his life by a thread. But still, to do something for his servant, or to salve over his own conscience, Charles, on the morrow-it was a Sunday -summoned his privy council together at Whitehall, called in some of the judges and bishops, propounded several scruples, imparted his doubts and misgivings, and asked their opinions. Honest, plain-spoken Juxon, Bishop of London, boldly advised him not to consent to the shedding of the blood of a man whom in his heart he believed to be innocent. Williams, the old Bishop of Lincoln, and now about to be Archbishop of York,' was of a very different opinion. He told Charles "that there was a private and a public conscience; that his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with, but oblige him to do that which was against his private conscience as a man; and that the question was, not whether he should save the Earl of Strafford, but whether he should perish with him; that the conscience of a king to preserve his kingdom, the conscience of a husband to preserve his wife, the conscience of a father to preserve his children (all which were now in danger), weighed down abundantly all the considerations the conscience of a master or a friend could suggest to him, for the preservation of a friend or servant; and by such unprelatical, ignominious arguments, in plain terms, advised him, even for conscience' sake, to pass that act." Three "oth rs of the same function, for whose learning and sincerity the king and the world had greater reverence"-Usher, Primate of Armagh, Moreton, Bishop of Durham, and another bishop, advised Charles to guide his conscience by the opinion of his judges. The judges, it is said, refused to give any reasons for their opinion, and merely stated that the case of Strafford, as put to them by the lords, was treason. The majority of the council pressed upon him the votes of both houses of parliament and the imminent danger of a refusal; and, late on Sunday evening, Charles reluctantly subscribed a commission to give his assent to the bill. According to one account, he shed tears; according to another, he exclaimed that the condition of the doomed Strafford was happier than his own. On the preceding Tuesday the prisoner had addressed a remarkable and a very touching letter to the king. He bemoaned the fate of his numerous progeny who must be beggared by his attainder; he spoke of the king's conscience, but he declared that he was quite ready to die in order to establish a "blessed agreement" between his majesty and his subjects; nay, he even requested the king to pass the bill of attainder. Some writers are of opinion that, in penning this letter, Strafford was heroically sincere; that the pri I Williams was promoted to York on the 4th of December of this same eventful year, 1641. 2 Clarendon, Hist. soner was willing to throw off his afflicted mortal coil, and that his life should be a peace-offering: but we confess we cannot entertain this notion, but are rather inclined to regard the letter as having been written to work upon the feelings of the king, who might probably have been expected to use it as he had used a similar letter of Goodman (which had saved that priest's life), and without any intention or expectation on the part of Strafford that his life should be sacrificed by his master. One of the best of contemporary authorities we have to follow says, that the king sent Carleton to the prisoner to acquaint him with what he had done, and the motives of it, especially the earl's own consent to die; that Strafford then seriously asked whether his majesty had passed the bill or not-"as not believing without some astonishment, that the king would have done it"-and that, being again assured that the bill was really passed, he rose from his chair, lifted up his eyes to heaven, laid his hand upon his heart, and said, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation."3 Two days after the fatal Saturday, on Monday, the 10th of May, the commission empowering the Earl of Arundel (the lord privy-seal) and two other lords to give the royal assent to the bill for the execution of the Earl of Strafford upon the Wednesday following, passed the great seal; and the commons were sent for to the lords, to be present at the giving the royal assent to that bill, and to the bill for doing away the prerogative of dissolving parliament. And on the same day Charles sent to inform both houses that the Irish army, which had caused so great an alarm, should be instantly disbanded; in return for which gracious message the commons assured Charles that they would make him as glorious a potentate and as rich a prince as any of his predecessors. On the morrow, the 11th of May, only one day before that fixed for the execution, Charles sent a letter to the lords by the hands of the young Prince of Wales. The royal breast must have been occupied by greater fears than ever; for it is scarcely possible to conceive a more trembling and miserable petition for mercy, and the concluding words made the doom of death prominent, and, as it were, inevitable. They were these "But if no less than his life can satisfy my people, I must say 'fiat justitia.' that his estate was so distracted that it necessarily required some few days for settlement." To this the lords replied, that it was their purpose to be suitors to his majesty, that favour might be showed to Strafford's innocent children, and that if the prisoner had made any provision for them the same might hold.' Then Charles turned away from the lords, who stayed him to offer into his hands the letter which he had just sent to them. "My lords," said Charles, "what I have written to you I shall be content it be registered and sad consideration," twelve peers were sent to tell the king that neither of the two intentions expressed in the letter could, with duty in them, or without danger to himself, the queen, and all the young princes, possibly be advised. Without permitting the twelve noble messengers to use any more words, Charles said, "What I intended by my letter was with an 'if' it might be done with contentment of my people. If that cannot be," he added, "I say again fiat justitia! My other intention, proceeding out of charity for a few days' respite was, upon certain information by you in your house: in it you see my mind; BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.-From a Drawing made between 1681 and 1689 by order of Lord Dartmouth, Governor-General of the Ordnance.-From the Vetusta Monumenta. I hope you will use it to my honour." The next the morrow morning, when he came forth to die, day was the fatal Wednesday. During the preced- he said, as he drew near to that part of the Tower ing night, the last of his stormy career, Strafford where the archbishop was confined, "Master Lieureceived the visit of Archbishop Usher, whom tenant, though I do not see the archbishop, give he requested to go to his old friend and fellow- me leave to do my last observance towards his prisoner Laud, and beg him to lend him his Almost immediately after the execution, the commons passed prayers that night, and give him his blessing a bill relieving Strafford's issue from all consequences of the atwhen he should go abroad on the morrow. On tainder. grant of tonnage and poundage, which he now accepted as a gift from his people. Six subsidies had also been voted. Three other acts were likewise presented, one imposing a poll-tax for the defraying of the charges of the armies, the second and third putting down for ever the High Commission Court and the detestable Star Chamber, which had, in fact, both fallen into decrepitude at the opening of the present parliament. On the 2d of July, Charles gave his assent to the poll-tax bill, probably hoping that it would disgust the people, and turn them against their new legislators or rulers; but he demurred upon the other two acts. The commons voted that he should pass all three or none at all; and Charles, alarmed at their tone, on the 5th of July, passed the other two also. rooms." But in the meantime, Laud, advertised of his approach, came up to the window. Then the earl bowed himself to the ground and said, "My lord, your prayers and your blessing." The archbishop lifted up his hands and bestowed both, but overcome with grief he fell to the ground, and the procession moved onwards. But after he had proceeded a little further, Strafford bent himself a second time, and said, “ Farewell, my lord; God protect your innocence." According to the laborious Rushworth, the clerk of the parliament, and one of the innumerable eye-witnesses, he marched towards the scaffold upon Tower-hill more like a general at the head of an army than like a condemned man. He was attended upon the scaffold by Archbishop Usher, the Earl of Cleveland, and his brother Sir George Wentworth; and other friends were present to take their last || The important events which we have had to leave. The multitude collected to see him die condense have carried us over some family inciwas estimated at 100,000 men, women, and chil- dents which were far from being of insignificant dren; but all preserved a respectful and awe- moment. In the autumn of 1638, the intriguing, struck silence. He had prepared the heads of a turbulent, conscienceless Mary de' Medici, Queenspeechr, which he now delivered.' He said, that dowager of France, and mother to Henrietta he was come to submit to the judgment passed Maria, arrived in England, and was conducted against him; that he did submit with a quiet and in great state through London. Cardinal Richecontented mind, freely forgiving all the world. lieu, after a hard contest, had driven her out of His conscience, he said, bore him witness that France with disgrace and in poverty. Her daughhe was innocent, although it was his ill-hap to ter, the Queen of Spain, could not, or would not he misconstrued. The executioner severed his grant her an asylum: the Queen of England had neck at one blow, and holding up the bleeding more filial tenderness, or more power, and after head towards the people, cried, "God save the long entreaties she prevailed upon Charles to reking" The people scarcely believed what they ceive and maintain her. The country, the relisaw; they shouted not, they gave way to no ma- gion, the manners of this royal refugee all renlignant or triumphant feelings; but in the even-dered her obnoxious to the people. The sailors ing they testified their joy and satisfaction by who brought her over called the equinoctial gales lighting bonfires in the streets." The death of Strafford completed the panic among the old placemen, most of whom now abandoned office in the hope of escaping impeachment. St. John had already been made attorney-general, and one of his first offices as such had been to drive on the trial of the great earl. On the 17th of May, the Lord Cottington gave up his place as master of the wards, which was conferred upon the Puritanic and patriotic Lord Say. The Marquis of Hertford was made governor to the prince, the Earl of Essex lordchamberlain, and the Earl of Leicester, another nobleman of the popular party, was made Lordlieutenant of Ireland. All these men were strong in the confidence of the House of Commons, but, from their first moment of entering upon office, they were intolerable to the king, who never trusted them, and who pursued so many bypaths with them that they ended (possibly they had begun) by never trusting him. On the 22d of June the commons presented to the king their This paper was picked up on the scaffold after his head had 2 Rushworth; Nalson; May, Sir P. Warwick. fallen. which raged during her passage "queen-mother weather;" and popular superstition connected the coming of the Papist and idolatress with a pestilence that was then raging. Nor were these prejudices removed by the liberality of the king, who granted her an enormous pension, and a patent or monopoly upon leather. Whenever the popular excitement was great, Mary de' Medici and her train of priests came in for a large share of abuse. Terrified at some great crowds and tumults during the trial of Strafford, she desired a guard for her security. The commons, saying that they were bound in honour not to suffer any violence to be done to her, referred the business to a committee. Mr. Henry Martin reported that the committee had agreed to provide for her safety by all good ways and means; being, however, of opinion that the best thing she could do was to be gone out of England, he moved that the house would entreat the lords to join with them in a petition to his majesty that the queen-mother might be moved to depart the kingdom, the rather for the quieting those jealousies in the hearts of his majesty's well-affected subjects, occasioned by some ill instruments about the queen's person, by the flocking of priests and Papists to her house, and by the use and practice of the idolatry of the mass.' Charles, however, held out; but Mary de' Medici was made restless and wretched by constant alarms, and soon showed that she was more anxious to leave England than ever she had been to come to it. The only thing that was wanting was money for her journey, and the commons gladly voted her £10,000 out of the poll-tax. In the month of July she took her departure, to become again a homeless wanderer; but she did not wander far, dying at Cologne shortly after. On the 4th of August, Serjeant Wild, in the name of the commons of England, presented at the bar of the upper house charges of impeachment against thirteen bishops who had been most active in pursuing Laud's system, and who were especially charged with contriving, making, and promulgating, in the late convocation, several constitutions and canons ecclesiastical, contrary to the king's prerogative, the laws of the realm, the rights of parliament, and the properties and liberties of the people. By this measure, though the bill for depriving prelates of their seats had been lost, thirteen bishops were kept away from parliament. The Scottish Covenanters, on the whole, had had a very comfortable time of it in the north of England: it had been for the interest of the commons to keep them well supplied with money, and to administer to their comforts in other respects. The military duty was light, allowing an abundance of time for preaching and praying; and the English people in those provinces had before, or they then contracted, an affection for the Calvinistic doctrine. As long as the royal army was kept on foot at York, the parliament considered it unsafe to permit the departure of Leslie's army; and it was very easy for them to prolong the negotiations; but at length, in the beginning of August, the treaty of pacification was concluded-Charles agreeing not merely to disband his army at York, but also to withdraw the strong garrisons which he had thrown into Berwick and Carlisle. The Scots obtained the security of the English parliament for payment of a balance of £220,000 of the "brotherly assist 1 Rushworth. 2 They were Winchester, Coventry, Gloucester, Exeter, St. Asaph, Bath and Wells, Hereford, Ely, Bangor, Bristol, Roches ter, Peterborough, and Llandaff; and the name of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was put at the end of the list. The commons did not forget to take notice of their bribes to the king. They said, in their impeachment, "And to add more weight and efficacy to this their monstrous design, they did, at the same synod, under a specious and fair title, grant a benevolence or contribution to his majesty, to be paid by the clergy of that province, contrary to law" ance," and "with store of English money and spoils, and the best entertainment, they left their warm and plentiful quarters"-not, however, until Leslie had seen that Charles's army was really disbanding. During the negotiations, Charles had offered to go into Scotland, and to meet the Scottish parliament for the better settlement of sundry matters; and as early as the month of June he had announced his intention of making this journey. But it in no way suited the English parliament to let him go at this moment, nor could his utmost efforts obtain their permission until the 10th of August. The popular party considered the journey as rife with danger and intrigue; and some of them, even at the last moment, would have prevented it. They desired the king to appoint a regent during his absence; but Charles got over this difficulty by naming commissioners, and, having given the command of all the forces on this side Trent to the popu lar Earl of Essex, he got into his carriage ruminating deep things, being attended by none in the coach but his nephew, Charles Louis, Elector Palatine (who had got out of Richelieu's clutches), by his cousin, the Duke of Lennox, created Duke of Richmond, and by the Marquis of Hamilton. He had not been gone a week when the Earl of Holland, formerly the queen's favourite, but now irritated against her and the whole court, sent a letter to the House of Peers, "with some obscure words, as if there were new practices and designs against the parliament." The lords imparted the contents of the letter to the commons, who forthwith appointed commissioners to go into Scotland, ostensibly to superintend the ratification of the recent treaty, but in reality to keep watch over the king, and, in the language of their instructions, "to certify the parliament from time to time of their proceedings, and of all occurrences which shall concern the good of this kingdom." The persons appointed for these delicate offices were, the Earl of Bedford, Edward, Lord Howard, Nathaniel Fiennes, Sir William Armyne, Sir Philip Stapleton, and Mr. Hampden; and a draft of a commission was sent after the king for him to sign, empowering the said commissioners to treat, confer, and conclude with such commissioners as should be named by the Scottish parliament. Charles, very anxious to avoid this surveillance, refused to sign the commission, and told the English parliament that he did so because the treaty was already ratified by the parliament of Scotland. The Scottish army was over the Tweed, and the lord-general had almost disbanded all the English army; and therefore his majesty saw no necessity for such commission, yet, in the end, was pleased to give leave to the members named to come and attend him in Scotland, &c. This answer was not written till the 25th of August. For reasons not explain- | appointments, but anxious to keep their governed, the Earl of Bedford did not go, but Lord ment independent of the cabinet of St. James's, Howard, Mr. Hampden, and the rest, hastened to which it had been subservient-occasionally into Scotland. to the detriment of Scottish interests and national honour-ever since James had succeeded to the throne of Elizabeth: and they opposed with all their might the assumption of the prerogative. There was, however, one gleam of comfort for the king in this long struggle about offices; he saw many noble Scots so fiercely bent on the obtaining of places for themselves, that he fancied they must break out into feuds and parties, some of which might yet rally round him. According to an eye-witness, he promised on all sides, and granted, at least in words, whatever was asked. In the end the parties came to an accommodation; the Covenanting leaders in parliament agreed to reduce the number of incendiaries to five, to release the incendiaries and plotters from prison, and to refer their trial to a committee, their sentence to the king; and Charles agreed that the appointment of ministers, judges, and privy counsellors should be by and with the approbation of the estates while parliament was sitting, and of the privy council when it was adjourned or dissolved. But still the matter was far from being settled: Argyle, the great champion of the Covenant, desired the post of chancellor ; Charles pre In the meantime the king had made a pleasant journey, and met with a kind reception. He dined with Leslie in his camp, caressed that old soldier of fortune, and endeavoured to corrupt his officers. At Edinburgh, forgetting his intolerances, and the lessons of Laud, he listened with an approving countenance to the Presbyterian preachers, and outwardly conformed to their simple or bare ceremonies. It was a curious, and, for him, a humiliating sight! The Scots could hardly forget how, a few months before, he had endeavoured to drive them from that worship by cannon balls. And as it seemed necessary for the king of the Presbyterian Scots to have a Presbyterian chaplain, Charles appointed to that office Alexander Henderson, the man who had had a principal hand in overthrowing the bishops and writing the bond of the Covenant. At the same time, so far from showing any ill-will towards the chiefs of the Covenanters, he treated them all, whether lay or clergy, nobles or burghers, with a great show of respect and even affection. Some he gratified with titles, some with employment, all with promises. In his opening speech to the parliament, he declared that affection for his na-ferred giving it to Loudon, whom he had comtive land had brought him thither, where he hoped to remedy all jealousies and distractions; and he engaged cheerfully to fulfil all that had been stip-trigue in full activity, there happened what Scotulated in the treaty. He reminded them, however, of his ancient descent, and of the rights and high standing which that circumstance ought to give him. Not looking at history with a critical eye, he told them that he claimed their allegiance as the descendant of one hundred and eight Scottish kings; and he offered to ratify the acts of their last session in the old form by the touch of his sceptre. The Covenanters, not much moved by the oratorical part of the address, told him that the acts of the Scottish parliament were valid without such assent. mitted to the Tower for the famous letter "Au Roy." While the discontent was great, and in tish historians significantly call the "Incident." Argyle, who was feared and detested by the king, and Hamilton, who had incurred the royal suspicion ever since he had consented to play that double part with the Covenanters, which Charles had put upon him as a proof of his loyalty and affection, were the most powerful men in the Scottish parliament. If they could be crushed the king might yet raise his head, or so he fondly fancied. There was a third noble Scot involved in the "Incident"--a man far more remarkable than the former two: this was the brave, adroit, and unprincipled Earl of Montrose, who had already been, by turns, courtier and Covenanter, and then king's man again. He had marched into England with the army of Leslie; he had enjoyed, as we have seen, the entire confidence of the Covenanters; he had been appointed one of their commissioners to treat with the king at Ripon and York; and, in the latter place, he had been won over by the graces, the arts, and promises of Charles, to betray his colleagues. It was agreed between them that Montrose, in order to be more useful, should continue to play the part of a zealous Covenanter. Charles, with all his cunning, was at times very careless: he kept in his pocket, at York, a letter, in which Montrose |