gave way, and their explanations were suppressed, whilst the King on his part took no further steps in condemnation of their original offence.1

Relations with Scot

The relations between Scotland and England were bringing into prominence the unfitness of a large assembly without definite leadership to deal with complicated affairs. During the first three weeks of March the feeling of land. the Commons shifted from day to day. The Scots naturally demanded that their troops should be paid as long as the negotiation was still on foot. At one time the Commons seemed anxious to provide the money. At another time they had something else to think of. There was a sense of insecurity abroad which made it hard to find capitalists who were ready to lend. If the friends of Episcopacy were anxious to get money together that the Scots might be finally paid off and sent across the Tweed, the enemies of Episcopacy feared lest, if money were collected, they might lose the support of such good allies. The King had ceased to govern, and there was no one who had undertaken the work in his stead. There was no Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House to strike the balance of advantage or disadvantage in incurring any particular expenditure, and to press upon the House the absolute necessity of deciding once for all upon the mode in which its financial engagements were to be satisfied. To the Scots themselves the situation was becoming well-nigh intolerable. On the 20th the Commons March 20. had to listen to a sharp demand for payment from the Scottish Commissioners. By this time the House was in an increased state of irritation at the continued delays in the commencement of Strafford's trial. Henry Marten, a son of the Judge of the Court of Arches, who was morally separated from the Puritans by his gay and dissolute Henry Marten and life, but who was at one with them in his trenchant Strode bring the debate to opposition to the King, thought this a good opportunity to urge forward the Lords by the threat of bringing the Scottish army upon them by stopping supplies, in

The Scots

demand money.

a close.

Baillie, i. 307. Borough's Notes, March 10, 16, Harl. MSS. cccclvii. 75, 78. The Scottish Commissioners to the Committee at New. castle, Feb. 27, Adv. Libr. Edin. 33, 4, 6.

1641

MARTEN AND STRODE.

301

default of which it might be expected that the Scots would cross the Tweed and take with a strong hand that which they could not obtain in any other way. He moved in committee that the House 'could not make any advancement of monies to any purpose until justice were done upon the Earl of Strafford.' His motion was supported by Sir Walter Erle. On this Strode suddenly proposed that the Speaker should resume the chair. The proposal was adopted, and the debate came to an end without remonstrance from any side.' Nothing more was heard for some time about money for the Scots. This extraordinary resolution was an indication that a temper was rising in the House which regarded Strafford's punishment, not as a vindication of public justice, but as a necessary precaution against a public enemy.

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. fol. clxiv. 129 b; clxii. 282, 283, 290, 329, 338.

332

CHAPTER XCVII.

THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

THE Commons needed not to have been so impatient. No further delay was proposed by the peers. So great was the

1641.

Arrange

ments of the

court.

interest taken in the trial that it had been determined March 22. that the proceedings should take place in Westminster Hall, where alone room could be found for the crowds which were eager to listen to the great impeachment. For form's sake a throne had been erected with its back against the long west wall. In front of it was the seat of the Earl of Arundel, who had recently been appointed Lord Steward of the Household, and who, as Lord Keeper Lyttelton was disabled by sickness from attending, was now selected by the Lords as their Speaker. In front of Arundel were seats, to be occupied by the judges if they were summoned to give advice on points of law. There was also a table for the clerks, on either side of which were the places of the peers. Then came the bar, behind which was a desk at which the prisoner might sit or stand, whilst four secretaries were to be ready to supply him with any papers which he might need. Farther back still were the lawyers whom he might employ to argue on his behalf if any legal question should be raised, though, according to the barbarous custom of those days, their mouths must be closed on all matters of fact. On one side of Strafford's desk were seats for the managers who appeared for the Commons, whilst a witness-box on the other side completed the arrangements of the cc art. On either side arose tiers of seats,

L. J. iv. 190.

1641

WESTMINSTER HALL.

303

Το

of which the most eligible were reserved for members of the Lower House, though room was made for such other spectators as were able, by favour or payment, to obtain admission. many of those who thrust themselves in, the most important prosecution in English history was no more than an exciting spectacle.

The throne remained unoccupied. that the peers would not consent to he was officially present.

Charles present.

Charles had now learnt transact business whilst He, therefore, together

His

with the Queen, occupied a seat which had been arranged like a box in a theatre, with a lattice in front. first act was to tear down the lattice. He would certainly be able to see the better by its removal, but there were some who thought that he wished to impose restraint on the managers by being himself seen.'

The proceedings of the first day were merely formal. On the 23rd Pym opened the case on behalf of the Commons.

March 23.

Pym opens his case.

If

he believed it to be necessary to guard against danger from Strafford in the future, he also believed that he was but doing his duty in calling for punishment on Strafford's past offences. He elected to proceed first on the charges relating to Ireland. In Pym's eyes Strafford was little more than a vulgar criminal. To Strafford's allegation that he had been faithful in executing the duties of his office, he replied by comparing him to the adulteress in the Book of Proverbs, who wiped her mouth and said that she had done no evil. Strafford had set forth his services to religion, his devotion to the King's honour, his labours for the increase of the revenue and for the peace of the kingdom. Not one of these claims would Pym allow for an instant. Strafford boasted that he had summoned parliaments in Ireland, and had induced them to pass good laws. Pym asked what was the worth of parliaments without parliamentary liberties, and what was the worth of laws 'when will is set above law.' The picture of Strafford's Irish administration he traced in the blackest colours. He showed how the ordinary administration of justice had been superseded by the

1 Baillie, i. 314.

decrees of the Council Table, how juries had been fined, how noblemen had been imprisoned, and infringers upon monopolies flogged. Such, he said, were the deeds of the Earl. They had been done from a habit of cruelty in himself more perfect than any act of cruelty he had committed.' Nor was his cruelty greater than his avarice. He had embezzled public money entrusted to him for public ends, and had gorged himself with wealth, to the impoverishment of the King and the State.

Such was Pym's account of Strafford's Irish administration. It was not possible for Pym to judge it fairly. As he did not comprehend Strafford, neither did he comprehend that chaos of self-seeking and wrong against which

Pym's view of Ireland erroneous.

Strafford had struck such vigorous blows in Ireland. To Pym Ireland was as England was-to be governed by the same methods and to be trusted with equal confidence. The English House of Commons had not yet arrived at the elementary knowledge that a land which contains within it two hostile races and two hostile creeds, and in which one of those races has within recent memory been violently dispossessed by the other of a large portion of the soil which had been its immemorial inheritance, needs other statesmanship to heal its woes than that which consists of a simple zeal for the maintenance of trial by jury and parliamentary privilege. But a few days before, the Lords had suggested that the King would be more likely to consent to the dismissal of the new Catholic army if he were authorised to reinforce the old Protestant army by It was answered that Ireland was a free kingdom, and that if it were relieved from Strafford's oppressions it would stand in no need of soldiers.1 Pym, in short, like other Englishmen, saw nothing in Ireland but the English colony. With the Celtic population he had no sympathy. The one point in Strafford's rule on which Irish memory is sorest, the threatened plantation of Connaught, the English House of Commons dropped out of sight as unworthy of notice when they came to plead their case before the Lords.

2,000 men.

Pym had given Strafford an opportunity of which he was

'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 320.