16. =The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641.=--On March 22, =1641=, Strafford's trial was opened in Westminster Hall. All his overbearing actions were set forth at length, but, after all had been said, a doubt remained whether they constituted high treason, that crime having been strictly defined by a statute of Edward III. (see p. 250). Young Sir Henry Vane, son of one of the Secretaries of State, found amongst his father's papers a note of a speech delivered by Strafford in a Committee of the Privy Council just after the breaking up of the Short Parliament, in which he had spoken of the king as loose and absolved from all rules of government. "You have an army in Ireland," Strafford was reported to have said, "you may employ here to reduce this kingdom, for I am confident as anything under heaven, Scotland shall not hold out five months." The Commons were convinced that 'this kingdom' meant England and not Scotland; but there were signs that the lords would be likely to differ from them, and the Commons accordingly abandoned the impeachment in which the lords sat as judges, and introduced a Bill of Attainder (see p. 401, note), to which, after the Commons had accepted it, the lords would have to give their consent if it was to become law, as in the case of any ordinary Bill. 17. =Strafford's Attainder and Execution.=--Pym would have preferred to go on with the impeachment, because he believed that Strafford was really guilty of high treason. He held that treason was not an offence against the king's private person, but against the king as a constitutional ruler, and that Strafford had actually diminished the king's authority by attempting to make him an absolute ruler, and thereby to weaken Charles's hold upon the goodwill of the people. This argument, however, did not break down the scruples of the Peers, and if Charles had kept quiet, he would have had them at least on his side. Neither he nor the queen could keep quiet. Before the end of =1640= she had urged the Pope to send her money and soldiers, and now she had a plan for bringing the defeated English army from Yorkshire to Westminster to overpower Parliament. Then came an attempt of Charles to get possession of the Tower, that he might liberate Strafford by force. Pym, who had learnt the secret of the queen's army-plot, disclosed it, and the peers, frightened at their danger, passed the Bill of Attainder. A mob gathered round Whitehall and howled for the execution of the sentence. Charles, fearing lest the mob should take vengeance on his wife, weakly signed a commission appointing commissioners to give the royal assent to the Bill, though he had promised Strafford that not a hair of his head should be touched. With the words, "Put not your trust in princes" on his lips, the great royalist statesman prepared for the scaffold. On May 12 he was beheaded, rather because men feared his ability than because his offences were legally punishable with death.