lest he should be torn to pieces by the mob in passing to execution, he replied, "I die to please the people, and I will die in their own way"." With such stern indifference to his fate, he was not likely to debase his dignity by puerile expressions of it. ⚫ [Flecknoe has an epigram "On the Lady Rockingham's nursing her Children herself," which thus concludes: "Mirror of mothers! in whom all may see By what you are, what others ought to be, For so, if milk be bloud, but cloath'd in white, You shew yourself great STRAFFORD's daughter right; You, for to give your milk, and he his bloud." Epigrams, 1670, p. 35.] 'Lord Roscommon, in one of his poems, makes the ghost of the old house of commons, say to the new one: "I chang'd true freedom for the name of free, And grew seditious for variety: All that oppos'd me were to be accus'd, And by the laws illegally abus'd; The robe was summon'd, Maynard in the head In legal murder none so deeply read; I brought him to the bar, where once he stood Stain'd with the yet unexpiated blood Of the brave STRAFFORD; where three kingdoms rung With his accumulative hackney-tongue; Prisoners and witnesses were waiting by, These had been taught to swear, and those to die; And to expect their arbitrary fates, Some for ill faces, some for good estates." Alexander Gill, the younger, published an elegy on Thomas, earl of Strafford, according to Wood's Athenæ, vol. ii. col. 22.] [Sir Thomas Wentworth, born in 1593, was lineally descended, as the preamble to his patent sets forth, from John of Gaunt. He spent some years at Cambridge, where he used great diligence, and made great progress in learning. On quitting the university he travelled abroad for farther accomplishments. In 1614 he became possessed of a family estate of £6000 per annum; was appointed custos rotulorum for the county of York; and made a conspicuous figure in the English annals both as commoner and peer, and in the cabinet as well as the field. He sided with the anti-courtiers, till he saw they aimed to overthrow the constitution, and then heartily concurred with the king's ministers, which so highly exasperated the popular demagogues, that they never ceased their machinations till this true patriot was brought to the block. In 1628 he was created by Charles the first baron and viscount Wentworth, and soon after president of York, and privy-counsellor 3. In 16334 he • New Biog. Dict. vol. xv. p. 233. Corrected by sir G. W. Radcliffe's Essay towards a Life of Lord Strafford. 3 Howell wrote to his father in December 1630, "Sir T. Wentworth hath been a good while lord president of York, and since is sworn privy-counsellor, and made baron and viscount. The duke of Buckingham himself flew not so high in so short a revolution of time. My lord Powis (who affects him not so much) being told that the heralds had fetched his pedigree from the blood-royal, viz. from John of Gaunt, said, 'Damme, if ever he come to be king of England, I will turn ' rebel.'" Fam. Letters, book i. p. 226. Or 1631, ut supra, where he is said to have exercised power with great severity: and Mrs. Macauley has incontestably was nominated lord deputy of Ireland, where he restored tranquillity and effected a conformity in public worship, the convocation there having agreed to receive the articles of religion established in England in the time of queen Elizabeth. In 1636 he came to England to give an account of his government in Ireland, for which he was highly approved and commended, and after six months absence he returned to Ireland. In 1639 he was sent for by the king, and dignified with the titles of baron Raby and carl of Strafford, and 300n after appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, and elected knight of the garter. The puritan interest, however, prevailing in the English parliament, and the chiefs of that party being aware that his lordship would be an insurmountable obstacle to their designs against monarchy and episcopacy, it was resolved to get rid of him. Soon after the meeting of parliament in November 1640, Pym, his implacable enemy, appeared at the bar of the house of lords, and impeached the earl of proved, says Granger, that some parts of his conduct coincided too much with the arbitrary proceedings of Charles the first. When that haughty statesman, sir Thomas Wentworth, was advanced to the dignity of earl of Strafford, and dignified with other titles, he, in contempt of sir Henry Vane, solicited and gained the title of baron of Raby, which the Vanes looked up, and justly thought they had a claim to. This insolence of Strafford cost him his head. Sir Henry Vane associated himself with Pym, and pursued him with the most unrelenting vengeance. Pennant's Tour from Alston-moor, p. 27. high treason, in the name of all the commons of England. Every method was taken to deprive him of the evidence of those who could best have exculpated him; yet his prosecutors were not able to make good their charge, according to the common laws of the land, and therefore proceeded against him by a bill of attainder, which passed through both houses, though not without difficulty. In its last stage it met with some laudable opposition from the king; but the royal sanction at length being given to it by commission, on May 10, 1641, lord Strafford was two days after conducted to the scaffold on Tower-hill, where he suffered with a dignity and composure suitable to his character as a great and good man. Granger 7 describes the earl of Strafford, from the general representation of our historians, as great from his honours and preferments; but much greater in and from himself. His desertion from the popular party, the elevation of his rank, the plenitude of his power, and the dread of his abilities, rendered him in the highest degree obnoxious to the puritans, who persecuted him with unrelenting hatred. He pleaded his cause upon his trial with a clearness and strength of reason that must have acquitted him in any court but such as was determined to condemn him. When he saw that the force of argument was not likely to prevail, he had recourse to the pathetic, of which he was 6 Collins's Peerage, vol. iv. p. 289. |