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fessing himself sorry for the offence taken against him, he desired their Lordships to look upon the whole course of his life, which (he said) was such, that he did verily persuade himself, not one man in the Lower House did believe in his heart that he was a traitor.' He was here called to order by the Earl of Essex, who said it was an indecent reflexion upon that assembly, to suppose that they should accuse him of so high a crime, if they did not themselves believe him guilty.' The Archbishop then desired, that he might be proceeded against in the ancient parliamentary way;' to which Lord Say answered, he must not prescribe to them, how they should proceed.' His Grace had not long withdrawn, when he was summoned to the bar, and by the Gentleman-Usher of the Black Rod, pursuant to an order of the House, taken into custody. Their Lordships also ordered, that no member of their house should visit him. The Scottish Commissioners, who were come to Ripon in Yorkshire in order to negotiate an accommodation between the two countries, now despatched a strong remonstrance against him, which gave additional strength to the Articles then in preparation. These Articles, to the number of fourteen, the Commons sent up to the House of

* The substance of them was reduced by his counsel to three general charges: 1. An endeavour to subvert the fundamental Laws of the realm, and instead thereof to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government against law; 2. An endeavour to subvert the true Religion as by law established, and instead thereof to set up Popish superstition and idolatry; 3. An endeavour to subvert the rights of Parliament, and the ancient course of parliamentary proceedings, and by false and malicious slanders to incense the King against parliaments.

The defence set up in his behalf was, that admitting all the

Lords, desiring time to exhibit the proofs of each; and that he might in the interim be kept safe. Upon which he was conveyed to the Tower, March 1, 1641, amidst the reproaches and insults of the multitudes, who lined the streets to see him pass. The next care of the Lower House was, to release all who had been illegally imprisoned by decrees of the Courts of StarChamber and High-Commission, and to oblige those by whom they had been sentenced, to make them all the reparation in their power.

In conformity to this principle the Archbishop, having been the principal agent in the severe proceedings against Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, was ordered to make them satisfaction respectively. He was farther fined 20,000l. for the active part, which he had taken in the Convocation of 1640.

In May 1641, his Grace was farther sentenced by the House of Lords to pay 500l. to Sir Robert Howard, for false imprisonment. In June, he resigned the chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and in October, the Lords sequestered his ecclesiastical jurisdiction into the hands of his inferior officers, injoining that he should not dispose of any benefice without the previous approbation of that House. In the January following, they ordered the arms and ordnance, which he kept at his palace at Lambeth, to be taken away by the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex;* and before the end of the year, all the rents and profits of his see were appropriated to

charges to be true, they did not by any law amount to high treason.

* By his own account, he had as many arms as cost him upward of 3001.; for what purpose, as a churchman, it is hard to be conceived.

the use of the commonwealth: nor could he upon petition obtain even a part of some wood and coals remaining at Lambeth, and valued by him at 2007., though he wanted them for his necessary use in the Tower.

On the twenty-fifth of April, 1643, a motion was made in the House of Commons to transport him to New England, but it was over-ruled On the ninth of May, his goods and books at Lambeth were seized, and the goods sold publicly for a third of their value.* On the sixteenth of the same month, an Ordinance of Parliament was issued, injoining him not to confer any benefice without an order from both Houses and a fortnight afterward Mr. Prynne, who had become a member of the House of Commons, received from the Close Committee a warrant to search his room in the Tower for papers, which he executed with indecent rigour; examining even his pockets, and carrying away his Diary,† his papers of private devotions, and the very memoranda drawn up for his defence. Shortly after this event, having bestowed a living without regard to the above-mentioned Ordinance, he was totally suspended; and on the tenth of October, ten additional articles of im

This has been pronounced an unwarrantable measure, as he had not yet been brought to his trial, and legally convicted. But he had been sentenced to pay one sum of 5001., and perhaps by this time Prynne, Bastwicke, and Burton had made their demands of reparation; so that the seizure and sale abovementioned probably took place, to secure payment to the injured parties.

This was, ungenerously, published before his death. A promise likewise, it is said, was violated upon this occasion; Prynne having engaged to restore these papers to him within three days and having only returned a very small part of them.

peachment were carried up against him, and the Lords were requested to hasten his trial.

He had now been three years a prisoner in the Tower, and was so loosely guarded, that it was generally thought to be the intention even of his enemies that he should escape. The trial, however, at last came on March 12, 1644; and though much of the evidence was trifling or irrelevant, it sufficiently appeared, that he had laboured to extend the royal prerogative and the ecclesiastical power to a degree utterly inconsistent with the liberties of the people; that he had been active in enforcing the illegal claim of ship-money; that he had imprisoned, and punished, several persons contrary to law; and had been guilty of many arbitrary and cruel actions. His plea, that many of these were acts of the Privy Council,' if admitted, would go near to extinguish the personal responsibility of ministers: and it would, indeed, be a poor vindication of criminals of any description, if they were to allege, that they had accomplices in their crimes.'

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During his whole trial, he defended himself with uncommon eloquence, acuteness, and presence of mind; and, as appears from the report which he has left behind him of every day's hearing, evinced the greatest address and ability, mixed with the most sarcastic reflexions upon his adversaries. At length, after it had lasted twenty days, the Commons, finding their evidence insufficient to convict him of treason in the ordinary course of law, had recourse to the method which had been previously adopted in the case of the Earl of Strafford. On the thirteenth of November, a Bill of Attainder was read the first time in the Lower House, and

sent to the Upper on the sixteenth. There it remained till the fourth of January following, when it passed in a very thin assembly, the Lords present being over-awed (as some have stated) by the violence of the Earl of Pembroke, and the menaces of the mob without doors, and the King's pardon under the Great Seal being pleaded in vain in bar of the attainder.

The Primate received the news of his condemnation with signal fortitude; but finding the sentence to be that, which the law awards against high-treason, he made repeated applications to have it changed to beheading. In this request he was, at last, indulged; yet not without much opposition from those, who had suffered ignominious punishments under his decrees.

The tenth of January, 1645, being appointed for his execution, he was conducted to a scaffold on Tower Hill, where he made a long and affecting speech to the people. Numbers however eagerly enjoyed the melancholy spectacle, and behaved with great indecency to the last, creeping under the scaffold, and looking at him through the crevices of the boards; so that he was disturbed in his devotions, and obliged to desire the proper officers either to stop them with clay, or to remove the people, being unwilling (he said) that his blood should fall upon their heads.' The substance of his speech was, a declaration that he was a true member of the Church of England, and that he suffered for endeavouring an uniformity; an exculpation of the King from the charge of favouring Popery; and a solemn protestation at the hour of his death (the same, which he had before made at the bar of both Houses) that he was innocent of the points of treason charged

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