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Updated: September 19, 2025
For King Charles I.; 'tis observable, that the charge against the Earl of Strafford, a thing which his Majesty blamed himself for all the days of his life, and at the moment of his last suffering, was first read in the Lords' House on the 30th of January, the same day of the month six years that the king himself was brought to the block.
The impeachment and attainder of Strafford occupied the great part of March and April, 1641, and throughout those months the delegates from Ireland assisted at the pleadings in Westminster Hall and the debates in the English Parliament. The Houses at Dublin were themselves occupied in a similar manner.
But our valiant friend took all quietly; and was not to be repulsed from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by mine; he labored at his Strafford; determined to labor, in all ways, till he felt the end of his tether in this direction.
In the Strafford Papers there is a letter to the Lord Deputy from Garrard, in which he says that, after Lady Purbeck's sentence some years earlier, she had evaded it by flight and had "not been much looked after since;" but that "this winter she lodged herself on the Water side over against Lambeth, I fear too near the road of the Archbishop's barge; whereof some complaint being made, she had the Sergeant at Arms sent with the warrant of the Lords and the Council to carry her to the Gate-House, whence she will hardly get out until she hath done her penance.
In fact, when the bill for taking away the life of Strafford was under consideration, all the spiritual peers withdrew. Now, however, the example of Cranmer, who had voted for some of the most infamous acts of attainder that ever passed, was thought more worthy of imitation; and there was a great muster of lawn sleeves.
Thus, in old times, the Act which was passed against Roger Mortimer, in the paroxysm of a resentment not unprovoked, had been, at a calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, however guilty he might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus, within the memory of the existing generation, the law which attainted Strafford had been annulled, without one dissentient voice.
Every body had then told him, even those who felt how much the law must be outraged to obtain a conviction of Lord Strafford, how many principles of justice must be shaken, and how sadly the royal word must suffer in its sanctity, yet all had told him that it was expedient to sacrifice that nobleman. One man ought not to stand between the king and his alienated people.
The stern resolve of the people to demand justice on their tyrants spoke in his threat of the axe. Strafford and Laud, and Charles himself, had yet to reckon with "that two-handed engine at the door" which stood "ready to smite once, and smite no more."
Strafford, who still sat by his bedside, he took him for one of his former masters, and spoke to him in French. "Mon père," he said, "pray do not be angry with us. We lost our way, and that is why we have been so long. The woods are green still, but the ground is soaked with rain, and it is hard to get through the bushes, and we are very tired."
The failure of the attempt to establish a Parliamentary ministry, the discovery of the army plot, the execution of Strafford, were the turning points in the history of the Long Parliament. Till May 1641 there was still hope for an accommodation between the Commons and the Crown by which the freedom that had been won might have been taken as the base of a new system of government.
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