But Wentworth,—­who ever names him without thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an antique Jupiter; of that brow, that eye, that cheek, that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the events of many stormy and disastrous years, high enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and to defy a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvas of Vandyke?  Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned before the tribunal of history which he excited at the bar of the House of Lords.  In spite of ourselves, we sometimes feel towards his memory a certain relenting similar to that relenting which his defence, as Sir John Denham tells us, produced in Westminster Hall.

This great, brave, bad man entered the House of Commons at the same time with Hampden, and took the same side with Hampden.  Both were among the richest and most powerful commoners in the kingdom.  Both were equally distinguished by force of character and by personal courage.  Hampden had more judgment and sagacity than Wentworth.  But no orator of that time equalled Wentworth in force and brilliancy of expression.  In 1626 both these eminent men were committed to prison by the King, Wentworth, who was among the leaders of the Opposition, on account of his parliamentary conduct, Hampden, who had not as yet taken a prominent part in debate, for refusing to pay taxes illegally imposed.

Here their path separated.  After the death of Buckingham, the King attempted to seduce some of the chiefs of the Opposition from their party; and Wentworth was among those who yielded to the seduction.  He abandoned his associates, and hated them ever after with the deadly hatred of a renegade.  High titles and great employments were heaped upon him.  He became Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, President of the Council of the North; and he employed all his power for the purpose of crushing those liberties of which he had been the most distinguished champion.  His counsels respecting public affairs were fierce and arbitrary.  His correspondence with Laud abundantly proves that government without parliaments, government by the sword, was his favourite scheme.  He was angry even that the course of justice between man and man should be unrestrained by the royal prerogative.  He grudged to the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas even that measure of liberty which the most absolute of the Bourbons allowed to the Parliaments of France.  In Ireland, where he stood in place of the King, his practice was in strict accordance with his theory.  He set up the authority of the executive government over that of the courts of law.