of passing
into the hands of a mutinous and unpaid army. The general alarm sealed
Strafford's doom. In plotting for his release, the plotters had marked
him out as a life which was the main danger to the new state of things.
Strafford still hoped in his master; he had a pledge from Charles that
his life should be saved; and on the first of May the king in a formal
message to the Parliament had refused his assent to the Bill of
Attainder. But the Queen had no mind that her husband should suffer for
a minister whom she hated, and before her pressure the king gave way. On
the tenth of May he gave his assent to the bill by commission, and on
the twelfth Strafford passed to his doom. He died as he had lived. His
friends warned him of the vast multitude gathered before the Tower to
witness his fall. "I know how to look death in the face, and the people
too," he answered proudly. "I thank God I am no more afraid of death,
but as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I
went to bed." As the axe fell, the silence of the great multitude was
broken by a universal shout of joy. The streets blazed with bonfires.
The bells clashed out from every steeple. "Many," says an observer,
"that came to town to see the execution rode in triumph back, waving
their hats, and with all expressions of joy through every town they
went, crying, 'His head is off. His head is off!'"

[Sidenote: The Panic.]

The failure of the attempt to establish a Parliamentary ministry, the
discovery of the army plot, the execution of Strafford, were the turning
points in the history of the Long Parliament. Till May 1641 there was
still hope for an accommodation between the Commons and the Crown by
which the freedom that had been won might have been taken as the base of
a new system of government. But from that hour little hope of such an
agreement remained. The Parliament could put no trust in the king. The
air at Westminster, since the discovery of the army conspiracy, was full
of rumours and panic; the creak of a few boards revived the memory of
the Gunpowder Plot, and the members rushed out of the House of Commons
in the full belief that it was undermined. On the other hand, Charles
put by all thought of reconciliation. If he had given his assent to
Strafford's death, he never forgave the men who had wrested his assent
from him. From that hour he regarded his consent to the new measures as
having been extorted by force, and to be retracte