Had he really scrupled to sentence that for treason, which he thought not treasonable, why did he seem resolved by the judges and the bishops? and if by them resolved, how comes the scruple here again? It was not then, as he now pretends, "the importunities of some, and the fear of many, which made him sign, but the satisfaction given him by those judges and ghostly fathers of his own choosing. Which of him shall we believe? for he seems not one, but double; either here we must not believe him professing that his satisfaction was but seemingly received and out of fear, or else we may as well believe that the scruple was no real scruple, as we can believe him here against himself before, that the satisfaction then received was no real satisfaction. Of such a variable and fleeting conscience what hold can be taken?

But that indeed it was a facile conscience, and could dissemble satisfaction when it pleased, his own ensuing actions declared; being soon after found to have the chief hand in a most detested conspiracy against the parliament and kingdom, as by letters and examinations of Percy, Goring, and other conspirators came to light; that his intention was to rescue the Earl of Strafford, by seizing on the Tower of London; to bring up the English army out of the North, joined with eight thousand Irish papists raised by Strafford, and a French army to be landed at Portsmouth, against the parliament and their friends. For which purpose the king, though requested by both houses to disband those Irish papists, refused to do it, and kept them still in arms to his own purposes. No marvel then, if being as deeply criminous as the earl himself, it stung his conscience to adjudge to death those misdeeds, whereof himself had been the chief author: no marvel though instead of blaming and detesting his ambition, his evil counsel, his violence, and oppression of the people, he fall to praise his great abilities; and with scholastic flourishes, beneath the decency of a king, compares him to the sun, which in all figurative use and significance bears allusion to a king, not to a subject: no marvel though he knit contradictions as close as words can lie together, "not approving in his judgment," and yet approving in his subsequent reason all that Strafford did, as "driven by the necessity of times, and the temper of that people;" for this excuses all his misdemeanors. Lastly, no marvel that

he goes on building many fair and pious conclusions upon false and wicked premises, which deceive the common reader, not well discerning the antipathy of such connexions: but this is the marvel, and may be the astonishment, of all that have a conscience, how he durst in the sight of God (and with the same words of contrition wherewith David repents the murdering of Uriah) repent his lawful compliance to that just act of not saving him, whom he ought to have delivered up to speedy punishment; though himself the guiltier of the two.

If the deed were so sinful, to have put to death so great a malefactor, it would have taken much doubtless from the heaviness of his sin, to have told God in his confession how he laboured, what dark plots he had contrived, into what a league entered, and with what conspirators, against his parliament and kingdoms, to have rescued from the claim of justice so notable and so dear an instrument of tyranny; which would have been a story, no doubt, as pleasing in the ears of heaven, as all these equivocal repentances. For it was fear, and nothing else, which made him feign before both the scruple and the satisfaction of his conscience, that is to say, of his mind: his first fear pretended conscience, that he might be borne with to refuse signing; his latter fear, being more urgent, made him find a conscience both to sign and to be satisfied. As for repentance, it came not on him till a long time after; when he saw "he could have suffered nothing more, though he had denied that bill." For how could he understandingly repent of letting that be treason, which the parliament and whole nation so judged? This was that which repented him, to have given up to just punishment so stout a champion of his designs, who might have been so useful to him in his following civil broils. It was a worldly repentance, not a conscientious; or else it was a strange tyranny, which his conscience had got over him, to vex him like an evil spirit for doing one act of justice, and by that means to "fortify his resolution" from ever doing so any more. That mind must needs be irrecoverably depraved, which either by chance or importunity, tasting but once of one just deed, spatters at it, and abhors the relish ever after.

To the Scribes and Pharisees wo was denounced by our Saviour, for straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, though a gnat were to be strained at: but to a conscience

66

with whom one good is so hard to pass down as to endanger almost a choking, and bad deeds without number, though as big and bulky as the ruin of three kingdoms, go down currently without straining, certainly a far greater wo appertains. If his conscience were come to that unnatural dyscrasy, as to digest poison and to keck at wholesome food, it was not for the parliament or any of his kingdoms, to feed with him any longer. Which to conceal he would persuade us, that the parliament also in their conscience escaped not some touches of remorse," for putting Strafford to death, in forbidding it by an after-act to be a precedent for the future. But, in a fairer construction, that act implied rather a desire in them to pacify the king's mind, whom they perceived by this means quite alienated: in the meanwhile not imagining that this after-act should be retorted on them to tie up justice for the time to come upon like occasion, whether this were made a precedent or not, no more than the want of such a precedent, if it had been wanting, had been available to hinder this.

But how likely is it, that this after-act argued in the parliament their least repenting for the death of Strafford, when it argued so little in the king himself; who, notwithstanding this after-act, which had his own hand and concurrence, if not his own instigation, within the same year accused of hightreason no less than six members at once for the same pretended crimes, which his conscience would not yield to think treasonable in the earl? So that this his subtle argument to fasten a repenting, and, by that means a guiltiness of Strafford's death upon the parliament, concludes upon his own head; and shows us plainly, that either nothing in his judgment was treason against the commonwealth, but only against the king's person; (a tyrannical principle!) or that his conscience was a perverse and prevaricating conscience, to scruple that the commonwealth should punish for treasonous in one eminent offender that which he himself sought so vehemently to have punished in six guiltless persons. If this were "that touch of conscience, which he bore with greater regret" than for any sin committed in his life, whether it were that proditory aid sent to Rochelle and religion abroad, or that prodigality of shedding blood at home, to a million of his subjects' lives not valued in comparison to one

Strafford; we may consider yet at last, what true sense and feeling could be in that conscience, and what fitness to be the master-conscience of three kingdoms.

But the reason why he labours, that we should take notice of so much "tenderness and regret in his soul for having any hand in Strafford's death," is worth the marking ere we conclude: "he hoped it would be some evidence before God and man to all posterity, that he was far from bearing that vast load and guilt of blood" laid upon him by others: which hath the likeness of a subtle dissimulation; bewailing the blood of one man, his commodious instrument, put to death, most justly, though by him unwillingly, that we might think him too tender to shed willingly the blood of those thousands whom he counted rebels. And thus by dipping voluntarily his finger's end, yet with show of great remorse, in the blood of Strafford, whereof all men clear him, he thinks to scape that sea of innocent blood, wherein his own guilt inevitably hath plunged him all over. And we may well perceive to what easy satisfactions and purgations he had inured his secret conscience, who thought by such weak policies and ostentations as these to gain belief and absolution from understanding men.

CHAPTER III.

Upon his going to the House of Commons.

CONCERNING his inexcusable and hostile march from the court to the house of commons, there needs not much be said; for he confesses it to be an act, which most men, whom he calls "his enemies," cried shame upon, "indifferent men grew jealous of and fearful, and many of his friends resented, as a motion arising rather from passion than reason." He himself, in one of his answers to both houses, made profession to be convinced, that it was a plain breach of their privilege; yet here, like a rotten building newly trimmed over, he represents it speciously and fraudulently, to impose upon the simple reader; and seeks by smooth and supple words, not here only, but through his whole book, to make some beneficial use or other even of his worst miscarriages.

VOL. I.

Ꮓ

"These men," saith he, meaning his friends, "knew not the just motives and pregnant grounds with which I thought myself furnished;" to wit, against the five members, whom he came to drag out of the house. His best friends indeed knew not, nor could ever know, his motives to such a riotous act; and had he himself known any just grounds, he was not ignorant how much it might have tended to his justifying, had he named them in this place, and not concealed them. But suppose them real, suppose them known, what was this to that violation and dishonour put upon the whole house, whose very door, forcibly kept open, and all the passages near it, he beset with swords and pistols cocked and menaced in the hands of about three hundred swaggerers and ruffians, who but expected, nay, audibly called for, the word of onset to begin a slaughter.*

"He had discovered, as he thought, unlawful correspondences, which they had used, and engagements to embroil his kingdoms;" and remembers not his own unlawful correspondences and conspiracies with the Irish army of papists, with the French to land at Portsmouth, and his tampering both with the English and Scots army to come up against the parliament: the least of which attempts, by whomsoever, was no less than manifest treason against the commonwealth.

If to demand justice on the five members were his plea, for that which they with more reason might have demanded justice upon him, (I use his own argument,) there needed. not so rough assistance. If he had "resolved to bear that repulse with patience," which his queen + by her words to

* Guizot describes in an admirable manner this "visit" of Charles I. to the house of commons, (Histoire, &c. t. i. p. 240-242,) accompanied up to the door by three or four hundred men, guards, cavaliers, students, &c. armed to the teeth. In Clarendon's account, (vol. ii. p. 124, sqq.) everything offensive is softened down: "the king, attended only by his own usual guard, and some few gentlemen, who put themselves into their company in the way! came to the house of commons," &c. The whole narrative is full of palpable contradictions, and the most audacious disregard of truth; yet this is the writer that Warburton, after frequently, in his notes, accusing him of falsehood, ventures to set up before the greatest and most impartial historians of Greece and Rome!-ED.

+"Le matin même au moment de son départ, Charles, en embrassant sa femme, lui avoit promis que, dans une heure, il reviendroit maitre enfin de son royaume, et la reine, sa montre à la main, avait compté les minutes en attendant son rétour." (Mémoires de Madame de Motteville, i. 265.)-Ed.