Opinion of the judges.
Fear made the Commons cruel.
The fifteenth article charged that Strafford did traitorously ‘by force of arms and in a warlike manner’ strive to subdue Ireland to his arbitrary will by quartering soldiers upon private persons without warrant of law. Hallam thought this came nearer treason than anything of which he was accused, but that the cases proved were too few to constitute levying war. There was much hearsay evidence, but enough was proved to make out a strong case. Edmond Byrne testified that soldiers were quartered on him by the Lord Deputy’s order for not paying ‘a pretended debt of a matter of ten pounds’ to a Mr. Archibald, and that they had done him damage to the value of 500l. The sixteenth article was directed against Strafford’s system of denying appeals to England except through himself, and of preventing anyone from leaving Ireland without his leave. In this, as in many other things, he had found the practice in existence, and had carried it further than his predecessors, so that it was thought worthy of special complaint in the Remonstrance of the Irish Parliament. The nineteenth article was concerned with the imposition of the Black Oath on the Ulster Scots, and the fact was undeniable; but Strafford pleaded danger from the Covenant which bound 100,000 people in the North to their near neighbours and fellow-countrymen across the channel. The seventh, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth articles were postponed, and in the end were not proceeded with at all, and it was a Bill of Attainder and not a verdict of the Lords on the Impeachment that brought Strafford to the scaffold. It may be granted that none of the charges taken separately amounted to treason, but the Lord Chief Justice ‘delivered the opinion of all the judges present upon all that which their Lordships have voted to be proved that the Earl of Strafford doth deserve to undergo the pains and forfeitures of High Treason by law.’ It is evident that the majority of the Commons were determined to have the Lord Lieutenant’s head, for they did not feel safe as long as he lived. St. John brutally said that the laws of chase were not for him, and that he should be hunted down without mercy as a beast of prey. ‘Stone dead hath no fellow,’ was Essex’s answer when Hyde suggested a milder penalty. Nor can it be said that the fears of the Puritan party were unfounded. The King, after hearing every word of the evidence, admitted that Strafford was unfit to hold even a chief constable’s place; but Charles was not to be trusted, and his word gave no guarantee that the hated statesman would not again be a minister and at the head of an army.[265]
The Irish army fatal to Strafford.
Charles consents to Strafford’s death,
and perpetuates the Parliament.
Execution of Strafford and disbandment of his army, May 1641.
Of all the causes for fear the greatest was the existence of the Irish army, which Charles repeatedly refused to disband. Strafford was accused on the authority of Vane’s famous notes of saying that it might be used to ‘reduce this kingdom,’ and these words, if truly reported, were uttered in England. Yet Scotland was probably intended, and the choice of Carrickfergus as a rendezvous pointed in that direction. But it is not likely that the plan would have been too scrupulously observed, and Willoughby’s mission to Carlisle showed that there was no pedantic objection to employ troops from Ireland upon English ground. ‘Strafford’s pride,’ says Clarendon, ‘was by the hand of heaven strangely punished by bringing his destruction upon him by two things that he most despised, the people and Sir Harry Vane.’ There is no mystery about the proceedings of the Commons, and not much about that of the Lords, but there was nothing to prevent the royal consent to the Bill of Attainder being withheld. Some episcopal casuists, of whom Ussher was not one, gave advice for hearkening to which Charles never forgave himself. The fact that he had fears for his family, and especially for his wife, is really no defence at all. He surrendered the right to pardon, which is the most precious privilege of monarchy, and the same day that he passed the fatal Bill, too agitated perhaps to know what he was doing, he consented to another providing that Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent. He himself killed prerogative, and after he had done so defied the assembly he had perpetuated by attempting to seize the five members. If the royal power was after that to be restored in his person it could only be by success in war. On the day after Strafford’s execution Charles wrote to Ormonde that he had decided to disband the Irish army.[266]
Character of Strafford.
Strafford was a very great man; but he failed completely, and it is not difficult to see why. His scheme of prerogative government depended upon the personality of Charles I., and the minister’s qualities were not such as could make people forget the monarch’s defects. In his determination to establish the Laudian system of what Petty afterwards called ‘Legal Protestantism,’ he made enemies of Roman Catholics and Puritans alike. Strafford had read law, had a fair knowledge of the classics and of English and French literature, and understood Scotch and Continental affairs. He wrote and spoke brilliantly, trusting much to his memory, which served him very well. For some years he wielded greater power than any servant of James or his son, Buckingham only excepted. He warned the King against war with the House of Austria for the Palatinate, because it would necessarily weaken him at home, and in private he gave the strong reason that Charles would be driven by war to raise money illegally without restraint. Strafford was very English in his views, and cared little for foreign opinion; but he would never have insulted the Prime Minister of Spain, nor made love to the Queen of France. He was an immeasurably abler man than Buckingham, but resembled him, to use Clarendon’s words, in that ‘he never made a noble and a worthy friendship with a man so near his equal that he would frankly advise him, for his honour and true interest, against the current, or rather the torrent of his impetuous passions.’ Apart from his great office Laud was not his equal, and it may be doubted if Conway, with whom he was on intimate terms, ever gave him any advice at all. Wandesford and Radcliffe were clever men, but mere echoes of their master, and Ormonde was too young to have much weight. Even Laud cautioned Strafford against making powerful enemies by his high-handed methods. His doctrine was that no subject could have any power against the King, or against his substitute in Ireland and Yorkshire. He spoke with scorn of Sir Edward Coke and his year-books, drew all important business into the Castle-chamber, and openly declared that while he had power Orders in Council should bind as fast as Acts of Parliament. Clarendon, who was essentially a common lawyer, has recorded his judgment against this policy in both islands. What recalcitrant juries or sheriffs had to suffer may be gathered from the Galway case. Strafford took credit for a rise in the price of land while he governed Ireland, but the same thing happened under Cromwell; for order gives security, and Plutus is a very timorous person. His work soon crumbled away, as the work of despots generally does, for who can secure a fitting successor? Marcus Aurelius was followed by Commodus. Strafford professed to rule for the benefit of the whole community, and probably the poor did really benefit by his firm hand; but he was hated by the official class and by most men who had anything to lose. His letters to his third wife are affectionate enough, but he did not consider her his equal in any way, and the want of intelligent female friendship was supplied by Lady Carlisle in England and by Lady Loftus in Ireland. The first famous lady is described by her friend, Sir Toby Matthew, as having no passion at all, and the latter must have been constantly under the eyes of Radcliffe, who declares his belief that there was nothing wrong; but Strafford was so much hated that every hostile report was long accepted as fact. Perhaps his unpopularity is sufficiently accounted for by Sir Philip Warwick, who knew him and who was one of the fifty-nine members of the House of Commons who voted against the Bill of Attainder. All his powers and acquirements, says that staunch royalist, were ‘lodged in a sour and haughty temper; so as it may probably be believed, he expected to have more observance paid to him than he was willing to pay to others, though they were of his own quality; and then he was not like to conciliate the good will of men of the lesser station.’ But he had a few friends who loved him, and his relations to his own family leave nothing to be desired.[267]