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." But his fate was determined upon. His enemies resolved to hasten it, at the expence of justice, by adopting a proceeding, which overstepped the established forms and maxims of law, and against which innocence could form no protection. Dreading the decision of the lords, if the charges and evidence were to be weighed by the received rules, they resolved to proceed by a bill of attainder and to enact that Strafford was guilty of high treason, and had incurred its punishment. The commons endeavoured to veil the infamy of this proceeding, by an attempt, not less infamous, and still more absurd, to satisfy the legal rules of evidence. The advice of Strafford about the employment of the Irish army, and which, by a forced interpretation, was construed into a design to subdue England by that force, had hitherto been attested by the solitary evidence of sir Henry Vane; but an attempt was now made to maintain the charge by two witnesses, as the laws of treason required. The younger Vane, on inspecting some of his father's papers, discovered a minute, as it appeared, of the consultation at which the words imputed to Strafford *were alleged to have been spoken; and this minute was recognised by the elder Vane, as taken down by him at the time, in his quality of secretary. In reporting this discovery to the House, Pym maintained, in a solemn argument, that the written evidence of sir Henry Vane, at the period of the transaction, and his oral evidence at present, ought to be considered as equivalent to the testimony of two witnesses; and this extravagant position was actually sanctioned by the House, and adopted as a ground of their proceedings.

Several members, even among the personal enemies of Strafford, remonstrated against this complicated injustice, but in vain; and no obstacle could restrain the commons from pursuing their victim to death, nor were they without means to accelerate the progress of the bill of attainder in the upper House. As a warning to the lords, the names of the fifty-nine comnroners who had voted against it, were posted up in conspicuous places, with this superscription, "The Straffordians, the men who to save a traitor would betray their country." The populate, indeed, were excited to every species of outrage, in order to intimidate the VOL. XXXI. U

House of Lords as well as his Majesty, and they succeeded too well in both cases. Out of eighty lords who had been present during the whole trial, only forty-six now ventured to attend; and when the bill came to a vote, it was carried with eleven dissenting voices. The king, who dreaded, that himself and family might fall victims to the vindictive rioters, summoned his privy-council to devise means for his safety, and they declared no other could be found but his assent to the death of Strafford; he represented the violence which he should thus impose on his conscience; and they referred him to the prelates, who, trembling under their own apprehensions, earnestly concurred in the advice of the privy-counsellors. Juxon alone, whose courage was not inferior to his other virtues, ventured to advise him, if in his conscience he did not approve of the bill, by no means to assent to it.

Strafford, hearing of the king's irresolution and anxiety, wrote a letter, in which he entreated his majesty, for the sake of public peace, to put an end to his unfortunate, however innocent life, and to quiet the tumultuous people by granting them the request for which they were so importunate. The magnanimity of this letter made little impression on the courtiers who surrounded the king; they now urged, that the full consent of Strafford to his own death absolved his majesty from every scruple of conscience; and after much anxiety and doubt, the king granted a commission to four noblemen to give the royal assent, in his name, to the bill, a measure ultimately as pernicious to Charles as it was now to Strafford, for with it was coupled his assent to the bill which rendered this parliament perpetual. But so much was his majesty at this time under the presence of terror, or regard for Strafford, that he did not perceive that this last bill was of fatal consequence to himself. In fact, in comparison with the bill. of attainder, this concession made no figure in his eyes. A circumstance, says Hume, which, if it lessen our idea of his resolution or penetration, serves to prove the integrity of his heart, and the goodness of his disposition. It is indeed certain, that strong compunction for his consent to Strafford's execution attended this unfortunate prince during the remainder of his life; and even at his own fatal end, the memory of this guilt, with great sorrow and remorse, recurred upon him.

Strafford, notwithstanding his voluntary surrender of his

life, in the letter he wrote to the king, was not quite prepared to expect so sudden a dereliction by his sovereign, When secretary Carleton waited on him with the intelli gence, and stated his own consent as the circumstance that had chiefly moved the king, the astonished prisoner inquired if his majesty had indeed sanctioned the bill? and when assured of the fatal truth, he exclaimed: "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men; for in them there is no salvation." Resuming, however, his accustomed fortitude, he began now to prepare for his fate, and employed the short interval of three days, which was allowed him, in the concerns of his friends and his family. He humbly petitioned the House of Lords to have compassion on his innocent children. He wrote his last instructions to his eldest son, exhorting him to be obedient and grateful to those entrusted with his education; to be sincere and faithful towards his sovereign, if he should ever be called into public service; and, as he foresaw that the revenues of the church would be despoiled, he charged him to take no part in a sacrilege which would certainly be followed by the curse of Heaven. He shed tears over the untimely fate of Wandesford, whom he had entrusted with the care of his government, and the protection of his family, and who, on learning the dangers of his friend and patron, bad fallen a victim to grief and despair. In a parting letter to his wife, he endeavoured to support her courage; and expressed a hope, that his successor, lord Dillon, would behave with tenderness to her and her orphans. On being refused an interview with sir George Radcliffe and archbishop Laud, his fellow-prisoners in the Tower, he conveyed a tender adieu to the one, and to the other an earnest request for his prayers and his parting blessing.

His latest biographer remarks, that the day of Strafford's execution threw a brighter lustre over his name, than his most memorable transactions. As he passed along to Tower Hill, on which the scaffold was erected, the populace, who eagerly thronged to the spectacle, beheld his noble deportment with admiration. His tall and stately figure, the grave, dignified symmetry of his features, corresponded with the general impression of his character: and the mildness, which had taken place of the usual severity of his forehead, expressed repentance enlivened by hope, and fortitude tempered by resignation. In his address to the people from the scaffold, he assured them that he sub

mitted to his sentence with perfect resignation; that freely and from his heart he forgave all the world. "I speak," said he," in the presence of Almighty God, before whom I stand there is not a displeasing thought that ariseth in me to any man." He declared that, however his actions might have been misinterpreted, his intentions had always been upright: that he loved parliaments, that he was devoted to the constitution and to the church of England: that he ever considered the interests of the king and people as inseparably united; and that, living or dying, the prosperity of his country was his fondest wish. But he expressed his fears, "that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood." Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attended him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent, "And now," said he, "I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, and my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends. But let God be to you and them all in all." Going to disrobe, and prepare himself for the block, "I thank God," said he, "that I am no wise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose." He then stretched out his hands as a signal to the executioner; and at one blow his head was severed from his body.

His execution took place May 12, 1641, in the fortyninth year of his age. Though his death, says Hume, was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution, it may be safely affirmed, that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or, more properly speaking, the difficulties with which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply, were the result of measures previous to Strafford's favour: and if they arose from ill conduct, he at least was entirely innocent. Even those violent expedients themselves which occasioned the complaint that the constitution was subverted, had been, all of them, conducted, so far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his pri

vate advice might be, this salutary maxim he failed not, often, and publicly, to inculcate in the king's presence, that, if any inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws, this license ought to be practised with extreme reserve, and as soon as possible a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury that it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first parliament after the Restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and even a few weeks after Strafford's execution, this very parliament remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence, as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been conducted.

Stratford's general character may be collected from the preceding sketch; but is more fully illustrated in his "Letters," published in 1739, 2 vols. folio; and in an interesting sequel, published lately by Dr. Whitaker, in the "Life and Correspondence of Sir George Radcliffe," 1810, 4to. A few particulars yet remain, gleaned by Dr, Birch from various authorities. Lord Strafford was extremely temperate in his diet, drinking, and recreations; but naturally very choleric, an infirmity which he endeavoured to controul, though upon sudden occasions it broke through all restraints. He was sincere and zealous in his friendships. Whitelocke assures us, that, "for natural parts and abilities, and for improvement of knowledge by experience in the greatest affairs, for wisdom, faithfuluess, and gallantry of mind, he left few behind him, that might be ranked equal with him." Lord Clarendon acknowledges, indeed, that the earl, in his government of Ireland, had been compelled, by reason of state, to exercise many acts of power, and had indulged some to his own appetite and passion; and as he was a man of too high and severe a deportment, and too great a contemner of ceremony, to have many friends at court, so he could not but have enemies enough. But he was a man, continues that noble historian, of great parts and extraordinary endowments of nature, not unadorned with some addition of art and learning, though that again was more improved and illustrated by the other; for he had a readiness of conception, and sharpness of expression, which made his learning thought more than in truth it was. He was, no doubt, of great observation, and a piercing judgment, both in things and persons; but his too great skill in persons made him judge the worse of things; for it was his misfortune to live in 1