that the deputy's conduct should be examined by the line of rigid law and severe principles, he appealed still to the practice of all former deputies, and to the uncontrollable necessity of his situation.

So great was his art of managing elections and balancing parties, that he had engaged the Irish parliament to vote whatever was necessary, both for the payment of former debts, and for the support of the new levied army; nor had he ever been reduced to the illegal expedients practised in England, for the supply of public necessities. No imputation of rapacity could justly lie against his administration. Some instances of imperious expressions, and even actions, may be met with. The case of Lord Mountmorris, of all those which were collected with so much industry, is the most flagrant and the least excusable.

It had been reported at the table of Lord Chancellor Loftus, that Annesley, one of the deputy's attendants, in moving a stool, had sorely hurt his master's foot, who was at that time afflicted with the gout. "Perhaps," said Mountmorris, who was present at the table, "it was done in revenge of that public affront which my lord deputy formerly put on him; BUT HE HAS A BROTHER WHO WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN SUCH A REVENGE." This casual and seemingly innocent, at least ambiguous expression was reported to Strafford, who, on pretence that such a suggestion might prompt Annesley to avenge himself in another manner, ordered Mountmorris, who was an officer, to be tried by a court-martial for mutiny and sedition against his general. The Court, which consisted of the chief officers of the army, found the crime capital, and condemned that nobleman to lose his head.

In vain did Strafford plead, in his own defence, that the sentence of Mountmorris was the deed, and that, too, unanimous, of the Court, not the act of the deputy; that he spake not to a member of the Court, nor voted in the cause, but sat uncovered as a party, and then immediately withdrew to leave them to their freedom; that sensible of the iniquity of the sentence he procured his majesty's free pardon for Mountmorris, and that he did not even keep that nobleman a moment in suspense with regard to his fate, but instantly told him that he himself would sooner lose his right hand than execute such a sentence, nor was his lordship's life in any danger. In vain did Strafford's friends add, as a further apology, that Mountmorris was a man of an infamous character, who paid court by the lowest adulation to all deputies while present, and blackened their character by the vilest calumnies when recalled; and that Strafford, expecting like treatment, had used this expedient for no other purpose than to subdue the petulant spirit of the man. These excuses alleviate the guilt; but there still remains enough to prove, that the mind of the deputy, though great and firm, had not been a little debauched by the riot of absolute power and uncontrolled authority. When Strafford was called over to England he found everything falling into such confusion, by the open rebellion of the Scots, and the secret discontent of the English, that if he had counselled or executed any violent measure, he might perhaps have been able to apologise for his conduct, from the great law of necessity, which admits not, while the necessity is extreme, of any scruple, ceremony, or delay. But in fact no illegal advice or action was proved against him; and the whole amount of his guilt, during this period, was some peevish or at most imperious expressions, which amidst such desperate extremities, and during a bad state of health, had unhappily fallen from him. If Strafford's apology was in the main, so satisfactory when he pleaded to each particular article of the charge, his victory was still more decisive when he brought the whole together, and repelled the imputation of treason; the crime which the commons would infer from the full view of his conduct and behaviour. Of all species of guilt, the law of England had, with the most scrupulous exactness, defined that of treason; because on that side it was found most necessary to protect the subject against the violence of the king and his ministers. In the famous statute

of Edward III., all kinds of treason are enumerated, and every other crime, besides such as are there expressly mentioned, is carefully excluded from that appellation. But with regard to this guilt, "an endeavour to subvert the fundamental laws," the statute of treason is totally silent; and arbitrarily to introduce it into the fatal catalogue is itself a subversion of all law; and under colour of defending liberty, reverses a statute the best calculated for the security of liberty, that had ever been enacted by an English Parliament.

As this species of treason discovered by the Commons, is entirely new and unknown to the laws, so is the species of proof by which they pretend to fix that guilt upon the prisoner. They have invented a kind of accumulative or constructive evidence, by which many actions, either totally innocent in themselves, or criminal in a much inferior degree, shall, when united, amount to treason, and subject the person to the highest penalties inflicted by the law. A hasty and unguarded word, a rash and passionate action, assisted by the malevolent fancy of the accuser, and tortured by doubtful constructions, is transmuted into the deepest guilt, and the lives and fortunes of the whole nation, no longer protected by justice, are subjected to arbitrary will and pleasure. "Where has this species of guilt lain so long concealed?" said Strafford in conclusion. "Where has this fire been so long buried during so many centuries, that no smoke should appear till it burst out at once, to consume me and my children? Better it were to live under no law at all, and, by the maxims of cautious prudence, conform ourselves, the best we can, to the arbitrary will of a master, than fancy we have a law on which we can rely, and find at last, that this law shall inflict a punishment precedent to the promulgation, and try us by maxims unheard of till the very moment of the prosecution. If I sail on the Thames, and split my vessel on an anchor; in case there be no buoy to give warning, the party shall pay me damages; but if the anchor be marked out, then is the striking on it at my own peril. Where is the mark set upon this crime? Where the token by which I should discover it? It has lain concealed under water; and no human prudence, no human innocence could save me from the destruction with which I an at present threatened.

and so

"It is now full two hundred and forty years since treasons were defined; long has it been since any man was touched to this extent upon this crime, before myself. We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves at home, we have lived gloriously abroad to the world; let us be content with what our fathers have left us; let not our ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive arts. Great wisdom it will be in your lordships, and just providence for yourselves, for your posterities, for the whole kingdom to cast from you into the fire, these bloody and mysterious volumes of arbitrary and constructive treasons, as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts, and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the statute, which tells you where crime is, and points out to you the path by which you may avoid it.

"Let us not, to our own destruction, awake those sleeping lions, by rattling up a company of old records, which have lain for so many ages by the wall forgotten and neglected. To all my afflictions add not this, my lords, the most severe of any; that I, for my other sins, not for my treasons, be the means of introducing a precedent so pernicious to the laws and liberties of my native country.

"However, these gentlemen at the bar say they speak for the Commonwealth ; and they believe so; yet, under favour, it is I, who in this particular speak for the Commonwealth. Precedents like those which are endeavoured to be established against me must draw along such inconveniences and miseries that in a few years the kingdom will be in a condition expressed in a statute of Henry IV., and no man shall know by what rule to govern his words and actions.

"Impose not, my lords, difficulties insurmountable on ministers of state, nor disable them from serving with cheerfulness their king and country. If you examine them, and under such severe penalties, by every grain, by every little weight, the scrutiny will be intolerable. The public affairs of the kingdom must be left waste; and no wise man, who has honour or fortune to lose, will ever engage himself in such dreadful, such unknown perils.

"My lords, I have troubled your lordships a great deal longer than I should have done. Were it not for the interest of these pledges, which a saint in heaven left me, I should be loth,"-here he pointed to his children, and his weeping stopped him— "What I forfeit for myself, it is nothing, but I confess, that my indiscretion should forfeit for them, it wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my infirmity; something I should have said, but I see I shall not be able, and therefore I shall leave it.

"And now, my lords, I thank God I have been, by His blessing, sufficiently instructed in the extreme vanity of all temporary enjoyments, compared to the importance of our eternal duration. And so, my lords, even so with all humility, and with all tranquillity of mind, I submit clearly and freely to your judgments; and whether that righteous doom shall be life or death, I shall repose myself, full of gratitude and confidence in the arms of the great Author of my existence."

"Certainly," says Whitlocke, with his usual candour, "Never any man acted such a part on such a theatre with more wisdom, constancy and eloquence, with greater reason, judgment, and temper, and with a better grace in all his words and actions than did this great and excellent person; and he moved the hearts of all his auditors, some few excepted, to remorse and pity." It is remarkable that the historian who expresses himself in these terms, was himself chairman of that committee which conducted the impeachment against this unfortunate statesman. The accusation and defence lasted eighteen days. The managers divided the several articles among them, and attacked the prisoner with all the weight of authority, with all the vehemence of rhetoric, with all the accuracy of long preparation, Strafford was obliged to speak with deference and reserve towards his most inveterate enemies-the Commons, the Scottish nation, and the Irish parliament. He took only a very short time on each article to recollect himself. Yet he alone, without assistance, mixing modesty and humility with firmness and vigour, made such a defence that the Commons saw it impossible, by a legal prosecution, ever to obtain a sentence against him. But the death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had that very day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hampden, and others with treason for having invited the Scots to invade England. Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in Council, after the dissolution of the last parliament, and being at a distance he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, sir Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane falling upon this paper of notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of Commons. The question before the council was: "Offensive or defensive war with the Scots?" The king proposes this difficulty, "But how can I undertake offensive war if I have no more money?" The answer ascribed to Strafford was in these words: "Borrow of the city a hundred thousand pounds. Go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty having tried all ways shall be acquitted before

God and man. And you have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience; for I am confident the Scots cannot hold out five months." Then followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington equally violent with regard to the king's being absolved from all rules of government.

This paper, with all the circumstances of its discovery and communication, was pretended to be equivalent to two witnesses, and to be an unanswerable proof of those pernicious counsels of Strafford which tended to the subversion of the laws and constitution. It was replied by Strafford and his friends, "that old Vane was his most inveterate and declared enemy, and if the secretary himself, as was by far more probable, had willingly delivered to his son this paper of notes, to be communicated to Pym, this implied such a breach of oaths and trust as rendered him totally unworthy of all credit. That the secretary's deposition was at first exceedingly dubious; upon two examinations he could not remember any such words; even the third time his testimony was not positive, but imported only that Strafford had spoken such or such like words; and words may be very like in sound and differ much in sense; nor ought the lives of men to depend upon grammatical criticisms of any expressions, much less of those which had been delivered by the speaker without premeditation, and committed by the hearer, for any time, however short, to the uncertain record of memory. That in the present case, changing this kingdom into that kingdom, a very slight alteration! the earl's discourse could regard nothing but Scotland, and implies no advice unworthy of an English counsellor. That even retaining the expression this kingdom, the words may fairly be understood of Scotland, which alone was the kingdom that the debate regarded, and which alone had thrown off allegiance, and could be reduced to obedience. That it could be proved, as well by the evidence of all the king's ministers, as by the known disposition of the forces, that the intention never was to land the Irish army in England but in Scotland. That of six other counsellors present, Laud and Windebank could give no evidence, Northumberland, Hamilton, Cottington and Juxon could recollect no such expression; and the advice was too remarkable to be easily forgotten. That it was nowise probable such a desperate counsel would be openly delivered at the board, and before Northumberland, a person of that high rank, and whose attachments to the Court were so much weaker than his connexions with the country. That though Northumberland and he alone, had recollected some such expression as that of being absolved from rules of government,' yet, in such desperate extremities as those into which the king and kingdom had then fallen, a maxim of that nature, allowing it to be delivered by Strafford, may be defended upon principles the most favourable to law and liberty. And that nothing could be more iniquitous, than to extract an accusation of treason from an opinion simply proposed at the council table, where all freedom of debate ought to be permitted, and where it was not unusual for the members, in order to draw forth the sentiments of others, to propose counsels very remote from their own secret advice and judgment."

The evidence of secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable objections, was the real cause of Strafford's unhappy fate; and made the bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of the legislature, the king and lords, whose assent was requisite; and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this difficulty the popular leaders employed expedients for which they were partly beholden to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of their adversaries.

PART II.

Next Sunday after the bill passed the Commons, the puritanical pulpits resounded with declamations concerning the necessity of executing judgment upon great delinquents. The populace took the alarm. About six thousand men, armed with swords and cudgels, flocked from the city, and surrounded the Houses of Parliament. The names of the fifty-nine Commoners who had voted against the bill of attainder were posted up under the title of Straffordians and betrayers of their country. These were exposed to all the insults of the ungovernable multitude. When any of the lords passed, the cry for justice against Strafford resounded in their ears; and such as were suspected of friendship to that obnoxious minister were sure to meet with menaces, not unaccompanied with symptoms of the most desperate resolutions in the furious populace. Complaints in the House of Commons being made against these violences, as the most flagrant breach of privilege, the ruling members by their affected coolness and indifference, showed plainly that the popular tumults were not disagreeable to them. But a new discovery made about this time served to throw everything into greater flame and combustion. Some principal officers, Percy, Jermyn, O'Neale, Goring, Wilmot, Pollard, Ashburnham, partly attached to the Court, partly disgusted with the parliament, had formed a plan of engaging into the king's service the English army, whom they observed to be displeased at some marks of preference given by the Commons to the Scots. For this purpose they entered into an Association, took an oath of secresy, and kept a close correspondence with some of the king's servants. The form of a petition to the king and parliament was concerted, and it was intended to get this petition subscribed by the army. The petitioners there represent the great and unexampled concessions made by the king for the security of public peace and liberty; the endless demands of certain insatiable and turbulent spirits, whom nothing less will content than a total subversion of the ancient constitution; the frequent tumults which these factious malcontents had excited, and which endangered the liberty of parliament. To prevent these mischiefs the army offered to come to guard that assembly. "So shall the nation," as they express themselves in the conclusion, "not only be vindicated from preceding innovations, but be secured from the future which are threatened and which are likely to produce more dangerous effects than the former." The draught of this petition being conveyed to the king, he was prevailed on, somewhat imprudently, to countersign it himself, as a mark of his approbation. But as several difficulties occurred, the project was laid aside two months before any public discovery was made of it.

men.

The alarm may

It was Goring who betrayed the secret to the popular leaders. easily be imagined which this intelligence conveyed. Petitions from the military to the civil power are always looked on as disguised or rather undisguised commands; and are of a nature widely different from petitions presented by any other rank of Pym opened the matter in the House. On the first intimation of a discovery Percy concealed himself and Jermyn withdrew beyond sea. This further confirmed the suspicion of a dangerous conspiracy. Goring delivered his evidence before the House; Percy wrote a letter to his brother Northumberland confessing most of the particulars. Both their testimonies agree, with regard to the oath of secresy; and as this circumstance had been denied by Pollard, Ashburnham, and Wilmot in all their examinations, it was regarded as a new proof of some desperate resolutions which had been taken.

To convey more quickly the terror and indignation at this plot, the Commons voted that a protestation should be signed by all the members. It was sent up to