The stirring events of the great rebellion, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, which so profoundly affected the life and institutions of the nation in other ways, touched the bench but slightly. In the early months of the Long Parliament a resolution was passed by both houses of Parliament to the effect that the judges’ appointments should be for the future _quamdiu se bene gesserint_, and on January 15, 1641, the king gave effect to this by a declaration that they should no longer hold office at the pleasure of the crown but during good behaviour. For twenty-four years the improvement was maintained in theory; in practice the old system kept its hold unshaken. During the short remainder of Charles I’s reign the judges were concerned on only two occasions in affairs of state. These were however enough to demonstrate that the change in the manner of their appointments had by no means the result of rehabilitating the character of the bench and restoring to it the quality, which it had long lacked, of independence. One of the first acts of the Long Parliament, after dealing with the vital question of ship-money, was to turn upon the judges who had lent the weight of their names to the decision which pronounced its legality. Finch was violently attacked as a traitor in the House of Commons, and his impeachment voted with scarcely a dissentient voice. The Lord Keeper preferred the path of safety to that of dignity and fled to Holland on board a royal vessel, leaving the impeachment to be formally concluded in his absence. At the same time proceedings were commenced against six other judges who had sat at Hampden’s trial.[490] The effect of this was immediate. Only once again did the judges come into prominence before the outbreak of the Civil War. Scarcely five months after Finch’s impeachment the House of Lords demanded their opinion whether or no the articles against Strafford amounted to making him guilty of treason. Without hesitation they replied unanimously that upon the articles which the Lords had voted to be proved it was their opinion that the Earl of Strafford did deserve to undergo the pains and penalties of high treason by law.[491] Not only was their conduct in delivering this extra-judicial opinion decidedly irregular,[492] but their decision was in flagrant opposition to the clearest dictates of justice and rules of law, for the accusations against Strafford cannot be regarded as tantamount, or even approaching, to a substantial charge of treason.[493] The fault lay not in their intelligence, but in the system which had made their honesty an asset in the treasury of government, and had robbed them of their ability to judge facts in the light of law and reason without reference to principles of statecraft or the struggle of parties. It was not upon the merits of the case that their decision was based now that it was unfavourable to the administration, any more than their favourable decisions had been based