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XXXVIII.

TRIAL OF STRAFFORD.-MOZLEY.

[After the dissolution of his third Parliament the king entered upon a course of absolute power. For eleven years he refused to summon the representatives of the nation. Ably seconded by Strafford and Laud, he attempted to establish an "enlightened despotism," and at one time it seemed as if he might succeed. But the petty ecclesiastical measures of Laud not only roused strong opposition in Engiand, but so exasperated the Scots that they rose in rebellion. Attempts to pacify them failed, and in the spring of 1640 Charles was forced to call a Parliament. He quarreled with it, however, and sent it home in disgrace. But the Scotch difficulty was increasing, the king was unable to meet it, and so he reluctantly summoned his fifth Parliament. This was the famous Long Parliament; and it proceeded at once to call the king's ministers to account. In its eyes Strafford was the arch criminal.]

STRAFFORD came up to town late on Monday, rested on Tuesday, came to Parliament on Wednesday, and that very night was in the Tower. The Lower House closed their doors, and the speaker kept the keys till the debate was over, when Pym, attended by a number of members, went up to the Upper House, and, in a short speech, accused, in the name of the Commons of England, Thomas, earl of Strafford and lordlieutenant of Ireland, of high treason. The sudden step astounded the Lords; word went to Strafford, who was just then closeted with the king; he returned instantly to the House, called loudly at the door for Maxwell (keeper of the black rod) to open, and, with firm step and proudly darkened countenance, marched straight up to his place at the board head. A host of voices immediately forced him to the door again. The consultation over, he was called back and stood before the House. "Kneel, kneel," he was told; he knelt, and on his knees was delivered into the custody of the black rod, to be a prisoner till cleared of the Common's charges. He offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone without a word.

The black rod bore off his great charge, and apparently felt his importance on the occasion. "In the outer room," says Baillie, "James Maxwell required him, as a prisoner, to give up his sword. When he had got it he cried with a loud voice for his man to carry my lord-lieutenant's sword. This done, he makes through a number of people toward his coach, all gazing, no man capping to him before whom that morning the greatest of England would have stood discovered; all crying, "What is the matter?" He said, "A small matter I warrant you." They replied, "Yes, indeed, high treason is a small matter." Coming to the place where he expected his coach, it was not there, so he behoved to return that same way, through a world of gazing people. When at last he found his coach, and was entering, James Maxwell told him, "Your lordship is my prisoner, and must go in my coach." This great step taken, the Commons were all activity. Pursuivants dispatched to Ireland and the north sounded the trumpet, and summoned all who had any complaint against the lord-deputy and president to appear at the approaching trial. Strafford was busily employed with his counsel in the Tower preparing his defense.

Four months passed, and the two sides met to encounter in the court of justice, before they tried their strength at Marston Moor and Worcester. On the 21st of March, Westminster Hall, railed and platformed, and benched, and scaffolded up to the roof, showed an ascending crowd of heads-judges, lawyers, peers of Parliament, Scotch commissioners, aggrieved gentlemen from the north, incensed Irish lords; the look of strife, of curiosity, and here and there of affection and pity, turned, in the excitement of the opening trial, on the illustrious prisoner. From a high scaffold at the north end an empty throne looked disconsolately over the scene, a chair for the prince on ore side of it, which he occupied during the proceedings. "Before it"-the accurate and characteristic. account of an eye-witness shall continue the description

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lay a large wool-sack, covered with green, for my lord steward, the earl of Arundel. Beneath it lay two other sacks for the lord keeper and the judges, with the rest of the Chancery, all in their red robes. Beneath this, a little table for four or five clerks of the Parliament, in their black gowns. Round about these some forms covered with green frieze, whereupon the earls and lords did sit in their red robes of the same fashion, lined with the same white ermine skin, as ye see the robes of our lords when they ride to Parliament. Behind the forms, where the lords sit, there is a bar covered with green. At the one end stands the committee of eight or ten gentlemen appointed by the House of Commons to pursue. At the midst there is a little desk, where the prisoner stands or sits as he pleases, together with his keeper, Sir William Balfour, the lieutenant of the Tower. This is the order of the House below on the floor; the same that is used daily in the higher House. Upon the two sides of the House, east and west, there arose a stage of eleven ranks of forms, the highest almost touching the roof; every one of these forms went from the one end of the room to the other, and contained about forty men; the two highest were divided from the rest by a rail, and a rail at every end cut off some seats. The gentlemen of the Lower House sat within the rails, others without. All the doors were kept very straitly with guards. We always behoved to be there a little after five in the morning. Lord Willoughby, earl of Lindsey, lord-chamberlain of England (Pembroke is chamberlain of the court) ordered the House with great difficulty. James Maxwell, black rod, was great usher; a number of other servants, gentlemen, and knights, assisted. The House was full daily before seven; the lords, in their robes, were set about eight. The king was usually half an hour before them. He came not into his throne, for that would have marred the action; for it is the order of England, when the king appears, he speaks what he will, but no other speaks in his presence. At the back of the throne were two rooms

on the two sides. In the one duke de Vanden, duke de Valler, and other French nobles, sat; in the other, the king, queen, princess Mary, the prince elector, and other court ladies. The tirlies, that made them to be secret, the king brake down with his own hands, so that they sat in the eyes of all; but little more regarded than if they had been absent, for the lords sat all covered. Those of the Lower House, and all others, except the French noblemen, sat discovered when the lords came, not else. A number of ladies were in boxes above the rails, for which they paid much money." Private persons of place and distinction were admitted to place among the Commons; one of whom was Baillie, principal of the University of Glasgow, and one of the commissioners from Scotland, from whose letters we borrow this description. By the force of a clear, strong mind, the intellectual Scotchman proceeds, in spite of himself, to describe, in Strafford, a fallen greatness, before which the noisy bustling scene sank into vulgarity; and, while his hatred of the champion of Church and king is as intense as ever, his intellect bows to the nobleness and grandeur of the man.

At eight o'clock the lieutenant and a guard brought up Strafford in a barge from the Tower; the lord-chamberlain and black rod met him at the door of the court. On his entrance he made a low courtesy, when he had proceeded a little way a second, and, on coming to his place, a third; he then kneeled, with his forehead upon his desk, rose quickly, saluted both sides of the court, and sat down; some few of the lords lifted their hats to him. Every day he was attired in the same deep suit of black. Four secretaries sat at a desk just behind him, whom he kept busily employed reading and writing, arranging and handing him his papers; and behind them his counsel, five or six able lawyers, who were not permitted to argue upon matters of fact, but only on points of law.

A day or two were occupied in preambles and general

statements, and a declamatory speech from Pym gave a sketch of all the charges against Strafford, and endeavored to destroy all the merit of those parts of his administration which the accused could appeal to. The regular business of the court followed; twenty-eight charges of treason and maladministration were formally preferred against Strafford; every high proceeding and act of power, every harshness, and every case of grievance of the subject, noble and aristocratical, that they thought could tell upon the court; all the knots and rough spots and corners that an administration of unparalleled activity had, in the full swing and impetus of its course, contracted, were brought up, singly and isolatedly enlarged upon, and exhibited in the very worst color. Strafford was asserted to have done every thing with a view to the most selfish ends, to establish his own tyranny, oppression, and extortion; and the very idea of a respectable intention in what he did, of any view to public good, mistaken, irregular, as they might think it, but still real, was not alluded to.

Strafford was fully equal to the emergency, and played off his host of papers with all the self-possession and dexterity possible. No knowledge of what a thread his life hung by ever unsteadied for a moment his thorough coolness and presence of mind; no unfair play, time after time, throughout the trial, put him the least out of temper; he let nothing pass without a struggle, he fought for a point of law or court practice stoutly, determinately; when decided against him, the fine, well-tempered spirit was passive again, took, with a nil admirari, what it could not help, and worked upon the bad ground as if it were its own choice. A charge was made with every skillful exaggeration and embellishment; he simply asked time to get up his reply--it was refused; without “sign of repining "it is the unconsciously beautiful expression of Baillie-he turned round and conferred with his counsel. For a few minutes a little nucleus of heads, amid the general turmoil, were seen in earnest consultation, eyes bent downward,

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