There was undoubtedly one very important matter of past controversy,

which they may seem to have avoided, the power over the militia. They

silently gave up that momentous question. Yet it was become, in a

practical sense, incomparably more important that the representatives

of the Commons should retain a control over the land forces of the

nation than it had been at the commencement of the controversy. War

and usurpation had sown the dragon's teeth in our fields; and, instead

of the peaceable trained bands of former ages, the citizen soldiers

who could not be marched beyond their counties, we had a veteran army

accustomed to tread upon the civil authority at the bidding of their

superiors, and used alike to govern and obey. It seemed prodigiously

dangerous to give up this weapon into the hands of our new sovereign.

The experience of other countries as well as our own demonstrated that

public liberty could never be secure, if a large standing army should

be kept on foot, or any standing army without consent of parliament.

But this salutary restriction the convention parliament did not think

fit to propose; and in this respect I certainly consider them as

having stopped short of adequate security. It is probable that the

necessity of humouring Monk, whom it was their first vote to

constitute general of all the forces in the three kingdoms,[522] with

the hope, which proved not vain, that the king himself would disband

the present army whereon he could so little rely, prevented any

endeavour to establish the control of parliament over the military

power, till it was too late to withstand the violence of the

cavaliers, who considered the absolute prerogative of the Crown in

that point the most fundamental article of their creed.

_Conduct of Monk._--Of Monk himself it may, I think, be said that, if

his conduct in this revolution was not that of a high-minded patriot,

it did not deserve all the reproach that has been so frequently thrown

on it. No one can, without forfeiting all pretensions to have his own

word believed, excuse his incomparable deceit and perjury; a

masterpiece, no doubt, as it ought to be reckoned by those who set at

nought the obligations of veracity in public transactions, of that

wisdom which is not from above. But, in seconding the public wish for

the king's restoration, a step which few perhaps can be so much in

love with fanatical and tyrannous usurpation as to condemn, he seems

to have used what influence he possessed, an influence by no means

commanding, to render the new settlement as little injurious as

possible to public and private interests. If he frustrated the scheme

of throwing the executive authority into the hands of a presbyterian

oligarchy, I, for one, can see no great cause for censure; nor is it

quite reasonable to expect that a soldier of fortune, inured to the

exercise of arbitrary power, and exempt from the prevailing religious

fanaticism which must be felt or despised, should have partaken a

fervent zeal for liberty, as little congenial to his temperament as it

was to his profession. He certainly did not satisfy the king even in

his first promises of support, when he advised an absolute indemnity,

and the preservation of actual interests in the lands of the Crown and

church. In the first debates on the bill of indemnity, when the case

of the regicides came into discussion, he pressed for the smallest

number of exceptions from pardon. And, though his conduct after the

king's return displayed his accustomed prudence, it is evident that,

if he had retained great influence in the council, which he assuredly

did not, he would have maintained as much as possible of the existing

settlement in the church. The deepest stain on his memory is the

production of Argyle's private letters on his trial in Scotland; nor

indeed can Monk be regarded, upon the whole, as an estimable man,

though his prudence and success may entitle him, in the common

acceptation of the word, to be reckoned a great one.

FOOTNOTES:

[245] May, p. 165.

[246] Both sides claimed the victory. May, who thinks that Essex, by

his injudicious conduct after the battle, lost the advantage he had

gained in it, admits that the effect was to strengthen the king's

side. "Those who thought his success impossible began to look upon him

as one who might be a conqueror, and many neuters joined him."--P.

176. Ludlow is of the same opinion as to Essex's behaviour and its

consequences: "Our army, after some refreshment at Warwick, returned

to London, not like men that had obtained a victory, but as if they

had been beaten."--P. 52. This shows that they had not in fact

obtained much of a victory; and Lord Wharton's report to parliament

almost leads us to think the advantage, upon the whole, to have been

with the king. _Parl. Hist._ ii. 1495.

[247] May, 212; Baillie, 373, 391.

[248] May, Baillie, Mrs. Hutchinson, are as much of this opinion as

Sir Philip Warwick and other royalist writers. It is certain that

there was a prodigious alarm, and almost despondency, among the

parliamentarians. They immediately began to make entrenchments about

London, which were finished in a month. May, p. 214. In the _Somers

Tracts_, iv. 534, is an interesting letter from a Scotsman then in

London, giving an account of these fortifications, which, considering

the short time employed about them, seem to have been very

respectable, and such as the king's army, with its weak cavalry and

bad artillery, could not easily have carried. Lord Sunderland, four

days before the battle of Newbury wherein he was killed, wrote to his

wife, that the king's affairs had never been in a more prosperous

condition; that sitting down before Gloscester had prevented _their

finishing the war that year_, "which nothing could keep us from doing,

if we had a month's more time." _Sidney Letters_, ii. 671. He alludes

in the same letters to the divisions in the royal party.

[249] _Parl. Hist._ iii. 45, 48. It seems natural to think that, if

the moderate party were able to contend so well against their

opponents, after the desertion of a great many royalist members who

had joined the king, they would have maintained a decisive majority,

had these continued in their places. But it is to be considered, on

the other hand, that the king could never have raised an army, if he

had not been able to rally the peers and gentry round his banner, and

that in his army lay the real secret of the temporary strength of the

pacific party.

[250] _Parl. Hist._ iii. 68, 94; Clarendon; May; Whitelock. If we

believe the last (p. 68), the king, who took as usual a very active

part in the discussions upon this treaty, would frequently have been

inclined to come into an adjustment of terms; if some of the more

war-like spirits about him (glancing apparently at Rupert) had not

over persuaded his better judgment. This, however, does not accord

with what Clarendon tells us of the queen's secret influence, nor

indeed with all we have reason to believe of the king's disposition

during the war.

[251] _Life of Clarendon_, p. 79. This induced the king to find

pretexts for avoiding the cessation, and was the real cause of his

refusal to restore the Earl of Northumberland to his post of lord

admiral during this treaty of Oxford, which was urged by Hyde. That

peer was, at this time, and for several months afterwards, inclining

to come over to the king; but, on the bad success of Holland and

Bedford in their change of sides, he gave into the opposite course of

politics, and joined the party of Lords Say and Wharton, in determined

hostility to the king.

Dr. Lingard has lately thrown doubts upon this passage in Clarendon,

but upon grounds which I do not clearly understand. _Hist. of Engl._

x. 208, note. That no vestige of its truth should appear, as he

observes, in the private correspondence between Charles and his

consort (if he means the letters taken at Naseby, and I know no

other), is not very singular; as the whole of that correspondence is

of a much later date.

[252] I cannot discover in the Journals any division on this

impeachment. But Hollis inveighs against it in his memoirs as one of

the flagrant acts of St. John's party; and there is an account of the

debate on this subject in the _Somers Tracts_, v. 500; whence it

appears that it was opposed by Maynard, Waller, Whitelock, and others;

but supported by Pym, Strode, Long, Glynn, and by Martin with his

usual fury and rudeness. The first of these carried up the impeachment

to the House of Lords.

This impeachment was not absolutely lost sight of for some time. In

January 1644, the Lords appointed a committee to consider what mode of

proceeding for bringing the queen to trial was most agreeable to a

parliamentary way, and to peruse precedents. _Parl. Hist._ 194.

[253] _Parl. Hist._ 129.

[254] _Parl. Hist._ 133, June 20; Clarendon, iv. 155. He published,

however, a declaration soon after the taking of Bristol, containing

full assurances of his determination to govern by the known laws.

_Parl. Hist._ 144.

[255] Clarend. iv. 192, 262; Whitelock, 70. They met with a worse

reception at Westminster than at Oxford, as indeed they had reason to

expect. A motion that the Earl of Holland should be sent to the Tower

was lost in the Commons by only one voice. _Parl. Hist._ 180. They

were provoked at his taking his seat without permission. After long

refusing to consent, the Lords agreed to an ordinance (June 29, 1644)

that no peer or commoner who had been in the king's quarters, should

be admitted again to sit in either house. _Parl. Hist._ 271. This

severity was one cause of Essex's discontent, which was increased when

the Commons refused him leave to take Holland with him on his

expedition into the west that summer. Baillie, i. 426; Whitelock, 87.

If it be asked why this Roman rigour was less impolitic in the

parliament than in the king, I can only answer, that the stronger and

the weaker have different measures to pursue. But relatively to the

pacification of the kingdom, upon such terms as fellow-citizens ought

to require from each other, it was equally blamable in both parties,

or rather more so in that possessed of the greater power.

[256] It is intimated by Clarendon that some at Oxford, probably

Jermyn and Digby, were jealous of Holland's recovering the influence

he had possessed with the queen, who seems to have retained no

resentment against him. As to Bedford and Clare, they would probably

have been better received, if not accompanied by so obnoxious an

intriguer of the old court. This seems to account for the unanimity

which the historian describes to have been shown in the council

against their favourable reception. Light and passionate tempers, like

that of Henrietta, are prone to forget injuries; serious and

melancholic ones, like that of Charles, never lose sight of them.

[257] Baillie deplores at this time "the horrible fears and confusions

in the city, the king everywhere being victorious. In the city, a

strong and insolent party for him."--P. 391. "The malignants stirred a

multitude of women of the meaner and more infamous rank to come to the

door of both houses, and cry tumultuously for peace on any terms. This

tumult could not be suppressed but by violence, and killing some three

or four women, and hurting some of them, and imprisoning many."--P.

300.

[258] Lords and Commons' Journals; _Parl. Hist._ 156, etc.; Clarendon,

iv. 183; Hollis's _Memoirs_. Hollis was a teller for the majority on

this occasion; he had left the war-like party some months (Baillie, i.

356); and his name is in the journals repeatedly, from November 1642,

as teller against them, though he is charged with having said the year

before, that he abhorred the name of accommodation. Hutchinson, p.

296. Though a very honest, and to a certain extent, an able man, he

was too much carried away by personal animosities; and as these

shifted, his principles shifted also.

[259] The resolution, that government by archbishops, bishops, etc.,

was inconvenient, and ought to be taken away, passed both houses

unanimously September 10, 1642; _Parl. Hist._ ii. 1465. But the

ordinance to carry this fully into effect was not made till October

1646. Scobell's _Ordinances_.

[260] _Parl. Hist._ iii. 15.

[261] This committee, appointed in February 1644, consisted of the

following persons, the most conspicuous, at that time, of the

parliament: the Earls of Northumberland, Essex, Warwick, and

Manchester; Lords Say, Wharton, and Roberts; Mr. Pierrepont, the two

Sir Henry Vanes, Sir Philip Stapylton, Sir William Waller, Sir Gilbert

Gerrard, Sir William Armyn, Sir Arthur Haslerig; Messrs. Crew, Wallop,

St. John, Cromwell, Brown, and Glynn. _Parl. Hist._ iii. 248.

[262] _Somers Tracts_, iv. 533. The names marked in the _Parliamentary

History_ as having taken the covenant, are 236.

The Earl of Lincoln alone, a man of great integrity and moderation,

though only conspicuous in the Journals, refused to take the covenant,

and was excluded in consequence from his seat in the house: but on his

petition next year, though, as far as appears, without compliance, was

restored, and the vote rescinded. _Parl. Hist._ 393. He regularly

protested against all violent measures; and we still find his name in

the minority on such occasions after the Restoration.

Baillie says, the desertion of about six peers at this time to the

king, was of great use to the passing of the covenant in _a legal

way_. Vol. i. p. 390.

[263] Burnet's _Mem. of Duke of Hamilton_, p. 239. I am not quite

satisfied as to this, which later writers seem to have taken from

Burnet. It may well be supposed that the ambiguity of the covenant was

not very palpable; since the Scots presbyterians, a people not easily

cozened, were content with its expression. According to fair and

honest rules of interpretation, it certainly bound the subscribers to

the establishment of a church-government conformed to that of

Scotland; namely, the presbyterian, exclusive of all mixture with any

other. But Selden, and the other friends of moderate episcopacy who

took the covenant, justified it, I suppose, to their consciences, by

the pretext that, in renouncing the jurisdiction of bishops, they

meant the unlimited jurisdiction without concurrence of any

presbyters. It was not, however, an action on which they could reflect

with pleasure. Baxter says that Gataker, and some others of the

assembly, would not subscribe the covenant, but on the understanding

that they did not renounce primitive episcopacy by it. _Life of

Baxter_, p. 48. These controversial subtleties elude the ordinary

reader of history.

[264] After the war was ended, none of the king's party were admitted

to compound for their estates, without taking the covenant. This

Clarendon, in one of his letters, calls "making haste to buy damnation

at two years' purchase." Vol. ii. p. 286.

[265] Neal, ii. 19, etc., is fair enough in censuring the committees,

especially those in the country. "The greatest part [of the clergy]

were cast out for malignity [attachment to the royal cause];

superstition and false doctrine were hardly ever objected; yet the

proceedings of the sequestrators were not always justifiable; for,

whereas a court of judicature should rather be counsel for the

prisoner than the prosecutor, the commissioners considered the king's

clergy as their most dangerous enemies, and were ready to lay hold of

all opportunities to discharge them their pulpits."--P. 24. But if we

can rely at all on White's _Century of Malignant Ministers_ (and I do

not perceive that Walker has been able to controvert it), there were a

good many cases of irregular life in the clergy, so far at least as

haunting alehouses; which, however, was much more common, and

consequently less indecent, in that age than at present. See also

Baxter's _Life_, p. 74; whose authority, though open to some

exceptions on the score of prejudice, is at least better than

Walker's.

The king's party were not less oppressive towards ministers whom they

reckoned puritan; which unluckily comprehended most of those who were

of strict lives, especially if they preached calvinistically, unless

they redeemed that suspicion by strong demonstrations of loyalty.

Neal, p. 21; Baxter's _Life_, p. 42. And, if they put themselves

forward on this side, they were sure to suffer most severely for it on

the parliament's success; an ordinance of April 1, 1643, having

sequestered the private estates of all the clergy who had aided the

king. Thus the condition of the English clergy was every way most

deplorable; and in fact they were utterly ruined.

[266] Neal, p. 93. He says it was not tendered, by favour, to some of

the clergy who had not been active against the parliament, and were

reputed Calvinists. P. 59. Sanderson is said to be one instance. This

historian, an honest and well-natured man at bottom, justly censures

its imposition.

[267] "All the judges answered that they could deliver no opinion in

this case, in point of treason by the law; because they could not

deliver any opinion in point of treason, but what was particularly

expressed to be treason in the statute of 25 E. III., and so referred

it wholly to the judgment of this house." Lords' Journals, 17th

December 1644.

[268] Lords' Journals, 4th January. It is not said to be done _nem.

con._

[269] "The difference in the temper of the common people of both sides

was so great that they who inclined to the parliament left nothing

unperformed that might advance the cause; whereas they who wished well

to the king thought they had performed their duty in doing so, and

that they had done enough for him, in that they had done nothing

against him." Clarendon, pp. 3, 452. "Most of the gentry of the county

(Nottinghamshire)," says Mrs. Hutchinson, "were disaffected to the

parliament; most of the middle sort, the able substantial freeholders

and the other commons, who had not their dependence upon the malignant

nobility and gentry, adhered to the parliament."--P. 81. This I

conceive to have been the case in much the greater part of England.

Baxter, in his _Life_, p. 30, says just the same thing in a passage

worthy of notice. But the Worcestershire populace, he says, were

violent royalists, p. 39. Clarendon observes in another place (iii.

41), "There was in this county (Cornwall), as throughout the kingdom,

a wonderful and superstitious reverence towards the name of a

parliament, and a prejudice to the power of the court." He afterwards

(p. 436) calls "an implicit reverence to the name of a parliament, the

fatal disease of the whole kingdom." So prevalent was the sense of the

king's arbitrary government, especially in the case of ship-money.

Warburton remarks, that he never expressed any repentance, or made any

confession in his public declarations, that his former administration

had been illegal. Notes on Clarendon, p. 566. But this was not,

perhaps, to be expected; and his repeated promises to govern according

to law might be construed into tacit acknowledgments of past errors.

[270] The associated counties, properly speaking, were at first

Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, Cambridge; to which some others

were added. Sussex, I believe, was not a part of the association; but

it was equally within the parliamentary pale, though the gentry were

remarkably loyal in their inclinations. The same was true of Kent.

[271] Clarendon, _passim_; May, 160; Baillie, i. 416. See, in the

_Somers Tracts_, v. 495, a dialogue between a gentleman and a citizen,

printed at Oxford, 1643. Though of course a royalist pamphlet, it

shows the disunion that prevailed in that unfortunate party, and

inveighs against the influence of the papists, in consequence of which

the Marquis of Hertford is said to have declined the king's service.

Rupert is praised, and Newcastle struck at. It is written, on the

whole, in rather a lukewarm style of loyalty. The Earl of Holland and

Sir Edward Dering gave out as their reason for quitting the king's

side, that there was great danger of popery. This was much

exaggerated; yet Lord Sunderland talks the same language. _Sidney

Papers_, ii. 667. Lord Falkland's dejection of spirits, and constant

desire of peace, must chiefly be ascribed to his disgust with the

councils of Oxford, and the greater part of those with whom he was

associated.

E quel che più ti graverà le spalle

Sarà la compagnia malvagia e ria,

Nella quel tu cadrai in questa valle.

We know too little of this excellent man, whose talents, however, and

early pursuits do not seem to have particularly qualified him for

public life. It is evident that he did not plunge into the loyal cause

with all the zeal of his friend Hyde; and the king doubtless had no

great regard for the counsels of one who took so very different a view

of some important matters from himself. _Life of Clarendon_, 48. He

had been active against Strafford, and probably had a bad opinion of

Laud. The prosecution of Finch for high treason he had himself moved.

In the Ormond _Letters_, i. 20, he seems to be struck at by one

writing from Oxford, June 1, 1643: "God forbid that the best of men

and kings be so used by some bad hollow-hearted counsellors, who

affect too much the parliamentary way. Many spare not to name them;

and I doubt not but you have heard their names."

[272] It appears by the late edition of Clarendon, iv. 351, that he

was the adviser of calling the Oxford parliament. The former editors

omitted his name.

[273] _Parl. Hist._ 218. The number who took the covenant in September

1643, appears by a list of the long parliament in the same work (vol.

ii.) to be 236; but twelve of these are included in both lists, having

gone afterwards into the king's quarters. The remainder, about 100,

were either dead since the beginning of the troubles, or for some

reason absented themselves from both assemblies. Possibly the list of

those who took the covenant is not quite complete; nor do I think the

king had much more than about sixty peers on his side. The parliament,

however, could not have produced thirty. Lords' Journals, Jan. 22,

1644. Whitelock, p. 80, says that two hundred and eighty appeared in

the House of Commons, Jan. 1644, besides one hundred absent in the

parliament's service; but this cannot be quite exact.

[274] Rushworth Abr. v. 266, and 296; where is an address to the king,

intimating, if attentively considered, a little apprehension of popery

and arbitrary power. Baillie says, in one of his letters, "The first

day the Oxford parliament met, the king made a long speech; but many

being ready to give in papers for the removing of Digby, Cottington,

and others from court, the meeting was adjourned for some days."--i.

429. Indeed, the restoration of Cottington, and still more of

Windebank, to the king's councils, was no pledge of protestant or

constitutional measures. This opposition, so natural to parliaments in

any circumstances, disgusted Charles. In one of his letters to the

queen, he congratulates himself on being "freed from the place of all

mutinous motions, his mongrel parliament." It may be presumed that

some of those who obeyed the king's summons to Oxford were influenced

less by loyalty than a consideration that their estates lay in parts

occupied by his troops; of course the same is applicable to the

Westminster parliament.

[275] Baillie, 441. I can find no mention of this in the Journals;

but, as Baillie was then in London, and in constant intercourse with

the leaders of parliament, there must have been some foundation for

his statement, though he seems to have been inaccurate as to the fact

of the vote.

[276] _Parl. Hist._ 299, _et post_; Clarendon, v. 16; Whitelock, 110,

etc.; Rushw. Abr. v. 449, etc.

[277] It was impossible for the king to avoid this treaty. Not only

his Oxford parliament, as might naturally be expected, were openly

desirous of peace, but a great part of the army had, in August 1644,

while opposed to that of Essex in the west, taken the extraordinary

step of sending a letter to that general, declaring their intentions

for the rights and liberties of the people, privileges of parliament,

and protestant religion against popish innovations; and that on the

faith of subjects, the honour and reputation of gentlemen and

soldiers, they would with their lives maintain that which his majesty

should publicly promise in order to a bloodless peace; they went on to

request that Essex, with six more, would meet the general (Earl of

Brentford) with six more, to consider of all means possible to

reconcile the unhappy differences and misunderstandings that have so

long afflicted the kingdom. Sir Edward Walker's _Historical

Discourses_, 59. The king was acquainted with this letter before it

was sent, but after some hands had been subscribed to it. He

consented, but evidently with great reluctance, and even indignation;

as his own expressions testify in this passage of Walker, whose

manuscript here, as in many other places, contains interlineations by

Charles himself. It was doubtless rather in a mutinous spirit, which

had spread widely through the army, and contributed to its utter ruin

in the next campaign. I presume it was at the king's desire that the

letter was signed by the general, as well as by Prince Maurice, and

all the colonels, I believe, in his army, to take off the appearance

of a faction; but it certainly originated with Wilmot, Percy, and some

of those whom he thought ill affected. See Clarendon, iv. 527, _et

post_; Rushw. Abr. v. 348, 358.

[278] The king's doctors, Steward and Sheldon, argued at Uxbridge that

episcopacy was _jure divino_; Henderson and others that presbytery was

so. Whitelock, 132. These churchmen should have been locked up like a

jury, without food or fire, till they agreed.

If we may believe Clarendon, the Earl of Loudon offered in the name of

the Scots, that if the king would give up episcopacy, they would not

press any of the other demands. It is certain, however, that they

would never have suffered him to become the master of the English

parliament; and, if this offer was sincerely made, it must have been

from a conviction that he could not become such.

[279] Rushworth, Whitelock, Clarendon. The latter tells in his life,

which reveals several things not found in his history, that the king

was very angry with some of his Uxbridge commissioners, especially Mr.

Bridgman, for making too great concessions with respect to episcopacy.

He lived, however, to make himself much greater.

[280] Whitelock, 133.

[281] The creed of this party is set forth in the _Behemoth_ of

Hobbes; which is, in other words, the application of those principles

of government which are laid down in the _Leviathan_, to the

constitution and state of England in the civil war. It is republished

in Baron Maseres's _Tracts_, ii. 565, 567. Sir Philip Warwick, in his

_Memoirs_, 198, hints something of the same kind.

[282] Warburton, in the notes subjoined to the late edition of

Clarendon, vii. 563, mentions a conversation he had with the Duke of

Argyle and Lord Cobham (both soldiers, and the first a distinguished

one) as to the conduct of the king and the Earl of Essex after the

battle of Edgehill. They agreed it was inexplicable on both sides by

any military principle. Warburton explained it by the unwillingness to

be _too victorious_, felt by Essex himself, and by those whom the king

was forced to consult. Father Orleans, in a passage with which the

bishop probably was acquainted, confirms this; and his authority is

very good as to the secret of the court. Rupert, he says, proposed to

march to London. "Mais l'esprit Anglois, qui ne se dement point même

dans les plus attachés a la royauté, l'esprit Anglois, dis-je,

toujours entêté de ces libertéz si funestes au repos de la nation,

porta la plus grande partie du conseil à s'opposer à ce dessein. Le

prétexte fut qu'il étoit dangereux pour le roy de l'entreprendre, et

pour la ville que le Prince Robert l'exécutâst, jeune comme il étoit,

emporté, et capable d'y mettre le feu. La vraie raison étoit qu'ils

craignoient que, si le roy entroit dans Londres les armes à la main,

il ne prétendist sur la nation une espèce de droit de conquête, qui le

rendist trop absolu." _Révolut. d'Angleterre_, iii. 104.

[283] Rushworth Abr. iv. 550. At the very time that he was publicly

denying his employment of papists, he wrote to Newcastle, commanding

him to make use of all his subjects' services, without examining their

consciences, except as to loyalty. Ellis's _Letters_, iii. 291, from

an original in the Museum. No one can rationally blame Charles for

anything in this, but his inveterate and useless habit of falsehood.

See Clarendon, iii. 610.

It is probable that some foreign catholics were in the parliament's

service. But Dodd says, with great appearance of truth, that no one

English gentleman of that persuasion was in arms on their side.

_Church History of Engl._ iii. 28. He reports as a matter of hearsay,

that, out of about five hundred gentlemen who lost their lives for

Charles in the civil war, one hundred and ninety-four were catholics.

They were, doubtless, a very powerful faction in the court and army.

Lord Spencer (afterwards Earl of Sunderland), in some remarkable

letters to his wife from the king's quarters at Shrewsbury, in

September 1642, speaks of the insolency of the papists with great

dissatisfaction. _Sidney Papers_, ii. 667.

[284] It cannot be doubted, and is admitted in a remarkable

conversation of Hollis and Whitelock with the king at Oxford in

November 1644, that the exorbitant terms demanded at Uxbridge were

carried by the violent party, who disliked all pacification.

Whitelock, 113.

[285] Baillie, ii. 91. He adds, "That which has been the great snare

to the king is the unhappy success of Montrose in Scotland." There

seems indeed great reason to think that Charles, always sanguine, and

incapable of calculating probabilities, was unreasonably elated by

victories from which no permanent advantage ought to have been

expected. Burnet confirms this on good authority. Introduction to

_Hist. of his Times_, 51.

[286] Whitelock, 109, 137, 142; Rushw. Abr. v. 163. The first _rat_

(except indeed the Earls of Holland and Bedford, who were rats with

two tails) was Sir Edward Dering, who came into the parliament's

quarters, Feb. 1644. He was a weak man of some learning, who had

already played a very changeable part before the war.

[287] A flagrant instance of this was the plunder of Bristol by

Rupert, in breach of the capitulation. I suspect that it was the

policy of one party to exaggerate the cruelties of the other; but the

short narratives dispersed at the time give a wretched picture of

slaughter and devastation.

[288] Clarendon and Whitelock _passim_; Baxter's _Life_, pp. 44, 55.

This license of Maurice's and Goring's armies in the west first led to

the defensive insurrection, if so it should be called, of the

club-men; that is, of yeomen and country people, armed only with

clubs, who hoped, by numbers and concert, to resist effectually the

military marauders of both parties, declaring themselves neither for

king nor parliament, but for their own liberty and property. They were

of course regarded with dislike on both sides; by the king's party

when they first appeared in 1644, because they crippled the royal

army's operations, and still more openly by the parliament next year,

when they opposed Fairfax's endeavour to carry on the war in the

counties bordering on the Severn. They appeared at times in great

strength; but the want of arms and discipline made it not very

difficult to suppress them. Clarendon, v. 197; Whitelock, 137; _Parl.

Hist._ 379, 390.

The king himself, whose disposition was very harsh and severe, except

towards the few he took into his bosom, can hardly be exonerated from

a responsibility for some acts of inhumanity (see Whitelock, 67, and

_Somers Tracts_, iv. 502, v. 369; Maseres's _Tracts_, i. 144, for the

ill-treatment of prisoners); and he might probably have checked the

outrages which took place at the storming of Leicester, where he was

himself present. Certainly no imputation of this nature can be laid at

the door of the parliamentary commanders; though some of them were

guilty of the atrocity of putting their Irish prisoners to death, in

obedience, however, to an ordinance of parliament. _Parl. Hist._ iii.

295; Rushworth's Abridgement, v. 402. It passed October 24, 1644, and

all remissness in executing it was to be reckoned a favouring of the

Irish rebellion. When we read, as we do perpetually, these violent and

barbarous proceedings of the parliament, is it consistent with honesty

or humanity to hold up that assembly to admiration, while the faults

on the king's side are studiously aggravated? The partiality of

Oldmixon, Harris, Macauley, and now of Mr. Brodie and Mr. Godwin, is

full as glaring, to say the very least, as that of Hume.

[289] Clarendon and Baxter.

[290] The excise was first imposed by an ordinance of both houses in

July 1643 (Husband's _Collection of Ordinances_, p. 267), and

afterwards by the king's convention at Oxford. See a view of the

financial expedients adopted by both parties in Lingard, x. 243. The

plate brought in to the parliament's commissioners at Guildhall, in

1642, for which they allowed the value of the silver, and one shilling

per ounce more, is stated by Neal at £1,267,326, an extraordinary

proof of the wealth of London; yet I do not know his authority, though

it is probably good. The university of Oxford gave all they had to the

king; but could not of course vie with the citizens.

The sums raised within the parliament's quarters from the beginning of

the war to 1647 are reckoned in a pamphlet of that year, quoted in

Sinclair's _Hist. of the Revenue_, i. 283, at £17,512,400. But, on

reference to the tract itself, I find this written at random. The

contributions, however, were really very great; and, if we add those

to the king, and the loss by waste and plunder, we may form some

judgment of the effects of the civil war.

[291] The independents raised loud clamours against the Scots army;

and the northern counties naturally complained of the burthen of

supporting them as well as of their excesses. Many passages in

Whitelock's journal during 1645 and 1646 relate to this. Hollis

endeavours to deny or extenuate the charges; but he is too prejudiced

a writer, and Baillie himself acknowledges a great deal. Vol. ii. pp.

138, 142, 146.

[292] The chief imputation against Manchester was for not following up

his victory in the second battle of Newbury, with which Cromwell

openly taxed him; see Ludlow, i. 133. There certainly appears to have

been a want of military energy on this occasion; but it is said by

Baillie (ii. 76) that all the general officers, Cromwell not excepted,

concurred in Manchester's determination. Essex had been suspected from

the time of the affair at Brentford, or rather from the battle of

Edgehill (Baillie and Ludlow); and his whole conduct, except in the

celebrated march to relieve Gloucester, confirmed a reasonable

distrust either of his military talents, or of his zeal in the cause.

"He loved monarchy and nobility," says Whitelock, p. 108, "and dreaded

those who had a design to destroy both." Yet Essex was too much a man

of honour to enter on any private intrigues with the king. The other

peers employed under the parliament, Stamford, Denbigh, Willoughby,

were not successful enough to redeem the suspicions that fell upon

their zeal.

All our republican writers, such as Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson in that

age, Mrs. Macauley and Mr. Brodie more of late, speak acrimoniously of

Essex. "Most will be of opinion," says Mr. B. (_History of British

Empire_, iii. 565), "that as ten thousand pounds a year out of the

sequestered lands were settled upon him for his services, he was

rewarded infinitely beyond his merits." The reward was doubtless

magnificent; but the merit of Essex was this, that he made himself the

most prominent object of vengeance in case of failure, by taking the

command of an army to oppose the king in person at Edgehill: a command

of which no other man in his rank was capable, and which could not, at

that time, have been intrusted to any man of inferior rank without

dissolving the whole confederacy of the parliament.

It is to be observed, moreover, that the two battles of Newbury, like

that of Edgehill, were by no means decisive victories on the side of

the parliament; and that it is not clear whether either Essex or

Manchester could have pushed the king much more than they did. Even

after Naseby, his party made a pretty long resistance, and he was as

much blamed as they for not pressing his advantages with vigour.

[293] It had been voted by the Lords a year before, Dec. 12, 1643,

"That the opinion and resolution of this house is from henceforth not

to admit the members of either house of parliament into any place or

office, excepting such places of great trust as are to be executed by

persons of eminency and known integrity, and are necessary for the

government and safety of the kingdom." But a motion to make this

resolution into an ordinance was carried in the negative. Lords'

Journals; _Parl. Hist._ 187. The first motion had been for a

resolution without this exception, that no place of profit should be

executed by the members of either house.

[294] Whitelock, pp. 118, 120. It was opposed by him, but supported by

Pierrepont, who carried it up to the Lords. The Lords were chiefly of

the presbyterian party; though Say, Wharton, and a few more, were

connected with the independents. They added a proviso to the ordinance

raising forces to be commanded by Fairfax, that no officer refusing

the covenant should be capable of serving, which was thrown out in the

lower house. But another proviso was carried in the Commons by 82 to

63, that the officers, though appointed by the general, should be

approved by both houses of parliament. Cromwell was one of the tellers

for the minority. Commons' Journals, Feb. 7 and 13, 1645.

In the original ordinance the members of both houses were excluded

during the war; but in the second, which was carried, the measure was

not made prospective. This, which most historians have overlooked, is

well pointed out by Mr. Godwin. By virtue of this alteration, many

officers were elected in the course of 1645 and 1646; and the effect,

whatever might be designed, was very advantageous to the republican

and independent factions.

[295] Whitelock, p. 145.

[296] Whether there are sufficient grounds for concluding that

Henrietta's connection with Jermyn was criminal, I will not pretend to

decide; though Warburton has settled the matter in a very summary

style. See one of his notes on Clarendon, vol. vii. p. 636. But I

doubt whether the bishop had authority for what he there says, though

it is likely enough to be true. See also a note of Lord Dartmouth on

Burnet, i. 63.

[297] Clarendon speaks often in his _History_, and still more

frequently in his private letters, with great resentment of the

conduct of France, and sometimes of Holland, during our civil wars. I

must confess that I see nothing to warrant this. The States-General,

against whom Charles had so shamefully been plotting, interfered as

much for the purpose of mediation as they could with the slightest

prospect of success, and so as to give offence to the parliament

(Rushworth Abridged, v. 567; Baillie, ii. 78; Whitelock, 141, 148;

Harris's _Life of Cromwell_, 246); and as to France, though Richelieu

had instigated the Scots malcontents, and possibly those of England,

yet after his death, in 1642, no sort of suspicion ought to lie on the

French government; the whole conduct of Anne of Austria having been

friendly, and both the mission of Harcourt in 1643, and the present

negotiations of Montreuil and Bellievre, perfectly well intended. That

Mazarin made promises of assistance which he had no design, nor

perhaps any power, to fulfil, is true; but this is the common trick of

such statesmen, and argues no malevolent purpose. But Hyde, out of his

just dislike of the queen, hated all French connections; and his

passionate loyalty made him think it a crime, or at least a piece of

base pusillanimity, in foreign states, to keep on any terms with the

rebellious parliament. The case was altered, after the retirement of

the regent Anne from power: Mazarin's latter conduct was, as is well

known, exceedingly adverse to the royal cause.

The account given by Mr. D'Israeli of Tabran's negotiations in the

fifth volume of his _Commentaries on the Reign of Charles I._, though

it does not contain anything very important, tends to show Mazarin's

inclination towards the royal cause in 1644 and 1645.

[298] Colepepper writes to Ashburnham, in February 1646, to advance

the Scots' treaty with all his power. "It is the only way left to save

the Crown and the kingdom; all other tricks will deceive you.... It is

no time to dally on distinctions and criticisms. All the world will

laugh at them when a crown is in question." _Clar. Papers_, ii. 207.

The king had positively declared his resolution not to consent to the

establishment of presbytery. This had so much disgusted both the Scots

and English presbyterians (for the latter had been concerned in the

negotiation), that Montreuil wrote to say he thought they would rather

make it up with the independents than treat again. "De sorte qu'il ne

faut plus marchander, et que V. M. se doit hâter d'envoyer aux deux

parlemens son consentiment aux trois propositions d'Uxbridge; ce

qu'étant fait, elle sera en sureté dans l'armée d'Ecosse" (15th Jan.

1646) P. 211.

[299] "I assure you," he writes to Capel, Hopton, etc., Feb. 2, 1646,

"whatever paraphrases or prophecies may be made upon my last message

(pressing the two houses to consent to a personal treaty), I shall

never part with the church, the essentials of my crown, or my

friends."--P. 206. Baillie could not believe the report that the king

intended to take refuge in the Scots army, as "there would be no

shelter there for him, unless he would take the covenant, and follow

the advice of his parliament. Hard pills to be swallowed by a wilful

and an unadvised prince." Vol. ii. p. 203.

[300] Not long after the king had taken shelter with the Scots, he

wrote a letter to Ormond, which was intercepted, wherein he assured

him of his expectation that their army would join with his, and act in

conjunction with Montrose, to procure a happy peace and the

restoration of his rights. Whitelock, page 208. Charles had bad luck

with his letters, which fell, too frequently for his fame and

interests, into the hands of his enemies. But who, save this most

ill-judging of princes, would have entertained an idea that the Scots

presbyterian army would co-operate with Montrose, whom they abhorred,

and very justly, for his treachery and cruelty, above all men living?

[301] _Parl. Hist._ 499; Whitelock, 215, 218. It was voted, 17th June,

that after these twenty years, the king was to exercise no power over

the militia without the previous consent of parliament, who were to

pass a bill at any time respecting it, if they should judge the

kingdom's safety to be concerned, which should be valid without the

king's assent. Commons' Journals.

[302] P. 248. "Show me any precedent," he says in another place,

"wherever presbyterian government and regal was together without

perpetual rebellions, which was the cause that necessitated the king

my father to change that government in Scotland. And even in France,

where they are but on tolerance, which in likelihood shall cause

moderation, did they ever sit still so long as they had power to

rebel? And it cannot be otherwise; for the ground of their doctrine is

anti-monarchical."--P. 260. See also p. 273.

[303] "The design is to unite you with the Scots nation and the

presbyterians of England against the anti-monarchical party, the

independents.... If by conscience it is intended to assert that

episcopacy is _jure divino_ exclusive, whereby no protestant, or

rather Christian church, can be acknowledged for such without a

bishop, we must therein crave leave wholly to differ. And if we be in

an error, we are in good company, there not being, as we have cause to

believe, six persons of the protestant religion of the other

opinion.... Come, the question in short is, whether you will choose to

be a king of presbytery, or no king, and yet presbytery or perfect

independency to be?"--P. 263. They were, however, as much against his

giving up the militia, or his party, as in favour of his abolishing

episcopacy.

Charles was much to be pitied throughout all this period; none of his

correspondents understood the state of affairs so well as himself; he

was with the Scots, and saw what they were made of, while the others

fancied absurdities through their own private self-interested views.

It is very certain that by sacrificing episcopacy he would not have

gained a step with the parliament; and as to reigning in Scotland

alone, suspected, insulted, degraded, this would perhaps just have

been possible for himself; but neither Henrietta nor her friends would

have found an asylum there.

[304] Juxon had been well treated by the parliament, in consequence of

his prudent abstinence from politics, and residence in their quarters.

He dates his answer to the king from his palace at Fulham. He was,

however, dispossessed of it not long after by virtue of the ordinance

directing the sale of bishops' lands. Nov. 16, 1646. _Parl. Hist._

528. A committee was appointed (Nov. 2, 1646) to consider of a fitting

maintenance to be allowed the bishops, both those who had remained

under the parliament, and those who had deserted it. Journals. I was

led to this passage by Mr. Godwin, _Hist. of Commonwealth_, ii. 250.

Whether anything farther was done, I have not observed. But there is

an order in the Journals, 1st May 1647, that whereas divers of the

late tenants of Dr. Juxon, late Bishop of London, have refused to pay

the rents or other sums of money due to him as Bishop of London at or

before the 1st of November last, the trustees of bishops' lands are

directed to receive the same, and pay them over to Dr. Juxon. Though

this was only justice, it shows that justice was done at least in this

instance, to a bishop. Juxon must have been a very prudent and

judicious man, though not learned; which probably was all the better.

[305] Jan. 29, 1646. _Parl. Hist._ 436. Whitelock says, "Many sober

men and lovers of peace were earnest to have complied with what the

king proposed; but the major part of the house was contrary, and the

new-elected members joined those who were averse to compliance."--P.

207.

[306] _Clar. Papers_, p. 275.

[307] _Id._ 294, 297, 300. She had said as much before (_King's

Cabinet Opened_, p. 28); so that this was not a burst of passion.

"Conservez vous la militia," she says in one place (p. 271), "et

n'abandonnez jamais; et _par cela tout reviendra_." Charles, however,

disclaimed all idea of violating his faith in case of a treaty (p.

273); but observes as to the militia, with some truth, that "the

retaining of it is not of so much consequence--I am far from saying,

none--as is thought, without the concurrence of other things; because

the militia here is not, as in France and other countries, a formed

powerful strength; but it serves more to hold off ill than to do much

good. And certainly, if the pulpits teach not obedience (which will

never be, if presbyterian government be absolutely settled), the Crown

will have little comfort of the militia."--P. 296.

[308] P. 301.

[309] P. 313.

[310] Pp. 245, 247, 278, 314. In one place he says, that he will go to

France _to clear his reputation to the queen_. P. 265. He wrote in

great distress of mind to Jermyn and Colepepper, on her threatening to

retire from all business into a monastery, in consequence of his

refusal to comply with her wishes. P. 270. See also Montreuil's memoir

in Thurloe's _State Papers_, i. 85, whence it appears that the king

had thoughts of making his escape in Jan. 1647.

[311] "For the proposition to Bellievre (a French agent at Newcastle

after Montreuil's recall), I hate it. If any such thing should be made

public, you are undone; your enemies will make a malicious use of it.

Be sure you never own it again in any discourse, otherwise than as

intended as a foil, or an hyperbole, or any other ways except in sober

earnest," etc. P. 304. The queen and her counsellors, however, seem

afterwards to have retracted in some measure what they had said about

his escape; and advised that if he could not be suffered to go into

Scotland, he would try Ireland or Jersey. P. 312.

Her dislike to the king's escape showed itself, according to

Clarendon, vi. 192, even at a time when it appeared the only means to

secure his life, during his confinement in the Isle of Wight. Some may

suspect that Henrietta had consoled herself too well with Lord Jermyn

to wish for her husband's return.

[312] P. 344.

[313] P. 279.

[314] Clarendon and Hume inveigh against the parliament for this

publication; in which they are of course followed by the whole rabble

of Charles's admirers. But it could not reasonably be expected that

such material papers should be kept back; nor were the parliament

under any obligation to do so. The former writer insinuates that they

were garbled; but Charles himself never pretended this (see Supplement

to Evelyn's _Diary_, p. 101); nor does there seem any foundation for

the surmise. His own friends garbled them, however, after the

restoration; some passages are omitted in the edition of King

Charles's Works; so that they can only be read accurately in the

original publication, called _The King's Cabinet Opened_, a small

tract in quarto; or in the modern compilations, such as the

_Parliamentary History_, which have copied it. Ludlow says he has been

informed that some of the letters taken at Naseby were suppressed by

those intrusted with them, who since the king's restoration have been

rewarded for it. _Memoirs_, i. 156. But I should not be inclined to

believe this.

There is, however, an anecdote which may be mentioned in this place: A

Dr. Hickman, afterwards Bishop of Derry, wrote in 1690, the following

letter to Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, a copy of which, in Dr. Birch's

handwriting, may be found in the British Museum. It was printed by him

in the Appendix to the _Inquiry into the Share K. Charles I. had in

Glamorgan's Transactions_, and from thence by Harris, in his _Life of

Charles I._, p. 144.

"MY LORD,--Last week Mr. Bennet [a bookseller] left with me a

manuscript of letters from King Charles I. to his queen; and said it

was your lordship's desire and Dr. Pelling's, that my Lord Rochester

should read them over, and see what was fit to be left out in the

intended edition of them. Accordingly, my lord has read them over, and

upon the whole matter says he is very much amazed at the design of

printing them, and thinks that the king's enemies could not have done

him a greater discourtesy. He showed me many passages which detract

very much from the reputation of the king's prudence, and something

from his integrity; and in short he can find nothing throughout the

whole collection, but what will lessen the character of the king and

offend all those who wish well to his memory. He thinks it very unfit

to expose any man's conversation and familiarity with his wife, but

especially that king's; for it was apparently his blind side, and his

enemies gained great advantage by showing it. But my lord hopes his

friends will spare him; and therefore he has ordered me not to deliver

the book to the bookseller, but put it into your lordship's hands; and

when you have read it, he knows you will be of his opinion. If your

lordship has not time to read it all, my lord has turned down some

leaves where he makes his chief objections. If your lordship sends any

servant to town, I beg you would order him to call here for the book,

and that you would take care about it."

Though the description of these letters answers perfectly to those in

the _King's Cabinet Opened_, which certainly "detract much from the

reputation of Charles's prudence, and something from his integrity,"

it is impossible that Rochester and the others could be ignorant of so

well-known a publication; and we must consequently infer that some

letters injurious to the king's character have been suppressed by the

caution of his friends.

[315] The king had long entertained a notion, in which he was

encouraged by the attorney-general Herbert, that the act against the

dissolution of the parliament without its own consent was void in

itself. _Life of Clarendon_, p. 86. This high monarchical theory of

the nullity of statutes in restraint of the prerogative was never

thoroughly eradicated till the Revolution, and in all contentions

between the Crown and parliament destroyed the confidence, without

which no accommodation could be durable.

[316] "There is little or no appearance but that this summer will be

the hottest for war of any that hath been yet; and be confident that,

in making peace, I shall ever show my constancy in adhering to bishops

and all our friends, not forgetting to put a short period to this

perpetual parliament." _King's Cabinet Opened_, p. 7. "It being

presumption, and no piety, so to trust to a good cause as not to use

all lawful means to maintain it, I have thought of one means more to

furnish thee with for my assistance, than hitherto thou hast had: it

is, that I give thee power to promise in my name, to whom thou

thinkest most fit, that I will take away all the penal laws against

the Roman catholics in England as soon as God shall enable me to do

it; so as by their means, or in their favours, I may have so powerful

assistance as may deserve so great a favour, and enable me to do it.

But if thou ask what I call that assistance, I answer that when thou

knowest what may be done for it, it will be easily seen, if it deserve

to be so esteemed. I need not tell thee what secrecy this business

requires; yet this I will say, that this is the greatest point of

confidence I can express to thee; for it is no thanks to me to trust

thee in anything else but in this, which is the only point of

difference in opinion betwixt us: and yet I know thou wilt make as

good a bargain for me, even in this, as if thou wert a protestant."

_Id. ibid._ "As to my calling those at London a parliament, I shall

refer thee to Digby for particular satisfaction; this in general--if

there had been but two, besides myself, of my opinion, I had not done

it; and the argument that prevailed with me was, that the calling did

no ways acknowledge them to be a parliament, upon which condition and

construction I did it, and no otherwise, and accordingly it is

registered in the council books, with the council's unanimous

approbation." _Id._ p. 4. The one counsellor who concurred with the

king was Secretary Nicholas, Supplement to Evelyn's _Memoirs_, p. 90.

[317] The queen evidently suspected that he might be brought to

abandon the catholics. _King's Cabinet Opened_, pp. 30, 31. And, if

fear of her did not prevent him, I make no question that he would have

done so, could he but have carried his other points.

[318] _Parl. Hist._ 428; _Somers Tracts_, v. 542. It appears by

several letters of the king, published among those taken at Naseby,

that Ormond had power to promise the Irish a repeal of the penal laws

and the use of private chapels as well as a suspension of Poyning's

law. _King's Cabinet Opened_, pp. 16, 19; Rushw. Abr. v. 589.

Glamorgan's treaty granted them all the churches with the revenues

thereof, of which they had at any time since October 1641 been in

possession; that is, the re-establishment of their religion: they, on

the other hand, were to furnish a very large army to the king in

England.

[319] Rushw. Abr. v. 582, 594. This, as well as some letters taken on

Lord Digby's rout at Sherborn about the same time, made a prodigious

impression. "Many good men were sorry that the king's actions agreed

no better with his words; that he openly protested before God with

horrid imprecations that he endeavoured nothing so much as the

preservation of the protestant religion and rooting out of popery; yet

in the meantime, underhand, he promised to the Irish rebels an

abrogation of the laws against them, which was contrary to his late

expressed promises in these words, 'I will never abrogate the laws

against the papists.' And again he said, 'I abhor to think of bringing

foreign soldiers into the kingdom,' and yet he solicited the Duke of

Lorrain, the French, the Danes, and the very Irish, for assistance."

May's "Breviate of Hist. of Parliament" in Maseres's _Tracts_, i. 61.

Charles had certainly never scrupled (I do not say that he ought to

have done so) to make application in every quarter for assistance; and

began in 1642 with sending a Col. Cochran on a secret mission to

Denmark, in the hope of obtaining a subsidiary force from that

kingdom. There was at least no danger to the national independence

from such allies. "We fear this shall undo the king for ever, that no

repentance shall ever obtain a pardon of this act, if it be true, from

his parliaments." Baillie, ii. 185. Jan. 20, 1646. The king's

disavowal had some effect; it seems as if even those who were

prejudiced against him could hardly believe him guilty of such an

apostasy, as it appeared in their eyes. P. 175. And, in fact, though

the catholics had demanded nothing unreasonable either in its own

nature or according to the circumstances wherein they stood, it threw

a great suspicion on the king's attachment to his own faith, when he

was seen to abandon altogether, as it seemed, the protestant cause in

Ireland, while he was struggling so tenaciously for a particular form

of it in Britain. Nor was his negotiation less impolitic than

dishonourable. Without depreciating a very brave and injured people,

it may be said with certainty that an Irish army could not have had

the remotest chance of success against Fairfax and Cromwell; the

courage being equal on our side, the skill and discipline incomparably

superior. And it was evident that Charles could never reign in England

but on a protestant interest.

[320] Birch's _Inquiry into the Share which King Charles I. had in the

Transactions of the Earl of Glamorgan_, 1747. Four letters of Charles

to Glamorgan, now in the British Museum (Sloane MSS. 4161), in Birch's

handwriting, but of which he was not aware at the time of that

publication, decisively show the king's duplicity. In the first, which

was meant to be seen by Digby, dated Feb. 3, 1646, he blames him for

having been drawn to consent to conditions much beyond his

instructions. "If you had advised with my lord lieutenant, as you

promised me, all this had been helped;" and tells him he had commanded

as much favour to be shown him as might possibly stand with his

service and safety. On Feb. 28 he writes by a private hand, Sir John

Winter, that he is every day more and more confirmed in the trust that

he had of him. In a third letter, dated April 5, he says, in a cipher,

to which the key is given, "you cannot be but confident of my making

good all instructions and promises to you and nuncio." The fourth

letter is dated April 6, and is in these words: "Herbert, as I doubt

not but you have too much courage to be dismayed or discouraged at the

usage like you have had, so I assure you that my estimation of you is

nothing diminished by it, but rather begets in me a desire of revenge

and reparation to us both (for in this I hold myself equally

interested with you), whereupon not doubting of your accustomed care

and industry in my service, I assure you of the continuance of my

favour and protection to you, and that in deeds more than in words I

shall show myself to be your most assured constant friend. C. R."

These letters have lately been republished by Dr. Lingard, _Hist. of

Eng._ x. note B, from Warner's _Hist. of the Civil War in Ireland_.

The cipher may be found in the _Biographia Britannica_, under the

article Bales. Dr. L. endeavours to prove that Glamorgan acted all

along with Ormond's privity; and it must be owned that the expression

in the king's last letter about revenge and reparation, which Dr. L.

does not advert to, has a very odd appearance.

The controversy is, I suppose, completely at an end; so that it is

hardly necessary to mention a letter from Glamorgan, then Marquis of

Worcester, to Clarendon after the restoration, which has every

internal mark of credibility, and displays the king's unfairness.

_Clar. State Pap._ ii. 201, and Lingard, _ubi supra_. It is remarkable

that the transaction is never mentioned in the _History of the

Rebellion_. The noble author was, however, convinced of the

genuineness of Glamorgan's commission, as appears by a letter to

Secretary Nicholas. "I must tell you, I care not how little I say in

that business of Ireland, since those strange powers and instructions

given to your favourite Glamorgan, which appear to be so inexcusable

to justice, piety, and prudence. And I fear there is very much in that

transaction of Ireland, both before and since that you and I were

never thought wise enough to be advised with in. Oh! Mr. Secretary,

those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes

in war which have befallen the king, and look like the effect of God's

anger towards us." _Id._ p. 237. See also a note of Mr. Laing, _Hist.

of Scotland_, iii. 557, for another letter of the king to Glamorgan,

from Newcastle, in July 1646, not less explicit than the foregoing.

[321] Burnet's _Mem. of Dukes of Hamilton_, 284. Baillie's letters,

throughout 1646, indicate his apprehension of the prevalent spirit,

which he dreaded as implacable, not only to monarchy, but to

presbytery and the Scots nation. "The leaders of the people seem

inclined to have no shadow of a king, to have liberty for all

religions, a lame Erastian presbytery, to be so injurious to us as to

chase us hence with the sword."--148. March 31, 1646. "The common word

is, that they will have the king prisoner. Possibly they may grant to

the prince to be a duke of Venice. The militia must be absolutely, for

all time to come, in the power of the parliament, alone," etc.--200.

On the king's refusal of the propositions sent to Newcastle, the Scots

took great pains to prevent a vote against him. 226. There was still,

however, danger of this. 236, Oct. 13, and p. 243. His intrigues with

both parties, the presbyterians and independents, were now known; and

all sides seem to have been ripe for deposing them. 245. These letters

are a curious contrast to the idle fancies of a speedy and triumphant

restoration, which Clarendon himself as well as others of less

judgment seem to have entertained.

[322] "Though he should swear it," says Baillie, "no man will believe

that he sticks upon episcopacy for any conscience."--ii. 205. And

again: "It is pity that base hypocrisy, when it is pellucid, shall

still be entertained. No oaths did ever persuade me, that episcopacy

was ever adhered to on any conscience."--224. This looks at first like

mere bigotry. But, when we remember that Charles had abolished

episcopacy in Scotland, and was ready to abolish protestantism in

Ireland, Baillie's prejudices will appear less unreasonable. The

king's private letters in the _Clarendon Papers_ have convinced me of

his mistaken conscientiousness about church government; but of this

his contemporaries could not be aware.

[323] Hollis maintains that the violent party were very desirous that

the Scots should carry the king with them, and that nothing could have

been more injurious to his interests. If we may believe Berkley, who

is much confirmed by Baillie, the presbyterians had secretly engaged

to the Scots that the army should be disbanded, and the king brought

up to London with honour and safety. "Memoirs of Sir J. Berkley," in

Maseres's _Tracts_, i. 358; Baillie, ii. 257. This affords no bad

justification of the Scots for delivering him up.

"It is very like," says Baillie, "if he had done any duty, though he

had never taken the covenant, but permitted it to have been put in an

act of parliament in both kingdoms, and given so satisfactory an

answer to the rest of the propositions, as easily he might, and

sometimes I know he was willing, certainly Scotland had been for him

as one man: and the body of England, upon many grounds, was upon a

disposition to have so cordially embraced him, that no man, for his

life, durst have muttered against his present restitution. But

remaining what he was in all his maxims, a full Canterburian, both in

matters of religion and state, he still inclined to a new war; and for

that end resolved to go to Scotland. Some great men there pressed the

equity of Scotland's protecting of him on any terms. This untimeous

excess of friendship has ruined that unhappy prince; for the better

party finding the conclusion of the king's coming to Scotland, and

thereby their own present ruin, and the ruin of the whole cause, the

making the malignants masters of church and state, the drawing the

whole force of England upon Scotland for their perjurious violation of

their covenant, they resolved by all means to cross that design."--P.

253.

[324] The votes for payment of the sum of £400,000 to the Scots are on

Aug. 21, 27, and Sept. 1; though it was not fully agreed between the

two nations till Dec. 8. Whitelock, 220, 229. But Whitelock dates the

commencement of the understanding as to the delivery of the king about

Dec. 24. P. 231. See Commons' Journals. Baillie, ii. 246, 253;

Burnet's _Memoirs of Hamiltons_, 293, etc.; Laing, iii. 362; and Mr.

Godwin's _History of the Commonwealth_, ii. 258; a work in which great

attention has been paid to the order of time.

[325] Journals, Aug. and Sept.; Godwin, _ubi supra_; Baillie, ii.

_passim_.

[326] Baillie, who, in Jan. 1644, speaks of the independents as rather

troublesome than formidable, and even says: "No man, I know, in either

of the houses of any note is for them" (437); and that "Lord Say's

power and reputation is none at all;" admits, in a few months, the

alarming increase of independency and sectarianism in the Earl of

Manchester's army; more than two parts in three of the officers and

soldiers being with them, and those the most resolute and confident;

though they had no considerable force either in Essex's or Waller's

army, nor in the assembly of divines or the parliament, ii. 5, 19, 20.

This was owing in a great degree to the influence, at that period, of

Cromwell over Manchester. "The man," he says, "is a very wise and

active head, universally well beloved, as religious and stout; being a

known independent, and most of the soldiers who love new ways put

themselves under his command."--60.

[327] The independent party, or at least some of its most eminent

members, as Lord Say and Mr. St. John, were in a secret correspondence

with Oxford, through the medium of Lord Saville, in the spring of

1645, if we believe Hollis, who asserts that he had seen their

letters, asking offices for themselves. _Mem. of Hollis_, sect. 43.

Baillie refers this to an earlier period, the beginning of 1644 (i.

427); and I conceive that Hollis has been incorrect as to the date.

The king, however, was certainly playing a game with them in the

beginning of 1646, as well as with the presbyterians, so as to give

both parties an opinion of his insincerity. _Clarendon State Papers_,

214; and see two remarkable letters written by his order to Sir Henry

Vane, 226, urging an union, in order to overthrow the presbyterian

government.

[328] The principles of the independents are set forth candidly, and

even favourably, by Collier, 829; as well as by Neal, ii. 98. For

those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical distinction, it

may be useful to mention the two essential characteristics of this

sect, by which they differed from the presbyterians. The first was,

that all churches or separate congregations were absolutely

independent of each other as to jurisdiction or discipline; whence

they rejected all synods and representative assemblies as possessing

authority; though they generally admitted, to a very limited degree,

the alliance of churches for mutual counsel and support. Their second

characteristic was the denial of spiritual powers communicated in

ordination by apostolical succession; deeming the call of a

congregation a sufficient warrant for the exercise of the ministry.

See Orme's _Life of Owen_, for a clear view and able defence of the

principles maintained by this party. I must add, that Neal seems to

have proved that the independents, as a body, were not systematically

adverse to monarchy.

[329] Edwards's _Gangræna_, a noted book in that age, enumerates one

hundred and seventy-six heresies, which, however, are reduced by him

to sixteen heads; and these seem capable of further consideration.

Neal, 249. The house ordered a general fast, Feb. 1647, to beseech God

to stop the growth of heresy and blasphemy. Whitelock, 236; a

presbyterian artifice to alarm the nation.

[330] _Parl. Hist._ ii. 1479. They did not meet till July 1, 1643.

Rushw. Abr. v. 123; Neal, 42; Collier, 823. Though this assembly

showed abundance of bigotry and narrowness, they were by no means so

contemptible as Clarendon represents them (ii. 423); and perhaps equal

in learning, good sense, and other merits, to any lower house of

convocation that ever made a figure in England.

[331] Whitelock, 71; Neal, 103. Selden, who owed no gratitude to the

episcopal church, was from the beginning of its dangers a steady and

active friend, displaying, whatever may have been said of his

timidity, full as much courage as could reasonably be expected from a

studious man advanced in years. Baillie, in 1641, calls him "the

avowed proctor of the bishops" (i. 245); and when provoked by his

Erastian opposition in 1646, presumes to talk of his "insolent

absurdity" (ii. 96). Selden sat in the assembly of divines; and by his

great knowledge of the ancient languages and of ecclesiastical

antiquities, as well as by his sound logic and calm clear judgment,

obtained an undeniable superiority, which he took no pains to conceal.

[332] Scobell; Rushw. Abr. v. 576; _Parl. Hist._ iii. 444; Neal, 199.

The latter says, this did not pass the Lords till June 6. But this is

not so. Whitelock very rightly opposed the prohibition of the use of

the common prayer, and of the silencing episcopal ministers, as

contrary to the principle of liberty of conscience avowed by the

parliament, and like what had been complained of in the bishops. 226,

239, 281. But, in Sept. 1647, it was voted that the indulgence in

favour of tender consciences should not extend to tolerate the common

prayer. _Id._ 274.

[333] The Erastians were named from Erastus, a German physician in the

sixteenth century. The denomination is often used in the present age

ignorantly, and therefore indefinitely; but I apprehend that the

fundamental principle of his followers was this: That in a

commonwealth where the magistrate professes Christianity, it is not

convenient that offences against religion and morality should be

punished by the censures of the church, especially by excommunication.

Probably he may have gone farther, as Selden seems to have done (Neal,

194), and denied the right of exclusion from church communion, even

without reference to the temporal power; but the limited proposition

was of course sufficient to raise the practical controversy. The

Helvetic divines, Gualter and Bullinger, strongly concurred in this

with Erastus; "Contendimus disciplinam esse debere in ecclesiâ, sed

satis esse, si ea administretur a magistratu." Erastus, _de

Excommunicatione_, p. 350; and a still stronger passage in p. 379. And

it is said, that Archbishop Whitgift caused Erastus's book to be

printed at his own expense. See one of Warburton's notes on Neal.

Calvin, and the whole of his school, held, as is well known, a very

opposite tenet. See _Erasti Theses de Excommunicatione_, 4to, 1579.

The ecclesiastical constitution of England is nearly Erastian in

theory, and almost wholly so in practice. Every sentence of the

spiritual judge is liable to be reversed by a civil tribunal, the

court of delegates, by virtue of the king's supremacy over all causes.

And, practically, what is called church discipline, or the censures of

ecclesiastical governors for offences, has gone so much into disuse,

and what remains is so contemptible, that I believe no one, except

those who derive a little profit from it, would regret its abolition.

"The most part of the House of Commons," says Baillie, ii. 149,

"especially the lawyers, whereof there are many, and divers of them

very able men, are either half or whole Erastians, believing no church

government to be of divine right, but all to be a human constitution

depending on the will of the magistrate." "The pope and king," he says

in another place (196), "were never more earnest for the headship of

the church than the plurality of this parliament." See also p. 183;

and Whitelock, 169.

[334] _Parl. Hist._ 459 _et alibi_; Rushw. Abr. v. 578 _et alibi_;

Whitelock, 165, 169, 173, 176 _et post_; Baillie's _Letters_,

_passim_; Neal, 23, etc., 191 _et post_; Collier, 841. The assembly

attempted to sustain their own cause by counter votes; and, the

minority of independents and Erastians having withdrawn, it was

carried with a single dissent of Lightfoot, that Christ had

established a government in his church independent of the civil

magistrate. Neal, 223.

[335] Neal, 228. Warburton says, in his note on this passage, that

"the presbyterian was _to all intents and purposes_ the established

religion during the time of the commonwealth." But, as coercive

discipline and synodical government are no small intents and purposes

of that religion, this assertion requires to be modified, as it has

been in my text. Besides which, there were many ministers of the

independent sect in benefices, some of whom probably had never

received ordination. "Both baptists and independents," says a very

well informed writer of the latter denomination, "were in the practice

of accepting the livings, that is, the temporalities of the church.

They did not, however, view themselves as parish ministers, and bound

to administer all the ordinances of religion to the parish population.

They occupied the parochial edifices, and received a portion of the

tithes for their maintenance; but in all other respects acted

according to their own principles." Orme's _Life of Owen_, 136. This

he thinks would have produced very serious evils, if not happily

checked by the Restoration. "During the commonwealth," he observes

afterwards (245), "no system of church government can be considered as

having been properly or fully established. The presbyterians, if any,

enjoyed this distinction."

[336] The city began to petition for the establishment of presbytery,

and against toleration of sectaries, early in 1646; and not long after

came to assume what seemed to the Commons too dictatorial a tone. This

gave much offence, and contributed to drive some members into the

opposite faction. Neal, 193, 221, 241; Whitelock, 207, 240.

[337] Vol. ii. 268. See also 207, and other places. This is a remark

that requires attention; many are apt to misunderstand the question.

"For this point (toleration) both they and we contend," says Baillie,

"tanquam pro aris et focis."--ii. 175. "Not only they praise your

magistrate" (writing to a Mr. Spang in Holland), "who for policy gives

some secret tolerance to divers religions, wherein, as I conceive,

your divines preach against them as great sinners, but avow that by

God's command the magistrate is discharged to put the least

discourtesy on any man, Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for

his religion."--18. See also 61, and many other passages. "The army"

(says Hugh Peters in a tract, entitled "A Word for the Army, and Two

Words to the People," 1647) "never hindered the state from a state

religion, having only wished to enjoy now what the puritans begged

under the prelates; when we desire more, blame us, and shame us." In

another, entitled "Vox Militaris," the author says: "We did never

engage against this platform, nor for that platform, nor ever will,

except better informed; and therefore, if the state establisheth

presbytery, we shall never oppose it."

The question of toleration, in its most important shape, was brought

at this time before parliament, on occasion of one Paul Best who had

written against the doctrine of the trinity. According to the common

law, heretics, on being adjudged by the spiritual court, were

delivered over to be burned under the writ de hæretico comburendo.

This punishment had been inflicted five times under Elizabeth; on

Wielmacker and Ter Wort, two Dutch anabaptists, who, like many of that

sect, entertained Arian tenets, and were burned in Smithfield in 1575;

on Matthew Hammond in 1579, Thomas Lewis in 1583, and Francis Ket in

1588; all burned by Scambler, Bishop of Norwich. It was also inflicted

on Bartholomew Legat and Edward Wightman, under James, in 1614; the

first burned by King, Bishop of London, the second by Neile of

Litchfield. A third, by birth a Spaniard, incurred the same penalty;

but the compassion of the people showed itself so strongly at Legat's

execution that James thought it expedient not to carry the sentence

into effect. Such is the venomous and demoralising spirit of bigotry,

that Fuller, a writer remarkable for good nature and gentleness,

expresses his indignation at the pity which was manifested by the

spectators of Legat's sufferings. _Church Hist._ part ii. p. 62. In

the present case of Paul Best, the old sentence of fire was not

suggested by any one; but an ordinance was brought in, Jan. 1646, to

punish him with death. Whitelock, 190. Best made, at length, such an

explanation as was accepted (Neal, 214); but an ordinance to suppress

blasphemies and heresies as capital offences was brought in. Commons'

Journals, April 1646. The independents gaining strength, this was long

delayed; but the ordinance passed both houses, May 2, 1648. _Id._ 303.

Neal (338) justly observes, that it shows the governing presbyterians

would have made a terrible use of their power, had they been supported

by the sword of the civil magistrate. The denial of the trinity,

incarnation, atonement, or inspiration of any book of the Old or New

Testament, was made felony. Lesser offences, such as anabaptism, or

denying the lawfulness of presbyterian government, were punishable by

imprisonment till the party should recant. It was much opposed,

especially by Whitelock. The writ de hæretico comburendo, as is well

known, was taken away by act of parliament in 1677.

[338] "In all New England, no liberty of living for a presbyterian.

Whoever there, were they angels for life and doctrine, will essay to

set up a different way from them [the independents], shall be sure of

present banishment." Baillie, ii. 4, also 17. I am surprised to find a

late writer of that country (Dwight's _Travels in New England_)

attempt to extenuate at least the intolerance of the independents

towards the quakers, who came to settle there; and which, we see,

extended also to the presbyterians. But Mr. Orme, with more judgment,

observes that the New England congregations did not sufficiently

adhere to the principle of independency, and acted too much as a body;

to which he ascribes their persecution of the quakers and others.

_Life of Owen_, 335. It is certain that the congregational scheme

leads to toleration, as the national church scheme is adverse to it,

for manifold reasons which the reader will discover.

[339] Though the writings of Chillingworth and Hales are not directly

in behalf of toleration, no one could relish them without imbibing its

spirit in the fullest measure. The great work of Jeremy Taylor, on the

_Liberty of Prophesying_, was published in 1647; and, if we except a

few concessions to the temper of the times, which are not reconcilable

to its general principles, has left little for those who followed him.

Mr. Orme admits that the remonstrants of Holland maintained the

principles of toleration very early (p. 50); but refers to a tract by

Leonard Busher, an independent, in 1614, as "containing the most

enlightened and scriptural views of religious liberty."--P. 99. He

quotes other writings of the same sect under Charles I.

[340] Several proofs of this occur in the _Clarendon State Papers_. A

letter, in particular, from Colepepper to Digby, in Sept. 1645, is so

extravagantly sanguine, considering the posture of the king's affairs

at that time, that, if it was perfectly sincere, Colepepper must have

been a man of less ability than has generally been supposed. Vol. ii.

p. 188. Neal has some sensible remarks on the king's mistake in

supposing that any party which he did not join must in the end be

ruined. P. 268. He had not lost this strange confidence after his very

life had become desperate; and told Sir John Bowring, when he advised

him not to spin out the time at the treaty of Newport, that "any

interests would be glad to come in with him." See Bowring's _Memoirs_

in Halifax's _Miscellanies_, 132.

[341] Baillie's letters are full of this feeling, and must be reckoned

fair evidence, since no man could be more bigoted to presbytery, or

more bitter against the royalist party. I have somewhere seen Baillie

praised for his mildness. His letters give no proof of it. Take the

following specimens: "Mr. Maxwell of Ross has printed at Oxford so

desperately malicious an invective against our assemblies and

presbyteries, that, however I could hardly consent to the hanging of

Canterbury or of any jesuit, yet I could give my sentence freely

against that unhappy man's life."--ii. 99. "God has struck Coleman

with death; he fell in an ague, and after three or four days expired.

It is not good to stand in Christ's way."--P. 199.

Baillie's judgment of men was not more conspicuous than his

moderation. "Vane and Cromwell are of horrible hot fancies to put all

in confusion, but not of any deep reach. St. John and Pierrepont are

more stayed, but not great heads."--P. 258. The drift of all his

letters is, that every man who resisted the _jus divinum_ of

presbytery was knave or fool, if not both. They are, however,

eminently serviceable as historical documents.

[342] "Now for my own particular resolution," he says in a letter to

Digby, March 26, 1646, "it is this. I am endeavouring to get to

London, so that the conditions may be such as a gentleman may own, and

that the rebels may acknowledge me king; being not without hope that I

shall be able so to draw either the presbyterians or independents to

side with me for extirpating the one or the other, that I shall be

really king again." Carte's _Ormond_, iii. 452; quoted by Mr. Brodie,

to whom I am indebted for the passage. I have mentioned already his

overture about this time to Sir Henry Vane through Ashburnham.

[343] Clarendon, followed by Hume and several others, appears to say

that Ragland Castle in Monmouthshire, defended by the Marquis of

Worcester, was the last that surrendered; namely, in August 1646. I

use the expression _appears to say_, because the last edition, which

exhibits his real text, shows that he paid this compliment to

Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, and that his original editors (I suppose

to do honour to a noble family), foisted in the name of Ragland. It is

true, however, of neither. The North Welsh castles held out

considerably longer; that of Harlech was not taken till April 1647,

which put an end to the war. Whitelock.

Clarendon, still more unyielding than his master, extols the long

resistance of his party, and says that those who surrendered at the

first summons obtained no better terms than they who made the stoutest

defence; as if that were a sufficient justification for prolonging a

civil war. In fact, however, they did the king some harm; inasmuch as

they impeded the efforts made in parliament to disband the army.

Several votes of the Commons show this; see the Journals of 12th May

and 31st July 1646.

[344] The resolution to disband Fairfax's regiment next Tuesday at

Chelmsford passed 16th May 1647, by 136 to 115; Algernon Sidney being

a teller of the noes. Commons' Journals. In these votes the house,

that is, the presbyterian majority, acted with extreme imprudence; not

having provided for the payment of the army's arrears at the time they

were thus disbanding them. Whitelock advised Hollis and his party not

to press the disbanding; and on finding them obstinate, drew off, as

he tells us, from that connection, and came nearer to Cromwell. P.

248. This, however, he had begun to do rather earlier. Independently

of the danger of disgusting the army, it is probable that, as soon as

it was disbanded, the royalists would have been up in arms. For the

growth of this discontent, day by day, peruse Whitelock's Journal for

March and the three following months, as well as the _Parliamentary

History_.

[345] It was only carried by 159 to 147, March 5, 1647, that the

forces should be commanded by Fairfax. But on the 8th, the house voted

without a division, that no officer under him should be above the rank

of a colonel, and that no member of the house should have any command

in the army. It is easy to see at whom this was levelled. Commons'

Journals. They voted at the same time that the officers should all

take the covenant, which had been rejected two years before; and, by a

majority of 136 to 108, that they should all conform to the government

of the church established by both houses of parliament.

[346] _Clar. State Papers_, ii. 365. The army, in a declaration not

long after the king fell into their power, June 24, use these

expressions: "We clearly profess that we do not see how there can be

any peace to this kingdom firm or lasting, without a due provision for

the rights, quiet, and immunity of his majesty, his royal family, and

his late partakers."--_Parl. Hist._ 647.

[347] Hollis censures the speakers of the two houses and others who

fled to the army from this mob; the riot being "a sudden tumultuous

thing of young idle people without design." Possibly this might be the

case; but the tumult at the door of the house, 26th July, was such

that it could not be divided. Their votes were plainly null, as being

made under duress. Yet the presbyterians were so strong in the Commons

that a resolution to annul all proceedings during the speaker's

absence was lost by 97 to 95, after his return; and it was only voted

to repeal them. A motion to declare that the houses, from 26th July to

6th August, had been under a force, was also lost by 78 to 75.

Journals, 9th and 17th August. The Lords, however, passed an ordinance

to this effect; and after once more rejecting it, the Commons agreed

on August 20, with a proviso that no one should be called in question

for what had been done.

[348] These transactions are best read in the Commons' Journals, and

_Parliamentary History_, and next to those, in Whitelock. Hollis

relates them with great passion; and Clarendon, as he does everything

else that passed in London, very imperfectly. He accounts for the Earl

of Manchester and the Speaker Lenthal's retiring to the army by their

persuasion that the chief officers had nearly concluded a treaty with

the king, and resolved to have their shares in it. This is a very

unnecessary surmise. Lenthal was a poor-spirited man, always

influenced by those whom he thought the strongest, and in this

instance, according to Ludlow (p. 206) persuaded with difficulty by

Haslerig to go to the army. Manchester indeed had more courage and

honour; but he was not of much capacity, and his parliamentary conduct

was not systematic. But upon the whole it is obvious, on reading the

list of names (_Parl. Hist._ 757), that the king's friends were rather

among those who staid behind, especially in the Lords, than among

those who went to the army. Seven of eight peers who continued to sit

from 26th July to 6th of August 1647, were impeached for it afterwards

(_Parl. Hist._ 764), and they were all of the most moderate party. If

the king had any previous connection with the city, he acted very

disingenuously in his letter to Fairfax, Aug. 3, while the contest was

still pending; wherein he condemns the tumults, and declares his

unwillingness that his friends should join with the city against the

army, whose proposals he had rejected the day before with an

imprudence of which he was now sensible. This letter, as actually sent

to Fairfax, is in the _Parliamentary History_, 734, and may be

compared with a rough draught of the same, preserved in _Clarendon

Papers_, 373, from which it materially differs, being much sharper

against the city.

[349] Fairfax's "Memoirs" in Maseres's _Collection of Tracts_, vol. i.

p. 447. "By this," says Fairfax, who had for once found a man less

discerning of the times than himself, "I plainly saw the broken reed

he leaned on. The agitators had brought the king into an opinion that

the army was for him." Ireton said plainly to the king, "Sir, you have

an intention to be the arbitrator between the parliament and us; and

we mean to be so between your majesty and the parliament."--Berkley's

"Memoirs," _ibid._ p. 360.

This folly of the king, if Mrs. Hutchinson is well informed, alienated

Ireton, who had been more inclined to trust him than is commonly

believed. "Cromwell," she says, "was at that time so incorruptibly

faithful to his trust and the people's interest, that he could not be

drawn in to practise even his own usual and natural dissimulation on

this occasion. His son-in-law Ireton, that was as faithful as he, was

not so fully of the opinion, till he had tried it, and found to the

contrary, but that the king might have been managed to comply with the

public good of his people, after he could no longer uphold his own

violent will; but upon some discourses with him, the king uttering

these words to him, 'I shall play my game as well as I can,' Ireton

replied, 'If your majesty have a game, you must give us also the

liberty to play ours.' Colonel Hutchinson privately discoursing with

his cousin about the communications he had had with the king, Ireton's

expressions were these: 'He gave us words, and we paid him in his own

coin, when we found he had no real intention to the people's good, but

to prevail, by our factions, to regain by art what he had lost in

fight.'"--P. 274.

It must be said for the king that he was by no means more sanguine or

more blind than his distinguished historian and minister. Clarendon's

private letters are full of strange and absurd expectations. Even so

late as October 1647, he writes to Berkley in high hopes from the

army, and presses him to make no concessions except as to persons. "If

they see you will not yield, they must; for sure they have as much or

more need of the king than he of them."--P. 379. The whole tenor,

indeed, of Clarendon's correspondence demonstrates that,

notwithstanding the fine remarks occasionally scattered through his

history, he was no practical statesman, nor had any just conception,

at the time, of the course of affairs. He never flinched from one

principle, not very practicable or rational in the circumstances of

the king; that nothing was to be receded from which had ever been

desired. This may be called magnanimity; but no foreign or domestic

dissension could be settled, if all men were to act upon it, or if all

men, like Charles and Clarendon, were to expect that Providence would

interfere to support what seems to them the best, that is, their own

cause. The following passage is a specimen: "Truly I am so unfit to

bear a part in carrying on this new contention [by negotiation and

concession], that I would not, to preserve myself, wife, and children

from the lingering death of want by famine (for a sudden death would

require no courage), consent to the lessening any part, which I take

to be in the function of a bishop, or the taking away the smallest

prebendary in the church, or to be bound not to endeavour to alter any

such alteration."--_Id._ vol. iii. p. 2, Feb. 4, 1648.

[350] _Parl. Hist._ 738. Clarendon talks of these proposals as worse

than any the king had ever received from the parliament; and Hollis

says they "dissolved the whole frame of the monarchy." It is hard to

see, however, that they did so in a greater degree than those which he

had himself endeavoured to obtain as a commissioner at Uxbridge. As to

the church, they were manifestly the best that Charles had ever seen.

As to his prerogative and the power of the monarchy, he was so

thoroughly beaten, that no treaty could do him any substantial

service; and he had, in truth, only to make his election, whether to

be the nominal chief of an aristocratical or a democratical republic.

In a well-written tract, called "Vox Militaris," containing a defence

of the army's proceedings and intentions, and published apparently in

July 1647, their desire to preserve the king's rights, according to

their notion of them, and the general laws of the realm, is strongly

asserted.

[351] The precise meaning of this word seems obscure. Some have

supposed it to be a corruption of adjutators, as if the modern term

adjutant meant the same thing. But I find agitator always so spelled

in the pamphlets of the time.

[352] Berkley's _Memoirs_, 366. He told Lord Capel about this time

that he expected a war between Scotland and England; that the Scots

hoped for the assistance of the presbyterians; and that he wished his

own party to rise in arms on a proper conjuncture, without which he

could not hope for much benefit from the others. Clarendon, v. 476.

[353] Berkley, 368, etc. Compare the letter of Ashburnham, published

in 1648, and reprinted in 1764, but probably not so full as the MS. in

the Earl of Ashburnham's possession; also the Memoirs of Hollis,

Huntingdon, and Fairfax, which are all in Maseres's Collection; also

Ludlow, Hutchinson, Clarendon, Burnet's _Memoirs of Hamilton_, and

some despatches in 1647 and 1648, from a royalist in London, printed

in the appendix to the second volume of the _Clarendon Papers_. This

correspondent of Secretary Nicholas believes Cromwell and Ireton to

have all along planned the king's destruction, and set the levellers

on, till they proceeded so violently, that they were forced to

restrain them. This also is the conclusion of Major Huntingdon, in his

Reasons for laying down his Commission. But the contrary appears to me

more probable.

Two anecdotes, well known to those conversant in English history, are

too remarkable to be omitted. It is said by the editor of Lord

Orrery's _Memoirs_, as a relation which he had heard from that noble

person, that in a conversation with Cromwell concerning the king's

death, the latter told him, he and his friends had once a mind to have

closed with the king, fearing that the Scots and presbyterians might

do so; when one of their spies, who was of the king's bedchamber, gave

them information of a letter from his majesty to the queen, sewed up

in the skirt of a saddle, and directing them to an inn where it might

be found. They obtained the letter accordingly, in which the king

said, that he was courted by both factions, the Scots presbyterians

and the army; that those which bade fairest for him should have him;

but he thought he should rather close with the Scots than the other.

Upon this, finding themselves unlikely to get good terms from the

king, they from that time vowed his destruction. Carte's _Ormond_, ii.

12.

A second anecdote is alluded to by some earlier writers, but is

particularly told in the following words, by Richardson, the painter,

author of some anecdotes of Pope, edited by Spence. "Lord Bolingbroke

told us, June 12, 1742 (Mr. Pope, Lord Marchmont, and myself), that

the second Earl of Oxford had often told him that he had seen, and had

in his hands, an original letter that Charles the First wrote to his

queen, in answer to one of hers that had been intercepted, and then

forwarded to him; wherein she had reproached him for having made those

villains too great concession, viz. that Cromwell should be lord

lieutenant of Ireland for life without account; that that kingdom

should be in the hands of the party, with an army there kept which

should know no head but the lieutenant; that Cromwell should have a

garter, etc.: That in this letter of the king's it was said, that she

should leave him to manage, who was better informed of all

circumstances than she could be; but she might be entirely easy as to

whatever concessions he should make them; for that he should know in

due time how to deal with the rogues, who, instead of a silken garter,

should be fitted with a hempen cord. So the letter ended; which answer

as they waited for, so they intercepted accordingly; and it determined

his fate. This letter Lord Oxford said he had offered £500 for."

The authenticity of this latter story has been constantly rejected by

Hume and the advocates of Charles in general; and, for one reason

among others, that it looks like a misrepresentation of that told by

Lord Orrery, which both stands on good authority, and is perfectly

conformable to all the memoirs of the time. I have, however, been

informed, that a memorandum nearly conformable to Richardson's

anecdote is extant, in the handwriting of Lord Oxford.

It is possible that this letter is the same with that mentioned by

Lord Orrery; and in that case was written in the month of October.

Cromwell seems to have been in treaty with the king as late as

September; and advised him, according to Berkley, to reject the

proposals of the parliament in that month. Herbert mentions an

intercepted letter of the queen (_Memoirs_, 60); and even his story

proves that Cromwell and his party broke off with Charles from a

conviction of his dissimulation. See Laing's note, iii. 562; and the

note by Strype, therein referred to, on Kennet's _Complete Hist. of

England_, iii. 170; which speaks of a "constant tradition" about this

story, and is more worthy of notice, because it was written before the

publication of Lord Orrery's _Memoirs_, or of the _Richardsoniana_.

[354] Ashburnham gives us to understand that the king had made choice

of the Isle of Wight, previously to his leaving Hampton Court, but

probably at his own suggestion. This seems confirmed by the king's

letter in Burnet's _Mem. of Dukes of Hamilton_, 326. Clarendon's

account is a romance, with little mixture probably of truth.

Ashburnham's _Narrative_, published in 1830, proves that he suggested

the Isle of Wight, in consequence of the king's being forced to

abandon a design he had formed of going to London, the Scots

commissioners retracting their engagement to support him.

[355] _Parl. Hist._ 799.

[356] Jan. 15. This vote was carried by 141 to 92. _Id._ 831. And see

Append. to 2nd vol. of _Clar. State Papers_. Cromwell was now vehement

against the king, though he had voted in his favour on Sept. 22.

Journals, and Berkley, 372. A proof that the king was meant to be

wholly rejected is, that at this time, in the list of the navy, the

expression "his majesty's ship," was changed to "the parliament's

ship." Whitelock, 291.

The four bills were founded on four propositions (for which I refer to

Hume or the _Parliamentary History_, not to Clarendon, who has

mis-stated them) sent down from the Lords. The lower house voted to

agree with them by 115 to 106; Sidney and Evelyn tellers for the ayes,

Martin and Morley for the noes. The increase of the minority is

remarkable, and shows how much the king's refusal of the terms offered

him in September, and his escape from Hampton Court, had swollen the

commonwealth party; to which, by the way, Colonel Sidney at this time

seems not to have belonged. Ludlow says, that party hoped the king

would not grant the four bills (i. 224). The Commons published a

declaration of their reasons for making no further addresses to the

king, wherein they more than insinuate his participation in the murder

of his father by Buckingham. _Parl. Hist._ 847.

[357] Clarendon, whose aversion to the Scots warps his judgment, says

that this treaty contained many things dishonourable to the English

nation. _Hist._ v. 532. The king lost a good deal in the eyes of this

uncompromising statesman, by the concessions he made in the Isle of

Wight. _State Papers_, 387. I cannot, for my own part, see anything

derogatory to England in the treaty; for the temporary occupation of a

few fortified towns in the north can hardly be called so. Charles,

there is some reason to think, had on a former occasion made offers to

the Scots far more inconsistent with his duty to this kingdom.

[358] Clarendon; May, "Breviate of the Hist. of the Parliament," in

Maseres's _Tracts_, i. 113; Whitelock, 307, 317, etc. In a conference

between the two houses, July 25, 1648, the Commons gave as a reason

for insisting on the king's surrender of the militia as a preliminary

to a treaty, that such was the disaffection to the parliament on all

sides, that without the militia they could never be secure. Rush. Abr.

vi. 444. "The chief citizens of London," says May, 122, "and others

called presbyterians, though the presbyterian Scots abominated this

army, wished good success to these Scots no less than the malignants

did. Whence let the reader judge of the times." The fugitive sheets of

this year, such as the "Mercurius Aulicus," bear witness to the

exulting and insolent tone of the royalists. The chuckle over Fairfax

and Cromwell, as if they had caught a couple of rats in a trap.

[359] April 28, 1648; _Parl. Hist._ 883.

[360] June 6. These peers were the Earls of Suffolk, Middlesex, and

Lincoln, Lords Willoughby of Parham, Berkley, Hunsdon, and Maynard.

They were impeached for sitting in the house during the tumults from

26th of July to 6th of August 1647. The Earl of Pembroke, who had also

continued to sit, merely because he was too stupid to discover which

party was likely to prevail, escaped by truckling to the new powers.

[361] June 8.

[362] See _Parl. Hist._ 823, 892, 904, 921, 924, 959, 996, for the

different votes on this subject, wherein the presbyterians gradually

beat the independent or republican party, but with very small and

precarious majorities.

[363] Clarendon, vi. 155. He is very absurd in imagining that any of

the parliamentary commissioners would have been satisfied with "an act

of indemnity and oblivion."