and hastened the next morning to an
interview with the king. But he had to deal with men as energetic as
himself. He was just laying his scheme before Charles when the news
reached him that Pym was at the bar of the Lords with his impeachment
for high treason. On the morning of the 11th of November the doors of
the House of Commons had been locked, Strafford's impeachment voted, and
carried by Pym with 300 members at his back to the bar of the Lords. The
Earl hurried at once to the Parliament. "With speed," writes an
eye-witness, "he comes to the House: he calls rudely at the door," and,
"with a proud glooming look, makes towards his place at the board-head.
But at once many bid him void the House, so he is forced in confusion to
go to the door till he was called." He was only recalled to hear his
committal to the Tower. He was still resolute to retort the charge of
treason on his foes, and "offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone
without a word." The keeper of the Black Rod demanded his sword as he
took him in charge. "This done, he makes through a number of people
towards his coach, no man capping to him, before whom that morning the
greatest of all England would have stood uncovered."

[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministers.]

The blow was quickly followed up. Windebank, the Secretary of State, was
charged with a corrupt favouring of recusants, and escaped to France;
Finch, the Lord Keeper, was impeached, and fled in terror over sea. In
December Laud was himself committed to the charge of the Usher. The
shadow of what was to come falls across the pages of his diary, and
softens the hard temper of the man into a strange tenderness. "I stayed
at Lambeth till the evening," writes the Archbishop, "to avoid the gaze
of the people. I went to evening prayer in my chapel. The Psalms of the
day and chapter fifty of Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me
worthy of it, and fit to receive it. As I went to my barge, hundreds of
my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my
house. For which I bless God and them." In February Sir Robert Berkeley,
one of the judges who had held that ship-money was legal, was seized
while sitting on the Bench and committed to prison. In the very first
days of the Parliament a yet more emphatic proof of the downfall of the
royal system had been given by the recall of Prynne and his fellow
"martyrs" from their prisons, and by their entry in triumph into London,
amidst th