The true maner of the execution of thomas earle of strafford Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland vpon Tower hill the 12th of May 1641
- Doctor Vsher Lord Primate of Ireland
- the Sherifes of London
- the Earle of Strafford
- his kindred and Friends
Execution of the Earl of Strafford, May 12th. 1641.
The first beginnings of a Tower regiment, according to Mr J. H. Round, was the appointment of two hundred men as Tower Guards in 1640. In November of the same year Charles promised to remove this garrison, but he did not do so until the city offered to lend him £25,000, on the condition that these troops should be taken away, as well as the ordnance from the White Tower, which was a perpetual menace to the safety of the city. Aersen, the Dutch Ambassador, writing to his Government about this time, says, “le dessein semble aller sur le tour.” Still the King would not withdraw the soldiers or the cannon, and then the House of Lords expostulated with him, but Charles excused his breach of faith by saying that his object was merely to insure the safety of the stores and ammunition in the fortress.
After his plot to seize the Tower had been made public, the train bands belonging to the Tower Hamlets occupied and garrisoned the fortress. These train bands, as well as those of Southwark and Westminster, were distinct from the city train bands. On the 3rd of January 1642, the King made another attempt to garrison the Tower with his own troops, which also proved a failure. On this occasion Sir John Byron entered the fortress with a detachment of gunners and disarmed the men of the Tower Hamlets, but the city train bands came to the rescue, and Byron, with his gunners, had to beat a retreat. When, in 1642, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Conyers, resigned his charge, the Parliament conferred the Lieutenancy upon the Lord Mayor of London. Later, in 1647, when the city had taken the side of the Parliament against the King, Fairfax was appointed Constable; the Constables had succeeded each other according to the chances which brought the King or the Parliament to the top, thus Lord Cottrington had been replaced by Sir William Balfour, and he in his turn had given room to Sir Thomas Lumsford, a “soldier of fortune,” writes Ludlow of him in his “Memoirs,” “fit for any wicked design.” Lumsford, so uncomplimentarily referred to by Ludlow, was supposed to be willing to act according to the King’s good pleasure, and succeeded in making himself so unpopular with the Londoners, that they petitioned the House of Lords to beg the King to place the custody of the Tower in other hands, the Lord Mayor saying he could not undertake to prevent the apprentices from rising were Lumsford allowed to remain in office; so Charles unwillingly gave the keys of the fortress to the care of Sir John Byron. Byron, in his turn, was succeeded by Sir John Conyers, who had distinguished himself in the Scottish wars and had been Governor of Berwick; and after Conyers followed Lord Mayor Pennington,[4] “in order,” as Clarendon writes, “that the citizens might see that they were trusted to hold their own reins and had a jurisdiction committed to them which had always checked their own.” From 1643 to 1647 the Tower remained in the hands of the Parliament. In the latter year the army obtained the mastery, and Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, became its Constable, under him being Colonel Tichbourne as Lieutenant of the fortress. Shortly after the King’s execution, however, Fairfax resigned his post of Constable, none other than Cromwell, himself, stepping into the vacant place.
But we must return to Archbishop Laud, who for four years was a prisoner in the Bloody Tower in the prison chamber over the gateway of that gloomy building.
In his diary, the Archbishop has left a minute account of a domiciliary visit paid him by William Prynne in 1643. The Archbishop’s trial being determined on by the House of Lords, Prynne was commissioned by the Peers to obtain Laud’s private papers. “Mr Prynne,” writes the Archbishop, “came into the Tower with other searchers as soon as the gates were open. Other men went to other prisoners; he made haste to my lodging, commanded the warder to open my doors, left two musketeer centinels below, that no man might go in or out, and one at the stairhead. With three others, which had their muskets already cocked, he came into my chamber, and found me in bed, as my servants were in theirs. I presently thought on my blessed Saviour when Judas led in the swords and staves about him.”—This surely is rather a bold comparison for an Archbishop to make?—“Mr Prynne, seeing me safe in bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them; and by that time my two servants came running in half ready. I demanded the sight of his warrant; he shewed it to me, and therein was expressed that he should search my pockets. The warrant came from the close committee, and the hands that were to it were these: E. Manchester, W. Saye and Seale, Wharton, H. Vane, Gilbert Gerard, and John Pym. Did they remember when they gave their warrant how odious it was to Parliament, and some of themselves, to have the pockets of men searched? When my pockets had been sufficiently ransacked, I rose and got my clothes about me, and so, half ready, with my gown about my shoulders, he held me in the search till half-past nine of the clock in the morning. He took from me twenty and one bundles of papers which I had prepared for my defence; two Letters which came to me from his gracious Majesty, about Chartham and my other benefices; the Scottish service books or diary, containing all the occurrences of my life, and my book of private devotions, both which last were written through with my own hand. Nor could I get him to leave this last, but he must needs see what passed between God and me, a thing, I think, scarce offered to any Christian. The last place that he rifled was my trunk, which stood by my bedside. In that he found nothing, but about forty pounds in money, for my necessary expenses, which he meddled not with, and a bundle of some gloves. This bundle he was so careful to open, so that he caused each glove to be looked into. Upon this I tendered him one pair of gloves, which he refusing, I told him he might take them, and fear no bribe, for he had already done me all the mischief he could, and I asked no favour of him, so he thanked me, took the gloves, bound up my papers, left two centinels at my door, and went his way.”—(From “Troubles and Trials of Archbishop Laud.”)
Prynne, whose ears Laud had been the means of cutting off some half-dozen years before, must have enjoyed this visit to his old foe. On the 10th of March 1643, the Archbishop was brought to his trial in Westminster Hall, but amongst all the charges brought against him none could be considered as proving him guilty of high treason. Serjeant Wild was obliged to admit this, but said that when all the Archbishop’s transgressions of the law were put together they made “many grand treasons.” To this Laud’s counsel made answer, “I crave you mercy, good Mr Serjeant, I never understood before this that two hundred couple of black rabbits made a black horse.”—(In Archbishop Tennison’s MSS. in Lambeth Library. Quoted by Bayley.)
Laud’s trial lasted for twenty days, the chief accusation brought against him being that he had “attempted to subvert religion and the fundamental laws of the realm.” The outcome of the trial was that Laud was beheaded on Tower Hill on 10th of January 1644. Laud was a strange compound of bigotry and intolerance, of courage and of devotion to what he considered to be the true Church, and of which he seemed to regard himself as a kind of Anglican Pope. His life and character are enigmas to those who study them, and his death became him far better than his life had done.