1641 life could satisfy them, he would say "fiat justitia." This pitiable letter he wrote at the Queen's instigation, who was afraid that if Strafford were saved he might accuse her, and she also caused him to add that disgraceful postscript, "If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him until Saturday." Strafford's death was now secured; the houses read the letter twice, and without noticing the cold request contained in the postscript, ordered the execution for the next day (May 12th). Laud blessed him from the window of his cell as he passed; on the scaffold he behaved with dignity and composure; and after delivering an address to the people, he laid his head on the block, and perished at the first stroke. The people displayed their joy by bonfires, and demolished the windows of those who refused to illuminate. execution The propriety and justice of Strafford's punishment will, perhaps, ever be questioned. That he laboured to exalt the power of the crown on the ruins Was of his country, is proved by the letters he wrote to Laud;* but the law of Strafford's England is silent as to conspiracies against itself, and therein lay the just? difficulty of the Commons. Yet, as Pym said, in his famous reply to the earl's defence, "To alter the settled frame and constitution of government is treason in any state. The laws whereby all other parts of a kingdom are preserved would be very vain and defective, if they had not a power to preserve themselves."† That which seems to have decided his fate, however, was the unanimous decision of the judges. With regard to the bill of attainder, Hallam observes, that it is a very important question, whether great crimes against the commonwealth may not justly incur the penalty of death by such an act of the legislature, such crimes not coming within the jurisdiction of any tribunal, or under the provisions of any known law. The attainder was certainly not justifiable, unless it can be proved that it was necessary; and it was certainly not necessary, if it can be shown that a lighter penalty would have been sufficient for the public security. This question does not admit of a demonstrative answer; but history furnishes us with several instances in which banished favourites have returned after a short exile, and avenged themselves upon their adversaries. The parliament, moreover, entirely distrusted the King, and, for this reason, objected to any mitigated penalty. On the other hand, Strafford was utterly unpopular, and the popular party was too powerful to render the contingency of his return from banishment at all probable. If, then, we blame, in some measure, the sentence against Strafford, it is not for his sake, but for that of the laws on which he trampled, and of the liberty which he betrayed. "He died justly before God and man."‡ 34. The King's journey to Scotland. The death of Strafford tended in no degree to reconcile the King and the Commons, but rather redoubled their distrust in his intentions, although he soon afterwards assented to those remedial laws which have been enumerated in a previous paragraph (July 5th). A new source of disquietude was suddenly opened, by the announcement of the King's intention to visit Scotland, and open the parliament there, * See Hallam's Const. Hist.. I., 463-473. + Forster's Lives, III., 182. Hallam, I., 524-30; Lingard, X., 29-30; see also Pym's Speech in Forster's Lives, III., 167-182. CHAP. IX. and by the public preparations which the Queen was making for a journey to the continent. The Commons, alarmed at these double movements, interposed many obstacles in the way; but, on the 10th of August, Charles set out on his journey northward, from which he entertained great hopes of obtaining such proofs against the popular leaders, as would convict them of having carried on a traitorous correspondence with the Scots.* The Charles attended by a committee of spies. patriots, however, watched all his movements with the utmost vigilance and jealousy: and a committee of both houses was appointed to attend him, in order, as was pretended, to see that the articles of the Pacification of Ripon were executed; but really to watch his conduet, and report it to the parliamentary committee, which sat in London during the adjournment. Banders The What further induced Charles to make this journey was, the formation of a secret party, called banders and plotters, and plotters. under the Earl of Montrose, the members of which had signed a bond in opposition to the covenant, and opened a correspondence with the King. But as early as the 4th of June, the Marquis of Argyle, the covenant leader, had intercepted a letter in cypher from Charles to Montrose, and, when the King arrived at Edinburgh, he found the earl in prison. He was resolved, however, to ingratiate himself with the Covenanters; and he conformed himself entirely to their worship, attending the kirk regularly, and listening to their interminably long sermons. He also admitted them to the privy council, lavished titles and honours upon them, and conceded all their demands. But in the midst of these fair shows, Argyle, and Hamilton, Incident." the King's favourite minister, pretending that the King was meditating their arrest and assassination, suddenly escaped to Kinneil Castle. This extraordinary event, emphatically called "The Incident," caused great excitement; and all that transpired to explain it was, that Montrose had secretly quitted his prison, and revealed to the King certain machinations which these two noblemen were concocting against him, and had advised him to arrest them, and assassinate them if they resisted. Although the King vehemently demanded an inquiry into the affair, the Scottish parliament prevented any being made; and a formal reconciliation was effected by the release of Montrose, and the grant of higher titles to Hamilton, Argyle, and General Leslie, who was made Earl of Leven. Hampden, and the English commissioners, sent a full account of all these things to London, *Forster's Arrest of the Five Members, Sect. II. 1641 where the information excited afresh the fears of the Fears of popular leaders, who had considered that, by the late the patriots pacification which Charles had concluded with the Scots, in which he had declared them to be ever good subjects, their former treasonable correspondence had been pardoned. Now, therefore, that they saw they were irremediably compromised, they demanded, on the first day of the meeting of parliament (October 20th, 1641), that the Earl of Essex, commander of the forces south of the Trent, should grant a guard for the safety of parliament. In the midst of this agitation, the news of the Irish massacre and rebellion burst upon London, and excited universal terror (November 1st). and causes. 35. The Irish Rebellion. Among the gentlemen of Kildare was Roger O'Moore, of Ballynagh, whose ancestors had been expelled from their lands in the reigns of Edward and Its origin Mary, and their sept almost exterminated by force of arms. The hope of recovering his ancient patrimony led him into different parts of Ireland, to exhort the natives to take up arms and vindicate their rights. He sounded the disposition of the lords of the Pale, and the Anglo-Irish, and excited the more inflammable passions of the ancient Irish. The latter longed for the restoration of their church to its ancient splendour, and they had always been in the habit of seeking the protection of foreign princes in their contests against their English oppressors. The Anglo-Irish, also, had been tormented with numerous oppressions, especially by fines and forfeitures, and by those inquisitions into their titles which the Stuarts had instituted for the purpose of depriving them of their lands. They were, however, opposed to any religious revolution, although they were Catholics; because they had shared in the ecclesiastical plunder which marked the establishment of the reformed church in Ireland; and they had, in all the wars which had broken out, constantly adhered to the English govern ment. Thus, the primary causes of the great rebellion which now broke out, lay in the two great sins of the English government: the penal laws, which pressed heavily upon these two great parties, and the systematic iniquity which despoiled them of their posses sions.* It could hardly be expected, therefore, that these people, who had been oppressed for so many years, should miss such an occasion for revolt as that which now offered. The Irish chieftains of Ulster, especially Sir Phelim O'Neil, the head of the Tyrone family, and Lord Macguire, of Inniskillen, readily listened to the suggestions of O'Moore; while the gentlemen * Hallam, II., 551; Lingard, X., 42; Moore's Ireland, IV., 219-220. Negotia between Charles and The plot CHAP. IX. of the Pale sought to attain the common objects by appealing to the King, whose interests and necessities at that juncture, induced him to listen to their demands, and to sign two bills to be passed into laws in the Irish parliament:-the one confirming tions the possession of lands which had been held uninterthe lords of ruptedly for sixty years; the other renouncing all claims the Pale. of the crown founded on Strafford's inquisitions. The relaxation of the penal laws, which they also demanded, was left to a secret negotiation which Charles was then carrying on through the Earls of Antrim and Ormond, for the purpose of securing the 8,000 troops which Strafford had lately raised, for service in England. The lords justices, Borlase and Parsons, who were then entrusted with the government of Ireland during the absence of Strafford's successor, the Earl of Leicester, were too much attached to the English parliament, to allow these bills to be passed; they prorogued parliament before they arrived (August 7th, 1641), and before the next session opened (November 1st) the general conspiracy was accidentally disclosed to them, betrayed. and that only at Dublin, on the eve before the castle was to have been surprised (October 22nd). Macguire and others were arrested; but O'Moore and the leading conspirators escaped. O'Neil, ignorant of this discovery, rose on the appointed day, and soon made himself master of the open country of in Ulster. Ulster. His followers were, however, little more than tumultuous bands of robbers, unarmed for the most part, who returned home to divide their spoil after they had plundered the plantations, and driven out the proprietors. Few fell by the sword, and none of those frightful acts of cruelty were perpetrated, which afterwards rendered this rebellion an abomination to Europe. The In defence of their proceedings, the insurgents published strance. a Remonstrance, which was drawn up by the celebrated Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, declaring that they had taken up arms in support of the royal prerogatives, and for the safety of their religion against the machinations of a party in the English parliament, which had intercepted the Graces granted by the King, and had put forth a project for the entire extirpation of the Irish Catholics, and the establishment of new plantations throughout the kingdom.* About the same time (October), a great meeting of the Catholic clergy and laity, was held in the ancient Abbey of Multifarnam, West Meath, for the purpose of considering the best methods of getting rid of the planters, whether by expulsion, massacre, or imprisonment. To this ominous meeting, First rising Remon * Moore's Ireland, IV., 224. 1641 the events that followed formed a fearful sequel. O'Neil, to animate and multiply his adherents, publicly exhibited a forged commission from the King, authorising him to have recourse to arms, and also, a letter from Scotland announcing the speedy arrival of an army of Covenanters, with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, to conquer or destroy the idolatrous papists of Ireland. He then made a murderous march through Ulster; sparing no age, sex, nor condition. All the O'Neil tortures which a horde of half savage followers could massacre. devise, were inflicted upon the miserable settlers; and death was their slightest punishment. begins the joined by the lords of "the Pale." For six weeks the insurrection was confined to the ancient Irish; but in December, Lord Gormanstown, the governor of Meath, summoned a general meeting of the gentry of the Pale, to be held on the hill of Crofty; one thousand freeholders attended, as well as O'Moore and the chief Irish leaders, and an which is association was formed between the two parties, in which they bound themselves by oath to be true to their objects; viz., freedom of conscience, security of the royal authority, and the liberties of Irishmen. They then published a vindication of their proceedings, and immediately commenced hostilities.* The English of the Pale now rivalled the Irish in every act of violence towards the new Protestant settlers; the 8,000 disbanded troops which Strafford had raised, added their force to the insurrection, and the number of those who perished by the outrageous cruelties which were committed, has been estimated at from 40,000 to 200,000. 36. The Grand Remonstrance. When Charles received the tidings of this terrible massacre, he hastened immediately to London, in the expectation, as he wrote to Sir Edward Nicholas, the secretary, that the ill news would "hinder some of these follies in England." A powerful re-action in his favour had indeed set in in the capital, where a noted royalist had been elected lord mayor, and on his entry, he was received with loud congratulations by the people. The defection from the number of their supporters had been observed by the popular leaders, and they saw that moderate men, such as Falkland, Hyde, and Culpeper, satisfied with the concessions already made by the King, began to deprecate any further demands upon him. These moderate men, whom their opponents called "Trimmers," were certainly in correspondence with the King, and expected office from him; but those who were still excluded from his favour, and who distrusted his inten * Lingard, X., 60. + Forster's Lives, III., 221. |