lieved Charles to have shown more sympathy with it than was the case. At all events, Pym was more strongly than ever convinced of the necessity of depriving the elements of resistance of a leader so capable as Strafford; and, with his usual instinct for gaining the popular ear, he pushed forward the charge of attempting to bring the Irish army into England, and supported it by the evidence of the notes which had come into Vane's hands. On 10 April, the lords having shown their willingness to treat Strafford with judicial fairness, the commons returned to their own house. Taking cognisance of Vane's notes, they resolved to drop the impeachment, and to proceed by bill of attainder. Pym, anxious to retain judicial forms, would gladly have avoided the change. He was indeed forced to give way at first, but he soon regained his influence; and, though the bill of attainder was formally persisted in, the commons consented to allow its managers to reply on the 13th to Strafford's defence and the legal arguments to be urged for and against him, just as if the impeachment had not been dropped. Pym's speech on the 13th was the principal exposition of the constitutional views which at this time prevailed in the House of Commons. In his anxiety to save Strafford, Charles again held out hopes of promotion to the parliamentary leaders, and before the end of April there was once more talk of making Pym chancellor of the exchequer. Twice in the course of a week he was admitted to an interview with the king (Tomkins to Lambe, 26 April, State Papers, Dom. cccclxxix. 74).
On both sides there was too much heat to allow of such an arrangement. The events of Sunday, 2 May, cost Strafford his life. Movements of armed men were heard of, and an attempt was made by Charles to gain possession of the Tower. On the 3rd there were tumults at Westminster. Pym, in the House of Commons, laid the blame not on the king, but on his counsellors, and asserted it to be the business of parliament ‘to be careful that he have good counsellors about him, and to let him understand that he is bound to maintain the laws, and that we take care for the maintaining of the word of God.’ This speech contained the germ of the Grand Remonstrance. Pym proceeded to suggest a declaration of the intentions of the house (Verney Notes, p. 66), a suggestion on which was based the protestation circulated for subscription in the kingdom.
It was dread of armed intervention which made Pym deaf to all appeals for mercy to Strafford. He had good information on all that passed at court, and everything that he heard convinced him that some desperate measures were projected. That he might carry parliament with him, on 5 May he revealed his knowledge of a design to bring the army up to Westminster. On this the lords took alarm, and passed not only the attainder bill, but another bill forbidding the dissolution of parliament without its own consent. On 10 May the royal assent was given to both bills, and Strafford was executed on the 11th.
As far as law could avail, Pym's policy had made parliament master of the situation. Charles could not get rid of the houses, and, as they took care to grant supplies only for a limited period, he would be obliged to conform his actions to their pleasure. Against force no legal defences could make provision, and it was against the employment of force by the king that Pym's efforts were now directed. A series of measures passed by parliament for the abolition of special powers acquired by the Tudor sovereigns were accepted by Charles, and preparations were made for disbanding both the English and the Scottish armies in the north of England. The prospect of the spreading among his adversaries of dissensions on ecclesiastical affairs was a source of encouragement to Charles. On 8 June the Bishops' Exclusion Bill had been thrown out by the lords, and the Root and Branch Bill, for the abolition of episcopacy, though supported by Pym and his friends in the house, roused strong opposition among those who had joined in the attack on the temporal authority of the crown. As far as we can enter into Pym's thoughts, his original view in favour of a modified episcopal system now gave way to a policy of total extirpation of bishops, because he believed that bishops nominated by the crown would always be subservient instruments of a hostile court. He was, however, as far as Falkland from desiring to establish in England a Scottish presbytery, and the Root and Branch Bill accordingly provided for the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by lay commissioners.
By the early part of June a second army plot had been concocted, in which Charles undoubtedly had a hand, and it may be presumed that some knowledge of it reached Pym before 22 June, when he carried up to the lords the ten propositions, asking them, among other things, to join in disbanding both the English and the Scottish armies, to remove evil counsellors, and to appoint such as parliament ‘may have cause to confide in’ (Lords' Journals, iv. 285). Charles agreed to disband the armies, but refused to acknowledge the supremacy of parliament by
