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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.

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1641.

CHAPTER XCVII.

THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Arrangements of the

court.

THE Commons needed not to have been so impatient. No further delay was proposed by the peers. So great was the 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 court. On either side arose tiers of seats,

1 L. J. iv. 190.

1641

WESTMINSTER HALL.

303

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. To many of those who thrust themselves in, the most important prosecution in English history was no more than an exciting spectacle.

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

The throne remained unoccupied. that the peers would not consent to he was officially present. with the Queen, occupied a seat which had been arranged like a box in a theatre, with a lattice in front.

Charles present.

His

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.1

March 23. Pym opens his case.

The proceedings of the first day were merely formal. On the 23rd Pym opened the case on behalf of the Commons. 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 Pyin'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 2,000 men. 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.

Pym had given Strafford an opportunity of which he was

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

1641

the bar.

STRAFFORD AT THE BAR.

305

not slow to avail himself. Never had he seemed more truly Strafford at great than when he appeared at the bar, like some fierce but noble animal at bay, to combat the united attacks of his accusers, in his own unaided strength. His crisp black hair was now streaked with grey, and his proud face was softened by the feeling of his calamities, and by the reverence which he felt for the great assembly of the peers, from which he firmly expected to receive that justice which was his due. With marvellous self-restraint he professed for the House of Commons a respect which it must have been difficult for him to feel. The most consummate actor could not have borne himself better. Strafford was no actor. He spoke out of the fulness of his heart, out of his consciousness of his own integrity, out of his incapacity to understand any serious view of the relations between a Government and a nation other than that upon which he had acted.

His Irish

For several days the Court was almost entirely occupied with the charges relating to the affairs of Ireland. Undoubtedly Strafford did not succeed in showing that he had government. been a constitutional ruler. He had again and again acted with a high-handed disregard of the letter of the law, and had sometimes violated its spirit. He fell back on his good intentions, on his anxiety to secure practical justice, and on the fact that his predecessors had acted very much as he was accused of acting. Though the plea was undoubtedly insufficient, the view which Strafford took of Ireland was far truer than the view which had been taken by Pym. What was really needed, as far as Ireland was concerned, was not Strafford's punishment, but a serious and impartial investigation into the causes of Irish disorder with the view of coming to an agreement as to the conditions under which the government of that country could in the future be carried on. It is needless to say that not a single member of the English Parliament ever thought for an instant of anything of the kind. The only remedy which they imagined to be needed was to place Ireland in the hands of men like Lord Mountnorris or the Earl of Cork. Ignorance brings with it its inevitable penalty, and vengeance, this time not slow-footed, was already on the track.

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