1641 ST. JOHN'S ARGUMENT. 345 rely. "We give law," he said, "to hares and deer, because they be beasts of chase; it was never accounted either cruelty or foul play to knock foxes and wolves on the head as they can be found, because they be beasts of prey. The warrener sets traps for polecats and other vermin for the preservation of the warren." Strafford's maxims were thus turned against him self. The Commons, too, claimed, in a moment of supreme danger to be loose and absolved from all rules of govern ment. urgent There can be little doubt that by this time the Attainder Bill was gaining ground in the House of Lords.2 The growing Charles's belief that plots, the extent of which it was imposappeal to the sible to know, were entertained at Court, would do Lords. more to convert the Lords than all St. John's eloquence. On the 30th, too, when the report of the King's speech. of the 28th was read by the speaker, the Commons again testified their dissatisfaction. "There followed," according to D'Ewes, "a long silence in respect it gave so little hope of disbanding the Irish army, and yet that the King pressed us to disband the other two armies, and told us that we were masters of the same." 3 No wonder that Bristol and Savile, the two ' Rushworth, Strafford's Trial, 703. We are told that several times in the course of this speech Strafford raised his hands to protest. In Kanke's account this grows into a special protest against this part of the speech. 2 Writing of the King's speech of May 1, Giustinian says that it was made sospettando il Rè che l'odio di molti Parlamentarii con le gelosie di rendere mal sodisfatto il popolo persuadino ad abbraciarlo,' i.e., the Bill of Attainder. A letter which reports news from another letter written on the 29th or 30th is more explicit. The writer says that the Bill of Attainder had been read twice in the Upper House, and the passing is yet doubtful, Thirty Lords are for it, but many of the fifty lords are come about, and therefore it is generally conceived the Earl will lose his head. Other letters say that Mr. St. John did make such an excellent argument as satisfied the opposites.'-King to Calthorpe, May 1, Tanner MSS. Ixvi. fol. 72. D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. fol. 120. These names are given in the letter of Father Philips (Rushworth, iv. 257). Clarendon gives Saye's name instead of Savile's. It is not likely 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. 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, 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. 'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. 122. N 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 King s inter- to vote to order, and Strafford at least considered the King's intervention to be in itself impolitic.2 ference. 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. So dissatisfied were the latter 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 disCompromise temper.' No clearer evidence of the depth of feeling on the Church question. The Bishops' against Strafford can be found than in the fact that Hampden assured Falkland that, as far as Church matters were concerned, he would be content with the passage of a Bill for the exclusion of the clergy from secular offices, and for shutting out the Bishops from the House of Lords, which 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. What information we have on the matter, indeed, points to a renunciation by Hampden of all further progress in Church reform, though, as a certain amount of Church reform was as dear to Falkland as it was to Hampden, it is probable that the whole story has not reached us. At all events it can hardly be doubted that Hampden announced that if the Bill passed he would never ask for the abolition of episcopacy.3 May 2. the Princess The next day was a Sunday. It had been fixed Marriage of for the celebration of the marriage of Charles's eldest Mary. daughter. Prince William of Orange, the bearer of the most illustrious name in Europe, a bright hopeful lad of 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.' 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 Dissatisfac- 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 ambassador was not likely to gain much real assistance from Charles; but there was a way in which Charles might The pregain something from the Portuguese ambassador. tended By authorising him to gather soldiers in England an levies for Portugal. 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. Giustinian to the Doge, March 25 6 May Ven. Transcripts, R. O. 16' 1541 AN ATTEMPT TO SAVE STRAFFORD. 349 Balfour was a good Scotsman, and refused to let him in. He gave information of what had occurred to the Par Billingsley mission into the Tower, refused ad 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 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 May. 3 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. |