Westminster Hall
The history of the fourth act deals with further episodes of Strafford's trial, especially with the change in the procedure from Impeachment to a Bill of Attainder against Strafford. The details of this great trial are complicated and cannot be followed in all their ramifications here. There was danger that the Impeachment would not go through. Strafford, himself, felt confident that in law his actions could not be found treasonable.
After Strafford's brilliant defense of himself, it was decided to bring in a Bill of Attainder. New evidence against Strafford con[158]tained in some notes which the younger Vane had found among his father's papers were used to strengthen the charge of treason. In these notes Strafford had advised the King to act "loose and absolved from all rules of government," and had reminded him that there was an army in Ireland, ready to reduce the Kingdom. These notes were found by the merest accident. The younger Vane who had just been knighted and was about to be married, borrowed his father's keys in order to look up some law papers. In his search he fell upon these notes taken at a committee that met immediately after the dissolution of the short Parliament. He made a copy and carried it to Pym who also made a copy.
According to Baillie, the "secret" of the change from the Impeachment to the Bill was "to prevent the hearing of the Earl's lawyers, who give out that there is no law yet in force whereby he can be condemned to die for aught yet objected against him, and therefore their intent by this Bill to supply the defect of the laws therein." To this may be added the opinion of a member of the Commons. "If the House of Commons proceeds to demand judgment of the Lords, without doubt they will acquit him, there being no law extant whereby to condemn him of treason.[159] Wherefore the Commons are determined to desert the Lord's judicature, and to proceed against him by Bill of Attainder, whereby he shall be adjudged to death upon a treason now to be declared."
One of the chief results in this change of procedure, emphasized by Browning in an intense scene between Pym and Charles was that it altered entirely the King's attitude towards Strafford's trial. As Baillie expresses it, "Had the Commons gone on in the former way of pursuit, the King might have been a patient, and only beheld the striking off of Strafford's head; but now they have put them on a Bill which will force the King either to be our agent and formal voicer to his death, or else do the world knows not what."
For the sake of a gain in dramatic power, Browning has once more departed from history by making Pym the moving power in the Bill of Attainder, and Hampden in favor of it; while in reality they were opposed to the change in procedure, and believed that the Impeachment could have been carried through.
The relentless, scourging force of Pym in the play, pursuing the arch-foe of England as he regarded Wentworth to the death, once he is convinced that England's welfare demands[160] it, would have been weakened had he been represented in favor of the policy which was abandoned, instead of with the policy that succeeded. But Pym is made to intimate that he will abandon the Bill unless the King gives his word that he will ratify it, and further, Pym declares, should he not ratify the Bill his next step will be against the King himself.
Enter Hampden and Vane.
Vane. O Hampden, save the great misguided man!
Plead Strafford's cause with Pym! I have remarked
He moved no muscle when we all declaimed
Against him: you had but to breathe—he turned
Those kind calm eyes upon you.