readiness to convey him from the coast, and all means prepared for his getting on board. But the whole of this scheme failed from the intervention of one honest man. This was Balfour, the lieutenant. In contemplation of great crimes in former days, the king had suddenly changed the lieutenant; but such an act now would have created instant suspicion, and roused the whole city. The king therefore sent the warrant for the removal of Strafford; but Balfour refused to obey it, though tempted by royal promises, and by Strafford with a bribe of twenty thousand pounds, and an advantageous match for his daughter. The honest officer listened to the lure with contempt, and the plot was at an end. But another was speedily substituted in its place. This was a plan to march the army at York suddenly to London, and thus take forcible possession of the prisoner. Advantage was taken of the discontent of the troops on account of the arrears of their pay remaining undischarged, whilst the Scotch army was amply supplied, and agents were sent down to tamper with the officers at York. These appear to have fallen readily into the proposition, and a petition was sent to the king from the officers, representing that as there were vast quantities of malignants collected in London, who were followed by vast multitudes, they deemed it expedient, for the safety of his majesty's person and of parliament, that the ringleaders should be seized and punished, and they offered to march up and do it. Charles not only accepted this petition, but, at the request of the officers, put his initials to it, in testimony of his sanction of their proposal. The petition itself may be seen in Clarendon.
But this plot also failed, through the quarrels of the two leading officers in the management—colonel Goring and Percy, the brother of the earl of Northumberland. Jermyn, the queen's favourite, whom she married after the king's death, was sent down to reconcile them, but did not succeed, and Goring, in his exasperation against Percy, revealed the whole plot to the earl of Bedford, lord Saye, and lord Kimbolton.
Mr. Hyde was sent by the commons to the peers, to inform them of these conspiracies. The Scotch commissioners were clamorous for his conviction, and the city of London refused to lend any more money to parliament till that was secured. But in the house of commons the bill of attainder met with unexpected opposition from one of the most zealous of the reformers, lord Digby. He saw, like the rest, that technically they could not condemn Strafford for high treason as the law then stood, and he feared the precedent of condemning men under a show of law that did not exist. It was, in fact, too much imitating the king. It was a real difficulty, which the patriots had not sufficiently foreseen. Instead of charging him with treason, as it was then defined, they should first have remodelled the law, or have charged Strafford with the violation of the national guarantee of Magna Charta, on which there could be no doubt, and for which he was well worthy of death; but it was too late to retrace their steps, and they were obliged to condemn him for the unquestionable crime of treason against the nation, making the act of the legislature in all its branches an extension of the law. Digby himself did not question his guilt. He said "he believed him still that grand apostate to the commonwealth, who must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be despatched to the other;" but he pleaded that on the ground of law he should have his life spared. But the commons knew that whilst he lived there was no security. On the first occasion the king would pardon and restore him, and all their labour would be thrown away. They sought, therefore, to erect parliament, in so great an emergency, into a court of equity as well as of law, believing that what was decreed by both houses, and had the sanction of the crown, was and would be a law of itself. They did not, like the Tudors and the Stuarts, seek to condemn him by setting aside the established courts and trial by jury; they gave him the highest court in the realm, and a full trial by his peers, and by their bill they now called for a verdict.
But that verdict was not obtained without a great struggle. In the commons it was warmly debated, and it was not till the eleventh day, the 21st of April, that it was carried by a vast majority. Only fifty-four, or, according to Whitelock, fifty-nine members voted against the bill, and the next morning the names of these were placarded in the streets as "Straffordians," who, to allow a traitor to escape, would betray their country. The lords, who had been greatly influenced by Strafford's speeches, and his confident exposition of the law, displayed no alacrity to pass the bill of attainder through their house; but they soon found themselves exposed to the pressure from without. The nation had made up its mind to the punishment of the man who had advised the king to reduce them to the condition of serfs; and the lords could not appear anywhere without being pursued by cries of "Justice! justice on the traitor!"
They surrounded the parliament house in vast crowds, uttering the same demands, and a petition was carried up from the city, signed by many thousands. The country was terrified by rumours of insurrections and invasions, which were made plausible by the army plot, and the court preparations for rescuing and getting away Strafford. There is also clear evidence from the despatches of Rosetti, who was in the confidence of the queen, that the king had ordered the fortifications of Portsmouth to be strengthened; and the command of the fortress was given to Goring, that he might have a place of retreat if he was obliged to quit London, and an opening for the landing of troops from France or Holland, whom he might prevail on to come to his assistance.
In carrying up the bill to the lords, the attorney-general, St. John, had endeavoured to get rid of the legal objections to the death of Strafford, by saying that laws were made for the protection of the peaceable and the innocent, not for those who broke all law for the destruction of the people. That we gave law to deer and hares, but knocked on the head wolves or foxes wherever we found them. This was a dangerous doctrine, and did not at all mend the matter; he did not see that the real strength and justification of the case was in all the three branches of the legislature interpreting the law as extending to the state and constitution altogether, and by their united act rendering it law—a precedent infinitely more valid than such as are acted on every day—the dicta of ordinary judges.
In the meantime, the anxiety and perplexity of the king
