[1641 A.D.] The following morning (the 12th) was appointed for the execution. The scaffold was erected on Tower Hill; the earl, when ready, left his chamber; Laud, as he had requested, was at his window to give him his blessing as he passed; the feeble old man raised his hands, but was unable to speak, and fell back into the arms of his attendants. The earl moved on; the lieutenant desired him to take coach at the gate, lest the mob should tear him to pieces; he replied that it was equal to him whether he died by the axe or by their fury. The multitudes extended far as the eye could reach; the earl took off his hat several times and saluted them; not a word of insult was heard; "his step and air," says Rushworth," who was present, "were those of a general marching at the head of an army to breathe victory, rather than those of a condemned man to undergo the sentence of death.' From the scaffold he addressed the people, assuring them that he had always had the welfare of his country at heart; it augured ill for their happiness, he told them, to write the commencement of a reformation in letters of blood; he assured them he had never been against parliaments, regarding them as "the best means under God to make the king and his people happy. He turned to take leave of his friends, and seeing his brother weeping, he gently reproached him. "Think," said he, "that you are now accompanying me the fourth time to my marriage-bed. That block shall be my pillow, and here I shall rest from all my labours." He then began to undress, saying, “I do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed." He knelt and prayed, Archbishop Usher and another clergyman kneeling with him. He laid down his head to try the block; then telling the executioner that he would stretch forth his hands as a sign when he was to strike, he laid it finally down, and giving the signal, it was severed at a single blow; and thus in the forty-ninth year of his age perished Thomas earl of Strafford, "who, for natural parts and abilities," says Whitelocke, "and for improvement of knowledge, by experience in the greatest affairs, for wisdom, faithfulness, and gallantry of mind, hath left few behind him that may be ranked equal with him." u h It is unnecessary here to enter into the question of the weakness or wickedness of the king in consenting to the sacrifice of Strafford. Charles held it, in the subsequent struggle of his life, as his one great fault-that which was justly punished by Heaven in his misfortunes. The firm yet modest demeanour of the great earl produced little mitigation of the dislike of the people. "In the evening of the day wherein he was executed the greatest demonstrations of joy that possibly could be expressed ran through the whole town and countries hereabout; and many that came up to town on purpose to see the execution rode in triumph back, and with all expressions of joy, through every town they went, crying, 'His head is off! his head is off!' Warwick, the zealous adherent of the court, tells this "to show how mad the whole people were, especially in and about this then bloody and brutish city, London. "g w By one party Strafford has been represented as the noblest, most innocent martyr for the purest cause in the world; by the second, as the worst of criminals, whose death was entirely merited and absolutely necessary for the establishment of liberty. An impartial examination confirms neither of these views, but leads to a judgment between the two. Strafford had committed no crime which deserved death according to the laws, and he had justly said, "I see nothing capital in their charge"; and the proceedings against him were carried on with acrimony, and with a violation of many forms. On the other hand, he had behaved, especially in Ireland, in individual cases in the [1641 A.D.] most arbitrary manner, in order to maintain certain general principles, and his plan, to free the king from all restraint, by an unlimited right of taxation and a standing army, was indeed not treason, according to the letter of the law, but more dangerous and more wicked than much that was designated by that name. For this reason, the popular leaders said that the question here was not the application of the letter of the law to cases which were foreseen, but a new action, nay, a whole series of actions and intentions, for which a new law and a new punishment must be laid down and applied, for the safety of the country. If the existing law was insufficient to avert the most dreadful danger, it ought not to be meanly submitted to, but means to punish such great criminals must be sought and found in the omnipotence of legislation. As Vaughani says: "If we blame the sentence which was passed upon Strafford, it is not so much on his account as for the sake of the laws which he trampled under foot, and of liberty which he betrayed." Strafford was the ablest, and in one sense the most faithful, of Charles' councillors, but he undertook a task to which he was not equal, and which he could not have executed without violating all the existing laws. He failed in attaining what Richelieu at that time purposed, and executed with far greater energy, and under very different circumstances; yet a more elevated point of view, and more genuine fidelity to the king, would have happily led in England to a far greater object. But precisely because the victory over the king's system was so decisive, and he had already granted everything advantageous to real liberty, it appears doubly wrong that the parliament was not satisfied with the fall of Strafford, without violating the existing law, and giving a retrospective power to the newly adopted principle; that, without a sufficient motive, it stained the road to peaceful improvement with blood, and after the king had sacrificed to it his erroneous principles, wantonly inflicted the deepest wound upon his heart. A milder course would have proved a better guarantee for liberty. By Strafford's death, on the contrary, the breach became incurable, all nobler feelings became subordinate to cold calculation, and in order to attain the object nearest at hand, that which was far greater was, in truth, sacrificed. From the moment that the affecting entreaty of Charles for the life of his servant and friend was refused, the very trace of everything pleasing and humane in the relation between king and parliament was lost, without an indemnity being found for it on any other side-nay, without the possibility of ever finding it. While the rejoicings were taking place in London on the execution of the earl, the windows of those who would not illuminate were broken. Richelieu, on the other hand, said: "The English are mad in cutting off the best head of their country." Digby's speech in favour of Strafford, which was printed, was burned by order of the house of commons, and Taylor expelled, imprisoned, and declared incapable of ever sitting in parliament, because he had called the execution of the earl a judicial murder.i MACAULAY ON STRAFFORD'S EXECUTION Defeat, universal agitation, financial embarrassments, disorganisation in every part of the government, had compelled Charles again to convene the houses before the close of the same year. Their meeting was one of the great eras in the history of the civilised world. Whatever of political freedom exists either in Europe or in America has sprung directly or indirectly from those [1641 A.D.] institutions which they secured and reformed. We never turn to the annals of those times without feeling increased admiration of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the consummate wisdom, which marked the measures of that great parliament, from the day on which it met to the commencement of civil hostilities. The impeachment of Strafford was the first, and perhaps the greatest blow. The whole conduct of that celebrated man proved that he had formed a deliberate scheme to subvert the fundamental laws of England. Those parts of his correspondence which have been brought to light since his death place the matter beyond a doubt. It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil rights, which even despots have generally respected, should treat with scorn the limitations which the constitution imposes on the royal prerogative. We might quote pages, but we will content ourselves with a single specimen: "The debts of the crown being taken off, you may govern as you please; and most resolute I am that may be done without borrowing any help forth of the king's lodgings. Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which Strafford meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he sold himself to the court, was in strict conformity to his theory. For his accomplices various excuses may be urged-ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry. But Wentworth had no such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early prepossessions were on the side of popular rights. He knew the whole beauty and value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the first of the rats, the first of those statesmen whose patriotism has been only the coquetry of political prostitution, and whose profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from an opposition than to rear them in a ministry. He was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was a sacrament of infamy, a baptism into the communion of corruption. As he was the earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest; eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, H. W.-VOL. XIX. 2 Q [1641 A.D.] ready of invention, immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys nations pre-eminent, the lost archangel, the Satan of the apostasy. The title for which, at the time of his desertion, he exchanged a name honourably distinguished in the cause of the people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of the first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning, "Satan-so call him now. His former name Is heard no more in heaven." The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed mainly to draw on him the hatred of his contemporaries. It has since made him an object of peculiar interest to those whose lives have been spent, like his, in proving that there is no malice like the malice of a renegade. Nothing can be more natural or becoming than that one turncoat should eulogise another. Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their private virtues. But Strafford was the same throughout. As was the statesman, such was the kinsman, and such the lover. His conduct towards Lord Mountmorris is recorded by Clarendon.c For a word which can scarcely be called rash, which could not have been made the subject of an ordinary civil action, the lord lieutenant dragged a man of high rank, married to a relative of his wife, that "saint" about whom he whimpered to the peers, before a tribunal of slaves. Sentence of death was passed. Everything but death was inflicted. Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still more scandalous. That nobleman was thrown into prison in order to compel him to settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his daughter-in-law, whom, as there is every reason to believe, Strafford had debauched. These stories do not rest on vague report. The historians most partial to the minister admit their truth, and censure them in terms which, though too lenient for the occasion, are still severe. These facts are alone sufficient to justify the appellation with which Pym branded him, "the wicked Earl." In spite of all Strafford's vices, in spite of all his dangerous projects, he was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law; but of the law in all its rigour, of the law according to the utmost strictness of the letter, which killeth. He was not to be torn in pieces by a mob, or stabbed in the back by an assassin. He was not to have punishment meted out to him from his own iniquitous measure. But if justice, in the whole range of its wide armoury, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before God and man, to employ. "If he may Find mercy in the law, 'tis his; if none, Such was the language which the commons might justly use. Did, then, the articles against Strafford strictly amount to high treason? Many people, who know neither what the articles were nor what high treason is, will answer in the negative, simply because the accused person, speaking for his life, took that ground of defence. The journals of the lords show that the judges were consulted. They answered, with one accord, that the articles on which the earl was convicted amounted to high treason. This judicial opinion, even if we suppose it to have been erroneous, goes far to justify the parliament. The judgment pronounced in the exchequer chamber has always been urged by the apologists of Charles in defence of his conduct respecting ship-money. Yet on that occasion there was but a bare majority in favour of the party at whose pleasure all the magistrates composing the tribunal |