The bishops were summoned a second time. This time Usher was amongst them, and Usher sided with Juxon. Williams persisted in the view which he had taken of the King's duty.1

The King hesitates.

The mob in the streets.

. All day long the street in front of Whitehall was blocked by a shouting multitude. Every minute it was expected that an attempt would be made to dash in the doors.2 The mob took up the cry that the Queen Mother was at the bottom of the mischief, and guards had to be despatched to St. James's to preserve her from attack.3 The Queen, alarmed for her mother's safety and her own, was no longer in a position to urge resistance. By this time, too, Charles probably knew that nothing would be gained by further resistance. Strafford was no longer in his hands to dispose of. A last attempt to effect his escape had been tried and had failed. The Earl had offered Balfour 20,000l. and a good marriage for his son, if he would connive at his evasion, and Balfour had been proof against the temptation.5 The unscrupulous Newport was now installed as Constable of the Tower, and he had given assurance that if the King refused his assent to the Bill he would order Strafford's execution without it.6

It was nine in the evening before Charles, wearied out with the long mental conflict, gave way at last. "If my own person only were in danger," he said, with tears in his eyes, gives way. as he announced his resolution to the Council, “I would gladly venture it to save Lord Strafford's life; but seeing

Charles

4 As Mr. Forster has argued, it is plain, from the words of the Elector Palatine's letter, printed by him in British Statesmen (vi. 71), that she was really much displeased at the death of Strafford. The notion that she had been his enemy is one founded on a state of things which had long ceased to exist.

5 Balfour's examination, June 2, An Exact Collection, 232. As this took place three or four days before Strafford's execution, this attempt must not be confounded with the earlier one betrayed by the three women.

• Clarendon, iii. 200.

1641

STRAFFORD SACRIFICED.

367

my wife, children, and all my kingdom are concerned in it, I am forced to give way unto it."1

In after-years Charles bitterly repented his compliance. He never lamented that which made the compliance almost inevitable—his want of confidence in the constitutional resistance of the peers, and his resort to intrigues which he knew not how to conduct, and to force which he knew not how to employ. Better, indeed, would it have been for Charles to have remained firm to the end. No doubt even Williams's argument was not entirely without its value. Some way must be discovered in which the performance of national acts shall be loosed from bondage to the intelligence and conscience of a single man; but the time had not yet come when kings would cease to be responsible for actions which had become mere formalities. Charles sinned against his conscience. Let him who has seen wife and child, and all that he holds dear, exposed to imminent peril, and has refused to save them by an act of baseness, cast the first stone at Charles.

Promises to

Bills.

Charles announced that on the following morning both the Bills should be passed Williams begged him to think of his prerogative, and to reject the Bill against the dissolupass the two tion of Parliament.2 Charles would have none of his advice on this matter. The next morning he signed the appointment of commissioners charged to give his assent to the two Bills, and in this way they became law The Royal without his personal intervention. "My lord of assent given. Strafford's condition," said Charles as he wrote his name, "is more happy than mine.'

May 10.

May 11.

"3

On Tuesday morning Charles made one more desperate effort to save Strafford. "I did yesterday," he wrote to the peers, "satisfy the justice of the kingdom . . . but The King's mercy being as inherent and inseparable to a king as justice, I desire at this time in some measure to show that likewise, by suffering that unfortunate man to fulfil the natural close of his life in a close imprisonment; yet so

letter.

1 The Elector Palatine to the Queen of Bohemia, May 18, Forster's British Statesmen, vi. 71.

2 Hacket, ii. 162.

Strafford Letters, ii. 432.

that if ever he make the least offer to escape, or offer directly or indirectly to meddle in any sort of public business, especially with me, by message or by letter, it shall cost him his life. This, if it may be done without a discontentment to my people, would be an unspeakable contentment to me. . . I will not say that your complying with me in this my intended mercy shall make me more willing, but certainly it will make me more cheerful in the granting your just grievances; but if no less than his life can satisfy my people, I must say Fiat justitia.” At the close of his letter, remembering that the prisoner, whose whole energy had been employed in the struggle for his life, had had but little time to set his affairs in order, he added a brief postscript, "If he must die, it were a charity to reprieve him until Saturday." 1

The Houses were pitiless, as terrified men are. They had no confidence in Charles. Stone-dead, they thought, had no fellow.

Strafford himself had no hope that he would be spared. He had offered his life for the safety of the King, the strong for the weak. Yet the news that Charles had abandoned him came on him like a shock. "Put not

May 10. Strafford hears that he is to die.

your trust in princes," he cried, "nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation."2

May 11. Asks to see

Laud.

The next day, the last of his life on earth, Strafford's thoughts reverted to his old and tried friend, now his fellowprisoner. He asked Balfour if he might be allowed to see Laud. Balfour told him that he must first have leave from Parliament. "No," said Strafford, "I have gotten my despatch from them, and will trouble them no more. I am now petitioning a higher Court, where neither partiality can be expected, nor error feared." He would rather send a message by Usher, who had come to console him in his last hours. "Desire the Archbishop," he said, "to lend me his prayers this night, and to give me his blessing when I do go abroad to-morrow, and to be in his window, that by my last 1L. J. ii. 248.

2 The story comes from Whitelocke, and is therefore not on the best authority, but I am inclined to accept it.

1641

EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD.

369

farewell I may give him thanks for this and all his former favours."

Is led to

execution.

Laud was not likely to refuse his friend's last request. As Strafford was led to execution in the morning, he saw the old man at the window. "My lord," he said with a humble reverence, "your prayers and blessing." Laud raised his hands to implore God's mercy on the tried comrade who was treading the path to freedom on which he was one day to follow. Overcome by his emotion, he fell fainting to the ground. Strafford's last words to him, Farewell, my lord, and God protect your innocency!" were addressed to ears that heard them not.

May 12.

Strafford's step was firm, and his port erect. His friends said of him that his look was more like that of a general at the head of an army than of a prisoner led to execution. When the sad procession reached the Tower gates, Balfour advised him to take a coach, lest the people should tear him in pieces. "No, Master Lieutenant," was the proud reply; "I dare look death in the face, and I hope the people too. Have you a care that I do not escape, and I care not how I die, whether by the hand of the executioner or the madness and fury of the people. If that may give them contentment, it is all one to me."1

-on Tower

Hill.

No such danger was to be feared. It was calculated that there were full two hundred thousand persons on Tower Hill.2 The crowd They had not come as murderers. They believed that they were there to witness an act of justice. From the scaffold the fallen statesman addressed his last words to those amongst that vast multitude who were within Strafford's hearing. He told them truly that he had ever held last speech. parliaments in England to be the happy constitution of the kingdom and nation, and the best means under God to make the king and his people happy.' He wished that all who were present would consider whether the beginning of the people's happiness should be written in letters of blood.' After

1 Brief and Perfect Relation, 98.

2 Giustinian to the Doge, May 14, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.

24'

Preparing for death.

professing his attachment to the Church of England he knelt for awhile in prayer, remaining on his knees for a quarter of an hour. He then rose, took leave of his brother, and sent messages to his wife and children. Having fulfilled all earthly duties, he prepared himself for death. "I thank God," he said, as he took off his upper garment, “I am not afraid of death, nor daunted with any discouragement rising from my fears, but do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed." The executioner then drew out a handkerchief to cover his eyes. "Thou shalt not bind my eyes," said Strafford, "for I will see it done.” He placed his neck upon the block, telling the executioner that after he had meditated awhile, he would spread forth his hands as a sign to him to strike. After a little while the hands were spread to grasp the mantle of the Eternal Father. The blow fell, and that life of disappointed toil had reached its end. 1

. What were Strafford's aims?

It is possible now to understand that in his own sense Strafford was speaking the truth when he declared his devotion to the parliamentary constitution, and that yet he was, in the truest sense, the most dangerous enemy of parliaments. He attempted to maintain the Elizabethan constitution, long after it was possible to maintain it, and when the only choice lay between absolute government and Parliamentary supremacy. In contending against the latter, 'he was, without knowing what he was doing, giving his whole strength to the establishment of the former

Yet, ruinous as his success would have been, in his devotion to the rule of intelligence he stands strangely near to one side of the modern spirit. Alone amongst his generation his voice was always raised for practical reforms. Pym and Hampden looked upon existing society as something admirable in itself, though needing to be quickened by a higher moral spirit, and to be relieved from the hindrances thrown in its way by a defective organisation. Strafford regarded that society as full of abuses, and sought in the organisation which was ready to his hand, the lever by which those abuses might be removed. 1 Rushworth, Strafford's Trial, 759. Brief and Perfect Relation, 104. News-letter, Add. MSS. mcccclxvii. fol. 31.