Salmasius, however, pleading by commission from Charles's son, can urge no such mitigating plea.

He is compelled to maintain the inviolability even of wicked sovereigns, and spends two-thirds of his treatise in supporting a proposition to state which is to refute it in the nineteenth century.

In the latter part he is on stronger ground.

Charles had unquestionably been tried and condemned by a tribunal destitute of legal authority, and executed contrary to the wish and will of the great majority of his subjects.

But this was a theme for an Englishman to handle.