William Strode

William Strode (1598 – 9 September, 1645) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1624 and 1645. He was one of the Five Members whose impeachment and attempted unconstitutional arrest by King Charles I in the House of Commons in 1642 sparked the Civil War, during which he fought on the Parliamentarian side.

Strode was the second son of Sir William Strode (d. 1637), MP, of Newnham, Plympton St Mary, Devon, by his first wife Mary Southcote, daughter of Thomas Southcote of Bovey Tracey in Devon.

He was admitted as a student of the Inner Temple in 1614, matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1617, and took the degree of BA in 1619.

In 1624, Strode was elected Member of Parliament for Bere Alston, and was re-elected MP for Bere Alston in 1625, 1626 and 1628. He opposed Charles I from the start, and took a leading part in the disorderly scene of 2 March 1629, when the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in the chair after refusing to put the resolution of Sir John Eliot against arbitrary taxation and innovations in religion (see Denzil Holles). Strode was prosecuted before the star chamber, but refused "to answer anything done in the House of Parliament but in that House." On 7 May a fresh warrant was issued, and a month later, to prevent his release on bail, he was sent by Charles with two of his fellow members to the Tower. Refusing to give a bond for his good behaviour, he was sentenced to imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and was kept in confinement in various prisons for eleven years. During those eleven years, King Charles ruled without parliament.

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