differed-Charles summoned the Commons to the bar of the House of Lords, and contumeliously dismissed them. He then cut off the golden bridge of retreat by imprisoning several of the members for their speeches in the late session, and renewed the dark days of Eliot, from which he had suffered so much. Mr. Belasis, Sir John Hotham, and John Crew were sent to the Fleet Prison by warrants under the hands of Strafford and Laud; and Charles, without a parliament, was again every inch a king.

§ 26. He threw himself on the old prerogative of the Crown, and summoned his military array. Noblemen and gentlemen of ancient name led their tenants to the camp. But faint-hearted in the cause, and much disinclined for battle, were the stout old yeomen of England, who had never seen a tented field, and had no animosity to the Scots. The Covenanters, on the other hand, were commanded by a famous general, of the name of Leslie, and had many of them served under Gustavus Adolphus, and smelt powder at Leipzig and Lutzen. They were also commanded by the nobles of their land, and encouraged by the ministrations of enthusiastic, praying, fighting, and unpitying clergymen, who had persuaded themselves and their flocks that Laud was an incarnation of the enemy of mankind, and held Charles under the domain of some spell. The armies marched from Edinburgh on one side, from York on the other. They came face to face on opposite sides of the Tyne at Newburn, near Newcastle, and both parties hesitated to begin the war. A chance shot broke the truce. Leslie, the German campaigner, played upon the English foot with his artillery; and when their attention was thus engaged, he sent a detachment across the ford. There was no possibility of resistance, for horse and infantry poured furiously upon the unaccustomed lines of Lord Conway, and a whole troop of Edinburgh lawyers, who had formed themselves into the body-guard of brave old Leslie, thundered

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among the amazed freeholders of Kent and Warwickshire, and put them to ignominious flight, as if they were serving them with a notice of forcible ejectment. The English fought unwillingly, or not at all. The rout was complete, but the slaughter very inconsiderable, and the Covenanters, by taking possession of Newcastle, secured the neutrality of London, for they had it in their power to cut off its supply of coals. Durham yielded next, then Darlington, then Northallerton, and the English army at last drew up, under the eyes of Charles and Strafford themselves, beneath the walls of York.

Every town the Scots entered received them kindly. They preserved exact discipline, and professed themselves faithful subjects of the crown. They began their toasts after dinner with the king's health, and then attended the sermons of their chaplains, who made their ears to tingle with Sisera, and Holofernes, and Saul. Nobody would come forward with life and fortune against such very moderate invaders. Many of the lords, and almost all the citizens of London, petitioned for peace and the calling of a Parliament, and Charles appointed commissioners for a treaty. In the meantime the Scots demanded forty thousand pounds a month. The council of peers recommended a loan of £200,000 to be raised from the city of London; a Parliament was to meet, and the armies to be disbanded in two months; the Scots collecting their maintenance-money in the districts they held, and keeping possession of Durham, Newcastle, and all the eastern towns beyond the Tees.

§ 27. The second parliament of this eventful year, and the most famous in English history, under the name of the "Long Parliament," met in November. Charles, who had been humbled in his loftiest aspirings, was now to be touched in his tenderest affections. Always feebly trusting to some one else, he had had the good taste to exchange the degrading reliance he reposed on Buckingham for the confidence and friendship he entertained for Strafford. There was something

elevating in listening to the advice of the most firm-souled, bold-hearted of his servants; and against that great supporter of all his claims, that fiery down-trampler of his enemies, and deep-thoughted counsellor of his most desperate acts, the Commons rose with a ferocious cry as soon as they felt he was in their power. The victims of the Star Chamber-Pryune, Burton, and Bastwick, who had lost their ears by its orderwere indemnified with money, and their sentences reversed; Finch, the lord-keeper, and Windbanke, the Secretary of State, made their escape abroad, and Laud himself was complained of by the Scots, and sent into confinement.

§ 28. It soon became known that Strafford had come to London by the king's command; that he bore as audacious and unabashed a front as ever, and relied on his eloquence when he came to be heard in his defence. He went down to the House of Peers, and almost before he could take his seat, the committee of the Commons, led by Mr. Pym, appeared at the bar, and impeached him of high crimes and misdemeanours. The triumph in the accuser's eye was answered by the indomitable pride of Strafford's. "Alas! they had been friends in youth;" and when their political and social union was broken up by Wentworth's secession from the reforming ranks, Pym had said to him, "You leave us, but we will never leave you while there is a head upon your shoulders." This must have recurred to Strafford when the well-known voice was pursuing him to the death. When the denunciation closed he was carried off to the Tower. Some few minor performers in the scenes of oppression and injustice which had marked the last eleven years were visited with fines and imprisonment; but the attention of the nation was fixed on the fate of the "Grand Apostate," who was brought to trial with all the solemnity befitting so momentous an event. The scene was Westminster Hall. A throne in the centre typified the actual presence of the fountain of justice; seats in front contained the peers and legal sages of the land, and the audience con

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sisted of the members of the House of Commons, ranged on benches round the walls, and representing the cities and boroughs of the whole of England. Room was also made for a committee of complainers from the Irish parliament; the Scots had their envoys mingled with the vast assembly, so that the three kingdoms were fairly in face of their great adversary; and he stood up with unflinching courage in that tremendous ordeal, rising superior by the sole energy of his mind to the bodily pains which racked his limbs, the consciousness of guilt which lay heavy on his heart, and the doubts he must have entertained of the constancy and support of the man for whose sake he had sacrificed all.

The trial was the greatest forensic display ever known up to that date. Pym and the other managers were the most eloquent men of their time, and pleaded now with their lives in their hands; for it was felt that the losing party on this great arbitrament would certainly fall by the axe. Strafford, greater in his deserted adversity than in the days of his overbearing power, answered his accusers point by point, relying on the wording of his commission and the warrants and personal orders of the king. Acts of violence, of injustice; and libertinage were proved against him beyond denial, but all these stopped short of the great crime which would forfeit his life. Other things he passed lightly by, and showed such readiness, such dignity and vigour in the whole week of taunt and interrogatory during which he stood up to be baited every day from morn till eve, before that hostile, frowning, and prejudiced assemblage, that opinion began to turn; his own distinction began to be generally entertained. No number of misdemeanours can grow by accumulation into treason. The bar was filled with admiration of his acuteness; ladies began to look favourably on the great earl, with his complexion "manly black," and his powerful features raised into poetic grandeur by the exigencies of the cause, when all of a sudden the missing clue was found-the deadly proof came forth.

The speech he had made to the king, in the Council of the 5th of May of the year before, was discovered in the notebook of the Secretary Vane, and was forwarded by his son, young Harry Vane, to the accusers. “You have an army in Ireland that you might employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience." His doom from that hour was assured. The Commons, though continuing his impeachment before the Lords, brought in a Bill of Attainder against him in their own House, and found him guilty by a majority of four to one. The bill was carried to the Upper House, and Charles himself interfered: he addressed the Lords, and assured them no man had advised him to employ force against the malcontents in England. He had attended the trial, he said, and pronounced Lord Strafford free from the stain of treason; but, by a shameful compromise, acknowledged at the same time, that he had disqualified himself for office, and was not fit to serve him or the Commonwealth in the lowest capacity. Nineteen of the peers made a more courageous effort, by voting against the attainder; but alarm maddened the whole country; mobs surrounded the parliament; reports were rife of attempts at rescue of the approach of the northern army of fleets ready to receive and protect the oppressor of the flight of the queen to excite foreign invasion; and the bill was passed by a majority of twenty-six.

✓

Charles was agonized with fear and regret. He tried to save his faithful servant, and consulted his council on the scruples that vexed his conscience. One of the bishops told him that, as Charles Stuart, his conscience ought to interfere to protect Lord Strafford; but as king, he was bound to let his conscience do what his interest commanded. Another bishop (Juxon), who was a safer friend, told him that if he knew the earl to be free from guilt, it would be better to perish along with him than shed one drop of innocent blood. Pausing, hesitating, arguing, and at last yielding, Charles signed the fatal assent; and Strafford exclaimed, " Put not your trust in