were as diligently instructed in the true principles of their duty, as they are terrified and amazed by preachers, with fruitless and dangerous doctrines concerning the nature of man’s will, and many other philosophical points that tend not at all to the salvation of their souls in the world to come, nor to their ease in this life, but only to the direction towards the clergy of that duty which they ought to perform to the King.
B. For aught I see, all the states of Christendom will be subject to these fits of rebellion, as long as the world lasteth.
A. Like enough; and yet the fault (as I have said) may be easily mended, by mending the Universities.
B. How long had the Parliament now sitten?
A. It began November the 3rd, 1640. My Lord of Strafford was impeached of treason before the Lords, November the 12th, sent to the Tower November the 22nd, his trial began March the 22nd, and ended April the 13th. After his trial he was voted guilty of high-treason in the House of Commons, and after that in the Lords’ House, May the 6th; and on the 12th of May beheaded.
B. Great expedition; but could not the King, for all that, have saved him by a pardon?
A. The King had heard all that passed at his trial, and had declared himself unsatisfied concerning the justice of their sentence. And, I think, notwithstanding the danger of his own person from the fury of the people, and that he was counselled to give way to his execution, not only by such as he most relied on, but also by the Earl of Strafford himself, he would have pardoned him, if that could have preserved him against the tumult raised and countenanced by the Parliament itself, for the terrifying of those they thought might favour him. And yet the King himself did not stick to confess afterwards, that he had done amiss, in that he did not rescue him.
B. It was an argument of good disposition in the King. But I never read that Augustus Cæsar acknowledged that he had done a fault, in abandoning Cicero to the fury of his enemy Antonius: perhaps because Cicero, having been
