On the 7th of May the Lords passed the bill of attainder against Strafford, as well as another bill, abrogating the power of the king to dissolve the Parliament. The House was thin, and it may have happened that the recent accident with the two fat members in the Commons operated as a warning to corpulent peers not to attend till their locus standi had been looked to by the carpenter.
It now remained to be seen whether Charles would give his consent to the execution of the favourite, and poor Strafford feeling that his life hung upon a thread, sent a long yarn, in the shape of a letter, to his royal master. The king summoned his privy council to advise him what step to take, when honest Jack Juxon, the plain-sailing Bishop of London, exclaimed, bluntly, "I'll tell you what it is, your majesty; if you've any doubts about his guilt don't you go and sign his bill of attainder for all the Bills—no, nor the Bobs, nor the Dicks—in Christendom." Others, however, gave him opposite advice, and the scene ended by his resolving to give his assent, though he did so with his pocket-handkerchief before his eyes, but whether from emotion or a cold in his head is still an "open question" with all historians. On the 12th of May, 1641, poor Strafford met his doom with such heroic fortitude that, though he became shorter by a head in a physical sense, his moral stature was considerably heightened in the eyes of posterity.
The death of Strafford was the signal for the abandonment of office by several of his friends, who thought it better to live with resignation than die with resignation at this very trying juncture. Bills were passed for abolishing the Star-Chamber, and the Court of High Commission, as well as for preventing the Parliament from being dissolved, except by its own consent; so that Charles became like a king in a game of skittles, whose downfall was only a question of time and circumstance.
Being dreadfully in want of a little loyalty to comfort him, and finding very little in England—and that of the weakest kind—the sovereign paid a visit to Scotland, where he knew he could have as much as he wanted, if he chose to pay for it. His visit to that country was fast coming to a close when news reached him of a rebellion in Ireland, where the descendants of the early settlers, who were for settling everybody, and had taken the name of the "Loras of the Pale," were causing numbers to "kick the bucket."
The republican spirit had now broken out in full force; and the more the king went on doing what he was asked, the more the Commons went on being dissatisfied. At length he determined to try a bit of firmness, and walked into the House of Commons one morning to demand the impeachment of five members, two of whom were Pym and Hampden. Charles entered the assembly quite alone, and walking up to the chair of the Speaker, who had risen on the king's arrival, his majesty glided into it. He stated that he had come to take the five members into custody; but there was something so derogatory in the idea of "every monarch his own policeman," that the Commons Were rather disgusted, and greeted him with shouts of "Privilege! Privilege!"
Having made up his mind that "this sort of thing would not do," he determined to go out of town, and repaired to York, where he was soon joined by a party of volunteers more select than numerous. Charles was in that state of cashlessness so often ascribed by history to kings, who, nominally possessed of a crown, are positively not worth a shilling.
He had sold his wife's jewels, and laid out the produce in arms and ammunition, which he gave out as far as they would go to his few friends; but the distribution was a mournful business. There were scarcely swords enough to go round, and the gunpowder was served out in little packets like so many doses of salts to the small band of royalists. They mustered the money for a manifesto, in which Essex, one of his apostate generals, was denounced in very large type; and the king having corrected the proof of the poster, ordered one hundred to be worked off and stuck up at the earliest opportunity. His majesty and suite—which Strype tells us was short and suite—repaired to Nottingham, where the cause of the sovereign got a sort of lift by the hoisting of the royal standard.
When Charles found it necessary to draw the sword, he felt that he had nothing else to draw, for his funds were quite exhausted. Everything seemed to go against him, and even the elements themselves were unfavourable, for the standard which his friends had found it so difficult to hoist, was blown down, and came rattling through a skylight on to the heads of the royalists. The civil war had now regularly commenced, and the first battle was fought at Edge Hill, in Warwickshire, where Prince Rupert—the inventor of mezzotinto engraving—left the print of his sword, and several proofs of his valour, on the ranks of the king's enemies. After fighting all day the two armies put up for the night, and facing each other the next morning, they evidently did not like each other's looks, for both parties retired. Had the king's troops gone to London, they might have done some good; but they loitered about Reading, and by the time they got to Turn-ham Green, it was occupied by twenty-four thousand men, though where they managed to turn 'em in at Turnham Green is somewhat mysterious.*
* It seems more probable that the twenty-four thousand
Parliamentary troops were stationed in London than that so
many were crammed into the little suburb specified.
On the 15th of April, the Parliamentarians invested Reading, but the king having nothing to invest, could not compete for this eligible investment. Essex, who had managed the transaction, did not continue long a holder, but fell back to Thame, where a skirmish took place that would have been literally a tame affair if the illustrious Hampden had not perished in the mêlée.