[179] The bitter Presbyterian feeling against Strafford is plain enough in Baillie's letters.
It belongs not to the scope of this ecclesiastical History to enter on the details of the trial, but I cannot resist the temptation to insert in the Appendix two letters found in the State Paper Office, giving an account of the way in which the bill of attainder was introduced.
[180] See Speeches by Lane and St. John (Rushworth's Trial of Strafford, 671, et seq.); then read what follows:
"It certainly does astonish us that men, however they may have condemned the conduct of Strafford, could bring themselves to believe that he was guilty of the crime of high treason; for they could hardly have been deceived by the wicked sophistry of St. John that an attempt to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom was high treason at common law, and still remains so, or by the base opinion delivered by the judges—that this amounts to high treason under the Statute of Edward III."—Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iv. 15.
[181] Ussher of Armagh, Juxon of London, Morton of Durham, Potter of Carlisle, and Williams of Lincoln.
[182] Slightly abridged from Elrington's Life of Ussher, 213.
[183] That such a distinction was suggested seems generally admitted. Clarendon attributes it to Williams, (Rebellion, 140.) This, considering the historian's prejudice respecting the Archbishop, is not perfectly conclusive against Williams, any more than the silence of Hacket (Life of Williams, pt. II., i. 161,)—who only speaks of the advice given in common, founded on the distinction between facts and law—is conclusively in his favour.
Clarendon is corroborated by the circumstance, that Ussher and Juxon were freed from the charge by the King himself (according to the report of Sir Edward Walker), and of the remaining prelates Williams was the most likely to give such advice as Clarendon mentions.
[184] Fuller's Church History, iii. 421.
The author says he copied what he gives of Hacket's speech out of his own papers. Nalson's Report (ii. 240) seems to be an amplification of what is contained in Rushworth, iv. 269. Verney entirely agrees with Fuller (Verney Papers—Camden Society, 75), but only in a few particulars with Nalson. Nalson is also wrong in saying Hacket answered Burgess. Hacket spoke first. Burgess answered him.