[Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, born 1593, executed 1641. At first a leading member of the opposition to Charles I in Parliament, he afterward joined the court party and became successively Viscount Wentworth and Earl of Strafford. As governor of Ireland, he organized the first standing army in English annals; and afterward formulated the policy of “Thorough”--an executive system which would have made Charles an absolute monarch, free of parliamentary or other shackles. His remarkable political genius inspired such dread that Parliament looked on his death as essential to their cause. He was impeached as a traitor, an indictment undoubtedly true, but which could not be legally proved. He was finally condemned by a bill of attainder. The worst blot on Charles I is that he should have yielded up Strafford to his foes with hardly a struggle. Though traitor to his country, he was the most loyal and devoted of servants to his king. Hume’s estimate of Strafford is more lenient than that of other historians.] In the former situation of the English Government, when the sovereign was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose his ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them, in expectation that they will afterward become more careful not to diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims of government. But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant to those of the Puritans that the leaders whom he gained lost from that moment all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors with implacable hatred and resentment. This was the case with Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom the king created first a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed in him; his character was stately and austere--more fitted to procure esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong impressions from private interest and ambition.