their lives in secure retirement. The knowledge that this could not be made a sharper course necessary. Though for the moment Parliament was strong, its strength would not last for ever. Sooner or later the Scottish army must be paid off, and must recross the Border. Weak as the English army was for the present, it might become strong if anything should occur to turn the tide of popular feeling against the Scots. Above all, that Irish Catholic army beyond the sea was a grim reality, which Pym and his associates never lost sight of as long as it remained in existence.

The King not to be touched;

Probably the only true solution of the difficulty was to be found in the abdication or dethronement of the King. It could not be reasonably expected of Charles that he should fit himself for the entirely changed conditions which were before him, and his presence on the throne could no longer serve any useful purpose either for himself or for his subjects. Such a solution, however, did not come within the range of practical politics. He certainly was not likely to propose it, nor was anyone else likely even to think of it. If he was to be irresponsible, responsibility would fall the heavier on his ministers. They would receive more blame than was their due, because he was to receive less than was his. The cry for their punishment, in order that none might hereafter dare to follow in their steps, would wax the louder when it was perceived that only by their punishment, perhaps only by their death, could their permanent exclusion from office be made absolutely certain.

Some thought of this kind, not reasoned out, but instinctively arising in their minds, was probably present to the Parliamentary leaders when, at a preliminary meeting, they drew up the list of proscription. It was decided that Strafford, Laud, Hamilton,

but certain

be impeached.

and Cottington, together with some of the judges 1 ministers to and of the bishops, should be called to account. No doubt in so doing the Parliamentary leaders assumed that there had been a more deliberate intention to overturn the constitution of the country than had really existed.

I here begin to follow the recovered fragment of Manchester's Memoirs. See page 211. The most important passages have been already printed by Mr. Sanford, though he was not aware of their authorship.

1640

THE QUEEN'S INTRIGUES,

227

If it is necessary to make some allowance for the ignorance of the House of Commons in everything that related to the political designs of the King's ministers, it is still more necessary to make allowance for their ignorance in everything that related to the ecclesiastical designs of the same men,

Supposed Catholic plot.

The

notion that Laud and Strafford had been conspiring with Con and Rossetti to lay England at the feet of the Pope is so entirely in contradiction with the facts of the case that a modern reader is tempted at once to treat the charge as a fiction deliberately invented to serve the ends of a political party. To give way to this temptation would be to commit the greatest injustice. The conviction was shared not merely by Pym and Hampden, who afterwards opposed the King, but by Falkland and Capel, who afterwards supported him, and its existence as a conscientious belief can alone explain the wide-spread vehemence of anger which it produced. Against the Catholics themselves as a body, the general distrust exceeded all reasonable bounds. It was thought that a number of persons, who in reality wished for nothing better than to be let alone, had combined to plan the extirpation of Protestantism in England, and to risk that welcome calm into which they had so lately entered, in some fresh Gunpowder Plot for the elevation of their Church upon the ruins of the English State and nation. Yet, even here, the general suspicion was not without foundation, What was not true of the general body of Catholics the centre of was true of a few intriguers who had gained the intrigue. ear of the Queen, and who made her apartments at Whitehall the centre from which radiated the wildest schemes for setting at defiance the resolute will of the English people. Thence had come those insensate projects, in which an English bishop and an English Secretary of State had shared, for amalgamating the Church of England with the Church of Rome, Thence had come those still more insensate invitations to the Pope to lend aid in men and money to bolster up the pretensions of an English sovereign to rule his people in defiance of their wishes. Thence came every petty and low contrivance for setting at naught the strength of the Sampson who had arisen in his might, by binding him with the green withs of

The Queen

feminine allurements. Never has evil council more speedily avenged itself upon its authors than when the statecraft of James and Buckingham and Charles brought a Catholic princess to be the bride of a Protestant king. To condemn Henrietta Maria is impossible. Nothing in her birth or education had taught her to comprehend the greatness of the cause which she was opposing. She had nothing of statesmanship in her, nothing of the stern and relentless will which is indispensable to the successful conspirator. All she wanted was to live the life of a gay butterfly passing lightly from flower to flower. Such a life, she found, was no longer for her. Her pleasures were to be cut short, her friends driven from her and thrust into danger. It was all so incomprehensible to her, that she was roused to mischievous activity by the extremity of her annoyance. If the fulness of the Queen's activity was not known, at least it was suspected. The favour shown to Catholics at Court,

General feeling against the

Catholics.

the appointment of many of them to command in the Northern army, the familiarity which had arisen between Charles and the Papal agents, combined to bewilder the mind of English Protestants, and facts occasionally occurred which seemed to give warrant to the wildest suspicions. It was likely enough that Catholic gentlemen in the midst of the universal excitement would be found to have collected arms in their houses instead of trusting themselves to the mercy of their Protestant neighbours. It was likely enough that, in view of the impending danger which they foresaw, some Catholics, less wise than the rest, should mutter some foolish threats. Such words would be certain to become more violent in the mouth of rumour. In September an apostate priest had sought to gain the favour of Charles by trumping up a story of a great Jesuit plot to murder him and Laud, and it was likely that the same man would be ready to trump up stories equally unfounded to please the King's opponents.1

The belief in the existence of a plot for the violent suppression of Protestantism is, therefore, only too easily to be explained.

1 The correspondence is printed in Rushworth, iii. 1310. Was the informant the John Brown who had another long story to tell the Commons in the following April?

1640

1

PYM AND STRAFFORD.

229

There can be no doubt that Pym was fully convinced of it. It is but a shallow criticism which conceives of Pym as a man raised above his fellows, and using their weaknesses for the purposes of his own ambition. It is perhaps more a matter of surprise that he can have supposed that Strafford could have had any connection with such a design. But it must be remembered that the Strafford of Pym's knowledge was not the Strafford who now stands revealed—the high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defect of temper and knowledge. He saw but the base apostate, who, from love of pelf and power, had betrayed the sacred cause of English liberty. No error is so utterly misleading as partial truth, and a document which appeared to point to the worst possible interpretation of Strafford's motives, had unexpectedly found its way into Pym's hands. In the autumn the younger Vane, who had recently been knighted, had occasion to inspect some legal documents, in view of his approaching marriage. In order to obtain them he borrowed his father's keys, and in the course of his search he opened the door of the room in which the Secretary kept his official papers. He there found his father's notes taken at the committee which had met immediately after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, took a copy of them, and carried it to Pym. Pym made a second copy for his own use. The original paper was burnt by the King's command before the meeting of Parliament.'

Vane's notes.

To Pym it was enough to know that Strafford had advised the King to act 'loose and absolved from all rules of govern

Their effect

upon Pym.

ment,' and that he had reminded him of his army in Ireland as being ready to reduce this kingdom.'

It was at once clear to Pym, if it had not been clear before, that the Lord Lieutenant was the head of a conspiracy to overthrow, if necessary by force, the fundamental laws of England, or, as we should now express it, the constitution of the country.

If Pym bore hardly on Strafford as a man, he could not

'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiv. fol. 162 b. The greater part of this was printed by Mr. Sanford; but he appears to have been unable to decipher the whole of the passage. He omitted the part about the burning of the original notes. See page 129.

bear too hardly on the system of government which Strafford had supported. That system had undeniably been calculated to establish an arbitrary power which was not merely unknown to the laws of England, but which would, for a time at least, have checked the development of the nation in the direction of self-government. When Pym rose, it was not to repeat once more the catalogue of grievances which had poured forth from the lips of others. "The distempers of the time,”

Pym's speech.

he said, "are well known. They need not repetition, for, though we have good laws, yet they want their execution, or if they are executed, it is in the wrong sense." The whole political contention of the Long Parliament at its commencement lay in these words. Parliament, as Pym understood it, was not merely called together to propose laws and to vote subsidies. It had to see that the laws were executed in accordance with the interpretation put upon them by the nation at large, and not merely in accordance with the interpretation put upon them by the King and the judges. It was inconceivable to him that anyone should honestly think otherwise. 'There was a design,' he said, 'to alter law and religion.' Those who formed it were 'papists who are obliged by a maxim in their doctrine, that they are not only bound to maintain their religion, but to extirpate all others.' Pym followed this by evidence culled from the high-handed dealing of judges and councillors during the past eleven years. He especially referred to the proposal to bring in foreign soldiers to support the King in 1639 and 1640. He also referred to the widely entertained suspicion that some mystery lay concealed in the visit of that Spanish fleet which had been destroyed in the Downs. few brief words he pointed the moral. There was the Irish army to bring us to order. We are not fully conquered.' In the end, he moved for a committee to inquire into the danger in which the King and kingdom was.

In the afternoon of the same day the Irish Committee met. A petition from Mountnorris was read, with startling effect. "If we consider divers points of this petition," said Pym, Committee. a man would think we lived rather in Turkey than in Christendom. Sir John Clotworthy, one of the Ulster settlers,

The Irish