ned by all the members.
It was sent up to the lords, and signed by all of them, except
Southampton and Robarts. Orders were given by the commons alone, without
other authority that it should be subscribed by the whole nation. The
protestation was in itself very inoffensive, even insignificant; and
contained nothing but general declarations, that the subscribers would
defend their religion and liberties.[*] But it tended to increase the
popular panic, and intimated, what was more expressly declared in the
preamble, that these blessings were now exposed to the utmost peril.

Alarms were every day given of new conspiracies.[**] In Lancashire,
great multitudes of Papists were assembling: secret meetings were held
by them in caves and under ground in Surrey: they had entered into
a plot to blow up the river with gunpowder, in order to drown the
city:[***] provisions of arms were making beyond sea: sometimes France,
sometimes Denmark, was forming designs against the kingdom; and the
populace, who are always terrified with present, and enraged with
distant dangers, were still further animated in their demands of justice
against the unfortunate Strafford.

The king came to the house of lords: and though he expressed his
resolution, for which he offered them any security, never again to
employ Strafford in any branch of public business, he professed himself
totally dissatisfied with regard to the circumstance of treason, and on
that account declared his difficulty in giving his assent to the bill
of attainder.[****] The commons took fire, and voted it a breach of
privilege for the king to take notice of any bill depending before the
houses, Charles did not perceive that his attachment to Strafford was
the chief motive for the bill; and that the greater proofs he gave of
anxious concern for this minister, the more inevitable did he render his
destruction.

About eighty peers had constantly attended Strafford's trial; but such
apprehensions were entertained on account of the popular tumults, that
only forty-five were present when the bill of attainder was brought into
the house. Yet of these nineteen had the courage to vote against it;[v]
a certain proof that if entire freedom had been allowed, the bill had
been rejected by a great majority.

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 252. Rush. vol. v. p. 241. Warwick,
p. 180.

** Dugdale, p. 69. Franklyn, p. 901.

*** Sir Edward Walker p. 349.

**** Rush. vol. v.