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pledges, which a saint in heaven has left me. I should be loth"-here his grief deprived him of utterance. He let fall a tear, pointed to his children, who were placed near him, and thus proceeded:-"What I forfeit for myself is a trifle; but that my indiscretion should forfeit for them, I confess, wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my infirmity,"again dropping a tear. "Something I should have added, but find I shall not be able, and therefore shall leave it. And now, my lords, I thank God, I have been, by his good 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."(1)

Certainly, says Whitlocke, 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.(2) It is truly remarkable, that the historian, who makes these candid and liberal observations, was himself chairman of that committee which conducted the impeachment against this unfortunate nobleman!

The accusation and defence lasted eighteen days; and Strafford behaved with so much modesty and humility, as well as firmness and vigour, that the commons, though aided by all the weight of authority, would have found it impossible to obtain a sentence against him, if the peers had not been overawed by the tumultuous populace. Reports were every day spread of the most alarming plots and conspiracies; and about six thousand men, armed with swords and cudgels, flocked from the city, and surrounded the two houses of parliament. When any of the lords passed, the cry for justice. against Strafford resounded in their ears; and such as were suspected of friendship for that obnoxious minister, were sure to meet with menaces, accompanied with symptoms of the most desperate intentions in the furious multitude.(3) Intimidated by these threats, only forty-five, out of about eighty peers, who had constantly attended this important trial, were present when the bill of attainder was brought into the house, and nineteen of that number had the courage to vote against it;(4) a strong presumption that, if no danger had been apprehended, it would have been rejected by a considerable majority.

Popular violence having thus far triumphed, it was next employed to extort the king's consent. Crowds of people besieged Whitehall, and seconded their demand of justice on the minister, with the loudest clamours, and most open threatenings against the monarch. Rumours of plots and conspiracies against the parliament were anew circulated; invasions and insurrections were apprehended; and the whole nation was raised into such a ferment, as seemed to portend some great and immediate convulsion. On which side soever the king turned his eyes, he saw no resource or security, except in submitting to the will of the populace. His courtiers, consulting their own personal safety, and perhaps their interest, more than their master's honour, advised him to pass the bill of attainder; the pusillanimous judges, when consulted, declared it legal; and the queen, who formerly bore no good-will towards Strafford, alarmed at the appearance of so frightful a danger, as that to which the royal family must be exposed by protecting him, now became an importunate solicitor for his death. She hoped, if the people were gratified in this demand, that their discontents would finally subside; and that, by such a measure, she should acquire a more absolute ascendant over the king, as well as some credit with the popular party. Bishop Juxon alone, in this trying extremity, had honesty or courage to offer an opinion worthy (4) Whitlocke, p. 43

(1) Rushworth, vol. iv. (2) Mem. p. 43. (3) Clarendon, vol. i.

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of his prince: he advised him, if, in his conscience, he did not think the prisoner criminal, by no means to give his assent to the bill.(1)

While Charles was all anxiety and irresolution, struggling between virtue and necessity, he received a letter from Strafford, entreating him, for the sake of public peace, to put an end to the innocent life of his unhappy servant; and thus to quiet the tumultuous people, by granting them that request for which they were so clamorous. "In this," added he, "my consent will more acquit you to God, than all the world can do besides to a willing man there is no injury.(2) And as, by God's grace, I forgive all the world, with a calmness and meekness of infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, so to you, sir, I can resign the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness in the just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours."(3) This illustrious effort of disinterestedness, worthy of the noble mind of Strafford, and equal to any instance of generosity recorded in the annals of mankind, was ill rewarded by Charles; who, after a little more hesitation, as if his scruples had been merely of the religious kind, granted a commission to four noblemen to give the royal assent, in his name, to the bill. These commissioners were also empowered, at the same time, to give assent to a bill, that the parliament then sitting should not be dissolved, prorogued, or adjourned, without the consent of the majority of the members;(4) a bill of yet more fatal consequence to his authority than the other, as it rendered the power of his enemies perpetual, as well as uncontrollable. But in the moment of remorse for assenting to the bill of attainder, by which he deemed himself an accomplice in his friend's murder, this enormous concession appears totally to have escaped his penetration, and to have been considered comparatively as a light matter.

The king might still have saved his minister, by granting him a reprieve; but that was not thought advisable, while the minds of men were in such agitation. He sent, however, by the hands of the prince of Wales, a letter addressed to the peers, in which he entreated them to confer with the commons about a mitigation of the prisoner's sentence, or at least to procure some delay. Both requests were rejected; and Strafford, finding his fate inevitable, prepared to meet death with the same dignity with which he had lived. In those awful moments of approaching dissolution, though neither cheered by that ray of popular immortality which beams upon the soul of the expiring patriot, nor consoled by the affectionate sorrow of the spectators, his erect mind found resources within itself; and, supported by the sentiment of conscious integrity, maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his vindictive enemies. His discourse, and also his deportment on the scaffold, discovered equal composure and courage. "The shedding of innocent blood," said he, as a propitiatory sacrifice, is a bad omen, I fear, of the intended reformation of the state." And on preparing himself for the block, he made this memorable declaration: "I thank God I am no way afraid of death, nor daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose !"(5) He accordingly submitted to his doom; and at one blow the executioner happily performed his office.

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Thus, my dear Philip, perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, the last great prop of royalty under the turbulent reign of Charles I. His character, as might be expected, has been severely handled by our zealous republican writers; but by none of them has

(1) Clarendon, vol. i. This opinion has been cavilled at. "A king of England," it has been said, "ought never to interpose his private opinion against the other parts of the legislature." If so, the royal assent is a matter of mere form; and perhaps, in most cases, it ought to be so. But, in the present instance, the king was surely the best judge, whether Strafford, as a minister, had advised the subversion of the constitution; or, as an officer, had exceeded the extent of his commission; and if he was blameable in neither capacity, Charles was surely bound, both in honour and conscience, to withhold his assent from the bill. The royal assent is not now necessary to bills of attainder; the jealousy of our constitution having cut off that, among other dangerous prerogatives.

(2) It appears that the king had sent a letter to Strafford during his confinement, in which he assured him, upon the word of a king, that he should not suffer in life, honour, or fortune. Strafford's Letters, vol ii (3) Clarendon, vol. i. Rushworth, vol. v. (4) Id. ibid. (5) Rushworth, vol."w"

it been so completely mangled as by a furious female, who will allow him neither virtue nor talents. But his abilities as a statesman, and his unshaken attachment to his master, you will readily perceive, were the chief cause of his ruin; and in the future proceedings of that parliament, to whose resentment he fell a sacrifice, you will find the best apology for his administration. A certain degree of vigour, and more perhaps than Strafford exerted, was necessary to preserve the church and monarchy from the ravages of those civil and religious enthusiasts, who soon overturned both.

The immediately subsequent proceedings of the commons, however, though inroads on the royal prerogative, were by no means reprehensible. They brought in a bill which was unanimously passed by both houses, for abolishing the arbitrary Star Chamber and High Commission courts, so grievous to all the lovers of liberty. By the same bill, the jurisdiction of the privy council was regulated, and its authority abridged. Charles, after some hesitation, gave his assent to this excellent statute, which produced a material but salutary change in our constitution. Several other arbitrary courts of an inferior nature were abolished; and the king, at the request of the parliament, instead of patents during pleasure, gave all the judges patents during their good behaviour;(1) an advance of the utmost importance towards the impartial administration of justice, and the exclusion of the influence of the crown from the ordinary courts of law.

In a word, if the commons had proceeded no farther, they would have deserved the praise of all the friends of freedom; and even the iniquity of Strafford's attainder, their most blameable measure, would have been lost amid the blaze of their beneficial provisions and necessary regulations, which had generally a reference to posterity. But, like all political bodies who had rapidly acquired power, having gone so far, they did not know where to stop; but advanced insensibly, from one gradation to another, till they usurped the whole authority of the state.

These usurpations, and their consequences, we shall afterward have occa sion to notice. They will form the subject of another Letter. In the mean time, I must observe, that the parliament, after sending home the Scots, and dismissing the English army, put a temporary stop to its proceedings; and that Charles paid a visit to his native kingdom, in order to settle the govern ment to the satisfaction of the covenanters.

LETTER V.

Great Britain and Ireland, from the Execution of Strafford, to the Beginning of the Grand Rebellion, in 1642.

WHEN Charles arrived in Scotland, he found his subjects of that kingdom highly elated with the success of their military expedition. Besides the large pay voted them for lying in good quarters at Newcastle, as long as the popular leaders had occasion for them, the English parliament had conferred on them a present of three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly assistance.(2) They were declared, in the articles of pacification, to have been ever good subjects; and their hostile irruptions were approved of, as enterprises calculated and intended for his majesty's honour and advantage! Nay, in order to carry yet farther the triumph over their sovereign, these articles, containing terms so ignominious to him, were ordered, by a parliamentary vote, to be read in all churches, on a day of thanksgiving appointed for the national pacification.(3)

People in such a humour were not likely to be satisfied with trifling concessions. The Scottish parliament began with abolishing the lords of articles; who, from their constitution, were supposed to be entirely devoted

(1) Clarendon, vol. i. Whitlocke, p. 47. May, p. 107. (2) Nalson, vol i.

(3) Rushworth, vol. v.

LET. V.]

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to the court, and without whose consent no motion could be made;(1) a circumstance peculiarly grievous in the Scottish parliament, where the peers and commons formed only one house. A law for triennial parliaments was likewise passed; and it was ordained, that the last act of every parliament should appoint the time and place for holding the parliament next ensuing.(2) So far, all perhaps was laudable; but subjects who usurp on the authority of their prince never know where to draw the line. In their rage for redressing grievances, they invade the most essential branches of royal prerogative. The king was in a manner dethroned in Scotland, by an article, which declared, that no member of the privy council (in whose hands, during the king's absence, the whole administration was vested), no officer of state, none of the judges, should be appointed but by the advice and approbation of parliament.(3)

To all these encroachments Charles quietly submitted, in order to satisfy his Scottish subjects, and was preparing to return to England, in hopes of completing a similar plan of pacification, when he received intelligence that a bloody rebellion had broke out in Ireland, accompanied with circumstances of cruelty and devastation which fill the soul with horror. On every side surrounded by melancholy incidents and humiliating demands, nature and fortune, no less than faction and fanaticism, seemed to have conspired the ruin of this unhappy prince.

The conduct of James I. in regard to the affairs of Ireland, as we have already had occasion to see, was truly political, and the same plan of administration was pursued by his son Charles; namely, to reconcile the turbulent natives to the authority of law, by the regular distribution of justice, and to cure them of that sloth and barbarism to which they had ever been addicted, by introducing arts and industry among them. For these salutary purposes, and also to secure the dominion of Ireland to the crown of England, great numbers of British subjects had been carried over to that island, and large colonies planted in different parts of it; so that, after a peace of near forty years, the inveterate quarrels between the two nations not only seemed to be obliterated, but the country every where wore a less savage face. To the tranquillity, as well as the prosperity of Ireland, the vigorous government of the earl of Strafford had contributed not a little. During his administration, agriculture had made great advances, by means of the English and Scottish plantations; the shipping of the kingdom had been doubled; the customs tripled upon the same rates; and manufactures introduced and promoted.(4) But soon after that minister fell a victim to popular fury, though dignified with the forms of justice, affairs began to wear a very different aspect in Ireland, and Charles found the parliament of that kingdom as high in its pretensions as those of England and Scotland, and as ready to rise in its encroachments in proportion to his concessions. The court of High Commission was voted to be a grievance; martial law was abolished; the jurisdiction of the council annihilated, and proclamations and acts of state declared of no authority.(5)

The English settlers, who were the chief movers of these measures, did not perceive, in their rage for liberty, the danger of weakening the authority of government, in a country where the Protestants scarce formed the sixth part of the inhabitants, and where two-thirds of the natives were still in a state of wild barbarity. The opportunity, however, thus afforded them, did not escape the discernment of the old Irish. They observed with pleasure every impolitic step, and determined on a general revolt, in order to free their country from the dominion of foreigners, and their religion from the insults of profane heretics. In this resolution they were encouraged by a gentleman, named Roger More, distinguished among them by his valour and abili ties, and who, by going from chieftain to chieftain, roused up every latent principle of discontent.

(3) Id. ibid. (2) Burnet's Mem. of the House of Hamilton. (1) Burnet, Mem. (5) Id. ibid. (4) Warwick, p. 115. Rushworth, vol. iv. Nalson, vol. ii. Strafford may be said to have given a beginning to the linen manufacture in freland now become the great staple of the kingdom.

More maintained a close correspondence with lord Maguire and sir Phelim O'Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish chieftains; and he took every opportunity of representing to his countrymen, that the king's authority, in Britain, was reduced to so low an ebb, that he could not possibly exert himself with any vigour, in maintaining the English dominion over Ireland: that the Catholics in the Irish house of commons, assisted by the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative, and the power of the lord-lieutenant, as would much facilitate the conducting of any conspiracy that should be formed; that the Scots, in having so successfully thrown off dependence on the crown of England, and taken the government into their own hands, had set an example to the Irish, who had much greater grievances to complain of; that the English planters, who had expelled them from their ancient possessions, were but a handful in comparison of the original inhabitants; that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, and trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions throughout the whole kingdom; that a body of eight thousand men, raised and disciplined by government, in order to suppress the rebellion in Scotland, were now thrown loose, and ready for any daring or desperate enterprise;(1) that although the Catholics had hitherto, from the moderation of their indulgent prince, enjoyed in some measure the exercise of their religion, they must expect that the government would thenceforth be conducted by other maxims and other principles; that the puritanical party in parliament having, at last, subdued the sovereign, would doubtless extend their ambitious views and fanatical politics to Ireland, as soon as they had consolidated their authority, and make the Catholics in that kingdom feel the same furious persecution to which their brethren in England were already exposed; that a people, taking arms to rescue their native country from the dominion of foreign invaders, could at no time be considered as rebels; and much less could the Irish be regarded as such during the present disorders, when royal authority, to which alone they could owe any obedience, was in a manner usurped by a set of desperate heretics, from whom they could expect no favour or indulgence, but might apprehend every violence and severity.(2)

Influenced by these considerations, all the heads of the native Irish engaged in the conspiracy; and it was not doubted but the old British planters, or the English of the Pale, as they were called, being all Catholics, would afterward join in an attempt to restore their religion to its ancient splendour. The beginning of winter was fixed on for the commencement of this revolt, that there might be more difficulty in transporting forces from England; and the plan of the conspirators was, that sir Phelim O'Neale and his confederates should, on one day, begin an insurrection throughout the country, and attack all the English settlements; while lord Maguire and Roger More, on the same day, should surprise the castle of Dublin.

A concurrence of favourable circumstances seemed to have rendered the success of this undertaking infallible. The Irish Catholics discovered such a propensity to revolt, that it was not thought necessary to trust the secret to many persons; and the appointed day drew nigh without any discovery having been made to government. The earl of Leicester, whom the king had appointed lord-lieutenant, remained in London; and the two chief justices, sir William Parsons and sir John Borlace, were men of slender abilities. The attempt upon the castle of Dublin, however, was defeated by one O'Connolly, who betrayed the conspiracy to Parsons. More escaped, Maguire was taken; and Mahone, another of the conspirators, also being seized, discovered (1) The English commons entertained the greatest apprehensions on account of this army, the officers of which were Protestants, but the private men Catholics: and never ceased soliciting the king, till he agreed to break it. Nor would they consent to his augmenting the standing army to five thousand men; a number which he judged necessary to retain Ireland in obedience. Nay, they even frustrated an agree ment, which he had made with the Spanish ambassador, to have the disbanded troops transported into Flanders, and enlisted in his master's service: Charles thinking it dangerous, that eight thousand men accustomed to idleness, and trained to the use of arms, should be dispersed among a people so turbulent and predatory as the Irish. Clarendon, vol. i. Rushworth, vol. v. Dugdale, p. 57.

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(2) Sir John Temple's Irish Rebellion.

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