It must be added that Juxon redeemed the scandal of his appointment by an unblemished probity, and gave so little offence in this invidious greatness, that the long parliament never attacked him, and he remained in his palace at Fulham without molestation till 1647.
[76] Strafford's Letters, i. 33, etc. The letters of Wentworth in this period of his life show a good deal of ambition and resentment, but no great portion of public spirit. This collection of the Strafford letters forms a very important portion of our historical documents. Hume had looked at them very superficially, and quotes them but twice. They furnished materials to Harris and Macaulay; but the first is little read at present, and the second not at all. In a recent and deservedly popular publication, Macdiarmid's Lives of British Statesmen, the work of a young man of letters, who did not live to struggle through the distresses of that profession, the character of Strafford is drawn from the best authorities, and with abundant, perhaps excessive candour. Mr. Brodie has well pointed out that he has obtained more credit for the early period of his parliamentary life than he deserves, by being confounded with Mr. Wentworth, member for Oxford. Vol. ii. p. 249. Rushworth has even ascribed to Sir Thomas Wentworth the speeches of this Mr. Wentworth in the second parliament of Charles, from which it is notorious that the former had been excluded.
[77] Hacket tells us, in his elegant style, that "Sir John Eliot of the west, and Sir Thomas Wentworth of the north, both in the prime of their age and wits, both conspicuous for able speakers, clashed so often in the house, and cudgelled one another with such strong contradictions, that it grew from an emulation between them to an enmity. The lord-treasurer Weston picked out the northern cock, Sir Thomas, to make him the king's creature, and set him upon the first step of his rising; which was wormwood in the taste of Eliot, who revenged himself upon the king in the Bill of Tonnage, and then fell upon the treasurer, and declaimed against him, that he was the author of all the evils under which the kingdom was oppressed." He proceeds to inform us, that Bishop Williams offered to bring Eliot over, for which Wentworth never forgave him. Life of Williams, p. 82. The magnanimous fortitude of Eliot forbids us to give credit to any surmise unfavourable to his glory, upon such indifferent authority; but several passages in Wentworth's letters to Laud show his malice towards one who had perished in the great cause which he had so basely forsaken.
[78] Wentworth was brought over before the assassination of Buckingham. His patent in Rymer bears date 22nd July 1628, a month previous to that event.
[79] Fourth Inst. c. 49. See also 13 Reports, 31.
[80] Rymer, xix. 9; Rushworth, ii. 127.
[81] Rushworth; Strafford's Trial, etc.; Brodie, ii. 319; Straff. Letters, i. 145. In a letter to Lord Doncaster, pressing for a severe sentence on Foulis, who had been guilty of some disrespect to himself as president of the North, Wentworth shows his abhorrence of liberty with all the bitterness of a renegado; and urges the "seasonable correcting an humour and liberty I find reign in these parts, of observing a superior command no farther than they like themselves, and of questioning any profit of the Crown, called upon by his majesty's ministers, which might enable it to subsist of itself, without being necessitated to accept of such conditions, as others might easily think to impose upon it." Sept. 1632. Somers Tracts, iv. 198.
[82] Rushworth Abr. iii. 85; Clarendon, i. 390 (1826). The original editors left out some words which brought this home to Strafford. And if the case was as there seems every reason to believe, I would ask those who talk of this man's innocence, whether in any civilised country, a more outrageous piece of tyranny has been committed by a governor than to compel a nobleman of the highest station to change the disposition of his private estate, because that governor carried on an adulterous intercourse with the daughter-in-law of the person whom he treated thus imperiously?
[83] Clarendon Papers, i. 449, 543, 594; Rushworth Abridg. iii. 43; Clar. Hist. i. 386 (1826); Strafford Letters, i. 497, et post. This proceeding against Lord Mountnorris excited much dissatisfaction in England; those of the council who disliked Strafford making it a pretext to inveigh against his arrogance. But the king, invariably on the severe and arbitrary side, justified the measure, which silenced the courtiers. P. 512. Be it added, that the virtuous Charles took a bribe of £6000 for bestowing Mountnorris's office on Sir Adam Loftus, not out of distress through the parsimony of parliament, but to purchase an estate in Scotland. Id. 511.
Hume, in extenuating the conduct of Strafford as to Mountnorris's trial, says, that, "sensible of the iniquity of the sentence, he procured his majesty's free pardon to Mountnorris." There is not the slightest evidence to warrant the words in italics; on the contrary, he always justified the sentence, and had most manifestly procured it. The king, in return to a moving petition of Lady Mountnorris, permitted his release from confinement, "on making such a submission as my lord-deputy shall approve."