Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/84

 94; Savile to Lady Temple, November 1642; Papers relating to the Delinquency of Lord Savile, p. 2 in the Camden Society's Miscellany, vol. viii.) When the Long parliament met, on 3 Nov. 1640, Pym took his seat once more as member for Tavistock.

By the coincidence of his point of view with that of the vast majority of the new House of Commons, as well as by his political ability, Pym was admirably qualified to take the lead in the coming attack on the king's government. His belief that the attempt of Charles to set up an arbitrary government was closely connected with a Roman catholic plot to destroy protestantism in England was shared by most of his colleagues. He had himself seen Vane's notes of the speeches of Strafford and others at the meeting of the committee held after the dissolution of the Short parliament, and these had confirmed his views as to the existence of a deliberate design to destroy parliamentary institutions. In a speech delivered on 7 Nov. he pointed to the necessity of punishing offenders, a demand which he had forborne to make in the Short parliament (D'Ewes's ‘Diary,’ Harl. MS. 162, fol. 2b. The speech printed by Rushworth is that in the Short parliament). After again giving a detailed list of grievances, he contented himself with asking for a committee of inquiry. On the same day, in a committee on Irish affairs, a petition from Lord Mountnorris against Strafford having been read, Pym moved for a sub-committee to examine into Strafford's conduct in Ireland. Strafford himself was still in the north, and it is evident that Pym contemplated a deliberate inquiry into his misdeeds which might serve as the foundation of an impeachment at a future time. Strafford's arrival in London on the 9th, together with information conveyed to Pym of advice given by the hitherto all-powerful minister to accuse the parliamentary leaders of treason for bringing in the Scots, changed his plans. On the 11th, Pym, having first moved that the doors be locked, was empowered to carry up an immediate impeachment of Strafford. Strafford having been placed under arrest, and ultimately committed to the Tower, Pym and his associates could proceed in a leisurely way to collect evidence against him. On the 10th his name is found among those of the committee on the state of the kingdom which ultimately produced the Grand Remonstrance, and on the 11th he was placed on another committee to prepare charges against Strafford. During the following weeks he was placed on a considerable number of other committees.

In the collection of evidence against Strafford, Pym took a leading part. On 21 Dec., in a discussion on Finch's guilt, he emitted the doctrine, from which he never swerved, ‘that to endeavour the subversion of the laws of this kingdom was treason of the highest nature’ (D'Ewes's ‘Diary,’ Harl. MS. 162, f. 90). He had already, on the 16th, moved the impeachment of Laud. On the 30th he was placed on the committee on the bill for annual parliaments, which ultimately took the shape of the Triennial Act. On 28 Jan. 1641 he brought up from committee the detailed charges against Strafford.

So strong was Pym's position in parliament, and so hopeless did Charles's cause appear, that the queen attempted to win him over by obtaining his appointment as chancellor of the exchequer; while his patron, the Earl of Bedford, was to become lord treasurer. As far as we can now penetrate into the mysteries of this intrigue of the queen, it would seem that the plan was wrecked, not merely by Bedford's death not long afterwards, but by the incompatibility of the motives of the parties. Pym would doubtless have taken office readily as a pledge of a complete change of system. What the court wanted was to avert such a change by distributing offices among those who were supposed to advocate it for personal ends.

Up to this point the houses had been practically unanimous in demanding political reform. The debates on 8 and 9 Feb. on two ecclesiastical petitions showed a rift in the House of Commons, which afterwards widened into the split which brought on the civil war. Pym's contribution to the debate was ‘that he thought it was not the intention of the house to abolish episcopacy or the Book of Common Prayer, but to reform both wherein offence was given to the people’ (, A Just Vindication, 1660). It can hardly be doubted that, if the times had been propitious, the legislation of the Long parliament would have followed on these lines, and that Pym would have left his impress on the church as well as on the state of England.

For such legislation a time of quiet was needed, and what followed was a time of mutual suspicion. On 23 March Pym opened the case against Strafford, reiterating the opinion which he had expressed in Finch's case, that an attempt to subvert what would now be called the constitution was high treason. This allegation was bitterly resented by Charles, and on 1 April, or soon afterwards, Pym learnt the existence of a project for bringing the northern army up to Westminster, and it may be that he be-