ed and forty. Of these a hundred and
five were in their places. Many thought that the Bishops ought to have
been permitted, if not required, to withdraw; for, by an ancient canon,
those who ministered at the altars of God were forbidden to take any
part in the infliction of capital punishment. On the trial of a peer
impeached of high treason, the prelates always retire, and leave the
culprit to be absolved or condemned by laymen. And surely, if it be
unseemly that a divine should doom his fellow creatures to death as a
judge, it must be still more unseemly that he should doom them to death
as a legislator. In the latter case, as in the former, he contracts
that stain of blood which the Church regards with horror; and it will
scarcely be denied that there are some grave objections to the shedding
of blood by Act of Attainder which do not apply to the shedding of blood
in the ordinary course of justice. In fact, when the bill for taking
away the life of Strafford was under consideration, all the spiritual
peers withdrew. Now, however, the example of Cranmer, who had voted
for some of the most infamous acts of attainder that ever passed, was
thought more worthy of imitation; and there was a great muster of lawn
sleeves. It was very properly resolved that, on this occasion, the
privilege of voting by proxy should be suspended, that the House should
be called over at the beginning and at the end of every sitting, and
that every member who did not answer to his name should be taken into
custody. [762]

Meanwhile the unquiet brain of Monmouth was teeming with strange
designs. He had now reached a time of life at which youth could no
longer be pleaded as an excuse for his faults; but he was more wayward
and eccentric than ever. Both in his intellectual and in his moral
character there was an abundance of those fine qualities which may be
called luxuries, and a lamentable deficiency of those solid qualities
which are of the first necessity. He had brilliant wit and ready
invention without common sense, and chivalrous generosity and delicacy
without common honesty. He was capable of rising to the part of the
Black Prince; and yet he was capable of sinking to the part of Fuller.
His political life was blemished by some most dishonourable actions;
yet he was not under the influence of those motives to which most of the
dishonourable actions of politicians are to be ascribed. He valued
power little and money less. Of fear he was utt