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The courtiers about him were rallying from their first panic. His French Queen, furious at what she looked on as insults to royalty, and yet more furious at the persecution of the Catholics, was spurring him to violent courses. And for violence there seemed at the moment an opportunity. In Ireland Strafford's army refused to disband itself.
The Commons came together in stern temper, Pym standing promptly at the Bar of the House of Lords with Strafford's impeachment for High Treason. The great Earl's apologists among the Lords, his own ingenious and powerful pleadings, the King's entreaties and worthless promises, all were in vain. The King saw the whole fabric of tyranny crumbling before his eyes.
He turned instantly and walked with her to the very extremity of the little point, Lucia following. They stood exactly on the spot where she had landed as a bride, and looked out into the darkness. Suddenly she grasped Mr. Strafford's arm. "Listen!" she said, "there are oars close by." "Impossible," he answered. "See, the steamer's lights are just there opposite us.
In the absence of a Parliament, the government of Ireland was vested in the Deputy, the Commander-in-Chief, and four commissioners, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones, and Weaver. There was, moreover, a High Court of Justice, which perambulated the kingdom, and exercised an absolute authority over life and property, greater than even Strafford's Court of Castle Chamber had pretended to.
"They take everything for clever the little idiot says!" he remarked to himself. "Nobody made anything of me when I was his age!" The letters were brought in. Amongst them was one for Mr. Raymount with a broad black border. He looked at the postmark. "This must be the announcement of cousin Strafford's death!" he said. "Some one told me she was not expected to live.
She took great pride in the success of her escape, and especially in the long concealment of her wealth. Not a night had passed since Mrs. Strafford's visit that she had not slept with the roll of money under her pillow by night, and buttoned safe inside her dress by day.
I used a great many reasons and arguments with them on this head, and at last with some difficulty obtained of them to give the reason, which was the Earl of Strafford's having the chief command at York, whom they declared their mortal enemy, he having declared them rebels in Ireland. With this answer I returned.
He was known to be resolute against the abolition of Episcopacy; but he announced no purpose of resisting the removal of the bishops from the House of Peers. Strafford's life he was determined to save; but he threw no obstacle in the way of his impeachment. The trial of the Earl opened on the twenty-second of March.
Political intrigues, hunger caused by blockade, cant, wire-pulling, hiding the truth, etc., etc., will break down before the German onslaught like waves break upon a rock. Britain has got to hark back to Strafford's watchword "thorough" and season it with the spirit of Cromwell's Ironsides.
Strafford's fears confirmed her own. "There are four Indians employed now about the Mills at the other end of the town," she said. "Two of them, I think, are quite young; the third I have hardly seen, but the fourth " she stopped and then went on steadily, "the fourth looks an old man. He is a wretched object, drunken and half idiotic." Mr. Strafford looked at her in wonder and trouble.
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