Who was Joyce, and what had he done? These questions take us back to the

King at Holmby.--His Majesty, watching the course of the struggle between

the Parliament and the Army, had at last, on the 12th of May, sent in his

long-deferred Answer to the Nineteen Propositions. It was substantially

the Draft which he had submitted to the Queen and the Earl of Lanark in

the preceding December, but had suppressed (_antè_, pp. 505-6). He

offered the surrender of the Militia for ten years, and assent to

Presbytery for three years, but with a reserve of the Liturgy for himself

and his household, and the right of adding twenty divines to the

Westminster Assembly to assist in the final settlement of the Church-

question. The clause about a toleration for tender consciences, inserted

in the former Draft as a bait for the Independents, was now totally

omitted. In other words, Charles had thought the moment favourable for

re-opening negotiations with the Presbyterians. The reception of his

Letter by Parliament had been encouraging. It had been read in the Lords,

May 18; and it had then been carried in that House by a majority of 15 to

9 that his Majesty should be brought at once from Holmby to some place

nearer London, for the convenience of treating with him. Oatlands in

Surrey had been named, and the concurrence of the Commons requested.

Actually on May 21, the very day when Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to

the Commons from their mission to the Army, the matter had been mentioned

in that House. Although no decision had been come to, the Independents

and the Army had taken alarm. Colonel Graves, commanding the guard at

Holmby, was a Presbyterian; some of those everlasting Scottish

Commissioners were back in London, in their old quarters at Worcester

House; nay, one of them, the Earl of Dunfermline, had obtained leave from

the two Houses (May 13) to visit the King at Holmby! What might not be in

agitation under this proposal of a removal of the King to Oatlands? What

so easy as for the Presbyterians, with Colonel Graves for their agent, to

secure the King wholly to themselves, and so, having bargained with him

on their own terms, to invite back the Scots and defy the Army? Such had

been questions gossiped over in the Army at the very time when for other

reasons the resolution was taken for a general Rendezvous. This very

danger of some Presbyterian plot for removing the King from Holmby was an

additional reason for the Rendezvous and the contraction of the Army's

quarters. But the Rendezvous was not enough. Simultaneously with the

Rendezvous, and to turn it to full account, something else was necessary.

What that was had also been discussed among the Agitators with every

precaution of secrecy; select parties of troopers from different

regiments had been told off for the enterprise; and a George Joyce, once

a tailor, but now cornet in Fairfax's lifeguard, had been appointed to

take the lead. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given; and

Parl. Hist. III. 577-581, containing the King's Letter.]

As early as Wednesday June 2, or two days before the Rendezvous at

Newmarket, there had been a suspicious appearance of parties of horse

gathering to a body near Holmby. That night there was no doubt about it;

and Colonel Graves, who had reasons for thinking that he was their main

object, had just made his escape, when, about one in the morning of June

3, the troopers were in the park and meadows surrounding the house.

Before daylight they were within the gates, Graves's men having let them

in and at once fraternized with them. The whole of that day was spent by

the troopers, Joyce acting as their spokesman, in a parley with the

Commissioners in charge of the King--viz.: Lord Montague of Boughton, Sir

John Coke, Mr. Crewe, and General Browne--the King meanwhile aware of

what was going on, but keeping his privacy. Messengers had been sent off

from the Commissioners to London; where, accordingly, on Friday the 4th,

there was great excitement in the two Houses. That same morning the news

was known in the Army at Newmarket, just before the proceedings of the

Rendezvous began, not much to the surprise of some there perhaps, but

certainly to the surprise of Fairfax himself. He could not then

countermand the Rendezvous; but at once he detached Whalley and his

horse-regiment, to gallop to Holmby, take Colonel Graves's place, and see

that no harm was done. By that time, however, Joyce had completed his

business. Passing from his first topic with the Commissioners, which had

been Colonel Graves and his plot, he had insisted on seeing the King; had

compelled the Commissioners late at night on the 3rd to introduce him

into his Majesty's bedchamber; had there apologized, talked with his

Majesty, answered his questions, and distinctly informed him that he had

authority from the Army to carry him away from Holmby. The King, amused

and interested, as it seemed, rather than displeased, had taken the night

to think over the matter; and by six o'clock next morning he had left his

chamber, and was again in colloquy with Joyce, who had his troopers all

mounted and ready where they could be seen. His Majesty did not seem

disinclined to go, but was naturally inquisitive as to the authority by

which Joyce acted. Had he a commission from Fairfax? Mr. Joyce could not

say he had. Had he any commission at all? "_There_ is my commission,

your Majesty," said Joyce at last, pointing to his mounted troopers. "A

fair commission and well-written," said the King, smiling: "a company of

as handsome, proper gentlemen as ever I saw in my life." In short, as

there was no help for it, he supposed he must go. And so, actually, after

vain protests and solemn threats by the Commissioners, and especially by

General Browne, to all which Joyce listened unmoved, the party did set

off at a trot from Holmby, about two o'clock in the afternoon of June 4,

with Joyce at their head, and the King in their charge, accompanied by

the Commissioners. The Scottish Earl of Dunfermline, who had witnessed

much of the affair, had posted off to London, The Rendezvous at Newmarket

was then going on. [Footnote: Original accounts of Joyce's conduct at

Holmby and abduction of the King are (1) Letters of the Commissioners

from Holmby, June 3 and 4, and from Childersley June 8, addressed to

Manchester as Speaker of the Lords, and given in the Lords Journals; (2)

Fairfax's Letters to Speaker Lenthall, of June 4 and 7, in the Commons

Journal giving Fairfax's account of the information he had collected, and

of his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interesting

contemporary account called "_An Impartial Narration, &c._," reprinted by

Rushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, one

soon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun,

that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff at

the pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectly

trustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version of the

incident is very loose and inaccurate. He huddles into one day what was

really an affair of two, &c.]

Joyce having given the King the option, within a certain extent, of the

place to which he would be conveyed, his Majesty himself had suggested

Newmarket. Thither, accordingly, they were bound. The evening of the 4th

brought them to Huntingdon, where his Majesty rested that night in the

mansion-house of Hinchinbrook, once the property of Cromwell's uncle, Sir

Oliver, but now of Colonel Edward Montague. Next day (Saturday, June 5)

they were again on their march for Newmarket, when they were met, about

four miles from Cambridge, by Whalley and his regiment of horse. Joyce,

of course, then retired from the management. Whalley, in accordance with

his instructions, was willing to convey the King and the Commissioners

back to Holmby; but this his Majesty positively declined. Till there

should be farther deliberation, therefore, his Majesty was quartered at

the nearest convenient house, which chanced to be Sir John Cutts's at

Childersley, near Cambridge. Here he remained over Sunday the 6th and

Monday the 7th. Meanwhile both in London and at Newmarket the commotion

was boundless. The full news had reached the two Houses on Saturday the

5th. Next day, though it was Sunday, they re-assembled for prayer and

business; but nothing practical could be thought of; all was panic,

passing into a mood of submissiveness to the Army. The only show of

anger, even in words, up to the mark of the occasion, was in a paper

given in to a Committee of the two Houses by the Scottish Commissioners,

with a speech in their name by the Earl of Lauderdale. The Scottish

nation had been insulted; its resentment might be expected; it would co-

operate at once with the Parliament for "the rescuing and defending his

Majesty's person," &c.! It was easier for the Scottish Commissioners to

speak in this strain than for the Parliament to take corresponding

action. The opportunity was now wholly with the Army. That they would

adopt Joyce's deed, and take the full benefit of it, could not be

doubted; or, if it could, the procedure of Fairfax at once put an end to

the doubt. On Saturday and Sunday he was lifting his Rendezvous from

Newmarket; by Monday the 7th he had brought his army bodily round about

Cambridge, so as to encircle the King; and on that day he, Cromwell,

Treton, and Hammond, with Whalley, Waller, Lambert, and other chief

officers, were assembled in interview with the King and the Commissioners

at Childersley House. No persuasion could induce his Majesty to go back

to Holmby. Much of the conversation turned on Joyce's daring act and his

authority for it; and Joyce, having been called in, underwent a long

examination and cross-examination on this point. Very little could be got

out of him, except that he had had no commission from Fairfax, and yet

that he considered his authority perfectly sufficient. Let the question,

he said, be put to the Army itself whether they approved of what he had

done, and, if three-fourths or four-fifths did not approve with

acclamations, he would be hanged with pleasure. The Commissioners thought

Joyce deserved hanging in any case; but the King, who had taken a liking

for him, told him that, though it was a great treason he had done, he

might consider himself pardoned. Joyce having then withdrawn, and the

King, having consented to remain with the Army, it was agreed that he

should be conveyed to Newmarket next day. [Footnote: Lords and Commons

Journals of June 5 and 6; Parl. Hist. III. 591-594; Rushworth, VI. 545-

550, with the previously-mentioned "Impartial Narration" of Joyce. To

this day nothing more is positively known of the real origin of the

scheme of the King's abduction than Joyce allowed himself to reveal. We

have Fairfax's own solemn word "as in the presence of God" that he was

utterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the same

Letter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of the

Army were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attribute

the act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meeting

at Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others lay

stress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London

"was the day of Joyce's appearance at Holmby. The Presbyterian Major

Huntingdon, Cromwell's own Major, afterwards distinctly declared, Aug.

1648, that Joyce had his instructions from Cromwell, and that Joyce

himself averred this to excuse himself from Fairfax's displeasure (Parl.

Hist. III. 967-8). I suspect that, whatever Cromwell and Ireton may have

privately sanctioned, the thing was managed among the Agitators; and it

does not seem impossible that the original design was to seize Graves at

Holmby, quash his supposed plotting there with Lord Dunfermline, and take

possession of the King for the Army without removing him. As to the

abduction, Joyce may have been left a discretion.]

Before we pass on, with the King, into the third stage of his captivity,

we have to report briefly the progress that had been made, during his

stay at Holmby, in one or two matters of public concern, not directly

involved in the feud between the Parliament and the Army.

In April 1647, there had been a vigorous resumption of the Church-

question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee on

obstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There was

great sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships and

classes; returns from counties were deficient; even in London the

Provincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions various

orders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The most

important of these was one for the immediate meeting of the FIRST

PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON. It met in the Convocation House

of St. Paul's, on Monday, May 3, 1647, and consisted of 108

representatives of the London classes or Presbyteries, in the proportion

of three ministers and six lay-elders from each. Dr. Gouge, of

Blackfriars, was chosen Prolocutor or Moderator of this first Synod, and

the term of the Moderatorship and of the Synod itself was to be for half

a year, or till November 1647; after which the Second Synod, similarly

elected, was to meet, with a new Moderator; and so on, every six months,

Synod after Synod, in Presbyterian London for ever. Of the First Synod,

under Dr. Gouge, we need only say that they arranged to meet twice a

week, and that, with the leave of the Parliament, they transferred their

meeting-place from St. Paul's to Sion College. The discussions there may

have been a little crippled by the fact that the new Presbyterian Church

of England was not yet provided with an authorized _Confession of

Faith_. The text of such a document, as prepared by the Westminster

Assembly, had been before the two Houses since Dec. 1646 (_antè_, p.

512); the Lords on the 16th of February had urged the Commons in almost

reproachful terms to quicken their pace in that business; the Commons on

the 22nd of April had at length roused themselves so far as to order the

Westminster Assembly to send in the Scriptural proofs which they had been

preparing according to a previous order; but, though on the 29th of April

these proofs were actually received and the Assembly thanked, it was not

till the 19th of May that the Commons did begin, Math printed copies of

the Confession before them, to examine the work, paragraph by paragraph.

On that day and May 28 they considered and passed, without division, and

apparently without much debate, the three first chapters of the

Confession--viz.: Chap. I. _Of the Holy Scriptures_ (ten paragraphs);

Chap. II. _Of God and the Holy Trinity_ (three paragraphs); Chap. III.

_Of God's Eternal Decrees_. The next chapter, entitled _Of Creation_, was

to be proceeded with punctually on Wednesday next, June 2; but, when that

day came, Fairfax's orders for the Army Rendezvous were out, Joyce was

prowling about Holmby, and the "Creation" had to be postponed. [Footnote:

Commons and Lords Journals of the days given (also a curious entry in

Commons Journals of April 27); Rushworth, VI. 476; Neal, III. 356-358.]

A matter on which the Parliament had been intent for some time was the

purgation and regulation of the University of Oxford. If Parliamentary

purgation had been found necessary for Cambridge three years before

(_antè_, pp. 92-96), how much more was this process needed in

Oxford, always the more Prelatic University of the two, and recently, as

the King's head-quarters through the Civil War, more deep-dyed in Prelacy

than ever! Where but in Oxford, amid courtiers and cavaliers, had ex-

bishops, Anglican doctors, and other dangerous persons, found house-room

for the last few years? Whence but from the colleges at Oxford had come

all the Prelatic sermons, pamphlets, and squibs against the Parliament,

the Covenant, and Presbytery, including the official Royalist newspaper,

the _Mercurius Aulicus_, edited by Mr. John Birkenhead and a society

of his brother-wits? Accordingly, since the surrender of Oxford in June

1646, punishment for the University had been in preparation. For various

reasons, however, it had been administered first in a didactic form.

Preachers of the right Presbyterian type had been sent down to Oxford by

authority in Aug. 1646; and these had been followed by such a rush of

volunteer zealots of all varieties that the loyal Oxford historian,

Anthony Wood, shuddered to his life's end at the recollection. "Hell was

broke loose," he says, "upon the poor remnant" of the scholars, so that

most of them "did either leave the University or abscond in their

respective houses till they could know their doom." That doom came at

length in the form of an Ordinance of the two Houses for the Visitation

of the University (May 1, 1647). It empowered twenty-four persons, not

members of Parliament, among whom were Sir Nathaniel Brent, William

Prynne, and thirteen other lawyers, the rest being divines, to visit

Oxford, inquire into abuses and delinquencies, impose the Covenant on

Heads of Houses, Fellows, &c., and report the results to a standing

Committee of both Houses, consisting of twenty-six Peers and fifty-two of

the Commons. Under this Ordinance the Visitors issued a citation to the

Heads of Houses and others to meet them in the Convocation House at

Oxford on the 4th of June. That was the day of the Army Rendezvous and of

the King's abduction; beyond which point we do not go at present. Suffice

it to say that there was to be a most strenuous resistance by the

Oxonians, headed by their Vice-Chancellor Dr. Fell. [Footnote: Wool's

Fasti Oxon. II 100-1 and 106-7; Lords Journals, May 1; Neal, III. 395

_et seq._]

THIRD STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ARMY, JUNE-NOV. 1647.

Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: their

Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarms

and Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament

mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the two

Speakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of the

Army upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled,

Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of the

King by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--The

Army's _Heads of Proposals,_ and Comparison of the same with the

_Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--King at Hampton Court, still

demurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals,_ but playing them off

publicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney--Cromwell's

Motion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re-application to

the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise: Intrigues at

Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: King

immoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion:

New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines among

the Soldiers: _Agreement of the People--_ Cromwell breaks utterly with

the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordat

between the Army and Parliament: The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight,

The effects of Joyce's abduction of the King from Holmby may be summed up

by saying that for the next five months the Army and the Independents

were in the ascendant, and the Presbyterians depressed. There were to be

vibrations of the balance, however, even during this period.

What the Presbyterians dreaded was an immediate march of the Army upon

London, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resort

to such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for a

time, kept moving their head-quarters from spot to spot in the counties

north and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding,

and paying but slight respect to the injunctions of the Parliament not to

bring the Army within a distance of forty miles. On the 10th of June

there was a Rendezvous 21,000 strong at Triplow Heath, near Royston;

thence, on the 12th, they came to St. Alban's, only twenty miles from

London, spreading such alarm in the City by this movement that guards

were posted, shops shut, &c.; and they remained at St. Alban's till the

24th, when they withdrew to Berkhampstead. Through this fortnight

negotiations had been going on between the Army-leaders and Parliamentary

Commissioners who had been sent down expressly; letters had also passed

between the Army-leaders and the City; and certain general

"Representations" and "Remonstrances" had been sent forth by the Army,

penned by Ireton and Lambert, but signed by Rushworth in the name of

Fairfax and the whole Council of War. In these it was distinctly repeated

that the Army had no desire to overturn or oppose Presbyterian Church-

government as it had been established, and only claimed Liberty of

Conscience under that government; but there were also clear expressions

of the opinion that a dissolution of the existing Parliament and the

election of a new one on a more popular system ought to be in

contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one

thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might

be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests,

and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not

only must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but

also those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who had

occasioned all the recent troubles! That there might be no mistake,

eleven such members of the House of Commons were named--to wit, Holles,

Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller,

John Glynn, Esq., Anthony Nichols, Esq. (original members), and Sir John

Maynard, Major-general Massey, Colonel Walter Long, and Colonel Edward

Harley (Recruiters). This Army denunciation of eleven chiefs of the

Commons, dated from St. Alban's June 14, had greatly perplexed the House;

but in the course of their debates on it they recovered spirit, and in a

vote of June 25 they stood out for Parliamentary privilege. As there had

been votes of the two Houses about bringing the King to Richmond for a

treaty, and other more secret signs of Presbyterian activity, the Army

then again applied the screw. They advanced to Uxbridge, some of the

regiments showing themselves even closer to the City (June 26). This had

the intended effect. The eleven consented to withdraw from their places

in the Commons, for a time at least (June 26); votes favourable to the

Army were passed by both Houses (June 26-29); and, though these were

mingled with others not quite so satisfactory, the Army had no pretext

for a severer pressure. They withdrew, therefore, to Wycombe in Bucks.

Here, at a Council of War (July 1), a Commission of ten officers

(Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Lambert, Rainsborough, Sir Hardress Waller,

Rich, Robert Hammond, Desborough, and Harrison) was appointed to treat

farther with new Commissioners of the Parliament (the Earl of Nottingham,

Lord Wharton, Vane, Skippon, &c.). Then surely all seemed in a fair way.

[Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 591-662; Rushworth, VI. 545-597; Godwin, II.

323-354; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 226-232.]

While Parliament, however, was thus yielding to the Army, the dense

Presbyterianism of the City and the district round was more reckless and

indignant. Whatever Parliament might do, the great city of London would

be true to its colours! Accordingly, in addition to various Petitions

already presented to the two Houses from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and

Common Council, all of an anti-Army character, a new one in the same

sense, but purporting to be simply "for payment of the soldiery and a

speedy settlement of the Nation," was presented July 2. A public and

responsible body like the Common Council could express itself only in

such general terms; but the Presbyterian "young men and apprentices of

the City," the number of whom was legion, and whose ranks and

combinations could easily be put in motion by the higher powers, were

able to speak out boldly. On the 14th of July a Petition, said to be

signed by 10,000 such, was presented to both Houses, praying for strict

observance of the Covenant, the defence of his Majesty's person and just

power and greatness, the disbandment of the Army, the thorough settlement

of Presbyterian Government, the suppression of Conventicles, and defiance

to the crotchet of Toleration. This audacious document having been

received even with politeness by the Lords, and only with cautious

reserve by the Commons, the City was stirred through all its Presbyterian

depths, made no doubt it could control Parliament, and grew more and more

violent to that end. Crowds came daily to Palace Yard and Westminster

Hall, signifying their anger at the seclusion of the Presbyterian Eleven,

and at all the other concessions made to the Army and the Independents.

What roused the City most, however, was the acquiescence of Parliament in

a demand of the Army that the Militia of London should be restored to the

state in which it had been before the 27th of April last. On that day the

Common Council, in whose trust the business was, had placed the direction

of the Militia in a Committee wholly Presbyterian, excluding Alderman

Pennington and other known Independents; and what was desired by the Army

was that Parliament, resuming the power, should bring back the

Independents into the Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had no

sooner passed the two Houses,--carried in the Commons by a majority of 77

to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23),

--than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had been

formed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called "A

Solemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the Trained

Bands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of London

and Westminster, Sea-Commanders, Seamen, and Watermen, &c. &c.," all

pledged by oath to an upholding of the Covenant and the furthering of a

Personal Treaty between King and Parliament, without interference from

the Army. A copy of this Engagement, said by Presbyterian authorities to

have been signed by nearly 100,000 hands, with an accompanying Petition

in the same sense, which had been addressed by the Engagers to the Lord

Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, was brought before both Houses on

the 24th of July. They declared it insolent and dangerous, and adjudged

all who should persevere in it guilty of high treason. That day was

Saturday, and the next day's Sabbath stood between the Houses and the

wrath they were provoking. But on Monday the 26th they were called to a

mighty reckoning. A Petition came in upon them from the Lord Mayor,

Aldermen, and Common Council, praying for a revocation of the Militia

Ordinance of the 23rd, and enclosing Petitions to the same effect which

the Common Council had received from "divers well-affected Citizens" and

from the "Young Men, Citizens and others, Apprentices." That was not all.

Another Petition came in, from "the Citizens, Young Men, and Apprentices"

themselves, complaining of the "pretended Declaration" of the 24th

against their Engagement, and of the seclusion of the Eleven. Even that

was not all. While the Petitions were under consideration, the Young Men,

Citizens, and Apprentices, with Seamen, Watermen, Trained-Bands, and

others, their fellow-Engagers, were round the Houses in thousands in

Palace Yard, and swarming in the lobbies, and throwing stones in upon the

Lords through the windows, and kicking at the doors of the Commons, and

bursting in with their hats on, all to enforce their demands. The riot

lasted eight hours. Speaker Lenthall, trying to quit the House, was

forced back, and was glad to end the uproar by putting such questions to

the vote as the intruders dictated. The unpopular Ordinance of the 23rd

and the Declaration of the 24th having thus been revoked under mob-

compulsion, the Houses were allowed to adjourn. They met next day,

Tuesday the 27th, but only to adjourn farther to Friday the 30th.

[Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 664-723; Lords and Commons Journals;

Whitlocke, II. 182-185.]

When the Houses did re-assemble on that day, their appearance was most

woe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to be

found, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eight

Lords in the one House; and the benches in the other were unusually thin.

Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a new

Speaker--the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the Commons

Henry Pelham, Esq., M.P. for Grantham, in permanence; each took notice of

its absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attendance--the Commons

also restoring the Eleven, Ly special enumeration, to their places; and

each went on for six or seven days, transacting business or trying to

transact it. A good deal of the business related to military preparations

to make good the position the City had taken. Sir William Waller and

General Massey, two of the Eleven, were added to a Committee for

consultation with the City Committee of the Militia; this City Committee

was empowered to choose a commander-in-chief and other commanders of the

London forces; and, when the Committee named Massey for the command-in-

chief, and Waller for the command of the Horse, the Houses gave their

cordial assent. In short, the two Houses, as they met during this

extraordinary week from July 30 to Aug. 5, consisted mainly of a forlorn

residue of the most fanatical Presbyterians in each, regarding the riots

of the 26th as a popular interposition for right principles, and

anxiously considering whether, with such a zealous London round them, and

with Massey, Waller, Poyntz, and perhaps Browne, for their generals, they

might not be able to face and rout the Army of Fairfax. There may,

however, have been some who remained with the residuary Houses on lazier

or more subtle principles. The restored Eleven, with Sir Robert Pye, Sir

Robert Harley, and a few other typical Presbyterians, certainly led the

business of the Commons in this extraordinary week; but among those that

remained in that House how are we to account for Selden? [Footnote: Lords

and Common Journals, July 30-Aug. 5, 1647.]

The City-tumults, intended as such a brave stroke for Presbytery, had

been, in fact, a suicidal blunder. Manchester and Lenthall, the missing

Speakers, though themselves Presbyterians, had withdrawn in disgust from

the dictation of a London mob of mixed Presbyterian young men and

Royalist intriguers, and had been joined by about fourteen Peers, some of

them also eminently Presbyterian, and a hundred Commoners, mostly

Independents. Deliberating what was to be done, these seceders had

resolved to place themselves under the protection of Fairfax, make common

cause with him and the Army, and act as a kind of Parliamentary Council

to him until they could resume their places in a Parliament free from

mob-law. Meanwhile Fairfax, acting for himself, was on the march towards

London. On the day of the tumults in London his headquarters had been as

far off as Bedford; but, starting thence on the 30th of July, he had

reached Colnbrook on Sunday Aug. 1. Next day he came on to Hounslow; and

here it was that, at an imposing Review of his Army, horse, foot, and

artillery, over 20,000 strong, the seceding Peers and Commoners came in,

and were received by the soldiers with acclamations, and cries of

"_Lords and Commons, and a Free Parliament_!" Only ten miles now

intervened between the Army and the Common Council of the City of London

consulting with their Militia commanders at Guildhall, and somewhat less

than that distance between the Army and the presumptuous fragment of the

two Houses at Westminster. Both these bodies, but especially the

citizens, had begun to come to their senses. The tramp, tramp, of

Fairfax's approaching Army had cooled their courage. At Guildhall,

indeed, as Whitlocke tells us, whenever a scout brought in the good news

that the Army had halted, the people would still cry "_One and all_;" but

the cry would be changed into "_Treat, Treat_" a moment afterwards, when

they heard that the march had been resumed. At Hounslow, therefore,

Fairfax received the most submissive messages and deputations, with

entreaties to spare the City. His reply, in effect, was that the City

need fear no unnecessary harshness from the Army, but that the late

"prodigious violence" had brought things into such a crisis that the Army

must and would set them right. Nothing more was to be said: the rest was

action. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 4, a brigade of the Army under

Rainsborough, which had been despatched across the Thames to approach

London on the south side, was in peaceable possession of the borough of

Southwark, and had two cannon planted against the fort on London Bridge

till the citizens thought good to yield it up. That day and the next

other defences on the Thames, eastwards and westwards, were seized or

surrendered. On Friday the 6th, Fairfax with his main Army, all with

laurel-leaves in their hats, and conducting the Lords and Commoners in

their coaches, marched in from Hammersmith by Kensington to Hyde Park,

where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen joined them, and so to Charing Cross,

where the Common Council made their obeisances, and thence to Palace

Yard, Westminster. There the two Speakers were ceremoniously reinstated,

the Houses properly reconstituted, and Fairfax and the Army thanked.

Finally, on Saturday the 7th, the grand affair was wound up by another

deliberate march of the Army through the main streets of the City itself,

all the more impressive to the beholders from the perfect order kept, and

the abstinence from every act, word, or gesture, that could give offence.

The Tower was made over to Fairfax on the 9th; and his head-quarters for

some time continued to be in London or its immediate neighbourhood.

[Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 723-756; Whitlocke, II, 187-193; Godwin, II.

371-387.]

By the Army's march through the City events were brought back so far into

the channel of regular Parliamentary debate, but with Independency

naturally more powerful than ever. All acts done by the two Houses during

the week's Interregnum of riot were voted null; and there were measures

of retaliation against those who had been most prominent in that

Interregnum. Six of the culpable Eleven--viz. Holles, Stapleton, Sir

William Waller, Clotworthy, Lewis, and Long--having fled abroad together,

had been chased at sea and overtaken, but let escape; and Stapleton had

died at Calais immediately after his landing. Massey had gone to Holland,

with Poyntz; but Glynn and Maynard, remaining behind, were expelled the

House, impeached, and sent to the Tower (Sept. 7). Seven out of the nine

Peers who had formed the Lords' House through the wrong-headed week were

similarly impeached and committed--viz. the Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln,

and Middlesex, and Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The

Lord Mayor and four Aldermen were disabled, impeached, and imprisoned

(Sept. 24); several officers of the City Trained Bands were called to

account; and one result of inquiries respecting culprits of a lower grade

was an order by the Commons (Sept. 28 and Oct. 1) for the arrest and

indictment for high treason of twelve persons, most of them young men and

apprentices, ascertained to have been ringleaders in the dreadful outrage

on the two Houses on the 26th of July. As there was a "John Milton,

junior" among these young rioters, one would like to have known whether

they were found and how they fared. In truth, however, nothing very

terrible was intended by such indictments and arrests. As the Army's

treatment of the conquered City had been studiously magnanimous, so what

was chiefly desired by the leaders now in power was that, by the removal

from public sight of persons like the Seven in the one House, the Eleven

in the other, and their City abettors, there might be a Parliament and

Corporation reasonably in sympathy with the Army. As respected the

Parliament, this object had been attained. From the reinstatement of the

two Houses by Fairfax, Aug. 6, on through the rest of that month and the

months of September and October, what we see at Westminster is a small

Upper House of from half-a-dozen to a dozen Peers, most of them

moderately Presbyterian, but several of them avowed Independents, co-

operating with a Commons' House from which the Presbyterians had

withdrawn in large numbers, so that the average voting-attendance ranged

from 90 to 190, and the divisions were mainly on new questions arising

among the Independents themselves. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals

of dates given, and generally from Aug. 6 to the beginning of November.--

The Peers who formed the Lords' House through this period were the Earl

of Manchester (Speaker), the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke (whose

error in remaining in the House through the week of intimidation had been

condoned), Kent, Salisbury, Mulgrave, Nottingham, and Denbigh, Viscount

Saye and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Grey of Wark, Howard of Escrick, and

Delawarr, with occasionally Lords Montague, North, and Herbert of

Cherbury. In the Commons I find one division (Sept. 25) when only 41

voted, and another (Nov. 3) when the number rose to 264. At a call of the

House, Oct. 9, note was taken of about 240 absentees; and of these 59,

whose excuses were not considered sufficient, were fined 20_l._ each. A

good few of these were Independents.]

It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of hammering out, if

possible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army and

yet be accepted by the King.

It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into the

keeping of the Army. He was still a captive, but his captivity was little

more than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany the

Army's movements, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowed

to vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting-

lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Childersley (June 7), he had

made visits in his coach or on horseback to various noblemen's houses

near; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Royston; thence

(June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield; thence (July 1)

to Windsor; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Beading;

thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford's

at Woburn; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl of

Devonshire; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved,

till, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at his

palace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to him

had been permitted, not only of Parliamentarian noblemen and gentlemen,

and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of noted

Royalists and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Richmond. His three

young children--the Duke of York, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of

Gloucester--had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian the

Earl of Northumberland, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham,

to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what was

the most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted,

since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains,

Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him.

These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by the

personal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton,

acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by their

mediation with the Parliament. There had been grumblings in the Houses,

indeed, at the too great indulgence shown to his Majesty in his choice of

chaplains and other company. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp.

37-49; Godwin, II. 349-361.]

What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances of

his Majesty is that, amid all the concourse of people round him, it was

Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army chiefs, that could now come

closest to him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed,

frequently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to face,

considering within themselves whether it would be possible after all to

come to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him they

were most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, it

seems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissing

the royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, and

would be "sometimes very pleasant in his discourse with them." What was

to come of it all? [Footnote: Herbert, 36, 37; Clar. 614.]

The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Since

he had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, and

putting into exact expression, certain _Heads of Proposals_, to be

submitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better in

its own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those

_Nineteen Propositions_ of July 1646 which had hitherto been the

vexed subject of debate. What these _Heads of Proposals_ were, or

came to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction of

them put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on its

march upon refractory London. The document is signed by Rushworth, "by

the appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council of

War," but the penning is Ireton's, and probably much of the matter too.

It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlike

precision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numerically

subdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the great

questions in dispute between the nation and the King. Biennial

Parliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, each to sit

for not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons House

in each to have increased powers and to be elected by constituencies so

reformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population and

property all over England: this is the substance of the first Head.

Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voice

in subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, the

exclusion from places of public trust for the next five years of persons

who had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliament

might see fit to make individual exceptions: such is the provision under

the second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland,

and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI.-XIII. treat of the

Religious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing about

Episcopacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of "all

coercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all other

ecclesiastical officers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties upon

any," and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of Common

Prayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worship

apart from the regular Church; and they expressly stipulate for non-

enforcement of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole,

neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor would

indicate a preference for Presbytery or Episcopacy in the rule of such a

Church, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty of

Religious Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may be

judged from the fact that they do not haggle on even the Roman Catholic

exception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discover

Papists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturbing the State, other

means than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end.

Article XIV. proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and their

issue, to full "safety, honour, and freedom," when the preceding Articles

shall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power except

as therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear therefore

supernumerary. One refers to Compositions by Delinquents, and urges a

generous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people for

past faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act of

Oblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Royalists to their

full civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of good

desert, without composition, with only the exception provided in the

second Article.

These _Heads of Proposals_ of the Army strike one as not only

inspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the

_Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament, but really also as

magnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generous

that we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs were

really prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, and

Commons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by the

Article about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession of

Biennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is that

the _Heads of Proposals_ were tendered for the English kingdom

alone, "leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to stand

as in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both kingdoms, until that

kingdom shall agree to any alteration." But farther, even as respected

England, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid the

establishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction,

and the majority seemed so determined in it, that the Army neither could

nor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it persevered

in by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discipline, or

worship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsory

either on the King or on any of his subjects. [Footnote: See the _Heads

of Proposals_ complete in Parl. Hist. III. 738-745, and Rushworth,

VII. 731-736 (the paging in this vol. beginning p. 731). Sufficient

attention has not been paid by historians, except perhaps Godwin (II.

373-378), to this great document. Even Godwin resorts to the

extraordinary hypothesis the Proposals were not in good faith, but only a

Machiavellian device of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching Charles from

the Presbyterians and bringing him over to the Army, who could then laugh

at him and the Proposals too. Godwin remarks in particular that, as

Ireton, who penned the Proposals, was "the most inflexible Republican

that ever existed," his self-repression in drawing up such a document,

accepting restored Royalty, and casting away the chance of a Republic,

must have been colossal. In Royalist historians of the seventeenth

century this kind of reasoning was natural, but one is surprised to find

it affecting a mind so able and candid as Godwin's. There is no reason to

doubt that, when the _Heads of Proposals_ were settled, they expressed

the real and deliberate conclusions of the Army chiefs as to those terms

the honest acceptance of which by Charles would satisfy them. Nay, the

publication of them was a service to Charles, by instructing the nation

generally on a better means of dealing with him than the Nineteen

Propositions. See Denzil Holles's amazed opinion of them as "a new

platform of government, an Utopia of their own." (Memoirs, p. 176 _et

seq._). As for Ireton's suppression of his Republicanism, Ireton's

Republicanism, like other people's, probably _grew_.]

The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subject

of conversations between Charles and the Army-chiefs, and even of a

formal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he was

at Woburn. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling the

deputation he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army could

not do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not his

support, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been that

Charles was at that moment building great hopes on the recent

demonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty with

him in the Presbyterian interest, and was even aware of the attempted

revolution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults.

It says much for the forbearance of the Army-leaders that they did not

withdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. On

the contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have the

option of agreeing with them; they modified them in some points to suit

him; and they were willing that the whole world should know what they

were. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, at

Colnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to the

Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army; and it was with that Paper

carried before it that the Army continued its march into London.

Accordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses

(Aug. 6), the Army's _Heads of Proposals_ were officially tabled in

both (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might,

if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead of

the _Nineteen Propositions_. [Footnote: Major Huntingdon's Paper

accusing Cromwell, Parl. Hist. III. 970; Sir John Berkley's _Memoirs of

Negotiations_ (1699), reprinted in Harleian' Miscellany, IX 466-488;

Godwin (quoting Bamfield), II. 378-380; Parl. Hist. III. 737; Commons

Journals, Aug. 6. There is evidence that, between the submission of the

Proposals to the King at Woburn on or about July 24 and their complete

redaction for publication Aug. 1; additions had been made to accommodate

the King. Such additions may have been the two supernumerary Articles

providing for lenity to compounders and a general Act of Oblivion.]

September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thus

arising. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug.

24, and where he was surrounded by such state and luxury that it seemed

as if the old days of Royalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplains

about him, and favourite household servants brought together again from

different parts of England; not only could he ride over when he liked to

see his children at the Earl of Northumberland's seat of Sion House; but,

as if an amnesty had already been passed, Royalists of the most marked

antecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, were

permitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time,

so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. Such were (in addition to

the Duke of Richmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton

and Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge and

Mr. Ashburnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now at

last, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long duty

in Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse kept

guard at Hampton Court, "captivity" was hardly now a word to be applied

to Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpost

at Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th of

August, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, the

Army's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to be

at Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Court

to Westminster is twelve miles, and Putney lies exactly half way between;

and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be represented

to the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places.

At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy which

could command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians and

Independents of various shades, with Army officers among them; at Putney

midway was the Army, containing its military Parliament, of which the

generals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-officers,

with the regimental agitators, were the Commons; and at Hampton Court, in

constant communication with both powers, and entertaining proposals from

both, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distance

must not be forgotten. Her emissaries and representatives were on the

scene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from Hampton

Court to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney.

[Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 789 _et seq._; Herbert, 47-51.]

A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition of

affairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Rising in

London had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of that

attempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written from

Edinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. The

impression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among the

London Presbyterians, and stupid mismanagement of a splendid opportunity.

Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their

"brave Engagement," had Massey and Waller shown "any kind of masculous

activity," and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen of

the London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical moment

from the body of their brethren, and put forth a childish Petition

disavowing all sympathy with the tumults, what a different ending there

might have been! As it was, "a company of silly rascals" (Fairfax's Army

to wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City,

and by them of all England." So wrote Baillie privately, and the public

organs of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There had

been Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to

the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general

state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous

insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the

expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the

Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on

Scotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? The

England with which Scotland had consented to league herself by the

Covenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to be

coming into fashion--an England in which constituted authority seemed to

be at an end, and an Army ruled all! And what an Army! An Army of

Sectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience which

would lead to a "Babylonish confusion," and impregnated also (as could be

proved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actually

anti-monarchical and revolutionary! So, in successive letters, from Aug.

13 onwards, the Scottish Government remonstrated from Edinburgh,

intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which they

had a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers of

Fairfax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to the

Earl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regular

annual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4; and in a long

document put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of "A Declaration

and Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England," the anarchy of

England on the religious question is largely bewailed. "Nevertheless,"

they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made by

England to conformity with Scotland in one and the same Presbyterian

Church-rule, "we are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangers

into which this common cause of Religion is now brought by the growing

and spreading of most dangerous errors in England, to the obstructing and

hindering of the begun Reformation: as namely (besides many others)

Socinianism, Arminianism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism,

Erastianism, Independency, and that which is called, by abuse of the

word, Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal,

schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the truth, hindering

reformation, and seducing others; whereunto we add those Nullifidians, or

men of no religion, commonly called Seekers." [Footnote: Baillie, III. 9-

22; Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1647; Rushworth, VII. 768-771;

and correspondence of Scottish Commissioners in Lords Journals of Aug.

and Sept. 1647. For the escapade of Stephen Marshall and his friends,

referred to by Baillie, see Neal, III. 375-6. While these few of the city

ministers disavowed the tumults, the Westminster Divines as a body merely

mediated in a neutral style to avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, Aug.

2).]

Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it had

reinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would have

made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But

with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the

key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London,

the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have done

so would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots,

and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on the

Nineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy.

Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with but

one or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered to

Charles on the part of the English Parliament and the Scottish

Commissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at the

utmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him," he said to the Earl of

Pembroke, who presented them; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, dated

Hampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all his

former objections to those now familiar Propositions, and that, having

seen certain "Proposals of the Army," to which "he conceived his two

Houses not to be strangers," he was of opinion that _they_ would be

"a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace." In other words, though Charles

had rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now played

them against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliament

not to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded as

obsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better terms

which had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently they

wanted to keep out of sight. This for England; and, for what concerned

Scotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the Scottish

Commissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositions

which were of interest to the Scottish nation. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII.

796, 802-3, and 810-11; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14.]

Parliament was in a dilemma. Was Charles to be taken at his word? Were

the Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard, and the Army Proposals

publicly brought forward instead? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration,

if not Presbyterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament,

and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful with

many, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelve

days of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in the

Commons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept.

21: "_Resolved_, That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept., given at

Hampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the Propositions: "such

is the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus:" The

question being put, That the House be forthwith resolved into a Grand

Committee, to take into consideration the whole matter concerning the

King, according to the former order, the House was divided. The _Yeas_

went forth: (Lieut.-General Cromwell, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers

for the _Yea_) with the _Yea_ 84; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel

Rainsborough, tellers for the _No_) with the _No_ 34; so that the

question passed with the affirmative." On the following day, accordingly,

we find "The question was propounded, That the House will once again make

application to the King for those things which the Houses shall judge

necessary for the welfare and safety of the kingdom; and, the question

being put, Whether this question shall be now put, the House was divided:

(Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the _Yea_)

with the _Yea_ 70; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Marten, tellers for the

_No_) with the _No_ 23: so that the question passed with the

affirmative." As far as one can construe what lies under these entries,

the state of the case was this:--By the King's new rejection of the

Nineteen Propositions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehand

and much approving [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. 478. "We

[Berkley, Ashburnham, &c.] gave our friends in the Army a sight of this

[the King's] Answer the day before it was sent, with which they seemed

infinitely satisfied."]), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless they

would vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of moving

then lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican of

these, including Colonel Rainsborough and Henry Marten, were for not

using the power, either because they desired to break with Charles

entirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament together

to the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful to

the Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take the

responsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be a

temporizing method? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease thinking

of the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they were

bound in all its parts and items, and to go over the whole business

afresh, selecting the most essential questions of the Nineteen

Propositions and expressing present conclusions on these in new

Propositions to be offered to the King? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, and

others of the Independent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a good

few of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma,

Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majority

of Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day.

[Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.]

The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a new

application to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been duly

informed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions,

and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with each

other. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had been

agreed to; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charles

were to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. In

one matter, however, the Commons _had_ proposed a change. On the

13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intended

Propositions which concerned Church-government, and the resolution before

the House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Acts

for settling the Presbyterian Government, Cromwell had forced the House

to three divisions. First he tried to limit the term of such settlement

to three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38; then

he insisted that _some_ limit of time should be mentioned, and won

by 44 to 30; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, and

lost by 33 to 41, Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlement

to which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of the

Parliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and the

following the question of Toleration also came up, and with these

results: Toleration to be granted of separate worship for Nonconformists

of tender consciences, but not for Roman Catholics, nor any toleration of

the use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to the

main principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on the

Lord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God somewhere. This

was all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents even

in October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, could

extract from the reluctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear to

have hesitated about even so much as this; for it was not till the 2nd of

November that the two Houses came to an understanding on the subject, and

even on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional security

in the form of a "Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion."

[Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates named; and Rushworth, VII.

843-4 and 853-4.]

Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period for

the present, we may notice one or two contemporary incidents.----On

Saturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of the

Westminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith_, at the point where

they had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. at Chap. IV. "Of

Creation," (_antè_, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also the

first paragraph of Chap. V., "Of Providence," that day, and resolved to

continue the business next Wednesday and punctually every following

Wednesday till it should be despatched. But Wednesday after Wednesday

came; other business was too pressing; and so the matter hung. This was

the more inconvenient because on the 22nd of October the Assembly

presented to the two Houses their _Larger Catechism_ completed. It

was ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and that

matter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it was

something on the credit side that the SECOND PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN

SYNOD OF LONDON duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr.

Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for English

Presbyterianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two Scottish

Divines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotland

in the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced in

the Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to his

brethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in their

books that the Scottish Commissioners, all or some, had been present to

that point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assembly

was still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over.

[Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of the dates given; and Neal, III.

354 and 358-9.]

There was no greater mystery all this while than the conduct of Cromwell

and Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been in

continual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or by

messages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been kept

up even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approaching the King

on the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while Cromwell was

constantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedings

consequent on his motion. [Footnote: "Sir, I pray excuse my not-

attendance upon you. I feared to miss the House a day, where it's very

necessary for me to be." So wrote Cromwell to Fairfax Oct. 13, the very

day of his three divisions of the House on the duration of Presbytery,

and of the compromise there on Toleration (Carlyle's Cromwell, f. 239).]

What did it all mean? We have little difficulty now in seeing what it

meant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in a

Parliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might be

constrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that of

the Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity to

which he saw himself reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Army

scheme held out, of a restoration of his Royalty, under inevitable

constitutional restrictions, but those less galling in many respects, and

especially in the religious respect, than the restrictions demanded by

Parliament? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell and

Ireton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world at

the time was suspicious and saw much more. What the English Presbyterians

and the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possession

of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament

and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more

leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue

riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces,

the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the

Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton--how could the Brewer

resist such temptations? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or were

mischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and roused

suspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It was

not only that Colonel Rainsborough, who had opposed Cromwell's motion for

re-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out against

his policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, such

as Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chief

officers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. But

among the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisen

outgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, and

impatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole political

question than seemed agreeable to Cromwell. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs

(Harl. Misc.) 476, 478; Holles, 184; Baxter, Book I. p.60; Clar. 620;

Godwin, II. 400 _et seq._ See also Major Huntington's Paper of

Accusations against Cromwell and Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Parl. Hist. III.

966-974). Duly interpreted, it is very instructive.]

At Putney the Army, having little to do, had resolved itself into a great

daily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships and

receiving deputations from the similar but civilian Agitatorships that

had sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiers

of the political school of THE LEVELLERS. Of this school John Lilburne,

still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and ink

there, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. "That the House of

Commons should think of that great Murderer of England (meaning the

King), for by the impartial Law of God there is no exemption of Kings,

Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers;"

"That the Lords are but painted puppets and Dagons, no natural issue of

Laws, but the mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government,

putting the body of the People to pain,"--such were opinions and phrases

collected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Government

as early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotland

for the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the whole

British world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of the

Levellers, as distinct from the more tentative Democracy of many

contemporary minds. The _Army Proposals_ of Aug. 1 were not for a

total subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons,

but only for a great limitation of the Royal Power, a reduction also of

the power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power of

the Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that House

in a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals,

the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed more

visibly through the whole Army. There began to be comments among the

Agitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on his

coquettings with the King. "I have honoured you, and my good thoughts of

you are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened,"

Lilburne had written to Cromwell Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance of

redeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down from

all his "present conceived greatness" before he was three months older.

Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring to

fulfil his threat; and by the end of October there was a wide-spread

mutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its own

printers, had by that time made its designs known in two documents. One,

entitled _The Case of the Army_, was signed by the agents of five

regiments, Cromwell's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18); the other,

entitled _An Agreement of the People_ (Nov. 1), emanated from the

same regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regiments

not to disband until the Army had secured its rights; and among these

rights were the speedy dissolution of the existing Parliament, and the

reconstitution of the Government of England in a single Representative

House, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially.

This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specified

fundamentals which were to be regarded as settled _ab initio_ beyond

disturbance or even reconsideration by any corporate authority whatever.

One of them was absolute freedom to all "in the matter of Religion and

the ways of God's worship"; but this was not to prevent the State from

setting up any "public way of instructing the Nation, so it be not

compulsive." In fact, here was the accurate essence of the _Army

Proposals_ over again, only distilled to a higher strength and more

fiercely flavoured. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, and 859,

860; Godwin, II. 423-428, and 436-450. One of the numerous incredible and

contradictory hypotheses about Cromwell is that it was he who, while in

treaty with the King for a restoration of his Royalty, was all the while,

by his secret grip of the Army-Agitatorships, hounding them on in their

ultra democratic tendencies. The Levelling Principle itself would be a

useful force in his hands, and he could well consent to being abused by

the Agitators while they were really working for his ends!!]

Cromwell's preserved Letters of this period are few, but one of them

contains a reference to the misconstructions to which he was then

subject. "Though, it may be, for the present," he says, "a cloud may lie

over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of

them, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity, and innocency

from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the Public Good."

[Footnote: Letter to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin, dated Sept 14,

1647; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 237-8.] At length, however, he had to let it

be seen that he had broken off from Charles utterly. Who does not know

the picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography?

Cromwell and Ireton says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern,

Holborn, disguised as common troopers and calling for cans of beer, till

the sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man with

the saddle had arrived; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, got

possession of the saddle he carried, and, ripping up the skirt of it,

found the King's letter to the Queen in which he quite agreed with her

opinion of the two Army-villains he was then obliged to cajole, and

assured her they should have their deserts at last. [Footnote: The story

professes to have come from Cromwell's own lips in conversation in 1649

with Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery; but its

mythical character is obvious.].

It needed no such interception of a letter in the yard of a tavern to

convince Cromwell at last that Charles could not be trusted even in a

negotiation for his own benefit. All the while that he had been treating

with Cromwell and Ireton, in the sense of the Army Proposals, with a

Religious Toleration included, he had been treating with the Scots, both

by messages through the Earl of Lauderdale and by letters in his own hand

to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh, in a sense directly the opposite:

_i.e._ on the terms of a paction with the Scots for compulsory

Presbytery and suppression of the Sects in England, in return for the

armed assistance of the Scottish nation towards a restoration of his

kingship in all other respects. Late in October, Lanark and Loudoun had

come from Scotland to help Lauderdale in finishing this negotiation; and

the three Lords together, in conferences at Hampton Court, had assured

Charles that, "if he would give satisfaction in the point of Religion, he

was master of Scotland on what terms as to other things he would demand."

He had not quite given them all the satisfaction they wanted; but the

three Lords still remained loyally about him, with plans for his escape

to Berwick. Nothing of all this appeared, of course, in the public

communications of the Scottish Commissioners with the English Parliament.

The purport, however, had been entrusted to Ormond, Capel, and others of

the Royalists who were chief in the King's counsels; and Cromwell had his

means of guessing. [Footnote: For the interesting and instructive

correspondence of Charles with Lanark from June 1647 onwards, with

details of the negotiations after Lanark and Loudoun joined Lauderdale at

Hampton Court, see Burnet's Hamiltons, 401-412. See also Clar. 622-3;

Rushworth, VII, 850; and Lords Journals, Nov. 6.]

The mutinous disposition of so many Regiments, and its manifestation in

such tracts as _The Case of the Army_ and the _Agreement of the

People_, had greatly alarmed Parliament. The investigation of the

matter had been substantially left, however, in the hands of Fairfax and

the Council of War at Putney. That Council, with Fairfax and Cromwell

present in it, had appointed a special Committee of Inquiry, consisting

of twenty officers with Ireton at their head; and in a series of meetings

of this Committee and of the collective Council itself, extending from

Oct. 22 to Nov. 8, things were brought to a kind of adjustment. There was

to be a general Rendezvous of the Army for ending of disorder; and

meanwhile certain new Proposals were sketched out, to be presented to

Parliament as a summary of what might now be considered the opinions of

the chief representatives of the Army, reviewing their former Proposals

of Aug. 1 in the light of all that had since occurred. So far as the

Proposals _were_ sketched out, one observes in them a curious

combination of compromises. There is decidedly greater severity in them

to the King than in the original Army Proposals. On the other hand, there

is nothing about the abolition of Kingship or of the House of Lords, no

concession on these points to the ultra-democratic tendency of the

Levellers. The question of King or No King had been raised, it is said,

in the Council meetings by the Agitators, but had been quashed by the

chief officers. Again, rather strangely, the question of Liberty of

Conscience and the terms of the establishment of Presbytery is entirely

waived, unless we regard the provision that Delinquents should be obliged

to take the Covenant before being admitted to compound as a sign that on

this question too there was a recession from former liberality. On the

whole, the new Army Proposals look like a jumble of incongruities, and

rather disappoint one after the clear political comprehensiveness of the

original Proposals which Ireton had drafted, or even the rude

simplification of the same put forth by the democratic Agitators. The

reason probably was that the Army-chiefs desired at the moment to patch

up a concordat, suppressing all unnecessary appearance of difference

between the Parliament and the Army, and bringing both as amicably as

possible into the one direct track of the new set of Parliamentary

Propositions to the King. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 849-866; Godwin, II,

450-454.]

On the 10th of November, all the Propositions being ready, a very

emphatic Preamble to them was agreed upon by the two Houses. It was

intended that they should be presented to the King formally at Hampton

Court within the next few days. Before that could be done, however, his

Majesty had vanished.

The vicinity of Putney, with exasperated Levellers and Agitators all

about, had become really unsafe for Charles; and, after some meditation

and hesitation, he had himself arranged a plan of escape. It was put in

execution on Thursday the 11th of November. On the evening of that day

his Majesty, accompanied by Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. William Legge, and Sir

John Berkley, contrived to slip out of Hampton Court Palace, by the back

garden, unobserved. It was supper-time before he was missed by Whalley

and the guard; the night was excessively dark and stormy; and, though it

was ascertained that he and his companions had mounted horses near the

Palace, the route they had taken could not be guessed. For the next two

or three days, therefore, London was all anxiety. Meanwhile the

fugitives, guided by the King himself through the New Forest, had reached

the south coast, near Southampton, and in sight of the Isle of Wight. The

King's reasons for taking this direction appear to have been the vaguest;

nor is it certainly known that the Isle of Wight had been in his mind

when he left Hampton Court. No ship, however, having been provided for a

more distant voyage, and the King being in any case irresolute about yet

leaving England altogether, the island did now, if not before, occur to

him as suitable for his purpose. One inducement may have been that the

Governor, young Colonel Robert Hammond, was a person whom the King had

reason to believe as well disposed to him as any Parliamentarian officer.

Hammond, indeed, was the nephew of the King's favourite chaplain, Dr.

Henry Hammond; and, though he was one of Cromwell's admiring disciples,

and had married a daughter of Hampden, his uncle's reasonings, or other

influences, had begun of late to weaken his ardour. It had been with

undisguised pleasure that, but a week or two before, he had left his post

in the Army and gone to this quiet and distant governorship, where he

might live in retirement and without active duty. What, then, was his

horror when, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 13, as he was riding along

the road near his residence of Carisbrooke Castle, in the centre of the

island, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Ashburnham presented themselves, and

told him that the King had fled in their company from Hampton Court and

desired to be his guest! "He grew so pale," says Berkley, "and fell into

such a trembling, that I did really believe he would have fallen from his

horse; which trembling continued with him at least an hour after, in

which he broke out into passionate and distracted expressions, sometimes

saying 'O gentlemen, you have undone me.'" He collected himself at

length, however, and accepted the duty which fate had sent him. Crossing

over, with Berkley and Ashburnham, to the earl of Southampton's house of

Titchfield on the mainland, where Charles had meanwhile been waiting with

Legge, he paid his homage gravely enough; and, after some conversation,

in which he promised to do all for his Majesty that might be consistent

with his obedience to Parliament, he returned to the island, with the

King in his charge, and Berkley, Ashburnham, and Legge in attendance.

His letter, narrating what had happened, and asking instructions, was

read in the two houses of Parliament on Monday, Nov. 15. [Footnote:

Berkley's Memoir, Harl. Miscell. IX. 479-483; Rushworth, VII. 871-874;

Clar. 624-7; Parl. Hist. III. 785-791. As usual, in the later Royalist

accounts, it is Cromwell that had contrived the whole affair of the

King's escape both matter and form. Hammond's appointment to the

Governorship of the island (Sept. 9) was Cromwell's doing, in

anticipation of what might be needed; then he had stirred up the

Agitators at Putney to threaten the King's life at Hampton Court; then he

had warned the King, through Whalley, of the designs of the Agitators, so

as to frighten him into flight; then, through Ashburnham or otherwise, he

had suggested the Isle of Wight as the very place for the King to go to,

and so had caught him in the prepared trap.]

FOURTH STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT: NOV. 1647-NOV. 1648.

Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence. Parliament's New

Method of the _Four Bills_. Indignation of the Scots; their

Complaints of Breach of the Covenant--Army Rendezvous at Ware:

Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of

the Concordat with Parliament--Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle of

Wight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of the

Four Bills--Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No Further

Addresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance--_The

Engagement_, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in the

Isle of Wight--Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: His

Habits in his Imprisonment--First Rumours of _The Scottish

Engagement_: Royalist Programme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR--Beginnings of

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in the

South-east: Siege of Colchester--Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among the

Royalist Exiles abroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey--Invasion of

England by Hamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales off

the Southeast Coast: Blockade of the Thames--Consternation of the

Londoners: Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of the

Presbyterians: their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: their

Leanings to the King: Independents in a struggling minority: Charge of

Treason against Cromwell in his absence--The Three Days' Battle of

Preston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell: Surrender of

Colchester to Fairfax: Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland: Virtual

End of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR--Parliamentary Treaty with the King at

Newport: Unsatisfactory Results--Protests against the Treaty by the

Independents--Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of their

Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery:

Formation of a Republican Party--Petitions for Justice on the King:

The _Grand Army Remonstrance_--Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration of

the Argyle Government there: Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter to

Hammond--The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle--The

Army again in possession of London.

Carisbrooke Castle, now mostly a ruin, but in Charles's time the chief

fortified place in the Isle of Wight, stands almost in the centre of the

island, close to the village of Carisbrooke, and near the town of

Newport, which, although really an inland town, communicates with the sea

by a navigable river. Here, with the verdant island all round him, and

fine views both of land and sea, Charles was to live for a whole year.

Though it was November when he came into the island, a lady, as he passed

through Newport on his way to Carisbrooke, could present him with a

damask-rose just picked from her garden; and he was to see all the circle

of seasons in that mild South-English climate, till November came round

again. [Footnote: Herbert, 55, 56.]

In a letter which Charles had left at Hampton Court, to be communicated

to the two Houses, he had avowed that, though security from threatened

violence was the immediate reason for his disappearance for a time into a

place of retirement, yet another reason was his desire to extricate

himself from a negotiation in which he felt that the "chief interests"

concerned were not all represented. In the same spirit of eclecticism,

with a word for each of the "chief interests," and a special show of

solicitude for the Army, is a Letter sent by the King to the two Houses

only four days after he had been in the Isle of Wight (Nov. 17). It gives

his Majesty's view of what would be the right kind of negotiation, and

conveys his definite offers. He cannot consent to the abolition of

Episcopacy, but he will assent to the experiment of Presbytery for three

years, if accompanied by a Toleration, but not for Papists, Atheists, and

Blasphemers; he will surrender the Militia for his own life, on condition

that it shall afterwards revert to the Crown; he will undertake for the

Arrears of the Army; and on other matters he will be ready to do his

utmost in a conclusive Personal Treaty in London. [Footnote: Rushworth,

VII. 871-2 and 880-833; Parl. Hist. III. 786-7 and 799-802; and King

Charles's Works (1651), 117-125.]

The two Houses retained their own ideas of the negotiation necessary;

and, while giving orders for the despatch of a sufficient guard to the

Isle of Wight, to be under Hammond's command, and also for the King's

household they were re-adjusting _their_ battery of negotiation for

the changed circumstances of its object.

At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with the

whole series of Propositions which the Houses had so carefully drawn out

for presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encountered

the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood

of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine,

Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before the

King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full

bloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard

usage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer the

insults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected,

ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managed

Army? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland! Could the

Scottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these

"tossings" to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect of

all the previous Remonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estates

on this very subject? No! let those Propositions which the English

Parliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King be

invited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treaty

with Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free"!--Partly to

please the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if they

would not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in their

procedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, or

rather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King "Four

Bills," embodying the Propositions "absolutely necessary for present

security." Bill 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia for

twenty years, or longer if necessary; Bill 2 was for confirmation of all

acts of the Parliament in the late war; Bill 3 was for the cancelling of

all Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, and

the creation of new Peers only with consent of the two Houses; and Bill 4

was for giving the two Houses the right of adjournment at their own

pleasure.--This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov.

25 (fifteen Peers present); there were divisions on it in the Commons

Nov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (an

unusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter;

and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as above

indicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec.

14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague,

for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, and

Mr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commissioners for

carrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as not

superseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were to

require his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at the

utmost; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to his

Majesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send another

Commission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills.

[Footnote: Parl. Hist. II. 799-804 and 823-826; Lords and Commons

Journals of days named; also (for a special Letter of the Scottish

Commissioners) Lords Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter Charles thanked

Lanark, saying, "Seriously, it is as full to my sense as if I had penned

it myself." Burnet's Hamiltons, 416.]

If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method of

procedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason to

abandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec.

14), the Scottish Commissioners, knowing well enough privately what they

were, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy of

them. This being reported to the Commons, a discussion ensued, and Mr.

Selden (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eager

for a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee to

prepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was taken

up by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. It

was to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the English

kingdom to communicate Bills ready for the King's assent to "any other

whomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four Bills

could not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as for

the rest, it was intended to send these Bills to the King on Monday next,

together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners were

already cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to add

any Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As if

to increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it a

copy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure both

with the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known to

them. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commissioners

mad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Reply, in

nineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the two

Houses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was a

marvel. The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launch

itself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued from

Worcester House "by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament of

Scotland," and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of the

indebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was a

recapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotland

at the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons for

preferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King to

the English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-made

Propositions. But, as the English Parliament _had_ communicated to

the Scottish Commissioners their new set of Propositions (though not the

Four Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from the

Scottish point of view, collectively and _seriatim_. The largest

criticism was on the Religious question. Nearly one half of the entire

document was occupied with this subject. Was not the Religious question

the main one, the _unum necessarium,_ deserving the first place in

any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the

Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show

that the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be

so stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's own

concerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in the

Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant

itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the

whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that! Was

the Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes of

oblivion? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treat

the cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity of

Church-rule in the two kingdoms? Most miserably! No pressing of

Presbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynical

acquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up,

and a glee in not being committed even to that beyond three years!

Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by an

accompanying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience! The

Commissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should be

troubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves to

Presbyterial government;" but they did "from their very souls abhor such

a general and vast Toleration" as one of the Propositions seemed to

provide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the

sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians,

Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or

Independents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to the

new sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not to

include "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the

security that these might not at least print and publish their

blasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are

moved, &c.!"--There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after

a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom

he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his

friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something

of the kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentous

Paper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length prevented

immediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the

"aspersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be "forborne

for the future." This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec.

20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assigned

the gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been

"more pathetique than ordinarily." Nevertheless from that moment the

connexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners

was totally severed. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 15-

21.]

What had become of the third party concerned, the English Army?--The

general Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of War at Putney, in

consequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament

(_antè_, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartite

Rendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to be

reviewed on different days and at different places. The first of these

Reviews was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which the

King's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each of

seven regiments then present according to order there was read a

Remonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline,

condemning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts to

make the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution of

himself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights,

but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which was

mutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of each

regiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience, As nothing

was said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mention

only made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a Reformed

Representative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts of

the regiments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fit

soldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field that

had come without orders--Colonel Harrison's horse-regiment and Colonel

Robert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state of

excitement, with copies of the _Agreement of the People_ stuck in

their hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had come

down to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way John

had expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax and

the other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinous

emblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which had

driven away most of its officers, remained sulky and vociferous, till

Cromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing from

their hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from the

ranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and one

of the three shot. After this turn given to the first Review, the others

passed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was the

minor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the common

soldiers, with temporary restraint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough,

Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, the

officers who had been most implicated in the revolt.--So, at the expense

of but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra-

Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson was

that, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it was

best for England that the Army should still serve the constituted

authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own.

No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton

had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for

teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic

spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew,

in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had been

necessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets of

two-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through November and December the

great aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters at

Windsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore harmony.

Rainsborough, Ewer, Scott, and the other ultra-Democratic officers had

been restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strong

recommendations had gone to Parliament that Rainsborough, who, before the

Mutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (in

recollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in that

high appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and great

prayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took a

conspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into a

happy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Commissioners with the

Army described as "a sweet and comfortable agreement, the whole matter of

the kingdom being left with Parliament." And so, while the two Houses

were arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isle

of Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly. [Footnote: Parl. Hist.

III. 791-799 and 805-822; Godwin, II. 462-8; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 254;

Rushworth, VII. 951.]

On Friday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners of

the two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Bills

and the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun,

Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, and

delivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, a

Protest against the English Bills and Propositions. For the day or two

following, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty than

the English Commissioners; but on the 28th the English Commissioners

received from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterly

unfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else except

after a complete and deliberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of the

Scottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been no

other. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, and

it was read in both Houses on the 3lst. The effects were extraordinary.

On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by a

majority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or addresses should

be made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications to

him by any person whatsoever should be made without leave of the Houses

under the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the King

should be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carry

such. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Resolutions, only Manchester

and Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thus

declared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burst

into applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in the

common cause.

One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiar

body which, under the name of "The Committee of the two Kingdoms," had

hitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive for

the Parliaments of England and Scotland (_antè_, p. 41). As Scotland

had broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so,

on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-Address

Resolution, they resolved "That the powers formerly granted by both

Houses to the Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms of

England and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the members of both

Houses only that are of that Committee." In other words, Lords Loudoun

and Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wanted

in England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being themselves of the

same opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that they

were about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sent

Manchester and Warwick "to wish them a good journey," assure them that

any arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attended

to, and express a desire for "the continuance of the brotherly union and

good correspondency between the two nations." Actually, a few days

afterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Houses

appointed six Commissioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, and

allay, if possible, any ill feeling that might be caused there by their

representation of recent occurrences.

Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less! It

had not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland against

the English Bills and Propositions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale

had made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of the

English Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them for

some time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court; and,

when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only the

Protest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a more

momentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. Actually on the 26th

of December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissed

with the unfavourable Answer to the English Parliament, this document had

been signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and by

Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark on the other. Not daring to bring it out

of the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wrapt

up in lead and buried in a garden whence they could recover it

afterwards. And little wonder! It was A SECRET TREATY BETWEEN CHARLES AND

THE SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS, in which his Majesty bound himself, on the

word of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or might

take it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirm

Presbyterian Church-government and the Westminster Directory of Worship

in England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c., for

himself and his household), and moreover to see to the suppression of the

Independents and all other sects and heresies; while the Scots, in

return, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoring

him, on these conditions, to his full Royalty in that kingdom! Thus at

last Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of his

adversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it was

with the Scots, all but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition of

Episcopacy and the establishment of strict Presbytery in England!!

[Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals; Parl. Hist. III. 827-837; Burnet's

Hamiltons (for correspondence between the King and Lanark) 412-423;

Stevenson's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1840, p. 586 (for

Loudoun's account of the substance of the Treaty); Clarendon, 634-637.

Clarendon's account of the Treaty is full; and, though he condemns it as

"monstrous," he gives the apology that had reconciled the King to it in

his despair. It was that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had themselves

argued that the Treaty would turn out mere waste paper. After the

Scottish Army should be in England, and the Royalists in England roused,

"there would be nobody to exact all those particulars, but everybody

would submit to what his Majesty should think fit to be done!"]

Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had

been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his

pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at

Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed.

Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by

some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond

had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time

either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge

himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With

this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue

in his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty was

not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive

unauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and

the line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his

service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be

dismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strict

regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's

life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter

captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had

the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were

sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good

air and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land." For his solace

and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a

spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was

converted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled," at one

side of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement."

This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and

afternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden,"

within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard,

some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle

of Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and

obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his

set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and his

favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were

again in request. Though he still declined the services of any

Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr.

Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on

theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday

Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had

written, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree of

Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be admitted,

received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to

the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after

having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on,

and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin

close to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, and

of subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57-

67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah

Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely.]