The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the

Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they

were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in

the Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and

Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of

Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the whole

subject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally

discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of

Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement,

carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention of

the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went

passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went with

them; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, including

most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the

HAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there a

strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis,

and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and,

as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish

clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in

the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the

Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the

conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality

evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause

for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war,

nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with

Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying

these views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang with

denunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Provincial

Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; had

the entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS would

have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the

Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to

ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork.

Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliament

adhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in

England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was

to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an

invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in

chief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for his

Lieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595;

Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435.] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement with

the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVIL

WAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over

four years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many

months (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern

us here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative.

The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta

Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all

those dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to

take leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion.

The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this

fashion:--(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England and

Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in

which London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable for

such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful

remains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of the

Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. The

Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and large

numbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to question

whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were

altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in

some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than

continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a

Democratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its

resources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mind

the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very

pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the

City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism,

into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular

districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains.

Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in England

or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where

immediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir Marmaduke

Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for the

West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich

(formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel,

and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Francis

Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then

but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their

great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name

they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the

commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they

should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in

the first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had done

him good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and his

Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There

was to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or follow

the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb.

8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have been

in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that

it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, then lying there, and

cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make

one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months

there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and

Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy,

Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the

Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, Secretary

Nicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey,

were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedly

poor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an

expedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, if

he did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest

daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all he

could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his

Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one

for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Most

would be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for example

Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was

specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being

among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either

remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England,

that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was

emphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI., where the pre-arrangement of

the new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to different

persons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, than

anywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. See

also Rushworth for Feb., March, and April, 1648.]

Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come

up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable.

The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer,

governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a Colonel

Laughern, also in Parliamentary employment, revolted as early as the end

of February. Ostensibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliament

for disbanding supernumeraries; but, before the end of April, the affair

became a Royalist outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and

Cardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppress

this rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments of

horse and three of foot; which, with the forces already in the region,

would make an army of about 8,000 men. Before he went, risings of less

importance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there had

been one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of "For God and

King Charles!" (Sunday, April 9.) It had been suppressed only by street-

charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing Cross.

Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the Irish

Rebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealous

Parliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Duke

of York. By the contrivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whisked

away from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes,

to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age; but his father had

instructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had been

designated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful.

All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales; but hardly had he gone when

there came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by Sir

Marmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave and

Sir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying in

Edinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with the

Duke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed,

announced himself as commissioned General for the King in the five

northern counties, and the business of watching against his advance lay

with Lambert, the Parliamentarian General in those parts, assisted by Sir

Arthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle.

Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in the

hands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon--Fairfax now no longer mere Sir

Thomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to his

father Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon as

hard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales and

Lambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed the

counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for the

disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendour

of his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and King

Charles" was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or less

of Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk,

Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection in

Kent was of independent origin, and was the most extensive and hence It

had been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by Roger

L'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales; but the Earl of Norwich had come into

Kent to take the lead. Canterbury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles of

Deal and Walmer, had been won for the King; there were communications

between the insurgents and the Londoners, and in the end of May some

10,000 or 12,000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices from

London in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums and

banners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went out

to Blackheath, May 29; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the two

were at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of their

hard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county;

and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thames

into Essex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, Lord

Loughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gathered

into that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of a

roundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, The

swift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) compelled them

to change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12),

adding some 4,000 or 5,000 armed men to the population of that doomed

town. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault,

resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their side

resolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfax

in Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both for

themselves and for the general cause, the SIEGE OF COLCHESTER (June l2--

Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war.

An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of the

Fleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off the

Kentish coast, Royalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, and

with such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Rainsborough, who had been

ashore Defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on board

his own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27th

of May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed the

Presbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, and

sent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry of

the sailors was, "We will go to our own Admiral," meaning the young Duke

of York in Holland. Actually, some ten warships, having ejected all their

Parliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about the

coasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection in

those parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early in

June, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for the

world of Royalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with the

wooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country.

Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague to

Helvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the pet

of the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accident

to the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raised

otherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Rupert,

Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. He

arrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet,

and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Prince

and Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was a

joyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal of

difference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means.

About the time of the Revolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received other

bad news. Pontefract had been seized for the King, June 2, and other

important places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Through

the rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands,

so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had been

successes, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell was

hopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his small

forces against Langdale in the north; Colchester was beginning to be

distressed in the grip of Fairfax; but still, with the whole of England

in Royalist or semi-Royalist palpitation, and the City of London actually

heaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton and

his army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border? There had been

delays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of the

Argyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been by

the most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. At

last, however, it _had_ been got together; and now England was full

of the rumour of its coming. Lo! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, the

designated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could not

choose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham,

young Lord Francis Villiers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the Dutch

Colonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he started

up at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July; addressed a formal

Declaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as well

as a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester; and called on

all Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however,

lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under Sir

Michael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. Lord

Francis Villiers and Dalbier were slain; the Duke of Buckingham and the

Earl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Holland

himself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner.

On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) the

Scots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth,

marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40,000, but the advanced

portion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numbered

about 20,000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in great

state, preceded by trumpeters "all in scarlet cloaks full of silver

lace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie came next with horse

and foot; and the Earl of Callander brought up the rear. Joined by Sir

Marmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather sauntered

on, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1?), the wary

Lambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion,

skirmishing when he could, and waiting anxiously for the arrival of

Cromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales

(July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. Off

Kendal, a body of about 3,000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major-

general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with an

understanding that Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly from

himself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best to

advance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into Yorkshire.

It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved,

the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over their

ravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding them

to explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue the

King, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establish

Presbytery, and put down "that impious Toleration settled by the two

Houses contrary to the Covenant!"

While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, the

Prince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's idea

that he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering about

the south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased to

nineteen sail; it had been provisioned by the Prince of Orange; and there

were 2,000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was off

Yarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view to

relieve Colchester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames,

to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of their

ships. Precisely at the time when the Westmorland and Lancashire people

were grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners were

in consternation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman and

several other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by their

owners the Prince demanded huge sums of money, intimating at the same

time (Aug 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until the

Londoners declared for the King, or Parliament agreed to a cessation of

arms on certain loyal conditions. [Footnote: In the summary given

in the text of the incidents of the Civil War from March to August 1648,

I have tried to reduce into chronological connexion the information given

disconnectedly in Rushworth, VII. 1010-1220, and at large in Clarendon,

Book XI. There have been references, for dates and facts, to the

Parliamentary History and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, Godwin's

Commonwealth, and Carlyle's Cromwell.]

Through these four or five months of Royalist risings coalescing at last

in a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much more

entangled (April-Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament? It

had been very odd indeed.

Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, and

especially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No-

Address Resolutions of Jan. 1-15. Thus, on the 11th of February, the

Commons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had been

prepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten,

setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communication with the King.

They published the document without consulting the other House. It was

the severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forth

by either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reign

was reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as "a

continued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms," and there was

even the horrible insinuation that he had connived with the Duke of

Buckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document--

so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the King

himself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey--who could

have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his

Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual.

Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the

Commons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and

prosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to the

recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of the

Westminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism_.

[Footnote: The Revision of the _Confession of Faith_ by the two

Houses was completed June 20, 1648, when, with the exception of certain

portions about Church-government held in reserve, it was passed and

ordered to be printed: not, however, with the title "Confession of

Faith," but as "Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed by

both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines

by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster." The Revision, though

detailed, was much a matter of form, paragraph after paragraph passing

without discussion. On at least one point, however, there was a division

in the Commons (Feb. 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. of the

Confession, entitled _Of Marriage and Divorce_. The question was

whether the House should agree to the last clause of the 4th paragraph of

that Chapter--"The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in

blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred

nearer in blood than of her own." For the _Yea_ there voted 40 (Sir

Robert Pye and Sir Anthony Irby, tellers); for the _No_ 71 (Sir

William Armyn and Mr. Knightley, tellers); in other words, the House by a

majority of 31 doubted the ecclesiastical doctrine of forbidden degrees

of _affinity_ in marriage.] The attendance during these months

ranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of the

Army, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April,

however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of the

Scottish invasion and the signs of Royalist movement in England, no fewer

than 306 members appeared in their places, Many of these seem to have

been Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by their

leaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Royalty in connexion with

Presbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 the

tide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterian

ascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April,

it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that it

would not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King,

Lords, and Commons; also, by 108 to 105, that "the matter of the

Propositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of both

kingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of the

kingdom; also, by 146 to 101, that the No-Address Resolutions of January

should not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything that

might tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly was

a change of policy; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effected

by a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by a

stupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Religious

question. On the 1st of May (the very day on which Cromwell was ordered

off to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was brought

up in the Commons an "_Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies and

Heresies_," which the Presbyterians had been long urging and labouring

at in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists had

hitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the House

that day; next day it passed the Lords; and, accordingly, under date May

2, 1648, this is what stands in the Lords Journals as thenceforward to be

the Law of England:--

"For the preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresy and Blasphemy:

Be it ordained ... That all such persons as shall, from and after the

date of this present Ordinance, willingly, by preaching, teaching,

printing, or writing, maintain and publish that there is no God, or that

God is not present in all places, doth not know and foreknow all things,

or that He is not Almighty, that He is not perfectly Holy, or that He is

not Eternal, or that the Father is not God, the Son is not God, or that

the Holy Ghost is not God, or that They Three are not One Eternal God; or

that shall in like manner maintain and publish that Christ is not God

equal with the Father, or shall deny the Manhood of Christ, or that the

Godhead and Manhood of Christ are several natures, or that the Humanity

of Christ is pure and unspotted of all sin; or that shall maintain and

publish, as aforesaid, that Christ did not die, nor rise from the dead,

nor is ascended into Heaven bodily, or that shall deny His death is

meritorious in the behalf of Believers; or that shall maintain and

publish, as aforesaid, that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God; or that

the Holy Scripture, _videlicet_ [here comes in the entire list of

the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments], is not the Word of

God; or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead;

or that there is no Day of Judgment after death:--All such maintaining

and publishing of such Error or Errors, with obstinacy therein, shall, by

virtue hereof, be adjudged Felony: And all such persons [here is

explained the process by which they are to be accused and brought to

trial].. and in case the indictment be found and the party upon his trial

shall not abjure the said Error, and defence and maintenance of the same,

he SHALL SUFFER THE PAINS OF DEATH, AS IN CASE OF FELONY, WITHOUT BENEFIT

OF CLERGY..."

"Be it further ordained, by the authority aforesaid, That all and every

person or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any of

the several Errors hereafter ensuing, _videlicet_ [here a long

enumeration of _minor_ forms of Religious Error, such as "that man

by nature hath free will to turn to God," that God may be worshipped by

pictures and images, that there is a Purgatory, "that man is bound to

believe no more than by his reason he can comprehend," "that the

baptizing of infants is unlawful," that the observation of the Lord's Day

is not obligatory, or "that the Church-government by Presbytery is Anti-

Christian or unlawful"], shall be [ordered to renounce their Error or

Errors in public congregation, and, in case of refusal,] COMMITTED TO

PRISON...."

Imagine _that_ going forth, just as the Second Civil War had begun,

as the will and ordinance of Parliament! One wonders that the Concordat

between Parliament and the Army, arranged by Cromwell and the other Army-

chiefs in the preceding November, was not snapped on the instant. One

wonders that the Army did not wheel in mass round Westminster, haul the

legislating idiots from their seats, and then undertake in their own name

both the war and the general business of the nation. The behaviour of the

Army, however, was more patient and wise. Parliament could be reckoned

with afterwards; meanwhile let it pass what measures it liked, so long as

it did not absolutely throw up its trust and abandon all to the King!

Till Parliament should do that, the fighting which the Army had to do at

any rate might as well be done in the name of the Parliament!

Really there seemed a chance that even the last extremity of faint-

heartedness would be reached, and that Parliament _would_ throw up

its national trust. Here, for example, were some of its proceedings in

June and July, of which Cromwell must have heard, with rather strange

feelings, in the midst of his hard work in Wales, Lambert in his watch

against the Scots in the north, and Fairfax and Ireton in their siege of

Colchester. June 3, 7, and 8, the two Houses, of their own accord, or on

earnest Petitions from the City, agreed to drop all the impeachments and

other proceedings voted in the preceding year at the instance of the Army

against members of their own body, and against City officials implicated

in the Presbyterian tumults in London, and in particular to invite the

Seven peccant Peers and the survivors of the Eleven peccant Commoners to

return to their places. June 30 and July 3 the proposal to re-open a

Treaty with the King was after much intermediate debating, brought to a

bearing by a formal agreement of the two Houses to rescind their No-

Address Resolutions of January, and by a vote of the Commons that the

Propositions to be submitted to the King for his assent before farther

treaty should be these three--Presbytery for three years, the Militia

with Parliament for ten years, and the Recall by the King of all

Proclamations and Declarations against the Parliament. Even this, so much

more favourable to the King than former offers, the Lords thought too

harsh; and they refused (July 5) to make the Treaty conditional on the

King's prior assent to the three Propositions. Nor was this the only

proof that the bravery of the Lords had evaporated even more completely

than that of the Commons. On July 14, when it was known that Hamilton's

Army of Scots was actually in England, the Commons did vote that the

invaders were public enemies, and that all Englishmen who should abet

them should be accounted traitors; but the Lords (July 18) refused to

concur in that vote. Were the soldiers of Parliament, then, to be

fighting against invaders whom one of the Houses did not regard as public

enemies?--In short, the fact had come to be that, in the beginning of

August, the forces of Fairfax, Lambert, and Cromwell, were conducting a

war in the name of Parliament which Parliament and the City of London

were taking every means to stop. A Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen,

and Common Council of the City, presented to the Lords Aug. 8 (the last

of scores of Petitions in the same sense that had for a month or two been

poured in), expressed the general Presbyterian feeling. "The government

of the Church still unsettled; blasphemy, heresy, schism, and profaneness

increased; the relief of bleeding Ireland obstructed; the war, to their

great astonishment, renewed; the people of England thereby miserably

impoverished and oppressed; the blood of our fellow-subjects spilt like

water upon the ground; our Brethren of Scotland now entered into this

kingdom in a hostile manner, his Highness the Prince of Wales commanding

at sea a considerable part of the Navy, and other ships under his power,

having already made stay of many English ships with merchandise and

provisions to a very great value:"--these were the complaints; and the

Petitioners humbly conceived there was no visible remedy but the "speedy

freeing of his Majesty" from restraint, and "a Personal Treaty" with him

for "restoring him to his just rights." The City was to have its will.

The Commons (July 28) had abandoned, by a majority of 71 to 64, their

intention to require assent to the three Propositions in preparation for

a Treaty, and had agreed to a general and open Treaty, such as the Lords

desired; communications on the subject had been made to the King; and,

though his Majesty would have preferred to treat in London, he consented

(Aug. 10) that the place should be Newport in the Isle of Wight.--Note

also two contemporary incidents of deep significance. On the 2nd of

August Major Robert Huntingdon, Cromwell's former Major, presented to the

Lords, in the form of a Paper of "Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay down

his Commission," what was really a series of charges of High Treason

against Cromwell; the Paper was that day duly entered in the Lords

Journals for future occasion; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and

much contrivance of the Speaker, that the same Paper was kept out of the

Commons. Such was the first incident; the other is thus given by

Rushworth under date Aug. 14: "Colonel Denzil Holles came this day to the

House and sat." This means that the chief of the Eleven, the Arch-

Presbyterian of the House, the man who hated Cromwell worse than poison,

had come back at this juncture to re-assume the Presbyterian leadership.

After that Major Huntingdon's charges against Cromwell were not likely to

be kept long out of the Commons by any contrivance of the Speaker.

[Footnote: The facts in this account of the conduct of Parliament from

Feb. to Aug. 1648 are from the Parliamentary History, the Lords and

Commons Journals, and Rushworth. The dates given will indicate the exact

places in these authorities.]

If ever a General fought for his country with the rope round his neck,

that General was Cromwell, as he now fought for England. No one knew this

better than himself, when, with his hardy troops hurried north from their

severe service in Wales, he joined Lambert among the Yorkshire hills

(Aug. 10 or thereabouts), to deal with the army of Hamilton and Langdale.

Let him fail in this enterprise, let him succeed but doubtfully in it,

and, in the relapse into Royalism which would then be universal, the

first uproar of execration would be against _him_, and London would

either never see him again or see him dragged to death. Fail!-succeed but

doubtfully! When the wicked plot against the just and gnash upon him with

their teeth, doth not the Lord laugh at them and see that their day is

coming? It was in this faith that Cromwell, descending westward from the

Yorkshire hills after his junction with Lambert, hurled himself, with his

little army of not more than 9,000 in all, right athwart the track of

Hamilton and his 24,000 of mixed Scots and English advancing through

Lancashire. The result was THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF PRESTON (Aug. 17-

19), in which the Scots and their English allies were totally ruined.

About 3,000 were slain; 10,000 were taken prisoners; of the host of

fugitives only a portion succeeded in attaching themselves to Monro, who

had been lying considerably to the rear of the main battle and now picked

up its fragments for a retreat northwards; the rest were dispersed

miserably hither and thither, so that for weeks afterwards poor Scots

were found begging about English farmhouses, either pretending to be dumb

lest their speech should betray them, or trying vainly to pass for

Yorkshiremen. Hamilton, with a fraction of the fugitives, made his way

into Staffordshire, but had to surrender himself a prisoner Aug. 25.

The collapse of the King's cause, begun in Lancashire Aug. 17-19, was to

be absolute within the next fortnight. On the 28th of August the Prince

of Wales withdrew from his useless hovering about the south-east coast

and sailed back with his fleet to Holland; whence most of the ships were

recovered in due time, the officers remaining in exile, but the crews

only too glad to return to their allegiance to Parliament. On the same

day the town of Colchester, after a siege of more than six weeks, during

which the most hideous extremities of famine had been endured by the poor

townsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3,000 soldiers, with

their officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, Sir

Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected for special reasons, were

shot immediately after the surrender by order of the Council of War; the

others, including the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel, were reserved for

the disposal of Parliament. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1225-1248; Parl.

Hist. III. 992-1002; Lords and Commons Journals; Carlyle's Cromwell, I.

279-299.]

Thus, in the end of August 1648, the SECOND CIVIL WAR, with the

exception of a few relics, was trampled out. Events then resolved

themselves into two distinct courses, running parallel for a time, but

one of which proved itself so much the more powerful that at last it

disdained the pretence of parallelism with the other and overflooded the

whole level.

In the first place, there was the progress of that TREATY OF NEWPORT to

which the two Houses had pledged themselves while the war was going on.

Delays had occurred in arranging particulars with the King, and it was

not till Sept. 1 that the Commissioners of the two Houses were appointed.

They were, for the Lords, the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke,

Salisbury, and Middlesex, and Viscount Saye and Sele, and, for the

Commons, Viscount Wenman (of the Irish Peerage), Denzil Holles, Glynn,

Vane the younger, William Pierrepoint, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Sir John

Potts, John Crewe, Samuel Browne, and John Bulkley. Their instructions

were to proceed to the Isle of Wight, and there, all together or any

eight of them (of whom two must be lords), to treat with the King for

forty days on the Propositions formerly presented to him at Hampton

Court, taking these Propositions in a fixed order and doing their best to

get his Majesty to agree to them, but receiving any counter-proposals he

might make, and transmitting these to the two Houses. All demands on the

King and all answers or proposals from him were to be in writing; but the

debates might be oral between the Commissioners and his Majesty. Not to

partake in these debates, but to be present at them by permission, and to

form a kind of Council with whom the King might retire to consult on

difficult points, were to be a largish body of Royalist lords, divines,

lawyers, and others, to whom, at his special request, leave had been

given to repair to the island and to be in attendance on him throughout

the Treaty. Among these were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of

Hertford, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, Bishops Juxon, Duppa, and

Dr. Saunderson, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir Thomas Gardiner, and Mr.

Geoffrey Palmer. Finally, the King was to be on his parole not to attempt

an escape during the Treaty, nor for twenty days afterwards. More than

one attempt of the kind had been made during the four months of the Civil

War. The wonder is that, while the Prince of Wales was off the English

coast with his fleet, a rescue of the King had not somehow been effected.

[Footnote: Parl. Hist III. 1001-4; Commons Journals, Sept. 1.]

Not till Friday Sept. 15 did the Parliamentary Commissioners arrive in

the Isle of Wight. They were accompanied by Messrs. Marshall, Nye, Vines,

Seaman, and Caryl, from the Assembly of Divines. The Treaty began on

Monday the 18th, in a house in the town of Newport selected as the most

suitable for the purpose. At the head of a table, under a canopy of

state, sat the King; the lords, divines, and lawyers, permitted to be

present as listeners in his behalf, stood grouped behind his chair; the

Parliamentary Commissioners sat at the sides of the table, with a space

between them and his Majesty. It was hoped at first by the Commissioners

that the Treaty would be a short one. That the King would accept the

Propositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as they

could be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holles, Glynn, and the

other Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to their

horror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highest

kingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Over

the Proposition first presented--that for annulling all declarations and

acts against Parliament--he was so dilatory that not till Sept. 25 was it

completely passed, and then only with the proviso that his assent to it

should have no force until the whole Treaty should be concluded. On the

Church question, also brought forward the first day, he was more

hopelessly unimpressible. The Proposition on this question being complex,

he framed his first Answer so as to include only some of the points and

evade the others. He consented to the establishment of Presbytery for

three years, but not to the perpetual alienation of the Bishops' lands;

and as to the abolition of Episcopacy and the obligation of the Covenant

he said not a word. Then, these points being pressed, he argued and re-

argued, day after day, conceding only that Episcopacy should be limited,

and the like, till the Commissioners, despairing of any full agreement on

that Proposition, left it, and passed to others (Oct. 9). On some of

these others, including that on the Militia, he chose to acquiesce at

once; but a second block occurred on the Proposition relating to

Delinquents (Oct. 13-17). All this while, the King was the sole speaker

on his side, retiring now and then to consult with his advisers, and of

course framing his written Papers with their advice, but always resuming

the oral debate himself, and showing an ability both in actual reasoning

and in the conduct of the business generally which surprised some of the

Commissioners. The necessity of continual reference to the two Houses

increased the delay. There had been various debates in both on the

progress of the Treaty as reported by the Commissioners, and on the 12th

of October the Commons had voted the King's answer on the Church question

unsatisfactory. The King, in consequence, revised his Answer on this

question, and offered, among other things, to consent to the abolition of

Archbishops and all other grades of the hierarchy, if the single office

of Bishops were preserved. This revised Answer the Commons voted

unsatisfactory, Oct. 26, the Lords agreeing substantially next day; and

on the 30th of October the Commons passed a similar vote respecting the

Answer on Delinquents. At this point, therefore, the Treaty may be

considered to have come to a stop. At the same time there came to a stop

a written controversy on the Church question, which had been going on

collaterally between his Majesty and the Divines of the Assembly

attending the Commissioners. The controversy was a repetition of that

between the King and Henderson at Newcastle. It had begun Oct. 2, and it

was wound up by his Majesty in a long last Paper Nov. 1.

It was mainly on the Episcopacy question that the Treaty was wrecked; or

rather it was on this question that the King had chosen that there should

be the appearance of wreck. For, in truth, the Treaty on his side, like

his former Treaties, had been all along a pretence. Though his doom was

staring him in the face, he could not see it, but had again been

mustering up wild hopes of some great turn of the wheel in his favour if

he could but procrastinate enough. Had not the Marquis of Ormond, for

example, effected a landing in Wexford, with a view to a junction with

the Irish Roman Catholic Confederates? Might not something come out of

that? Or might there not be some help yet from the Prince of Wales in

Holland, or from the Queen's and Jermyn's plottings at Paris, or from the

Scots after all? To take advantage of any or all of these contingencies,

a temporary refuge on the Continent might be necessary; and so, when the

time of his parole should be over, a means of escape must be devised!

Such having been Charles's mood when he began the Treaty, one does not

wonder at finding that he had been behaving with his usual duplicity

while it was in progress. "To deal freely with you," he had secretly

written to one correspondent on the day when he had accepted the

Proposition on the Militia question, "the great concession I made this

day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would

not have done it." Again to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, "Though you

will hear that this Treaty is near, or at least most likely to be,

concluded, yet believe it not; but pursue the way you are in with all

possible vigour: deliver also that my command to all your friends, but

not in public way." With such a man, now as ever, a Treaty was absurd.

Parliament did not break off the Treaty, even when its failure had become

apparent, but allowed it to straggle on. The term of forty days first

fixed had been prolonged to Nov. 4, and on that day most of the

Commissioners left Newport on their return to London. Six of them,

however, remained behind, on the chance that his Majesty might yet see

his way to more complete concessions on the Church question. On this mere

chance the Treaty was prolonged to Nov. 18, and again to Nov. 25; and, as

his Majesty had begged Parliament that he might have the assistance of

such new advice on the Church question as could be given by Usher, ex-

Bishops Brownrigg, Prideaux, and Warner, and Drs. Ferne and Morley, leave

had been granted to these divines to proceed to Newport. Nothing to the

purpose came of their advice; for in the King's final letters from

Newport to the two Houses, dated Nov. 18 and Nov. 21, he is as firm as

ever on the necessity and Apostolical origin of the order of Bishops,

quotes 1 Timothy v. 22 and Titus i. 5 in that behalf, and protests that

he can go no farther than his previous offer of a reduction of Episcopacy

to its barest Apostolical simplicity. On Friday the 24th of November

these letters were voted unsatisfactory by both Houses, but it was

resolved (not without a division in the Commons) to allow the King two

days more. The Treaty was to be considered at an end on the night of

Monday the 27th, and on the next day, with or without satisfaction, the

Commissioners still on duty were to take their leave. By the King's

parole he would be bound not to attempt an escape from the island till

twenty days after that. Colonel Hammond, observing signs that the King

meant to assume that the terms of his original parole had ceased to be

binding, had prudently insisted on its public renewal. [Footnote: For the

account of the treaty of Newport my authorities have been--Parl. Hist

III. 1013-1133, with references at the chief dates to Rushworth and the

Lords and Commons Journals; Works of King Charles I. (1651), pp. 191-286

of third paging; Godwin, II. 608-618.]

Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiation

between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been

forming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, and

hurry all to a real catastrophe.

The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and the

Army-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name of

_The Concordat (antè_, pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement of

the Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democratic

manifestations of the Army and its pretensions to political dictation,

leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, as

we saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediate

democratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The political

views of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictly

constitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a large

increase of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Biennial Parliaments,

and a thoroughly Reformed System of Representation--such had been the

ideal of the Army-chiefs in their _Heads of Proposals_ of August

1647; the Levellers had gone a good deal farther in their _Agreement of

the People_ in Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditary

privileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a single

Representative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscience

and Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should be

so recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit of

Episcopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, and

Sectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to be

the silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on the

religious question generally, and on the political question very often,

had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its

own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this

had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell,

Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of

heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose,

but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in

Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For several

months, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat.

Especially in January 1647-8, when the two Houses broke off their

abortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their No-

Address Resolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army.

But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagement

with the King began to rouse Royalists and Presbyterians alike for a new

war, and the absent Presbyterians of the Commons came back to their

places to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty with

the King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disbandment of the

Army, and the suppression of Sects,--then what could the Army do but

spurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the King

himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been,

after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certain

beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of

those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not

be right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were called

an Army! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequently

that the whole Army had them by heart--the principle "That every single

man is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom," and

the principle "That the interest of honest men is the interest of the

kingdom"? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of the

matter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poor

fellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Rendezvous at Ware been in

some sense a martyr? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary that

at least _something_ of the spirit of the Levellers, _some_ of

those proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh and

premature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into the

general creed of the Army?

That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such questionings as to

the course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before the

outbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence,

but nowhere more strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer-

meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at Windsor Castle

in March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of this

record, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards,

and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in the

history of the Army and of the nation. At that time, he says, the Army

was "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects" and

there were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and a

new war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist no

longer, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into one

of individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that more

remained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at their

instance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with most

remarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to the

causes of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the second

day Cromwell proposed, as the best method of inquiry among themselves,

that they should all simultaneously engage in silent retrospection, both

upon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians," and also

upon their "public actions as an Army." If they should each and all be

led, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of time

as that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former countenance and things

had begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity? And

lo! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review of

the past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which their

departure from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. It

was a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay among

those prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally out

of which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Allen,

in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited wisdom, our fears, and

want of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with the

King and his Party." And with this unanimous agreement on the question

where the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as to

the right course of future duty. "We were led and helped," says Allen,

"to a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissenting, That it was

the duty of our day, with the forces we had, to go out and fight against

those potent enemies which that year in all places appeared against

us...; and we were also enabled then, after serious seeking His face, to

come to a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large there

debated amongst us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us

back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an

account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost

against the Lord's Cause and People in these poor Nations." [Footnote:

See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length in

Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 263-266.]

This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor most

probably in April 1648, or just before Cromwell went off to suppress the

Royalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in the

bosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War

(May-Aug.). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolution

formally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints came

from those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of the

Armychiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of these

Independents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott for

one declaring that "a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince"

was an impossibility; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by the

Presbyterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, just

as the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept. 11)

an extraordinary document purporting to be "The humble Petition of

Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London,

Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent."

This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely a

denunciation of the Treaty; it was a detailed democratic challenge. It

proclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England,"

and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this,

that England had fought and struggled for six years; and, after a severe

lecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen to

the full height of this principle, it enumerated twenty-seven things

which were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were the

repudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords to

resist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for Annual

Parliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the

"exemption of matters of Religion and God's worship from the compulsive

or restrictive power of any authority upon earth," and the consequent

repeal of the recent absurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerning

opinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, others

Heresies." Such a Petition, signed by about 40,000 persons, in or near

London, hitherto pre-eminently the Presbyterian city, was a signal for

similar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came a

Petition in the same sense from "many thousands" of the well-affected in

Oxfordshire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions from

Newcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset. [Footnote: Parl. Hist, III.

1005-11; Whitlocke, II. 413, 419.]

These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spoke

out at last. Since Sept. 16 the headquarters of the Army had been at St.

Alban's; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters from

Fairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from the

Officers and Soldiers of different regiments had been presented to him,

or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in

particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and

speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault

may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the

poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in

upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next

fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from

Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also

demanded "immediate care that justice should be done upon the principal

invaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party;" it demanded,

moreover, that "sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given to

future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it went

on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things

from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion,

they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council of

the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the

practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all

the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitations

about complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliament

immediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking for

some last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time of

the Treaty again and again in the vain chose of this last chance; but in

another matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their "half-

heartedness" became apparent. At the very time when the Independents of

London and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army,

were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the late

war, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority in

the Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were then

in custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the English

Peerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of

100,000_l._, with imprisonment till it should be paid; and for the

Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and four

others, simple banishment! Resolutions to this effect passed the Commons

Nov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, though

prepared for almost anything from the "half-heartedness" of the

Parliament, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive

"amazement." What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Army

itself as a whole should step forward, call its masters to a reckoning,

and either compel them to be the instruments of a better policy, or take

affairs into its own hands? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could not

decline the responsibility: and accordingly a General Council of the

Officers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It had

sat about a week when (Nov. 16) a GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, to be

presented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted. [Footnote:

Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1811-12, and 1830; Commons Journals, Nov. 10

1618, Whitlocke, II. 436.]

This GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE of Nov. 1648 is another of those documents

from the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporary

lumber with which they are associated, and to be carefully studied on

account of their supreme interest in English History. The document is of

most elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages of

this volume; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House of

Commons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation,

setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme of

action on which they had resolved:--There is first an exposition of the

rule _Salus Populi lex suprema_, a rule admitted to be capable of

abuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a real

meaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliament

and the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, it

is added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual; most

reluctant were they to break it. But what had happened? Had not

Parliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Resolutions of ten

months ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat? Had they not,

within a few months after passing those Resolutions, utterly forgotten

them, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A Personal

Treaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fears

that had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless--though the

Lord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they had

ceased to trust and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabled

to shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aided

by an invasion from Scotland--even after this rebuke from God, were they

not still pursuing the same phantom of an Accommodation? Here the

Remonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down the

principle that in every State the care of all matters of public concern

must be in a Supreme Representative Council or Parliament, freely elected

by the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such office

instituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such Supreme

Council for special ends and within special limits, and that any one

holding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringly

abused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, may

justly be called to account. They appeal to the entire recollection of

Charles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woe

and war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason.

But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonable

chance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. "If

there were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that his

coming in again were with a new or changed heart," then, they say, "his

person might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation

with him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid

points of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitable

construction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial." But no such

ground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles.

Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his complete

second ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating,

secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Rebels? If such a

man were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees,

the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, of

the new situation would be his; he would figure for a while as the Father

of his People, the Restorer of would be forgotten, or would be remembered

only as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short time

there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new

spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at

this play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at

it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex,

wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one

with the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the political

thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up.--Towards the end come the

specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were

resolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets:--I. _Immediate

Demands_. These are five. First of all, it is demanded "That the

capital and grand author of our troubles, the Person of the King, by

whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for

whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have

been, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought to

justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of."

Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince of

Wales and the Duke of York may return to England and render themselves:

with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declared

incapable for ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are to

be treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards they

are found in England; and also that, if they do return within the limited

time, their cases are to be severally considered, and their past

delinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and "in appearance next unto

his father's") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be found

fit; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown be

sequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, with

reserve of a reasonable provision for the Royal Family and for old Crown-

servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chief

instruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, in capital

punishment. With this satisfaction to justice the Remonstrants would be

content; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clement

treatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetual

banishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who should

remain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Army are brought

forward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of their

damages and arrearages.--II. _Prospective Demands_. These point to

the future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Army

demand (1) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonable

time; (2) a guaranteed succession of subsequent Parliaments, annual or

biennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and of

redistribution of constituencies as should make them really

representative of the whole people; (3) the temporary disfranchisement

and disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provision

that Parliament, as the representative body of the people, should

henceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestion the

policy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on the

foundations of common Right, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provision

it is definitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship be

kept up in England, it should be as an elective office merely, every

successive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, and

should have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament.

[Footnote: See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Parl.

Hist. III. 1077]

This vast document, signed officially by John Rushworth, "by the

appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of

Officers," was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfax

himself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation

of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay,

Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and

for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of the

Independents among the members spoke manfully in favour of the

Remonstrance; others were for temporizing; but the more resolute

Presbyterians, among whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented the

Remonstrance as an insolence "subversive of the law of the land and the

fundamental constitutions of the kingdom," and protested that "it became

not the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of the

Nation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council of

Sectaries in Arms." Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of the

House, but only this entry: "Ordered, That the debate upon the

Remonstrance of the General and his General Council of Officers be

resumed on Monday next." That "Monday next" was the 27th of November, the

very day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with the

King at Newport should finally cease. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov.

20, 1648; Whitlocke, same date; Parl. Hist. III. 1127-8 (where extracts

are given from a contemporary account of the in the _Mercurius

Pragmaticus_).]

Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediate

scene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17-19),

he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from the

Scots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces under

Monro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Government as

that no more should be feared from that quarter.

His task had been easy. The "Engagement" with the King, and the

consequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest,

had been, as we know (_antè_, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottish

party then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had been

vehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun,

backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of the

Scottish clergy. When, therefore, the news of the disaster at Preston

reached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against the

Government of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it with

reproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark,

who had been left as the chief of the Government after the capture of his

brother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monro

and the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field with

their joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of the

western shires, nicknamed _Whigs_ or _Whigamores_, having obeyed the

summons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, and

marched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces of

the Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6,000 men, the

command of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with David

Leslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them,

moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling; there

were some skirmishes; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality,

however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heart

for the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to be

desperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotland

itself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, in

communication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready to

cross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after some

negotiation, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of this

Treaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special portion of the

troops; but otherwise both armies were to be disbanded, Lanark and all

who had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from all

places of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in the

hands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constituted

themselves the new Committee of Estates _de facto_.

Although this arrangement had been effected without Cromwell's direct

interference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, having

crossed the Tweed on the 2lst of September with an army of horse and

foot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, as

a Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed in

the name of the Committee by their Chancellor Loudoun. The new Government

of Scotland most handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisle

and Berwick, with apologies for the conduct of their predecessors in

having seized them; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to see

all duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax and

Speaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing that

there was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party of

Scotland" and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however,

that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personal

presence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins of

that of the Hamiltons. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enter

Edinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig in

their company. They were escorted into the city with all ceremony by the

authorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, the

finest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people of

Edinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity of

studying the features of the great English Independent as he came out or

went in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For the

Whigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates and

city clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the opportunities

were, of course, still closer; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7)

there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, at

which the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and other

lords of the Committee of Estates were present.

So ended Cromwell's memorable first visit to Edinburgh; and, his real

object having been accomplished (which was to pledge, the new Government

of Scotland, and especially Argyle, to alliance in future with the

advanced English party), he began his return journey southwards on the

same day, only leaving Lambert, with two regiments of horse and two

troops of dragoons, to be at the service of the Argyle Government so long

as they might be wanted. A week later (Oct. 14) he was at Carlisle,

seeing after the surrender of that town; and in the beginning of November

he was at Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. The

Castle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, still

held out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitive

Cavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actual

desperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had been

frequent; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, a

party of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far as

Doncaster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Rainsborough

there, under pretence of bringing him letters from Cromwell, and left him

stabbed dead (Sunday, Oct. 29). The business of pacifying Yorkshire,

which otherwise might have been left to Bainsborough, thus devolved upon

Cromwell. He summoned Pontefract Castle to surrender Nov. 9; and, the

surrender having been refused, he remained at Pontefract all the rest of

that month, superintending the siege. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons

(edit. 1852), 465-482; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 299-333; Rushworth, VII.

1314-15. The first open occurrence of the word _Whig_ in British

History was, I believe, in the circumstances described in the text at

p.621. The original _Whigs_ were the zealous Covenanting peasants,

or true-blue Presbyterians, of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and other western

Scottish counties; and the nickname was derived, it is supposed, either

from the sound _Whigh_ (meaning _Gee-up_) used by the peasantry

of those parts in driving their horses, or simply from the word

_Whey_ (in Anglo-Saxon _hwæg_), by comparison to the solemn

Presbyterians to the sour watery part of milk separated from the curd in

making cheese.]

Thus, through the three months in which the English Army and Independents

were waxing more and more indignant at the Treaty with the King at

Newport, and determining to break it down, and to bring the King to trial

for his life with or without the concurrency of Parliament, Cromwell, as

we said, was away from the immediate scene of action. There is not the

least doubt, however, that he was aware generally of the proceedings of

his friends in the south, and that one of their encouragements was the

knowledge that Cromwell was with them. There are, however, actual proofs.

Thus, about the middle of September, or just after the presentation to

the Commons of the great London Petition asking the Commons to declare

themselves the supreme authority of England, one finds Henry Marten, the

framer of that Petition, on a journey to the north, for the purpose of

consulting with Cromwell, then on his way to Scotland. Their consultation

cannot have boon for nothing. At all events, after Cromwell returned into

England and engaged in the siege of Pontefract Castle, his letters attest

his interest in the proceedings of Ireton and the other Army officers at

St. Alban's. In one letter, dated "near Pontefract," Nov. 20, he

expresses his own anger and that of his officers at the recent lenient

votes of the Commons in the case of the Duke of Hamilton and the other

eminent Delinquents. On the same day he writes in the same sense to

Fairfax, and forwards Petitions from the regiments under his command in

aid of those which Fairfax had already received from the southern

regiments. When these letters were written Cromwell had not heard of the

adoption at St. Alban's of the Grand Army Remonstrance drawn up by his

son-in-law, or at least did not know that on that very day it had been

presented to the Commons. Before the 25th of November, however, he had

received this news too, and had a full foresight of what it portended.

For that is the date of one of the most remarkable letters he ever wrote,

his letter from "Knottingley near Pontefract "to Colonel Robert Hammond,

Governor of the Isle of Wight. This young Colonel, upon whom the sore

trial had fallen of having the King for his prisoner, was, as we have

said, one of Cromwell's especial favourites, and the long letter which

Cromwell now addressed to him was in reply to one just received from

Hammond, imparting to Cromwell his doubts respecting the recent

proceedings of the Army, and his own agony of mind in the difficult and

complicated duties of his office in the Isle of Wight. Cromwell's letter,

so occasioned, begins "Dear Robin," and is conceived throughout in terms

of the most anxious affection, struggling with a half-expressed purpose.

He reasons earnestly with Hammond on his doubts and scruples,

sympathizing with them so far, but at the same time combating them, and

suggesting such queries as these--"_first_, Whether _Salus Populi_ be a

sound position? _secondly_, Whether in the way in hand [_i.e._ the

Parliamentary rule as then experienced], really and before the Lord,

before whom Conscience has to stand, this be provided for?... _thirdly_,

Whether this Army be not a lawful Power, called by God to oppose and

fight against the King upon some stated grounds, and, being in power to

such ends, may not oppose one Name of Authority, for these ends, as well

as another Name?" [_i.e._ may not oppose Parliament itself as well as the

King.] He refers to the Grand Army Remonstrance, of the publication of

which he has just heard. "We could perhaps have wished the stay of it

till after the Treaty," he says, for himself and the officers of his

northern part of the Army; "yet, seeing it is come out, we trust to

rejoice in the will of the Lord, waiting His further pleasure." Again

returning to the main topic, Hammond's scruples, he pleads almost

yearningly with him: "Dear Robin, beware of men; look up to the Lord."

Had Hammond really reasoned himself, with other good men, into that

excess of the passive-obedience principle which maintained that as much

good might come to England by an accommodation with the King as by

breaking with him utterly? "Good by this Man," Cromwell exclaims,

"against whom the Lord has witnessed, and whom _thou_ knowest!" Then,

after a few more sentences: "This trouble I have been at," he concludes,

"because my soul loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve, or lose

any glorious opportunity the Lord puts into thy hand." [Footnote:

Rushworth, VII. 1265; Lords Journals, Nov. 21 (Hammond's Letter);

Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 333-345.]

Cromwell's letter to Hammond was too late for its purpose. At Fairfax's

head-quarters at St. Alban's it had been resolved that, until there

should be a satisfactory answer from the Commons to the Army's

Remonstrance, the Army must secure the main object of that Remonstrance

by taking the King's person into its own custody. For the management of

this business it was most important that the officer in command in the

Isle of Wight should be one of unflinching Army principles. Hence, as the

amiable Hammond's scruples were well known, and had indeed been

communicated by him to Fairfax as well as to Cromwell, it had been

resolved, partly in pity to him, partly in the interest of the business

itself, to withdraw him from the Isle of Wight at that critical moment.

Accordingly, on the 2lst of November, Fairfax had penned a letter to

Hammond from St. Alban's, requiring his presence with all possible speed

at head-quarters, and ordering him to leave the island meanwhile in

charge of Colonel Ewer, the bearer of the letter. This letter did not

reach Hammond till Nov. 25 (the very day when Cromwell was writing to him

from Yorkshire); and it was not then delivered to him by Colonel Ewer in

person, but by a messenger. The next day, Sunday, Nov. 26, Hammond wrote

from Carisbrooke Castle to the two Houses of Parliament, informing them

of what had happened, enclosing a copy of Fairfax's letter, and

signifying his intention of obeying it. This communication was brought to

London with all haste by Major Henry Cromwell, Oliver's second son, then

serving under Hammond, and was the subject of discussion in both Houses

on the 27th. Fairfax's intervention between Parliament and one of its

servants was condemned as unwarrantable; a letter to that effect, but in

mild terms, was written to Fairfax; and Major Cromwell was sent back with

a despatch from both Houses to Hammond, instructing him to remain at his

post. Before this despatch reached Hammond, however, there had been a

meeting between him and Ewer, and some intricate negotiations, the result

of which was that he and Ewer left the island together, Nov. 28, bound

for the Army's head-quarters (then removed to Windsor)--Hammond

entrusting the charge of the island in his absence, with strict care of

the King's person, to Major Rolph and Captain Hawes, his subordinates at

Newport, in conjunction with Captain Bowerman, the commandant at

Carisbrooke Castle. Ewer having thus succeeded in withdrawing Hammond

from his post, and having doubtless made other necessary arrangements

while he hovered about the island, the execution of what remained was

left to other hands, and principally to Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and a

Captain Merryman. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Nov. 27 and 30; Parl. Hist.

III. 1133 _et seq._; Rushworth. VII. 1338 _et seq._ In most

modern accounts Ewer simply comes to the Isle of Wight, displaces

Hammond, and removes the King. Not so by any means. It was a complicated

transaction of seven or eight days; Ewer was _in_ the trans-action,

and perhaps the principal in it; but, except in his interview with

Hammond, he keeps in the background.]

Not till the evening of Thursday, Nov. 30, does any suspicion of what

was intended seem to have been aroused in the mind of the King. He was

then still in his lodgings in Newport. The Treaty had come to an end

three days before; the Parliamentary Commissioners for the Treaty had

returned to London; most of the Royalist Lords and other Counsellors who

had been assisting the King in the Treaty had also gone; only the Duke of

Richmond, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, and some few others,

remained. The stir through the island attending the close of the Treaty

and the departure of so many persons had probably covered the coming and

going of Ewer, his interview with Hammond, and certain arrivals and

shiftings of troops which he had managed. But on the Thursday evening,

about eight o'clock, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Lindsey, and a

certain Colonel Cook, who was with them, were summoned from their

lodgings in the town to the King's. A warning had that moment been

conveyed to his Majesty that there were agents of the Army at hand to

carry him off. Immediately Colonel Cook went to Major Rolph's room, and

interrogated him on the subject. The answers were cautious and

unsatisfactory. The fact was, though Major Rolph dared not then divulge

it, that he and his fellow-deputies, Captain Hawes and Captain Bowerman,

knew themselves to be superseded by Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and Captain

Merryman, who had arrived that day with a fresh warrant from Fairfax and

the Army Council, empowering them to finish what Ewer had begun. Only

inferring from Rolph's uneasiness that something was wrong, Colonel Cook

returned to the King and the two Lords. There was farther consultation,

and a second call on Rolph; after which Cook volunteered to go to

Carisbrooke Castle for farther information. It was an excessively dark

night, with high wind and plashing rain; and the King consented to the

Colonel's going only after observing that he was young and might take no

harm from it. The Colonel, accordingly, groped his way through the dark

and rain over the mile and a half of road or cross-road intervening

between Newport and the Castle. His object was to see the commandant,

Captain Bowerman. After some considerable time, spent under the shelter

of the gateway, he was admitted and did see Captain Bowerman, but only to

find him sitting sulkily with about a dozen strange officers, who were

evidently his masters for the moment, and prevented his being in the

least communicative. Nothing was left for the Colonel but to grope his

way back to Newport. It was near midnight when, with his clothes drenched

with wet, he reached the King's lodgings; and there, what a change!

Guards all round the house; guards at every window; sentinels in the

passages, and up to the very door of the King's chamber, armed with

matchlocks and with their matches burning! Major Rolph, glad to be out of

the business, had gone to bed. They managed to rouse him, and to get the

sentinels, with their smoke, removed to a more tolerable distance from

the King's chamber-door. Then, for an hour or more, there was an anxious

colloquy in the King's chamber, the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of

Lindsey urging some desperate attempt to escape, but the King dubious and

full of objections. Nothing could be done; and, about one o'clock, the

Earl and the Colonel retired, leaving the King to rest, with the Duke in

attendance upon him. There were then several hours of hush within,

disturbed by sounds of moving and tramping without; but between five and

six in the morning there came a loud knocking at the door of the King's

dressing-room. When it had been opened, after some delay, a number of

officers entered, headed by Colonel Cobbet. Making their way into the

King's chamber, they informed him that they had instructions to remove

him. On his asking whither, they answered, "To the Castle;" and, on his

farther asking whether they meant Carisbrooke Castle, they answered,

after some hesitation, that their orders were to remove him out of the

island altogether, and that the place was to be Hurst Castle on the

adjacent Hampshire mainland. Remarking that they could not have named a

worse place, the King rose, was allowed to summon the Earl of Lindsey and

all the rest of his household, and had breakfast. At eight o'clock

coaches and horses were ready, and the King, having chosen about a dozen

of his most confidential servants to accompany him, and taken a farewell

of the rest of the sorrowing company, placed himself in charge of Colonel

Gobbet and the troop of horse waiting to be his escort. Having seated

himself in his coach, he invited Mr. Harrington, Mr. Herbert, and Mr.

Mildmay to places beside him. Colonel Gobbet, as the commander of the

party, was about to enter the coach also, when his Majesty put up his

foot by way of barrier; whereupon Cobbet, somewhat abashed, contented

himself with his horse. The cavalcade then set out, gazed after by all

Newport, the Duke of Richmond allowed to accompany it for two miles. A

journey of some eight miles farther brought them to the western end of

the island, a little beyond Yarmouth; whence a vessel conveyed them, over

the little strip of intervening sea, to Hurst Castle that same afternoon

(Dec. 1). The so-called Castle was a strong, solitary, stone blockhouse,

which had been built, in the time of Henry VIII., at the extremity of a

long narrow spit of sand and shingle projecting from the Hampshire coast

towards the Isle of Wight. It was a rather dismal place; and the King's

heart sank as he entered it, and was confronted by a grim fellow with a

bushy black beard, who announced himself as the captain in command. The

possibility of private assassination flashed on the King's mind at the

sight of such a jailor. But, Colonel Cobbet having superseded the rough

phenomenon, the King was reassured, and things were arranged as

comfortably as the conditions would permit. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII.

1344-8 (narrative of Colonel Cook); _Ib._ 1351 and Parl. Hist. III.

1147-8 (Letter to Parliament from Major Rolph and Captains Hawes and

Bowerman); and Sir Thomas Herbert's Memoirs of Charles I. 112-124. The

day of the King's abduction from Newport has been variously dated by

historians. It was really Friday, Dec. 1.]

Meanwhile Fairfax and the Army, by whose orders, all punctually written

and dated, this abduction of the King had been effected, were on the move

to take advantage of it. On Monday the 27th of November, the Commons,

instead of taking up the consideration of the Grand Army Remonstrance as

they had proposed, had again adjourned the subject. On Wednesday the

29th, accordingly, there was a fresh manifesto from Fairfax and his

Council of Officers at Windsor. After complaining of the delays over the

Remonstrance and of the continued infatuation of the Commons over the

farce of the Newport Treaty, they proceeded. "For the present, as the

case stands, we apprehend ourselves obliged, in duty to God, this

kingdom, and good men therein, to improve our utmost abilities, in all

honest ways, for the avoiding those great evils we have remonstrated, and

for prosecution of the good things we have propounded;" and they

concluded with this announcement, "For all these ends we are now drawing

up with the Army to London, there to follow Providence as God shall clear

our way." This document, signed by Rushworth, reached the Commons on the

30th. They affected to ignore it, and still refused, by a majority of 125

to 58, to proceed to the consideration of the Army's Remonstrance. Next

day, Friday Dec. 1, the tune was somewhat changed. The advanced guards of

the Army were then actually at Hyde Park Corner, and the City and the two

Houses were in terror. Saturday, Dec. 2, consummated the business.

Despite an order bidding him back, Fairfax was then in Whitehall, his

head-quarters close to the two Houses, and his regiments of horse and

foot distributed round about. London and Westminster were, in fact, once

more in the Army's possession. Nevertheless both Houses met that day in

due form, and there was a violent debate in the Commons over the Treaty

as affected by the new turn of affairs. The debate broke off late in the

afternoon, when it was adjourned till Monday by a majority of 132 to 102.

The news of the abduction of the King to Hurst Castle had not yet reached

London, and Cromwell was still believed to be at Pontefract. [Footnote:

Commons and Lords Journals of Nov. 27 to Dec. 2, 1648: Parl. Hist. III.

1134-1146; Rushworth, VII. 1349-59.]

CHAPTER II.

TROUBLES IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION

SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH

OF MILTON'S FATHER--SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS-ITALIAN

REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLY

TO THE LAST OF THEM--PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN

PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH--EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIB

AGAIN: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY--

REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN--MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE

HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THE

EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS--STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS:

TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES:

MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST--ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OF

NINE PSALMS FROM THE HEBREW--MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HIS

PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TO

FAIRFAX--BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI.

The two years and four months of English History traversed in the last

chapter were of momentous interest to Milton at the time, were preparing

an official career of eleven years for him at the very centre of affairs,

and were to furnish him with matter for comment, and indeed with risk and

responsibility, to the end of his days. While they were actually passing,

however, his life was rather private in its tenor, and we have to seek

him not so much in public manifestations as in his household and among

his books.

PROBLEMS IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION

SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH

OF MILTON'S FATHER

We left the household in Barbican a rather overcrowded one, consisting

not merely of Milton, his wife, their newly-born little girl, his father,

and his two nephews, but also of his Royalist father-in-law Mr. Powell,

with Mrs. Powell, and several of their children, driven to London by the

wreck of the family fortunes at Oxford. For some months, we now find, the

state of poor Mr. Powell's affairs continued to be a matter of anxiety to

all concerned.

On the 6th of August, 1646, or as soon as possible after Mr. Powell's

arrival in London, he had applied, as we saw, to the Committee at

Goldsmiths' Hall for liberty to compound for that portion of his

sequestered Oxfordshire estates which was yet recoverable. Milton's

younger brother, Christopher, we saw, was at the same time engaged in a

similar troublesome business. Ho too was suing out pardon for his

delinquency on condition of the customary fine on his property; and,

according to his own representation to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee,

the sole property he had consisted of a single house in the city of

London, worth 40_l._ a year.

The Goldsmiths' Hall Committee being then overburdened with similar

applications of Delinquents from all parts of England, the cases of Mr.

Powell and Christopher Milton had waited their turn.

The case of Christopher Milton came on first. His delinquency had been

very grave. He had actually served as one of the King's Commissioners for

sequestrating the estates of Parliamentarians in three English counties.

There seems, therefore, to have been a disposition at head-quarters to be

severe with him. On the 24th of September the Committee at Goldsmiths'

Hall did fix his fine for his London property at 80_l._ (_i.e._ a tenth

of its whole value calculated at twenty years' purchase), receiving the

first moiety of 40_l._ down, and accepting "William Keech, of Fleet

Street, London, goldbeater," as Christopher's co-surety for the payment

of the second moiety within three months. But they do not seem to have

been satisfied that the young barrister had given a correct account of

his whole estate; and it was intimated to him that, while the 80_l_.

would restore to him his London property, the House of Commons would look

farther into his case, and he might have more to pay on other grounds. In

fact, his case was protracted not only through the rest of 1646, but for

five years longer, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee never letting him

completely off all that while, but instituting inquiries repeatedly in

Berks and Suffolk, with a view to ascertain whether he had not concealed

properties in those counties in addition to the small London property for

which he had compounded. [Footnote: It is rather difficult to follow

Christopher Milton's case through the Composition Records and other

notices respecting it; but here is the substance of the first of them:--

_Aug._ 7, 1646, Delinquent's Application to Compound, with statement of

his property, referred to Sub-Committee (Hamilton's Milton Papers, 128,

129); _Aug. and Sept._ 1646, Various proposals of the Committee as to the

amount of his fine--at 80_l._ or "a tenth," at 200_l._ or "a third"--

ending, ending Sept. 24, in the imposition of a fine of 80_l._ for his

London property, with a hint that there might be farther demand

(Hamilton, 62 and 129-30, and Todd. I. 162-3); _Undated, but seemingly

after Dec._ 1646, Note of Christopher Milton as a defaulter for the

latter moiety of his fine (Hamilton, 62). The case runs on through

subsequent years to 1652; nay, as late as Feb. 1657-8 there is trace of

it (Hamilton, 130, Document lxvi.).]

Mr. Powell's case, for different reasons, was more complex. On the 2lst

of Nov. 1646, or somewhat more than three months after he had petitioned

the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for leave to compound, he sent in the

necessary "Particular of Real and Personal Estate" by which his

composition was to be rated. He had been living all the while in his son-

in-law's house in Barbican; and the delay may have arisen from those

circumstances of perplexity, already known to the reader (_antè_, pp.

473-483), which rendered it difficult for him to estimate what the amount

of his remaining property might really be. In the "Particular" now sent

in, though he still designates himself "Richard Powell of Forest-hill,"

the Forest-hill mansion and lands are totally omitted, as no longer his

property in any practical sense, but transferred by legal surrender to

his creditor Sir Robert Pye. All that he can put on paper as his own is

now (1) his small Wheatley property of 40_l._ a year; (2) his "personal

estate in corn and household stuff," left at Forest-hill before the siege

of Oxford, and estimated at 500_l._ if it could be properly recovered and

sold; (3) his much more doubtful stock of "timber and wood," also left at

Forest-hill, and worth 400_l._ on a similar supposition; and (4) debts

owing to him to the amount of 100_l._ Against these calculated assets, of

about 1,800_l._ altogether, he pleads, however, a burden of 400_l._, with

arrears of interest, due to Mr. Ashworth by mortgage of the Wheatley

property, and also 1,200_l._ of debts to various people, and a special

debt of 300_l._ "owing upon a statute" to his son-in-law Mr. John Milton.

As a reason for leniency, the fact is moreover stated that he had lost

3,000_l._ by the Civil War. Actually, if his account is correct, he was

insolvent; or, if his debt to his son-in-law were regarded as cancelled,

he had but about 200_l._ left in the world. In criticising his account,

however, the Committee would be sharp-sighted. They would remember that

it was his interest, on the one hand, to rate his debts and losses at the

highest figure, and, on the other hand, to represent at the lowest figure

all his remaining property, except those items of "corn and household

stuff," and "timber and wood," which he held to have been illegally

disposed of by Parliamentary officials, and for the recovery of which he

might bring forward a claim against Parliament. How the Committee, or the

sub-Committee to whom the case was referred Nov. 26, did proceed in their

calculations can only be conjectured; but the result was that they

charged Mr. Powell on his whole returned property, without any allowance

whatever for his debts. This appears from three documents in the State

Paper Office, all of date Dec. 1646. On the 4th of that month Mr. Powell

went through the two formalities required by law of every Delinquent

before composition. He subscribed the National Covenant in the presence

of "William Barton, minister of John Zachary" (the same clergyman who had

administered the Covenant to Christopher Milton seven months before); and

he took the so-called "Negative Oath" in presence of another witness. On

the same day, before a third witness, he took another and more special

oath, to the effect that the debts mentioned in his return to the

Goldsmiths' Hall Committee were genuine debts, "truly and really owing by

him," and that the estimate of his losses by the Civil War there set down

was also just. Nevertheless, in the paper drawn up on the 8th of December

by two of the Goldsmiths' Hall officials, containing an abstract of Mr.

Powell's case, in which his own statements are accepted, and notice is

taken of a request he had made for an allowance of 400_l._ off the value

of the Wheatley property on account of the mortgage to that amount with

which it was burdened, the fine is fixed by these ominous words at the

close: "Fine at 2 yeeres value, 180_l._" The officials had been strict as

Shylock. Taking the Wheatley property at Mr. Powell's own valuation of

40_l._ a year, without allowing his claim of a half off for the Ashworth

mortgage, they had added 50_l._ a year as the worth of the remaining

1,000_l._ made up by the three other capital items in his return, and

thus appraised him as worth 90_l._ a year in all. At the customary rate

of two years' value, his fine therefore was to be 180_l._ The debts of

the Delinquent might amount to more than his estimated property, as he

said they did; but that was a matter between himself and the world at

large, and not between him and the Commissioners for Compositions.

[Footnote: The documents the substance of which is here given will be

found in the Appendix to Hamilton's Milton Papers (pp. 76-78).--The Rev.

William Barton seems to be the person of that name already known to us as

author of that Metrical Version of the Psalms which the Lords favoured

against Rous's (_antè_, pp. 425 and 512). He may have been an

acquaintance of Milton's; at all events, as minister of a church in

Aldergate Ward, he was conveniently near to Barbican.]

Either the decision of the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee broke Mr. Powell

down unexpectedly, or he had been ailing before it came. It is possible,

indeed, that he had been confined to Milton's house during the

negotiation, signing the Covenant and other necessary documents there,

and unable to walk even the little distance between Barbican and

Goldsmiths' Hall. Certain it is that he died there on or about the 1st of

January, 1646-7, leaving the following will, executed but a day or two

before:--

"In the name of God, Amen!--I, Richard Powell, of Forresthill,

_alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxon, Esquire, being sick and

weak of bodie, but of perfect minde and memorie, I praise God therefore,

this thirtieth daie of December in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand

six hundred fortie and six, doe make and declare this my will and

testament in manner and forme following:--First and principallie, I

comend my soule to the hands of Almighty God my Maker, trusting by the

meritts, death, and passion of his sonn Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, to

have life everlasting; and my bodie I comitt to the earth from whence it

came, to be decentlie interred according to the discretion of my Executor

hereafter named.--And, for my worldlie estate which God hath blessed rue

withall, I will and dispose as followeth:--_Imprimis_, I give and

bequeathe unto Richard Powell, my eldest son, my house at Forresthill,

_alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxford, with all the household

stuffe and goods there now remaining, and compounded for by me since at

Goldsmiths' Hall, together with the woods and timber there remaining; and

all the landes to my said house of Forresthill belonging and heretofore

therewith used, together with the fines and profitts of the said landes

and tenements, to the said Richard Powell and his heires and assignes for

ever: to this intent and purpose, and it is the true meaning of this my

last will, that my landes and goods shalbe first employed for the

satisfieing of my debts and funerall expenses, and afterwards for the

raiseing of portions for his brothers and sisters soe far as the estate

will reach, allowing as much out of the estate abovementioned unto my

said sonn Richard Powell as shall equal the whole to be devided amongst

his brothers and sisters, that is to saie the one halfe of the estate to

himselfe and the other halfe to be devided amongst his brothers and

sisters that are not alredie provided for; in which devision my will is

that his sisters have a third parte more than his brothers.--My will and

desire is that my said sonn Richard doe, out of my said landes and

personall estate herein mentioned, satisfy his mother, my dearely-beloved

wife Ann Powell, that bond I have entered into for the makeing her a

joynture, which my estate is not in a condition now to dischardge.--And,

lastlie, I doe by this my last will and testament make and ordaine my

sonn Richard Powell my sole executor of this my last will, and I doe

hereby revoke all former wills by me made whatsoever. And my will farther

is that, in case my sonn Richard Powell shall not accept the

executorshipp, then I doe hereby constitute and appointe, and doe

earnestly desire, my dearely beloved wife Ann Powell to be my sole

executrix, and to take upon her the mannageing of my estate

abovementioned to the uses and purposes herein expressed. And, in case

she doe refuse the same, then I desire my loveing friend Master John

Ellston of Forresthill to take the executorshipp uppon him and to

performe this my will as is herebefore expressed; to whom I give twentie

shillings, to buy him a ring. And my earnest desire is that my wife and

my sonn have no difference concerning this my will and estate.--

_Item_, I give and bequeathe to my sonn Richard Powell all my houses

and landes at Whately in the countie of Oxford, and all other my estate

reall and personall in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, to

the use, intent, and purpose above herein expressed: And my desire is

that my daughter Milton be had a reguard to in the satisfieing of her

portion, and adding thereto in case my estate will beare it. And, for

this estate last bequeathed, in case my sonn take not upon him the

executorshipp, then my will is my beloved wife shall be sole executrix,

unto whom I give the landes and goods last abovementioned, to the uses

and purposes herein mentioned. In case she refuses, then I appoint Master

John Ellstone my executor, to the uses and purposes above-mentioned.--In

witness hereof I have hereto put my hand and seale the daie and yeare

first above-written.--For the further strengthening of this my last will,

I doe constitute and appoint my loveing friends, Sir John Curson and Sir

Robert Pye the elder, Knights, to be overseers of this my last will,

desireing them to be aiding and assisting to my executor to see my last

will performed, according to my true meaning herein expressed, for the

good and benefitt of my wife and children; and I give them, as a token of

my love, twentie shillings apiece, to buy them each a ring, for their

paines taken to advise and further my executor to performe this my will.

"RICHARD POWELL.

"Subscribed, sealed, and acknowledged to be his last will, in the

presence of

"JAMES LLOYD, JOHN MILTON, HENRY DELAHAY." [Footnote: Found by me at

Doctors' Commons.--The date assigned for Mr. Powell's death depends on

his widow's statement on oath, four years afterwards (Feb. 27, 1650-1),

that "said Richard Powell, her late husband, died near the first day of

January, in the year of our Lord 1646, at the house of Mr. John Milton

situate in Barbican, London." (Todd, I. 57.)]