Note see Appendix — Chapter II

Page 48.—The story of the meeting of Pym and Strafford told by Dr. James Welwood in his “History of the Last Hundred Years preceding the Revolution in 1688.” More authentic illustrations of the close connection of Wentworth with the popular leaders before his acceptance of office are to be found in the Strafford Letters and Despatches. While Eliot was confined in the Tower, Lord Cottingdon wrote to Wentworth in Ireland that his ‘old dear friend, Sir John Eliot, is very like to die.’ Again, Laud, in one of his letters to Wentworth, communicates the following piece of intelligence: “When we came to this passage in your despatch, ‘Again, I did beseech them to look well about, and to be wise by others’ harms, they were not ignorant of the misfortunes these meetings’ [i.e., Parliaments] ‘had run in England of late years,’ here a good friend of yours interposed, ‘Quorum pars magna fui.’” “It pierces my heart,” says Strafford himself on his trial, “though not with guilt, yet with sorrow, that in my gray hairs I should be so much misunderstood by the companions of my youth, with whom I have formerly spent so much time.” Wentworth’s contemporaries certainly considered him as an apostate. An attempt has recently been made (Quarterly Review, April, 1874), to defend him from the charge. The article bears evidence of most careful research, and the writer certainly shows that in the Parliament of 1628, Wentworth differed from Eliot on details as to the best means to be employed in securing the liberty of the subject, but does not prove that he differed about the end in view. The main facts remain that Wentworth was imprisoned in 1627 for resisting a forced loan, that he was returned to the Parliament of 1628 as an extreme advocate of popular rights in the teeth of an opposition from the court, which made his supporters afraid to disclose their names. Wentworth’s speeches in this Parliament, as quoted in the article itself, seem to tell their own tale. “I cannot forget the duty I owe to my country, and unless we be secured in our liberties, we cannot give (any supplies);” again he wished the committee “to draw into a law what may assure us of our liberty of our persons and propriety of our goods before we report the resolution of our gift;” and further, “some character must be put upon it (this law), and the council must not on every occasion leap out of it. Therefore, let some penalty be set on the violators thereof.” When the king promised to observe Magna Charta, and to govern according to the laws and statutes of the realm, and wished Parliament to give up the proposed bill and trust to this declaration, Wentworth persevered against the king’s express wish, and proposed to “confirm Magna Charta and those other laws, together with the king’s declarations,” by the objectionable bill. This was the man who became the king’s minister without conditions, the chief enemy of popular rights, and the advocate of the policy of Thorough.