Note 634 — Chapter XI · (continued 2)

A motion to refer the heads of charge against Clarendon to a committee was lost by 194 to 128; Seymour and Osborne telling the noes, Birch and Clarges the ayes. Commons' Journals, Nov. 6, 1667. These names show how parties ran, Seymour and Osborne being high-flying cavaliers, and Birch a presbyterian. A motion that he be impeached for treason on the first article was lost by 172 to 103, the two former tellers for the ayes: Nov. 9. In the Harleian MS. 881, we have a copious account of the debates on this occasion, and a transcript in No. 1218. Sir Heneage Finch spoke much against the charge of treason; Maynard seems to have done the same. A charge of secret correspondence with Cromwell was introduced merely ad invidiam, the prosecutors admitting that it was pardoned by the act of indemnity, but wishing to make the chancellor plead that: Maynard and Hampden opposed it, and it was given up out of shame without a vote. Vaughan, afterwards chief justice, argued that counselling the king to govern by a standing army was treason at common law, and seems to dispute what Finch laid down most broadly, that there can be no such thing as a common law treason; relying on a passage in Glanvill, where "seductio domini regis" is said to be treason. Maynard stood up for the opposite doctrine. Waller and Vaughan argued that the sale of Dunkirk was treason, but the article passed without declaring it to be so; nor would the word have appeared probably in the impeachment, if a young Lord Vaughan had not asserted that he could prove Clarendon to have betrayed the king's councils, on which an article to that effect was carried by 161 to 89. Garraway and Littleton were forward against the chancellor; but Coventry seems to have taken no great part. See Pepys's Diary, Dec. 3rd and 6th, 1667. Baxter also says that the presbyterians were by no means strenuous against Clarendon, but rather the contrary, fearing that worse might come for the country, as giving him credit for having kept off military government. Baxter's Life, part iii. 21. This is very highly to the honour of that party whom he had so much oppressed, if not betrayed. "It was a notable providence of God, he says, that this man, who had been the great instrument of state, and done almost all, and had dealt so cruelly with the nonconformists should thus by his own friends be cast out and banished; while those that he had persecuted were the most moderate in his cause, and many for him. And it was a great ease that befel the good people throughout the land by his dejection. For his way was to decoy men into conspiracies or to pretend plots, and upon the rumour of a plot the innocent people of many countries were laid in prison, so that no man knew when he was safe. Whereas since then, though laws have been made more and more severe, yet a man knoweth a little better what he is to expect, when it is by a law that he is to be tried." Sham plots there seem to have been; but it is not reasonable to charge Clarendon with inventing them. Ralph, 122.