EARL OF STRAFFORD.
By DAVID HUME.
[Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, born 1593, executed 1641. At first a leading member of the opposition to Charles I in Parliament, he afterward joined the court party and became successively Viscount Wentworth and Earl of Strafford. As governor of Ireland, he organized the first standing army in English annals; and afterward formulated the policy of “Thorough”—an executive system which would have made Charles an absolute monarch, free of parliamentary or other shackles. His remarkable political genius inspired such dread that Parliament looked on his death as essential to their cause. He was impeached as a traitor, an indictment undoubtedly true, but which could not be legally proved. He was finally condemned by a bill of attainder. The worst blot on Charles I is that he should have yielded up Strafford to his foes with hardly a struggle. Though traitor to his country, he was the most loyal and devoted of servants to his king. Hume’s estimate of Strafford is more lenient than that of other historians.]
In the former situation of the English Government, when the sovereign was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose his ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them, in expectation that they will afterward become more careful not to diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims of government. But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant to those of the Puritans that the leaders whom he gained lost from that moment all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors with implacable hatred and resentment.
This was the case with Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom the king created first a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed in him; his character was stately and austere—more fitted to procure esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong impressions from private interest and ambition.
The death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had, that very day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason for having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was, therefore, brought into the Lower House immediately after finishing these pleadings; and preparatory to it a new proof of the earl’s guilt was produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained with regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.
Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council after the dissolution of the last Parliament; and being at a distance, he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, Sir Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper of notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of Commons. The question before the council was, offensive or defensive war with the Scots. The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand pounds; go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience; for I am confident the Scots can not hold out five months.” There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally violent, with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of government.
The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable objections, was the real cause of Strafford’s unhappy fate, and made the bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients, for which they were beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of their adversaries.
Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants. Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.”
Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent—“And now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner.
Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution, it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.