The following Sunday was to him a day for the most painful determination--for what an admission it was, to recognise as a capital crime the having executed his own will and purposes. The political tendency, if fully carried out, obviously was to separate the crown from its advisers, and make them dependent on another authority than that of the King; to make the King’s power inferior to that of the Parliament. Charles I had solemnly declared that he found the accused not guilty of high treason: he had given him his word to let no evil befal him, not to let a hair of his head be harmed. Could he nevertheless [A.D. 1641.] sanction his execution? Verily it was a great moment for the King: what glory would attend his memory had he lived up to his convictions, and opposed to the pressure put upon him an immovable moral strength! To this end was he King, and possessed the right of sanctioning or of rejecting the resolutions of Parliament: that was the theory of the constitution. But among the five bishops whom the King called to his side in this great case of conscience, only one advised him to follow his own convictions. The others represented that it was not the King’s business to form a personal opinion on the legality of a sentence; that the acts which Strafford himself admitted had now been pronounced to be treasonable; and that he might allow the judgment without being convinced of its accuracy, as he would a judgment of the King’s Bench or at the assizes. This may be the meaning of the doctrine, attributed to Bishop Williams, that the King has a double conscience, a public and a private one, and that he may lawfully do as King what he would not do as a private man[255]. But the constitutional principle essentially was that personal convictions in this high office should possess a negative influence. The distinction must be regarded as an insult to the theory of the crown, implying its annihilation as a free power in the State. King Charles felt this fully: all the days of his life he regretted as one of his greatest faults, that in this case he had not followed the dictates of his conscience. But he was told that he must not ruin himself, his future, and his house for the sake of a single man: the question was not whether he would save Strafford, but whether he would perish with him. The movement begun in the city was spreading throughout the country; from every county men were coming up to join the city populace[256]. [A.D. 1641.] From a letter of one of the best informed and most intelligent eye-witnesses we gather that the idea of appealing to the commons of the country against the King’s refusal was mooted in the Lower House[257]. And so far as the assurances given to the Viceroy of Ireland were concerned, a letter from Strafford was laid before the King, in which he released him from his promise, and entreated him to avoid the disasters which would result from the rejection of the bill, and to sacrifice him, the