The king's speech.
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.
Speeches against them.
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.
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.
Similar denunciations were made against Strafford, and they awakened no opposition. On the contrary, it was found that the feeling of hostility against both the ministers was so universal and so strong, that the leaders began to think seriously of an impeachment on a charge of high treason. High treason is the greatest crime known to the English law, and the punishment for it, especially in the case of a peer of the realm, is very terrible. This punishment was generally inflicted by what was called a bill of attainder, which brought with it the worst of penalties. It implied the perfect destruction of the criminal in every sense. He was to lose his life by having his head cut off upon a block. His body, according to the strict letter of the law, was to be mutilated in a manner too shocking to be here described. His children were disinherited, and his property all forfeited. This was considered as the consequence of the attainting of the blood, which rendered it corrupt, and incapable of transmitting an inheritance. In fact, it was the intention of the bill of attainder to brand the wretched object of it with complete and perpetual infamy.