Chapter VIII.
Downfall of Strafford and Laud
1640-1641
Opening of the new Parliament.
The king's speech.
The Parliament assembled in November, 1640. The king proceeded to London to attend it. He left Strafford in command of the army at York. Active hostilities had been suspended, as a sort of temporary truce had been concluded with the Scots, to prepare the way for a final treaty. Strafford had been entirely opposed to this, being still full of energy and courage. The king, however, began to feel alarmed. He went to London to meet the Parliament which he had summoned, but he was prepared to meet them in a very different spirit from that which he had manifested on former occasions. He even gave up all the external circumstances of pomp and parade with which the opening of Parliament had usually been attended. He had been accustomed to go to the House of Lords in state, with a numerous retinue and great parade. Now he was conveyed from his palace along the river in a barge, in a quiet and unostentatious manner. His opening speech, too, was moderate and conciliatory. In a word, it was pretty evident to the Commons that the proud and haughty spirit of their royal master was beginning to be pretty effectually humbled.
Attacks on Strafford and Laud.
Of course, now, in proportion as the king should falter, the Commons would grow bold. The House immediately began to attack Laud and Strafford in their speeches. It is the theory of the British Constitution that the king can do no wrong; whatever criminality at any time attaches to the acts of his administration, belongs to his advisers, not to himself. The speakers condemned, in most decided terms, the arbitrary and tyrannical course which the government had pursued during the intermission of Parliaments, but charged it all, not to the king, but to Strafford and Laud. Strafford had been, as they considered, the responsible person in civil and military affairs, and Laud in those of the Church. These speeches were made to try the temper of the House and of the country, and see whether there was hostility enough to Laud and Strafford in the House and in the country, and boldness enough in the expression of it, to warrant their impeachment.
Speeches against them.
The attacks thus made in the House against the two ministers were made very soon. Within a week after the opening of Parliament, one of the members, after declaiming a long time against the encroachments and tyranny of Archbishop Laud, whose title, according to English usage, was "his Grace," said he hoped that, before the year ran round, his grace would either have more grace or no grace at all; "for," he added, "our manifold griefs do fill a mighty and vast circumference, yet in such a manner that from every part our lines of sorrow do meet in him, and point at him the center, from whence our miseries in this Church, and many of them in the Commonwealth, do flow." He said, also, that if they must submit to a pope, he would rather obey one that was as far off as the Tiber, than to have him come as near as the Thames.
Feelings of hostility.
Bill of attainder.