THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
1621-1640
The Earl of Strafford.--His early life.--Strafford's course in
Parliament.--His opposition to the king.--The leaders removed.--The
opposition still continues.--Wentworth imprisoned.--His return
to Parliament.--Wentworth is courted.--He goes over to the king.--The
king appoints Wentworth to office.--Wentworth is appointed President
of the North.--Wentworth appointed to the government of
Ireland.--Wentworth's arbitrary government.--He is made an
earl.--Difficulties.--Laud's administration of his office.--Defense
of Episcopacy.--Progress of non-conformity.--A Parliament
called.--Strafford appointed commander-in-chief.--Meeting of
Parliament.--The king's speech.--Address of the lord
keeper.--Grievances.--Messages.--Parliament dissolved.--The Scots
cross the borders and invade England.--March of the Scots.--The king
goes to York.--Defeat of the English.--Perplexities and dangers.--The
king calls a council of peers.--Message from the Scots.--The king
compromises with the Scots.--Opposition of Strafford.--Strafford
desires to return to Ireland.--The king's promised protection.
During the time that the king had been engaged in the attempt to
govern England without Parliaments, he had, besides Laud, a very
efficient co-operator, known in English history by the name of the
Earl of Strafford. This title of Earl of Strafford was conferred upon
him by the king as a reward for his services. His father's name was
Wentworth. He was born in London, and the Christian name given to him
was Thomas. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, and was
much distinguished for his talents and his personal accomplishments.
After finishing his education, he traveled for some time on the
Continent, visiting foreign cities and courts, and studying the
languages, manners, and customs of other nations. He returned at
length to England. He was made a knight. His father died when he was
about twenty-one, and left him a large fortune. He was about seven
years older than King Charles, so that all these circumstances took
place before the commencement of Charles's reign. For many years after
this he was very extensively known in England as a gentleman of large
fortune and great abilities, by the name of Sir Thomas Wentworth.
Sir Thomas Wentworth was a member of Parliament in those days, and in
the contests between the king and the Parliament he took the side of
Parliament. Charles used to maintain that _his_ power alone was
hereditary and sovereign; that the Parliament was his council; and
that they had no powers or privileges except what he himself or his
ancestors had granted and allowed them. Wentworth took very strong
ground against this. He urged Parliament to maintain that their rights
and privileges were inherent and hereditary as well as those of the
king; that such powers as they possessed were their own, and were
entirely independent of royal grant or permission; and that the king
could no more encroach upon the privileges of Parliament, than
Parliament upon the prerogatives of the king. This was in the
beginning of the difficulties between the king and the Commons.
It will, perhaps, be recollected by the reader, that one of the plans
which Charles adopted to weaken the opposition to him in Parliament
was by appointing six of the leaders of this opposition to the office
of sheriff in their several counties. And as the general theory of all
monarchies is that the subjects are bound to obey and serve the king,
these men were obliged to leave their seats in Parliament and go home,
to serve as sheriffs. Charles and his council supposed that the rest
would be more quiet and submissive when the leaders of the party
opposed to him were taken away. But the effect was the reverse. The
Commons were incensed at such a mode of interfering with their action,
and became more hostile to the royal power than ever.
Wentworth himself, too, was made more determined in his opposition by
this treatment. A short time after this, the king's plan of a forced
loan was adopted, which has already been described; that is, a sum of
money was assessed in the manner of a tax upon all the people of the
kingdom, and each man was required to lend his proportion to the
government. The king admitted that he had no right to make people
_give_ money without the action of Parliament, but claimed the right
to require them to _lend_ it. As Sir Thomas Wentworth was a man of
large fortune, his share of the loan was considerable. He absolutely
refused to pay it. The king then brought him before a court which was
entirely under royal control, and he was condemned to be imprisoned.
Knowing, however, that this claim on the part of the king was very
doubtful, they mitigated the punishment by allowing him first a range
of two miles around his place of confinement, and afterward they
released him entirely.
He was chosen a member of Parliament again, and he returned to his
seat more powerful and influential than ever. Buckingham, who had been
his greatest enemy, was now dead, and the king, finding that he had
great abilities and a spirit that would not yield to intimidation or
force, concluded to try kindness and favors.
In fact, there are two different modes by which sovereigns in all ages
and countries endeavor to neutralize the opposition of popular
leaders. One is by intimidating them with threats and punishments, and
the other buying them off with appointments and honors. Some of the
king's high officers of state began to cultivate the acquaintance of
Wentworth, and to pay him attentions and civilities. He could not but
feel gratified with these indications of their regard. They
complimented his talents and his powers, and represented to him that
such abilities ought to be employed in the service of the state.
Finally, the king conferred upon him the title of baron. Common
gratitude for these marks of distinction and honor held him back from
any violent opposition to the king. His enemies said he was bought off
by honors and rewards. No doubt he was ambitious, and, like all other
politicians, his supreme motive was love of consideration and honor.
This was doubtless his motive in what he had done in behalf of the
Parliament. But all that he could do as a popular leader in Parliament
was to acquire a general ascendency over men's minds, and make himself
a subject of fame and honor. All places of real authority were
exclusively under the king's control, and he could only rise to such
stations through the sovereign's favor. In a word, he could acquire
only _influence_ as a leader in Parliament, while the king could give
him _power_.
Kings can exercise, accordingly, a great control over the minds of
legislators by offering them office; and King Charles, after finding
that his first advances to Wentworth were favorably received,
appointed him one of his Privy Council. Wentworth accepted the office.
His former friends considered that in doing this he was deserting
them, and betraying the cause which he had at first espoused and
defended. The country at large were much displeased with him, finding
that he had forsaken their cause, and placed himself in a position to
act against them.
Persons who change sides in politics or in religion are very apt to go
from one extreme to another. Their former friends revile them, and
they, in retaliation, act more and more energetically against them. It
was so with Strafford. He gradually engaged more and more fully and
earnestly in upholding the king. Finally, the king appointed him to a
very high station, called the Presidency of the North. His office was
to govern the whole north of England--of course, under the direction
of the king and council. There were four counties under his
jurisdiction, and the king gave him a commission which clothed him
with enormous powers--powers greater, as all the people thought, than
the king had any right to bestow.
Strafford proceeded to the north, and entered upon the government of
his realm there, with a determination to carry out all the king's
plans to the utmost. From being an ardent advocate of the rights of
the people, as he was at the commencement of his career, he became a
most determined and uncompromising supporter of the arbitrary power of
the king. He insisted on the collection of money from the people, in
all the ways that the king claimed the power to collect it by
authority of his prerogative; and he was so strict and exacting in
doing this, that he raised the revenue to four or five times what any
of his predecessors had been able to collect. This, of course, pleased
King Charles and his government extremely; for it was at a time during
which the king was attempting to govern without a Parliament, and
every accession to his funds was of extreme importance. Laud, too, the
archbishop, was highly gratified with his exertions and his success,
and the king looked upon Laud and Wentworth as the two most efficient
supporters of his power. They were, in fact, the two most efficient
promoters of his destruction.
Of course, the people of the north hated him. While he was earning the
applause of the archbishop and the king, and entitling himself to new
honors and increased power, he was sewing the seeds of the bitterest
animosity in the hearts of the people every where. Still he enjoyed
all the external marks of consideration and honor. The President of
the North was a sort of king. He was clothed with great powers, and
lived in great state and splendor. He had many attendants, and the
great nobles of the land, who generally took Charles's side in the
contests of the day, envied Wentworth's greatness and power, and
applauded the energy and success of his administration.
Ireland was, at this time, in a disturbed and disordered state, and
Laud proposed that Wentworth should be appointed by the king to the
government of it. A great proportion of the inhabitants were
Catholics, and were very little disposed to submit to Protestant rule.
Wentworth was appointed lord deputy, and afterward lord lieutenant,
which made him king of Ireland in all but the name. Every thing, of
course, was done in the name of Charles. He carried the same energy
into his government here that he had exhibited in the north of
England. He improved the condition of the country astonishingly in
respect to trade, to revenue, and to public order. But he governed in
the most arbitrary manner, and he boasted that he had rendered the
king as absolute a sovereign in Ireland as any prince in the world
could be. Such a boast from a man who had once been a very prominent
defender of the rights of the people against this very kind of
sovereignty, was fitted to produce a feeling of universal exasperation
and desire of revenge. The murmurs and muttered threats which filled
the land, though suppressed, were very deep and very strong.
The king, however, and Laud, considered Wentworth as their most able
and efficient co-adjutor; and when the difficulties in Scotland began
to grow serious, they recalled him from Ireland, and put that country
into the hands of another ruler. The king then advanced him to the
rank of an earl. His title was the Earl of Strafford. As the
subsequent parts of his history attracted more attention than those
preceding his elevation to this earldom, he has been far more widely
known among mankind by the name of Strafford than by his original name
of Wentworth, which was, from this period, nearly forgotten.
To return now to the troubles in Scotland. The king found that it
would be impossible to go on without supplies, and he accordingly
concluded, on the whole, to call a Parliament. He was in serious
trouble. Laud was in serious trouble too. He had been indefatigably
engaged for many years in establishing Episcopacy all over England,
and in putting down, by force of law, all disposition to dissent from
it; and in attempting to produce, throughout the realm, one uniform
system of Christian faith and worship. This was his idea of the
perfection of religious order and right. He used to make an annual
visitation to all the bishoprics in the realm; inquire into the usages
which prevailed there; put a stop, so far as he could, to all
irregularities; and confirm and establish, by the most decisive
measures, the Episcopal authority. He sent in his report to the king
of the results of his inquiries, asking the king's aid, where his own
powers were insufficient, for the more full accomplishment of his
plans. But, notwithstanding all this diligence and zeal, he found that
he met with very partial success. The irregularities, as he called
them, which he suppressed in one place, would break out in another;
the disposition to throw off the dominion of bishops was getting more
and more extensive and deeply seated; and now, the result of the
religious revolution in Scotland, and of the general excitement which
it produced in England, was to widen and extend this feeling more than
ever.
He did not, however, give up the contest, He employed an able writer
to draw up a defense of Episcopacy, as the true and scriptural form of
Church government. The book, when first prepared, was moderate in its
tone, and allowed that in some particular cases a Presbyterian mode of
government might be admissible; but Laud, in revising the book, struck
out these concessions as unnecessary and dangerous, and placed
Episcopacy in full and exclusive possession of the ground, as the
divinely instituted and only admissible form of Church government and
discipline. He caused this book to be circulated; but the attempt to
reason with the refractory, after having failed in the attempt to
coerce them, is not generally very successful. The archbishop, in his
report to the king this year of the state of things throughout his
province, represents the spirit of non-conformity to the Church of
England as getting too strong for him to control without more
efficient help from the civil power; but whether it would be wise, he
added, to undertake any more effectual coercion in the present
distracted state of the kingdom, he left it for the king to decide.
Laud proposed that the council should recommend to the king the
calling of a Parliament. At the same time, they passed a resolution
that, in case the Parliament "should prove peevish, and refuse to
grant supplies, they would sustain the king in the resort to
extraordinary measures." This was regarded as a threat, and did not
help to prepossess the members favorably in regard to the feeling with
which the king was to meet them. The king ordered the Parliament to be
elected in December, but did not call them together until April. In
the mean time, he went on raising an army, so as to have his military
preparations in readiness. He, however, appointed a new set of
officers to the command of this army, neglecting those who were in
command before, as he had found them so little disposed to act
efficiently in his cause. He supplied the leader's place with
Strafford. This change produced very extensive murmurs of
dissatisfaction, which, added to all the other causes of complaint,
made the times look very dark and stormy.
The Parliament assembled in April. The king went into the House of
Lords, the Commons being, as usual, summoned to the bar. He addressed
them as follows:
"My Lords and gentlemen,--There was never a King who had a more
great and weighty Cause to call his People together than myself. I
will not trouble you with the particulars. I have informed my lord
keeper, and now command him to speak, and I desire your
Attention."
The keeper referred to was the keeper of the king's seals, who was, of
course, a great officer of state. He made a speech, informing the
houses, in general terms, of the king's need of money, but said that
it was not necessary for him to explain minutely the monarch's plans,
as they were exclusively his own concern. We may as well quote his
words, in order to show in what light the position and province of a
British Parliament was considered in those days.
"His majesty's kingly resolutions," said the lord keeper, "are
seated in the ark of his sacred breast, and it were a presumption
of too high a nature for any Uzzah uncalled to touch it. Yet his
Majesty is now pleased to lay by the shining Beams of Majesty, as
Phoebus did to Phaeton, that the distance between Sovereignty and
Subjection should not bar you of that filial freedom of Access to
his Person and Counsels; only let us beware how, with the Son of
Clymene, we aim not at the guiding of the Chariot, as if that were
the only Testimony of Fatherly Affection; and let us remember,
that though the King sometimes lays by the Beams and Rays of
Majesty, he never lays by Majesty itself."
When the keeper had finished his speech, the king confirmed it by
saying that he had exaggerated nothing, and the houses were left to
their deliberations. Instead of proceeding to the business of raising
money, they commenced an inquiry into the grievances, as they called
them--that is, all the unjust acts and the maladministration of the
government, of which the country had been complaining for the ten
years during which there had been an intermission of Parliaments. The
king did all in his power to arrest this course of procedure. He sent
them message after message, urging them to leave these things, and
take up first the question of supplies. He then sent a message to the
House of Peers, requesting them to interpose and exert their influence
to lead the Commons to act. The Peers did so. The Commons sent them
back a reply that their interference in the business of supply, which
belonged to the Commons alone, was a breach of their privileges.
"And," they added, "therefore, the Commons desire their lordships in
their wisdom to find out some way for the reparation of their
privileges broken by that act, and to prevent the like infringement in
future."
Thus repulsed on every hand, the king gave up the hope of
accomplishing any thing through the action of the House of Commons,
and he suddenly determined to dissolve Parliament. The session had
continued only about three weeks. In dissolving the Parliament the
king took no notice of the Commons whatever, but addressed the Lords
alone. The Commons and the whole country were incensed at such
capricious treatment of the national Legislature.
The king and his council tried all summer to get the army ready to be
put in motion. The great difficulty, of course, was want of funds.
The _Convocation_, which was the great council of the Church, and
which was accustomed in those days to sit simultaneously with
Parliament, continued their session afterward in this case, and raised
some money for the king. The nobles of the court subscribed a
considerable amount, also, which they lent him. They wished to sustain
him in his contest with the Commons on their own account, and then,
besides, they felt a personal interest in him, and a sympathy for him
in the troubles which were thickening around him.
The summer months passed away in making the preparations and getting
the various bodies of troops ready, and the military stores collected
at the place of rendezvous in York and Newcastle. The Scots, in the
mean time, had been assembling their forces near the borders, and,
being somewhat imboldened by their success in the previous campaign,
crossed the frontier, and advanced boldly to meet the forces of the
king.
They published a manifesto, declaring that they were not entering
England with any hostile intent toward their sovereign, but were only
coming to present to him their humble petitions for a redress of their
grievances, which they said they were sure he would graciously
receive as soon as he had opportunity to learn from them how great
their grievances had been. They respectfully requested that the people
of England would allow them to pass safely and without molestation
through the land, and promised to conduct themselves with the utmost
propriety and decorum. This promise they kept. They avoided molesting
the inhabitants in any way, and purchased fairly every thing they
consumed. When the English officers learned that the Scotch had
crossed the Tweed, they sent on immediately to London, to the king,
urging him to come north at once, and join the army, with all the
remaining forces at his command. The king did so, but it was too late.
He arrived at York; from York he went northward to reach the van of
his army, which had been posted at Newcastle, but on his way he was
met by messengers saying that they were in full retreat, and that the
Scotch had got possession of Newcastle.
The circumstances of the battle were these. Newcastle is upon the
Tyne. The banks at Newcastle are steep and high, but about four miles
above the town is a place called Newburn, where was a meadow near the
river, and a convenient place to cross. The Scotch advanced in a very
slow and orderly manner to Newburn, and encamped there. The English
sent a detachment from Newcastle to arrest their progress. The Scotch
begged them not to interrupt their march, as they were only going to
_present petitions to the king_! The English general, of course, paid
no attention to this pretext. The Scotch army then attacked them and
soon put them to flight. The routed English soldiers fled to
Newcastle, and were there joined by all that portion of the army which
was in Newcastle, in a rapid retreat. The Scotch took possession of
the town, but conducted themselves in a very orderly manner, and
bought and paid for every thing they used.
The poor king was now in a situation of the most imminent and terrible
danger. Rebel subjects were in full possession of one kingdom, and
were now advancing at the head of victorious armies into the other. He
himself had entirely alienated the affections of a large portion of
his subjects, and had openly quarreled with and dismissed the
Legislature. He had no funds, and had exhausted all possible means of
raising funds. He was half distracted with the perplexities and
dangers of his position.
His deciding on dissolving Parliament in the spring was a hasty step,
and he bitterly regretted it the moment the deed was done. He wished
to recall it. He deliberated several days about the possibility of
summoning the same members to meet again, and constituting them again
a Parliament. But the lawyers insisted that this could not be done. A
dissolution was a dissolution. The Parliament, once dissolved, was no
more. It could not be brought to life again. There must be new orders
to the country to proceed to new elections. To do this at once would
have been too humiliating for the king. He now found, however, that
the necessity for it could no longer be postponed. There was such a
thing in the English history as a council of peers alone, called in a
sudden emergency which did not allow of time for the elections
necessary to constitute the House of Commons. Charles called such a
council of peers to meet at York, and they immediately assembled.
In the mean time the Scotch sent embassadors to York, saying to the
king that they were advancing to lay their grievances before him! They
expressed great sorrow and regret at the victory which they had been
compelled to gain over some forces that had attempted to prevent them
from getting access to their sovereign. The king laid this
communication before the lords, and asked their advice what to do; and
also asked them to counsel him how he should provide funds to keep his
army together until a Parliament could be convened. The lords advised
him to appoint commissioners to meet the Scotch, and endeavor to
compromise the difficulties; and to send to the city of London, asking
that corporation to lend him a small sum until Parliament could be
assembled.
This advice was followed. A temporary treaty was made with the rebels,
although making a treaty with rebels is perhaps the most humiliating
thing that a hereditary sovereign is ever compelled to do. The Earl of
Strafford was, however, entirely opposed to this policy. He urged the
king most earnestly not to give up the contest without a more decisive
struggle. He represented to him the danger of beginning to yield to
the torrent which he now began to see would overwhelm them all if it
was allowed to have its way. He tried to persuade the king that the
Scots might yet be driven back, and that it would be possible to get
along without a Parliament. He dreaded a Parliament. The king,
however, and his other advisers, thought that they must yield a little
to the storm. Strafford then wanted to be allowed to return to his
post in Ireland, where he thought that he should probably be safe from
the terrible enmity which he must have known that he had awakened in
England, and which he thought a Parliament would concentrate and bring
upon his devoted head. But the king would not consent to this. He
assured Strafford that if a Parliament should assemble, he would take
care that they should not hurt a hair of his head. Unfortunate
monarch! How little he foresaw that that very Parliament, from whose
violence he thus promised to defend his favorite servant so completely
as to insure him from the slightest injury, would begin by taking off
his favorite's head, and end with taking off his own!