Strafford

Fi à faute de courage, je n’en aye que trop.

I

Dark steel, the muffled flash

On iron sleeve and cuff; black storm of armour,

Half-moons and wedges, scaly wings and hinges,

Ovals and quadrilaterals and cylinders

Moulded in nightshade metal.

                                                So he stands

With rod and sword of office, living fingers

Poised lightly on the sword-hilt, pale and still,

Wentworth, the black-browed Yorkshire magnate, with a rent-roll

Matched only by his pedigree, the long list

Of Norman-English quarters and alliances—

His patent granting D’Arcys and Despensers,

Latimers, Talboys, Ogles; Maud of Cambridge,

Quincy of Winchester; Grantmesnil of Hinckley,

Peveril of Nottingham, Ferrers Earl of Digby;

And crowned by John of Gaunt, Plantagenet.

And still the dark eyes gloom beneath the bent brows

As if impatient of himself, his greatness

Rooted in limitation, strength and weakness

Of fiery piercing mind, that wears the waning body;

And still resentful to be so resented

Pleads for his power and purpose, ‘chaste ambition’,

For ‘power as much as may be, that may be power to do more good’;

Yet as we read it further, pleads for pity:

‘Pity me for the power that drives me onward,

Far from content and quiet, yet farther, wider, climbing higher,

Haunted by thirst and shadow, to slip the bar of shadow

Lurking within, but finding greater darkness—

Envy attending me, black clouds above the world’s abyss,

Black streams that crawl below,

Envy, death’s rivers.’

II

Old histories, pale, stained, yet beautiful,

Unfold from yellowing papers, tarnished print,

Their tales of times of trouble, fear and war,

Dry death and living love.

                                        And still unsatisfied

Strafford lives on, he being of the kind

That are by nature never satisfied.

‘Ever desiring best things, never satisfied

That I had done enough, but did desire

Always, I might do better …’

So he in sadness at the trial,

And long before, in letter after letter

We see the difficulty draw him on—

Not for the greatness only, but the difficulty,

And will to do what others will not do,

Well knowing what he does:

                                             ‘I know, I know

And see the pinnacles I go upon,

Danger at every step, left solitary,

Left lonely in the heat of the day,

To bear it out alone …

                                   ‘And so have reason

To carry my eyes along, and know that all my actions

Are cast into the balance, weighed and fingered,

And rubbed and tested whether gross or light’;

And so defies them, flashing in despite,

‘Content a’ God’s name!

So let them take me up and cast me down.

If I do not prove paragon, fall square

In every coign of duty to my master,

Let me perish, and may no man pity me!’

III

So to his master’s work. And what a master!

Stubborn and yet irresolute, immovable

Always in wrong positions, only wavering in the right;

Thinking himself most gracious, but cold-hearted;

Cross-grained and peevish, far too fond of money;

Pleased as a woman with his easy cunning;

Anxious and yet self-righteous, self-justified

Yet sensitive to every rub or rumour.

—With that small elegance, that sad shut face,

Sullenly delicate, that wan mean dignity!…

Wentworth would have him King, uphold him King;

And for that narrow nature toiled and wrestled,

And had indeed upheld him for ten years

Caught in the closing circle of his rule:

Governing like a king away in Ireland—

Faithfully drawing odium on himself, the distant servant,

From sharking lords and lawyers—dealing justice,

Planted and dug and watered, pruned and fostered

Till the poor cried ‘Never so good a Lord Deputy!’

And the King’s purse was filled—to fatten courtiers.

IV

But to subdue two Kingdoms, distempered by their bungling King?

Come to his aid alone and patch his blunders,

Tied to the hot Archbishop and cold Church?

Enter the crumbling warrens of the Court,

Phosphorescent in decay, and tainted Council,

With Arundel and Holland, Henry Vane

And all ‘the Queen’s men’ itching for his ruin?

Yet never had he done so much, so quickly:

Ireland and back again, his mind on fire

To force his failing body—there and back,

Armed with four subsidies and public vows.

And ill already, to the captain’s terror

Puts out from Howth, beats out the storm to Chester

Through twenty hours of torment, where he touches

Half-dead with pain but, carried on to London,

Hurries to Charles and grips the wavering Council:

Bears down his enemies—the Queen his convert—

Levies, advises and devises, puts to shame,

And counsels a new Parliament; it meets,

But dashed and snatched away by Vane,

Leaves him alone again.

                                       And so at length

Comes a new General and unprovided,

To that ‘lost business’ in the North, and there

They have him in their noose, their traitors’ truce—

The league with Scotland.

V

Yet in the ‘strange mistaking of these times’

(He will not say, their taste for blood and lies)

Something breaks out of him, astonishing

Old friends and enemies alike, so new

It seemed in him, a gentleness, a sweetness,

Born of the wreck of fortune, ‘this my night.’

Was it a confidence in innocence—

For anyone can see his innocence?

‘God’s hand is with us, and to my best judgement

We rather win than lose …’

                                              And as it lingered,

‘All will be well, and every hour

Brings us more hope than other.’

Or was it faith in that poor Stuart’s word

That he should never die while Charles was King?

Or was it over and above,

That ‘Strafford would not die a fool’?

And when that fettered angel

Of his burning, winged intelligence

Had seen the blood and malice that men love,

For all their godly rage and godly lies;

Still looking back on faith and right

He found his reasons bathed in light,

And ‘being upon his life and children’,

Learning patience after strife,

Wrote the absolving letter

To the King, and in all sadness

Placed in his hands the ‘things most loved, most dreaded,

Death or Life.’

‘Sir, my consent herein shall more acquit you

To God, than all the world can do beside’;

‘There is no injury done to a willing man.’

‘To say, Sir, that there hath not been a strife

Within me, were to make me less than man,

God knows …’

                         And thinking still of Will and Nan,

‘My poor son and his sisters’,

He will beg for them the King’s regard

‘No more or less hereafter, than hereafter

Their father may seem worthy of this death.’

VI

So ends the letter. Two days later Charles

Had signed the warrant weeping, while the mob

Cumbered the yard at Whitehall.

Judges and Bishops barrenly opined:

‘As it was put to us, the case was treason’;

‘Kings have two consciences, the public cloaks you here.’

Juxon alone said ‘Follow your own conscience.’

So this earl ended.

                              And the lasting moral?

Something on geese and mice, or rats and lions?

An eagle torn by jackals?

                                       ‘Strafford’s innocent blood

Taught Charles to die’?

                                    For after seven years,

He reckoned it the purchase of his death:

‘An unjust sentence

That I suffered once to pass me by,

Brings me an unjust sentence.’

VII

But turning to the great man from the small,

Should we not think of Strafford after all

As of the kind

Who ‘pilgrim it out here’

Some years, and ‘tug and tow’,

But labour, drudge unconsciously, to find

Their way to self-destruction?

And further, in the way assigned,

As one who tasted justice by injustice, murdered here,

His thirst for justice quenched when all is clear,

And he is right and they are wrong and he can say

‘They have my body, but my soul is God’s’,

Remembering the words of Jacques Molay.

—The silver river ruffled in the breeze,

Running by grey mud-banks; the glimmering hill-circle

Closes, and opens wider …

                                            And at dawn,

And coming from the Tower he sees

The sun lift up his head, and lifting up his head,

He goes forth ‘like a general breathing victory,

That leads a loving army’,

But with no army to be led,

And walks between the people thick as trees.

Mounting the scaffold, granted time for speech—

Delivered standing on the hollow wood,

And turning words and gestures to the multitude;

Unheard by most and yet, it may be, not misunderstood:

As first, he thinks it strange a people should

‘Choose to begin their happiness in blood’;

Submits to death as voted for their good, the common good,

But not as just: ‘Here we misjudge each other;

Righteous judgement, that shall come hereafter.’

And so he ends ‘forgiving all the world

From my dislodging soul.’

                                         Then kisses Ussher and his brother,

Unbuttons at the neck, puts up his hair,

Forgives the axe his coming stroke,

And having knelt awhile in prayer

—The head falls from the block,

Caught up and held, the people shout approof

And shake the air.

One touch of azure breaks the cloudy crumbling roof

Hung far above the tumult,

And the piece of paper whence he read

Flutters and drops, unheeded

For the trophy of the bleeding head;

But gathered up by Rushworth,

Creased, and speckled with a faded red

Comes to be published after fifty years

—When most who could remember would be dead,

Or only wished that Strafford were forgotten.