balfour, the Lieutenant of the Tower; but that virtuous individual scorned the filthy dross, though some brute, who has no appreciation of the great and good, has hinted that Balfour either expected more, or was afraid that what was offered would not be forthcoming.
Charles, who was very anxious to make the favourite safe, though the odds were terribly against him, sent for the Lords and Commons, whom he begged, when drawing up their sentence, to draw it as mild as possible. He said he had listened to the evidence, and he really did not see how they could commit the earl. But Pym replied, sotto voce, that "none are so blind as those who won't see;" and Charles could elicit nothing satisfactory. At the next sitting of the Parliament a furious mob was collected outside, and the Lords naturally expressed their disinclination to being bullied into haste on the subject of the bill of attainder. Upon this, one Dr. Burgess, who had some weight with the people, went out to disperse them, and though he said some sharp things which caused that intolerable nuisance—a wag—to cry out, "Come, Burgess, none of your sauce!" he succeeded in his object.
The state of nervous agitation in which the whole country was plunged at about this period may be conceived by a little anecdote which is told on the best authority—that is to say, the best that happens to be available. Sir Walter Earl was in the midst of a cock-and-bull story about some plot that had been hatching to make a sort of girandola of the Parliament, by blowing it up with a splendid display of fireworks, in the midst of which the Speaker was to have gone off like a Jack-in-the-box, when the members, who were shivering and shaking like a grove of aspens, were startled by the following incident:—Two very corpulent members happening to stand upon one plank, which was rather the worse for wear, caused the floor to crack, and the Commons thought it was all up, or rather all down, with them. The utmost confusion prevailed, and somebody at once started off to fetch the train-bands, who acted as the police of the period. It turned out to be a false alarm, or to speak more correctly, a real alarm resting on false premises, for the flaw in the floor had been the cause of this not altogether groundless terror.