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The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such unsurmountable objections, was the real cause of Strafford’ unhappy fate; and made the bill of attainder pass the commons with no greater opposition than that of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients for which they were beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of their adversaries.

Next Sunday, after the bill passed the commons, the Puritanical pulpits resounded with declamations concerning the necessity of executing justice upon great delinquents.[**] The populace took the alarm. About six thousand men, armed with swords and cudgels, flocked from the city, and surrounded the houses of parliament.[***] The names of the fifty-nine commoners who had voted against the bill of attainder, were posted up under the title of “Straffordians, and betrayers of their country.” These were exposed to all the insults of the ungovernable multitude. When any of the lords passed, the cry for justice against Strafford resounded in their ears; and such as were suspected of friendship to that obnoxious minister, were sure to meet with menaces, not unaccompanied with symptoms of the most desperate resolutions in the furious populace.[****]

Complaints in the house of commons being made against these violences, as the most flagrant breach of privilege, the ruling members, by their affected coolness and indifference, showed plainly, that the popular tumults were not disagreeable to them.[v] But a new discovery, made about this time, served to throw every thing into still greater flame and combustion.

* Rush. vol. iv. p. 560.

** Whitlocke, p. 43.

*** Whitlocke, p. 43.

**** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 232, 256. Rush. vol. v. p. 248,
1279.

v    Whitlocke, ut supra.

Some principal officers, Piercy, Jermyn, O’Neale, Goring, Wilmot, Pollard, Ashburnham, partly attached to the court, partly disgusted with the parliament, had formed a plan of engaging into the king’s service the English army, whom they observed to be displeased at some marks of preference given by the commons to the Scots. For this purpose, they entered into an association, took an oath of secrecy, and kept a close correspondence with some of the king’s servants. The form of a petition to the king and parliament was concerted; and it was intended to get this petition subscribed by the army. The petitioners there represent the great and unexampled concessions made by the king for the security of public peace and liberty; the endless demands of certain insatiable and turbulent spirits, whom nothing less will content than a total subversion of the ancient constitution; the frequent tumults which these factious malecontents had excited, and which endangered the liberty of parliament. To prevent these mischiefs, the army offered to come up and guard that assembly, “So shall the nation,” as they express themselves in the conclusion, “not only be vindicated from preceding innovations, but be secured from the future, which are threatened, and which are likely to produce more dangerous effects than the former.”[*] The draught of this petition being conveyed to the king, he was prevailed on, somewhat imprudently, to countersign it himself, as a mark of his approbation. But as several difficulties occurred, the project was laid aside two months before any public discovery was made of it.

It was Goring who betrayed the secret to the popular leaders. The alarm may easily be imagined which this intelligence conveyed. Petitions from the military to the civil power are always looked on as disguised or rather undisguised commands, and are of a nature widely different from petitions presented by any other rank of men. Pym opened the matter in the house.[**] On the first intimation of a discovery, Piercy concealed himself, and Jermyn withdrew beyond sea. This further confirmed the suspicion of a dangerous conspiracy. Goring delivered his evidence before the house: Piercy wrote a letter to his brother, Northumberland, confessing most of the particulars.[***] Both their testimonies agree with regard to the oath of secrecy; and as this circumstance had been denied by Pollard, Ashburnham, and Wilmot, in all their examinations, it was regarded as a new proof of some desperate resolutions which had been taken.

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 247. Whitlocke, p. 43.

** Rush, vol v. p. 240.

*** Rush. vol. v. p. 255.

To convey more quickly the terror and indignation at this plot, the commons voted that a protestation should be signed by all the members. It was sent up to the lords, and signed by all of them, except Southampton and Robarts. Orders were given by the commons alone, without other authority that it should be subscribed by the whole nation. The protestation was in itself very inoffensive, even insignificant; and contained nothing but general declarations, that the subscribers would defend their religion and liberties.[*] But it tended to increase the popular panic, and intimated, what was more expressly declared in the preamble, that these blessings were now exposed to the utmost peril.

Alarms were every day given of new conspiracies.[**] In Lancashire, great multitudes of Papists were assembling: secret meetings were held by them in caves and under ground in Surrey: they had entered into a plot to blow up the river with gunpowder, in order to drown the city:[***] provisions of arms were making beyond sea: sometimes France, sometimes Denmark, was forming designs against the kingdom; and the populace, who are always terrified with present, and enraged with distant dangers, were still further animated in their demands of justice against the unfortunate Strafford.

The king came to the house of lords: and though he expressed his resolution, for which he offered them any security, never again to employ Strafford in any branch of public business, he professed himself totally dissatisfied with regard to the circumstance of treason, and on that account declared his difficulty in giving his assent to the bill of attainder.[****] The commons took fire, and voted it a breach of privilege for the king to take notice of any bill depending before the houses, Charles did not perceive that his attachment to Strafford was the chief motive for the bill; and that the greater proofs he gave of anxious concern for this minister, the more inevitable did he render his destruction.

About eighty peers had constantly attended Strafford’s trial; but such apprehensions were entertained on account of the popular tumults, that only forty-five were present when the bill of attainder was brought into the house. Yet of these nineteen had the courage to vote against it;[v] a certain proof that if entire freedom had been allowed, the bill had been rejected by a great majority.

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 252. Rush. vol. v. p. 241. Warwick,
p. 180.

** Dugdale, p. 69. Franklyn, p. 901.

*** Sir Edward Walker p. 349.

**** Rush. vol. v. p. 239.

v Whitlocke, p. 43.

In carrying up the bill to the lords, St. John, the solicitor-general, advanced two topics well suited to the fury of the times; that though the testimony against Strafford were not clear, yet, in this way of bill, private satisfaction to each man’s conscience was sufficient, even should no evidence at all be produced; and that the earl had no title to plead law, because he had broken the law. It is true, added he, we give law to hares and deer, for they are beasts of chase: but it was never accounted either cruel or unfair to destroy foxes or wolves wherever they can be found, for they are beasts of prey.[*]