While, free from the excitements of the seventeenth century, we calmly look at Strafford's deserts, is it fair to apply our standard of judgment to the patriots and Puritans of 1641 who took part in his condemnation? Right and wrong, it is true, in themselves are unalterable and eternal, but there are almost infinite degrees in the blameworthiness of men doing wrong, as there are in the meritoriousness of men doing right. Allowance being made for different ideas of criminal jurisprudence in the times of the Stuarts from those now current; and excuses being admitted for stern severity provoked by long oppression,--the patriots and Puritans who put Strafford to death must not be condemned as men would be who had done such a thing in our own times. If it be allowed that the Puritans acted under a sense of mistaken justice; that, standing before the bar of Heaven, they could lay their hands on their breasts, and plead the convictions of conscience and the impulses of patriotism; then, however condemnatory the deed, lenient should be the sentence on the offenders. I am not however prepared to contend for the absence of all vindictiveness in the men who brought Strafford to trial, and then sent him to the scaffold. One cannot but fear that a large amount of alloy was mixed up with the purity of their justice. But that must be left for the decision of a far different tribunal from any which we can erect. [Sidenote: 1641, May.] Every reader of English history is aware of the perplexity of Charles when required by Parliament to sanction the death of his Minister. He did not believe Strafford guilty of treason, and he consequently regarded his execution as unjust. Yet he sought for some method of pacifying his conscience, and consulted certain Bishops[181] as to the course that he should pursue. The general advice they gave is reported by the most distinguished of the counsellors. Ussher puts it thus: The matter of fact must be distinguished from the matter of law; of the matter of fact the King may judge; if he do not conceive the Earl guilty, he cannot in justice condemn him; but as for law, what is treason, and what is not, the King must rely on the opinion of the judges.[182] [Sidenote: _Lord Strafford._]