who were most anxious that Strafford's life should be spared by a constitutional vote of the House of Lords, urged Charles to come forward to give assurance that, in pleading for the life of the prisoner, he had no wish to restore him to authority in the kingdom. No doubt there was hazard in the step. The Lords might take umbrage at an interference by the King in a matter pending before them. Charles, however, had already brought matters to such a pass that to refrain from interfering was infinitely more hazardous.

intervention.

I

The King consented to do as Bristol and Savile asked. Probably he was glad to do anything which gave him a chance of extricating himself from the wild schemes in which he was entangled. On the morning of May 1 the Usher of May 1. The King's the Black Rod knocked at the door of the Commons. A whisper ran round the benches that a dissolution was imminent—a dissolution, which, as most men there believed, would be promptly followed by acts of violence. Maxwell at once reassured the members. "Fear not, I warrant you,' "1 he said with a smile, as he summoned them to the Upper House. When they arrived there they found the King on the throne. He had come, he said, to give three assurances. No one had ever advised him to bring the Irish army to England. No discussion had ever taken place in his presence, in which the disloyalty of his English subjects had been assumed. He had never been advised to change the least of the laws of England, far less the whole of them. He hoped, therefore, that a way might be found to satisfy justice without pressing on his conscience. He had already resolved that Strafford was unfit to serve him in any office, if it were but that of a constable. 'Therefore," he ended by saying, "I leave it to you, my lords, to find some such way as to bring me out of this great strait, and keep ourselves and the kingdom from such inconveniences. Certainly,

66

that Savile was anxious to befriend Strafford, but he must have known that to procure the replacement of a sentence of death by one of banishment or imprisonment was the surest way to stand well at Court. The name of Bristol is conclusive against any suggestion that the action was meant to injure and not to save Strafford.

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. 122.

1641

THE KING'S INTERVENTION.

347

he that thinks him guilty of high treason in his conscience may condemn him of misdemeanour.” 1

Effect of the

The tone of the last sentence was undoubtedly unwise. It had too much the air of a dictator calling on the Lords to vote to order. Strafford considered the King's intervenKing's inter- tion to be in itself impolitic.2 If it was so, what is ference. to be said for those wicked schemes which by comparison give to it almost the air of superhuman wisdom?

on the

Church

question.

A week before, the speech might have had some effect. It could have no effect now. If the Lords remained unmoved, there was no chance of moving the Commons. No clearer evidence of the depth of feeling against Strafford can be found Compromise than in the fact that the two ecclesiastical parties agreed upon a compromise in the face of the existing danger. Hampden and Falkland came to an understanding that Episcopacy should be reformed, not abolished. A Bill for the exclusion of the clergy from secular The Bishops' Exclusion offices, and for shutting out the bishops from the House of Lords, had passed the Commons without serious opposition, and had been carried up to the Peers that very morning. It was known already that Charles had said in conversation that he would never give his assent to such a Bill. So dissatisfied were the Commons that Pym prudently moved an adjournment as soon as they returned to their own House after listening to the King's speech, 'lest they should break out in some rash distemper.'

Bill.

the Princess

3

May 2. The next day was a Sunday. It had been fixed Marriage of for the celebration of the marriage of Charles's eldest daughter. Prince William of Orange, the bearer of the most illustrious name in Europe, a bright hopeful lad of

Mary.

1 Rushworth, iv. 239. Bristol and Savile must not be held responsible for the wording of the speech.

2 Strafford to the King, May 1, Rushworth, iv. 251.

3 Clarendon, iii. 330. Falkland is stated to have said after the autumn vacation that Mr. Hampden had assured him that, if the Bill might pass, there would be nothing more attempted to the prejudice of the Church.' As the Bill did not pass, Hampden no doubt considered himself relieved from his promise.

fifteen, plighted his troth at Whitehall to the child of nine who was one day in her early widowhood to bring forth a child who, nurtured in adversity, was to become the deliverer of half a continent. The day of the Princess's marriage was one of anxiety and gloom, and the ceremony was shorn of its accustomed splendour. There were divisions even in Charles's own household, and the Elector Palatine, who had at last been liberated from his French prison, refused to be present at the banquet because the bride had not been given to himself.1

Dissatisfaction of the Elector

Palatine.

Roe's mission.

It was ambition rather than love which was the cause of Charles Lewis's displeasure. He had returned to England hoping that his uncle would at last help him to the recovery of his inheritance, and he found that all that could be done for him was the despatch of Roe on a fresh mission to Germany. Nor was the Elector the only Prince who miscalculated Charles's power to help. The Spanish monarchy was apparently breaking up. Catalonia was in full rebellion; Portugal had shaken off the hated Castilian yoke, and had declared itself once more an independent kingdom under a prince of the house of Braganza. A Portuguese ambassador had lately arrived to ask for the alliance of England.

The prelevies for Portugal.

The ambassador was not likely to gain much real assistance from Charles; but there was a way in which Charles might gain something from the Portuguese ambassador. tended By authorising him to gather soldiers in England an excuse had been found for bringing armed men together in London. For some little time Suckling had been busily engaged, with the aid of a certain Captain Billingsley, in inducing men to give in their names for the Portuguese service. The men were collected with a very different object. Foiled in his hope of carrying the Lords with him to the side of mercy, Charles now fell back on his former plan. On the Sunday morning Billingsley made his appearance at the Tower with an order from the King to the Lieutenant, Sir William Balfour, to admit him into the fortress with a hundred men.

1641 AN ATTEMPT TO SAVE STRAFFORD.

refused ad

the Tower.

349

Balfour was a good Scotsman, and refused to let him in. He Billingsley gave information of what had occurred to the Parmission into liamentary leaders.1 liamentary leaders. For Charles's purpose nothing worse could have happened. Even if he had learnt, from the coolness with which his speech had been received by the Lords, that Strafford could only be saved by force, it was childish to expect to gather secretly together armed troops in the heart of such a city as London, where there were thousands of men accustomed to bear arms, and where there was scarcely one of them who did not dread the liberation of Strafford more than any other earthly danger.

Suckling brings

armed men to a tavern.

No doubt Charles might justify to himself the legality of what he had done. The law gave him the custody of the Tower, and it was his duty to see that his prisoners were safe from the violence of a mob. Coming as it did, after so many other intimations of an appeal to force, this act left the worst possible impression. The danger seemed all the greater because no one knew its actual dimensions. It was known in the City on Sunday that Suckling had brought sixty armed. men to a tavern in Bread Street, and had dismissed them with orders to return on Monday evening.2 This, then, was the comment of facts on the King's speech. It came at a time when men's minds were distracted with rumours of the King's intention to set out for the army, of an immediate dissolution of Parliament, and of aid given by the Dutch Prince to re-establish his new father-in-law in his ancient authority. The City was seized with a wild impatience to bring the long May. 3 agitation to a close. As the peers gathered at WestThe tumults minster on the morning of the 3rd they found the minster. doors of their House beset by a mob shrieking for justice and execution upon Strafford. Arundel, as acting Lord High Steward, was specially called on to do justice. He answered meekly that he was going to the House to that effect. "We will take your word for once," replied those who stood nearest him, and let him go. When the peers came out again

at West

'Balfour's examination, Rushworth, iv. 250. Examinations of Balfour, Wadsworth, and Lanyon, An Exact Collection, 232.

2 Moore's Diary, Harl. MSS. cccclxxvii. 26 b.

at the end of their sitting, Bristol was in special danger. "For you, my Lord of Bristol," some one cried out, "we know you are an apostate from the cause of Christ, and our mortal enemy. We do not, therefore, crave justice from you, but shall, God willing, crave justice upon you and your false son. As soon as the peers had dispersed, the crowd amused itself with posting up a placard containing, under the title of Straffordians, betrayers of their country,' the names of the fifty-nine members of the House of Commons who had voted against the Attainder Bill. It is even said that one man called out, "If we have not the Lieutenant's life, we will have the King's." 3

List of Straffordians posted up.

2

The riot was not the work of the ordinary populace. The stoppage of trade caused by the political uncertainty was felt Character of by the merchants and shopkeepers more than by the the mob. apprentices, and all authorities concur in stating that merchants and shopkeepers constituted the bulk of those by whom the outcry was raised.1

When they met that morning the Commons remained for some time silently regarding one another, as men looking for counsel and finding none. At last the Clerk began to read the Bill which stood first on the Orders of Day. It happened to be one for regulating the trade of wiredrawing. The inappropriateness of the subject struck the members with a sense of ludicrous incongruity, and the tension of their feelings relieved itself in a loud burst of laughter. Then there was again silence for a quarter or half an hour.5

The meeting of the Commons.

1 Brief and Perfect Relation, 85. Contemporary authorities attribute the arrival of the mob to the King's speech, but it is impossible to doubt that the knowledge of Suckling's meeting with his sixty men must have given the worst possible interpretation to the speech.

2 For a complete list see Verney Notes, 57.

Brief and Perfect Relation, 87.

▲ The Venetian ambassador, for instance, says that the mob consisted 'delli più bene stanti di questa città.'-Giustinian to the Doge, May 16, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.

5 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. 24. The doubt as to the time, says Mr. Sanford, 'in such an accurate man as D'Ewes, shows the alarm which he really felt.' Studes of the Great Rebellion, 351.