under the necessity of reprehending him. A rebuke which nevertheless appears to have had small effect on the honourable member, who "in great fury reproached the "chairman for being partial;" which, having regard to the confession just made in a precisely similar case, we are disposed to think that the chairman decidedly may have been. The honourable member who came so tempestuously on this occasion between the witnesses ("who "were a very rude kind of people") and Mr. Hyde's sense of decorum, was Mr. Cromwell, lately returned for the town of Cambridge.

Altogether, we think Mr. Bankes will have to re-study and revise his character of Clarendon. He is moved with horror at what he calls the revolutionary, the "fatal” act, for perpetuation of the Parliament; yet for that act Hyde deliberately voted. He objects to the celebrated Protestation brought forward at the time by Pym, and which had such a singular effect in exciting the people; yet seems not to be aware that the second name affixed to it was that of Edward Hyde. He (very inconsiderately we must say) compares to Robespierre's Reign of Terror, the excitements and "pretended" plots that forced on the execution of Strafford; yet the man who carried up to the House of Lords the first message as to the army plot which precipitated the execution, was no other than Edward Hyde. Its resolute promoter to the last, by speeches as well as votes, was Falkland, Hyde's dearest friend. Culpeper, his other confidential and intimate ally, supported most eagerly every step that led to it. The last thing his associate Lord Capel recalled, as he laid his own head down upon the scaffold raised by Cromwell, was his vote in favour of it. And Hyde himself was the man who exposed and defeated the last desperate attempt of Strafford's personal friends, by means of an escape from the Tower, to avert what Clarendon had afterwards the face to call Strafford's "miserable and never to be enough "lamented ruin."

The entire history of that period of Strafford's trial, in

short, and of all the proceedings connected with the Bill of his Attainder, remains to be written; and even since. the foregoing remarks were first printed, we have made discoveries relating to it of sufficient importance to justify a future attempt to render more complete the existing records of the life and death of that remarkable man. At present we restrict ourselves to a new piece of evidence of singular interest, drawn from the manuscript journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, which, while it thoroughly bears out the general tenour of what we have said as to the men who most eagerly supported Strafford's attainder, somewhat startlingly disposes of our special surmise as to the improbability of Hampden's' having opposed it. In a former Essay? we have referred to this discovery, reserving a more particular description of it for this place; and from that description we now exclude all argument and detail more proper to be dealt with on a different occasion. We confine it strictly to what is necessary to set at rest, once

1 The remarks now made are the result of research subsequent to the date when this Essay was first written; and I may here take the opportunity of observing, that, out of the many who have variously commented on that very obscure note by Sir Ralph Verney of a speech of Hampden's on the Attainder, which has hitherto comprised all the known evidence wherefrom an opinion was to be drawn as to his course respecting it, to Lord Macaulay alone must be given the praise of having construed it with singular correctness. "The opinion of Hampden," he re"marks (Essays, i. 209) "as far as "it can be collected from a very "obscure note of one of his speeches,

seems to have been that the "proceeding by Bill was unne'cessary, and that it would be a "better course to obtain judgment

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on the Impeachment.' It now appears, as the reader will find from my text, that such exactly was Pym's opinion, in which Hampden implicitly followed him. I had myself

been disposed to think that the note settled nothing conclusively, except the fact of his desiring that Strafford's counsel should be heard; both because it contained no opinion adverse to the Attainder, and also because, believing Pym to have originated that Bill, I found it difficult to imagine that in such a proceeding Hampden could have separated himself from the friend with whom, through the whole course of these eventful times, he cer tainly had no other known difference. It had occurred to no one as within reasonable probability that Pym himself might also, upon the mere ground of policy, have opposed the Attainder; which now proves to have been the The exact words of Verney's note are subjoined. "HAMPDEN. "The bill now pending doth not tie "us to goe by bill. Our councill "hath been heard; ergo, in justice,

case.

and for ever, such personal statements and charges. connected with the Attainder as have been variously disputed and long contested by historians; and to apportion with some degree of correctness, at last, the responsibilities of blame and praise incurred by the men who abandoned the way of Impeachment they had themselves originated, in order to proceed by Bill.

That mode of procedure, it seems, had been canvassed at the opening of the session; and having been strongly advocated by St. John, Glyn, and Maynard, a bill was actually prepared. But Pym and Hampden were so bent the other way, and so convinced that their proofs would establish the charge of treason under the statute of Edward, that the impeachment went on. Nor in this belief did they ever waver for an instant. Up to the close of the proceedings on the trial, they had an invincible persuasion that in the several hearings before the upper house both the facts and the law had been established; and when the sitting of the thirteenth day, Saturday the 10th of April, closed abruptly in violent dissatisfaction at a decision of the peers, allowing Strafford to reopen the evidence on other articles provided the demand of the Commons to give additional proofs of the twenty-third article were conceded, they returned to their house, not to throw up the impeachment, but to prepare the heads of a conference with the Lords for settlement of such matters of difference as had arisen. But with them returned a more discontented section, numbering among its members not only such men as Haselrig and Henry Marten, Oliver St. John and Glyn, but also a group comprised of Falkland, Culpeper, the Hothams, Tomkins (member for Weobly), and others, all of whom afterwards either openly embraced the cause of the King, or secretly conspired to further it. And by these men it was that the project of proceeding by Bill, formerly laid aside, was now suddenly revived and pressed. "Divers," says D'Ewes, "spake "whether we should proceed by way of Bill of Attainder, or as we had begun; but most inclined that we should

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go by Bill." The principal opponents were Pym and Hampden.

The additional evidence sought to be given before the Lords upon the twenty-third article was that copy of the Notes taken at the Council Board by the elder Vane on the day of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, which had been abstracted from his cabinet by the younger Vane, and by him given to Pym, who had founded the twenty-third article upon them. They were publicly read for the first time, after the tumultuous return of the Commons to their own house on that Saturday afternoon; and from them it appeared, not only that Strafford had given the King such traitorous advice as the article in question charged him with (that having been denied supply by his parliament he was absolved and loose from all rule of government, and that he had an army in Ireland which he might employ to reduce "this kingdom" to obedience), but that Laud and Lord Cottington also had taken part in the dangerous counsel. Amid the excitement consequent thereon, the Bill of Attainder was produced; and the proposal by which it was met on the part of those who objected to its introduction, was that a narrative of the circumstances attending the discovery and production of Vane's important Notes of Council should be drawn up and submitted to the Lords at a conference; and that if, upon deliberation, the Lords decided not to receive it except upon condition of permitting the accused to reopen the evidence upon other articles, then that it should be waived, and immediate steps taken to sum up the case on both sides, and demand judgment. Any other course, they argued, would involve not only the certainty of delay, but a strong probability of disagreement with the House of Lords. So decided was the feeling for the Bill, however, that for once these great leaders were outvoted, and it was introduced and read a first time; a suggestion of Hampden's, for resuming at Monday's sitting the preparation of heads for a conference with the upper house, being at the same time assented to.

What occurred in the latter part of this Monday's sitting (the early part was occupied by the speeches of Pym and young Vane in reference to the Minutes of Council, and by the examination of the elder Vane's secretary as to their abstraction from his cabinet), the reader who turns to the facsimile given at the close of this volume may study from D'Ewes's blotted record, taken down while yet the sitting went on, and while the men named in it were busy talking and writing around him. He will probably, however, elect to avail himself of the labour we have ourselves already given to the task of decyphering it, and prefer to read it in the plain print subjoined. The report is of the roughest kind, as will be observed; passing abruptly from one point to another without explanation, and leaving upon record things subsequently laid aside. But its evidence is decisive as to the personal matters for which alone it is here introduced; and never more can be raised the question, so long and eagerly debated, of whether or not Hampden quitted Pym's side during the discussion of the Bill of Attainder, and temporarily joined with the party whom he afterwards very determinedly opposed. Upon this, as upon every other great incident of the time, the two friends held their course together, from first to last. It must be kept ever in view, however, that they did not oppose the introduction of the Bill of Attainder as having any doubt either of Strafford's guilt, or of the sufficiency of the proofs against him. They opposed it for the express reason that they held the proofs already placed before the Lords to be sufficient; and their subsequent assent to it, when the majority finally determined on that course, involved no inconsistency.

"Mr. Pymme shewed that the Committee appointed "for the managing of the Evidence agst the Earle of "Strafford had prepared certaine heads for a conference "with the Lords.

"Mr. Maynard begann where Mr. Pymme ended & furth [further] shewed that wee were to desire a conference. "1. A Narrative of the evidence concerning the triall