AUGUST 1646--JANUARY 1648-9.
_HISTORY_:--THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.:--
I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND FAILURE OF
HIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS;
II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ENGLISH
PARLIAMENT AND THE ENGLISH ARMY;
III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM;
IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR;
V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM.
_BIOGRAPHY_:-MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN.--PRIVATE AND
PUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE SONNETS, AND TRANSLATION OF NINE
PSALMS: OTHER WORKS IN PROGRESS: LETTERS TO AND FROM CARLO DATI.
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES IN HIS CAPTIVITY.
Charles himself becomes now the central object. For now, one may say, he
was left to think and act wholly for himself, and to work out by his own
cogitations and conduct the rest of the long problem between him and his
subjects. From this point, therefore, one follows him with a more
sympathetic interest than can be accorded to any part of his previous
career. When his captivity began (which may be said to have been when the
Scots withdrew with him to Newcastle, May 1646) he was forty-five years
and six months old. His hair was slightly grizzled; but otherwise he was
in the perfect strength and health of a man of spare and middle-sized
frame, whose habits had been always careful and temperate.
Henrietta-Maria was nine years younger than her husband. For two years
they had not seen each other, her co-operation during that time having
been given from her residence at or near Paris. There her effort had been
to induce the French Queen Regent and Cardinal Mazarin to interfere
actively for Charles, with or without the help of the Pope; and, when she
had not succeeded in that, she had contented herself with sending to
Charles from time to time her criticisms of his procedure and her notions
of the kind of arrangement he ought to try to make with his subjects in
the last extremity. The influence she had acquired over him was so great
that these missives were perfectly efficient substitutes for her black
eyes and French-English tongue when she had been with him. Unfortunately,
however, the co-agency with his absent Queen to which he thus felt
himself obliged, and to which indeed he had solemnly pledged himself, had
become the more perplexing because, in the particular of greatest
practical moment to both, he and she tended different ways. Of the two
main concessions involved in any possible treaty with the Parliament,
that of the abandonment of Episcopacy and that of the surrender of the
Militia, Charles was most tenaciously predetermined against the first. It
was a matter of conscience with him. Next to the death of Strafford, the
thing in his past life which caused him the most continued private
remorse was his assent, in Feb. 1641-2, to the Bill excluding Bishops
from Parliament: whatever happened, he would sin no more in that
direction. He would consent to any restriction of his kingly power in the
Militia and other matters, rather than do more in repudiation of
Episcopacy. Nay, he had reasoned himself into a belief that the course
thus most to his conscience would be also the most expedient. Buoying
himself up with a hope that, though Parliament demanded both concessions,
they might let him off with one, he was of opinion that kingly power in
the Militia and other matters might be more easily fetched back by a
retained Episcopacy than a lost Episcopacy could be restored by any
remnant of his power in the Militia. With Queen Henrietta-Maria the
reasoning was different. To her, a Roman Catholic, back now among her co-
religionists, what were all the disputes of British Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, and Independents, but battles of kites and crows? If her
husband's kind of Protestant Church could have been retained, that of
course would have been well; but, as things were, she had no patience
with those scruples of conscience for which he would sacrifice the most
substantial interests of himself and his family. His main object ought to
be to retain as much of real kingly power as possible, to be enjoyed by
himself and her, and transmitted to their descendants; and might not this
be attained by a frank concession to the English of the Presbyterian
settlement, only with a personal dispensation to the King if he desired
it very much, a reservation of liberty for the Roman Catholics of Ireland
and England, and, of course, a toleration for the Queen herself in her
private Roman Catholic worship?
Actually, with all the King's firmness within himself on the Episcopacy
question, the Queen's influence had so far prevailed as to bring him into
a position where her views rather than his had chances in their favour.
That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain to
maintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was very
much the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or at
least since Montrose's ruin at Philiphaugh, it had been in the King's
mind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland,
Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, while the
sea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his own
irresolution, but very considerably to his dread of the Queen's
displeasure. She did not want him to be on the Continent with her, a
dependent on her relatives of the French Court or on the Dutch
Stadtholder; she wanted him to remain in Britain and struggle on,
somehow, anyhow. Nay, she had devised a particular way for him, and
almost compelled him to it. A flight to the Scots and a pact with them on
the basis of some acceptance of their Presbyterianism even for England:
this was the course which she had urged on him ever since his defeat by
Parliament had become certain; this was the course she had arranged for
him by causing the French Court to send over Montreuil to negotiate for
his reception among the Scots; and, though things had not turned out
quite as she expected, and the Scots had shown no disposition to save
Charles from the tremendous Nineteen Propositions of the English
Parliament, still she did not regret that the course had been taken. It
was for the King now to extricate himself from the Nineteen Propositions
by his utmost ingenuity, and she did not doubt that this would be most
easily done by adhering to the Scots, humouring them in all those parts
of the Propositions that related to Presbytery, and evading or refusing
the rest. [Footnote: For this and last paragraph see _Charles I. in_
1646, Introduction by Mr. Bruce, and the King's own Letters
_passim_; Clar. 591-600 (Hist.) and 961 (Life); Hallam's Const.
Hist. (10th ed.), II. 182-188, with notes.]
Irritating as the Queen's conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton,
and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishness
in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her
determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and
nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with
Charles; and since July the Prince, as well as his infant sister, the
Princess Henrietta-Maria, had been under her charge. Rather than
accompany the Prince to Paris, and undertake the responsibility of
advising him in matters in which it would be necessary to detach him from
his mother, Hyde, Hopton, and Lord Capel had remained in Jersey, happy
for a time in their mutual society, and Hyde, as he tells us, passing the
pleasantest hours of his life in the composition of parts of his History.
Others of the King's late counsellors, such as Cottington, the Earl of
Bristol, and Secretary Nicholas, had domiciled themselves in Rouen, Caen,
or elsewhere in France, away from Paris. But round the Queen, in Paris or
at St. Germains, there _had_ gathered not a few of the exiles,
gratifying the King more, as it proved, by this compliance than the
others did by their prudery. Among these were Lord Jermyn, Lord Digby,
Lord Percy, Lord Wilmot, and even Lord Colepepper, though he had at first
agreed with Hyde in opposing the removal of the Prince from Jersey.
Conspicuous in the same group of refugees was the veteran Thomas Hobbes,
Not that he had gone to Paris at that time, as the others had done, in
the mere course of Royalist duty. He had been there for several years on
his own account, that he might be out of the turmoil of affairs at home,
and free to pursue his speculations in quiet, with the relaxation of
walks about Notre Dame and the Sorbonne, and much of the agreeable
company of M. Gassendi. But the Prince could not be without a tutor, and
Hobbes was chosen to instruct him in mathematics and whatever could be
brought under that head. If what Clarendon says is true, the philosopher
must have had curious remarks to make on the relations between his royal
pupil and his mother, and on that lady's own behaviour. Though the Prince
was sixteen years of age, she governed him with a high hand. "He never
put his hat on before the Queen," says Clarendon; "nor was it desired
that
he should meddle in any business, or be sensible of the unhappy condition
the royal family was in. The assignation which was made by the Court of
France for the better support of the Prince was annexed to the monthly
allowance given to the Queen, and received by her and distributed as she
thought fit; such clothes and other things provided for his Highness as
were necessary; her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Prince
lived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with the dignity
of the Prince of Wales to be a pensioner to the King of France. Hereby
none of his Highness's servants had any pretence to ask money, but they
were contented with what should be allowed them; which was dispensed with
a very sparing hand; nor was the Prince himself ever master of ten
pistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn was the Queen's chief
officer, and governed all her receipts; and he loved plenty so well that
he would not be without it, whatever others suffered who had been more
acquainted with it." In this last sentence there is an insinuation of
more than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members for
Bury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn by
Charles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Royalism, had long been the
special favourite of the Queen and the chief of her household; after
Charles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secret
marriage; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate to
countenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of a
husband while Charles was yet alive. [Footnote: Clar. 594-602 and 640;
Hallam, Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 183 and 188, with footnotes; and
Letters of the King, to the Queen, numbered xxvii., xxviii., xxxii.,
xxxv., and xxxviii. in Brace's _Charles I. in_ 1646. In the last of
these letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, Charles writes:--"Tell Jermyn,
from me, that I will make him know the eminent service he hath done me
concerning Pr. Charles his coming to thee, as soon as it shall please God
to enable me to reward honest men. Likewise thank heartily, in my name,
Colepepper, for his part in that business; but, above all, thou must make
my acknowledgments to the Queen of England (for none else can do it), it
being her love that maintains my life, her kindness that upholds my
courage; which makes me eternally hers, CHARLES R."]
Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when his
captivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for more
than two years and a half. The form and place of his captivity were
indeed to be varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the first
only being his detention among the Scots at Newcastle. At the point which
we have reached in our narrative, viz. the conclusion of the Civil War,
three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May-August 1646)
had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with an
eye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder of
this stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeeded
it.
FIRST STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: STILL WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE: AUG.
1646--JAN. 1646-7.
Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents--His
Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents
among the Scots--His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will
Murray in London--Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's
Mission to Newcastle--The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal
Treaty offered--Difficulties between the Scots and the English
Parliament--Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and
Cession of Charles to the English--Westminster Assembly Business, and
Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement.
Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to move
Charles. He would not take the Covenant; he would not promise a pure and
simple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of the
English Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatory
answer.
The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder of
them, with the Scots, were in despair. "We are here, by the King's
madness, in a terrible plunge," Baillie writes from London, Aug. 18; "the
powerful faction desires nothing so much as any colour to call the King
and all his race away." In another letter on the same day he says, "We
[the Scots in London] strive every day to keep the House of Commons from
falling on the King's answer. We know not what hour they will close
their doors and declare the King fallen from his throne; which if they
once do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, if any should
mutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed." And again and again
in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest
Presbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the
thought of the King's continued obstinacy. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389
_et seq._]
It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in his
obstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kind
of game, he was "playing his cards" as well as he could. What was
constantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were a
composite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw the
Presbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing of
the English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed to
the smaller and very sensitive Scottish mass, to whose keeping he had
meanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope,
which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before his
flight to the Scots, that he "should be able so to draw the Presbyterians
or the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, that
he should really be King again." [Footnote: From a letter to Lord Digby,
dated March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin (II. 132-3) from Carte.] He could
not now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with the
expectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. He
could extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets of
concessions which they demanded--the concession of Presbytery and what
went along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what went
along with that; and, holding the two sets of concessions in different
hands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents which
preferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to find
out with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal of
yielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppress
Sects and Heresy, might he not bribe the Scots and Presbyterians to join
him against the Independents? By a good deal of yielding on the Militia
question, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might he
not bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, and
perhaps even save Episcopacy? Which course would be the best? Might not
that be found out most easily by trying both?
In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun with
the Presbyterian "card," and had played it first among the Scots. We have
seen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation of
them at Newcastle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals,
the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or absolute Royalists,
were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, with
the hope of still performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of his
captive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulate
and disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Royalist
commanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permitted
the consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, had
embarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a ship
bound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King's
reckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals making
now no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into the
Hamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present very
apparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensibly
less urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept the
Nineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majesty
had discerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning it
to account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came to
Newcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he had
been estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more than
two years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed at
once." But forgiveness had passed between them; and, though the King in
his letters to the Queen continued to speak of the "bragging" of the
Hamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-haired
brothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves again
addressed familiarly by the King as "Cousin James" and "Lanark." Through
these Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that should
be less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrence
with the English in all the Nineteen Propositions? The experiment was
worth trying, and in the course of September the King did try it in a
very curious manner.
The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, had
then returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from the
Committee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoning
with his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation the
Earls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesser
barons, and three burgesses. They had had an interview with the King, and
had pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by all
sorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, they
received a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressing
his regret that his conversation with them the day before had not been
satisfactory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had then
proposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by no
means desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But was
it not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government should
be legally settled in England? Well, he was willing to consent to this
after a particular scheme. "Whereas I mentioned that the Church-
government should be left to my conscience and those of my opinion, I
shall be content to restrict it to some few dioceses, as Oxford,
Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter, leaving all the rest of
England fully under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictest
clauses you shall think upon against Papists and Independents." In other
words, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy should
share England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration of
anything else, Presbytery taking about four-fifths, and Episcopacy about
one-fifth. He argues eagerly for this scheme, and points out its
advantages. "It is true," he says, "I desire that my own conscience and
those that are of the same opinion with me might be preserved; which I
confess doth not as yet totally take away Episcopal Government: but then
consider withal that this [scheme] will take away all the superstitious
sects and heresies of the Papists and Independents; to which you are no
less obliged by your Covenant than the taking away of Episcopacy." How
far this scheme of the King was discussed or even published does not
appear. It was one which the Scottish Commissioners collectively could
not even profess to entertain; and, however well disposed Hamilton may
have been privately to abet it, he dared not give it any countenance
openly. [Footnote: Authorities for this and the last paragraph are--
Napier's Montrose, 631 _et seq._; Burnet's Lives of the Hamiltons
(ed. 1852), 359-375; Rushworth, VI. 232, and 327-329; King's Letters l.
and lxiii. in _Brace's Charles I_, in 1646. The remarkable Paper of
the King proposing a compromise between Episcopacy and Presbytery is
given entire both by Rushworth and by Burnet It is not dated, but is one
of several letters given by both these authorities as written by the King
in September 1646. Burnet, who had a copy before him in Lanark's hand,
notes the absence of the date. In a postscript to the letter, however, as
given in Rushworth, the King says: "I require you to give a particular
and full account hereof to the General Assembly in Scotland;" and in
Burnet's copy the words are "to the General Assembly _now sitting in
Scotland_." This phrase would refer the Paper to some time between
June 3 and June 18 when the Assembly was last in session, its next
meeting not being till August 4, 1647. In that case the Paper must have
been delivered not to the deputation mentioned in the text, but to the
prior deputation from Scotland. of which Lanark was one (_antè_, pp.
412-418), This is possible; but it does not lessen the significance of
the document in connexion with the King's dealings with the Hamiltons in
September, The extant copy of the Paper seen by Burnet was in Lanark's
hand; it must therefore have been mainly through the Hamiltons that
Charles wanted to feel the pulse of Scotland respecting his proposal; and
the proposal, if first made in June, must have been a topic between the
King and the Hamiltons in subsequent months. Altogether, however, I
suspect, the proposal did not go far beyond the King and the Hamiltons, I
have found no distinct cognisance of it in Baillie or in the Acts of the
Assembly of 1646.]
And so, with a heavy heart, Hamilton, in the end of September, returned
to Scotland. Foreseeing the King's ruin, he had resolved to withdraw
altogether from the coil of affairs, and retire to some place on the
Continent. In vain did his brother Lanark fight against this resolution;
and not till he had received several affectionate letters from the King
did he consent to remain in Britain on some last chance of being useful.
Actually, from this time onwards, Hamilton and Lanark, though not yet
daring a decidedly separate policy from that of Argyle and his party in
Scotland, did work for the King as much as they could within limits. He
continued to correspond with both, but chiefly with Lanark.
Not the less, while the King was trying to bargain with the Presbyterians
through the Hamiltons, was he intriguing in the opposite direction. His
agent here was a certain Mr. William Murray, son of the parish-minister
of Dysart in Scotland, and known familiarly as Will Murray. He had been
page or "whipping-boy" to Charles in his boyhood, had been in his service
ever since, had been recently in France, but had returned early in 1646.
His connexions with the King being so close, and his wiliness notorious,
he had been arrested by Parliament and committed to the Tower as a spy;
and it had cost the Scottish Commissioners some trouble--Baillie for one,
but especially Gillespie, who was related to Murray by marriage--to
procure his release on bail. This having been accomplished in August, he
had been allowed to go to his master in Newcastle, the Scottish
Commissioners vouching that he would use all his influence to bring the
King into the right path. He had been well instructed by Baillie as to
all the particulars of the duty so expected from him, not the least of
which, in Baillie's judgment, was that he should get the King to dismiss
Hobbes from the tutorship of the Prince at Paris. Once with the King,
however, Murray had forgotten Baillie's lectures, and relapsed into his
wily self. "Will Murray is let loose upon me from London," the King
writes to the Queen Sept. 7; but on the 14th he writes that Murray has
turned out very reasonable, and that, though he will not absolutely trust
him, the rather because he is not a client of the Hamiltons, but "plainly
inclines more to Argyle," yet he hopes to make good use of him. On the
2lst we hear of "a private treaty" he has made with Murray; and the
result was that, in October, Murray, created Earl of Dysart in prospect,
was back in London on a secret mission, the general aim of which was the
conciliation of the Independents. On the condition that the King should
surrender on the Militia question, give up the Militia even for his whole
life, would the Parliamentary leaders consent to the restoration of a
Limited Episcopacy after three or five years? It was a dangerous mission
for Murray, "so displeasing that it served only to put his neck to a new
hazard;" and he was obliged to keep himself and his proposals as much
within doors as he could. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 391-396, and Appendix
to same vol., 509, 510; Burnet's Hamiltons, 378; and Hallam, II. 187-8,
and Notes.] To the Queen at Paris her husband's continued hesitation on
the Episcopacy question seemed positively fatuous. Her letters, as well
as Jermyn's and Colepepper's, had not ceased to urge bold concession on
that question, and a paction with the Scots for Presbytery. Now,
accordingly, their counsels to this effect became more emphatic. The
Queen thought the King perfectly right in refusing his personal signature
to the Covenant, and advised him to remain steady to that refusal, and
also to his resolution not to let the Covenant be imposed upon others;
she was moreover sure that he ought not to abandon Ireland or the English
Roman Catholics to the mercies of Parliament; but, with these exceptions,
she would close with the Scots and Presbyterians in the matter of Church-
government, if by that means she could save the Militia and the real
substance of kingly prerogative. "We must let them have their way in what
relates to the Bishops," she wrote to Charles, Oct. 9/19; "which thing I
know goes quite against your heart, and, I swear to you, against mine
too, if I saw any one way left of saving them and not destroying you.
But, if you are lost, they are without resource; whereas, if you should
be able again to head an army, we shall restore them. Keep the Militia,
and never give it up, and by that all will come back--(_Conservez-vous
la Militia, et n'abandonnez jamais, et par cela tout reviendra_)."
Colepepper, always rough-speaking, used more decided language. Nothing
remained for the King, he wrote, but a union with the Scottish nation and
the English Presbyterians against the Independents and Anti-monarchists;
and to secure such a union Episcopacy must go overboard. His Majesty's
conscience! Did his Majesty really believe that Episcopacy only was
_jure divino_, and that there could be no true Church without
Bishops? If so, Colepepper personally did not agree with him, and doubted
whether there were six Protestants in the world that did. "Come," he
breaks out at last, "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." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 _et seq._;
Rushworth VI. 327 _et seq._; Clarendon, 605; Hallam, II. 185-6; and
Queen's Letter in the original French in Appendix to Mr. _Bruce's
Charles I. in_ 1646.]
It was not only by letter that such counsels from France reached Charles.
Bellievre, who had succeeded Montreuil as French ambassador in England,
and had been much with the King at Newcastle, plying him with the same
counsels, had reported to Mazarin that some person of credit among the
English exiles should be sent over, expressly to reason with Charles on
the all-important point. They seem to have had some difficulty at Paris
in finding a proper person for the mission. To have sent Hobbes, even if
he would have gone, would have been too absurd. Hobbes a successor of
Alexander Henderson in the task of persuading the King to accept
Presbytery! The person sent, however, was the one next to Hobbes in
literary repute among the Royalist exiles, the one most liked by Hobbes,
and oftenest in his company. He was no other than the laureate and
dramatist Will Davenant, known on the London boards by that name for a
good many years before the war, but now Sir William Davenant, knighted by
the King in Sept. 1643 for his Army-plotting and his gallant soldiering.
He was over forty years of age, and had just turned, or was turning, a
Roman Catholic in Paris, or perhaps rather a Roman Catholic Hobbist.
Clarendon, with a sneer at Davenant's profession of play-writer, makes
merry over the choice of such an agent by the Queen, Jermyn, and
Colepepper, and relates the result with some malice. Arrived at Newcastle
late in September, or early in October, Davenant had delivered his
letters to the King, and proceeded to argue according to his
instructions. Charles had heard him for a while with some patience, but
in a manner to show that he did not like the subject of his discourse.
Determined, however, to do his work thoroughly, Davenant had gone on,
becoming more fluent and confidential, It was the advice of all his
Majesty's friends that he should yield on the question of Episcopacy!
"What friends?" said the King. "My Lord Jermyn," replied Davenant. His
Majesty was not aware that Lord Jermyn had given his attention to Church
questions. "My Lord Colepepper," said Davenant, trying to mend his
answer. "Colepepper has no religion," said the King, bluntly; and then he
asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer (_i.e._ Clarendon himself,
then Sir Edward Hyde) agreed with Colepepper and Jermyn. Davenant could
not say he did, for Sir Edward was not in Paris with the Prince, as he
ought to have been, but in Jersey: and he proceeded to convey from the
Queen some insinuations to Hyde's discredit. The King, Clarendon is glad
to tell, had defended him, and said he had perfect trust in him, and was
sure _he_ would never desert the Church. Something of the wit, or of the
Roman Catholic Hobbist and freethinker, had then flashed out in the
speech of the distressed envoy. He "offered some reasons of his own in
which he mentioned the Church slightingly." On this the King had blazed
into proper indignation, given poor Davenant "a sharper reprehension than
he ever did to any other man," told him never to show his face again, and
frowned him to the door. And so, says Clarendon, "the poor man, who had
indeed very good affections," returned to Paris crestfallen. [Footnote:
Clar. 606, and Wood's Ath. III. 801, 805. The King's Letters mention
Davenant's presence at Newcastle and the purport of his argument, but
without tolling of any such _scene_ between him and Davenant as Clarendon
describes. Davenant had not arrived at Newcastle Sept. 26, but was there
Oct. 3. He was back in Paris in November.]
Perturbed by the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at
heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite
directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of
sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By
December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, Will Murray
having returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made up
his mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their Nineteen
Propositions in detail. He had prepared such an Answer, and on the 4th of
December he sent a draft of it to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh. In
this draft he goes over the Propositions one by one, signifying his
agreement where it is complete, or the amount of his agreement where it
is only partial. In such matters as the management of Ireland, laws
against the Roman Catholics, &c., he will yield to Parliament; but he
would like an act of general oblivion for Delinquents. In the matter of
the Militia his offer is to resign all power for ten years. In the matter
of the Church he offers his consent to Presbytery for three years, as had
been settled by Parliament, with these provisions--(l) that there be
"such forbearance to those who through scruple of conscience cannot in
everything practise according to the said rules as may consist with the
rule of the Word of God and the peace of the kingdom;" (2) "that his
Majesty and his household be not hindered from that form of God's service
which they have formerly done;" and (3) that he be allowed to add twenty
persons of his own nomination to the Westminster Assembly, to aid that
body and Parliament in considering what Church-government shall be
finally adjusted after the three years' trial of Presbytery. Altogether,
the concessions were the largest he had yet offered, and an elated
consciousness of this appears in the letter which conveyed the Draft to
Lanark for the consideration of him and his friends in Scotland. Only on
one point is he dubious. The clause promising a toleration for scrupulous
consciences may not please the Scots! He explains, however, that that
clause had been inserted "purposely," to make the whole "relish the
better" with the English Independents, and adds, "If my native subjects
[the Scots] will so countenance this Answer that I may be sure they will
stick to me in what concerns my temporal power, I will not only expunge
that clause, but likewise make what declarations I shall be desired
against the Independents, and that really without any reserve or
equivocation." This was Charles all over!--Alas! Lanark's reply was
unfavourable. The Toleration clause, he wrote, was but one of the
stumbling-blocks. As far as he could ascertain Scottish opinion, he dared
not "promise the least countenance" to the King's proposals about the
Church, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, and
contemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor was
it from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, to
whom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from a
point of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. The
surrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. "By that you have also
confirmed them the Parliament for ten years; which is as much as to say
that we shall never see an end to our misfortunes. For while the
Parliament lasts you are not King; and, for me, I shall never again set
foot in England. And with this shift of your granting the Militia you
have cut your own throat (_Et avec le biais que vous avez accordé la
Milice, vous vous este coupé la gorge_)." On the promised concession
with respect to Ireland she remarks: "I am astonished that the Irish do
not give themselves to some foreign king; you will force them to it at
last, seeing themselves made a sacrifice."--The result was that, though
the terms of Charles's draft Answer got about, and he was in a manner
committed to them, the message which he did formally send to Parliament,
on the 20th of December, was quite different from the Draft. It explained
that, though he had bent all his thoughts on the preparation of a written
Answer to the Nineteen Propositions, "the more he endeavoured it he more
plainly saw that any answer he could make would be subject to
misinformations and misconstructions." He repeats, therefore, his earnest
desire for a personal treaty in London. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons,
381-389 (for the interesting correspondence between the King and Lanark);
King's Letters, liii.-lxii. in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646, and
Queen's Letters in Appendix to the same: Rushworth, VI. 393; and Parl.
Hist. III. 537.]
Meanwhile, quite independently of the King, his messages, or his wishes,
matters had been creeping on to a definite issue. For four months now
there had been a most intricate debate between the Scots and the English
Parliament on the distinct and yet inseparable questions of the Disposal
of the King's Person and the Settlement of Money Accounts. Though the
reasoning on both sides on the first question was from Law and Logic, it
was heated by international animosity. Lord Loudoun was the chief speaker
for the Scottish Commissioners in the London conferences; the great
speech on the English side was thought to be that of Mr. Thomas
Challoner, a Recruiter for Richmond in Yorkshire; but the speeches,
published and unpublished, were innumerable, and a mere abstract of them
fills forty pages in Rushworth. Not represented by so much printed matter
now, but as prolix then, was the dispute on the question of Accounts. The
claim of the Scots for army-arrears and indemnity was for a much vaster
sum than the English would acknowledge. This item and that item were
contested, and the Accounts of the two nations could not be brought to
correspond. Not even when the Scots consented to a composition for a
slump sum roughly calculated was there an approach to agreement. The
Scots thought 500,000_l_. little enough; the English thought the sum
exorbitant. Equally on this question as on the other it was the
Independents that were fiercest against the Scots and the most careless
of their feelings; and again and again the Presbyterians had to deprecate
the rudeness shown to their "Scottish brethren." And so on and on the
double dispute had wound its slow length between the two sets of
Commissioners, the English Parliament looking on and interfering, and the
Scottish Parliament, after its meeting on the 3rd of November,
contributing its opinions and votes from Edinburgh. [Footnote: Rushworth,
VI. 322-372.]
To Charles in Newcastle all this had been inexpressibly interesting. A
rupture between the English and the Scots, such as would occasion the
retreat of the Scots into their own country, carrying him with them, was
the very greatest of his chances; and it was in the fond dream of such a
chance that he had procrastinated his direct dealings with the English
Parliament. But from this dream there was to be a rude awakening. It came
in December, precisely at the time when he was corresponding with the
Queen and Lanark over his proposed compromises on all the Nineteen
Propositions. Already, indeed, there had been signs that the dispute
between the two nations was working itself to an end. By laying entirely
aside the question of the Disposal of the King's person, and prosecuting
the question of Accounts by itself, difficulties had been removed and
progress made. It had been agreed that the sum to be paid to the Scots
should be 400,000_l._ in all, one-half to be paid before they left
England, and the rest in subsequent instalments; and actually on the 16th
of December the first moiety of 200,000_l._ was off from London in
chests and bags, packed in thirty-six carts, to be under the charge of
Skippon in the North till it should be delivered to the Scots. Yes! but
would it ever be delivered to the Scots? Not a word was in writing as to
the surrender of the King by the Scots, but only about their surrender of
the English towns and garrisons held by them; and, so far as appeared,
the money was to be theirs even if they kept the King. Here, however, lay
the very skill of the policy that had been adopted. Instead of persisting
in the theoretical question of the relative rights of the two nations in
the matter of the custody of the King, and wrangling over that question
in its unfortunate conjunction with a purely pecuniary question, it had
been resolved to close the pecuniary question by putting down the money
in sight of the Scots as undisputedly theirs on other grounds, and
allowing them to decide for themselves, under a sense of their duty to
all the three kingdoms, whether they would let Charles go to Scotland
with them or would leave him in England. Precisely in this way was the
issue reached. But oh! with what trembling among the Scots, what wavering
of the balance to the very last! Dec. 16, the very day when the money
left London, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament or Convention
of Estates in Edinburgh, the result of which was a vote that the Scottish
Commissioners in London should be instructed to "press his Majesty's
coming to London with honour, safety, and freedom," for a personal
treaty, and that resolutions should go forth from the Scottish nation "to
maintain monarchical government in his Majesty's person and posterity,
and his just title to the crown of England." This vote, passing over
altogether the question of the surrender of the King, and pledging the
Scots to his interests generally, was a stroke in his favour by the
Hamilton party in the Convention, carried by their momentary
preponderance. But the flash was brief. There was in Edinburgh another
organ of Scottish opinion, more powerful at that instant than even the
Convention of Estates. This was the Commission of the General Assembly of
the Kirk, or that Committee of the last General Assembly whose business
it was to look after all affairs of importance to the Kirk till the next
General Assembly should meet. The Commission then in power, by
appointment of the Assembly of June 1646, consisted of eighty-nine
ministers and about as many lay-elders; and among these latter were the
Marquis of Argyle, the Earls of Crawford, Marischal, Glencairn, Cassilis,
Dunfermline, Tullibardine, Buccleuch, Lothian, and Lanark, besides many
other lords and lairds. It was in fact a kind of ecclesiastical
Parliament by the side of the nominal Parliament, and with most of the
Parliamentary leaders in it, but these so encompassed by the clergy that
the Hamilton influence was slight in it and the Argyle policy all-
prevailing. Now, on the very day after that of the Hamilton resolutions
in Parliament for the King (Dec. 17), and when Parliament was again in
debate, the Commission spoke out. In "A Solemn and Seasonable Warning to
all Estates and Degrees of Persons throughout the Land" they proclaimed
their view of the national duty. Nothing could be more dangerous, they
said, than that his Majesty should be allowed to come into Scotland, "he
not having as yet subscribed the League and Covenant, nor satisfied the
lawful desires of his loyal subjects in both nations;" and they therefore
prayed that this might be prevented, and that, in justice to the English,
to whom the Scots were bound by the Covenant, the King should not be
withdrawn at that moment from English influence and surroundings. This
opinion of the Commission at once turned the balance in the Convention.
The resolutions of the previous day were rescinded; and on that and the
few following days it was agreed, Hamilton and Lanark protesting, that
nothing less than the King's absolute consent to the Nineteen
Propositions would be satisfactory, and that, unless he made his peace
with the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letters
with this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game of
chess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan of
escape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But it
could not be managed. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 389-393; Burnet's
Hamiltons, 389-393; Baillie, III. 4, 5; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536.]
January 1646-7 was an eventful month. On the 1st it was settled by the
two Houses that Holdenby House, usually called Holmby House, in
Northamptonshire, should be the King's residence during farther treaty
with him; and on the 6th the Commissioners were appointed who should
receive him from the Scots, and conduct him to Holmby. The Commissioners
for the Lords were the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh and Lord Montague;
those for the Commons were Sir William Armyn (for whom Sir James
Harrington was substituted), Sir John Holland, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John
Coke, Mr. John Crewe, and General Browne. On the 13th these Commissioners
set out from London, with two Assembly Divines, Mr. Stephen Marshall and
Mr. Caryl, in their train, besides a physician and other appointed
persons. On the 23rd they were at Newcastle. On the whole, the King
seemed perfectly content. When the English Commissioners first waited on
him and informed him that they were to convey him to Holmby, he "inquired
how the ways were." On Saturday, Jan. 30, the Scots marched out of
Newcastle, leaving the King with the English Commissioners, and Skippon
marched in. Within a few days more, the 200,000_l._ having been
punctually paid, and receipts taken in most formal fashion, as prescribed
by a Treaty signed at London Dec. 23, the Scots were out of England. The
Scottish political Commissioners (Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Messrs.
Erskine, Kennedy, and Barclay) had left London immediately after the
conclusion of the Treaty. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 7 and 12,
1646-7; Rushworth, VI. 393-398; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536; Burnet's
Hamiltons, 393-397. Burnet has a curious blunder here, and founds a joke
on it. Before the Scottish Commissioners left London, he says, there was
a debate in the Commons as to the form of the thanks to be tendered to
them. It was proposed, he says, to thank them for their _civilities and
good offices_, but the Independents carried it by 24 votes to strike out
the words _good offices_ and thank them for their _civilities_ only. "And
so all those noble characters they were wont to give the Scottish
Commissioners on every occasion concluded now in this, that they were
_well-bred gentlemen_." On turning to the Commons Journals for the day in
question (Dec. 24, 1646), one finds what really occurred. It was reported
that Loudoun, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, were
about to take their leave, and that they desired to know whether they
could do any service for the English Parliament with the Parliament of
Scotland. The vote was on the question whether thanks should be returned
to them _for all their civilities and for this their last kind offer_.
The Independents (Haselrig and Evelyn, tellers) wanted it to stand so;
the Presbyterians (Stapleton and Sir Roger North, tellers) wanted an
_addition_ to be made, _i.e._, I suppose, wanted some particular use to
be made of the offer of the Commissioners to convey a message to the
Scottish Parliament. Actually it was carried by 129 to 105 that the
question should stand as proposed by the Independents; and, the Lords
concurring next day, the Commissioners were thanked in those terms.]
With the Scottish lay Commissioners, there returned to Scotland at this
time a Scot who has been more familiar to us in these pages than any of
them. For a long time, and especially since Henderson had gone, Baillie
had been anxious to return home. Having now obtained the necessary
permission, he had packed up his books, had taken a formal farewell of
the Westminster Assembly, in which he had sat for more than three years,
had received the warmest thanks of that body and the gift of a silver
cup, and so, in the company of Loudoun and Lauderdale, had made his
journey northwards, first to Newcastle, thence to Edinburgh, and thence
to his family in Glasgow. On the whole, he had left the Londoners, and
the English people generally, at a moment when the state of things among
them was pleasing to his Presbyterian heart. For, both in the Parliament
and in the Westminster Assembly, notwithstanding the engrossing interest
of the negotiations with and concerning the King, there had been, in the
course of the last five months, a good deal of progress towards the
completion of the Presbyterian settlement. Thus, in Parliament, there had
been (Oct. 9) "An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops
within the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, and for settling
their lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of the
Commonwealth." It was an Ordinance the first portion of which may seem
but the unnecessary execution of a long-dead corpse; but the second
portion was of practical importance, and prepared the way for another
measure (Nov. 16), entitled "An Ordinance for appointing the sale of the
Bishops' lands for the use of the Commonwealth." Then in the Westminster
Assembly there had been such industry over the _Confession of Faith_
that nineteen chapters of it had been presented to the Commons on Sept.
25, a duplicate of the same to the Lords Oct. 1, and so with the residue,
till on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 the two Houses respectively had the text of
the entire work before them. The Houses had not yet passed the work, or
permitted it to be divulged, but had only ordered a certain number of
copies to be printed for their own use; nay they had, with what seemed an
excess of punctiliousness, required the Assembly to send in their
Scriptural proofs for all the Articles of the Confession; but still, when
Baillie left London, that great business might be considered off the
Assembly's hands. A good deal also had been done in the _Catechisms_
by the Assembly; and, if the Assembly's revised edition of Rous's
_Metrical Version of the Psalms_ had not received full Parliamentary
enactment, that was because the Lords still stood out for Mr. Barton's
competing Version. It was satisfactory to Baillie that, on his return to
Scotland, he could report to his countrymen that so much had been done
for the Presbyterianizing of England. There were, indeed, drawbacks. Both
in London and in Lancashire, where the machinery of Presbytery was
already in operation, the procedure was a little languid; and in other
parts of England, "owing to the sottish negligence of the ministers and
gentry of the shires more than the Parliament," they were wofully slow in
setting up the Elderships and the Presbyteries. Even worse than this was
the unchecked abundance of Sects and Heresies throughout England, and the
prevalence of the poisonous tenet of Toleration. An Ordinance for the
suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies, which had been occupying a Grand
Committee of the Commons through September, October, November, and
December, had not yet emerged into light. These were certainly serious
causes of regret to Baillie, but his mood altogether was one of
thankfulness and hope. "This is the incomparably best people I ever knew
if they were in the hands of any governors of tolerable parts," had been
his verdict on the English in a letter of Dec. 7, when he was preparing
to take leave of them. An Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies
would make them perfect, and till that came were there not substitutes?
Had not a number of the orthodox ministers of London put forth a famous
treatise, called _Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici_, arguing for
the Divine Right of Presbytery in a manner which left nothing to be
desired? The Second Part of Baillie's own _Dissuasive from the Errors
of the Time_, published just as he was leaving London (Dec. 28, 1646),
and intended as a parting-gift to the English, might also do some good!
And, though he himself was no longer to sit in the Westminster Assembly,
had he not left there his excellent colleagues, Samuel Rutherford and
George Gillespie? [Footnote: Baillie, II. 397-403, 406-7, 410-416, and
III. 1-5; Rushworth, VI. 373-388; Parl. Hist. III. 518; Commons and Lords
Journals of dates given; Neal's Puritans III. 350-51.]
SECOND STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: AT HOLMBY HOUSE: FEB. 1646-7--JUNE 1647.
The King's Manner of Life at Holmby--New Omens in his favour from the
Relations of Parliament to its own Army--Proposals to disband the Army
and reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland--Summary of Irish
Affairs since 1641--Army's Anger at the proposal to disband it--View of
the State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it: Passion for
Toleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers--
Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, and
Votes in Parliament to that effect--Resistance of the Army: Petitions and
Remonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators--Cromwell's
Efforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous--
Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army--The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce's
Abduction of the King from Holmby--Westminster Assembly Business: First
Provincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of Oxford
University.
Holmby or Holdenby House in Northamptonshire had been built by Lord
Chancellor Hatton in Elizabeth's time, but afterwards purchased by Queen
Anne for her son Charles while he was but Duke of York. It was a stately
mansion, with gardens, very much to the King's taste. It was not till the
16th of February that he arrived there, the journey from Newcastle having
been broken by halts at various places, at each of which crowds had
gathered respectfully to see him, and poor people had begged for his
royal touch to cure them of the king's evil. Near Nottingham he had been
met by General Fairfax, who had dismounted, kissed his hand, and then
turned back, conveying him through that town, and conversing with him.
[Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 398; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 115; Sir Thomas
Herbert's _Memoirs of the last Two Years of the Reign of King Charles
I._.(1813), 13-15. Herbert was a kinsman and _protégé_ of the Pembroke
family, who had travelled much in the East, published an account of his
travels, and had acquired quiet and æsthetic tastes. He had been in
various posts of Parliamentary employment, procured for him by Philip,
Earl of Pembroke; but, having accompanied that Earl when he went to
Newcastle as one of the Commissioners to take charge of the King, he had
attracted the King's regard, so that, on the dismissal of some of the
King's attendants at Holmby, _he_ was selected to be one of the grooms of
the bedchamber. He remained faithfully with the King to his death,
cherished his memory afterwards, was made a baronet by Charles II. after
the Restoration, and died in 1681. Two or three years before his death he
wrote, at a friend's request, the above-mentioned _Memoirs_, containing
interesting reminiscences and anecdotes of Charles in his captivity. They
were reprinted in 1702 and again in 1813 (see a memoir of Herbert in
Wood's Ath. IV. 15-42).]
During the four months of the King's stay at Holmby his mode of life was
very regular and pleasant. The house and its appurtenances, being large,
easily accommodated not only the King and all his permitted servants, but
also the Parliamentary Commissioners and their retinue, besides Messrs.
Marshall and Caryl, Colonel Graves as military commandant, and the under-
officers and soldiers of the guard. The allowance of Parliament for the
King's own expenses was 50_l._ a day, so that "all the tables were
as well furnished as they used to be when his Majesty was in a peaceful
and flourishing state." At meal-times the Commissioners always waited
upon his Majesty, and the two chaplains were generally also present. It
was almost his only complaint that Parliament persisted in keeping these
two reverend gentlemen about him, and would not let him have chaplains of
his own persuasion. But, though he declined the religious services of
Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, and said grace at table himself rather than
ask them to do so, he was civil to them personally, and allowed such of
his servants as chose to attend their sermons. On Sundays Charles kept
himself quite retired to his private devotions and meditations, and on
other days two or three hours were always spent in reading and study.
Among his favourite English books were Bishop Andrewes's Sermons,
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Herbert's Poems, Fairfax's Tasso,
Harrington's Ariosto, Spenser's Faery Queene, and, above all,
Shakespeare's Plays, his copy of the Second Folio Edition of which is
still in extant, with the words "_Dum spiro spero: C. R._" written
on it by his own hand. But he read also in Greek and Latin, and fluently
in French, Italian, and Spanish. At dinner and supper he ate of but a few
dishes, and drank sparingly of beer, or wine and water mixed by himself.
He disliked tobacco extremely, and was offended by any whiff of it near
his presence. His chief relaxations were playing at chess after meals,
and walking much in the garden; but, not unfrequently, as he was fond of
bowls and there was no good bowling-green at Holmby, he would ride to
Lord Spencer's house at Althorp, about three miles off, or even to Lord
Vaux's at Harrowden, nine miles off, at both of which places there were
excellent bowling-greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, of
course, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly but
that a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country-
bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand.
Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King's
chamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large silver basin
on a low table by the bed, on which also were placed the King's two
watches and the silver bell with which he called his grooms. This custom
had begun at Oxford and had become invariable. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI.
452-4; Parl. Hist. III. 551 and 557-9; Clar. 608; but chiefly Herbert's
Memoirs, 15-25, 61-65, 124-126, and 131. It is remarkable that Herbert,
who mentions the other favourite English books of Charles named in the
text, does not mention Shakespeare; for Charles's copy of the Second
Folio, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, was given to Herbert himself
by Charles before his death, and bears, in addition to the inscription in
Charles's hand, this in Herbert's, "_Ex dono Serenissimi Regis Car.
servo suo humiliss. T. Herbert_" (Lowndes by Bohn, 2,257). Herbert
mentions that _Dum spiro spero_ was a favourite motto with Charles,
inscribed by him on many books. But that Shakespeare was a prime
favourite of Charles we have Milton's authority in the well-known phrase
in the [Greek: Gakonoklastæs]--"one whom we well know was the closet
companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare."]
Of course there were continued negotiations between Charles and the
Parliament. Anything done in this way, however, during the four months of
the stay at Holmby, hardly deserves notice. For at that time there was a
huge new clouding of the air in England, pregnant with no one knew what
changes, and making the postponement of conclusions between the King and
the Parliament quite natural on both sides. All the world has heard of
the extraordinary quarrel between the Long Parliament and its own
victorious Army.
The war being over, and the troublesome Scots out of England at last,
what remained but to disband the Parliamentarian Army, and enter on a
period of peace, retrenched expense, and renewed industry? This was what
all the orthodox politicians, and especially all the Presbyterians, were
saying. In the very act of saying it, however, they faltered and
explained. By disbanding they did not mean complete disbanding; some
force must still be kept up in England for garrison duty, as a police
against fresh Royalist attempts; they meant the disbanding of all beyond
the moderate force needed for such use; nay, they did not even then mean
actual disbanding of all the surplus; they contemplated the immediate re-
enlistment and re-organization of a goodly portion of the surplus for
service in another employment. What that was, who needed to be told? Did
there not remain for England a tremendous and long-postponed duty beyond
her own bounds? Now at length, now at length, was there not leisure to
attend to the case of unhappy Ireland?
Unhappy Ireland! Her history at any time is hard to write; but no human
intellect could make a clear story of those five particular years of
triple distractedness which intervene between the murderous Insurrection
of 1641-2 (Vol. II. pp. 308-314) and the beginning of 1647. One can but
note a few points.
Through the first year or more of the Insurrection there seemed to be but
two parties in Ireland. There was the vast party of the Insurgents, or
Confederates, including the whole Roman Catholic population of the
island, both the old Irish natives, who had mainly begun the Rebellion,
and the Catholics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually the
mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed into
something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals
Preston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of the
Rebellion and the government of Confederate Ireland had been provided for
by the assembling at Kilkenny of a Parliament of Roman Catholic lords,
prelates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the appointment by
that body of county-councils, provincial councils, and a supreme
executive council. The other party in Ireland was the small Protestant
party, consisting of the mixed English and Scottish population of certain
districts of the east and north coasts, with the surviving Protestants
from other parts amongst them, and with Dublin and other strongholds
still in their possession. At their head ought to have been the Earl of
Leicester, Stafford's successor in the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy. But, as
Leicester had been detained in England by the King, the management had
devolved on the Lords Justices and Councillors resident in Dublin, and on
their military assessor, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, who had been
Lieutenant-General of the Irish forces under Strafford. In fact it was
this able Ormond that had to fight the Rebellion. Though supplies and
forces, with some good officers, were sent over from England, and a
special army of Scots under General Monro had been lent to the English
Parliament for service in Ulster, it was still Ormond that had to direct
in chief. His success had been very considerable.
In the course of 1643, however, after the Civil War had begun in England,
Ireland and the Rebellion there had become related in a strangely complex
manner to the struggle between the King and the Parliament. Whatever
share the King may have had, through the Queen, in first exciting the
Roman Catholics, he had come to regard the Irish distraction as a
magazine of chances in his favour. If he could get into his own hands the
command of the Protestant forces employed in putting down the Rebellion,
he would have an army in Ireland ready for his service generally, and the
policy would then be to come to an arrangement with the Roman Catholic
Insurgents, so as to free that army, and perhaps the Insurgents too, for
his service in England. Now, though the Lords Justices and most of the
Councillors in Dublin were Parliamentarian in their sympathies, Ormond
was a Royalist, of a family old in Ireland, far from fanatical in his own
Protestantism, and with many relatives and friends among the Roman
Catholics. Willing enough, therefore, to fight on against the
Confederates, he was yet as willing, on instructions from Oxford, to make
an arrangement with them in the King's interests. Actually, on the 15th
of September, 1643, he did make a year's truce with the Rebels, which
permitted the despatch of some portions of his own force, mixed with
Irish Roman Catholics, to the King's assistance in England. Vehement had
been the outcry of the English Parliamentarians over this breach of the
King's compact with them to leave the conduct of the Irish war wholly to
the Parliament; and from that moment there were two Protestant powers or
trusteeships for the management of the Irish Rebellion. Ormond, made a
Marquis, and raised to the Lord-Lieutenancy in Leicester's place (Jan.
1643-4), was trustee for the King, and continued to rule in Dublin, bound
by his truce. In other parts of Ireland, however, the war was maintained
in the interests of Parliament and by instructions from London--in
Munster by Lord Inchiquin; in Connaught by Sir Charles Coote; and in
Ulster by Monro and his Scots, in conjunction with English officers and
advisers. So the imbroglio had gone on, a mere chaos of mutual sieges and
skirmishes in bogs, and Ireland in fact, through the stress of the Civil
War at home, all but abandoned to herself in the meantime. The
Confederates were stronger after the end of Ormond's year of truce than
they had been before; and in 1645 they were up again against Ormond, as
well as against Inchiquin, Coote, and Monro. They had already received
help from France and Spain, and in Oct. 1645 there arrived among them no
less than a Papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini, with a retinue of other
Italians, to take possession of the tumult in the name of his Holiness,
and regulate it sacerdotally. In this complexity Ormond had still kept
his footing. He had kept it even in the midst of a sudden shock given to
his Vice-royalty by Charles himself.
Without Ormond's knowledge, Charles had been trafficking for months with
the Confederate Irish Catholics through another plenipotentiary. In Jan.
1645-6 it came out, by accident, that the Roman Catholic Earl of
Glamorgan, to whose presence in Ireland for some months no particular
significance had been attached, had been treating, in Charles's name, for
a Peace with the Confederates on the basis not merely of a repeal of all
penal laws against their Religion, but even of its establishment in
Ireland. All Britain and Ireland were aghast at the discovery, and even
Ormond reeled. Recovering himself, however, he did what he could to save
Charles from the results of his own double-dealing. Glamorgan was
imprisoned for a time, with tremendous threats; all publicity was given
to Charles's letters authorizing proceedings against him as "one who
either out of falseness, presumption, or folly, hath so hazarded the
blemishing of his Majesty's reputation with his good subjects, and so
impertinently framed these Articles out of his own head;" and meanwhile
Charles's letters of consolation to Glamorgan, with his thanks, and
promises of "revenge and reparation," remained private.
One consequence of the Glamorgan exposure, happening as it did when the
King had been all but completely beaten in England, was a resolution of
Parliament that Irish affairs should be managed thenceforward not by the
mere Committee for these affairs meeting at Derby House, Westminster, and
communicating with Inchiquin, Coote, and others in Ireland, but by "a
single person of honour," in fact a Parliamentary Lord-Lieutenant. For
this high post there was chosen Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, M.P. for
Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This was partly a tribute to Lord Lisle's
own zeal and to service he had already rendered in Ireland, partly a
compliment to his father, the Earl of Leicester, whom Charles had
displaced from the Lord-Lieutenancy to make way for Ormond. Accordingly,
from April 1646, while Ormond remained in power for Charles at Dublin, it
was in the name of Lord Lisle, as "Lord Lieutenant-General," that all
commissions for Parliament respecting Ireland were issued. Lord Lisle,
however, had not gone over to Ireland, but had been waiting till he could
take troops with him. It remained, therefore, for Ormond to do what he
finally could in Ireland for the fallen King. He had been in negotiation
with the Confederates for a Peace on more respectable terms than
Glamorgan's, and yet valuable for the King; and though, after Charles's
flight to the Scots, letters had come from Newcastle (June 11)
countermanding previous instructions, Ormond had persevered. On the 28th
of July, 1646, _Ormond's Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels_
were signed at Dublin and published for general information. They
promised the repeal of all acts against the Roman Catholic Religion in
Ireland, and admission of Roman Catholics to a proportion of all places
of public trust; and the recompense was to be an army of 10,000 Irish for
his Majesty's assistance in England. The indignation among the
Parliamentarians in Ireland, and throughout England and Scotland, was
immense, and Ormond was the best-abused man living. Fortunately for him,
he was extricated from the consequences of his own Treaty. The Papal
Nuncio disowned it as insulting to the Church after Glamorgan's; the
Roman Catholic clergy gathered round the Nuncio; there were riots
wherever it was proclaimed; excommunications were thundered against its
adherents; the Confederate Commissioners who had made the Treaty were
imprisoned; the Nuncio himself became generalissimo, and, with Owen Roe
O'Neile's army on one side of him and General Preston's on the other,
declared war afresh against Ormond, and marched in his robes upon Dublin.
For Ormond then there remained one plain duty. To save English rule and
the existence of Protestantism in Ireland, he must hand over Dublin and
the entire management of the war to the English Parliament. Having
procured the King's full consent, he began a treaty with Parliament to
this effect in Nov. 1646. As he was staunch in his desire to make the
best bargain for the King he could, he was in no hurry; so that in
February 1646-7, when the King was taken to Holmby, Ormond was still in
Dublin, going on with the Treaty. In reality, however, by that time
Ireland was as good as transferred to the Parliament. They had acted on
the knowledge. Dec. 23,1646, "Resolved that this House doth declare that
they will prosecute and carry on an offensive war in Ireland for the
regaining of that kingdom to the obedience of the kingdom of England;"
Jan. 4, 1646-7, "Resolved that an Ordinance be forthwith prepared and
brought in for establishing and settling the same Form of Church-
government in the kingdom of Ireland as is or shall be established in the
kingdom of England;" such were two momentous votes of the Commons when
the King was about to leave Newcastle. Nay, on the 28th of January, when
the Scots were handing over the King to the English, Lord Lisle had left
London for Ireland to assume his Lord-Lieutenancy. A new sword of State
had been made for him; his Irish Council, of nine members at £500 a year
each, had been nominated; and, at his special request, Major Thomas
Harrison of the New Model had accompanied him. [Footnote: Authorities for
the summary of Irish affairs from 1641 to 1647 given in the text are--
Rushworth, VI. 238-249; Clar. 641, and at various other points; Whitlocke
under Jan. 25 and 28 and March 9, 1646-7; Godwin, I. 245 _et seq._,
and II. 102 _et seq._; Commons Journals of dates given, with other
entries from Dec. 1646 to Feb. 1646-7; and Carte's Ormond. Carte's large
book is of some value from the abundance of information that was at his
disposal, but is intrinsically silly.]
What could Lord Lisle do without troops? Now was the time for England to
perform fully for "the gasping and bleeding Island" that duty of which,
with all the excuse of her own pressing needs, she had been long too
negligent. Now was the time to revenge the massacre of 1641, and re-
subject Ireland to English rule and the one only right faith and worship.
And were not the means at hand? An army of 25,000 or 30,000 Englishmen
was now standing idle: why not disband and cashier part of them, and
recast the rest into a new army for the service of Ireland? The question
was obvious and natural to all; but it was put most loudly by the
Presbyterians, because of a peculiar interest in it. They had never liked
the Army of the New Model; all its victories had not reconciled them to
it, or made them cease to regret the Army of the Old Model, That had been
a respectable army, with the Earl of Essex at its head; this was an army
of Independents, Sectaries, Tolerationists. Might not the disbanding of
this army be so managed as to be at once a deliverance of England from a
great danger and the salvation of Ireland? What was necessary in the
process was to get rid of Cromwell, his followers among the officers, and
the most peccant parts of the soldiery, so as to leave a sufficient mass
to be re-formed, with additions, into an army of the Old Model type, the
command of which might be given to Fairfax if he would take it, or
perhaps to honest Skippon, or, best of all, to Sir William Waller.
This had been the understanding between the English Presbyterians and
their Scottish friends since the close of the war. [Footnote: In a letter
of Baillie's October 2, 1646, he expects "the Sectarian Army disbanded
and that party humbled."] There was, however, another party likely to
have a voice in the business. This was the Army itself.
Never under the sun had there been such an army before. It was not large
according to our modern ideas of armies: only some 25,000 or 30,000 men,
four-fifths of them foot-soldiers and the rest horse-troopers and
dragoons. But imagine these all hardy men, thoroughly drilled and
disciplined, and conscious that it was they who had done the work, they
who had fought the battles, they who had saved England. Imagine farther
that this Army had somehow come to be constituted, through its entire
mass, on Cromwell's extraordinary principle, announced by him to Hampden
at the beginning of the war, that the power of an army depends ultimately
on the "spirit," or intrinsic moral mood, of the individuals composing
it. Imagine that the atoms of this army were all "men of a spirit," men
who had not fought as hirelings, but as earnest partakers in a great
cause. Imagine them, if you like, as an army of fanatics. This phrase,
however, might mislead, unless qualified.
The common conception of an army of fanatics is that of an army mad for
one set of tenets. Now the Parliamentary Army was really, as the
Presbyterians called it, an Army of Sectaries. It was a miscellany of all
the forms of Puritan belief known in England, with forms of belief
included that were not Puritan. The much largest proportion, after
Presbyterians, of whom there were many, and ordinary Independents, of
whom there were more, were Sectaries of the fervid and devout sorts, such
as Baptists, Old Brownists, and Antinomians, with mystical Millenaries
and Seekers, all passionately Scriptural, saturated with the language and
history of the Old Testament, and zealously Anti-Romanist and Anti-
prelatic; and these, on the whole, were the men after Cromwell's heart.
Such, among others, was Harrison--whom Baxter, who had seen much of him,
classes at this time among the Anabaptists and Antinomians, telling us
"he would not dispute at all [with Baxter], but he would in good
discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of Free Grace,
which was savoury to those that had right principles, though he had some
misunderstandings of Free Grace himself:" a man, adds Baxter, "of
excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in
the principles of his Religion; of a sanguine complexion; naturally of
such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hath
drunken a cup too much;" and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle,
when the enemy began to flee, "with a loud voice break forth into the
praises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture."
But there were also in the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order--
Arminians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, Familists, and Sceptics.
Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English Sects
in a former chapter but had representatives in the Army; nay, new
speculative oddities had broken out in some regiments; and it may be
doubted whether even in the English mind of our own time there is any
form of speculation so peculiar as not to have had its prototype or
lineal progenitor in that mass of steel-clad theorists contemporary with
the Westminster Assembly. Nor did each man keep his theory to himself.
There were constant prayer-meetings in companies and regiments, and
meetings for theological debate; troopers or foot-soldiers off duty would
expound or harangue to their fellows in camp, or even from the pulpits of
parish-churches when such were convenient; whenever the Army halted there
was a hum of holding-forth. There were army-chaplains, it is true, and
some of them, such as Peters, Dell, and Saltmarsh, great favourites; but,
on the whole, the regular cloth was in disrepute: those who belonged to
it were spoken of as the _Levites_ or priests by profession; the
need for such a profession was voted obsolete; and any man was held to be
as good for the preaching office as any other, if he had the preaching
gift. And with the respect for ordination had vanished the respect for
most of the regular Church-forms and symbols. Not only did preaching
officers and troopers, when they chanced to enter parish-churches, often
eject the regular ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselves
instead--in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell are
reported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for established
decencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances,
in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregations
by sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing; and Hewson's men
were said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days,
having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco _ad libitum_. Such
were, doubtless, mere excesses here and there, which would have been
rebuked by the more serious men who formed the bulk of the Army; but it
is quite certain that even among these that extreme kind of Independency
had become common which repudiated a National Church of any kind
whatsoever, nay denied that there was any Church on earth at all, any
system of spiritual ordinances visibly from God, anything but a great
invisible brotherhood of Saints, walking in this life's darkness,
passionately using meanwhile this symbol and that to feature forth the
unimaginable, glad above all in the great glow of the present Bible, but
expecting also, each soul for itself, rays and shafts from the Light
beyond. Of this kind of indifferency to all competing forms of external
worship, and even of doctrine, combined with either a mystical and dreamy
piety, or a wildly-fervid enthusiasm, Dell and Saltmarsh, among the army-
chaplains, seem to have been the most noted exponents; but it was really
a modification of that which is already known to us as the _Seekerism_ of
Roger Williams. At all events, that absolute doctrine of Toleration which
Roger Williams had propounded, and which was logically inseparable in his
mind from Independency at its purest, had found its largest discipleship
in the Parliamentary Army. Toleration to some extent was the universal
Army tenet; even the Presbyterians of the Army, with some exceptions, had
learnt to be Tolerationists in some degree. But a very full principle of
Toleration had possessed most, and the most absolute possible principle
was avowed by many. "If I should worship the Sun or Moon. like the
Persians, or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody has anything to do with
it," one sectary had been heard to say; and some even had "justified the
Irish Rebellion," on the ground that the Irish "did it for the liberty of
their consciences and for their country." If this last extreme
application of the Toleration doctrine did actually come from the mouth
of a sectary serving in the Army (which is not quite clear from the
report), it must be regarded, I suspect, as one of those eccentricities
of mess-table debate which, when Baxter talked of them to Colonel
Purefoy, vouching that he had heard such things himself, that officer
indignantly refused to credit, saying, "If Noll Cromwell should hear any
soldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown." Precisely the
Toleration doctrine, however, was that in which Cromwell himself was most
thorough-going and most distinctly the representative of the whole Army.
Even Baxter, after his two years of army-chaplaincy, spent in observing
the medley of sects around him and combating their errors, could not
refer Cromwell with positive certainty to any one of the Sects. He seemed
most for the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Seekers, but "did not openly
profess what opinion he was of himself." But on Toleration of Religious
Differences he was explicit and decided. All that were most to his mind
in the Army "he tied together by the point of Liberty of Conscience,
which was the common interest in which they did unite." [Footnote: This
description of the Parliamentary Army is a digest of the best knowledge I
have been able to form from various readings in contemporary books and
study of Army documents; but particulars of it are from Baxter's
Autobiography (1696), Part I. 52-57, and Edwards's _Gangræna_, Parts II.
and III. _passim_. The good, though narrow and hypochondriac, Baxter may
be thoroughly relied on for whatever he vouches as a fact known to
himself; otherwise, _cum grano_. Edwards has to be put into the witness-
box and cross-examined unmercifully, not as a wilful liar, but as an
incredibly spiteful collector of gossip for the Presbyterians. After all,
many of the so-called ribaldries and profanities reported by him of the
Army Sectaries turn out innocent enough, or only very rough jokes, as
when a soldier told a godly old woman that, if she did not believe in
universal redemption, she would be damned. Perhaps his most horrible
story is that of some soldiers taking a horse into a village church in
Hunts and baptizing him in all due form at the font, giving him the name
of _Esau_ because he was hairy. The story, with a certificate of its
truth by seven of the villagers, will be found in Gangræna, Part III. 17,
18. But, if the atrocity ever did occur, its date, according to Edwards
himself, was June 2, 1644, _i.e._ in the time of the Old Model Army, to
which the very objection of Cromwell and others was that it did not
consist sufficiently of "men of a spirit."]
There were three reasons why this extraordinary Army should object to
being disbanded:--(1) They had large and long-deferred claims upon the
Parliament for arrears of pay, compensation for losses, provision for the
wounded and disabled and for widows and orphans, indemnity also for
illegal or questionable acts done in the time of war. Was the Army to let
itself be disbanded without due security on these points? (2) There was
the unsettled question of Religious Toleration. The whole drift of things
in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly seemed to be to a
uniform and compulsory Presbyterianism; and was that a prospect to which
the Army, or nine-tenths of it, could look forward placidly? The Army did
not want to undo the Presbyterian settlement as already decreed, but they
were unwilling to disband before a Toleration under that settlement had
been arranged. (3) Over and above these two reasons, and in powerful
conjunction with them, was another. The Army, although an Army, had not
ceased to regard itself as a portion of the English people; nay, it had
come to regard itself as a select portion of that people, whose
opportunities of thinking and reasoning on political affairs had been
peculiarly good. It had come to be, in its own belief, an organ of
political opinion, representing wishes and feelings of large parts of the
population which were not represented in Parliament, and representing
these in the form of conclusions for the future more radical and more
definite than any that Parliament alone was ever likely to work out. In
short, those democratic ideas the prevalence of which in the Army had so
surprised Baxter when he first joined it had now become paramount. It was
not only that the Army had formed views more severe than those of the
Presbyterians as to the proper terms of the settlement to be made with
the King; it was that the Army thought the present the time for
discussing the whole subject of the constitution of the country. The
House of Lords, for example! Whether there should be a Peerage at all,
legislating in a separate House by mere hereditary right, might be a very
fair question, and was one on which the Army had pretty decided opinions
But that the House of Lords then sitting--not the assembled Peerage of
England at all, but a mere fifth-part of that Peerage, in the shape of
some twenty-eight persons meeting from day to day, sometimes as few as
half-a-dozen of them at a time, and not only partaking with the other
House in the legislation, but often obstructing that House, thwarting it,
throwing out its measures,--that this should continue who would maintain?
No! the House of Lords must go, and the sole House in England must be the
other House, the "House of Representers." But here too there was room for
improvement. The House of Commons then sitting was numerically
substantial enough, now that it had been Recruited; and no one could look
back on the great things which the House had done without gratitude and
admiration. But were there not signs of exhaustion, debility, and wrong-
headedness, even in that House, arising partly from its long independence
of the People, partly from the imperfect system of suffrage under which
it had been elected. Only in an imperfect sense could the existing House
be called a "House of Representers;" and, as soon as should be
convenient, it must be dissolved and succeeded by a House fully deserving
that name. For the election of such a House there must be a reform of the
details of the electoral system, including the abolition of such
anomalies as the return of one-twelfth of the whole House by the single
and remote county of Cornwall, and a redistribution of seats in
accordance with the proportions of population and property in the various
parts of England. All these ideas, and many more, anticipating with
surprising exactness the Parliamentary Reform movements of much later
times, were agitating the Parliamentary Army while the King was in his
captivity at Holmby. Pamphlets from London, actively circulated among the
regiments, aided the discussion and supplied it with topics and catch-
words. Especially popular among the soldiers, and keeping up their
excitement more particularly against the House of Lords, were the
pamphlets that came from John Lilburne and an associate of his named
Richard Overton.--Lilburne, whom we left in October 1645, just released
from the short imprisonment to which he had been committed by the Commons
(_antè_, p. 390), had gone on again in his old pugnacious way, till,
by Prynne's contrivance, he found himself in the clutches of the Lords.
Called before that House, in June 1646, for a Letter he had printed,
called _The Just Man's Justification_, he had amazed the Peers by
conduct such as they had never seen before. He had refused to kneel,
refused to take off his hat, refused to hear the charges against him,
stopped his ears while they were read, denied the jurisdiction of the
Peers, stamped at them, glared at them, told them his whole mind about
them, appealed to the Commons as the sole power in the State, and
altogether behaved like a mad ox. They had consequently fined him £4,000,
and committed him to Newgate for seven years. For similar offences to the
Peers, and similar contumacy when charged with them, Richard Overton, a
printer and assiduous publisher of pamphlets, had also been sent to
prison two months afterwards (Aug. 1646). There was considerable sympathy
with both among the Londoners, and the Independents in the Commons had
taken up Lilburne's case and procured the appointment of a Committee on
it. Nor even in Newgate, it appears, had he been debarred the use of pen
and ink; for, in addition to his former pamphlets, there had come from
him fiercer and fresh ones--_Anatomy of the Lords' Tyranny_, _London's
Liberty in Chains_, _The Free Man's Freedom_, _The Oppressed Man's
Oppressions_, _The Resolved Man's Resolution_, &c. These were the
pamphlets of Lilburne which, together with Overton's, one of which was
_An Arrow Shot into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of
Lords_, were popular with the common soldiers of the Parliamentary Army,
and nursed that especial form of the democratic passion among them which
longed to sweep away the House of Lords and see England governed by a
single Representative House.--Baxter, who reports this growth of
democratic opinion in the Army from his own observation, distinctly
recognises in it the beginnings of that rough ultra-Republican party
which afterwards became formidable under the name of THE LEVELLERS. All
the while, however, there was also a quiet formation, in some of the
superior and more educated minds of the Army, of sentiments essentially
Republican, but more reserved and tentative in the style of their
Republicanism. Among these minds too it had become a question whether a
mere settlement with the King even on the basis of the Nineteen
Propositions would suffice, and whether the hour had not come for organic
changes in the Constitution of England. Perhaps the leader of Army
thought in this direction was Cromwell's son-in-law Ireton. [Footnote:
Baxter _ut supra_; Gangræna, part III. _passim_; Lords Journals, June 10,
11, 23, and July 11, 1646 (Lilburne's case), and Aug. 11 (Overton's);
Godwin, II. 407 _et seq._; Wood's Ath. III. 353] That the English
Presbyterians, bereft now even of that overrated support which had been
afforded them by the presence of a Scottish Army in England, should have
rushed into a struggle with the English Army, such as it has been
described, without trying so much as a compromise on the Toleration
question, is one of the greatest examples of political stupidity on
record. They seem to have calculated mainly on the fact that they had a
majority in Parliament. Of the few Lords forming the Upper House they
could count nearly all as decidedly with them. In the Commons, too, where
the balance had always been more nearly equal, Presbyterianism had of
late been gaining force. Why it had been so is not very obvious. The
latest Recruiters may have been politicians of a more Presbyterian type
than the earlier ones; and of these earlier Recruiters some who had come
in as Independents may have veered round. Men whose opinions are not very
decided tend naturally to the winning side, and the King's flight to the
Scots and their long possession of him had put Presbyterianism in the
likelihood to win. However it had happened, the Presbyterians had of late
been preponderating in the Commons. In a vote on Sept. 1, 1646, affecting
the relations of the Parliament to the Scots, the Presbyterians had
beaten the Independents by 140 to 101; in another vote on Dec. 25, on the
question whether the words "according to the Covenant" should be added to
a Resolution, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten by 133 to 91; and in
an interesting vote on Dec. 31, on the question whether the words "or
expound the Scriptures" should be added to a Resolution forbidding
unordained persons to preach, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten by
no fewer than 105 to 57. In this last vote Cromwell was one of the
Tellers for the _Noes_ or Independents. In testing divisions these
numbers may be taken as representing the relative strengths of the two
parties in the end of 1646 and the beginning of 1647. But, even with a
considerable majority in the Commons, and with the Lords all but wholly a
Presbyterian House, the confidence of the Presbyterians in confronting
the Army can be accounted for only by reckless leadership. Holles and
Stapleton, their most forward men in the Commons, appear to have been men
of but ordinary faculty and decidedly rash temper, incomparably inferior
to their great opponents. One argument they had, of which they did not
fail to make the most. The City of London was eminently and staunchly
Presbyterian; and would that great city, the central money-power of the
nation, allow the Government to be dictated to by an Army of Sectaries?
[Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given, with divisions generally
between Aug. 1646 and Feb. 1646-7; Godwin, II. 263 _et seq._]
The struggle, long foreseen, began actually in the first two months and a
half of the King's stay at Holmby, _i.e._ in February, March, and
April, 1646-7. The gauntlet was thrown down by Parliament. Feb. 19, in an
unusually full House, it was carried by 158 (Holles and Stapleton
tellers) against 148 (Haselrig and Evelyn tellers), that no force of Foot
beyond what was necessary for garrisons should be kept up in England, but
only a certain force of Horse. On the 5th of March there came a vote on
the important question who should be the Commander-in-chief of the
retained Army, and so jealous had the Presbyterians become even of
Fairfax, because of his connexion with the existing Army, that the
Independents, though going for him to a man, carried his appointment but
by a majority of 12. Subsequent resolutions, carried without division,
were that no member of the House should hold a military command
(Cromwell's Self-denying Ordinance cleverly repeated against himself),
that no officer in the future Army under Fairfax should be above the rank
of Colonel, and that all officers should take the Covenant; and when, on
the farther and more outrageous proposition, that all officers must
conform to the Presbyterian Church-government, the Independents forced a
division; they lost by 108 _Noes_ (Haselrig and Evelyn), against 136
_Yeas_ (Holies and Stapleton). By additional Resolutions of March 29
and April 8 the arrangements were completed. It was formally resolved
that all the Foot of the existing Army not required for the garrisons
should be disbanded, and that the future Army of Horse under Fairfax
should consist of nine regiments of 600 each, or 5,400 in all, recruited
out of the existing Army or otherwise. The Colonels for the nine re-
modelled regiments were named, some of them cavalry Colonels of the
existing Army, but not all. Cromwell's own regiment, or the regiment that
should be built out of any safe shred of it with other materials, was to
go to the Presbyterian Major Huntingdon.----So much for England and
Wales; but what of the new Army for Ireland? That also had been arranged
for. March 6, it was voted by the Commons that the Army for Ireland
should consist of 8,400 foot, 3,000 horse, and 1,200 dragoons, to be
recruited as far as possible from the existing English Army. But how
about the command of this Army and the government of Ireland while it
should be serving there? Lord Lisle, then in Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant
for the Parliament, was one of Cromwell's disciples, and had been
appointed by Cromwell's influence. It would not do to leave _him_ in
command. Fortunately, he had been appointed but for a year; and, to avoid
re-appointing him, it was resolved (April 1) that the previous vote of
the Houses for the management of Ireland through "a single person of
honour" should be rescinded, and that, while the Civil Government should
revert to the two Lords-Justices in Dublin, the military command should
be in the hands of a Field-Marshal, attended by Parliamentary
Commissioners. Sir William Waller was named for this Field-Marshalship;
but the Presbyterians did not go to the vote for him; and Skippon, then
at Newcastle, and unaware of the honour intended for him, was unanimously
chosen (April 2). The Presbyterian Massey was to be his Lieutenant-
General. As an inducement to officers and soldiers of the English Army to
re-enlist for the Irish service, high pay was promised, with an option of
taking part of it in the valuable form of Irish lands. [Footnote: Commons
Journals of the dates given.]
0, if you had been at Saffron Walden in Essex, where the bulk of the
English Army was quartered, when the news of these votes of the Commons
reached them! What murmurs among the common soldiers, what consultations
among the officers! The officers, as was fitting, took the lead. A
deputation of four Colonels and five Lieutenant-colonels had already gone
to London (March 22) with a Petition and Remonstrance. They had been
received graciously enough by the Lords, but coldly and with rebuke by
the Commons. Then, a great Petition being in preparation throughout the
Army, to be signed by both officers and men, and addressed to Fairfax as
Commander-in-chief, there had come, on a hasty motion by Holles, a
Declaration of the two Houses (March 29-30) voting the same dangerous and
mutinous, and threatening proceedings against such as should go on with
it. With vast self-control on the part of the Army, and much good
management on the part of Fairfax, the offensive Petition had been
suppressed; and through a great part of April the dispute took the form
of conferences between Fairfax and his officers and five Commissioners
sent down to the Army from Parliament (Waller and Massey among them) to
argue for the disbandment and promote re-enlistment for Ireland. At these
conferences the questions of arrears, indemnity, the rate of pay in
Ireland, &c., were all discussed, and the Commissioners tried to give
satisfactory explanations. It was a great point with the Army whether
Skippon would accept the Irish Field-Marshalship; and at one of the
conferences, when Colonel Hammond was expressing this for his comrades,
and saying that nothing would be more likely to induce them to enlist for
Ireland than the knowledge that that "great soldier" was to be in
command, "_All, all!_" cried the assembled officers, "_Fairfax and
Cromwell, and we all go!_" No real conciliation, however, was
effected; and on the 26th of April the Commissioners, in their "perfect
list" of officers who had agreed individually to go to Ireland, could
report but three Colonels, and a proportionate following of Captains and
subalterns. Among the men it was worse. In one company, eight score
strong, twenty-six had volunteered to go with their Captain; in another
the Captain could not get a single man to join him. Parliament was taken
aback by this ill success; but Holles and his party were undaunted. It
was a gleam in their favour that Skippon, coming to London from
Newcastle, did at length (April 27) accept the Irish Field-Marshalship.
The Houses voted him their thanks and a gift of 1,000_l._and on the
same day it was carried in the Commons, by the overwhelming majority of
114 to 7 (the Independents evidently abstaining from the vote), that the
Army, horse and foot, should be immediately disbanded with payment of six
weeks of arrears. Orders were also issued for the appearance at the bar
of the House of some of the most refractory superior officers and the
arrest of several subalterns; and at the same moment the Common Council
of the City of London proved their Presbyterian zeal by ejecting Alderman
Pennington and other prominent Independents from the Committee of the
City Militia. On the very day of this concurrence of Presbyterian
demonstrations (April 27) there was presented to the Commons a "Humble
Petition of the Officers in behalf of themselves and the Soldiers," with
an accompanying "Vindication" of their recent conduct. Lieutenant-general
Thomas Hammond headed the list of Petitioners; next came Colonels
Whalley, Lambert, Robert Lilburne, Rich, Hewson, Robert Hammond, and
Okey; then Lieutenant-colonels Pride, Kelsay, Reade, Jubbs, Grimes, Ewer,
and Salmon; then Majors Rogers, Axtell, Cowell, Smith, Horton, and
Desborough; and there followed about 130 captains and inferior officers.
Such an Officers' Petition might well have given the Presbyterians pause;
but three days afterwards (April 30) there came something more
extraordinary. It was a Letter brought to town, and delivered to Skippon
and Cromwell for presentation to the House, by three private troopers,
professing to be "agents" or "agitators" or "adjutators" for some
regiments in the Army. It used very high language indeed. It complained
of the "scandalous and false suggestions" current against the Army, spoke
darkly of "a plot contrived by some men who had lately tasted of
sovereignty," and declared flatly that the soldiers "would neither be
employed for the service of Ireland nor suffer themselves to be disbanded
till their desires were granted, and the rights and liberties of the
subjects should be vindicated and maintained." The amazed House ordered
the three troopers who had brought the Letter, and who were waiting
outside, to be brought in. They came in, gave their names as Edward
Saxby, William Allen, and Thomas Sheppard, and stood stoutly to their
business. Holles and his clique were for committing them to prison; but,
Skippon certifying that they were honest men, and another member
suggesting that, if they were committed at all, it should be "to the best
inn of the town, and sack and sugar provided for them," the more good-
humoured counsel prevailed, and they were dismissed. Nay, their
appearance and their Letter had produced an impression. In Holles's own
words, "the House flatted," began to think it had been too peremptory,
and resolved that Skippon, Cromwell, Ireton, and Fleetwood, should go at
once to Saffron Walden, as mediators between it and the Army. [Footnote:
Commons Journals of all the cited dates; Rushworth, VI. 444-475;
Whitlocke, II. 121-137; Parl. Hist. III. 560-576; Holles's Memoirs by
himself (1699), pp. 88-90.]
Agents, or Agitators, or Adjutators, the three bold troopers had called
themselves; and it was the first time the Houses had heard the name. It
announced, however, an important reality. The common soldiers had made up
their minds that they could not leave the struggle for the Army's rights
wholly in the hands of the officers, and that it might assist these
officers if they, the rank and file, with the corporals and sergeants,
formed an organization among themselves for the same ends. Accordingly,
trusty men in each regiment had been chosen to meet and consult with
others of other regiments, and the name "Agitators" or "Adjutators" had
been given to these deputies. Very soon the organization was so perfect
that every troop or company had its two Agitators, every regiment its
distinct Agitatorship composed of the Agitators of the several troops or
companies, and so by gradation upwards to general meetings of the
Agitators of the whole Army and special meetings of Committees for
maturing business more privately. Too obvious a connexion between this
association and the higher army-officers was inconvenient; but it was
useful to have connecting links in officers of the lower ranks; and the
Presidency of the Agitators came, at length, to be vested in one such
officer. This was James Berry, one of the captains of Fairfax's own
horse-regiment, in which Desborough was Major. He had been a clerk in
some iron-works in the west of England, and was "of very good natural
parts, especially mathematical and mechanical." Before the war he and
Richard Baxter had been bosom friends; but, since he had come into the
Army and been much in the society of Cromwell, he had become, says
Baxter, a man of new lights in religion, regarding the old Puritans of
his acquaintance as "dull, self-conceited men of a lower form." During
Baxter's two years of army-chaplaincy, Berry had never visited him, nor
even seen him, except once or twice accidentally. [Footnote: Rushworth,
VI. 485: Holles, 86, 87; Baxter's Autobiography, Part I. 57 and 97.]
Through the greater part of May, Fairfax being then in London, Cromwell,
and his fellow-commissioners, Skippon, Ireton, and Fleetwood, remained at
Saffron Walden, busy in their work of mediation. Three successive letters
to Speaker Lenthall reported the amount of their success. It was next to
nothing. They had obtained, they say in the last of the three letters
(May 17), a complete statement of the grievances of the Army, in the form
of papers which they would bring to town; but meanwhile they found the
soldiers so unsettled that they did not think it safe to leave them.
Skippon and Ireton, in fact, did remain; but Cromwell and Fleetwood
returned to town, May 21, to report to the House in greater detail. Among
the documents they brought with them, representing the opinions and
demands of the Army, was one which had been prepared with extraordinary
care. The various votes relating to the Army having been read to each
regiment by its commanding officer, the regimental Agitatorships
(apparently now first fully constituted) had reported the opinions and
demands of the regiments severally, and these opinions and demands had
been digested into one Draft at a conference of the chief officers, on
the principle of including only such demands as were made unanimously by
all the regiments. Rushworth does not give the document, but describes it
as fair and moderate, and tells us in particular that, while it
complained of misrepresentations and ill-treatment, and desired
reparation, it denounced only one person by name. One is not surprised to
learn that this was the Rev. Mr. Edwards. His _Gangræna_, it was
said, had been written expressly to make the Army odious. [Footnote:
Letters in Appendix IX. to Carlyle's Cromwell; Commons Journals of May
21; and Rushworth, VI. 485-6.]
Moderate or not, the Army's _ultimatum_ obtained but an unfriendly
hearing in the two Houses; and, between the 22nd and the 28th of May,
Fairfax having meanwhile returned to the Army, they issued their opposed
_ultimatum_ in a sharp series of orders. The entire army of Foot was
to be disbanded, willing or unwilling, on the terms fixed: Fairfax's own
regiment at Chelmsford on June 1, Hewson's at Bishop's Stortford on June
3, Lambert's at Saffron Walden on June 5, and so on regiment by regiment,
each on a named day and at a named place, a Committee of the two Houses
to be present at each disbanding, and Skippon also to be present to
enlist such of the disbanded men as would go to Ireland. These orders
reached Fairfax at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk, to which he had removed
his head-quarters. They threw the Army into an ungovernable uproar, which
subsided in a day or two into an ominous calm. For a great resolution had
been taken. The Agitators, at a meeting on Saturday, May 29, had drawn up
a petition to Fairfax for a speedy Rendezvous of the whole Army at one
place for united action; and a council of officers, to the number of 200,
with Ireton among them, had declared themselves on the same day to the
same effect. They advised Fairfax to grant the Rendezvous, telling him
that, if he did not, the men would hold one themselves and it was sure
then to end in tumult. Fairfax had taken the advice; and in the last days
of May orders were out for the "contraction of the Army's quarters" by
drawing the dispersed regiments closer together, and for a general
"Rendezvous" at Kentford Heath, close to Newmarket, on Friday the 4th of
June. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 582-588, and Rushworth, VI. 494-500.]
Fairfax, with whatever hesitation, had thus thrown in his lot with the
Army. Skippon, though he had accepted the Irish Field-Marshalship, almost
repented having done so, and was one at heart with his old comrades. Of
the other officers only a small minority, whether from Presbyterian
predilections or out of mere respect for authority, wavered towards
Parliament. The chief of these were Colonels Harley, Herbert, Fortescue,
Sheffield, Butler, Sir Robert Pye, and Graves, this last being the
Colonel in charge of the King at Holmby. On the other side, round
Fairfax, and sustaining him, were Generals Ireton and Hammond, as next in
rank; with Whalley, Rich, Okey, Rainsborough, Robert Lilburne, Sir
Hardress Waller, Robert Hammond, Lambert, Hewson, Ewer, Kelsay,
Ingoldsby, Pride, Axtell, Jubbs, Desborough, and other Colonels,
Lieutenant-Colonels, and Majors, among whom is not to be forgotten the
enthusiast Harrison, back from Ireland just at the right moment. But what
of Fleetwood and Cromwell, left in their places in the House of Commons?
Which way they would go nobody could doubt; but the question was whether
they might not be seized as hostages by the Presbyterians and detained in
London. As far as Fleetwood was concerned, the danger was over on the 2nd
of June; on which day he had leave from the House "to go into the
country," and went we can imagine whither. For Cromwell the danger was
greater. He too, however, had made his arrangements. On the evening of
the 3rd of June, or early on the following morning, just in time to avoid
the arrest and impeachment which Holles and the Presbyterians were
preparing for him, he rode quietly out of London in the direction of the
Army. As far as can be ascertained, he had waited purposely to cover
Fleetwood's departure, and be himself the last army-man to leave the
Commons. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 2; Whitlocke, May 31;
Rushworth, VI. 464-8 and 495; Holles 85, 86; Clar. 611; Godwin, II. 311,
312. Cromwell's so-called "Flight to the Army" is an incident made much
of by Royalist and Presbyterian writers, and Clarendon's account of it
and what preceded it is a perfect jumble of incompatible dates and
confused rumours. What all those writers (Holles, Clement Walker,
Clarendon, Baxter, Burnet, &c.) wanted to make out, and really succeeded
in transmitting as a fact, was that Cromwell's whole conduct through the
dispute between the Army and Parliament, up to the moment of his flight,
had been a tissue of the profoundest craft and hypocrisy. He had pushed
on the policy of disbandment in the Parliament on the one hand, and on
the other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators;
to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protested
in the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army would
lay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of his
dissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mind
that could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressive
words (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts are
to be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had been
in London through February, March, and April, while the votes for
disbandment, &c. were passed, unable to resist those votes, but anxious
to prevent a rupture, and doing his best to that end: and not till after
his return from his mission of mediation to the Army (May 21), or even
till after the Army's resolution for a Rendezvous (May 29), were his
hopes of a reconciliation utterly gone.]
The general Rendezvous of the Army was duly held, as appointed, near
Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, on Friday the 4th of June. There were
present seven foot-regiments and six regiments of horse--a full
representation of the Army, though not the whole. There was the utmost
display of resolution. One great general Petition was agreed to; a solemn
engagement was drawn up and signed by officers and soldiers; Fairfax rode
from regiment to regiment, addressed each, and was received with outcries
of applause. The proceedings were not over on the 4th, but protracted
themselves into the next day. On that day it was that a strange
excitement or suspense, which had been visible in all faces from the very
beginning of the Rendezvous, in consequence of news then received, was
relieved by the arrival of farther news. "Joyce has done it! Joyce has
done it!" were the words that might then have been heard through the
assembled Army, caught up and repeated by group after group of talking
soldiers over the heath. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 504-512.]