Note 83 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
Clarendon Papers, i. 449, 543, 594; Rushworth Abridg. iii. 43; Clar. Hist. i. 386 (1826); Strafford Letters, i. 497, et post. This proceeding against Lord Mountnorris excited much dissatisfaction in England; those of the council who disliked Strafford making it a pretext to inveigh against his arrogance. But the king, invariably on the severe and arbitrary side, justified the measure, which silenced the courtiers. P. 512. Be it added, that the virtuous Charles took a bribe of £6000 for bestowing Mountnorris's office on Sir Adam Loftus, not out of distress through the parsimony of parliament, but to purchase an estate in Scotland. Id. 511.
Hume, in extenuating the conduct of Strafford as to Mountnorris's trial, says, that, "sensible of the iniquity of the sentence, he procured his majesty's free pardon to Mountnorris." There is not the slightest evidence to warrant the words in italics; on the contrary, he always justified the sentence, and had most manifestly procured it. The king, in return to a moving petition of Lady Mountnorris, permitted his release from confinement, "on making such a submission as my lord-deputy shall approve."