I I
The Judicial History of Individual Liberty. resentment which caused the Commons to take his life. The Lords were intimidated and passed the attainder. The king, who had given Strafford a solemn pledge to pro tect him, now betrayed him. Strafford mag nanimously returned the king's promise, but in signing the death warrant of Strafford and Laud, Charles I. signed his own. The trial of Charles I. (4 St. Tr. 990) was not, of course, conducted according to the
-verdict id that war had closed with a treaty с Challes sealed his fate when he -тэрд.; bring on the second war while no. conducting friendly relations with Parlia ment. His condemnation was an act of war, and rests upon the same grounds as the war itself. It was a struggle to the death, and the king lost. Certainly the author of the attempt upon the Five Members (4 St. Tr. 83) was not entitled, as Mr. Morley says in
JOHN L1LBURNK.
forms of law. The tribunal before which the king was arraigned was established by an ordinance of the Commons alone. The king could not commit treason against himself, and it was only by giving it a retroactive effect that the declaration of the Commons that it was treason for the king to levy war against Parliament could be made to apply to Charles. If he had besought foreign aid in the first civil war, Parliament had, on its side, enlisted a Scotch army. Moreover, that
his life of Cromwell, to plead punctilious de murrers to the revolutionary jurisdiction. At the trial many of the orderly forms of proce dure were observed. Evidence was heard to prove the facts alleged. His presence at dif ferent battles and the fact that people were killed there was proved by the depositions of witnesses who would have been called had he pleaded. The principal trials during the Common wealth were those of Lilburne, Andrews and
