Earl of Strafford. The earl had been governor
of Ireland, and had kept great order there, but severely;
and he thought that the king was the only person who
ought to have any power, and was always advising the
king to put down all resistance by the strong hand.
He was thought a hard man, and very much hated; and
when he was tried the Houses of Parliament gave sentence
against him that he should be beheaded. Still,
this could not be done without the king’s warrant;
and Charles at first stood out against giving up his
faithful friend. But there was a great tumult,
and the queen and her mother grew frightened, and
entreated the king to save himself by giving up Lord
Strafford, until at last he consented, and signed the
paper ordering the execution. It was a sad act
of weakness and cowardice, and he mourned over it
all the days of his life.
The Parliament only asked more and more, and at last
the king thought he must put a check on them.
So he resolved to go down to the House and cause
the five members who spoke against his power to be
taken prisoners in his own presence. But he
told his wife what he intended, and Henrietta Maria
was so foolish as to tell Lady Carlisle, one of her
ladies, and she sent warning to the five gentlemen,
so that they were not in the House when Charles arrived;
and the Londoners rose up in a great mob, and showed
themselves so angry with him, that he took the queen
and his children away into the country. The queen
took her daughter Mary to Holland to marry the Prince
of Orange; and there she bought muskets and gunpowder
for her husband’s army—for things
had come to pass now that a civil war began.
A civil war is the worst of all wars, for it is one
between the people of the same country. England
had had two civil wars before. There were the
Barons’ wars, between Henry III. and Simon de
Montfort, about the keeping of Magna Carta; and there
were the wars of the Roses, to settle whether York
or Lancaster should reign. This war between Charles
I. and the Parliament was to decide whether the king
or the House of Commons should be most powerful.
Those who held with the king called themselves Cavaliers,
but the friends of the Parliament called them Malignants;
and they in turn nicknamed the Parliamentary party
Roundheads, because they often chose not to wear their
hair in the prevailing fashion, long and flowing on
their shoulders, but cut short round their heads.
Most of the Roundheads were Puritans, and hated the
Prayer-book, and all the strict rules for religious
worship that Archbishop Laud had brought in; and the
Cavaliers, on the other hand, held by the bishops
and the Prayer-book. Some of the Cavaliers were
very good men indeed, and led holy and Christian lives,
like their master the king, but there were others
who were only bold, dashing men, careless and full
of mirth and mischief; and the Puritans were apt to
think all amusements and pleasures wrong, so that
they made out the Cavaliers worse than they really
were.
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