The History of England
By John Lingard

Chapter I.

CHARLES I.–(Continued.)

Battle Of Edge Hill–Treaty At Oxford–Solemn Vow And Covenant–Battle Of Newbury–Solemn League And Covenant Between The English And Scottish Parliaments–Cessation Of War In Ireland-Royalist Parliament At Oxford–Propositions Of Peace–Battle Of Marston Moor–The Army Of Essex Capitulates In The West–Self-Denying Ordinance–Synod Of Divines–Directory For Public Worship–Trial Of Archbishop Laud–Bill Of Attainder–His Execution.

It had been suggested to the king that, at the head of an army, he might negotiate with greater dignity and effect. From Nottingham he despatched to London the earl of Southampton, Sir John Colepepper, and William Uvedale, the bearers of a proposal, that commissioners should be appointed on both sides, with full powers to treat of an accommodation.[a] The two houses, assuming a tone of conscious superiority, replied that they could receive no message from a prince who had raised his standard against his parliament, and had pronounced their general a traitor.[b] Charles (and his condescension may be taken as a[c]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. August 27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 4]

proof of his wish to avoid hostilities) offered to withdraw his proclamation, provided they on their part would rescind their votes against his adherents.[a] They refused: it was their right and their duty to denounce, and bring to justice, the enemies of the nation.[b] He conjured them to think of the blood that would be shed, and to remember that it would lie at their door; they retorted the charge; he was the aggressor, and his would be the guilt.[c] With this answer vanished every prospect of peace; both parties appealed to the sword; and within a few weeks the flames of civil war were lighted up in every part of the kingdom.[1]

Three-fourths of the nobility and superior gentry, led by feelings of honour and gratitude, or by their attachment to the church, or by a well-grounded suspicion of the designs of the leading patriots, had ranged themselves under the royal banner. Charles felt assured of victory, when he contemplated the birth, and wealth, and influence of those by whom he was surrounded; but he might have discovered much to dissipate the illusion, had he considered their habits, or been acquainted with their real, but unavowed sentiments. They were for the most part men of pleasure, fitter to grace a court than to endure the rigour of military discipline, devoid of mental energy, and likely, by their indolence and debauchery, to offer advantages to a prompt and vigilant enemy. Ambition would induce them to aspire to office, and commands and honours, to form cabals against their competitors, and to distract the attention of the monarch by their importunity or their complaints. They contained among them many who secretly disapproved of the war,

[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 327, 328, 338, 341, 358. Clarendon, ii, 8, 16.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Sept. 6.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 11.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]

conceiving that it was undertaken for the sake of episcopacy,–an institution in the fate of which they felt no interest, and others who had already in affection enrolled themselves among the followers of the parliament, though shame deterred them for a time from abandoning the royal colours.[1]

There was another class of men on whose services the king might rely with confidence,–the Catholics,–who, alarmed by the fierce intolerance and the severe menaces of the parliament, saw that their own safety depended on the ascendancy of the sovereign. But Charles hesitated to avail himself of this resource. His adversaries had allured the zealots to their party, by representing the king as the dupe of a popish faction, which laboured to subvert the Protestant, and to establish on its ruins the popish worship. It was in vain that he called on them to name the members of this invisible faction, that he publicly asserted his attachment to the reformed faith, and that, to prove his orthodoxy, he ordered two priests to be put to death at Tyburn, before his departure from the capital, and two others at York, soon after his arrival in that city.[2] The houses still persisted in the charge; and in all their votes and remonstrances attributed the measures adopted by the king to the advice and influence of the papists

[Footnote 1: Thus Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, told Hyde, that he followed the king because honour obliged him; but the object of the war was against his conscience, for he had no reverence for the bishops, whose quarrel it was.–Clarendon’s Life, 69. Lord Spencer writes to his lady, "If there could be an expedient found to salve the punctilio of honour, I would not continue here an hour."–Sidney Papers, ii. 667.]

[Footnote 2: Thomas Reynolds and Bartholomew Roe, on Jan. 21; John Lockwood and Edmund Caterick, on April 13.–Challoner, ii. 117, 200.]

and their adherents.[1] Aware of the impression which such reports made on the minds of the people, he at first refused to intrust with a commission, or even to admit into the ranks, any person, who had not taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; but necessity soon taught him to accept of the services of all his subjects without distinction of religion, and he not only granted[a] permission to the Catholics to carry arms in their own defence, but incorporated them among his own forces.[2]

While the higher classes repaired with their dependants to the support of the king, the call of the parliament was cheerfully obeyed by the yeomanry in the country, and by the merchants and tradesmen in the towns. All these had felt the oppression of monopolies and ship-money; to the patriots they were indebted for their freedom from such grievances; and, as to them they looked up with gratitude for past benefits,

[Footnote 1: In proof of the existence of such a faction, an appeal has been made to a letter from Lord Spencer to his wife.–Sidney Papers, ii. 667. Whether the cipher 243 is correctly rendered “papists,” I know not. It is not unlikely that Lord Spencer may have been in the habit of applying the term to the party supposed to possess the royal confidence, of which party he was the professed adversary. But when it became at last necessary to point out the heads of this popish faction, it appeared that, with one exception, they were Protestants–the earls of Bristol, Cumberland, Newcastle, Carnarvon, and Rivers, secretary Nicholas, Endymion Porter, Edward Hyde, the duke of Richmond, and the viscounts Newark and Falkland.–Rushworth, v. 16. May, 163. Colonel Endymion Porter was a Catholic.–Also Baillie, i. 416, 430; ii. 75.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, iv. 772; v. 49, 50, 80. Clarendon, ii. 41. On September 23, 1642, Charles wrote from Shrewsbury, to the earl of Newcastle: “This rebellion is growen to that height, that I must not looke to what opinion men are, who at this tyme are willing and able to serve me. Therefore I doe not only permit, but command you, to make use of all my loving subjects’ services, without examining ther contienses (more than there loyalty to me) as you shall fynde most to conduce to the upholding of my just regall power."–Ellis, iii. 291.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642 August 10.]

so they trusted to their wisdom for the present defence of their liberties. Nor was this the only motive; to political must be added religious enthusiasm. The opponents of episcopacy, under the self-given denomination of the godly, sought to distinguish themselves by the real or affected severity of their morals; they looked down with contempt on all others, as men of dissolute or irreligious habits; and many among them, in the belief that the reformed religion was in danger, deemed it a conscientious duty to risk their lives and fortunes in the quarrel.[1] Thus were brought into collision some of the most powerful motives which can agitate the human breast,–loyalty, and liberty, and religion; the conflict elevated the minds of the combatants above their ordinary level, and in many instances produced a spirit of heroism, and self-devoted-ness, and endurance, which demands our admiration and sympathy. Both parties soon distinguished their adversaries by particular appellations. The royalists were denominated Cavaliers; a word which, though applied to them at first in allusion to their quality, soon lost its original acceptation, and was taken to be synonymous with papist, atheist, and voluptuary; and they on their part gave to their enemies the name of Roundheads, because they cropped their hair short, dividing “it into so many little peaks as was something ridiculous to behold."[2]

Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given, not to persons the most fit to

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100. “The godly of those days, when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their phrase."–Ibid. The names were first given a little before the king left Whitehall.–Clarendon, i. 339.]

command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition. To enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to have employed authority and punishment. The command of the royal army was intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl of Essex, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was supposed to have acquired in foreign service. But such experience afforded little benefit. The passions of the combatants despised the cool calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of the contest.

Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march. Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty God that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain. the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observe all the statutes enacted in parliament. Should he fail in any one of these particulars, he renounced all claim to assistance from man, or protection from God; but as long as he remained faithful to his promise, he hoped for cheerful aid from his subjects, and was confident of obtaining the blessing of Heaven. This solemn and affecting protestation being circulated through the kingdom, gave a new stimulus to the exertions of his friends; but it was soon opposed by a most extraordinary declaration on the part of[a] the parliament; that it was the real intention of the king to satisfy the demands of the papists by altering the national religion, and the rapacity of the Cavaliers by giving up to them the plunder of the metropolis; and that, to prevent the accomplishment of so wicked a design, the two houses had resolved to enter into a solemn covenant with God, to defend his truth at the hazard of their lives, to associate with the well-affected in London and the rest of the kingdom, and to request the aid of their Scottish brethren, whose liberties and religion were equally at stake.[1]

In the meantime Waller had reduced Portsmouth,[b] while Essex concentrated his force, amounting to fifteen thousand men, in the vicinity of Northampton. He received orders from the houses to rescue, by force[c] if it were necessary, the persons of the king, the prince, and the duke of York, from the hands of those desperate men by whom they were surrounded, to offer a free pardon to all who, within ten days, should return to their duty, and to forward to the king a petition that he would separate himself from his evil counsellors, and rely once more on the loyalty of his parliament. From Northampton Essex hastened to[d] Worcester to oppose the advance of the royal army.

At Nottingham the king could muster no more than six thousand men; he left Shrewsbury at the head of[e] thrice that number. By a succession of skilful manoeuvres

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 16. Rushworth, v. 20, 21. Journals, v. 376,418.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 9.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Sept. 23.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1642. Oct. 12.]

he contrived to elude the vigilance of the enemy; and had advanced two days’ march on the road to the metropolis before Essex became aware of his object. In London the news was received with terror. Little reliance could be placed on the courage, less on the fidelity of the trained bands; and peremptory orders were despatched to Essex, to hasten with his whole force to the protection of the capital and the parliament. That general had seen his error; he was following the king with expedition; and his vanguard entered the village of Keynton on the same evening on which the royalists halted on Edgehill, only a few miles in advance. At midnight[a] Charles held a council of war, in which it was resolved to turn upon the pursuers, and to offer them battle. Early in the morning the royal army was seen in position[b] on the summit of a range of hills, which gave them a decided superiority in case of attack; but Essex, whose artillery, with one-fourth of his men, was several miles in the rear, satisfied with having arrested the march of the enemy, quietly posted the different corps, as they arrived, on a rising ground in the Vale of the Red Horse, about half a mile in front of the village. About noon the Cavaliers grew weary of inaction; their importunity at last prevailed; and about two the king discharged a cannon with his own hand as the signal of battle. The royalists descended in good order to the foot of the hill, where their hopes were raised by the treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue, a parliamentary officer, who, firing his pistol into the ground, ranged himself with two troops of horse under the royal banner. Soon afterwards Prince Rupert, who commanded the cavalry on the right, charged twenty-two troops of parliamentary horse led by Sir James

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 23.]

Ramsay; broke them at the very onset; urged the pursuit two miles beyond Keynton, and finding the baggage of the enemy in the village, indulged his men for the space of an hour in the work of plunder. Had it not been for this fatal imprudence, the royalists would probably have gained a decisive victory.

During his absence the main bodies of infantry were engaged under their respective leaders, the earls of Lindsey and Essex, both of whom, dismounting, led their men into action on foot. The cool and determined courage of the Roundheads undeceived and disconcerted the Cavaliers. The royal horse on the left, a weak body under lord Wilmot, had sought protection behind a regiment of pikemen; and Sir William Balfour, the parliamentary commander, leaving a few squadrons to keep them at bay, wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, broke through two divisions, and made himself master of a battery of cannon. In another part of the field the king’s guards, with his standard, bore down every corps that opposed them, till Essex ordered two regiments of infantry and a squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, whilst Balfour, abandoning the guns which he had taken, burst on them from the rear. They now broke; Sir Edward Varner was slain, and the standard which he bore was taken; the earl of Lindsey received a mortal wound; and his son, the lord Willoughby, was made prisoner in the attempt to rescue his father[1]. Charles, who, attended by his troop of pensioners, watched the fortune of the field, beheld with dismay the slaughter of his guards;

[Footnote 1: The standard was nevertheless recovered by the daring or the address of a Captain Smith, whom the king made a banneret in the field.]

and ordering the reserve to advance, placed himself at their head; but at the moment Rupert and the cavalry reappeared; and, though they had withdrawn from Keynton to avoid, the approach of Hampden with the rear of the parliamentary army, their presence restored the hopes of the royalists and damped the ardour of their opponents. A breathing-time succeeded; the firing ceased on both sides, and the adverse armies stood gazing at each other till the darkness induced them to withdraw,–the royalists to their first position on the hills, and the parliamentarians to the village of Keynton. From the conflicting statements of the parties, it is impossible to estimate their respective losses. Most writers make the number of the slain to amount to five thousand; but the clergyman of the place, who superintended the burial of the dead, reduces it to about one thousand two hundred men.[1]

Both armies claimed the honour, neither reaped the benefit, of victory. Essex, leaving the king to pursue his march, withdrew to Warwick, and thence to Coventry; Charles, having compelled the garrison[a] of Banbury to surrender, turned aside to the city of Oxford. Each commander wished for leisure to

[Footnote 1: This is the most consistent account of the battle, which I can form out of the numerous narratives in Clarendon, May, Ludlow, Heath, &c. Lord Wharton, to silence the alarm in London, on his arrival from the army, assured the two houses that the loss did not exceed three hundred men.–Journ. v. 423. The prince of Wales, about twelve years old, who was on horseback in a field under the care of Sir John Hinton, had a narrow escape, “One of the troopers observing you,” says Hinton, “came in fall career towards your highness. I received his charge, and, having spent a pistol or two on each other, I dismounted him in the closing, but being armed cap-a-pie I could do no execution on him with my sword: at which instant one Mr. Matthews, a gentleman pensioner, rides in, and with a pole-axe decides the business."–MS. in my possession.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 27.]

reorganize his army after the late battle. The two houses, though they assumed the laurels of victory, felt alarm at the proximity of the royalists, and at occasional visits from parties of cavalry. They ordered Essex to come to their protection; they[a] wrote for assistance from Scotland; they formed a new army under the earl of Warwick; they voted an address to the king; they even submitted to his refusal of receiving as one of their deputies Sir John Evelyn, whom he had previously pronounced a traitor.[1] In the meanwhile the royal army, leaving Oxford, loitered-for what reason is unknown-in the vicinity of Reading, and permitted Essex to march without molestation by the more eastern road to the capital. Kingston, Acton, and Windsor were already garrisoned[b] for the parliament; and the only open passage to London lay through the town of Brentford. Charles had reached Colnbrook in this direction, when he was[c] met by the commissioners, who prevailed on him to suspend his march. The conference lasted two days; on the second of which Essex threw a brigade,[d] consisting of three of his best regiments, into that town. Charles felt indignant at this proceeding. It was in his opinion a breach of faith; and two days[e] later, after an obstinate resistance on the part of the enemy, he gained possession of Brentford, having driven part of the garrison into the river, and taken fifteen pieces of cannon and five hundred men. The latter he ordered to be discharged, leaving it to their option either to enter among his followers or to

[Footnote 1: Journals, 431-466. On Nov. 7 the house voted the king’s refusal to receive Evelyn a refusal to treat; but on the 9th ingeniously evaded the difficulty, by leaving it to the discretion of Evelyn, whether he would act or not. Of course he declined.–Ibid. 437, 439.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Nov. 7.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Nov. 10.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Nov. 11.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Nov. 13.]

promise on oath never more to bear arms against him.[1]

This action put an end to the projected treaty. The parliament reproached the king that, while he professed the strongest repugnance to shed the blood of Englishmen, he had surprised and murdered their adherents at Brentford, unsuspicious as they were, and relying on the security of a pretended negotiation. Charles indignantly retorted the charge on his accusers. They were the real deceivers, who sought to keep him inactive in his position, till they had surrounded him with the multitude of their adherents. In effect his situation daily became more critical. His opponents had summoned forces from every quarter to London, and Essex found himself at the head of twenty-four thousand men. The two armies faced[a] each other a whole day on Turnham Green; but neither ventured to charge, and the king, understanding that the corps which, defended the bridge at Kingston had been withdrawn, retreated first to Beading, and then to Oxford. Probably he found himself too weak to cope with the superior number of his adversaries; publicly he alleged his unwillingness to oppose by a battle any further obstacle to a renewal of the treaty.[2]

The whole kingdom at this period exhibited a most melancholy spectacle. No man was suffered to remain neuter. Each county, town, and hamlet was divided into factions, seeking the ruin. of each other. All stood upon their guard, while the most active of either

[Footnote 1: Each party published contradictory accounts. I have adhered to the documents entered in the Journals, which in my opinion show that, if there was any breach of faith in these transactions, it was on the part of the parliament, and act of the king.]

[Footnote 2: May, 179. Whitelock, 65, 66. Clarendon, ii. 76.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 14.]

party eagerly sought the opportunity of despoiling the lands and surprising the persons of their adversaries. The two great armies, in defiance of the prohibitions of their leaders, plundered wherever they came, and their example was faithfully copied by the smaller bodies of armed men in other districts. The intercourse between distant parts of the country was interrupted; the operations of commerce were suspended; and every person possessed of property was compelled to contribute after a certain rate to the support of that cause which obtained the superiority in his neighbourhood. In Oxford and its vicinity, in the four northern counties, in Wales, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, the royalists triumphed without opposition; in the metropolis, and the adjoining counties, on the southern and eastern coast, the superiority of the parliament was equally decisive. But in many parts the adherents of both were intermixed in such different proportions, and their power and exertions were so variously affected by the occurrences of each succeeding day, that it became difficult to decide which of the two parties held the preponderance. But there were four counties, those of York, Chester, Devon, and Cornwall, in which the leaders had[a] already learned to abhor the evils of civil dissension. They met on both sides, and entered into engagements to suspend their political animosities, to aid each other in putting down the disturbers of the public peace, and to oppose the introduction, of any armed force, without the joint consent both of the king and the parliament. Had the other counties followed the example, the war would have been ended almost as soon as it began. But this was a consummation which the patriots deprecated. They pronounced such engagements

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Dec. 23.]

derogatory from the authority of parliament; they absolved their partisans from the obligations into which they had entered; and they commanded them once more to unsheath the sword in the cause of their[a] God and their country.[1]

But it soon became evident that this pacific feeling was not confined to the more distant counties. It spread rapidly through the whole kingdom; it manifested itself without disguise even in the metropolis. Mea were anxious to free themselves from the forced contribution of one-twentieth part of their estates for the support of the parliamentary army[2] and the citizens could not forget the alarm which had been created by the late approach of the royal forces. Petitions for peace, though they were ungraciously received, continued to load the tables of both houses; and, as the king himself had proposed a cessation of hostilities, prudence taught the most sanguine advocates for war to accede to the wishes of the people, A negotiation was opened at Oxford. The demands of[b] the parliament amounted to fourteen articles; those of Charles were confined to six. But two only, the[c] first in each class, came into discussion. No argument[d] could induce the houses to consent that the king should name to the government of the forts and castles without their previous approbation of the persons to be appointed; and he demurred to their proposal that both armies should be disbanded, until he knew on what conditions he was to return to his capital. They had limited the duration of the conference to twenty days; he proposed a prolongation of[e]

[Footnote 1: Journals, 535. Rushworth, v. 100. Clarendon, ii, 136, 139.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 463, 491, 594, Commons’ Journals, Dec. 13. It was imposed Nov. 29, 1642.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Jan. 7.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Jan. 30.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Feb. 3.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. March 20.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. March 30.]

the term; they refused; and he offered, as his ultimatum, that, whenever he should be reinstated in the possession of his revenues, magazines, ships, and[a] forts, according to law; when all the members of parliament, with the exception of the bishops, should be restored to their seats, as they held them on the 1st of January, 1641; and when the two houses should be secure from the influence of tumultuary assemblies, which could only be effected by an adjournment to some place twenty miles distant from London, he would consent to the immediate disbanding of both armies, and would meet his parliament in person. The Commons instantly passed a vote to recall the[b] commissioners from Oxford; the Lords, though at first they dissented, were compelled to signify their concurrence; and an end was put to the treaty, and to[c] the hopes which it had inspired.[1]

During this negotiation the houses left nothing to the discretion of their commissioners, the earl of Northumberland, Pierrepoint, Armyn, Holland, and Whitelock. They were permitted to propose and argue; they had no power to concede.[2] Yet, while they acted in public according to the tenour of their instructions, they privately gave the king to understand that he might probably purchase the preservation, of the church by surrendering the command of the militia,–a concession which his opponents deemed

[Footnote 1: See the whole proceedings relative to the treaty in the king’s works, 325-397; the Journals of the Lords, v. 659-718; and Rushworth, v. 164-261.]

[Footnote 2: This was a most dilatory and inconvenient arrangement. Every proposal, or demand, or suggestion front the king was sent to the parliament, and its expediency debated. The houses generally disagreed. Conferences were therefore held, and amendments proposed; new discussions followed, and a week was perhaps consumed before a point of small importance could be settled.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 12.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. April 14.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. April 17.]

essential to their own security. At one period they indulged a strong hope of success. At parting, Charles had promised to give them satisfaction, on the following day; but during the night he was dissuaded from his purpose; and his answer in the morning proved little short of an absolute denial. Northumberland also made a secret offer of his influence to mollify the obstinacy of the patriots; but Charles, who called that nobleman the most ungrateful of men, received the proposal with displeasure, and to the importunity of his advisers coldly replied, that the service must come first and the reward might follow afterwards. Whether the parliament began to suspect the fidelity of the commissioners, and on that account recalled them, is unknown. Hyde maintains that the king protracted the negotiation to give time for the arrival of the queen, without whom he would come to no determination; but of this not a vestige appears in the private correspondence between Charles and his consort; and a sufficient reason for the failure of the treaty may be found in the high pretensions of each party, neither of whom had been sufficiently humbled to purchase peace with the sacrifice of honour or safety.[1]

It was owing to the indefatigable exertions of Henrietta, that the king had been enabled to meet his opponents in the field. During her residence in

[Footnote 1: See Clarendon’s Life, 76-80; Whitelock, 68; and the letters in the king’s works, 138-140. Before Henrietta left England, he had promised her to give away no office without her consent, and not to make peace but through her mediation. Charles, however, maintained that the first regarded not offices of state, but offices of the royal household; and the second seems to have been misunderstood. As far as I can judge, it only meant that whenever he made peace, he would put her forward as mediatrix, to the end that, since she had been calumniated as being the cause of the rupture between him and his people, she might also have in the eyes of the public the merit of effecting the reconciliation.–Clarendon’s Life, ibid.] [a]Holland she had repeatedly sent him supplies of arms and ammunition, and, what he equally wanted, of veteran officers to train and discipline his forces.[b] In February, leaving the Hague, and trusting to her good fortune, she had eluded the vigilance of Batten, the parliamentary admiral, and landed in safety in the port of Burlington, on the coast of Yorkshire.[c] Batten, enraged at his disappointment, anchored on the second night, with four ships and a pinnace, in the road, and discharged above one hundred shot at the houses on the quay, in one of which the queen was lodged.[d] Alarmed at the danger, she quitted her bed, and, “bare foot and bare leg,” sought shelter till daylight behind the nearest hill. No action of the war was more bitterly condemned by the gallantry of the Cavaliers than this unmanly attack on a defenceless female, the wife of the sovereign. The earl of Newcastle hastened to Burlington, and escorted her with his army to York. To have pursued her journey to Oxford would have been to throw herself into the arms of her opponents. She remained four months in Yorkshire, winning the hearts of the inhabitants by her affability, and quickening their loyalty by her words and example.[1]

During the late treaty every effort had been made to recruit the parliamentary army; at its expiration, Hampden, who commanded a regiment, proposed to besiege the king within the city of Oxford. But the ardour of the patriots was constantly checked by the caution of the officers who formed the council of war. Essex invested Reading; at the expiration of ten days[e]

[Footnote 1: Mercurius Belgic. Feb. 24. Michrochronicon, Feb. 24, 1642-3. Clarendon, ii. 143. According to Rushworth, Batten fired at boats which were landing ammunition on the quay.]

[Sidenote a: CHAP.I.A.D. 1643] [Sidenote b: 1643 Feb. 16.] [Sidenote c: 1643 Feb. 22.] [Sidenote d: 1643 Feb. 24.] [Sidenote e: 1643 April 27.]

it capitulated; and Hampden renewed his proposal. But the hardships of the siege had already broken the health of the soldiers; and mortality and desertion daily thinned their numbers, Essex found himself compelled to remain six weeks in his new quarters at Reading.

If the fall of that town impaired the reputation of the royalists, it added to their strength by the arrival of the four thousand men who had formed the garrison. But the want of ammunition condemned the king to the same inactivity to which sickness had reduced his adversaries. Henrietta endeavoured to supply this deficiency. In May a plentiful convoy [a] arrived from York; and Charles, before he put his forces in motion, made another offer of accommodation. By the Lords it was received with respect; the Commons imprisoned the messenger; and Pym, in their name, impeached the queen of high treason against the parliament and kingdom.[b] The charge was met by the royalists with sneers of derision. The Lords declined the ungracious task of sitting in judgment on the wife of their sovereign; and the Commons themselves, but it was not till after the lapse of eight months, yielded to their reluctances and silently dropped the prosecution.[1]

In the lower house no man had more distinguished himself of late, by the boldness of his language, and his fearless advocacy of peace, than Edmund Waller, the poet. In conversation with his intimate friends he had frequently suggested the formation of a third party, of moderate men, who should “stand in the gap, and unite the king and the parliament.” In

[Footnote 1: Journals, 104, 111, 118, 121, 362. Commons’ Journals, May 23, June 21, July 3, 6, 1644, Jan. 10.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 20] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. May 23]

this work they calculated on the co-operation of all the Lords excepting three, of a considerable number of the lower house, and of the most able among the advisers of the king at Oxford; and that they might ascertain the real opinion of the city, they agreed to portion it into districts, to make lists of the inhabitants, and to divide them into three classes,–of moderate men, of royalists, and of parliamentarians. The design had been communicated to Lord Falkland, the king’s secretary; but it remained in this imperfect state, when it was revealed to Pym by the perfidy or patriotism of a servant, who had overheard the discourse of his master.[a] Waller, Tomkins his brother-in-law, and half-a-dozen others, were immediately secured; and an annunciation was made to the two houses of “the discovery of a horrid plot to seize the city, force the parliament, and join with the royal army."[1]

The leaders of the patriots eagerly improved this opportunity to quell that spirit of pacification which had recently insinuated itself among their partisans. While the public mind was agitated by rumours respecting the bloody designs of the conspirators, while every moderate man feared that the expression of his sentiments might be taken as an evidence of his participation in the plot, they proposed a new oath and covenant to the House of Commons.[b] No one dared to object; and the members unanimously swore “never to consent to the laying down of arms, so long as the papists, in open war against the parliament, should be protected from the justice thereof, but according to their power and vocation, to assist the forces raised by the parliament against the forces

[Footnote 1: Journals, June 6.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 31] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 6]

raised by the king.” The Lords, the citizens, the army followed their example; and an ordinance was published that every man in his parish church should make the same vow and covenant.[1][a] As for the prisoners, instead of being sent before a court of law, they were tried by a court-martial.[b] Six were condemned to die: two suffered.[c] Waller saved his life by the most abject submission. “He seemed much smitten in conscience: he desired the help of godly ministers,” and by his entreaties induced the Commons to commute his punishment into a fine of ten thousand pounds and an order to travel on the continent. To the question why the principal should be spared, when his assistants suffered, it was answered by some that a promise of life had been made to induce him to confess, by others that too much

[Footnote 1: Journals, May 31; June 6, 14, 21, 27, 29. Rushworth, v. 322-333. Whitelock, 67, 70, 105. The preamble began thus: “Whereas there hath been and now is in this kingdom a popish and traitorous plot for the subversion of the true Protestant religion, and liberty of the subject, in pursuance whereof a popish army hath been raised and is now on foot in divers parts of the kingdom,” &c.–Journals, June 6. Lords’ Journals, vi. 87. I am loath to charge the framers and supporters of this preamble with publishing a deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole congregation: “My Lord, I have to the utmost of my soul prepared to become a worthy receiver; and may I so receive comfort by the blessed sacrament, as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed Protestant religion, as it stood in its beauty in the happy days of Queen Elizabeth, without any connivance at popery. I bless God that in the midst of these publick distractions I have still liberty to communicate; and may this sacrament be my damnation, if my heart do not joyn with my lipps in this protestation."–Rush. v. 346. Connivance was an ambiguous and therefore an ill-chosen word. He was probably sincere in the sense which heattached to it, but certainly forsworn in the sense in which it would be taken by his opponents.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 27] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 30] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 5]

blood had already been shed in expiation of an imaginary plot.[1]

In the meanwhile Essex, after several messages from the parliament, had removed from Reading, and fixed his head-quarters at Tame. One night Prince Rupert, making a long circuit, surprised Chinnor in the rear of the army, and killed or captured the greater part of two regiments that lay in the town.[a] In his retreat to Oxford, he was compelled to turn on his pursuers at Chalgrove; they charged with more courage than prudence, and were repulsed with considerable loss. It was in this action that the celebrated Hampden received the wound of which he died. The reputation which he had earned by his resistance to the payment of the ship-money had deservedly placed him at the head of the popular leaders. His insinuating manner, the modesty of his pretensions, and the belief of his integrity, gave to his opinions an irresistible weight in the lower house; and the courage and activity which he displayed in the army led many to lament that he did not occupy the place held by the more tardy or more cautious earl of Essex. The royalists exulted at his death as equal to a victory; the patriots lamented it as a loss which could not be repaired. Both were deceived. Revolutions are the seed-plots of talents and energy. One great leader had been withdrawn; there was no dearth of others to supply his place.[2]

[Footnote 1: After a minute investigation, I cannot persuade myself that Waller and his friends proceeded farther than I have mentioned. What they might have done, had they not been interrupted, is matter of mere conjecture. The commission of array, which their enemies sought to couple with their design, had plainly no relation to it.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, v. 265, 274. Whitelock, 69, 70. Clarendon, ii. 237, 261.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 18]

To the Root-and-branch men the rank, no less than the inactivity of Essex, afforded a legitimate ground of suspicion. In proportion as he sank in their esteem, they were careful to extol the merits and flatter the ambition of Sir William Waller. Waller had formerly enjoyed a lucrative office under the crown, but he had been fined in the Star-chamber, and his wife was a “godly woman;” her zeal and his own resentment made him a patriot; he raised a troop of horse for the service, and was quickly advanced to a command. The rapidity of his movements, his daring spirit, and his contempt of military rules, were advantageously contrasted with the slow and cautious experience of Essex; and his success at Portsmouth, Winchester, Chichester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, all of which he reduced in a short time, entitled him, in the estimation of his admirers, to the quaint appellation of William the Conqueror. While the forces under Essex were suffered to languish in a state of destitution,[1] an army of eight thousand men, well clothed and appointed, was prepared for Waller. But the event proved that his abilities had been overrated. In the course of a week he fought two battles, one near Bath, with Prince Maurice,[a] the other with Lord Wilmot, near Devizes[b]: the first was obstinate but indecisive, the second bloody and disastrous. Waller hastened from the field to the capital, attributing the loss of his army, not to his own errors, but to the jealousy of Essex. His patrons did not abandon their favourite. Emulating the example of the Romans,

[Footnote 1: His army was reduced to “four thousand or five thousand men, and these much malcontented that their general and they should be misprised, and Waller immediately prized."–Baillie, i. 391. He had three thousand marching men, and three hundred sick.–Journals, vi. 160.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 5] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13]

they met the unfortunate general in triumphal procession, and the speaker of the Commons officially returned him thanks for his services to his country.[1][a]

This tone of defiance did not impose on the advocates of peace. Waller’s force was annihilated; the grand army, lately removed to Kingston, had been so reduced by want and neglect, that Essex refused to give to it the name of an army; the queen had marched without opposition from Yorkshire to Oxford, bringing to her husband, who met her on Edge-hill, a powerful reinforcement of men, artillery, and stores[b]; and Prince Rupert, in the course of three days, had won the city and castle of Bristol, through the cowardice or incapacity of Nathaniel Fiennes, the governor.[2][c] The cause of the parliament seemed to totter on the brink of ruin; and the Lords, profiting of this moment of alarm, sent to the Commons six resolutions to form the basis of a new treaty. They were favourably received; and after a debate, which lasted till ten at night, it was resolved by a majority of twenty-nine to take them into consideration.[3][d]

But the pacific party had to contend with men of

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 284, 285. Clarendon, ii. 278, 290. Journals, July 27. May, 201–205. His first successes were attributed to Colonel Hurry, a Scotsman, though Waller held the nominal command–Baillie, i. 351. But Hurry, in discontent, passed over to the king, and was the planner of the expedition which led to the death of Hampden.–Clarendon, ii. 264. Baillie, i. 371.]

[Footnote 2: Fiennes, to clear himself from the imputation of cowardice, demanded a court-martial, and Prynne and Walker, who had accused him in their publications, became the prosecutors. He was found guilty, and condemned to lose his head, but obtained a pardon from Essex, the commander-in-chief.–Howell, State Trials, iv. 186-293.]

[Footnote 3: Clarendon Papers, ii. 149. The Lords had in the last month declared their readiness to treat; but the proceedings had been suspended in consequence of a royal declaration that the houses were not free, nor their votes to be considered as the votes of parliament.–Journals, vi. 97, 103, 108.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 27] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 27] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. August 5]

the most determined energy, whom no dangers could appal, no difficulties subdue. The next day was Sunday, and it was spent by them in arranging a new plan of opposition.[a] The preachers from their pulpits described peace as the infallible ruin of the city; the common council voted a petition, urging, in the most forcible terms, the continuation of the war; and placards were affixed in the streets, calling on the inhabitants to rise as one man, and prevent the triumph of the malignants.[b] The next morning Alderman Atkins carried the petition to Westminster, accompanied by thousands calling out for war, and utterings threats of vengeance against the traitors. Their cries resounded through both the houses. The Lords resolved to abstain from all public business till tranquillity was restored, but the Commons thanked the petitioners for their attachment to the cause of the country. The consideration of the resolutions was then resumed; terror had driven the more pusillanimous from the house; and on the second division the war party obtained a majority of seven.[1]

Their opponents, however, might yet have triumphed, had they, as was originally suggested, repaired to the army, and claimed the protection of the earl of Essex. But the lord Saye and Mr. Pym hastened to that nobleman and appeased his discontent with

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 320. Journals, Aug. 5, 7, Lords’, vi, 171, 172. Baillie, i. 390. On the Saturday, the numbers were 94 and 65; on the Monday 81 and 79; but the report of the tellers was disputed, and on the second division it gave 81 and 89. Two days later, between two thousand and three thousand women (the men dared mot appear) presented a petition for peace, and received a civil answer; but as they did not depart, and some of them used menacing language, they were charged and dispersed by the military, with the loss of several lives.–Journals, June 9. Clarendon, iii. 321 Baillie. i. 390.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 6] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 7]

excuses and promises. They offered to punish those who had libelled his character; they professed an unbounded reliance on his honour; they assured him that money, clothing, and recruits were already prepared to re-establish his army. Essex was won; and he informed his friends, that he could not conscientiously act against the parliament from which he held his commission. Seven of the lords, almost half of the upper house, immediately retired from Westminster.[1]

The victorious party proceeded with new vigour in their military preparations. Measures were taken to recruit to its full complement the grand army under Essex; and an ordinance was passed to raise a separate force of ten thousand horse for the protection of the metropolis. Kimbolton, who on the death of his father had succeeded to the title of earl of Manchester, received a commission to levy an army in the associated counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Ely, and Hertford.[2] Committees were appointed to raise men and money in numerous other districts, and were invested with almost unlimited powers; for the exercise of which in the service of the parliament,

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 323-333. Northumberland repaired to his house at Petworth; the earls of Bedford, Holland, Portland, and Clare, and the lords Lovelace and Conway, to the king at Oxford. They were ungraciously received, and most of them returned to the parliament.]

[Footnote 2: The first association was made in the northern counties by the earl of Newcastle in favour of the king, and was afterwards imitated by the counties of Devon and Cornwall. The patriots saw the advantage to be derived from such unions, and formed several among their partisans. The members bound themselves to preserve the peace of the associated counties; if they were royalists, “against the malevolent and ambitious persons who, in the name of the two houses, had embroiled the kingdom in a civil war;" if they were parliamentarians, “against the papists and other ill-affected persons who surrounded the king.” In each, regulations were adopted, fixing the number of men to be levied, armed, and trained, and the money which for that purpose was to be raised in each township.–Rushworth, v. 66, 94-97, 119, 381.]

they were made responsible to no one but the parliament itself. Sir Henry Vane, with three colleagues from the lower house, hastened to Scotland to solicit the aid of a Scottish army; and, that London might be secure from insult, a line of military communication was ordered to be drawn round the city. Every morning thousands of the inhabitants, without distinction of rank, were summoned to the task in rotation; with drums beating and colours flying they proceeded to the appointed place, and their wives and daughters attended to aid and encourage them during the term of their labour.[a] In a few days this great work, extending twelve miles in circuit, was completed, and the defence of the line, with the command of ten thousand men, was intrusted to Sir William Waller. Essex, at the repeated request of the parliament, reluctantly signed the commission, but still refused to insert in it the name of his rival. The blank was filled up by order of the House of Commons.[1]

Here, however, it is time to call the attention of the reader to the opening career of that extraordinary man, who, in the course of the next ten years, raised himself from the ignoble pursuits of a grazier to the high dignity of lord protector of the three kingdoms. Oliver Cromwell was sprung from a younger branch of the Cromwells, a family of note and antiquity in Huntingdonshire, and widely spread through that county and the whole of the Fenn district. In the more early part of his life he fell into a state of profound and prolonged melancholy; and it is plain from the few and disjointed documents which have come down to us, that his mental faculties were

[Footnote 1: May, 214. Journals, July 18, 19, 27; Aug. 3, 7, 9, 15, 26. Lords’, vi. 149, 158, 175, 184.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August.]

impaired, that he tormented himself with groundless apprehensions of impending death, on which account he was accustomed to require the attendance of his physician at the hour of midnight, and that his imagination conjured up strange fancies about the cross in the market-place at Huntingdon,[1] hallucinations which seem to have originated in the intensity of his religious feelings, for we are assured that “he had spent the days of his manhood in a dissolute course of life in good fellowship and gaming;"[2] or, as he expresses it himself, he had been “a chief, the chief of sinners, and a hater of godliness.” However, it pleased “God the light to enlighten the darkness” of his spirit, and to convince him of the error and the wickedness of his ways; and from the terrors which such conviction engendered, seems to have originated that aberration of intellect, of which he was the victim during great part of two years. On his recovery he had passed from one extreme to the other, from the misgivings of despair to the joyful assurance of salvation. He now felt that he was accepted by God, a vessel of election to work the work of God, and bound through gratitude “to put himself forth in the cause of the Lord."[3] This flattering belief, the

[Footnote 1: Warwick’s Memoirs, 249. Warwick had his information from Dr. Simcott, Cromwell’s physician, who pronounced him splenetic. Sir Theodore Mayerne was also consulted, who, in his manuscript journal for 1628, describes his patient as valde melancholicus.–Eliis, Orig. Letters, 2nd series, iii. 248.]

[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]

[Footnote 3: In 1638 he thus writes of himself to a female saint, one of his cousins: “I find that God giveth springs in a dry barren wilderness, where no water is. I live, you know where, in Meshec, which they say signifies prolonging,–in Kedar, which signifies blackness. Yet the Lord forsaketh me not, though he do prolong. Yet he will, I trust, bring me to his tabernacle, his resting place.” If the reader wish to understand this Cromwellian effusion, let him consult the Psalm cxix. in the Vulgate., or cxx. in the English translation. He says to the same correspondent, “You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh! I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light. I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true. I hated godliness. Yet God had mercy on me. Oh, the riches of his mercy!"–Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches by Carlyle, i. 121. Warwick bears testimony to the sincerity of his conversion; “for he declared he was ready to make restitution to any man who would accuse him, or whom he could accuse himself to, to have wronged."–Warwick, 249.]

fruit of his malady at Huntingdon, or of his recovery from it, accompanied him to the close of his career: it gave in his eyes the sanction of Heaven to the more questionable events in his life, and enabled him to persevere in habits of the most fervent devotion, even when he was plainly following the unholy suggestions of cruelty, and duplicity, and ambition.

It was probably to withdraw him from scenes likely to cause the prolongation or recurrence of his malady, that he was advised to direct his attention to the pursuits of agriculture. He disposed by sale of his patrimonial property in Huntingdon, and took a large grazing farm in the neighbourhood of the little town of St. Ives.[a] This was an obscure, but tranquil and soothing occupation, which he did not quit till five years later, when he migrated to Ely, on the death of his maternal uncle, who had left to him by will the lucrative situation of farmer of the tithes and of churchlands belonging to the cathedral of that city. Those stirring events followed, which led to the first civil war; Cromwell’s enthusiasm rekindled, the time was come “to put himself forth in the cause of the Lord,” and that cause he identified in his own mind with the cause of the country party in opposition to the sovereign and the church. The energy with which he entered into the controversies of the time attracted public notice, and the burgesses of Cambridge chose him for their representative in both the parliaments called by the king in 1640. He carried with him to the house the simplicity of dress, and the awkwardness of manner, which bespoke the country farmer; occasionally he rose to speak, and then, though his voice was harsh, his utterance confused, and his matter unpremeditated, yet he seldom failed to command respect and attention by the originality and boldness of his views, the fervour with which he maintained them, and the well-known energy and inflexibility of his character.[1] It was not, however, before the year 1642 that he took his place among the leaders of the party. Having been appointed one of the committees for the county of Cambridge and the isle of Ely, he hastened down to Cambridge, took possession of the magazine, distributed the arms among the burgesses, and prevented the colleges from sending their plate to the king at Oxford.[a] From the town he transferred his services to the district committed to his charge. No individual of suspicious or dangerous principles, no secret plan or association of the royalists, could elude his vigilance and activity. At the head of a military force he was everywhere present, making inquiries, inflicting punishments, levying weekly the weekly assessments, impressing men, horses, and stores, and exercising with relentless severity all those repressive and vindictive powers with which the recent ordinances had armed the committees. His exertions were duly appreciated. When the parliament selected officers to command the seventy-five troops of horse, of sixty men each, in the new army under the earl of Essex,[b] farmer Cromwell received the

[Footnote 1: Warwick, 247]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August. 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 14.]

commission of captain; within six months afterwards, he was raised to the higher rank of colonel, with permission to levy for himself a regiment of one thousand horse out of the trained bands in the Eastern association.[a] To the sentiment of honour, which animated the Cavaliers in the field, he resolved to oppose the energy which is inspired by religious enthusiasm. Into the ranks of his Ironsides–their usual designation–he admitted no one who was not a freeholder, or the son of a freeholder, and at the same time a man fearing God, a known professor of godliness, and one who would make it his duty and his pride to execute justice on the enemies of God.[1] Nor was he disappointed. The soldiers of the Lord of Hosts proved themselves a match for the soldiers of the earthly monarch. At their head the colonel, by his activity and daring, added new laurels to those which he had previously won; and parliament, as a proof of confidence, appointed him military governor of a very important post, the isle of Ely.[b] Lord Grey of Werke held at that time the command of the army in the Eastern association; but Grey was superseded by the earl of Manchester, and Colonel Cromwell speedily received the commission of lieutenant-general under that commander.[2][c]

But to return to the general narrative, which has been interrupted to introduce Cromwell to the reader,

[Footnote 1: Cromwell tells us of one of them, Walton, the son of Colonel Walton, that in life he was a precious young man fit for God, and at his death, which was caused by a wound received in battle, became a glorious saint in heaven. To die in such a cause was to the saint a “comfort great above his pain. Yet one thing hung upon his spirit. I asked him what that was. He told me, that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His enemies."–Ellis, first series, iii. 299.]

[Footnote 2: See Cromwelliana, 1–7; May, 206, reprint of 1812; Lords’ Journ. iv. 149; Commons’, iii. 186.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. March 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 28.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. August 8.]

London was preserved from danger, not by the new lines of circumvallation, or the prowess of Waller, but through the insubordination which prevailed among the royalists. The earl, now marquess, of Newcastle, who had associated the northern counties in favour of the king, had defeated the lord Fairfax, the parliamentary general, at Atherton Moor, in Yorkshire, and retaken Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, from the army under Cromwell. Here, however, his followers refused to accompany him any further. It was in vain that he called upon them to join the grand army in the south, and put an end at once to the war by the reduction of the capital. They had been embodied for the defence of the northern counties, and could not be induced to extend the limits of that service for which they had been originally enrolled. Hence the king, deprived of one half of his expected force, was compelled to adopt a new plan of operations. Turning his back on London, he hastened towards the Severn, and invested Gloucester, the only place of note in the midland counties which admitted the authority of the parliament.[a] That city was defended by Colonel Massey, a brave and determined officer, with an obstinacy equal to its importance; and Essex, at the head of twelve thousand men, undertook to raise the siege. The design was believed impracticable; but all the attempts of the royalists to impede his progress were defeated;[b] and on the twenty-sixth day the discharge of four pieces of cannon from Presbury Hills announced his arrival to the inhabitants.[c] The besiegers burnt their huts and retired;[d] and Essex, having spent a few days to recruit his men and provision the place, resumed his march in the direction of London.[e] On his approach to Newbury,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 10.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 26.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Sept. 5.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. Sept. 6.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. Sept. 19.]

he found the royal army in possession of the road before him. I shall not attempt to describe a conflict which has been rendered unintelligible by the confused and discordant narratives of different writers. The king’s cavalry appears to have been more than a match for that of the enemy; but it could make no impression on the forest of pikes presented by the infantry, the greater part of which consisted of the trained bands from the capital. The battle raged till late in the evening, and both armies passed the night in the field, but in the morning the king allowed Essex to march through Newbury; and having ordered Prince Rupert to annoy the rear, retired with his infantry to Oxford. The parliamentarians claimed, and seem to have been justified in claiming, the victory; but their commander, having made his triumphal entry into the capital, solicited permission to resign his command and travel on the continent. To those who sought to dissuade him, he objected the distrust with which he had been treated, and the insult which had been offered to him by the authority intrusted to Waller. Several expedients were suggested; but the lord general was aware of his advantage; his jealousy could not be removed by adulation or submission; and Waller, after a long struggle, was compelled to resign the command of the army intrusted with the defence of the capital.[1][a]

As soon as the parliament had recovered from the alarm occasioned by the loss of Bristol, it had found leisure to devote a part of its attention to the civil government of the kingdom. I. Serious inconveniences

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 286, 290, 293. May, 220-228. Clarendon, iii, 347. Journals, Sept. 26, 28; Oct. 7, 9. Lords’, vi. 218, 242, 246, 247, 347, 356.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Oct. 9.]

had been experienced from the absence of the great seal, the application of which was held by the lawyers necessary to give validity to several descriptions of writs. Of this benefit the two houses and their adherents were deprived, while the king on his part was able to issue patents and commissions in the accustomed form. To remedy the evil, the Commons had voted a new seal;[a] the Lords demurred; but at last their consent was extorted:[b] commissioners were appointed to execute the office of lord keeper, and no fewer than five hundred writs were sealed in one day. 2. The public administration of justice had been suspended for twelve months. The king constantly adjourned the terms from Westminster to Oxford, and the two houses as constantly forbade the judges to go their circuits during the vacations. Now, however, under the authority of the new seal, the courts were opened. The commissioners sat in Chancery, and three judges, all that remained with the parliament, Bacon, Reeve, and Trevor, in those of the King’s Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. 3. The prosecution of the judges on account of their opinions in the case of the ship-money was resumed. Of those who had been impeached, two remained, Berkeley and Trevor. The first was fined in twenty, the second in six, thousand pounds. Berkeley obtained the remission of a moiety of the fine, and both were released from the imprisonment to which they were adjudged.[1]

Ever since the beginning of the troubles, a thorough understanding had existed between the chief of the Scottish Covenanters, and the principal of the English

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, vi. 214, 252, 264, 301, 318. Commons’ Journals, May 15; July 5; Sept. 28. Rushworth, v. 144, 145, 339, 342, 361.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Oct. 11.]

reformers. Their views were similar; their object the same. The Scots had, indeed, fought and won; but they held the fruit of their victory by a doubtful tenure, as long as the fate of their “English brethren” depended on the uncertain chances of war. Both policy and religion prompted them to interfere. The triumph of the parliament would secure their own liberties; it might serve to propagate the pure worship of their kirk. This had been foreseen by the Scottish royalists, and Montrose, who by the act against the plotters was debarred from all access to the king, took advantage of the queen’s debarkation at Burlington to visit her at York. He pointed out to her the probability of the Scottish Covenanters sending their army to the aid of the parliament, and offered to prevent the danger by levying in Scotland an army of ten thousand royalists. But he was opposed by his enemy the marquess of Hamilton, who deprecated the arming of Scot against Scot, and engaged on his own responsibility to preserve the peace between the Scottish people and their sovereign. His advice, prevailed; the royalists in Scotland were ordered to follow him as their leader; and, to keep him true to the royal interest, the higher title of duke was conferred upon him.[1]

If Hamilton was sincere, he had formed a false notion of his own importance. The Scottish leaders, acting as if they were independent of the sovereign, summoned a convention of estates. The estates met[a] in defiance of the king’s prohibition; but, to their surprise and mortification, no commissioner had arrived from the English parliament. National jealousy, the known intolerance of the Scottish kirk, the exorbitant

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iv. 624. Guthrie, 127.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 22.]

claims set up by the Scottish leaders in the late invasion, contributed to deter many from accepting their new offers of assistance;[1] and more than two months were suffered to elapse before the commissioners, Vane, Armyn, Hatcher, and Darley, with Marshall, a Presbyterian, and Nye, an Independent divine, were despatched[a] with full powers to Scotland.[2] Both the convention of the estates and the assembly of the kirk had long waited to receive them; their arrival[b] was celebrated as a day of national triumph; and the letters which they delivered from the English parliament were read with shouts of exultation and tears of joy.[3]

In the very outset of the negotiation two important difficulties occurred. The Scots professed a willingness to take up arms, but sought at the same time to assume the character of mediators and umpires, to dictate the terms of reconciliation, and to place themselves in a condition to extort the consent of the opposite parties. From these lofty pretensions they were induced to descend by the obstinacy of Vane and the persuasions of Johnston of Wariston, one of their subtlest statesmen; they submitted to act as the allies of the parliament; but required as an indispensable

[Footnote 1: “The jealousy the English have of our nation, beyond all reason, is not well taken. If Mr. Meldrum bring no satisfaction to us quickly as to conformity of church government, it will be a great impediment in their affairs here."–Baillie, July 26, i. 372. See also Dalrymple, ii. 144.]

[Footnote 2: The Scots did not approve of this mission of the Independent ministers. “Mr. Marshall will be most welcome; but if Mr. Nye, the head of the Independents, be his fellow, we cannot take it well."–Baillie, i. 372. They both preached before the Assembly. “We heard Mr. Marshall with great contentment. Mr. Nye did not please. He touched neither in prayer or preaching the common business. All his sermon was on the common head of spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all our understandings."–Id. 388.]

[Footnote 3: Baillie, i. 379, 380. Rushworth, v. 467, 470.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 27.]

preliminary, the sanction of the kirk. It was useless to reply that this was a civil, and not a religious treaty. The Scots rejoined, that the two houses had always announced the reformation of religion as the chief of their objects; that they had repeatedly expressed their wish of “a nearer union of both churches;” and that, in their last letters to the Assembly, they had requested the members to aid them with their prayers and influence, to consult with their commissioners, and to send some Scottish ministers to join the English divines assembled at Westminster.[1] Under these circumstances, Vane and his colleagues could not refuse to admit a deputation from the Assembly, with Henderson the moderator at its head. He submitted to their consideration the form of a “solemn league and covenant" which should bind the two nations to prosecute the public incendiaries, to preserve the king’s life and authority in defence of the true religion and the liberties of both kingdoms, to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy, schism, and profaneness, and to establish a conformity of doctrine, discipline, and church government throughout the island. This last clause alarmed the commissioners. They knew that, though the majority of the parliamentarians inclined to the Presbyterian tenets, there existed among them a numerous and most active party (and of these Vane himself was among the most distinguished) who deemed all ecclesiastical authority an invasion of the rights of conscience; and they saw that, to introduce an obligation so repugnant to the principles of the latter, would be to provoke an open rupture, and to marshal the two sects in hostile array against each other. But the zeal of the

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]

Scottish theologians was inexorable; they refused to admit any opening to the toleration of the Independents; and it was with difficulty that they were at last persuaded to intrust the working of the article to two or three individuals of known and approved orthodoxy. By these it was presented in a new and less objectionable form, clothed in such happy ambiguity of language, as to suit the principles and views of all parties. It provided that the kirk should be preserved in its existing purity, and the church of England “be reformed according to the word of God” (which the Independents would interpret in their own sense), and “after the example of the best reformed churches,” among which the Scots could not doubt that theirs was entitled to the first place. In this shape, Henderson, with an appropriate preface, laid[a] the league and covenant before the Assembly; several speakers, admitted into the secret, commended it in terms of the highest praise, and it was immediately approved, without one dissentient voice.[1]

As soon as the covenant, in its amended shape, had received the sanction of the estates, the most eloquent pens were employed to quicken the flame of enthusiasm. The people were informed,[b] in the cant language of the time, 1. that the controversy in England was between the Lord Jesus, and the antichrist with his followers; the call was clear; the curse of Meroz would light on all who would not come to help the Lord against the mighty: 2. that both kirks and kingdoms were in imminent danger; they sailed in one bottom, dwelt in one house, and were members of one body; if either were ruinated, the other could not subsist; Judah could not long continue in liberty, if

[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 381. Clarendon, iii. 368-384.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 24.]

Israel were led away captive: and 3. that they had now a fair opportunity of advancing uniformity in discipline and worship; the English had already laid the foundation of a good building by casting out that great idol, prelacy; and it remained for the Scots to rear the edifice and in God’s good time to put on the cap-stone. The clergy called on their hearers “to turn to God by fasting and prayer;” a proclamation was issued summoning all the lieges between the ages of sixteen and sixty to appear in arms; and the chief command of the forces was, at the request of the parliament, accepted by Leslie, the veteran general of the Covenanters in the last war. He had, indeed, made a solemn promise to the king, when he was created earl of Leven, never more to bear arms against him; but he now recollected that it was with the reservation, if not expressed, at least understood, of all cases in which liberty or religion might be at stake.[1]

In England the covenant, with some amendments was approved by the two houses, and ordered to be taken and subscribed by all persons in office, and generally by the whole nation. The Commons set[a] the example; the Lords, with an affectation of dignity which exposed them to some sarcastic remarks, waited till it had previously been taken by the Scots. At the same time a league of “brotherly assistance” was negotiated, stipulating that the estates should aid the parliament with an army of twenty-one thousand men; that they should place a Scottish garrison in Berwick, and dismantle the town at the conclusion of the war;[b]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 472, 482, 492. Journals, 139, 312. Baillie, i. 390, 391. “The chief aim of it was for the propagation of our church discipline in England and Ireland."–Id. 3.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Sept. 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Nov. 29.]

and that their forces should be paid by England at the rate of thirty-one thousand pounds per month, should receive for their outfit an advance of one hundred thousand pounds, besides a reasonable recompense at the establishment of peace, and should have assigned to them as security the estates of the papists, prelates, and malignants in Nottinghamshire and the five northern counties. On the arrival of sixty thousand pounds the levies began; in a few weeks they were completed; and before the end of the year Leslie mustered his forces at Hairlaw, the appointed place of rendezvous.[1]

This formidable league, this union, cemented by interest and fanaticism, struck alarm into the breasts of the royalists. They had found it difficult to maintain their ground against the parliament alone; they felt unequal to the contest with a new and powerful enemy. But Charles stood undismayed; of a sanguine disposition, and confident in the justice of his cause, he saw no reason to despond; and, as he had long anticipated, so had he prepared to meet, this additional evil. With this view he had laboured to secure the obedience of the English army in Ireland against the adherents and emissaries of the parliament. Suspecting the fidelity of Leicester, the lord lieutenant, he contrived to detain him in England; gave to the commander-in-chief, the earl of Ormond, who was raised to the higher rank of marquess, full authority to

[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 14, 21, 25; Oct. 3; Dec. 8. Lords’ Journals, vi. 220-224, 243, 281, 289, 364. The amendments were the insertion of "the church of Ireland” after that of England, an explanation of the word prelacy, and the addition of a marginal note, stating, that by the expression “according to the word of God,” was meant “so far as we do or shall in our consciences conceive the same according to the word of God."–Journals, Sept. 1, 2.]

dispose of commissions in the army; and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne lord justice in the place of Parsons. The commissioners sent by the two houses were compelled[a] to leave the island; and four of the counsellors, the most hostile to his designs, were imprisoned[b] under a charge of high treason.[1]

So many reinforcements had successively been poured into Ireland, both from Scotland and England, that the army which opposed the insurgents was at length raised to fifty thousand men;[2] but of these the Scots seemed to attend to their private interests more than the advancement of the common cause; and the English were gradually reduced in number by want, and desertion, and the casualties of war. They won, indeed, several battles; they burnt and demolished many villages and towns; but the evil of devastation recoiled upon themselves, and they began to feel the horrors of famine in the midst of the desert which they had made. Their applications for relief were neglected by the parliament, which had converted to its own use a great part of the money raised for the service of Ireland, and felt little inclination to support an army attached to the royal cause. The officers remonstrated in free though respectful language, and the failure of their hopes embittered their discontent, and attached them more closely to the sovereign.[3]

In the meanwhile, the Catholics, by the establishment of a federative government, had consolidated their power, and given an uniform direction to their efforts. It was the care of their leaders to copy the example given by the Scots during the successful war

[Footnote 1: Carte’s Ormond, i. 421, 441; iii. 76, 125, 135.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, v. 226.]

[Footnote 3: Clarendon, iii. 415-418, 424. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 155, 162, 164.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 1.]

of the Covenant. Like them they professed a sincere attachment to the person, a profound respect for the legitimate authority of the monarch; but like them they claimed the right of resisting oppression, and of employing force in defence of their religion and liberties. At their request, and in imitation of the general assembly of the Scottish kirk, a synod of Catholic prelates and divines was convened at Kilkenny; a statement[a] of the grievances which led the insurgents to take up arms was placed before them; and they decided that the grounds were sufficient, and the war was lawful, provided it were not conducted through motives of personal interest or hatred, nor disgraced by acts of unnecessary cruelty. An oath and covenant was ordered to be taken, binding the subscribers to protect, at the risk of their lives and fortunes, the freedom of the Catholic worship, the person, heirs, and rights of the sovereign, and the lawful immunities and liberties of the kingdom of Ireland, against all usurpers and invaders whomsoever; and excommunication was pronounced against all Catholics who should abandon the covenant or assist their enemies, against all who should forcibly detain in their possession the goods of English or Irish Catholics, or of Irish Protestants not adversaries to the cause, and against all who should take advantage of the war, to murder, wound, rob, or despoil others. By common consent a supreme council of twenty-four members was chosen, with Lord Mountgarret as president; and a day was appointed for a national assembly, which, without the name, should assume the form and exercise the rights of a parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 516. Vindiciae Cath. Hib. 4-7. This work has often been attributed to Sir Rich. Belling, but Walsh (Pref. to Hist. of Remonstrance, 45) says that the real author was Dr. Callaghan, presented by the supreme council to the see of Waterford.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. May 10.]

This assembly gave stability to the plan of government devised by the leaders. The authority of the statute law was acknowledged, and for its administration a council was established[a] in each county. From the judgment of this tribunal there lay an appeal to the council of the province, which in its turn acknowledged the superior jurisdiction of “the supreme council of the confederated Catholics in Ireland.” For the conduct of the war four generals were appointed, one to lead the forces of each province, Owen O’Neil in Ulster, Preston in Leinster, Barry Garret in Munster, and John Burke in Connaught, all of them officers of experience and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign princes, to offer their services to their countrymen. Aware that these regulations amounted to an assumption of the sovereign authority, they were careful to convey to the king new assurances of their devotion to his person, and to state to him reasons in justification of their conduct. Their former messengers, though Protestants of rank and acknowledged loyalty, had been arrested, imprisoned, and, in one instance at least, tortured by order of their enemies. They now adopted a more secure channel of communication, and transmitted their petitions through the hands of the commander-in-chief. In these the supreme council detailed a long list of grievances which they prayed might be redressed. They repelled with warmth the imputation of disloyalty or rebellion. If they had taken up arms, they had been compelled by a succession of injuries beyond human endurance, of injuries in their religion, in their

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 1.]

honour and estates, and in the liberties of their country. Their enemies were the enemies of the king.

The men who had sworn to extirpate them from their native soil were the same who sought to deprive him of his crown. They therefore conjured him to summon a new parliament in Ireland, to allow them the free exercise of that religion which they had inherited from their fathers, and to confirm to Irishmen their national rights, as he had already done to his subjects of England and Scotland.[1]

The very first of these petitions, praying for a cessation of arms, had suggested a new line of policy to the king.[2] He privately informed the marquess of Ormond of his wish to bring over a portion of his Irish army that it might be employed in his service in England; required him for that purpose to conclude[a] an armistice with the insurgents, and sent to him instructions for the regulation of his conduct. This despatch was secret; it was followed by a public warrant; and that was succeeded by a peremptory command. But much occurred to retard the object, and irritate the impatience of the monarch. Ormond, for his own security, and the service of his sovereign, deemed it politic to assume a tone of superiority, and to reject most of the demands of the confederates, who, he saw, were already divided into parties, and influenced by opposite counsels. The ancient Irish and the clergy, whose efforts were directed by Scaramp, a papal envoy, warmly opposed the project. Their enemies, they observed, had been reduced to extreme distress; their victorious army under Preston made daily inroads to the very gates of the capital. Why should they descend from the vantage-ground which they had

[Footnote 1: Carte, iii. 110, 111, 136.]

[Footnote 2: Carte, iii. 90.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 23.]

gained? why, without a motive, resign the prize when it was brought within their reach? It was not easy to answer their arguments; but the lords of the pale, attached through habit to the English government, anxiously longed for an armistice as the preparatory step to a peace. Their exertions prevailed. A cessation of arms was concluded[a] for twelve months; and the confederates, to the surprise of their enemies, consented to contribute towards the support of the royal army the sum of fifteen thousand pounds in money, and the value of fifteen thousand pounds in provisions.[1]

At the same time Charles had recourse to other expedients, from two of which he promised himself considerable benefit, 1. It had been the policy of the cardinal Richelieu to foment the troubles in England as he had previously done in Scotland; and his intention was faithfully fulfilled by the French ambassador Senneterre. But in the course of the last year both Richelieu and Louis XIII. died; the regency, during the minority of the young king, devolved on Anne of Austria, the queen-mother; and that princess had always professed a warm attachment for her sister-in-law, Henrietta Maria. Senneterre was superseded

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 548. Carte, ii. App. 1; iii. 117, 131, 159, 160, 166, 168, 172, 174. No one, I think, who has perused all the documents, can doubt that the armistice was necessary for the preservation of the army in Ireland. But its real object did not escape the notice of the two houses, who voted it “destructive to the Protestant religion, dishonourable to the English nation, and prejudicial to the interests of the three kingdoms;" and, to inflame the passions of their partisans, published a declaration, in which, with their usual adherence to truth, they assert that the cessation was made at a time when “the famine among the Irish had made them, unnatural and cannibal-like, eat and feed one upon another;” that it had been devised and carried on by popish instruments, and was designed for the better introduction of popery, and the extirpation of the Protestant religion.–Journals, vi. 238, 289.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Sept. 15.]

by the count of Harcourt, a prince of the house of Lorrain, with the title of ambassador extraordinary. The parliament received him with respect in London, and permitted him to proceed to Oxford. Charles, whose circumstances would not allow him to spend his time in diplomatic finesse, immediately[a] demanded a loan of money, an auxiliary army, and a declaration against his rebellious subjects. But these were things which the ambassador had no power to grant. He escaped[b] with difficulty from the importunity of the king, and returned to the capital to negotiate with the parliament. There, offering himself in quality of mediator, he requested[c] to know the real grounds of the existing war; but his hope of success was damped by this cold and laconic answer, that, when he had any proposal to submit in the name of the French king, the houses would be ready to vindicate their conduct. Soon afterwards[d] the despatches from his court were intercepted and opened; among them was discovered a letter from Lord Goring to the queen; and its contents disclosed that Harcourt had been selected on her nomination; that he was ordered to receive his instructions from her and the king; and that Goring was soliciting succour from the French court. This information, with an account of the manner in which it had been obtained, was communicated to the ambassador, who immediately[e] demanded passports and left the kingdom.[1]

2. Experience had proved to Charles that the very name of parliament possessed a powerful influence over the minds of the lower classes in favour of his adversaries.

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 398-403. Journals, vi. 245, 302, 305, 309, 375, 379, 416. Commons, Sept. 14; Oct. 11; Nov. 15, 22; Jan. 10, 12; Feb. 12.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643 Oct. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643 Nov. 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643 Nov. 22.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644 Jan. 10.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1644 Feb. 12.]

To dispel the charm, he resolved to oppose the loyal members to those who remained at Westminster, and summoned by proclamation both houses to meet him at Oxford on the twenty-second of January in the[a] succeeding year. Forty-three peers and one hundred and eighteen commoners obeyed;[1] the usual forms of parliament were observed, and the king opened the session with a gracious speech, in which he deplored[b] the calamities of the kingdom, desired them to bear witness to his pacific disposition, and promised them all the freedom and privileges belonging to such assemblies. Their first measure was a letter subscribed by all the members of both houses, and directed to the earl of Essex, requesting him to convey to those “by whom he was trusted,” their earnest desire that commissioners might be appointed[c] on both sides to treat of an accommodation. Essex, having received instructions, replied that he could not deliver a letter which, neither in its address nor in its contents, acknowledged the authority of the parliament. Charles himself was next brought forward.[d] He directed his letter to “the lords and commons of parliament assembled at Westminster,” and requested, “by the advice of the lords and commons of parliament assembled at Oxford,” the appointment

[Footnote 1: If we may believe Whitelock (80), when the two houses at Westminster were called over (Jan. 30), there were two hundred and eighty members present, and one hundred employed on different services. But I suspect some error in the numbers, as the list of those who took the covenant amounts only to two hundred and twenty names, even including such as took it after that day. (Compare Rushworth, v. 480, with the Journals.) The lords were twenty-two present, seventy-four absent, of whom eleven were excused.–Journals, vi. 387. The two houses at Oxford published also their lists of the members, making the commons amount to one hundred and seventy-five, the lords to eighty-three. But of the latter several had been created since the commencement of the war.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Jan. 22.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Jan. 29.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Jan. 30.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March. 3.]

of commissioners to settle the distractions of the kingdom, and particularly the manner “how all the members of both houses might meet in full and free convention of parliament, to consult and treat upon such things as might conduce to the maintenance of the true Protestant religion, with due consideration to the just ease of tender consciences, to the settling of the rights of the crown and of parliament, the laws of the land, and the liberties and property of the subject.” This message the two houses considered an insult,[a] because it implied that they were not a full and free convention of parliament. In their answer they called on the king to join them at Westminster; and in a public declaration denounced the proceeding as “a popish and Jesuitical practice to allure them by the specious pretence of peace to disavow their own authority, and resign themselves, their religion, laws, and liberties, to the power of idolatry, superstition, and slavery."[1] In opposition, the houses at Oxford declared that the Scots had broken the act of pacification, that all English subjects who aided them should be deemed traitors and enemies of the state, and that the lords and commons

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 451, 459. The reader will notice in the king’s letter an allusion to religious toleration ("with due consideration to the ease of tender consciences”), the first which had yet been made by authority, and which a few years before would have scandalized the members of the church of England as much as it did now the Presbyterians and Scots. But policy had taught that which reason could not. It was now thrown out as a bait to the Independents, whose apprehensions of persecution were aggravated by the intolerance of their Scottish allies, and who were on that account suspected of having already made some secret overtures to the court. “Bristol, under his hand, gives them a full assurance of so full a liberty of their conscience as they could wish, inveighing withal against the Scots’ cruel invasion, and the tyranny of our presbytery, equal to the Spanish inquisition."–Baillie, i. 428.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. March 9.]

remaining at Westminster, who had given their consent to the coming in of the Scots, or the raising of forces under the earl of Essex, or the making and using of a new great seal, had committed high treason, and ought to be proceeded against as traitors to the king and kingdom.[1] Thus again vanished the prospect of peace; and both parties, with additional exasperation of mind, and keener desires of revenge, resolved once more to stake their hope of safety on the uncertain fortune of war.

But the leaders at Westminster found it necessary to silence the murmurs of many among their own adherents, whose anxiety for the restoration of peace led them to attribute interested motives to the advocates of war. On the first appearance of a rupture, a committee of safety had been appointed, consisting of five lords and ten commoners, whose office it was to perform the duties of the executive authority, subject to the approbation and authority of the houses; now that the Scots had agreed to join in the war, this committee, after a long resistance on the part of the Lords, was dissolved,[a] and another established in its place, under the name of the committee of the two kingdoms, composed of a few members from each house, and of certain commissioners from the estates of Scotland.[2] On this new body the Peers looked with an eye of jealousy, and, when the Commons, in consequence of unfavourable reports, referred to it the task of “preparing some grounds for settling a just and safe peace in all the king’s dominions,” they objected not

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 440-454. Journals, 399, 404, 451, 459, 484, 485; Dec. 30; Jan. 16, 30; March 6, 11. Rushworth, v. 559-575, 582-602.]

[Footnote 2: Journals of Commons, Jan. 30; Feb. 7, 10, 12, 16; of Lords, Feb. 12, 16.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Feb. 16.]

to the thing, but to the persons, and appointed for the same purpose a different committee. The struggle lasted six weeks: but the influence of the upper. house had diminished with the number of its members, and the Lords were compelled to submit,[a] under the cover of an unimportant amendment to maintain their own honour. The propositions now[b] brought forward as the basis of a reconciliation were in substance the following: that the covenant with the obligation of taking it, the reformation of religion according to its provisions, and the utter abolition of episcopacy, should be confirmed by act of parliament; that the cessation of war in Ireland should be declared void by the same authority; that a new oath should be framed for the discovery of Catholics; that the penalties of recusancy should be strictly enforced; that the children of Catholics should be educated Protestants; that certain English Protestants by name, all papists, who had borne arms against the parliament, and all Irish rebels, whether Catholics or Protestants, who had brought aid to the royal army, should be excepted from the general pardon; that the debts contracted by the parliament should be paid out of the estates of delinquents; and that the commanders of the forces by land and sea, the great officers of state, the deputy of Ireland and the judges, should be named by the parliament, or the commissioners of parliament, to hold their places during their good behaviour. From the tone of these propositions it was evident that the differences between the parties had become wider than before, and that peace depended on the subjugation of the one by the superior force or the better fortune of the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Journals, March 15, 20, 23, 29, 30; April 3, 5, 13, 16. On the question whether they should treat in union with the Scots, the Commons divided sixty-four against sixty-four: but the noes obtained the casting vote of the speaker.–Baillie, i. 446. See also the Journals of the Lords, vi. 473, 483, 491, 501, 514, 519, 527, 531. Such, indeed, was the dissension among them, that Baillie says they would have accepted the first proposal from the houses at Oxford, had not the news that the Scots had passed the Tweed arrived a few hours before. This gave the ascendancy to the friends of war.–Baillie, i. 429, 430.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. April 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. April 29.]

Here the reader may pause, and, before he proceeds to the events of the next campaign, may take a view of the different financial expedients adopted by the contending parties. Want of money was an evil which pressed equally on both; but it was more easily borne by the patriots, who possessed an abundant resource in the riches of the capital, and were less restrained in their demands by considerations of delicacy or justice. 1. They were able on sudden emergencies to raise considerable supplies by loan from the merchants of the city, who seldom dared to refuse, or, if they did, were compelled to yield by menaces of distraint and imprisonment. For all such advances interest was promised at the usual rate of eight per cent., and “the public faith was pledged for the repayment of the capital." 2. When the parliament ordered their first levy of soldiers, many of their partisans subscribed considerable sums in money, or plate, or arms, or provisions. But it was soon asked, why the burthen should fall exclusively on the well-affected; and the houses improved the hint to ordain that all non-subscribers, both in the city and in the country, should be compelled to contribute the twentieth part of their estates towards the support of the common cause. 3. Still the wants of the army daily increased, and, as a temporary resource, an order was made that each county should provide for the subsistence of the men whom it had furnished; 4. and this was followed by a more permanent expedient, a weekly assessment of ten thousand pounds on the city of London, and of twenty-four thousand pounds on the rest of the kingdom, to be levied by county-rates after the manner of subsidies. 5. In addition, the estates both real and personal of all delinquents, that is, of all individuals who had borne arms for the king, or supplied him with money, or in any manner, or under any pretence, had opposed the parliament, were sequestrated from the owners, and placed under the management of certain commissioners empowered to receive the rents, to seize the moneys and goods, to sue for debts, and to pay the proceeds into the treasury. 6. In the next place came the excise, a branch of taxation of exotic origin, and hitherto unknown in the kingdom. To it many objections were made; but the ample and constant supply which it promised insured its adoption; and after a succession of debates and conferences, which occupied the houses during three months, the new duties, which were in most instances to be paid by the first purchaser, were imposed both on the articles already subject to the customs, and on a numerous class of commodities of indigenous growth or manufacture.[1] Lastly, in aid of these several sources of revenue, the houses did not refuse another of a more singular description. It was customary for many of the patriots to observe a weekly fast for the success of their cause; and, that their purses might not profit by the exercise of their piety,

[Footnote 1: It should be observed that the excise in its very infancy extended to strong beer, ale, cider, perry, wine, oil, figs, sugar, raisins, pepper, salt, silk, tobacco, soap, strong waters, and even flesh meat, whether it were exposed for sale in the market, or killed by private families for their own consumption.–Journals, vi. 372.] they were careful to pay into the treasury the price of the meal from which they had abstained. If others would not fast, it was at least possible to make them pay; and commissioners were appointed by ordinance to go through the city, to rate every housekeeper at the price of one meal for his family, and to collect the money on every Tuesday during the next six months. By these expedients the two houses contrived to carry on the war, though their pecuniary embarrassments were continually multiplied by the growing accumulation of their debts, and the unavoidable increase of their expenditure.[1] With respect to the king, his first resource was in the sale of his plate and jewels, his next in the generous devotion of his adherents, many of whom served him during the whole war at their own cost, and, rather than become a burthen to their sovereign, mortgaged their last acre, and left themselves and their families without the means of future subsistence. As soon as he had set up his standard, he solicited loans from his friends, pledging his word to requite their promptitude, and allotting certain portions of the crown lands for their repayment–a very precarious security as long as the issue of the contest should remain uncertain. But the appeal was not made in vain. Many advanced considerable sums without reserving to themselves any claim to remuneration, and others lent so freely and abundantly, that this resource was productive beyond his most sanguine expectations. Yet, before the commencement of the third campaign,

[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 460, 466, 482; vi. 108, 196, 209, 224, 248, 250, 272. Commons’ Journals, Nov. 26, Dec. 8, 1642; Feb. 23, Sept. 1643; March 26, 1644. Rushworth, v. 71, 150, 209, 313, 748. It should be recollected that, according to the devotion of the time, “a fast required a total abstinence from all food, till the fast was ended."–Directory for the Publique Worship, p. 32.]

he was compelled to consult his parliament at Oxford. By its advice he issued privy seals, which raised one hundred thousand pounds, and, in imitation of his adversaries, established the excise, which brought him in a constant, though not very copious supply. In addition, his garrisons supported themselves by weekly contributions from the neighbouring townships, and the counties which had associated in his favour willingly furnished pay and subsistence to their own forces. Yet, after all, it was manifest that he possessed not the same facilities of raising money with his adversaries, and that he must ultimately succumb through poverty alone, unless he could bring the struggle to a speedy termination.[1]

For this purpose both parties had made every exertion, and both Irishmen and Scotsmen had been called into England to fight the battles of the king and the parliament. The severity of the winter afforded no respite from the operations of war. Five Irish regiments, the first fruits of the cessation in Ireland, arrived[a] at Mostyn in Flintshire; their reputation, more than their number, unnerved the prowess of their enemies; no force ventured to oppose them in the field; and, as they advanced, every post was abandoned or surrendered. At length the garrison of Nantwich arrested[b] their progress; and whilst they were occupied with the siege, Sir Thomas Fairfax approached with a superior force from Yorkshire. For two hours[c] the Anglo-Irish, under Lord Byron, maintained an obstinate resistance against the assailants from without, and the garrison from within the town; but in a moment of despair one thousand six hundred men in the works threw down their arms,

[Footnote: 1 Rushworth, v. 580, 601. Clarendon, ii. 87, 453.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. November.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Jan. 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Jan. 25.]

and, with a few exceptions, entered the ranks of their adversaries. Among the names of the officers taken, occurs that of the celebrated Colonel Monk, who was afterwards released from the Tower to act a more brilliant part, first in the service of the Commonwealth, and then in the re-establishment of the throne.[1]

A few days before this victory, the Scots had passed the Tweed.[a] The notion that they were engaged in a holy crusade for the reformation of religion made them despise every difficulty; and, though the weather was tempestuous, though the snow lay deep on the ground, their enthusiasm carried them forward in a mass which the royalists dared not oppose. Their leader sought to surprise Newcastle; he was disappointed by the promptitude of the marquess of Newcastle, who, on the preceding day,[b] had thrown himself into the town; and famine compelled the enemy, after a siege of three weeks, to abandon the attempt.[c] Marching up the left bank of the Tyne,[d] they crossed the river at Bywell,[e] and hastening by Ebchester to Sunderland, took possession of that port to open a communication by sea with their own country. The marquess, having assembled his army, offered them battle, and, when they refused to fight, confined them for five weeks within their own quarters. In proportion as their advance into England had elevated the hopes of their friends in the capital, their subsequent inactivity provoked surprise and complaints. But Lord Fairfax, having been joined by his victorious son from Cheshire, dispersed the royalists at Leeds,[f] under Colonel Bellasis, the son of Lord Falconberg; and the danger of being enclosed between two armies induced the marquess of Newcastle to retire[g] from Durham

[Footnote 1: Rush. v. 299, 303. Fairfax, 434, ed. of Maseres.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Jan. 16.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Feb. 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Feb. 28.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March 2.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. March 4.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1644. April 11.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1644. April 23.]

to York. He was quickly followed by the Scots; they were joined by Fairfax, and the combined army sat down before the city. Newcastle at first despised their attempts; but the arrival[a] of fourteen thousand parliamentarians, under the earl of Manchester, convinced him of his danger, and he earnestly solicited[b] succour from the king.[1]

But, instead of proceeding with the military transactions in the north, it will here be necessary to advert to those which had taken place in other parts of the kingdom. In the counties on the southern coast several actions had been fought, of which, the success was various, and the result unimportant. Every eye fixed itself on the two grand armies in the vicinity of Oxford and London. The parliament had professed a resolution to stake the fortune of the cause on one great and decisive battle; and, with this view, every effort had been made to raise the forces of Essex and Waller to the amount of twenty thousand men. These generals marched in two separate corps, with the hope of enclosing the king, or of besieging him in Oxford.[2] Aware of his inferiority, Charles, by a skilful manoeuvre,

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 222. Baillie, ii. 1, 6, 10, 28, 32. Journals, 522.]

[Footnote 2: When Essex left London he requested the assembly of divines to keep a fast for his success. The reader may learn from Baillie how it was celebrated. “We spent from nine to five graciously. After Dr. Twisse had begun with a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large two hours, most divinely confessing the sins of the members of the assembly in a wonderful, pathetick, and prudent way. After Mr. Arrowsmith preached an hour, then a psalm; thereafter Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr. Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours, then a psalm; after Mr. Henderson brought them to a sweet conference of the heat confessed in the assembly, and other seen faults to be remedied, and the conveniency to preach against all sects, especially Anabaptists and Antinomians. Dr. Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing. God was so evidently in all this exercise, that we expect certainly a blessing."–Baillie, ii. 18, 19.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. April 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. June 3.]

passed with seven thousand men between the hostile divisions, and arrived in safety at Worcester.[a] The jealousy of the commanders did not allow them to act in concert. Essex directed his march into Dorsetshire;[b] Waller took on himself the task of pursuing the fugitive monarch. Charles again deceived him. He pretended to advance along the right bank of the Severn from Worcester to Shrewsbury;[c] and when Waller, to prevent him, hastened from Broomsgrove to take possession of that town, the king turned at Bewdley, retraced his steps to Oxford,[d] and, recruiting his army, beat up the enemy’s quarters in Buckinghamshire. In two days Waller had returned to the Charwell, which separated the two armies; but an unsuccessful action at Copredy Bridge[e] checked his impetuosity, and Charles, improving the advantage to repass the river, marched to Evesham in pursuit of Essex. Waller did not follow; his forces, by fatigue, desertion, and his late loss, had been reduced from eight thousand to four thousand men, and the committee of the two kingdoms recalled their favourite general from his tedious and unavailing pursuit.[1]

During these marches and counter-marches, in which the king had no other object than to escape from his pursuers, in the hope that some fortunate occurrence might turn the scale in his favour, he received the despatch already mentioned from the marquess of Newcastle. The ill-fated prince instantly saw the danger which threatened him. The fall of York would deprive him of the northern counties, and the subsequent junction of the besieging army with his opponents in the south would constitute a force

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 670-676. Clarendon, iv. 487-493, 497-502. Baillie, ii. 38.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. June 6.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. June 15.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 20.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. June 29.]

against which it would be useless to struggle. His only resource was in the courage and activity of Prince Rupert. He ordered[a] that commander to collect all the force in his power, to hasten into Yorkshire, to fight the enemy, and to keep in mind that two things were necessary for the preservation of the crown,–both the relief of the city, and the defeat of the combined army.[1]

Rupert, early in the spring, had marched from his quarters at Shrewsbury, surprised the parliamentary army before Newark,[b] and after a sharp action, compelled it[c] to capitulate. He was now employed in Cheshire and Lancashire, where he had taken Stockport, Bolton, and Liverpool, and had raised[d] the siege of Latham House, after it had been gallantly defended during eighteen weeks by the resolution of the countess of Derby. On the receipt of the royal command, he took with him a portion of his own men, and some regiments lately arrived from Ireland; reinforcements poured in on his march, and on his approach the combined army deemed it prudent to abandon the works before the city. He was received[e] with acclamations of joy; but left York the next day[f] to fight the bloody and decisive battle of Marston Moor.[2] Both armies, in accordance with the military tactics of the age, were drawn up in line, the infantry in three divisions, with strong bodies of cavalry on each flank. In force they were nearly equal, amounting to twenty-three or twenty-five thousand men; but there was this peculiarity in the arrangement of the parliamentarians, that in each division the

[Footnote 1: See his letter in Evelyn’s Memoirs, ii. App. 88. It completely exculpates Rupert from the charges of obstinacy and rashness in having fought the subsequent battle of Marston Moor.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, v. 307, 623, 631.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. March 21.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. May 25.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 11.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. July 1.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1644. July 2.]

English and the Scots were intermixed, to preclude all occasion of jealousy or dispute. It was now five in the afternoon, and for two hours a solemn pause ensued, each eyeing the other in the silence of suspense, with nothing to separate them but a narrow ditch or rivulet. At seven the signal was given, and Rupert, at the head of the royal cavalry on the right, charged with his usual impetuosity, and with the usual result. He bore down all before him, but continued the chase for some miles, and thus, by his absence from the field, suffered the victory to slip out of his hands.[1]

At the same time the royal infantry, under Goring, Lucas, and Porter, had charged their opponents with equal intrepidity and equal success. The line of the confederates was pierced in several points; and their generals, Manchester, Leven, and Fairfax, convinced that the day was lost, fled in different directions. By their flight the chief command devolved upon Cromwell, who improved the opportunity to win for himself the laurels of victory. With “his ironsides” and the Scottish horse he had driven the royal cavalry, under the earl of Newcastle, from their position on the left. Ordering a few squadrons to observe and harass the fugitives, he wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, and found them in separate bodies, and in disorder, indulging in the confidence and license of victory. Regiment after regiment was attacked and dispersed; but the "white coats,” a body of veterans raised by Lord Newcastle, formed in a circle; and, whilst their pikemen kept the cavalry at bay, their

[Footnote 1: Sir Thomas Fairfax says that at first he put to flight part of the loyal cavalry, and pursued them on the road to York. On his return he found that the rest of his wing had been routed by the prince.–Fairfax, 438.]

musketeers poured repeated volleys into the ranks of the enemy. Had these brave men been supported by any other corps, the battle might have been restored; but, as soon as their ammunition was spent, an opening was made, and the white coats perished, every man falling on the spot on which he had fought.

Thus ended the battle of Marston Moor. It was not long, indeed, before the royal cavalry, amounting to three thousand men, made their appearance returning from the pursuit. But the aspect of the field struck dismay into the heart of Rupert. His thoughtless impetuosity was now exchanged for an excess of caution; and after a few skirmishes he withdrew. Cromwell spent the night on the spot; but it was to him a night of suspense and anxiety. His troopers were exhausted with the fatigue of the day; the infantry was dispersed, and without orders; and he expected every moment a nocturnal attack from Rupert, who had it in his power to collect a sufficient force from the several corps of royalists which had suffered little in the battle. But the morning brought him the pleasing intelligence that the prince had hastened by a circuitous route to York. The immediate fruit of the victory were fifteen hundred prisoners and the whole train of artillery. The several loss of the two parties is unknown; those who buried the slain numbered the dead bodies at four thousand one hundred and fifty.[1]

This disastrous battle extinguished the power of the

[Footnote 1: For this battle see Rushworth, v. 632; Thurloe, i. 39; Clarendon, iv. 503; Baillie, II, 36, 40; Whitelock, 89; Memorie of the Somervilles, Edin. 1815. Cromwell sent messengers from the field to recall the three generals who had fled. Leven was found in bed at Leeds about noon; and having read the despatch, struck his breast, exclaiming, “I would to God I had died upon the place."–Ibid.; also Turner, Memoirs, 38.]

royalists in the northern counties. The prince and the marquess had long cherished a deeply-rooted antipathy to each other. It had displayed itself in a consultation respecting the expediency of fighting; it was not probable that it would be appeased by their defeat. They separated the next morning; Rupert, hastening to quit a place where he had lost so gallant an army, returned to his former command in the western counties; Newcastle, whether he despaired of the royal cause, or was actuated by a sense of injurious treatment, taking with him the lords Falconberg and Widerington, sought an asylum on the continent. York, abandoned to its fate, opened its gates to the enemy, on condition that the citizens should not be molested, and that the garrison should retire to Skipton. The combined army immediately separated by order of the committee of both kingdoms. Manchester returned into Nottinghamshire, Fairfax remained in York, and the Scots under Leven retracing their steps, closed the campaign with the reduction of Newcastle. They had no objection to pass the winter in the neighbourhood of their own country; the parliament felt no wish to see them nearer to the English capital.[1]

In the mean time Essex, impatient of the control exercised by that committee, ventured to act in opposition to its orders; and the two houses, though they reprimanded him for his disobedience, allowed him to pursue the plan which he had formed of dissolving with his army the association of royalists in Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall.[a] He relieved Lime, which had long been besieged by Prince Maurice, one[a] of the king’s nephews, and advanced in the direction

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 504.]

[Sidenote a: A.D.. 1644. June 25.]

of Exeter, where the queen a few days before[a] had been delivered of a daughter. That princess, weary of the dangers to which she was exposed in England, repaired to Falmouth, put to sea[b] with a squadron of ten Dutch or Flemish vessels, and, escaping the keen pursuit of the English fleet from Torbay, reached[c] in safety the harbour of Brest.[1]

Essex, regardless of the royalists who assembled in the rear of his army, pursued[d] his march into Cornwall. To most men his conduct was inexplicable. Many suspected that he sought to revenge himself on the parliament by betraying his forces into the hands of the enemy. At Lestwithiel he received[e] two letters, one, in which he was solicited by the king to unite with him in compelling his enemies to consent to a peace, which while it ascertained the legal rights of the throne, might secure the religion and liberties of the people; another from eighty-four of the principal officers in the royal army, who pledged themselves to draw the sword against the sovereign himself, if he should ever swerve from the principles which he had avowed in his letter. Both were disappointed. Essex sent the letters to the two houses, and coldly replied that his business was to fight, that of the parliament to negotiate.

[Footnote 1: I doubt whether Essex had any claim to that generosity of character which is attributed to him by historians. The queen had been delivered of a princess, Henrietta Maria, at Exeter, and sent to him for a passport to go to Bath or Bristol for the recovery of her health. He refused, but insultingly offered to attend her himself, if she would go to London, where she had been already impeached of high treason.–Rushworth, v. 684. I observe that even before the war, when the king had written to the queen to intimate his wish to Essex, as lord chamberlain, to prepare the palace for his reception, she desired Nicholas to do it adding, "their lordships are to great princes to receave anye direction from me."–Evelyn’s Mem. ii. App. 78.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 16.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. July 14.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. July 15.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 26.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. August 6.]

But he now found himself in a most critical situation, cut off from all intercourse with London, and enclosed between the sea and the combined forces of the king, Prince Maurice, and Sir Richard Grenville.[a] His cavalry, unable to obtain subsistence, burst in the night, though not without loss, through the lines of the enemy. But each day the royalists won some of his posts; their artillery commanded the small haven of Foy, through which, alone he could obtain provisions; and his men, dismayed by a succession of disasters, refused to stand to their colours. In this emergency Essex, with two other officers, escaped from the beach in a boat to Plymouth; and Major-General Skippon offered to capitulate for the rest of the army.[b] On the surrender of their arms, ammunition, and artillery, the men were allowed to march to Pool and Wareham, and thence were conveyed in transports to Portsmouth, where commissioners from the parliament met them with a supply of clothes and money. The lord general repaired to his own house, calling for an investigation both into his own conduct and into that of the committee, who had neglected to disperse the royalists in the rear of his army, and had betrayed the cause of the people, to gratify their own jealousy by the disgrace of an opponent. To soothe his wounded mind, the houses ordered a joint deputation to wait on him, to thank him for his fidelity to the cause, and to express their estimation of the many and eminent services which he had rendered to his country.

This success elevated the hopes of the king, who, assuming a tone of conscious superiority, invited all his

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 683, 684, 690-693, 699-711. Clarend. iv. 511-518-527.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Aug 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Sept. 1.]

subjects to accompany him to London, and aid him in compelling the parliament to accept of peace.[a]But the energies of his opponents were not exhausted. They quickly recruited their diminished forces; the several corps under Essex, Waller, and Manchester were united; and, while the royalists marched through Whitechurch to Newbury, a more numerous army moved in a parallel direction through Basingstoke to Reading.[b]There the leaders (the lord general was absent under the pretence of indisposition), hearing of reinforcements pouring into Oxford, resolved to avail themselves of their present superiority, and to attack, at the same moment, the royalist positions at Show on the eastern, and at Speen on the western side of the town. The action in both places was obstinate, the result, as late as ten at night, doubtful; but the king, fearing to be surrounded the next day, assembled his men under the protection of Donnington Castle, and[c] marched towards Wallingford, a movement which was executed without opposition by the light of the moon, and in full view of the enemy.[d]In a few days he returned with a more numerous force, and, receiving the artillery and ammunition, which for security he had left in Donnington Castle, conveyed it without molestation to Wallingford. As he passed and repassed, the parliamentarians kept within their lines, and even refused the battle which he offered. This backwardness, whether it arose from internal dissension, or from inferiority of numbers, provoked loud complaints, not only in the capital, where the conflict at Newbury had been celebrated as a victory, but in the two houses, who had ordered the army to follow up its success. The generals, having dispersed their troops in winter quarters, hastened to vindicate their

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Sept. 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Oct. 27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 6.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. Nov. 9.]

own conduct. Charges of cowardice, or disaffection, or incapacity, were made and retorted by one against the other; and that cause which had nearly triumphed over the king seemed now on the point of being lost through the personal jealousies and contending passions of its leaders.[1]

The greater part of these quarrels had originated in the rivalry of ambition; but those in the army of the earl of Manchester were produced by religious jealousy, and on that account were followed by more important results. When the king attempted to arrest the five members, Manchester, at that time Lord Kymbolton, was the only peer whom he impeached. This circumstance endeared Kymbolton to the party; his own safety bound him more closely to its interests. On the formation of the army of the seven associated counties, he accepted, though with reluctance, the chief command; for his temper and education had formed him to shine in the senate rather than the camp; and, aware of his own inexperience, he devolved on his council the chief direction of military operations, reserving to himself the delicate and important charge of harmonizing and keeping together the discordant elements of which his force was composed. The second in command, as the reader is aware, was Cromwell, with the rank of lieutenant-general. In the parade of sanctity both Manchester and Cromwell seemed equal proficients; in belief and practice they followed two opposite parties. The first sought the exclusive establishment of the presbyterian system; the other contended for the common right of mankind to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. But this difference of opinion

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 715-732. Clarendon, 546-552.]

provoked no dissension between them. The more gentle and accommodating temper of Manchester was awed by the superior genius of Cromwell, who gradually acquired the chief control of the army, and offered his protection to the Independents under his command. In other quarters these religionists suffered restraint and persecution from the zeal of the Presbyterians; the indulgence which they enjoyed under Cromwell scandalized and alarmed the orthodoxy of the Scottish commissioners, who obtained, as a counterpoise to the influence of that officer, the post of major-general for Crawford, their countryman, and a rigid Presbyterian. Cromwell and Crawford instantly became rivals and enemies. The merit of the victory at Marston Moor had been claimed by the Independents, who magnified the services of their favourite commander, and ridiculed the flight and cowardice of the Scots. Crawford retorted the charge, and deposed that Cromwell, having received a slight wound in the neck at the commencement of the action, immediately retired and did not afterwards appear in the field.[a]The lieutenant-general in revenge exhibited articles against Crawford before the committee of war, and the colonels threatened to resign their commissions unless he were removed; while on the other hand Manchester and the chaplains of the army gave testimony in his favour, and the Scottish commissioners, assuming the defence of their countryman, represented him as a martyr in the cause of religion.[1]

But before this quarrel was terminated a second of greater importance arose. The indecisive action at Newbury, and the refusal of battle at Donnington, had

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 40, 41, 42, 49, 57, 60, 66, 69. Hollis, 15.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Sept. 5.]

excited the discontent of the public;[a]the lower house ordered an inquiry into the conduct of the generals and the state of the armies; and the report made by the committee of both kingdoms led to a vote that a plan for the organization of the national force, in a new and more efficient form, should be immediately prepared. Waller and Cromwell, who were both members of the house, felt dissatisfied with the report. At the next meeting each related his share in the transactions which had excited such loud complaints; and the latter embraced the opportunity to prefer a charge of disaffection against the earl of Manchester, who, he pretended, was unwilling that the royal power should suffer additional humiliation, and on that account would never permit his army to engage, unless it were evidently to its disadvantage. Manchester in the House of Lords repelled the imputation with warmth, vindicated his own conduct, and retorted on his accuser, that he had yet to learn in what place Lieutenant General Cromwell with his cavalry had posted himself on the day of battle.[1]

It is worthy of remark, that, even at this early period, Essex, Manchester, and the Scottish commissioners suspected Cromwell with his friends of a design to obtain the command of the army, to abolish the House of Lords, divide the House of Commons, dissolve the covenant between the two nations, and erect a new government according to his own principles. To defeat this project it was at first proposed that the chancellor of Scotland should denounce him as an incendiary, and demand his punishment according to the late treaty; but, on the reply of the

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 732. Journals, Nov. 22, 23, 25. Lords’ Journals, vii. 67, 78, 80, 141. Whitelock, 116.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Nov. 25.]

lawyers whom they consulted, that their proofs were insufficient to sustain the charge, it was resolved that Manchester should accuse him before the Lords of having expressed a wish to reduce the peers to the state of private gentlemen; of having declared his readiness to fight against the Scots, whose chief object was to establish religious despotism; and of having threatened to compel, with the aid of the Independents, both king and parliament to accept such conditions as he should dictate.[a]This charge, with a written statement by Manchester in his own vindication, was communicated to the Commons; and they, after some objections in point of form and privilege, referred it to a committee, where its consideration was postponed from time to time, till at last it was permitted to sleep in silence.[1]

Cromwell did not hesitate to wreak his revenge on Essex and Manchester, though the blow would probably recoil upon himself.[b]He proposed in the Commons what was afterwards called the “self-denying ordinance,” that the members of both houses should be excluded from all offices, whether civil or military. He would not, he said, reflect on what was passed, but suggest a remedy for the future. The nation was weary of the war; and he spoke the language both of friends and foes, when he said that the blame of its continuance rested with the two houses, who could not be expected to bring it to a speedy termination as long as so many of their members derived from military commands wealth and authority, and consideration. His real object was open to every eye; still the motion met with the concurrence of his own party,

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 76, 77. Journals, Dec. 2, 4; Jan. 18. Lords’ Journals, 79, 80. Whitelock, 116, 117. Hollis, 18.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 9.]

and of all whose patience had been exhausted by the quarrels among the commanders; and, when an exemption was suggested in favour of the lord-general, it was lost on a division by seven voices, in a house of one hundred and ninety-three members.[a] However, the strength of the opposition encouraged the peers to speak with more than their usual freedom.[b] They contended, that the ordinance was unnecessary, since the committee was employed in framing a new model for the army; that it was unjust, since it would operate to the exclusion of the whole peerage from office, while the Commons remained equally eligible to sit in parliament, or to fill civil or military employments. It was in vain that the lower house remonstrated.[c] The Lords replied that they had thrown out the bill, but would consent to another of similar import, provided it did not extend to commands in the army.

But by this time the committee of both kingdoms had completed their plan of military reform, which, in its immediate operation, tended to produce the same effect as the rejected ordinance.[d] It obtained the sanction of the Scottish commissioners, who consented, though with reluctance, to sacrifice their friends in the upper house, for the benefit of a measure which promised to put an end to the feuds and delays of the former system, and to remove from the army Cromwell, their most dangerous enemy. If it deprived them of the talents of Essex and Manchester, which they seem never to have prized, it gave them in exchange a commander-in-chief, whose merit they had learned to appreciate during his service in conjunction[e]

[Transcriber’s Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 9, 17; Jan. 7, 10, 13. Lords’ Journals, 129, 131, 134, 135. Rushworth, vi. 3-7.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 21.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Jan. 15.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. Jan. 9.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1645. Jan. 21.]

with their forces at the siege of York. By the “new model” it was proposed that the army should consist of one thousand dragoons, six thousand six hundred cavalry in six, and fourteen thousand four hundred infantry in twelve regiments, under Sir Thomas Fairfax as the first, and Major-General Skippon as the second, in command. The Lords hesitated;[a] but after several conferences and debates they returned it with a few amendments to the Commons, and it was published by sound of drum in London and Westminster.[1]

This victory was followed by another. Many of the peers still clung to the notion that it was intended to abolish their privileges, and therefore resolved not to sink without a struggle. They insisted that the new army should take the covenant, and subscribe the directory for public worship; they refused their approbation to more than one half of the officers named by Sir Thomas Fairfax; and they objected to the additional powers offered by the Commons to that general. On these subjects the divisions in the house were nearly equal, and whenever the opposite party obtained the majority, it was by the aid of a single proxy, or of the clamours of the mob. At length a declaration was made by the Commons, that “they held themselves obliged to preserve the peerage with the rights and privileges belonging to the House of Peers equally as their own, and would really perform the same."[b] Relieved from their fears, the Lords yielded to a power which they knew not how to control; the different bills were passed, and among them a new self-denying ordinance, by which every member of either house was discharged from all[c]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 9, 13, 25, 27; Feb. 11, 15; of Lords, 159, 175, 169, 193, 195, 204. Clarendon, ii. 569.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Feb. 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. March 25.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. April 3.]

civil and military offices, conferred by authority of parliament after the expiration of forty days.[1]

Hitherto I have endeavoured to preserve unbroken the chain of military and political events: it is now time to call the attention of the reader to the ecclesiastical occurrences of the two last years.

I. As religion was acknowledged to be the first of duties, to put down popery and idolatry, and to purge the church from superstition and corruption, had always been held out by the parliament as its grand and most important object. It was this which, in the estimation of many of the combatants, gave the chief interest to the quarrel; this which made it, according to the language of the time, “a wrestle between Christ and antichrist,” 1. Every good Protestant had been educated in the deepest horror of popery; there was a magic in the very word which awakened the prejudices and inflamed the passions of men; and the reader must have observed with what art and perseverance the patriot leaders employed it to confirm the attachment, and quicken the efforts of their followers. Scarcely a day occurred in which some order or ordinance, local or general, was not issued by the two houses; and very few of these, even on the most indifferent subjects, were permitted to pass without the assertion that the war had been originally provoked, and was still continued by the papists, for the sole purpose of the establishment of popery on the ruins of Protestantism. The constant repetition acted on the minds of the people as a sufficient proof of the charge; and the denials, the protestations, the appeals to heaven made by the king, were disregarded and condemned as unworthy artifices, adopted to deceive

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 25, March 21; of Lords, 287, 303.]

the credulous and unwary. Under such circumstances, the Catholics found themselves exposed to insult and persecution wherever the influence of the parliament extended: for protection they were compelled to flee to the quarters of the royalists, and to fight under their banners; and this again confirmed the prejudice against them, and exposed them to additional obloquy and punishment.

But the chiefs of the patriots, while for political purposes they pointed the hatred of their followers against the Catholics, appear not to have delighted unnecessarily in blood. They ordered, indeed, searches to be made for Catholic clergymen; they offered and paid rewards for their apprehension, and they occasionally gratified the zealots with the spectacle of an execution. The priests who suffered death in the course of the war amounted on an average to three for each year, a small number, if we consider the agitated state of the public mind during that period.[1] But it was the property of the lay Catholics which they chiefly sought, pretending that, as the war had been caused by their intrigues, its expenses ought to be defrayed by their forfeitures. It was ordained that two-thirds of the whole estate, both real and personal, of every papist, should be seized and sold for

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 133, 254. See their Memoirs in Challoner, ii. 209-319. In 1643, after a solemn fast, the five chaplains of the queen were apprehended and sent to France, their native country, and the furniture of her chapel at Somerset House was publicly burnt. The citizens were so edified with the sight that they requested and obtained permission to destroy the gilt cross in Cheapside. The lord mayor and aldermen graced the ceremony with their presence, and “antichrist” was thrown into the flames, while the bells of St. Peter’s rang a merry peal, the city waits played melodious tunes on the leads of the church, the train bands discharged volleys of musketry, and the spectators celebrated the triumph with acclamations of joy.–Parl. Chron. 294, 327.]

the benefit of the nation; and that by the name of papist should be understood all persons who, within a certain period, had harboured any priest, or had been convicted of recusancy, or had attended at the celebration of mass, or had suffered their children to be educated in the Catholic worship, or had refused to take the oath of abjuration; an oath lately devised, by which all the distinguishing tenets of the Catholic religion were specifically renounced.[1]

II. A still more important object was the destruction of the episcopal establishment, a consummation most devoutly wished by the saints, by all who objected to the ceremonies in the liturgy, or had been scandalized by the pomp of the prelates, or had smarted under the inflictions of their zeal for the preservation of orthodoxy. It must be confessed that these prelates, in the season of prosperity, had not borne their facilities with meekness; that the frequency of prosecutions in the ecclesiastical courts had produced irritation and hatred; and that punishments had been often awarded by those courts rigorous beyond the measure of the offence. But the day of retribution arrived. Episcopacy was abolished; an impeachment suspended over the heads of most of the bishops, kept them in a state of constant apprehension; and the inferior clergy, wherever the parliamentary arms prevailed, suffered all those severities which they had formerly inflicted on their dissenting brethren. Their enemies accused them of immorality or malignancy; and the two houses invariably sequestrated their livings, and assigned the profits to other ministers, whose sentiments accorded better with the new

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 17, 1643. Collections of Ordinances, 22.]

standard of orthodoxy and patriotism admitted at Westminster.

The same was the fate of the ecclesiastics in the two universities, which had early become objects of jealousy and vengeance to the patriots. They had for more than a century inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience, and since the commencement of the war had more than once advanced considerable sums to the king. Oxford, indeed, enjoyed a temporary exemption from their control; but Cambridge was already in their power, and a succession of feuds between the students and the townsmen afforded a decent pretext for their interference. Soldiers were quartered in the colleges; the painted windows and ornaments of the churches were demolished; and the persons of the inmates were subjected to insults and injuries. In January, 1644, an ordinance passed for the reform of the university;[a] and it was perhaps fortunate that the ungracious task devolved in the first instance on the military commander, the earl of Manchester, who to a taste for literature added a gentleness of disposition adverse from acts of severity. Under his superintendence the university was “purified;” and ten heads of houses, with sixty-five fellows, were expelled. Manchester confined himself to those who, by their hostility to the parliament, had rendered themselves conspicuous, or through fear had already abandoned their stations; but after his departure, the meritorious undertaking was resumed by a committee, and the number of expulsions was carried to two hundred.[1] Thus the clerical establishment gradually crumbled

[Footnote 1: Journals of Lords, vi. 389; of Commons, Jan. 20, 1644. Neal, 1, iii. c. 3. Walker, i. 112. Querela Cantab. in Merc. Rust. 178-210.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Jan. 22.]

away; part after part was detached from the edifice; and the reformers hastened to raise what they deemed a more scriptural fabric on the ruins. In the month of June, 1643, one hundred and twenty individuals selected by the Lords and Commons, under the denomination of pious, godly, and judicious divines, were summoned to meet at Westminster; and, that their union might bear a more correct resemblance to the assembly of the Scottish kirk, thirty laymen, ten lords, and twenty commoners were voted additional members. The two houses prescribed the form of the meetings, and the subject of the debates: they enjoined an oath to be taken on admission, and the obligation of secrecy till each question should be determined; and they ordained that every decision should be laid before themselves, and considered of no force until it had been confirmed by their approbation.[1] Of the divines summoned, a portion was composed of Episcopalians; and these, through motives of conscience or loyalty, refused to attend: the majority consisted of Puritan ministers, anxious to establish the Calvinistic discipline and doctrine of the foreign reformed churches; and to these was opposed a small but formidable band of Independent clergymen, who, under the persecution of Archbishop Laud, had formed congregations in Holland, but had taken the present opportunity to return from exile, and preach the gospel in their native country. The point at issue between these two parties was one of the first importance, involving in its result the great question of liberty of conscience. The Presbyterians sought to introduce a

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 114, 254. Commons, 1643, May 13, June 16, July 6, Sept. 14. Rush. v. 337, 339.]

gradation of spiritual authorities in presbyteries, classes, synods, and assemblies, giving to these several judicatories the power of the keys, that is, of censuring, suspending, depriving, and excommunicating delinquents. They maintained that such a power was essential to the church; that to deny it was to rend into fragments the seamless coat of Christ, to encourage disunion and schism, and to open the door to every species of theological war. On the other hand, their adversaries contended that all congregations of worshippers were co-ordinate and independent; that synods might advise, but could not command; that multiplicity of sects must necessarily result from the variableness of the human judgment, and the obligation of worshipping God according to the dictates of conscience; and that religious toleration was the birthright of every human being, whatever were his speculative creed or the form of worship which he preferred.[1]

The weight of number and influence was in favour of the Presbyterians. They possessed an overwhelming majority in the assembly, the senate, the city, and the army; the solemn league and covenant had enlisted the whole Scottish nation in their cause; and the zeal of the commissioners from the kirk, who had also seats in the assembly, gave a new stimulus to the efforts of their English brethren. The Independents, on the contrary, were few, but their deficiency in point of number was supplied by the energy and talents of their leaders. They never exceeded a dozen in the assembly; but these were veteran disputants, eager, fearless, and persevering, whose attachment to their favourite doctrines had been riveted by persecution and exile, and who had not escaped from the intolerance

[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 420, 431; ii. 15, 24, 37, 43, 61.]

of one church to submit tamely to the control of another. In the House of Commons they could command the aid of several among the master spirits of the age,–of Cromwell, Selden, St. John, Vane, and Whitelock; in the capital some of the most wealthy citizens professed themselves their disciples, and in the army their power rapidly increased by the daily accession of the most godly and fanatic of the soldiers. The very nature of the contest between the king and the parliament was calculated to predispose the mind in favour of their principles. It taught men to distrust the claims of authority, to exercise their own judgment on matters of the highest interest, and to spurn the fetters of intellectual as well as of political thraldom. In a short time the Independents were joined by the Antinomians, Anabaptists, Millenarians, Erastians, and the members of many ephemeral sects, whose very names are now forgotten. All had one common interest; freedom of conscience formed the chain which bound them together.[1]

In the assembly each party watched with jealousy, and opposed with warmth, the proceedings of the other. On a few questions they proved unanimous. The appointment of days of humiliation and prayer, the suppression of public and scandalous sins, the prohibition of copes and surplices, the removal of organs from the churches, and the mutilation or demolition of monuments deemed superstitious or idolatrous, were matters equally congenial to their feelings, and equally gratifying to their zeal or fanaticism.[2] But when they

[Footnote 1: Baillie, 398, 408; ii. 3, 19, 43. Whitelock, 169, 170.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1643, July 5; 1644, Jan. 16, 29, May 9. Journals of Lords, vi. 200, 507, 546. Baillie, i. 421, 422, 471. Rush. v. 358, 749.]

came to the more important subject of church government, the opposition between them grew fierce and obstinate; and day after day, week after week, was consumed in unavailing debates. The kirk of Scotland remonstrated, the House of Commons admonished in vain. For more than a year the perseverance of the Independents held in check the ardour and influence of their more numerous adversaries. Overpowered at last by open force, they had recourse to stratagem; and, to distract the attention of the Presbyterians, tendered to the assembly a plea for indulgence to tender consciences; while their associate, Cromwell, obtained from the lower house an order that the same subject should be referred to a committee formed of lords and commoners, and Scottish commissioners and deputies from the assembly. Thus a new apple of discord was thrown among the combatants. The lords Say and Wharton, Sir Henry Vane, and Mr. St. John, contended warmly in favour of toleration; they were as warmly opposed by the “divine eloquence of the chancellor” of Scotland, the commissioners from the kirk, and several eminent members of the English parliament. The passions and artifices of the contending parties interposed additional delays, and the year 1644 closed before this interesting controversy could be brought to a conclusion.[1] Eighteen months had elapsed since the assembly was first convened, and yet it had accomplished nothing of importance except the composition of a directory for the public worship, which regulated the order of the service, the administration of the sacraments, the ceremony of marriage, the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead.

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 57, 61, 62, 66-68. Journals, Sept. 13, Jan. 24; of Lords, 70.]

On all these subjects the Scots endeavoured to introduce the practice of their own kirk; but the pride of the English demanded alterations; and both parties consented to a sort of compromise, which carefully avoided every approach to the form of a liturgy, and, while it suggested heads for the sermon and prayer, left much of the matter, and the whole of the manner, to the talents or the inspiration of the minister. In England the Book of Common Prayer was abolished, and the Directory substituted in its place by an ordinance of the two houses; in Scotland the latter was commanded to be observed in all churches by the joint authority of the assembly and the parliament.[1]

To the downfall of the liturgy succeeded a new spectacle,–the decapitation of an archbishop. The name of Laud, during the first fifteen months after his impeachment, had scarcely been mentioned; and his friends began to cherish a hope that, amidst the din of arms, the old man might be forgotten, or suffered to descend peaceably into the grave. But his death was unintentionally occasioned by the indiscretion of the very man whose wish and whose duty it was to preserve the life of the prelate. The Lords had ordered Laud to collate the vacant benefices in his gift on persons nominated by themselves, the king forbade him to obey. The death[a] of the rector of Chartham, in Kent, brought his constancy to the test. The Lords named one person to the living, Charles another; and the archbishop, to extricate himself from the dilemma, sought to defer his decision till the right should have

[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 408, 413, 440; ii. 27, 31, 33, 36, 73, 74, 75. Rush. v. 785. Journals, Sept. 24, Nov. 26, Jan. 1, 4, March 5. Journals of Lords, 119, 121. See “Confessions of Faith, &c. in the Church of Scotland," 159-194.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643 Feb. 3.] lapsed to the crown; but the Lords made a peremptory order, and when he attempted to excuse his disobedience, sent a message[a] to the Commons to expedite his trial. Perhaps they meant only to intimidate; but his enemies seized the opportunity; a committee was appointed; and the task of collecting and preparing evidence was committed to Prynne, whose tiger-like revenge still thirsted for the blood of his former persecutor.[1] He carried off[b] from the cell of the prisoner his papers, his diary, and even his written defence; he sought in every quarter for those who had formerly been prosecuted or punished at the instance of the archbishop, and he called on all men to discharge their duty to God and their country, by deposing to the crimes of him who was the common enemy of both.

At the termination of six months[c] the committee had been able to add ten new articles of impeachment to the fourteen already presented; four months later,[d] both parties were ready to proceed to trial, and on the 12th of March, 1644, more than three years after his commitment, the archbishop confronted his prosecutors at the bar of the House of Lords.

I shall not attempt to conduct the reader through, the mazes of this long and wearisome process, which occupied twenty-one days in the course of six months. The many articles presented by the Commons might be reduced to three,–that Laud had endeavoured to subvert the rights of parliament, the laws and the religion of the nation. In support of these, every instance that could be raked together by the industry and ingenuity of Prynne, was brought forward. The familiar discourse, and the secret writings of the

[Footnote 1: Laud’s History written by himself in the Tower, 200-206.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 21.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. May 31.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Oct. 23.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March 4.]

prelate, had been scrutinized; and his conduct both private and public, as a bishop and a counsellor, in the Star-chamber and the High Commission court, had been subjected to the most severe investigation. Under every disadvantage, he defended himself with spirit, and often with success. He showed that many of the witnesses were his personal enemies, or undeserving of credit; that his words and writings would bear a less offensive and more probable interpretation; and that most of the facts objected to him were either the acts of his officers, who alone ought to be responsible, or the common decision of those boards of which he was only a single member.[1] Thus far[a] he had conducted his defence without legal aid. To speak to matters of law, he was allowed the aid of counsel, who contended that not one of the offences alleged against him amounted to high treason; that their number could not change their quality; that an endeavour to subvert the law, or religion, or the rights of parliament, was not treason by any statute; and that the description of an offence, so vague and indeterminate ought never to be admitted;: otherwise the slightest transgression might, under that denomination, be converted into the highest crime known to the law.[2]

But the Commons, whether they distrusted the patriotism of the Lords, or doubted the legal guilt of the prisoner, had already resolved to proceed by attainder. After the second reading[b] of the ordinance, they sent for the venerable prisoner to their bar, and ordered Brown, one of the managers, to recapitulate in his

[Footnote 1: Compare his own daily account of his trial in History, 220-421, with that part published by Prynne, under the title of Canterburies Doome, 1646; and Rushworth, v. 772.]

[Footnote 2: See it in Laud’s History, 423.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. March 11.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Nov. 2.]

hearing the evidence against him, together with his answers. Some days later[a] he was recalled, and suffered to speak in his own defence. After his departure, Brown made a long reply; and the house, without further consideration, passed[b] the bill of attainder, and adjudged him to suffer the penalties of treason.[1] The reader will not fail to observe this flagrant perversion of the forms of justice. It was not as in the case of the earl of Strafford. The commons had not been present at the trial of Laud; they had not heard the evidence, they had not even read the depositions of the witnesses; they pronounced judgment on the credit of the unsworn and partial statement made by their own advocate. Such a proceeding, so subversive of right and equity, would have been highly reprehensible in any court or class of men; it deserved the severest reprobation in that house, the members of which professed themselves the champions of freedom, and were actually in arms against the sovereign, to preserve, as they maintained, the laws, the rights, and the liberties of the nation.

To quicken the tardy proceedings of the Peers, the enemies of the archbishop had recourse to their usual expedients. Their emissaries lamented the delay in the punishment of delinquents, and the want of unanimity between the two houses. It was artfully suggested as a remedy, that both the Lords and Commons ought to sit and vote together in one assembly; and a petition, embodying these different subjects, was prepared and circulated for signatures through the city. Such manoeuvres aroused the spirit of the Peers. They threatened[c] to punish all disturbers

[Footnote 1: Journals, Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 11, 16. Laud’s History, 432-440. Rushworth, v. 780.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Nov. 11.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Nov. 13.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 28.]

of the peace; they replied with dignity to an insulting message from the Commons; and, regardless of the clamours of the populace, they spent several days in comparing the proofs of the managers with the defence of the archbishop. At last,[a] in a house of fourteen members, the majority pronounced him guilty of certain acts, but called upon the judges to determine the quality of the offence; who warily replied, that nothing of which he had been convicted was treason by the statute law; what it might be by the law of parliament, the house alone was the proper judge. In these circumstances the Lords informed the Commons, that till their consciences were satisfied, they should “scruple” to pass the bill of attainder.[1]

It was the eve of Christmas,[b] and to prove that the nation had thrown off the yoke of superstition, the festival was converted, by ordinance of the two houses, into a day of “fasting and public humiliation."[2] There was much policy in the frequent repetition of these devotional observances. The ministers having previously received instructions from the leading patriots, adapted their prayers and sermons to the circumstances of the time, and never failed to add a new stimulus to the fanaticism of their hearers. On the present occasion[c] the crimes of the archbishop offered a tempting theme to their eloquence; and the next morning the Commons, taking into consideration the last message, intrusted[d] to a committee the task of enlightening the ignorance of the Lords. In a conference

[Footnote 1: Journals, vii. 76, 100, 111.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 106. In the preceding year, the Scottish commissioners had “preached stoutly against the superstition of Christmas;” but only succeeded in prevailing on the two houses “to profane that holyday by sitting on it, to their great joy, and some of the assembly’s shame."–Baillie, i. 411.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644 Dec. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644 Dec. 23.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644 Dec. 26.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645 Jan. 2.]

the latter were told that treasons are of two kinds: treasons against the king, created by statute, and cognizable by the inferior courts; and treasons against the realm, held so at common law, and subject only to the judgment of parliament; there could not be a doubt that the offence of Laud was treason of the second class; nor would the two houses perform their duty, if they did not visit it with the punishment which it deserved. When the question was resumed, several of the Lords withdrew; most of the others were willing to be persuaded by the reasoning of the Commons; and the ordinance of attainder was passed[a] by the majority, consisting only, if the report be correct, of six members.[1]

The archbishop submitted with resignation to his fate, and appeared[b] on the scaffold with a serenity of countenance and dignity of behaviour, which did honour to the cause for which he suffered. The cruel punishment of treason had been, after some objections, commuted for decapitation, and the dead body was delivered for interment to his friends.[2] On Charles the melancholy intelligence made a deep impression;

[Footnote 1: Journals, 125, 126. Commons, Dec. 26. Laud’s Troubles, 452, Rushworth, v. 781-785. Cyprianus Aug. 528. From the journals it appears that twenty lords were in the house during the day: but we are told in the "Brief Relation” printed in the second collection of Somers’s Tracts, ii. 287, that the majority consisted of the earls of Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Bolingbroke, and the lords North, Gray de Warke, and Bruce. Bruce afterwards denied that he had voted. According to Sabran, the French ambassador, the majority amounted to five out of nine.–Raumer, ii. 332.]

[Footnote 2: Several executions had preceded that of the archbishop. Macmahon, concerned in the design to surprise the castle of Dublin, suffered Nov. 22; Sir Alexander Carew, who had engaged to surrender Plymouth to the king, on Dec. 23, and Sir John Hotham and his son, who, conceiving themselves ill-treated by the parliament, had entered into a treaty for the surrender of Hull, on the 1st and 2nd of January; Lord Macguire followed on Feb. 20.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Jan. 4.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Jan. 10.]

yet he contrived to draw from it a new source of consolation. He had sinned equally with his opponents in consenting to the death of Strafford, and had experienced equally with them the just vengeance of heaven. But he was innocent of the blood of Laud; the whole guilt was exclusively theirs; nor could he doubt that the punishment would speedily follow in the depression of their party, and the exaltation of the throne.[1]

The very enemies of the unfortunate archbishop admitted that he was learned and pious, attentive to his duties, and unexceptionable in his morals; on the other hand, his friends could not deny that he was hasty and vindictive, positive in his opinions, and inexorable in his enmities. To excuse his participation in the arbitrary measures of the council, and his concurrence in the severe decrees of the Star-chamber, he alleged, that he was only one among many; and that it was cruel to visit on the head of a single victim the common faults of the whole board. But it was replied, with great appearance of truth, that though only one, he was the chief; that his authority and influence swayed the opinions both of his sovereign and his colleagues; and that he must not expect to escape the just reward of his crimes, because he had possessed the ingenuity to make others his associates in guilt. Yet I am of opinion that it was religious, and not political rancour, which led him to the block; and that, if the zealots could have forgiven his conduct as archbishop, he might have lingered out the remainder of his life in the Tower. There was, however, but little difference in that respect between

[Footnote 1: See his letter to the queen, Jan. 14th, in his Works, 145.]

them and their victim. Both were equally obstinate, equally infallible, equally intolerant. As long as Laud ruled in the zenith of his power, deprivation awaited the non-conforming minister, and imprisonment, fine, and the pillory were the certain lot of the writer who dared to lash the real or imaginary vices of the prelacy. His opponents were now lords of the ascendant, and they exercised their sway with similar severity on the orthodox clergy of the establishment, and on all who dared to arraign before the public the new reformation of religion. Surely the consciousness of the like intolerance might have taught them to look with a more indulgent eye on the past errors of their fallen adversary, and to spare the life of a feeble old man bending under the weight of seventy-two years, and disabled by his misfortunes from offering opposition to their will, or affording aid to their enemies.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have not noticed the charge of endeavouring to introduce popery, because it appears to me fully disproved by the whole tenor of his conduct and writings, as long as he was in authority. There is, however, some reason to believe that, in the solitude of his cell, and with the prospect of the block before his eyes, he began to think more favourably of the Catholic church. At least, I find Rosetti inquiring of Cardinal Barberini whether, if Laud should escape from the Tower, the pope would afford him an asylum and a pension in Rome. He would be content with one thousand crowns–"il quale, quando avesse potuto liberarsi dalle carceri, sarebbe ito volontieri a vivere e morire in Roma, contendandosi di mille scudi annui."–Barberini answered, that Laud was in such bad repute in Rome, being looked upon as the cause of all the troubles in England, that it would previously be necessary that he should give good proof of his repentance; in which case he should receive assistance, though such assistance would give a colour to the imputation that there had always been an understanding between him and Rome. “Era si cattivo il concetto, che di lui avevasi in Roma, cioč che fosse stato autore di tutte le torbolenze d’Inghilterra, che era necessario dasse primo segni ben grandi del suo pentimento. Ed in tal caso sarebbe stato ajutato; sebene saria paruto che nelle sue passate resoluzioni se la fosse sempre intesa con Roma."–From the MS. abstract of the Barberini papers made by the canon Nicoletti soon after the death of the cardinal.]

Chapter II.

Treaty At Uxbridge–Victories Of Montrose In Scotland–Defeat Of The King At Naseby–Surrender Of Bristol–Charles Shut Up Within Oxford–Mission Of Glamorgan To Ireland–He Is Disavowed By Charles, But Concludes A Peace With The Irish–The King Intrigues With The Parliament, The Scots, And The Independents–He Escapes To The Scottish Army–Refuses The Concessions Required–Is Delivered Up By The Scots.

Whenever men spontaneously risk their lives and fortunes in the support of a particular cause, they are wont to set a high value on their services, and generally assume the right of expressing their opinions, and of interfering with their advice. Hence it happened that the dissensions and animosities in the court and army of the unfortunate monarch were scarcely less violent or less dangerous than those which divided the parliamentary leaders. All thought themselves entitled to offices and honours from the gratitude of the sovereign; no appointment could be made which did not deceive the expectations, and excite the murmurs, of numerous competitors; and complaints were everywhere heard, cabals were formed, and the wisest plans were frequently controlled and defeated, by men who thought themselves neglected or aggrieved. When Charles, as one obvious remedy, removed the lord Wilmot from the command of the cavalry, and the lord Percy from that of the ordnance, he found that he had only aggravated the evil; and the dissatisfaction of the army was further increased by the substitution of his nephew Prince Rupert, whose severe and imperious temper had earned him the general hatred, in the place of Ruthen, who, on account of his infirmities, had been advised to retire.[1]

Another source of most acrimonious controversy was furnished by the important question of peace or war, which formed a daily subject of debate in every company, and divided the royalists into contending parties. Some there were (few, indeed, in number, and chiefly those whom the two houses by their votes had excluded from all hopes of pardon) who contended that the king ought never to lay down his arms till victory should enable him to give the law to his enemies; but the rest, wearied out with the fatigues and dangers of war, and alarmed by the present sequestration of their estates, and the ruin which menaced their families, most anxiously longed for the restoration of peace. These, however, split into two parties; one which left the conditions to the wisdom of the monarch; the other which not only advised, but occasionally talked of compelling a reconciliation, on almost any terms, pretending that, if once the king were reseated on his throne, he must quickly recover every prerogative which he might have lost. As for Charles himself, he had already suffered too much by the war, and saw too gloomy a prospect before him, to be indifferent to the subject; but, though he was now prepared to make sacrifices, from which but two years before he would have recoiled with horror, he had still resolved never to subscribe to conditions irreconcilable with his honour and conscience; and in this temper of

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 482, 513, 554.]

mind he was confirmed by the frequent letters of Henrietta from Paris, who reminded him of the infamy which he would entail on himself, were he, as he was daily advised, to betray to the vengeance of the parliament the Protestant bishops and Catholic royalists, who, trusting to his word, had ventured their all for his interest.[1] He had now assembled hisparliament for the second time; but the attendance of the members was scarce, and the inconvenience greater than the benefit. Motions were made ungrateful to the feelings, and opposed to the real views of the king, who, to free himself from the more obtrusive and importunate of these advisers, sent them

[Footnote 1: This is the inference which I have drawn from a careful perusal of the correspondence between Charles and the queen in his Works, p. 142-150. Some writers have come to a different conclusion: that he was insincere, and under the pretence of seeking peace, was in reality determined to continue the war. That he prepared for the resumption of hostilities is indeed true, but the reason which he gives to the queen is satisfactory, “the improbability that this present treaty should produce a peace, considering the great strange difference (if not contrariety) of grounds that are betwixt the rebels’ propositions and mine, and that I cannot alter mine, nor will they ever theirs, until they be out of the hope to prevail by force” (p. 146). Nor do I see any proof that Charles was governed, as is pretended, by the queen. He certainly took his resolutions without consulting her, and, if she sometimes expressed her opinion respecting them, it was no more than any other woman in a similar situation would have done. “I have nothing to say, but that you have a care of your honour; and that, if you have a peace, it may be such as may hold; and if it fall out otherwise, that you do not abandon those who have served you, for fear they do forsake you in your need. Also I do not see how you can be in safety without a regiment of guard; for myself, I think I cannot be, seeing the malice which they have against me and my religion, of which I hope you will have a care of both. But in my opinion, religion should be the last thing upon which you should treat; for if you do agree upon strictness against the Catholics, it would discourage them to serve you; and if afterwards there should be no peace, you could never expect succours either from Ireland, or any other Catholic prince, for they would believe you would abandon them after you have served yourself” (p. 142, 143).]

into honourable exile, by appointing them[a] to give their attendance on his queen during her residence in France.[1]

In the last summer the first use which he had made of each successive advantage, was to renew[b] the offer of opening a negotiation for peace. It convinced the army of the pacific disposition of their sovereign, and it threw on the parliament, even among their own adherents, the blame of continuing the war. At length,[c] after the third message, the houses gave a tardy and reluctant consent; but it was not before they had received from Scotland the propositions formerly voted as the only basis of a lasting reconciliation, had approved of the amendments suggested by their allies, and had filled up the blanks with the specification of the acts of parliament to be passed, and with the names of the royalists to be excepted from the amnesty. It was plain to every intelligent man in either army that to lay such a foundation of peace was in reality to proclaim perpetual hostilities.[2] But the king, by the advice of his council, consented to make it the subject of a treaty, for two ends; to discover whether it was the resolution of the houses to adhere without any modification to these high pretensions; and to make the experiment, whether it were not possible to gain one of the two factions, the Presbyterians or the Independents, or at least to widen

[Footnote 1: See the letters in Charles’s Works, 142-148. “I may fairly expect to be chidden by thee for having suffered thee to be vexed by them (Wilmot being already there, Percy on his way, and Sussex within a few days of taking his journey), but that I know thou carest not for a little trouble to free me from great inconvenience."–Ibid. 150.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, vii. 53. The very authors of the propositions did not expect that the king would ever submit to them.–Baillie, ii. 8, 43, 73.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. July 4.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Sept. 5.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 23.] the breach between them by furnishing new causes of dissension.[1]

At Uxbridge, within the parliamentary quarters, the commissioners from the two parties met each other.[a] Those from the parliament had been commanded to admit of no deviation from the substance of the propositions already voted; to confine themselves to the task of showing that their demands were conformable to reason, and therefore not to be refused; and to insist that the questions of religion, the militia, and Ireland, should each be successively debated during the term of three days, and continued in rotation till twenty days had expired, when, if no agreement were made, the treaty should terminate. They demanded that episcopacy should be abolished, and the Directory be substituted in place of the Book of Common Prayer; that the command of the army and navy should be vested in the two houses, and intrusted by them to certain commissioners of their own appointment; and that the cessation in Ireland should be broken, and hostilities should be immediately renewed. The king’s commissioners replied, that his conscience would not allow him to consent to the proposed change of religious worship, but that he was willing to consent to a law restricting the jurisdiction of the bishops within the narrowest bounds, granting every reasonable indulgence to tender consciences, and raising on the church property the sum of one hundred thousand

[Footnote 1: Charles was now persuaded even to address the two houses by the style of “the Lords and Commons assembled in the parliament of England at Westminster,” instead of “the Lords and Commons of parliament assembled at Westminster,” which he had formerly used.–Journals, vii. 91. He says he would not have done it, if he could have found two in the council to support him.–Works, 144, Evelyn’s Mem. ii. App. 90. This has been alleged, but I see not with what reason, as a proof of his insincerity in the treaty.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1645. Jan. 30.]

pounds, towards the liquidation of the public debt; that on the subject of the army and navy he was prepared to make considerable concessions, provided the power of the sword were, after a certain period, to revert unimpaired to him and his successors; and that he could not, consistently with his honour, break the Irish treaty, which he had, after mature deliberation, subscribed and ratified. Much of the time was spent in debates respecting the comparative merits of the episcopal and presbyterian forms of church government, and in charges and recriminations as to the real authors of the distress and necessity which had led to the cessation in Ireland. On the twentieth day nothing had been concluded. A proposal to prolong the negotiation was rejected by the two houses, and the commissioners returned to London and Oxford.[a] The royalists had, however, discovered that Vane, St. John, and Prideaux had come to Uxbridge not so much to treat, as to act the part of spies on the conduct of their colleagues; and that there existed an irreconcilable difference of opinion between the two parties, the Presbyterians seeking the restoration of royalty, provided it could be accomplished with perfect safety to themselves, and with the legal establishment of their religious worship, while the Independents sought nothing less than the total downfall of the throne, and the extinction of the privileges of the nobility.[1]

Both parties again appealed to the sword, but with very different prospects before them; on the side of the royalists all was lowering and gloomy, on that of the parliament bright and cheering. The king had

[Footnote 1: See Journals, vii. 163, 166, 169, 174, 181, 195, 211, 231, 239, 242-254; Clarendon, ii. 578-600.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Feb. 22.]

derived but little of that benefit which he expected from the cessation in Ireland. He dared not withdraw the bulk of his army before he had concluded a peace with the insurgents; and they, aware of his difficulties, combined their demands, which he knew not how to grant, with an offer of aid which he was unwilling to refuse. They demanded freedom of religion, the repeal of Poyning’s law, a parliamentary settlement of their estates, and a general amnesty, with this exception, that an inquiry should be instituted into all acts of violence and bloodshed not consistent with the acknowledged usages of war, and that the perpetrators should be punished according to their deserts, without distinction of party or religion. It was the first article which presented the chief difficulty. The Irish urged the precedent of Scotland; they asked no more than had been conceded to the Covenanters; they had certainly as just a claim to the free exercise of that worship, which had been the national worship for ages, as the Scots could have, to the exclusive establishment of a form of religion which had not existed during an entire century. But Charles, in addition to his own scruples, feared to irritate the prejudices of his Protestant subjects. He knew that many of his own adherents would deem such a concession an act of apostasy; and he conjured the Irish deputies not to solicit that which must prove prejudicial to him, and therefore to themselves: let them previously enable him to master their common enemies; let them place him in a condition “to make them happy,” and he assured them on the word of a king, that he would not “disappoint their just expectations."[1] They were not, however, to be satisfied

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, Irish Rebellion, 25.]

with vague promises, which might afterwards be interpreted as it suited the royal convenience; and Charles, to throw the odium of the measure from himself on his Irish counsellors, transferred the negotiation to Dublin, to be continued by the new lord lieutenant, the marquess of Ormond. That nobleman was at first left to his own discretion. He was then authorized to promise the non-execution of the penal laws for the present, and their repeal on the restoration of tranquillity; and, lastly, to stipulate for their immediate repeal, if he could not otherwise subdue the obstinacy, or remove the jealousy of the insurgents. The treaty at Uxbridge had disclosed to the eyes of the monarch the abyss which yawned before him; he saw “that the aim of his adversaries was a total subversion of religion and regal power;” and he commanded Ormond to conclude the peace whatever it might cost, provided it should secure the persons and properties of the Irish Protestants, and the full exercise of the royal authority in the island.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carte’s Ormond, ii. App. xii. xiv. xv. xviii. iii. cccxxxi. He thus states his reasons to the lord lieutenant:–"It being now manifest that the English rebels have, as far as in them lies, given the command of Ireland to the Scots” (they had made Leslie, earl of Leven, commander-in-chief of all the English as well as Scottish forces in Ireland), “that their aim is the total subversion of religion and regal power, and that nothing less will content them, or purchase peace here; I think myself bound in conscience not to let slip the means of settling that kingdom (if it may be) fully under my obedience, nor lose that assistance which I may hope from my Irish subjects, for such scruples as in a less pressing condition might reasonably be stuck at by me.... If the suspension of Poining’s act for such bills as shall be agreed upon between you there, and the present taking away of the penal laws against papists by a law, will do it, I shall not think it a hard bargain, so that freely and vigorously they engage themselves in my assistance against my rebels of England and Scotland, for which no conditions can be too hard, not being against conscience or honour."–Charles’s Works, 149, 150.]

In Scotland an unexpected but transient diversion had been made in favour of the royal cause. The earls, afterwards marquesses, of Antrim and Montrose had met in the court at Oxford. In abilities Montrose was inferior to few, in ambition to none. The reader is aware that he had originally fought in the ranks of the Covenanters, but afterwards transferred his services to Charles, and narrowly escaped the vengeance of his enemies. Now, that he was again at liberty, he aspired to the glory of restoring the ascendancy of the royal cause in Scotland. At first all his plans were defeated by the jealousy or wisdom of Hamilton; but Hamilton gradually sunk, whilst his rival rose in the esteem of the sovereign.[1] Antrim, his associate, was weak and capricious, but proud of his imaginary consequence, and eager to engage in undertakings to which neither his means nor his talents were equal. He had failed in his original attempt to surprise the castle of Dublin; and had twice fallen into the hands of the Scots in Ulster, and twice made his escape; still his loyalty or presumption was unsubdued, and he had come to Oxford to make a third tender of his services.

[Footnote 1: When Hamilton arrived at Oxford, Dec. 16, 1643, several charges were brought against him by the Scottish royalists, which with his answers may be seen in Burnet, Memoirs, 250-269. Charles pronounced no opinion; but his suspicions were greatly excited by the deception practised by Hamilton on the lords of the royal party at the convention, and his concealment from them of the king’s real intentions. On this account Hamilton was arrested, and conveyed to Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall, where he remained a prisoner till the place was taken by the parliamentary forces. Hamilton’s brother Lanark was also forbidden to appear at court; and, having received advice that he would be sent to the castle of Ludlow, made his escape from Oxford to his countrymen in London, and thence returned to Edinburgh. His offence was, that he, as secretary, had affixed the royal signet to the proclamation of August 24, calling on all Scotsmen to arm in support of the new league and covenant.–See p. 36.]

Both Antrim and Montrose professed themselves the personal enemies of the earl of Argyle, appointed by the Scottish estates lieutenant of the kingdom; and they speedily arranged a plan, which possessed the double merit of combining the interest of the king with the gratification of private revenge. Having obtained the royal commission,[1] Antrim proceeded to Ulster, raised eleven or fifteen hundred men among his dependants, and despatched them to the opposite coast of Scotland under the command of his kinsman Alaster Macdonald, surnamed Colkitto.[2] They landed at Knoydart: the destruction of their ships in Loch Eishord, by a hostile fleet, deprived them of the means of returning to Ireland; and Argyle with a superior force cautiously watched their motions.[a] From the Scottish royalists they received no aid; yet Macdonald marched as far as Badenoch, inflicting severe injuries on the Covenanters, but exposed to destruction from the increasing multitude of his foes. In the mean time, Montrose, with the rank of lieutenant-general, had unfurled the royal standard at Dumfries;[b] but with so little success, that he hastily retraced his steps to Carlisle, where by several daring actions he rendered such services to the royal cause, that he received the title of marquess from the gratitude of the king. But the fatal battle of Marston Moor induced him to turn his thoughts once more towards Scotland;[c] and having ordered his followers to proceed to Oxford, on

[Footnote 1: He was authorized to treat with the confederate Catholics for ten thousand men; if their demands were too high, to raise as many men as he could and send them to the king; to procure the loan of two thousand men to be landed in Scotland; and to offer Monroe, the Scottish commander, the rank of earl and a pension of two thousand pounds per annum, if with his army he would join the royalists. Jan. 20, 1644.–Clarendon Papers, ii. 165.]

[Footnote 2: MacColl Keitache, son of Coll, the left-handed.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. July 8.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. April 13.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. May 6.]

the third day he silently withdrew with only two companions, and soon afterwards reached in the disguise of a groom the foot of the Grampian Hills. There he received intelligence of the proceedings of Macdonald, and appointed to join him in Athole.[a] At the castle of Blair, which had surrendered to the strangers, the two chieftains met: Montrose assumed the command, published the royal commission, and called on the neighbouring clans to join the standard of their sovereign. The Scots, who had scorned to serve under a foreigner, cheerfully obeyed, and to the astonishment of the Covenanters an army appeared to rise out of the earth in a quarter the most remote from danger; but it was an army better adapted to the purpose of predatory invasion than of permanent warfare. Occasionally it swelled to the amount of several thousands: as often it dwindled to the original band of Irishmen under Macdonald. These, having no other resource than their courage, faithfully clung to their gallant commander in all the vicissitudes of his fortune; the Highlanders, that they might secure their plunder, frequently left him to flee before the superior multitude of his foes.

The first who dared to meet the royalists in the field, was the lord Elcho, whose defeat at Tippermuir gave to the victors the town of Perth, with a plentiful supply of military stores and provisions.[b] From Perth they marched towards Aberdeen; the Lord Burley with his army fled at the first charge; and the pursuers entered the gates with the fugitives.[c] The sack of the town lasted three days: by the fourth many of the Highlanders had disappeared with the spoil; and Argyle approached with a superior force.[d] Montrose, to avoid the enemy, led his followers into Banff, proceeded

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. August 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Sept. 1.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Sept. 12.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. Sept. 19.]

along the right bank of the Spey, crossed the mountains of Badenoch, passed through Athole into Angus, and after a circuitous march of some hundred miles, reached and took the castle of Fyvie. There he was overtaken by the Covenanters, whom he had so long baffled by the rapidity and perplexity of his movements.[a] But every attempt to force his position on the summit of a hill was repelled; and on the retirement of the enemy, he announced to his followers his intention of seeking a safer asylum in the Highlands. Winter had already set in with severity; and his Lowland associates shrunk from the dreary prospect before them; but Montrose himself, accompanied by his more faithful adherents, gained without opposition the braes of Athole.

To Argyle the disappearance of the royalists was a subject of joy. Disbanding the army, he repaired, after a short visit to Edinburgh, to his castle of Inverary, where he reposed in security, aware, indeed, of the hostile projects of Montrose, but trusting to the wide barrier of snows and mountains which separated him from his enemy. But the royal leader penetrated through this Alpine wilderness,[b] compelled Argyle to save himself in an open boat on Loch Tyne, and during six weeks wreaked his revenge on the domains and the clansmen of the fugitive. At the approach of Argyle with eleven hundred regular troops, he retired; but suddenly turning to the left, crossed the mountains, and issuing from Glennevis, surprised his pursuers at Inverlochy in Lochabar.[c] From his galley in the Frith Argyle beheld the assault of the enemy, the shock of the combatants, and the slaughter of at least one half of his whole force.[d] This victory placed the north of Scotland at the mercy of the conquerors.

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Oct. 28.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 13.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Jan. 28.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. Feb. 2.]

From Inverlochy they marched to Elgin, and from Elgin to Aberdeen, ravaging, as they passed, the lands, and burning the houses of the Covenanters. But at Brechin, Baillie opposed their progress with a[a] numerous and regular force. Montrose turned in the direction of Dunkeld; Baillie marched to Perth. The former surprised the opulent town of Dundee; the latter arrived in time to expel the plunderers. But[b] he pursued in vain. They regained the Grampian hills, where in security they once more bade defiance to the whole power of the enemy. Such was the short and eventful campaign of Montrose. His victories, exaggerated by report, and embellished by the fancy of the hearers, cast a faint and deceitful lustre over the declining cause of royalty. But they rendered no other service. His passage was that of a meteor, scorching every thing in its course. Wherever he appeared, he inflicted the severest injuries; but he made no permanent conquest; he taught the Covenanters to tremble at his name, but he did nothing to arrest that ruin which menaced the throne and its adherents.[1]

England, however, was the real arena on which the conflict was to be decided, and in England the king soon found himself unable to cope with his enemies. He still possessed about one-third of the kingdom. From Oxford he extended his sway almost without interruption to the extremity of Cornwall: North and South Wales, with the exception of the castles of Pembroke and Montgomery, acknowledged his authority; and the royal standard was still unfurled in several

[Footnote 1: See Rushworth, v. 928-932; vi. 228; Guthrie, 162-183; Baillie, ii. 64, 65, 92-95; Clarendon, ii. 606, 618; Wishart, 67, 110; Journals, vii. 566; Spalding, ii. 237.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. March 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. April 4.]

towns in the midland comities.[1] But his army, under the nominal command of the prince of Wales, and the real command of Prince Rupert, was frittered away in a multitude of petty garrisons, and languished in a state of the most alarming insubordination. The generals, divided into factions, presumed to disobey the royal orders, and refused to serve under an adversary or a rival; the officers indulged in every kind of debauchery; the privates lived at free quarters; and the royal forces made themselves more terrible to their friends by their licentiousness than to their enemies by their valour.[2] Their excesses provoked new associations in the counties of Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, and Worcester, known by the denomination of Clubmen, whose primary object was the protection of private property, and the infliction of summary vengeance on the depredators belonging to either army. These associations were encouraged and organized by the neighbouring gentlemen; arms of every description were collected for their use; and they were known to assemble in numbers of four, six, and even ten thousand men. Confidence in their own strength, and the suggestions of their leaders, taught them to extend their views; they invited the adjoining counties to follow their example, and talked of putting an end by force to the unnatural war which depopulated the country. But though they professed to observe the strictest neutrality between the contending parties, their meetings excited a well-founded jealousy

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 18-22.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, ii. 604, 633, 636, 642, 661, 668. “Good men are so scandalized at the horrid impiety of our armies, that they will not believe that God can bless any cause in such hands."–Lord Culpeper to Lord Digby. Clarendon Papers, ii. 189. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 396, 399.]

on the part of the parliamentary leaders; who, the moment it could be done without danger, pronounced such associations illegal, and ordered them to be suppressed by military force.[1]

On the other side, the army of the parliament had been reformed according to the ordinance. The members of both houses had resigned their commissions, with the exception of a single individual, the very man with whom the measure had originated,–Lieutenant-General Cromwell. This by some writers has been alleged as a proof of the consummate art of that adventurer, who sought to remove out of his way the men that stood between him and the object of his ambition; but the truth is, that his continuation in the command was effected by a succession of events which he could not possibly have foreseen. He had been sent with Waller to oppose the progress of the royalists in the west; on his return he was ordered to prevent the junction of the royal cavalry with the forces under the king; and he then received a commission to protect the associated counties from insult.

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 665. Whitelock, March, 4, 11, 15. Rushw. vi. 52, 53, 61, 62. But the best account of the Clubmen is to be found in a letter from Fairfax to the committee of both kingdoms, preserved in the Journals of the Lords, vii. 184. They wore white ribbons for a distinction, prevented, as much as they were able, all hostilities between the soldiers of the opposite parties, and drew up two petitions in the same words, one to be presented to the king, the other to the parliament, praying them to conclude a peace, and in the meantime to withdraw their respective garrisons out of the country, and pledging themselves to keep possession of the several forts and castles, and not to surrender them without a joint commission from both king and parliament. Fairfax observes, that “their heads had either been in actual service in the king’s army, or were known favourers of the party. In these two counties, Wilts and Dorset, they are abundantly more affected to the enemy than to the parliament. I know not what they may attempt."–Ibid. At length the two houses declared all persons associating in arms without authority, traitors to the commonwealth.–Journals, vii. 549.]

While he was employed in this service, the term appointed by the ordinance approached; but Fairfax expressed his unwillingness to part with so experienced an officer at such a crisis, and the two houses consented that he should remain forty days longer with the army. Before they expired, the great battle of Naseby had been fought: in consequence of the victory the ordinance was suspended three months in his favour; and afterwards the same indulgence was reiterated as often as it became necessary.[1]

It was evident that the army had lost nothing by the exclusion of members of parliament and the change in its organization. The commanders were selected from those who had already distinguished themselves by the splendour of their services and their devotion to the cause; the new regiments were formed of privates, who had served under Essex, Manchester, and Waller, and care was taken that the majority of both should consist of that class of religionists denominated Independents. These men were animated with an enthusiasm of which at the present day we cannot form an adequate conception. They divided their time between military duties and prayer; they sang psalms as they advanced to the charge; they called on the name of the Lord, while they were slaying their enemies. The result showed that fanaticism furnished a more powerful stimulus than loyalty; the soldiers of God proved more than a match for the soldiers of the monarch.[2]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 27, May 10, June 16, Aug. 8. Lords’ Journ. vii. 420, 535.]

[Footnote 2: Essex, Manchester, and Denbigh reluctantly tendered their resignations the day before the ordinance passed. The first died in the course of the next year (Sept. 14); and the houses, to express their respect for his memory, attended the funeral, and defrayed the expense out of the public purse.–Lords’ Journals, viii. 508, 533.]

Charles was the first to take the field. He marched from Oxford at the head of ten thousand men, of whom more than one-half were cavalry; the siege of Chester[a] was raised at the sole report of his approach; and Leicester, an important post in possession of the parliament,[b] was taken by storm on the first assault. Fairfax[c] had appeared with his army before Oxford, where he expected to be admitted by a party within the walls; but the intrigue failed, and he received orders to proceed[d] in search of the king.[1] On the evening of the[e] seventh day his van overtook the rear of the royalists between Daventry and Harborough. Fairfax and his officers hailed with joy the prospect of a battle. They longed to refute the bitter taunts and sinister predictions of their opponents in the two houses; to prove that want of experience might be supplied by the union of zeal and talent; and to establish, by a victory over the king, the superiority of the Independent over the Presbyterian party. Charles, on the contrary, had sufficient reason to decline an engagement.[2] His numbers had been diminished by the necessity of leaving a strong garrison in Leicester, and several reinforcements were still on their march to join the royal standard. But in the presence of the Roundheads the Cavaliers never listened to the suggestions of prudence. Early[f] in the morning the royal army formed in line about a mile south of Harborough. Till eight they awaited with patience the expected charge of the enemy; but

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, vii. 429, 431.]

[Footnote 2: So little did Charles anticipate the approach of the enemy, that On the 12th he amused himself with hunting, and on the 13th at supper time wrote to secretary Nicholas that he should march the next morning, and proceed through Landabay and Melton to Belvoir, but no further. Before midnight he had resolved to fight.–See his letter in Evelyn’s Memoirs, ii. App. 97.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. May 7.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. May 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. May 31.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. June 6.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1645. June 13.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1645. June 14.]

Fairfax refused to move from his strong position near Naseby, and the king, yielding to the importunity of his officers, gave the word to advance. Prince Rupert commanded on the right. The enemy fled before him; six pieces of cannon were taken, and Ireton, the general of the parliamentary horse, was wounded, and for some time a prisoner in the hands of the victors.[1] But the lessons of experience had been thrown away upon Rupert. He urged the pursuit with his characteristic impetuosity, and, as at Marston Moor, by wandering from the field suffered the victory to be won by the masterly conduct of Oliver Cromwell.

That commander found himself opposed to a weak body of cavalry under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. By both the fight was maintained with obstinate valour; but superiority of numbers enabled the former to press on the flanks of the royalists, who began to waver, and at last turned their backs and fled. Cromwell prudently checked the pursuit, and leaving three squadrons to watch the fugitives, directed the remainder of his force against the rear of the royal infantry. That body of men, only three thousand five hundred in number, had hitherto fought with the most heroic valour, and had driven the enemy’s line, with the exception of one regiment, back on the reserve; but this unexpected charge broke their spirit; they threw down their arms and asked for quarter. Charles, who had witnessed their efforts and their danger, made every exertion to support them; he collected several

[Footnote 1: Ireton was of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, and bred to the law. He raised a troop of horse for the parliament at the beginning of the war, and accepted a captain’s commission in the new-modelled army. At the request of the officers, Cromwell had been lately appointed general of the horse, and, at Cromwell’s request, Ireton was made commissary-general under him.–Journals, vii. 421. Rushworth, vi. 42.]

bodies of horse; he put himself at their head; he called on them to follow him; he assured them that one more effort would secure the victory. But the appeal was made in vain. Instead of attending to his prayers and commands, they fled, and forced him to accompany them. The pursuit was continued with great slaughter almost to the walls of Leicester; and one hundred females, some of them ladies of distinguished rank, were put to the sword under the pretence that they were Irish Catholics. In this fatal battle, fought near the village of Naseby, the king lost more than three thousand men, nine thousand stand of arms, his park of artillery, the baggage of the army, and with it his own cabinet, containing private papers of the first importance. Out of these the parliament made a collection, which was published, with remarks, to prove to the nation the falsehoods of Charles, and the justice of the war.[1]

[Footnote 1: For this battle see Clarendon, ii. 655; Rushworth, vi. 42; and the Journals, vii. 433-436. May asserts that not more than three hundred men were killed on the part of the king, and only one hundred on that of the parliament. The prisoners amounted to five thousand.–May, 77. The publication of the king’s papers has been severely censured by his friends, and as warmly defended by the advocates of the parliament. If their contents were of a nature to justify the conduct of the latter, I see not on what ground it could be expected that they should be suppressed. The only complaint which can reasonably be made, and which seems founded in fact, is that the selection of the papers for the press was made unfairly. The contents of the cabinet were several days in possession of the officers, and then submitted to the examination of a committee of the lower house; by whose advice certain papers were selected and sent to the Lords, with a suggestion that they should be communicated to the citizens in a common hall. But the Lords required to see the remainder; twenty-two additional papers were accordingly produced; but it was at the same time acknowledged that others were still kept back, because they had not yet been deciphered. By an order of the Commons the papers were afterwards printed with a preface contrasting certain passages in them with the king’s former protestations.–Journals, June 23, 26, 30, July 3, 7; Lords’, vii. 467, 469. Charles himself acknowledges that the publication, as far as it went, was genuine (Evelyn’s Memoirs, App. 101); but he also maintains that other papers, which would have served to explain doubtful passages, had been purposely suppressed.–Clarendon Papers, ii. 187. See Baillie, ii. 136.]

After this disastrous battle, the campaign presented little more than the last and feeble struggles of an expiring party. Among the royalists hardly a man could be found who did not pronounce the cause to be desperate; and, if any made a show of resistance, it was more through the hope of procuring conditions for themselves, than of benefiting the interests of their sovereign. Charles himself bore his misfortunes with an air of magnanimity, which was characterized as obstinacy by the desponding minds of his followers. As a statesman he acknowledged the hopelessness of his cause; as a Christian he professed to believe that God would never allow rebellion to prosper; but, let whatever happen, he at least would act as honour and conscience called on him to act; his name should not descend to posterity as the name of a king who had abandoned the cause of God, injured the rights of his successors, and sacrificed the interests of his faithful and devoted adherents. From Leicester he retreated[a] to Hereford; from Hereford to Ragland Castle, the seat of the loyal marquess of Worcester; and thence to Cardiff, that he might more readily communicate with Prince Rupert at Bristol. Each day brought him a repetition of the most melancholy intelligence. Leicester had surrendered almost at the[b] first summons; the forces under Goring, the only body of royalists deserving the name of an army, were defeated by Fairfax at Lamport; Bridgewater, hitherto[c] deemed an impregnable fortress, capitulated after a[d]

[Transcriber’s Note: No footnote 1 in the text]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth vi. 132. Clarendon, ii. 630.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645 July 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645 June 17.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645 July 10.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645 July 23.]

short siege; a chain of posts extending from that town to Lime, on the southern coast, cut off Devonshire and Cornwall, his principal resources, from all communication with the rest of the kingdom; and, what was still worse, the dissensions which raged among his officers and partisans in those counties could not be appeased either by the necessity of providing for the common safety, or by the presence and authority of the prince of Wales.[1] To add to his embarrassments, his three[a] fortresses in the north, Carlisle, Pontefract, and Scarborough,[b] which for eighteen months had defied all the efforts of the enemy, had now fallen, the first into the[c] hands of the Scots, the other two into those of the parliament. Under this accumulation of misfortunes many of his friends, and among them Rupert himself, hitherto the declared advocate of war, importuned him to yield to necessity, and to accept the conditions offered by the parliament. He replied that they viewed[d] the question with the eyes of mere soldiers and statesmen; but he was a king, and had duties to perform, from which no change of circumstances, no human power could absolve him,–to preserve the church, protect his friends, and transmit to his successors the lawful rights of the crown. God was bound to support his own cause: he might for a time permit rebels and traitors to prosper, but he would ultimately humble them before the throne of their sovereign.[2] Under

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 663, et seq. Rushw. vi. 50, 55, 57. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 423.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, ii. 679. Lords’ Journals, vii. 667. Only three days before his arrival at Oxford, he wrote (August 25) a letter to secretary Nicholas, with an order to publish its contents, that it was his fixed determination, by the grace of God, never, in any possible circumstances, to yield up the government of the church to papists, Presbyterians, or Independents, nor to injure his successors by lessening the ecclesiastical or military power bequeathed to him by his predecessors, nor to forsake the defence of his friends, who had risked their lives and fortunes in his quarrel.–Evelyn’s Memoirs, ii. App. 104.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. June 28.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. July 21.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. July 25.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. July 31.]

this persuasion, he pictured to himself the wonderful things to be achieved by the gallantry of Montrose in Scotland, and looked forward with daily impatience to the arrival of an imaginary army of twenty thousand men from Ireland. But from such dreams he was soon awakened by the rapid increase of disaffection in the population around him, and by the rumoured advance of the Scots to besiege the city of Hereford. From Cardiff he hastily crossed the kingdom to Newark. Learning that the Scottish cavalry were in pursuit, he[a] left Newark, burst into the associated counties, ravaged the lands of his enemies, took the town of Huntingdon,[b] and at last reached in safety his court at Oxford.[c] It was not that in this expedition he had in view any particular object. His utmost ambition was, by wandering from place to place, to preserve himself from falling into the hands of his enemies before the winter. In that season the severity of the weather would afford him sufficient protection, and he doubted not, that against the spring the victories of Montrose, the pacification of Ireland, and the compassion of his foreign allies, would enable him to resume hostilities with a powerful army, and with more flattering prospects of success.[1]

At Oxford Charles heard of the victory gained at Kilsyth, in the neighbourhood of Stirling, by Montrose, who, if he had been compelled to retreat from Dundee, was still able to maintain the superiority in the Highlands. The first who ventured to measure[d] swords with the Scottish hero was the veteran general

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 677. Rushw. vi. 131. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 415, 416, 418, 420, 423, 427. Baillie, ii, 152.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. August 21.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. August 24.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. August 28.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. May 5.]

Hurry: but the assailant fled from the conflict at Auldearn, and saved himself, with the small remnant of his force, within the walls of Inverness. To Hurry[a] succeeded with similar fortune Baillie, the commander-in-chief. The battle was fought at Alford, in the shire of Aberdeen; and few, besides the principal officers and the cavalry, escaped from the slaughter. A new army of ten thousand men was collected: four days were spent in fasting and prayer; and the host of God marched to trample under foot the host of the king. But the experience of their leader was controlled by the presumption of the committee of estates; and he, in submission to their orders, marshalled his men in a position near Kilsyth: his cavalry was broken by the[b] royalists at the first charge; the infantry fled without a blow, and about five thousand of the fugitives are said to have perished in the pursuit, which was continued for fourteen or twenty miles.[1] This victory placed the Lowlands at the mercy of the conqueror. Glasgow and the neighbouring shires solicited his clemency; the citizens of Edinburgh sent to him the prisoners who had been condemned for their adherence to the royal cause; and many of the nobility, hastening to his standard, accepted commissions to raise forces in the name of the sovereign. At this news the[c] Scottish cavalry, which, in accordance with the treaty of “brotherly assistance,” had already advanced to Nottingham, marched back to the Tweed to protect their own country; and the king on the third day left Oxford with five thousand men, to drive the infantry

[Footnote 1: It was probably on account of the heat of the season that Montrose ordered his men to throw aside their plaids–vestes molestiores–and fight in their shirts; an order which has given occasion to several fanciful conjectures and exaggerations;–See Carte, iv. 538.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. July 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. August 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. August 26.]

from the siege of Hereford. They did not wait his arrival, and he entered the city amidst the joyful acclamations of the inhabitants.[1]

But Charles was not long suffered to enjoy his[a] triumph. Full of confidence, he had marched from Hereford to the relief of Bristol; but at Ragland Castle learned that it was already in possession of the enemy. This unexpected stroke quite unnerved him. That a prince of his family, an officer whose reputation for courage and fidelity was unblemished, should surrender in the third week of the siege an important city, which he had promised to maintain for four months, appeared to him incredible. His mind was agitated with suspicion and jealousy. He knew not whether to attribute the conduct of his nephew to cowardice, or despondency, or disaffection; but he foresaw and lamented its baneful influence on the small remnant of his followers. In the anguish of his mind[b] he revoked the commission of the prince, and commanded him to quit the kingdom; he instructed the council to watch his conduct, and on the first sign of disobedience to take him into custody; and he ordered the arrest of his friend Colonel Legge, and appointed Sir Thomas Glenham to succeed Legge, as governor of Oxford. "Tell my sone,” he says in a letter to Nicholas, “that I shall lesse grieeve to hear that he is knoked in the head, than that he should doe so meane an act as is the rendering of Bristoll castell and fort upon the termes it was."[2]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 230. May. Guthrie, 194. Baillie, ii. 156, 157, 273. This defeat perplexed the theology of that learned man. I confess I am amazed, and cannot see to my mind’s satisfaction, the reasons of the Lord’s dealing with that land.... What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low, and by his own immediate hand, I confess I know not."–Ibid.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, ii. 693. Rushworth, vi. 66-82. Journals, vi. 584. Ellis, iii. 311. Evelyn’s Memoirs, ii. App, 108. The suspicion of Legge’s fidelity was infused into the royal mind by Digby. Charles wished him to be secured, but refused to believe him guilty without better proof.–Ibid, 111.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Sept. 10.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Sept. 14.]

Whilst the king thus mourned over the loss of Bristol, he received still more disastrous intelligence from Scotland. The victory of Kilsyth had dissolved the royal army. The Gordons with their followers had returned to their homes; Colkitto. had led back the Highlanders to their mountains; and with the remnants not more than six hundred repaired to the borders to await the arrival of an English force which had been promised, but not provided, by Charles. In the mean while David Leslie had been detached with four thousand cavalry from the Scottish army in England. He crossed the Tweed,[a] proceeded northward, as if he meant to interpose himself between the enemy and the Highlands; and then returned suddenly to surprise them in their encampment at Philiphaugh. Montrose spent the night at Selkirk in preparing despatches for the king; Leslie, who was concealed at no great distance, crossing the Etrick at dawn, under cover of a dense fog, charged[b] unexpectedly into the camp of the royalists, who lay in heedless security on the Haugh. Their leader, with his guard of horse, flew to their succour; but, after a chivalrous but fruitless effort was compelled to retire and abandon them to their fate. The greater part had formed themselves into a compact body, and kept the enemy at bay till their offer of surrender upon terms had been accepted. But then the ministers loudly demanded their lives; they pronounced the capitulation sinful, and therefore void; and had the satisfaction to behold the whole body of captives massacred in

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Sept. 6.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Sept. 13.]

cold blood, not the men only, but also every woman and child found upon the Haugh. Nor was this sacrifice sufficient. Forty females, who had made their escape, and had been secured by the country people, were a few days later delivered up to the victors, who, in obedience to the decision of the kirk, put them to death by throwing them from the bridge near Linlithgow into the river Avon. Afterwards the Scottish parliament approved of their barbarities, on the pretence that the victims were papists from Ireland; and passed an ordinance that the “Irische prisoners taken at and after Philiphaughe, in all the prisons in the kingdom, should be execut without any assaye or processes conform to the treatey betwixt both kingdoms."[1] Of the noblemen and gentlemen who fled with Montrose, many were also taken; and of these few escaped the hands of the executioner: Montrose himself threaded back his way to the Highlands, where he once more raised the royal standard, and, with a small force and diminished reputation, continued to bid defiance to his enemies. At length, in obedience to repeated messages from the king, he dismissed his followers, and reluctantly withdrew to the continent.[2] With the defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh vanished those brilliant hopes with which the king had consoled himself for his former losses; but the activity of his enemies allowed him no leisure to indulge his grief; they had already formed a lodgment within the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iii. 341. Thurloe, i. 72. The next year the garrison of Dunavertie, three hundred men, surrendered to David Leslie “at the kingdom’s mercie.” “They put to the sword,” says Turner, “everie mother’s sonne except one young man, Machoul, whose life I begged."–Turner’s Memoirs, 46, also 48.]

[Footnote 2: Rush. vi. 237. Guthrie, 301. Journals, vi. 584. Wishart, 203. Baillie, ii. 164.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Dec. 23.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Sept. 3.]

suburbs of Chester, and threatened to deprive him of that, the only port by which he could maintain a communication with Ireland. He hastened to its relief, and was followed at the distance of a day’s journey by Pointz, a parliamentary officer. It was the king’s intention[a] that two attacks, one from the city, the other from the country, should be simultaneously made on the camp of the besiegers; and with this view he left the greater part of the royal cavalry at Boutenheath, under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, while he entered Chester himself with the remainder in the dusk of the evening. It chanced that Pointz meditated a similar attempt with the aid of the besiegers, on the force under Langdale; and the singular position of the armies marked the following day with the most singular vicissitudes of fortune. Early in the morning[b] the royalists repelled the troops under Pointz; but a detachment from the camp restored the battle, and forced them to retire under the walls of the city. Here, with the help of the king’s guards, they recovered the ascendancy, but suffered themselves in the pursuit to be entangled among lanes and hedges lined with infantry, by whom they were thrown into irremediable disorder. Six hundred troopers fell in the action, more than a thousand obtained quarter, and the rest were scattered in every direction. The next night Charles repaired to Denbigh, collected the fugitives around him, and, skilfully avoiding Pointz, hastened[c] to Bridgenorth, where he was met by his nephew Maurice from the garrison of Worcester.[1]

The only confidential counsellor who attended the king in this expedition was Lord Digby. That nobleman,

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 712. Thurloe, i. 3. Rush. vi. 117. Journals, vi. 608.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Sept. 23.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Sept. 23.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Sept. 30.]

unfortunately for the interests of his sovereign, had incurred the hatred of his party: of some, on account of his enmity to prince Rupert; of the general officers, because he was supposed to sway the royal mind, even in military matters; and of all who desired peace, because to his advice was attributed the obstinacy of Charles in continuing the war. It was the common opinion that the king ought to fix his winter quarters at Worcester; but Digby, unwilling to be shut up during four months in a city of which the brother of Rupert was governor, persuaded him to proceed[a] to his usual asylum at Newark. There, observing that the discontent among the officers increased, he parted[b] from his sovereign, but on an important and honourable mission. The northern horse, still amounting to fifteen hundred men, were persuaded by Langdale to attempt a junction with the Scottish hero, Montrose, and to accept of Digby as commander-in-chief. The first achievement of the new general was the complete dispersion of the parliamentary infantry in the neighbourhood of Doncaster; but in a few days his own followers were dispersed by Colonel Copley at Sherburne. They rallied[c] at Skipton, forced their way through Westmoreland and Cumberland, and penetrated as far as Dumfries, but could nowhere meet with intelligence of their Scottish friends. Returning to the borders, they disbanded near Carlisle, the privates retiring to their homes, the officers transporting themselves to the Isle of Man. Langdale remained at Douglas; Digby proceeded to the marquess of Ormond in Ireland.

Charles, during his stay at Newark, was made to

[Transcriber’s Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, Hist. ii. 714. Clarendon Papers, ii. 199. Rushworth, vi. 131.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Oct. 4.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Oct. 12.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Oct. 15.]

feel that with his good fortune he had lost his authority. His two nephews, the Lord Gerard, and about twenty other officers, entered his chamber, and, in rude and insulting language, charged him with ingratitude for their services, and undue partiality for the traitor Digby. The king lost the command of his temper, and, with more warmth than he was known to have betrayed on any other occasion, bade them quit his presence for ever. They retired, and the next morning received passports to go where they pleased. But it was now[a] time for the king himself to depart. The enemy’s forces multiplied around Newark, and the Scots were advancing to join the blockade. In the dead of the night[b] he stole, with five hundred men, to Belvoir Castle; thence, with the aid of experienced guides, he threaded the numerous posts of the enemy; and on the second day reached, for the last time,[c] the walls of Oxford. Yet if he were there in safety, it was owing to the policy of the parliament, who deemed it more prudent to reduce the counties of Devon and Cornwall, the chief asylum of his adherents. For this purpose Fairfax, with the grand army, sat down before Exeter: Cromwell had long ago swept away the royal garrisons between that city and the metropolis.[1]

The reader will have frequently remarked the king’s impatience for the arrival of military aid from Ireland. It is now time to notice the intrigue on which he founded his hopes, and the causes which led to his disappointment. All his efforts to conclude a peace with the insurgents had failed through the obstinacy of the ancient Irish, who required as an indispensable

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 719-723. Rushworth, vi. 80-95. Journals, 671, 672.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Oct. 29.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Nov. 3.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Nov. 5.]

condition the legal establishment of their religion.[1] The Catholics, they alleged, were the people of Ireland; they had now regained many of the churches, which, not a century before, had been taken from their fathers; and they could not in honour or conscience resign them to the professors of another religion. Charles had indulged a hope that the lord lieutenant would devise some means of satisfying their demand without compromising the character of his sovereign;[2] but the scruples or caution of Ormond compelled him to look out for a minister of less timid and more accommodating disposition, and he soon found one in the Lord Herbert, a Catholic, and son to the marquess of Worcester. Herbert felt the most devoted attachment to his sovereign. He had lived with him for twenty years in habits of intimacy: in conjunction with his father, he had spent above two hundred thousand pounds in support of the royal cause; and both had repeatedly and publicly avowed their determination to stand or fall with the throne. To him, therefore, the king explained his difficulties, his views, and his wishes. Low as he was sunk, he had yet a sufficient resource left in the two armies in Ireland. With them he might make head against his enemies, and re-establish his authority. But unfortunately this powerful and necessary aid was withheld from him by the obstinacy of the Irish Catholics, whose demands were such, that, to grant them publicly would be to forfeit the affection and support of all the Protestants in his dominions. He knew but of one way to elude the difficulty,–the employment of a secret and

[Footnote 1: Rinuccini’s MS. Narrative.]

[Footnote 2: See the correspondence in Carte’s Ormond, ii. App. xv. xviii. xx. xxii.; iii. 372, 387, 401; Charles’s Works, 155.]

confidential minister, whose credit with the Catholics would give weight to his assurances, and whose loyalty would not refuse to incur danger or disgrace for the benefit of his sovereign. Herbert cheerfully tendered his services. It was agreed that he should negotiate with the confederates for the immediate aid of an army of ten thousand men; that, as the reward of their willingness to serve the king, he should make to them certain concessions on the point of religion; that these should be kept secret, as long as the disclosure might be likely to prejudice the royal interests; and that Charles, in the case of discovery, should be at liberty to disavow the proceedings of Herbert, till he might find himself in a situation to despise the complaints and the malice of his enemies.[1]

For this purpose Herbert (now[a] created earl of Glamorgan) was furnished, 1. with a commission to levy men, to coin money, and to employ the revenues of the crown for their support; 2. with a warrant[b] to grant on certain conditions to the Catholics of Ireland such concessions as it was not prudent for the king or the lieutenant openly to make; 3. with a promise on the part of Charles to ratify whatever engagements his envoy might conclude, even if they were contrary to law; 4. and with different letters for the pope, the nuncio, and the several princes from whom subsidies might be expected. But care was taken that none of these documents should come to the knowledge of the council. The commission was not sealed in the usual manner; the names of the persons to whom the letters were to be addressed were not inserted; and all the papers were in several respects informal; for this purpose, that the king might have a plausible pretext to

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. 201.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Jan. 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. March 12.]

deny their authenticity in the event of a premature disclosure.[1]

Glamorgan proceeded on his chivalrous mission, and after many adventures and escapes, landed in safety in Ireland. That he communicated the substance of his instructions to Ormond, cannot be doubted; and, if there were aught in his subsequent proceedings of which the lord lieutenant remained ignorant, that ignorance was affected and voluntary on the part of Ormond.[2] At Dublin both joined in the negotiation with the Catholic deputies: from Dublin Glamorgan proceeded to Kilkenny, where the supreme council, satisfied with his authority, and encouraged by the advice of Ormond, concluded with him a treaty,[a] by which it was stipulated that the Catholics should enjoy the public exercise of their religion, and retain all churches, and the revenues of churches, which were not actually in possession of the Protestant clergy; and that in return they should, against a certain day, supply the king with a body of ten thousand armed men, and should devote two-thirds of the ecclesiastical revenues to his service during the war.[3]

[Footnote 1: See the authorities in Note (A).]

[Footnote 2: See the same.]

[Footnote 3: Dr. Leyburn, who was sent by the queen to Ireland in 1647, tells us, on the authority of the nuncio and the bishop of Clogher, “that my lord of Worcester (Glamorgan) was ready to justify that he had exactly followed his instructions, and particularly that concerning the lord lieutenant, whom he had made acquainted with all that he had transacted with the Irish, of which he could produce proof."–Birch, Inquiry, 322. Nor will any one doubt it, who attends, to the letter of Ormond to Lord Muskerry on the 11th of August, just after the arrival of Glamorgan at Kilkenny, in which, speaking of Glamorgan, he assured him, and through him the council of the confederates, that he knew “no subject in England upon whose favour and authority with his majesty they can better rely than upon his lordship’s, nor ... with whom he (Ormond) would sooner agree for the benefit of this kingdom."–Birch, 62. And another to Glamorgan himself on Feb. 11th, in which he says, “Your lordship may securely go on in the way you have proposed to yourself, to serve the king, without fear of interruption from me, or so much as inquiring into the means you work by."–Ibid. 163. See also another letter, of April 6th, in Leland, iii. 283.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. August 25.]

To the surprise of all who were not in the secret, the public treaty now proceeded with unexpected facility. The only point in debate between the lord lieutenant and the deputies, respected their demand to be relieved by act of parliament from all penalties for the performance of the divine service and the administration of the sacraments, after any other form than that of the established church. Ormond was aware of their ulterior object: he became alarmed, and insisted on a proviso, that such article should not be construed to extend to any service performed, or sacraments administered, in cathedral or parochial churches. After repeated discussions, two expedients were suggested; one, that in place of the disputed article should be substituted another, providing that any concession with respect to religion which the king might afterwards grant should be considered as making part of the present treaty; the other, that no mention should be made of religion at all, but that the lieutenant should sign a private engagement, not to molest the Catholics in the possession of those churches which they now held, but leave the question to the decision of a free parliament. To this both parties assented;[a] and the deputies returned to Kilkenny to submit the result of the conferences to the judgment of the general assembly.[1]

But before this, the secret treaty with Glamorgan, which had been concealed from all but the leading members of the council, had by accident come to the

[Footnote 1: Compare Carte, i. 548, with Vindiciae Cath. Hib. 11, 13.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Nov. 11.]

knowledge of the parliament. About the middle of October, the titular archbishop of Tuam was slain in a skirmish[a] between two parties of Scots and Irish near Sligo; and in the carriage of the prelate were found duplicates of the whole negotiation. The discovery was kept secret; but at Christmas Ormond received a copy of these important papers from a friend, with an intimation that the originals had been for some weeks in possession of the committee of both nations in London. It was evident that to save the royal reputation some decisive measure must be immediately taken. A council was called. Digby, who looked upon himself as the king’s confidential minister, but had been kept in ignorance of the whole transaction, commented on it with extreme severity. Glamorgan had been guilty of unpardonable presumption. Without the permission of the king, or the privity of the lord lieutenant, he had concluded a treaty with the rebels, and pledged the king’s name to the observance of conditions pregnant with the most disastrous consequences. It was an usurpation of the royal authority; an offence little short of high treason. The accused, faithful to his trust, made but a feeble defence, and was committed to close custody. In the despatches from the council to Charles, Digby showed that he looked on the concealment which had been practised towards him as a personal affront, and expressed his sentiments with a warmth and freedom not the most grateful to the royal feelings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 239, 240. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 436-440. “You do not believe,” writes Hyde to secretary Nicholas, “that my lord Digby knew of my lord Glamorgan’s commission and negotiation in Ireland. I am confident he did not; for he shewed me the copies of letters which he had written to the king upon it, which ought not in good manners to have been written; and I believe will not be forgiven to him, by those for whose service they were written."–Clarendon Papers, ii. 346.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Oct. 17.]

The unfortunate monarch was still at Oxford devising new plans and indulging new hopes. The dissensions among his adversaries had assumed a character of violence and importance which they had never before borne. The Scots, irritated by the systematic opposition of the Independents, and affected delays of the parliament, and founding the justice of their claim on the solemn league and covenant confirmed by the oaths of the two nations, insisted on the legal establishment of Presbyterianism, and the exclusive prohibition of every other form of worship. They still ruled in the synod of divines; they were seconded by the great body of ministers in the capital, and by a numerous party among the citizens; and they confidently called for the aid of the majority in the two houses, as of their brethren of the same religions persuasion. But their opponents, men of powerful intellect and invincible spirit, were supported by the swords and the merits of a conquering army. Cromwell, from the field of Naseby, had written to express his hope, that the men who had achieved so glorious a victory might be allowed to serve God according to the dictates of their consciences. Fairfax, in his despatches, continually pleaded in favour of toleration. Seldon and Whitelock warned their colleagues to beware how they erected among them the tyranny of a Presbyterian kirk; and many in the two houses began to maintain that Christ had established no particular form of church government, but had left it to be settled under convenient limitations by the authority of the state.[1] Nor were their

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 111, 161, 169, 183. Rushw. vi. 46, 85. Whitelock, 69, 172. Journals, vii. 434, 476, 620.]

altercations confined to religious matters. The decline of the royal cause had elevated the hopes of the English leaders. They no longer disguised their jealousy of the projects of their Scottish allies; they accused them of invading the sovereignty of England by placing garrisons in Belfast, Newcastle, and Carlisle; and complained that their army served to no other purpose than to plunder the defenceless inhabitants. The Scots haughtily replied, that the occupation of the fortresses was necessary for their own safety; and that, if disorders had occasionally been committed by the soldiers, the blame ought to attach to the negligence or parsimony of those who had failed in supplying the subsidies to which they were bound by treaty. The English commissioners remonstrated with the parliament of Scotland, the Scottish with that of England; the charges were reciprocally made and repelled in tones of asperity and defiance; and the occurrences of each day seemed to announce a speedy rupture between the two nations. Hitherto their ancient animosities had been lulled asleep by the conviction of their mutual dependence: the removal of the common danger called them again into activity.[1]

To a mind like that of Charles, eager to multiply experiments, and prone to believe improbabilities, the hostile position of these parties opened a new field for intrigue. He persuaded himself that by gaining either, he should be enabled to destroy both.[2] He therefore tempted the Independents with promises of ample

[Footnote 1: Journals, vii. 573, 619, 640-643, 653, 668, 689, 697, 703, viii. 27, 97. Baillie, ii. 161, 162, 166, 171, 185, 188.]

[Footnote 2: “I am not without hope that I shall be able to draw either the Presbyterians or Independents to side with me for extirpating the one the other, that I shall be really king again."–Carte’s Ormond, iii. 452.]

rewards and unlimited toleration; and at the same time sought to win the Scots by professions of his willingness to accede to any terms compatible with his honour and conscience. Their commissioners in London had already made overtures for an accommodation to Queen Henrietta in Paris; and the French monarch, at her suggestion, had intrusted[a] Montreuil with the delicate office of negotiating secretly between them and their sovereign. From Montreuil Charles understood that the Scots would afford him an asylum in their army, and declare in his favour, if he would assent to the three demands made of him during the treaty at Uxbridge; a proposal which both Henrietta and the queen regent of France thought so moderate in existing circumstances, that he would accept it with eagerness and gratitude. But the king, in his own judgment, gave the preference to a project of accommodation with the Independents, because they asked only for toleration, while the Scots sought to force their own creed on the consciences of others; nor did he seem to comprehend the important fact, that the latter were willing at least to accept him for their king, while the former aimed at nothing less than the entire subversion of his throne.[1]

From Oxford he had sent several messages[b][c][d][e][f][g] to the parliament, by one of which he demanded passports for commissioners, or free and safe access for himself. To all a refusal was returned, on the ground that he had employed the opportunity afforded him by former treaties to tempt the fidelity of the commissioners, and that it was unsafe to indulge him with more facilities for conducting similar intrigues. Decency, however,

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. 209-211. Baillie, ii. 188. Thurloe, i. 72, 73, 85.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. August.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Dec. 5.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Dec. 15.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. Dec. 26.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1645. Dec. 29.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1646. Jan. 15.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1646. Jan. 17.]

required that in return the two houses should make their proposals; and it was resolved to submit to him certain articles for his immediate and unqualified approval or rejection. The Scots contended in favour of the three original propositions; but their opponents introduced several important alterations, for the twofold purpose, first of spinning out the debates, till the king should be surrounded in Oxford, and secondly of making such additions to the severity of the terms as might insure their rejection.[1]

Under these circumstances Montreuil admonished him that he had not a day to spare; that the Independents sought to deceive him to his own ruin; that his only resource was to accept of the conditions offered by the Scots; and that, whatever might be his persuasion respecting the origin of episcopacy, he might, in his present distress, conscientiously assent to the demand respecting Presbyterianism; because it did not require him to introduce a form of worship which was not already established, but merely to allow that to remain which he had not the power to remove. Such, according to his instructions, was the opinion of the queen regent of France, and such was the prayer of his own consort, Henrietta Maria. But no argument could shake the royal resolution.[2] He returned[a] a firm but temperate refusal, and renewed his request for a personal conference at Westminster. The message was conveyed in terms as energetic as language could supply, but it arrived at a most unpropitious

[Footnote 1: Charles’s Works, 548-550. Journals, viii. 31, 45, 53, 72. Baillie, ii. 144, 173, 177, 184, 190.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Papers, ii. 211-214. “Let not my enemies flatter themselves so with their good successes. Without pretending to prophesy, I will foretel their ruin, except they agree with me, however it shall please God to dispose of me."]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Jan. 20.]

moment, the very day on which the committee of both kingdoms thought proper to communicate to the two houses the papers respecting the treaty between Glamorgan and the Catholics of Ireland. Amidst the ferment and exasperation produced by the disclosure, the king’s letter was suffered to remain unnoticed.[1]

The publication of these important documents imposed[a] on Charles the necessity of vindicating his conduct to his Protestant subjects; a task of no very easy execution, had he not availed himself of the permission which he had formerly extorted from the attachment of Glamorgan. In an additional message to the two houses, he protested that he had never given to that nobleman any other commission than to enlist soldiers, nor authorized him to treat on any subject without the privity of the lord lieutenant; that he disavowed all his proceedings and engagements with the Catholics of Ireland; and that he had ordered the privy council in Dublin to proceed against him for his presumption according to law.[2] That council, however,[b] or at least the lord lieutenant, was in possession of a document unknown to the parliament, a copy of the warrant by which Charles had engaged to confirm whatever Glamorgan should promise in the royal name. On this account, in his answer to Ormond, he was compelled to shift his ground, and to assert that he had no recollection of any such warrant; that it was indeed possible he might have furnished the earl with some credential to the Irish Catholics; but that if he did, it was only with an understanding that it should not be employed without the knowledge and the approbation

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. 213. Journals, viii. 103, 125. Commons’ iv. Jan. 16, 26. Charles’s works, 551. Baillie, ii. 185.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, viii. 132. Charles’s Works, 555.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Jan. 29.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. Jan. 31.]

of the lord lieutenant. Whoever considers the evasive tendency of these answers, will find in them abundant proof of Glamorgan’s pretentions.[1]

That nobleman had already recovered his liberty. To prepare against subsequent contingencies, and to leave the king what he termed “a starting-hole,” he had been careful to subjoin to his treaty a secret article called a defeasance, stipulating that the sovereign should be no further bound than he himself might think proper, after he had witnessed the efforts of the Catholics in his favour; but that Glamorgan should conceal this release from the royal knowledge till he had made every exertion in his power to procure the execution of the treaty.[2] This extraordinary instrument he now produced in his own vindication: the council ordered him to be discharged upon bail for his appearance when it might be required; and he[a] hastened under the approbation of the lord lieutenant, to resume his negotiation with the Catholics at Kilkenny. He found the general assembly divided into two parties. The clergy, with their adherents, opposed the adoption of any peace in which the establishment of the Catholic worship was not openly recognized; and their arguments were strengthened by the recent imprisonment of Glamorgan, and the secret influence of the papal nuncio Rinuccini, archbishop and prince of Fermo, who had lately landed in Ireland. On the other hand, the members of the council and the lords and gentlemen of the pale strenuously recommended the adoption of one of the two expedients which have

[Footnote 1: Carte, iii. 445-448.]

[Footnote 2: Compare Carte, i. 551, with the Vindiciae, 17. Neither of these writers gives us a full copy of the defeasance. In the Vindiciae we are told that it was this which procured Glamorgan’s discharge from prison.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Jan. 22.]

been previously mentioned, as offering sufficient security for the church, and the only means of uniting the Protestant royalists in the same cause with the Catholics. At the suggestion of the nuncio, the decision was postponed to the month of May; but Glamorgan did not forget the necessities of his sovereign; he obtained an immediate aid of six thousand men, and the promise of a considerable reinforcement, and proceeded to Waterford for the purpose of attempting to raise the siege of Chester. There, while he waited the arrival of transports, he received the news of the public disavowal of his authority by the king. But this gave him little uneasiness; he attributed it to the real cause, the danger with which Charles was threatened; and he had been already instructed “to make no other account of such declarations, than to put himself in a condition to help his master and set him free."[1] In a short time the more distressing intelligence arrived that Chester had surrendered: the fall of Chester was followed by the dissolution of the royal army in Cornwall, under the command of Lord Hopton; and the prince of Wales, unable to remain there with safety, fled first to Scilly and thence to Jersey. There remained not a spot on the English coast where the Irish auxiliaries could be landed with any prospect of success. Glamorgan dispersed his army. Three hundred men accompanied the Lord Digby to form a guard for the prince; a more considerable body proceeded to Scotland in aid of Montrose; and the remainder returned to their former quarters.[2]

[Footnote 1: Birch, 189.]

[Footnote 2: Had Glamorgan’s intended army of 10,000 men landed in England, the war would probably have assumed a most sanguinary character. An ordinance had passed the houses, that no quarter should be given to any Irishman, or any papist born in Ireland; that they should be excepted out of all capitulations; and that whenever they were taken, they should forthwith be put to death.–Rushworth, v. 729. Oct. 24, 1644. By the navy this was vigorously executed. The Irish sailors were invariably bound back to back, and thrown into the sea. At land we read of twelve Irish soldiers being hanged by the parliamentarians, for whom Prince Rupert hanged twelve of his prisoners.–Clarendon, ii. 623. After the victory of Naseby, Fairfax referred the task to the two houses. He had not, he wrote, time to inquire who were Irish and who were not, but had sent all the prisoners to London, to be disposed of according to law–Journals, vii. 433.]

In the mean while the king continued to consume his time in unavailing negotiations with the parliament, the Scots, and the Independents. 1. He had been persuaded that there were many individuals of considerable influence both in the city and the two houses, who anxiously wished for such an accommodation as might heal the wounds of the country: that the terror inspired by the ruling party imposed silence on them for the present; but that, were he in London, they would joyfully rally around him, and by their number and union compel his adversaries to lower their pretensions. This it was that induced him to solicit a personal conference at Westminster. He[a] now repeated the proposal, and, to make it worth acceptance, offered to grant full toleration to every class of Protestant dissenters, to yield to the parliament the command of the army during seven years, and to make over to them the next nomination of the lord admiral, the judges, and the officers of state. The insulting[b] silence with which this message was treated did not deter him from a third attempt. He asked whether, if he were to disband his forces, dismantle his garrisons, and return to his usual residence in the vicinity of the parliament, they, on their part, would pass their

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Jan. 29.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. March 23.]

word for the preservation of his honour, person, and estate, and allow his adherents to live without molestation on their own property. Even this proposal could not provoke an answer. It was plain that his enemies dare not trust their adherents in the royal presence; and, fearing that he might privately make his way into the city, they published an ordinance, that if the king came within the lines of communication, the officer of the guard should conduct him to St. James’s, imprison his followers, and allow of no access to his person[a]; and at the same time they gave notice by proclamation that all Catholics, and all persons who had borne arms in the king’s service, should depart within six days, under the penalty of being proceeded against as spies according to martial law.[1]

2. In the negotiation still pending between Montreuil and the Scottish commissioners, other matters were easily adjusted; but the question of religion presented an insurmountable difficulty, the Scots insisting that the presbyterian form of church government should be established in all the three kingdoms; the king consenting that it should retain the supremacy in Scotland, but refusing to consent to the abolition of episcopacy in England and Ireland.[2] To give a colour to the agency of Montreuil, Louis had appointed him the French resident in Scotland, and in that capacity he applied for permission to pass through Oxford on his way, that he might deliver to the king letters from his sovereign and the queen regent.[b] Objections were made; delays were created; but after the lapse of a fortnight, he obtained a passport[c]

[Footnote 1: Charles’s Works, 556, 557. Rushworth, vi. 249. Journals, March 31, 1646. Carte’s Ormond, iii. 452.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Papers, ii. 209-215.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. March 31.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. Feb. 16.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1646. March 7.]

from the committee of the two kingdoms,[1] and employed his time at Oxford in persuading Charles of the necessity of concession, and in soliciting from the Scottish commissioners authority to assure their sovereign of safety as to person and conscience in the Scottish army. On the first of April he received from[a] Charles a written engagement, that he would take with him to their quarters before Newark “no man excepted by parliament, but only his nephews and Ashburnham,” and that he would then listen to instruction in the matter of religion, and concede as far as his conscience would permit.[2] In return, Montreuil pledged to him the word of his sovereign and the queen regent of France,[3] that the Scots should receive him as their natural king, should offer no violence to his person or conscience, his servants or followers, and should join their forces and endeavours with his to procure “a happy and well-grounded peace.” On this understanding it was agreed that the king should attempt on the night of the following Tuesday to break through the parliamentary force lying round Oxford, and that at the same time a body of three hundred Scottish cavalry should advance as far as Harborough to receive him, and escort him in safety to their own army.[4]

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journ. viii. 171. Commons’, Feb. 16, 28, March 4, 5, 7.]

[Footnote 2: Of this paper there were two copies, one to be kept secret, containing a protestation that none of the king’s followers should be ruined or dishonoured; the other to be shown, containing no such protestation. “En l’un desquels, qui m’a esté donné pour faire voir, la protestation n’estoit point. Faite ŕ Oxford ce premier Avril, 1646."–Clarend. Papers ii. 220.]

[Footnote 3: Why so? It had been so settled in Paris, because the negotiation was opened under their auspices, and conducted by their agent.–Clarend. Hist. ii. 750. Papers, ii. 209.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid. 220-222. It had been asked whether Montreuil had any authority from the Scottish commissioners to make such an engagement. I see no reason to doubt it. Both Charles and Montreuil must have been aware that an unauthorized engagement could have offered no security to the king in the hazardous attempt which he meditated. We find him twice, before the date of the engagement, requiring the commissioners to send powers to Montreuil to assure him of safety in person and conscience in their army (Clarendon Pap. ii. 218), and immediately afterwards informing Ormond that he was going to the Scottish army because he had lately received “very good security” that he and his friends should be safe in person, honour, and conscience. See the letter in Lords’ Journals, viii. 366, and account of a letter from the king to Lord Belasyse in pys, ii. 246.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. April 1.]

Two days later Montreuil resumed his pretended journey to Scotland, and repaired to Southwell, within the quarters assigned to the Scots. That they might without inconvenience spare a large escort to meet the[a] king, he had brought with him a royal order to Lord Belasyse to surrender Newark into their hands; but, to his surprise and dismay, he found that the commissioners to the army affected to be ignorant of the authority exercised by him at Oxford, and refused to take upon themselves the responsibility of meeting and receiving the king. They objected that it would be an act of hostility towards the parliament, a breach of the solemn league and covenant between the nations: nor would they even allow him to inform Charles of their refusal, till they should have a personal conference with their commissioners in London. In these circumstances he burnt the order for the surrender of Newark; and the king, alarmed at his unaccountable silence, made no attempt to escape from Oxford. A fortnight was passed in painful suspense. At last the two bodies of commissioners met[b] at Royston; and the result of a long debate was a sort of compromise between the opposite parties that the king should he received, but in such manner that all appearance of previous treaty or concert might be

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. April 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. April 11.]

avoided; that he should be requested to give satisfaction on the question of religion as speedily as possible, and that no co-operation of the royal forces with the Scots should be permitted. At first Montreuil, in the anguish of disappointment, was of opinion that no faith was to be put in the word of a Scotsman: now he thought that he discovered a gleam of[a] hope in the resolution taken at Royston, and advised[b] the king to accept the proposal, if no better expedient[c] could be devised. It held out a prospect of safety, though it promised nothing more.[1]

3. During this negotiation the unfortunate monarch, though warned that, by treating at the same time with two opposite parties, he ran the risk of forfeiting the confidence of both, had employed Ashburnham to make proposals to the Independents through Sir Henry Vane. What the king asked from them was to facilitate his access to parliament. Ample rewards were held out to Vane, “to the gentleman, who was quartered[d] with him,"[2] and to the personal friends of both; and an assurance was given, that if the establishment of Presbyterianism were still made an indispensable condition of peace, the king would join his efforts with theirs “to root out of the kingdom that tyrannical government.” From the remains of the correspondence it appears that to the first communication Vane had replied in terms which, though not altogether satisfactory, did not exclude the hope of his compliance; and Charles wrote to him a second time,

[Footnote 1: These particulars appear in the correspondence in Clarendon Papers, 221-226. Montreuil left Oxford on Friday; therefore on the 3rd.]

[Footnote 2: This gentleman might be Fairfax or Cromwell; but from a letter of Baillie (ii. 199, App. 3), I should think that he was an “Independent minister,” probably Peters.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. April.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. April 18.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1646. April 20.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1646. March 2.]

repeating his offers, describing his distress, and stating that, unless he received a favourable answer within four days, he must have recourse to some other expedient.[1] The negotiation, however, continued for weeks; it was even discovered by the opposite party, who considered it as an artful scheme on the part of[a] the Independents to detain the king in Oxford, till Fairfax and Cromwell should bring up the army from Cornwall; to amuse the royal bird, till the fowlers had enclosed him in their toils.[2]

Oxford during the war had been rendered one of the strongest fortresses in the kingdom. On three sides the waters of the Isis and the Charwell, spreading over the adjoining country, kept the enemy at a considerable distance, and on the north the city was covered with a succession of works, erected by the most skilful engineers. With a garrison of five thousand men, and a plentiful supply of stores and provisions, Charles might have protracted his fate for several months; yet the result of a siege must have been his captivity. He possessed no army; he had no prospect of assistance from without; and within, famine would in the end compel him to surrender. But where was he to seek an asylum?

[Footnote 1: See two letters, one of March 2, from Ashburnham, beginning, "Sir, you cannot suppose the work is done,” and another without date from Charles, beginning, “Sir, I shall only add this word to what was said in my last.” They were first published from the papers of secretary Nicholas, by Birch, in 1764, in the preface to a collection of “Letters between Colonel Hammond and the committee at Derby House, &c.,” and afterwards in the Clarendon Papers, ii. 226, 227.]

[Footnote 2: See Baillie, App. 3, App. 23, ii. 199, 203. “Their daily treaties with Ashburnham to keep the king still, till they deliver him to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and to be disposed upon as Cromwell and his friend think it fittest for their affairs."–Ibid. A different account is given in the continuation of Macintosh, vi. 21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. April 23.]

Indignant at what he deemed a breach of faith in the Scots, he spurned the idea of throwing himself on[a] their mercy; and the march of Fairfax with the advanced guard of his army towards Andover admonished him that it was time to quit the city of Oxford. First he inquired by two officers the opinion of Ireton, who[b] was quartered at Waterstock, whether, if he were to disband his forces, and to repair to the general, the parliament would suffer him to retain the title and authority of king. Then, receiving no answer[c] from Ireton, he authorized the earl of Southampton to state to Colonel Rainborowe, that the king was ready to deliver himself up to the army, on receiving a pledge that his personal safety should be respected.[1] But Rainborowe referred him to the parliament; and the unhappy monarch, having exhausted every expedient which he could devise, left Oxford at midnight,[d] disguised as a servant, following his supposed master[e] Ashburnham, who rode before in company with Hudson, a clergyman, well acquainted with the country. They passed through Henley and Brentford to Harrow; but the time which was spent on the road proved either that Charles had hitherto formed no plan in his own mind, or that he lingered with the hope of some communication from his partisans in the metropolis. At last he turned in the direction of St. Alban’s; and, avoiding that town, hastened through bye-ways to Harborough. If he expected to find there a body of[f] Scottish horse, or a messenger from Montreuil, he was disappointed. Crossing by Stamford, he rested at Downham,[g] and spent two or three days in fruitless inquiries for a ship which might convey him to Newcastle or Scotland, whilst Hudson repaired to the French agent

[Footnote 1: Hearne’s Dunstable, ii. 787-790.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. April 22.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. April 25.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1646. April 26.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1646. April 27.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1646. April 28.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1646. April 30.]

at Southwell, and returned the bearer of a short note sent by Montreuil, from whom the messenger understood that the Scots had pledged their word–they would give no written document–to fulfill on their part the original engagement made in their name at Oxford.[1] On this slender security–for he had no[a] alternative–he repaired to the lodgings of Montreuil early in the morning, and about noon was conducted by a troop of horse to the head quarters at Kelham. Leslie and his officers, though they affected the utmost surprise, treated him with the respect due to their sovereign; and London in the name of the commissioners required that he should take the covenant, should order Lord Belasyse to surrender Newark, and should despatch a messenger with the royal command to Montrose to lay down his arms. Charles soon discovered that he was a prisoner, and when, to make the experiment, he undertook to give the word to the guard, he was interrupted by Leven, who said: “I am the older soldier, sir: your majesty had better leave that office to me.”

For ten days the public mind in the capital had been

[Footnote 1: The Scots had made three offers or promises to the king. The first and most important was the engagement of the 1st of April. But the Scottish commissioners with the army shrunk from the responsibility of carrying it into execution; and, as it appears to me, with some reason, for they had not been parties to the contract. The second was the modified offer agreed upon by both bodies of commissioners at Royston. But this offer was never accepted by the king, and consequently ceased to be binding upon them. The third was the verbal promise mentioned above. If it was made–and of a promise of safety there can be no doubt, though we have only the testimony of Hudson–the Scots were certainly bound by it, and must plead guilty to the charge of breach of faith, by subsequently delivering up the fugitive monarch to the English parliament.]

[Footnote 2: Peck, Desid. Curios. I. x. No. 8. Ashburnham, ii. 76. Rushworth, vi. 266, 267, 276. Clarendon, Hist. iii. 22; Papers, ii. 228. Turner, Mem. 41.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. May 5.]

agitated by the most contradictory rumours: the moment the place of the king’s retreat was ascertained, both Presbyterians and Independents united in condemning the perfidy of their northern allies. Menaces of immediate hostilities were heard. Poyntz received orders to watch the motions of the Scots with five thousand horse; and it was resolved that Fairfax should follow with the remainder of the army. But the Scottish leaders, anxious to avoid a rupture, and yet unwilling to surrender the royal prize, broke up their camp before Newark, and retired with precipitation to Newcastle. Thence by dint of protestations and denials they gradually succeeded in allaying the ferment.[1] Charles contributed his share, by repeating his desire of an accommodation, and requesting the two houses to send to him the propositions of peace; and, as an earnest of his sincerity, he despatched a circular order[a] to his officers to surrender the few fortresses which still maintained his cause. The war was at an end; Oxford, Worcester, Pendennis, and Ragland opened[b] their gates; and to the praise of the conquerors it must be recorded, that they did not stain their laurels with blood. The last remnants of the royal army obtained honourable terms from the generosity of Fairfax; easy compositions for the redemption of their estates were held out to the great majority of the

[Footnote 1: See their messages in the Lords’ Journals, viii. 307, 308, 311, 364; Hearne’s Dunstable, ii. 790-800. They protest that they were astonished at the king’s coming to their army; that they believed he must mean to give satisfaction, or he would never have come to them; that his presence would never induce them to act in opposition to the solemn league and covenant; that they should leave the settlement of all questions to the parliaments of the two nations; that there had been no treaty between the king and them; and that the assertion in the letter published by Ormond was "a damnable untruth."]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. June 10.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. August 20.]

royalists; and the policy of the measure was proved by the number of those who hastened to profit by the indulgence, and thus extinguished the hopes of the few who still thought it possible to conjure up another army in defence of the captive monarch.[1]

While the two houses, secure of victory, debated at their leisure the propositions to be submitted for acceptance to the king, the Scots employed the interval in attempts to convert him to the Presbyterian creed. For this purpose, Henderson, the most celebrated of their ministers, repaired from London to Newcastle. The king, according to his promise, listened to the arguments of his new instructor; and an interesting controversy respecting the divine institution of episcopacy and presbyteracy was maintained with no contemptible display of skill between the two polemics. Whether Charles composed without the help of a theological monitor the papers, which on this occasion he produced, may perhaps be doubted; but the author whoever he were, proved himself a match, if not more than a match, for his veteran opponent.[2] The Scottish

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 309, 329, 360, 374, 475. Baillie, ii. 207, 209. Rush. vi. 280-297. The last who submitted to take down the royal standard was the marquess of Worcester. He was compelled to travel, at the age of eighty, from Ragland Castle to London, but died immediately after his arrival. As his estate was under sequestration, the Lords ordered a sum to be advanced for the expenses of his funeral.–Journals, viii. 498, 616. See Note (B) at the end of the volume.]

[Footnote 2: The following was the chief point in dispute. Each had alleged texts of Scripture in support of his favourite opinion, and each explained those texts in an opposite meaning. It was certainly as unreasonable that Charles should submit his judgment to Henderson, as that Henderson should submit his to that of Charles. The king, therefore, asked who was to be judge between them. The divine replied, that Scripture could only be explained by Scripture, which, in the opinion of the monarch, was leaving the matter undecided. He maintained that antiquity was the judge. The church government established by the apostles must have been consonant to the meaning of the Scripture. Now, as far as we can go back in history, we find episcopacy established: whence it is fair to infer that episcopacy was the form established by the apostles. Henderson did not allow the inference. The church of the Jews had fallen into idolatry during the short absence of Moses on the mount, the church of Christ might have fallen into error in a short time after the death of the apostles. Here the controversy ended with the sickness and death of the divine.–See Charles’s Works, 75-90.]

leaders, however, came with political arguments to the aid of their champion. They assured[a] the king that his restoration to the royal authority, or his perpetual exclusion from the throne, depended on his present choice. Let him take the covenant, and concur in the establishment of the Directory, and the Scottish nation to a man, the English, with the sole exception of the Independents, would declare in his favour. His conformity in that point alone could induce them to mitigate the severity of their other demands, to replace him on the throne of his ancestors, and to compel the opposite faction to submit. Should he refuse, he must attribute the consequences to himself. He had received sufficient warning: they had taken the covenant, and must discharge their duty to God and their country.

It was believed then, it has often been repeated since, that the king’s refusal originated in the wilfulness and obstinacy of his temper; and that his repeated appeals to his conscience were mere pretexts to disguise his design of replunging the nation into the horrors from which it had so recently emerged. But this supposition is completely refuted by the whole tenour of his secret correspondence with his queen and her council in France. He appears to have divided his objections into two classes, political and religious. 1. It was, he alleged, an age in which mankind were governed from the pulpit: whence it became an object

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. July 13.]

of the first importance to a sovereign to determine to whose care that powerful engine should be intrusted. The principles of Presbyterianism were anti-monarchical; its ministers openly advocated the lawfulness of rebellion; and, if they were made the sole dispensers of public instruction, he and his successors might be kings in name, but would be slaves in effect. The wisest of those who had swayed the sceptre since the days of Solomon had given his sanction to the maxim “no bishop no king;" and his own history furnished a melancholy confirmation of the sagacity of his father. 2. The origin of episcopacy was a theological question, which he had made it his business to study. He was convinced that the institution was derived from Christ, and that he could not in conscience commute it for another form of church government devised by man. He had found episcopacy in the church at his accession; he had sworn to maintain it in all its rights; and he was bound to leave it in existence at his death. Once, indeed, to please the two houses, he had betrayed his conscience by assenting to the death of Strafford: the punishment of that transgression still lay heavy on his head; but should he, to please them again, betray it once more, he would prove himself a most incorrigible sinner, and deserve the curse both of God and man.[1]

The king had reached Newark in May: it was the end of July before the propositions of peace were submitted[a] to his consideration. The same in substance with those of the preceding year, they had yet been aggravated by new restraints, and a more numerous

[Footnote 1: For all these particulars, see the Clarendon Papers, ii. 243, 248, 256, 260, 263, 265, 274, 277, 295; Baillie, ii. 208, 209, 214, 218, 219, 236, 241, 242, 243, 249.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. July 24.]

list of proscriptions. On the tenth day,[a] the utmost limit of the time allotted to the commissioners, Charles replied that it was impossible for him to return an unqualified assent to proposals of such immense importance; that without explanation he could not comprehend how much of the ancient constitution it was meant to preserve, how much to take away; that a personal conference was necessary for both parties, in order to remove doubts, weigh reasons, and come to a perfect understanding; and that for this purpose it was his intention to repair to Westminster whenever the two houses and the Scottish commissioners would assure him that he might reside there with freedom, honour, and safety.[1]

This message, which was deemed evasive, and therefore unsatisfactory, filled the Independents with joy, the Presbyterians with sorrow. The former disguised no longer their wish to dethrone the king, and either to set up in his place his son the duke of York, whom the surrender of Oxford had delivered into their hands, or, which to many seemed preferable, to substitute a republican for a monarchical form of government. The Scottish commissioners sought to allay the ferment, by diverting the attention of the houses. They expressed[b] their readiness not only to concur in such measures as the obstinacy of the king should make necessary, but on the receipt of a compensation for their past services, to withdraw their army into their own country. The offer was cheerfully accepted; a committee assembled to balance the accounts between

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 423, 447, 460. The king now wished to escape from the Scots. Ashburnham was instructed to sound Pierpoint, one of the parliamentarian commissioners, but Pierpoint refused to confer with him.–Ashburn. ii. 78.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. August 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. August 11.]

the nations; many charges on both sides were disputed and disallowed; and at last the Scots agreed[a] to accept four hundred thousand pounds in lieu of all demands, of which one half should be paid before they left England, the other after their arrival in Scotland.[1]

At this moment an unexpected vote[b] of the two houses gave birth to a controversy unprecedented in history. It was resolved that the right of disposing of the king belonged to the parliament of England. The Scots hastened to remonstrate. To dispose of the king was an ambiguous term; they would assume that it meant to determine where he should reside until harmony was restored between him and his people. But it ought to be remembered that he was king of Scotland as well as of England; that each nation had an interest in the royal person; both had been parties in the war; both had a right to be consulted respecting the result. The English, on the contrary, contended that the Scots were not parties, but auxiliaries, and that it was their duty to execute the orders of those whose bread they ate, and whose money they received. Scotland was certainly an independent kingdom. But its rights were confined within its own

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 461, 485. Baillie, ii. 222, 223, 225, 267. Rush. vi. 322-326. To procure the money, a new loan was raised in the following manner. Every subscriber to former loans on the faith of parliament, who had yet received neither principal nor interest, was allowed to subscribe the same sum to the present loan, and, in return, both sums with interest were to be secured to him on the grand excise and the sale of the bishops’ lands. For the latter purpose, three ordinances were passed; one disabling all persons from holding the place, assuming the name, and exercising the jurisdiction of archbishops or bishops within the realm, and vesting all the lands belonging to archbishops and bishops in certain trustees, for the use of the nation (Journals, 515); another securing the debts of subscribers on these lands (ibid. 520); and a third appointing persons to make contracts of sale, and receive the money.–Journals of Commons, Nov. 16.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Sept. 5.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. Sept. 21.]

limits; it could not claim, it should not exercise, any authority within the boundaries of England. This altercation threatened to dissolve the union between the kingdoms. Conferences were repeatedly[a][b] held. The Scots published their speeches; the Commons ordered the books to be seized, and the printers to be imprisoned; and each party obstinately refused either to admit the pretensions of its opponents, or even to yield to a compromise. But that which most strongly marked the sense of the parliament, was a vote[c] providing money for the payment of the army during the next six months; a very intelligible hint of their determination to maintain their claim by force of arms, if it were invaded by the presumption of their allies.[1]

This extraordinary dispute, the difficulty of raising an immediate loan, and the previous arrangements for the departure of the Scots, occupied the attention of the two houses during the remainder of the year. Charles had sufficient leisure to reflect on the fate which threatened him. His constancy seemed to relax; he consulted[d] the bishops of London and Salisbury: and successively proposed several unsatisfactory expedients, of which the object was to combine the toleration of episcopacy with the temporary or partial establishment of Presbyterianism. The lords voted[e] that he should be allowed to reside at Newmarket; but the Commons refused[f] their consent; and ultimately both houses fixed on Holmby, in the vicinity of Northampton.[2] No notice was taken of the security

[Footnote 1: Journals, 498, 534. Commons’, Oct. 7, 13, 14, 16. Rush. vi. 329-373. Baillie, ii. 246.]

[Footnote 2: “Holdenby or Holmby, a very stately house, built by the lord chancellor Hatton, and in King James’s reign purchased by Q. Anne for her second son."–Herbert, 13. It was, therefore, the king’s own property.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Oct. 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. Oct. 7.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1646. Oct. 13.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1646. Sept. 30.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1646. Dec. 16.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1646. Dec. 31.]

which he had demanded for his honour and freedom, but a promise was given that respect should be had to the safety of his person in the defence of the true[a] religion and the liberties of the two kingdoms, according to the solemn league and covenant. This vote was communicated to the Scottish commissioners at Newcastle, who replied that they awaited the commands[b] of their own parliament.[1]

In Scotland the situation of the king had been the subject of many keen and animated debates. In the parliament his friends were active and persevering; and their efforts elicited a resolution that the commissioners[c] in London should urge with all their influence his request of a personal conference. Cheered by this partial success, they proposed a vote expressive of their determination to support, under all circumstances, his right to the English throne. But at this moment arrived the votes of the two houses for his removal to Holmby: the current of Scottish loyalty was instantly checked; and the fear of a rupture between the nations induced the estates to observe a solemn fast, that they might deserve the blessing of Heaven, and to consult the commissioners of the kirk, that they might proceed with a safe conscience. The answer was such as might have been expected from the bigotry of the age: that it was unlawful to assist in the restoration of a prince, who had been excluded from the government of his kingdom, for his refusal of the propositions respecting religion and the covenant. No man ventured to oppose the decision of the kirk. In a house of two hundred

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. 265, 268, 276. Journals, 622, 635, 648, 681. Commons’ Journals, Dec. 24. His letter to the bishop of London is in Ellis, iii. 326, 2nd ser.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Jan. 6.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Jan. 12.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1646. Dec. 16.]

members, not more than seven or eight were found to speak in favour of their sovereign. A resolution was voted that he should be sent to Holmby, or some other of his houses near London, to remain there till he had assented to the propositions of peace; and all that his friends could obtain was an amendment more expressive of their fears than of their hopes, that no injury[a] or violence should be offered to his person, no obstacle be opposed to the legitimate succession of his children, and no alteration made in the existing government of the kingdoms. This addition was cheerfully adopted by the English House of Lords; but the Commons did not vouchsafe to honour it with their notice. The first[b] payment of one hundred thousand pounds had already been made at Northallerton: the Scots, according to[c] agreement, evacuated Newcastle; and the parliamentary commissioners, without any other ceremony, took charge of the royal person. Four days later the Scots[d] received the second sum of one hundred thousand pounds; their army repassed the border-line between the two kingdoms; and the captive monarch, under a[e] strong guard, but with every demonstration of respect, was conducted to his new prison at Holmby.[1]

The royalists, ever since the king’s visit to Newark, had viewed with anxiety and terror the cool calculating policy of the Scots. The result converted their suspicions into certitude: they hesitated not to accuse them of falsehood and perfidy, and to charge them with having allured the king to their army by deceitful promises, that, Judas-like, they might barter him for money with his enemies. Insinuations so injurious

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 686, 689, 695, 699, 713. Commons’, Jan. 25, 26, 27. Baillie, ii. 253. Rush. vi. 390-398. Whitelock, 233. Thurloe, i. 73, 74.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Jan. 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Jan. 21.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. Jan. 30.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1647. Feb. 3.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1647. Feb. 16.]

to the character of the nation ought not to be lightly admitted. It is, indeed, true that fanaticism and self-interest had steeled the breasts of the Covenanters against the more generous impulses of loyalty and compassion; and that, by the delivery of the king to his enemies, they violated their previous pledge of personal safety, which, if once given, though by word only, ought to have been sacredly fulfilled. But there is no ground for the statement, that they held out promises to delude the unfortunate prince. It was with reluctance that they consented to receive him at all; and, when at last he sought an asylum in their army, he came thither, not allured by invitation from them, but driven by necessity and despair. 2. If the delivery of the royal person, connected as it was with the receipt of Ł200,000, bore the appearance of a sale, it ought to be remembered, that the accounts between the two nations had been adjusted in the beginning of September; that for four months afterwards the Scots never ceased to negotiate in favour of Charles; nor did they resign the care of his person, till the votes of the English parliament compelled them to make the choice between compliance or war. It may be, that in forming their decision their personal interest was not forgotten; but there was another consideration which had no small weight even with the friends of the monarch. It was urged that by suffering the king to reside at Holmby, they would do away with the last pretext for keeping on foot the army under the command of Fairfax; the dissolution of that army would annihilate the influence of the Independents, and give an undisputed ascendancy to the Presbyterians; the first the declared enemies, the others the avowed advocates of Scotland, of the kirk, and of the king; and the necessary consequence must be, that the two parliaments would be left at liberty to arrange, in conformity with the covenant, both the establishment of religion and the restoration of the throne.[1]

Charles was not yet weaned from the expectation of succour from Ireland. At Newcastle he had consoled the hours of his captivity with dreams of the mighty efforts for his deliverance, which would be made by Ormond, and Glamorgan, and the council at Kilkenny. To the first of these he forwarded two messages, one openly through Lanark, the Scottish secretary, the other clandestinely through Lord Digby, who proceeded to Dublin from France. By the first Ormond received a positive command to break off the treaty with the Catholics; by the second he was told to adhere to his former instructions, and to obey no order which was not transmitted to him by the queen or the prince.[a] The letter to Glamorgan proves more clearly the distress to which he was reduced, and the confidence which he reposed in the exertions of that nobleman. “If,” he writes, “you can raise a large sum of money by pawning my kingdoms for that purpose, I am content you should do it; and if I recover them, I will fully repay that money. And tell the nuncio, that if once I can come into his and your hands, which ought to be extremely wish’d”

[Footnote 1: See the declarations of Argyle in Laing, iii. 560; and of the Scottish commissioners, to the English parliament, Journals, ix. 594, 598. "Stapleton and Hollis, and some others of the eleven members, had been the main persuaders of us to remove out of England, and leave the king to them, upon assurance, which was most likely, that this was the only means to get that evil army disbanded, the king and peace settled according to our minds; but their bent execution of this real intention has undone them, and all, till God provide a remedy."–Baillie, ii. 257.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. July 20.]

for by you, both, as well for the sake of England as Ireland, since all the rest, as I see, despise me, I will do it. And if I do not say this from my heart, or if in any future time I fail you in this, may God never restore me to my kingdoms in this world, nor give me eternal happiness in the next, to which I hope this tribulation will conduct me at last, after I have satisfied my obligations to my friends, to none of whom am I so much obliged as to yourself, whose merits towards me exceed all expressions that can be used by

Your constant friend,

Charles R."[1]

But religion was still the rock on which the royal hopes were destined[a] to split. The perseverance of the supreme council at Kilkenny prevailed in appearance over the intrigues of the nuncio and the opposition of the clergy. The peace was reciprocally signed; it was published with more than usual parade in the cities of Dublin and Kilkenny; but at the same time a national synod at Waterford not only condemned it[b] as contrary to the oath of association, but on that ground excommunicated its authors, fautors, and abettors as guilty of perjury. The struggle between the advocates and opponents of the peace was soon terminated. The men of Ulster under Owen O’Neil, proud of their recent victory (they had almost annihilated

[Footnote 1: Birch, Inquiry, 245. I may here mention that Glamorgan, when he was marquess of Worcester, published “A Century of the “Names and Scantlings of such Inventions,” &c., which Hume pronounces “a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities, enough to show what might be expected from such a man.” If the reader peruse Mr. Partington’s recent edition of this treatise, he will probably conclude that the historian had never seen it, or that he was unable to comprehend it.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. July 29.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. August 6.]

the Scottish army in the sanguinary battle of Benburb), espoused the cause of the clergy; Preston, who commanded the forces of Leinster, after some hesitation, declared also in their favour; the members of the old council who had subscribed the treaty were imprisoned, and a new council was established, consisting of eight laymen and four clergymen, with the nuncio at their head. Under their direction, the two armies marched to besiege Dublin: it was saved by the prudence of Ormond, who had wasted the neighbouring country, and by the habits of jealousy and dissension which prevented any cordial co-operation between O’Neil and Preston, the one of Irish, the other of English descent. Ormond, however, despaired of preserving the capital against their repeated attempts; and the important question for his decision was, whether he should surrender it to them or to the parliament. The one savoured of perfidy to his religion, the other[a] of treachery to his sovereign. He preferred the latter. The first answer to his offer he was induced to reject as derogatory from his honour: a second negotiation followed; and he at last consented to resign to the parliament the sword, the emblem of his office, the[b] castle of Dublin, and all the fortresses held by his troops, on the payment of a certain sum of money, a grant of security for his person, and the restoration of his lands, which had been sequestrated. This agreement was performed. Ormond came to England, and the king’s hope of assistance from Ireland was once more disappointed.[1]

Before the conclusion of this chapter, it will be

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 519, 522; ix. 29, 32, 35. The reader will find an accurate account of the numerous and complicated negotiations respecting Ireland in Birch, Inquiry, &c., p. 142-261.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Oct. 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Feb. 22.]

proper to notice the progress which had been made in the reformation of religion. From the directory for public worship, the synod and the houses proceeded to the government of the church. They divided the kingdom into provinces, the provinces into classes, and the classes into presbyteries or elderships; and established by successive votes a regular gradation of authority among these new judicatories, which amounted, if we may believe the ordinance, to no fewer than ten thousand. But neither of the great religious parties was satisfied. 1. The Independents strongly objected to the intolerance of the Presbyterian scheme;[1] and though willing that it should be protected and countenanced by the state, they claimed a right to form, according to the dictates of their consciences, separate congregations for themselves. Their complaints were received with a willing ear by the two houses, the members of which (so we are told by a Scottish divine who attended the assembly at Westminster) might be divided into four classes: the Presbyterians, who, in number and influence, surpassed any one of the other three; the Independents, who, if few in number, were yet distinguished by the superior talents and industry of their leaders; the lawyers, who looked with jealousy on any attempt to erect an ecclesiastical power independent of the legislature; and the men of irreligious habits, who dreaded the stern and scrutinizing discipline of a Presbyterian kirk. The two last occasionally

[Footnote 1: Under the general name of Independents, I include, for convenience, all the different sects enumerated at the time by Edwards in his Gangraena,–Independents, Brownists, Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arianists, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturists, and Sceptics.–Neal’s Puritans, ii. 251. I observe that some of them maintained that toleration was due even to Catholics. Baillie repeatedly notices it with feelings of horror (ii. 17, 18, 43, 61).]

served to restore the balance between the two others, and by joining with the Independents, to arrest the zeal, and neutralize the votes of the Presbyterians.[a] With their aid, Cromwell, as the organ of the discontented religionists, had obtained the appointment of a “grand committee for accommodation,” which sat four months, and concluded nothing. Its professed object was to reconcile the two parties, by inducing the Presbyterians to recede from their lofty pretensions, and the Independents to relax something of their sectarian obstinacy. Both were equally inflexible. The former would admit of no innovation in the powers which Christ, according to their creed, had bestowed on the presbytery; the latter, rather than conform, expressed their readiness to suffer the penalties of the law, or to seek some other clime, where the enjoyment of civil, was combined with that of religious, freedom.[1]

2. The discontent of the Presbyterians arose from a very different source. They complained that the parliament sacrilegiously usurped that jurisdiction which Christ had vested exclusively in his church. The assembly contended, that “the keys of the kingdom of heaven were committed to the officers of the church, by virtue whereof, they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut the kingdom of heaven against the impenitent by censures, and to open it to the penitent by absolution.” These claims of the divines were zealously supported by their brethren in parliament, and as fiercely opposed by all who were not of their communion. The divines claimed for the presbyteries the right of inquiring into the private lives of individuals, and of suspending the unworthy[b]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 408, 420, 431; ii. 11, 33, 37, 42, 57, 63, 66, 71.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Sept. 13.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. March 5.]

from the sacrament of the Lord’s supper; but the parliament refused the first, and confined the second to cases of public scandal. They arrogated to themselves the power of judging what offences should be deemed scandalous; the parliament defined the particular offences, and appointed civil commissioners in each province, to whom the presbyteries should refer every case not previously enumerated. They allowed of no appeal from the ecclesiastical tribunals to the civil magistrate; the parliament empowered all who thought themselves aggrieved to apply for redress to either of the two houses.[1] This profane mutilation of the divine right of the presbyteries excited the alarm and execration of every orthodox believer. When the ordinance for carrying the new plan into execution was in progress through the Commons, the ministers generally determined not to act under its provisions. The citizens of London, who petitioned against it, were indeed silenced by a vote[a] that they had violated the privileges of the house; but the Scottish commissioners came to their aid with a demand that religion should be regulated to the satisfaction of the church; and the assembly of divines ventured to remonstrate, that they could not in conscience submit to an imperfect and anti-scriptural form of ecclesiastical government. To the Scots a civil but unmeaning answer was returned:[b] to alarm the assembly, it was resolved that the remonstrance was a breach of privilege, and that nine questions should be proposed to the divines, respecting the nature and object of the divine right to which they pretended. These questions had been prepared by the ingenuity of Selden and Whitelock,

[Footnote 1: Journals, vii. 469. Commons’, Sept. 25, Oct. 10, March 5.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. March 26.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1646. April 22.]

ostensibly for the sake of information, in reality to breed dissension and to procure delay.[1]

When the votes of the house were announced to the assembly, the members anticipated nothing less than the infliction of those severe penalties with which breaches of privilege were usually visited. They observed a day of fasting and humiliation, to invoke the protection of God in favour of his persecuted church; required the immediate attendance of their absent colleagues; and then reluctantly entered on the consideration of the questions sent to them from the Commons. In a few days, however, the king took refuge in the Scottish army, and a new ray of hope cheered their afflicted spirits. Additional petitions were presented; the answer of the two houses became more accommodating; and the petitioners received thanks for their zeal, with an assurance in conciliatory language that attention should be paid to their requests. The immediate consequence was the abolition of the provincial commissioners; and the ministers, softened by this condescension, engaged to execute the ordinance in London and Lancashire.[2] At the same time the assembly undertook the composition of a catechism and confession of faith; but their progress was daily retarded by the debates respecting the nine questions; and the influence of their party was greatly diminished by the sudden death of the earl of Essex.[3][a]

[Footnote 1: Journals, viii. 232. Commons’, March 23, April 22. Baillie, ii. 194. “The pope and king,” he exclaims, “were never more earnest for the headship of the church, than the plurality of this parliament” (196, 198, 199, 201, 216).]

[Footnote 2: These were the only places in which the Presbyterian government was established according to law.]

[Footnote 3: Baillie says, “He was the head of our party here, kept altogether who now are like, by that alone, to fall to pieces. The House of Lords absolutely, the city very much, and many of the shires depended on him” (ii. 234).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. .Sept. 14.]

It was, however, restored by the delivery of the king into the hands of the parliament: petitions were immediately presented, complaining of the growth of[a] error and schism; and the impatience of the citizens[b] induced them to appoint a committee to wait daily at the door of the House of Commons, till they should receive a favourable answer. But another revolution, to be related in the next chapter, followed; the custody of the royal person passed from the parliament to the army: and the hopes of the orthodox were utterly extinguished.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 207, 215, 216, 226, 234, 236, 250. Journals, viii. 332, 509; ix. 18, 72, 82. Commons’, May 26, Nov. 27, Dec. 7, March 25, 30.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Feb. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. March 17.]

Chapter III.

Opposite Projects Of The Presbyterians And Independents–The King Is Brought From Holmby To The Army–Independents Driven From Parliament–Restored By The Army–Origin Of The Levellers–King Escapes From Hampton Court, And Is Secured In The Isle Of Wight–Mutiny In The Army–Public Opinion In Favour Of The King–Scots Arm In His Defence–The Royalists Renew The War–The Presbyterians Assume The Ascendancy–Defeat Of The Scots–Suppression Of The Royalists–Treaty Of Newport–The King Is Again Brought To The Army–The House Of Commons Is Purified–The King’s Trial–Judgment–And Execution–Reflections.

The king during his captivity at Holmby divided his time between his studies and amusements. A considerable part of the day he spent in his closet, the rest in playing at bowls, or riding in the neighbourhood.[1] He was strictly watched; and without an order from the parliament no access could be obtained to the royal presence. The crowds who came to be touched for the evil were sent back by the guards; the servants who waited on his person received their appointment from the commissioners; and, when he refused[a] the spiritual services of the two Presbyterian ministers sent to him from London, his request[b] for the attendance of any of his twelve chaplains was equally refused.[c]

[Footnote 1: “He frequently went to Harrowden, a house of the Lord Vaux’s, where there was a good bowling-green with gardens, groves, and walks, and to Althorp, a fair house, two or three miles from Holmby, belonging to the Lord Spenser, where there was a green well kept."–Herbert, 18.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Feb. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. March 6.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. March 8.]

Thus three months passed away without any official communication from the two houses. The king’s patience was exhausted; and he addressed them in a[a] letter, which, as it must have been the production of his own pen, furnishes an undoubted and favourable specimen of his abilities. In it he observed that the want of advisers might, in the estimation of any reasonable man, excuse him from noticing the important propositions presented to him at Newcastle; but his wish to restore a good understanding between himself and his houses of parliament had induced him to make them the subjects of his daily study; and, if he could not return an answer satisfactory in every particular, it must be attributed not to want of will, but to the prohibition of his conscience. Many things he would cheerfully concede: with respect to the others he was ready to receive information, and that in person, if such were the pleasure of the Lords and Commons. Individuals in his situation might persuade themselves that promises extorted from a prisoner are not binding. If such were his opinion, he would not hesitate a moment to grant whatever had been asked. His very reluctance proved beyond dispute, that with him at least the words of a king were sacred.

After this preamble he proceeds to signify his assent to most of the propositions; but to the three principal points in debate, he answers: 1. That he is ready to confirm the Presbyterian government for the space of three years, on condition that liberty of worship be allowed to himself and his household; that twenty divines of his nomination be added to the assembly at Westminster; and that the final settlement of religion at the expiration of that period be made in the regular way by himself and the two houses: 2. he is willing

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. May 12.]

that the command of the army and navy be vested in persons to be named by them, on condition that after ten years it may revert to the crown; and 3. if these things be accorded, he pledges himself to give full satisfaction with respect to the war in Ireland. By[a] the Lords the royal answer was favourably received, and they resolved by a majority of thirteen to nine that the king should be removed from Holmby to Oatlands; but the Commons neglected to notice the subject, and their attention was soon occupied by a question of more immediate, and therefore in their estimation of superior importance.[1]

The reader is aware that the Presbyterians had long viewed the army under Fairfax with peculiar jealousy. It offered a secure refuge to their religious, and proved the strongest bulwark of their political, opponents. Under its protection, men were beyond the reach of intolerance. They prayed and preached as they pleased; the fanaticism of one served to countenance the fanaticism of another; and all, however they might differ in spiritual gifts and theological notions, were bound together by the common profession of godliness, and the common dread of persecution. Fairfax, though called a Presbyterian, had nothing of that stern, unaccommodating character which then marked the leaders of the party. In the field he was distinguished by his activity and daring; but the moment his military duties were performed, he relapsed into habits of ease and indolence; and, with the good-nature and the credulity of a child, suffered himself to be guided by the advice or the wishes of

[Footnote 1: These particulars appear in the correspondence in Clar. Pap. 221-226; Journals, 19, 69, 193, 199; Commons’, Feb. 25; March 2, 9; May 21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. May 20.]

those around him–by his wife, by his companions, and particularly by Cromwell. That adventurer had equally obtained the confidence of the commander-in-chief and of the common soldier. Dark, artful, and designing, he governed Fairfax by his suggestions, while he pretended only to second the projects of that general. Among the privates he appeared as the advocate of liberty and toleration, joined with them in their conventicles, equalled them in the cant of fanaticism, and affected to resent their wrongs as religionists and their privations as soldiers. To his fellow-officers he lamented the ingratitude and jealousy of the parliament, a court in which experience showed that no man, not even the most meritorious patriot, was secure. To-day he might be in high favour; tomorrow, at the insidious suggestion of some obscure lawyer or narrow-minded bigot, he might find himself under arrest, and be consigned to the Tower. That Cromwell already aspired to the eminence to which he afterwards soared, is hardly credible; but that his ambition was awakened, and that he laboured to bring the army into collision with the parliament, was evident to the most careless observer.[1]

To disband that army was now become the main object of the Presbyterian leaders; but they disguised their real motives under the pretence of the national benefit. The royalists were humbled in the dust; the Scots had departed; and it was time to relieve the country from the charge of supporting a multitude of

[Footnote 1: As early as Aug. 2, 1648, Huntingdon, the major in his regiment, in his account of Cromwell’s conduct, noticed, that in his chamber at Kingston he said, “What a sway Stapleton and Hollis had heretofore in the kingdom, and he knew nothing to the contrary but that he was as well able to govern the kingdom as either of them."–Journals, x. 411.]

men in arms without any ostensible purpose. They carried, but with considerable opposition, the following resolutions: to take from the army three regiments of horse and eight regiments of foot, for the service in Ireland; to retain in England no greater number of infantry than might be required to do the garrison duty, with six thousand cavalry for the more speedy suppression of tumults and riots; and to admit of no officer of higher rank than colonel, with the exception of Fairfax, the commander-in-chief. In addition it was voted that no commission should be granted to any member of the lower house, or to any individual who refused to take the solemn league and covenant, or to any one whose conscience forbade him to conform to the Presbyterian scheme of church government.[1]

The object of these votes could not be concealed from the Independents. They resolved to oppose their adversaries with their own weapons, and to intimidate those whom they were unable to convince. Suddenly, at their secret instigation, the army, rising from its cantonments in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, approached the metropolis, and selected quarters in the county of Essex. This movement was regarded and resented as a menace: Fairfax, to excuse it, alleged the difficulty of procuring subsistence in an exhausted and impoverished district.[a] At Saffron Walden he was met by the parliamentary commissioners, who called a council of officers, and submitted to their consideration proposals for the service of

[Footnote 1: Journals of Commons, iv., Feb. 15, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27; March 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. On several divisions, the Presbyterian majority was reduced to ten; on one, to two members. They laboured to exclude Fairfax, but were left in a minority of 147 to 159.–Ibid. March 5. “Some,” says Whitelock, “wondered it should admit debate and question” (p. 239).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. March 21.]

Ireland; but instead of a positive answer, inquiries were made and explanations demanded, while a remonstrance against the treatment of the army was circulated for signatures through the several regiments. In it the soldiers required an ordinance of indemnity to screen them from actions in the civil courts for their past conduct, the payment of their arrears, which amounted to forty-three weeks for the horse, and to eighteen for the infantry; exemption from impressment for foreign service; compensation for the maimed; pensions for the widows and families of those who had fallen during the war, and a weekly provision of money, that they might no longer be compelled to live at free quarters on the inhabitants. This remonstrance was presented to Fairfax to be forwarded by him to the two houses. The ruling party became alarmed: they dreaded to oppose petitioners with swords in their hands; and, that the project might be suppressed in its birth, both houses sent instructions to the general, ordered all members of parliament holding commands to repair to the army, and issued a declaration,[a] in which, after a promise to take no notice of what was past, they admonished the subscribers that to persist in their illegal course would subject them to punishment “as enemies to the state and disturbers of the public peace."[1]

The framers of this declaration knew little of the temper of the military. They sought to prevail by intimidation, and they only inflamed the general discontent. Was it to be borne, the soldiers asked each other, that the city of London and the county of Essex should be allowed to petition against the army,

[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 66, 72, 82, 89, 95, 112-115. Commons’, v. March 11, 25, 26, 27, 29.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647 March 29.]

and that they, who had fought, and bled, and conquered in the cause of their country, should be forbidden either to state their grievances or to vindicate their characters? Hitherto the army had been guided, in appearance at least, by the council of officers; now, whether it was a contrivance of the officers themselves to shift the odium to the whole body of the military, or was suggested by the common men, who began to distrust the integrity of their commanders, two deliberating bodies, in imitation of the houses at Westminster, were formed; one consisting of the officers holding commissions, the other of two representatives from every troop and company, calling themselves adjutators or helpers; a name which, by the ingenuity of their enemies, was changed into that of agitators or disturbers.[1] Guided by their resolves, the whole army seemed to be animated with one soul; scarcely a man could be tempted to desert the common cause by accepting of the service in Ireland; each corps added supernumeraries to its original complement;[2] and language was held, and projects were suggested, most alarming to the Presbyterian party. Confident, however, in their own power, the majority in the house[a]

[Footnote 1: Hobbes, Behemoth, 587. Berkeley, 359. This, however, was not the first appearance of the agitators. “The first time,” says Fairfax, “I took notice of them was at Nottingham (end of February), by the soldiers meeting to frame a petition to the parliament about their arrears. The thing seemed just; but not liking the way, I spoke with some officers who were principally engaged in it, and got it suppressed for that time."–Short Memorials of Thomas Lord Fairfax, written by himself. Somers’s Tracts, v. 392. Maseres, 446.]

[Footnote 2: Several bodies of troops in the distant counties had been disbanded; but the army under Fairfax, by enlisting volunteers from both parties, royalists as well as parliamentarians, was gradually increased by several thousand men, and the burthen of supporting it was doubled.–See Journals, ix. 559-583.]

[Sidebar a: A.D. 1647. April 27.]

resolved that the several regiments should be disbanded on the receipt of a small portion of their arrears. This vote was scarcely past, when a deputation from the agitators presented to the Commons a defence of the remonstrance. They maintained that by becoming soldiers they had not lost the rights of subjects; that by purchasing the freedom of others, they had not forfeited their own; that what had been granted to the adversaries of the commonwealth, and to the officers in the armies of Essex and Waller, could not in justice be refused to them; and that, as without the liberty of petitioning, grievances are without remedy, they ought to be allowed to petition now in what regarded them as soldiers, no less than afterwards in what might regard them as citizens. At the same time the agitators addressed to Fairfax and the other general officers a letter complaining of their wrongs, stating their resolution to obtain redress, and describing the expedition to Ireland as a mere pretext to separate the soldiers from those officers to whom they were attached, “a cloak to the ambition of men who having lately tasted of sovereignty, and been lifted beyond their ordinary sphere of servants, sought to become masters, and degenerate into tyrants.” The tone of these papers excited alarm; and Cromwell, Skippon, Ireton, and Fleetwood were[a] ordered to repair to their regiments, and assure them that ordinances of indemnity should be passed, that their arrears should be audited, and that a considerable payment should be made previous to their dismissal from the service.[b] When these officers announced, in the words of the parliamentary order, that they were come to quiet “the distempers in the army,” the councils replied, that they knew of no[b]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. April 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. May 8.]

distempers, but of many grievances, and that of these they demanded immediate redress.[1]

Whitelock, with his friends, earnestly deprecated a course of proceeding which he foresaw must end in defeat; but his efforts were frustrated by the inflexibility or violence of Holles, Stapleton, and Glyn, the leaders of the ruling party, who, though they condescended to pass[a] the ordinance of indemnity, and to issue[b] money for the payment of the arrears of eight weeks, procured[c] instructions for the lord general to collect the several regiments in their respective quarters, and to disband them without delay. Instead of obeying, he called together the council of officers, who resolved, in answer to a petition to them from the agitators, that the votes of parliament were not satisfactory; that the arrears of payment for eight weeks formed but a portion of their just claim, and that no security had been given for the discharge of the remainder; that the bill of indemnity was a delusion, as long as the vote declaring them enemies of the state was unrepealed; and that, instead of suffering themselves to be disbanded in their separate quarters, the whole army ought to be drawn together, that they might consult in common for the security of their persons and the reparation of their characters. Orders were despatched at the same time to secure the park of artillery at Oxford, and to seize the sum of four thousand pounds destined for the garrison in that city. These measures opened the eyes of their adversaries. A proposal was made in parliament to expunge the offensive declaration from the journals, a more comprehensive bill of indemnity was introduced, and other

[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 164. Commons’, Ap. 27, 30. Whitelock, 245, 246. Rushworth, vi. 447, 451, 457, 469, 480, 485.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. May 21.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. May 25.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. May 29.]

votes were suggested calculated to remove the objections of the army, when the alarm of the Presbyterian leaders was raised to the highest pitch by the arrival of unexpected tidings from Holmby.[1]

Soon after the appointment of the agitators, an officer had delivered to the king a petition from the army, that he would suffer himself to be conducted to the quarters of their general, by whom he should be restored to his honour, crown, and dignity.[a] Charles replied, that he hoped one day to reward them for the loyalty of their intention, but that he could not give his consent to a measure which, must, in all probability, replunge the nation into the horrors of a civil war. He believed that this answer had induced the army to abandon the design; but six weeks later, on Wednesday the 2nd of June, while he was playing at bowls at Althorp, Joyce, a cornet in the general’s lifeguard, was observed standing among the spectators; and late in the evening of the same day, the commissioners in attendance upon him understood that a numerous party of horse had assembled on Harleston Heath, at the distance of two miles from Holmby.[b] Their object could not be doubted; it was soon ascertained that the military under their orders would offer no resistance; and Colonel Greaves, their commander, deemed it expedient to withdraw to a place of safety. About two in the morning a body of troopers appeared before the gates, and were instantly admitted.[c] To the questions of the commissioners, who was their commander, and what was their purpose, Joyce replied, that they were all commanders, and that they had

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 248, 250. Holles, 92. Journals, 207, 222, 226-228. Commons’, May 14, 21, 25, 28, June 1, 4, 5. Rushworth, vi. 489, 493, 497-500, 505.]

[Transcriber’s Note: Footnote 2 not found in the text.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Papers, ii. 365.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. April 21] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. June 2] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. June 3]

come to arrest Colonel Greaves, and to secure the person of the king, that he might not be carried away by their enemies. With a pistol in his hand he then demanded admission to Charles; but the grooms of the bedchamber interposed; and, after a violent altercation, he was induced to withdraw. During the day the parliamentary guards were replaced by these strangers; about ten at night Joyce again demanded admission to the royal bedchamber, and informed the king that his comrades were apprehensive of a rescue, and wished to conduct him to a place of greater security. Charles signified his assent, on the condition that what then passed between them in private should be repeated in public; and at six the next morning, took his station on the steps at the door, while the troopers drew up before him, with Joyce a little in advance of the line. This dialogue ensued:–

KING.–Mr. Joyce, I desire to ask you, what authority you have to take charge of my person and convey me away?

JOYCE.–I am sent by authority of the army, to prevent the design of their enemies, who seek to involve the kingdom a second time in blood.

KING.–That is no lawful authority. I know of none in England but my own, and, after mine, that of the parliament. Have you any written commission from Sir Thomas Fairfax?

JOYCE.–I have the authority of the army, and the general is included in the army.

KING.–That is no answer. The general is the head of the army. Have you any written commission?

JOYCE.–I beseech your majesty to ask me no more questions. There is my commission, pointing to the troopers behind him.

KING, with a smile–I never before read such a commission; but it is written in characters fair and legible enough; a company of as handsome proper gentlemen as I have seen a long while. But to remove me hence, you must use absolute force, unless you give me satisfaction as to these reasonable and just demands which I make: that I may be used with honour and respect, and that I may not be forced in any thing against my conscience or honour, though I hope that my resolution is so fixed that no force can cause me to do a base thing. You are masters of my body, my soul is above your reach.

The troopers signified their assent by acclamation; and Joyce rejoined, that their principle was not to force any man’s conscience, much less that of their sovereign. Charles proceeded to demand the attendance of his own servants, and, when this had been granted, asked whither they meant to conduct him. Some mentioned Oxford, others Cambridge, but, at his own request, Newmarket was preferred. As soon as he had retired, the commissioners protested against the removal of the royal person, and called on the troopers present to come over to them, and maintain the authority of parliament. But they replied with one voice “None, none;” and the king, trusting himself to Joyce and his companions, rode that day as far as Hinchinbrook House, and afterwards proceeded to Childersley, not far from Cambridge.[1]

[Footnote 1: Compare the narrative published by the army (Rushw. vi. 53), with the letters sent by the commissioners to the House of Lords, Journals, 237, 240, 248, 250, 273, and Herbert’s Memoirs, 26-33. Fairfax met the king at Childersley, near Cambridge, and advised him to return to Holmby. “The next day I waited on his majesty, it being also my business to persuade his return to Holmby; but he was otherwise resolved.... So having spent the whole day about this business, I returned to my quarters; and as I took leave of the king, he said to me, Sir, I have as good interest in the army as you.... I called for a council of war to proceed against Joyce for this high offence, and breach of the articles of war; but the officers, whether for fear of the distempered soldiers, or rather (as I suspected) a secret allowance of what was done, made all my endeavours in this ineffectual." Somers’s Tracts, v. 394. Holles asserts that the removal of the king had been planned at the house of Cromwell, on the 30th of May (Holles, 96); Huntingdon, that it was advised by Cromwell and Ireton.–Lords’ Journals, x. 409.]

This design of seizing the person of the king was openly avowed by the council of the agitators, though the general belief attributed it to the secret contrivance of Cromwell. It had been carefully concealed from the knowledge of Fairfax, who, if he was not duped by the hypocrisy of the lieutenant-general and his friends, carefully suppressed his suspicions, and acted as if he believed his brother officers to be animated with the same sentiments as himself, an earnest desire to satisfy the complaints of the military, and at the same time to prevent a rupture between them and the parliament. But Cromwell appears to have had in view a very different object, the humiliation of his political opponents; and his hopes were encouraged not only by the ardour of the army, but also by the general wishes of the people.

1. The day after the abduction of the king[a] from Holmby, the army rendezvoused at Newmarket, and entered into a solemn engagement, stating that, whereas several officers had been called in question for advocating the cause of the military, they had chosen certain men out of each company, who then chose two or more out of themselves, to act in the name and behalf of the whole soldiery of their respective regiments; and that they did now unanimously declare and promise that the army should not disband, nor volunteer for the service in Ireland, till

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. June 5.]

their grievances had been so far redressed, and their subsequent safety so far secured, as to give satisfaction to a council composed of the general officers, and of two commissioned officers, and two privates, or agitators, chosen from each regiment.[1]

2. The forcible removal of the king had warned the Presbyterian leaders of the bold and unscrupulous spirit which animated the soldiery; yet they entertained no doubt of obtaining the victory in this menacing and formidable contest. So much apparent reverence was still paid to the authority of the parliament, so powerful was the Presbyterian interest in the city and among the military, that they believed it would require only a few concessions, and some judicious management on their part, to break that bond of union which formed the chief element of strength possessed by their adversaries. But when it became known that a friendly understanding already existed between the officers and the king, they saw that no time was to be lost. In their alarm the measures, which they had hitherto discussed very leisurely, were turned through the two houses; the obnoxious declaration was erased from the journals; a most extensive bill of indemnity was passed; several ordinances were added securing more plentiful pay to the disbanded soldiers, and still more plentiful to those who should volunteer for the service in Ireland. Six commissioners–the earl of Nottingham and Lord Delaware from the House of Lords, and Field-Marshal General Skippon,[2] Sir Henry Vane the younger, and two

[Footnote 1: Parl. Hist. iii. 64.]

[Footnote 2: Skippon had been appointed commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland, with the title of field-marshal, and six pounds per day for his entertainment.–Journals, ix. 122, Ap. 6. He also received the sum of one thousand pounds for his outfit–Holles, p. 250.]

others, from the House of Commons–were appointed to superintend the disbandment of the forces; and peremptory orders were despatched to the lord general, to collect all the regiments under his immediate command on Newmarket Heath on Wednesday the 9th of June, and to second to the utmost of his power the proceedings on the part of the six deputies. He professed obedience; but of his own authority changed the place of rendezvous to Triploe Heath, between Cambridge and Royston, and the day also from Wednesday to Thursday, apparently with a view to the convenience of the two houses.[1]

It was only on the morning of Wednesday that the earl of Nottingham, with his five companions, was able to set out from London on their important mission; and, while they were on the road, their colleagues at Westminster sought to interest Heaven in their favour by spending the day, as one of fasting and humiliation, in religious exercises, according to the fashion of the time.[a] Late in the evening the commissioners reached Cambridge, and immediately offered the votes and ordinances, of which they were the bearers, to the acceptance of Fairfax and his council. The whole, however, of the next morning was wasted (artfully, it would seem, on the part of the officers) in trifling controversies on mere matters of form, till at last the lord general deigned to return an answer which was tantamount to a refusal.[b] To the proposals of parliament he preferred the solemn engagement already entered into by the army on Newmarket Heath, because

[Footnote 1: The orders of the parliament with respect to the time and place are in the Lords’ Journals, ix. 241. Yet the debates on the concessions did not close before Tuesday, nor did the negotiation between the commissioners and the military council conclude till afternoon on Thursday.–Ibid. 247, 353.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. June 9.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. June 10.]

the latter presented a more effectual way of disbanding the forces under his command without danger, and of extinguishing satisfactorily the discontent which pervaded the whole nation. If, however, the commissioners wished to ascertain in person the real sentiments of the soldiery, he was ready with his officers to attend upon them, whilst they made the inquiry.[1] It was now one in the afternoon; every corps had long since occupied its position on the heath; and there is reason to believe, that the opportunity afforded by this delay had been improved to prepare each regiment separately, and particular agents in each regiment, against the arrival and proposals of the commissioners. The latter dared not act on their own discretion, but resolved to obey their instructions to the very letter. Proceeding, therefore, to the heath, they rode at once to the regiment of infantry of which Fairfax was colonel. The votes of the two houses were then read to the men, and Skippon, having made a long harangue in commendation of the votes, concluded by asking whether, with these concessions, they were not all satisfied. “To that no answer can be returned,” exclaimed a voice from the ranks, “till your proposals have been submitted to, and approved by, the council of officers and agitators." The speaker was a subaltern, who immediately, having asked and obtained permission from his colonel to address the whole corps, called aloud, “Is not that the opinion of you all?” They shouted, “It is, of all, of all." "But are there not,” he pursued, “some among you who think otherwise?" "No,” was the general response, “no, not one.” Disconcerted and abashed, the commissioners turned aside, and, as they withdrew, were

[Footnote 1: The correspondence is in the Journals, ibid.]

greeted with continual cries of “Justice, justice, we demand justice."[1]

From this regiment they proceeded to each of the others. In every instance the same ceremony was repeated, and always with the same result. No one now could doubt that both officers and men were joined in one common league; and that the link which bound them together was the “solemn engagement."[2] Both looked upon that engagement as the charter of their rights and liberties. No concession or intrigue, no partiality of friendship or religion, could seduce them from the faith which they had sworn to it. There were, indeed, a few seceders, particularly the captains, and several of the lord general’s life-guard; but after all, the men who yielded to temptation amounted to a very inconsiderable number, in comparison with the immense majority of those who with inviolable fidelity adhered to the engagement, and, by their resolution and perseverance, enabled their leaders to win for them a complete, and at the same time a bloodless victory.

3. On the next day a deputation of freeholders from the county of Norfolk, and soon afterwards similar deputations from the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Herts, and Buckingham, waited with written addresses upon Fairfax. They lamented that now, when the war with the king was concluded, peace had not brought with it the blessings, the promise of which by the parliament had induced them to submit to the evils and privations of war; a disappointment that could be attributed only to the obstinacy with which certain individuals clung to the emoluments of office

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 518. Whitelock, 251. Holles, 252.]

[Footnote 2: Nottingham’s Letter in the Lords’ Journals, ix. 253.]

and the monopoly of power. To Fairfax, therefore, under God, they appealed to become the saviour of his country, to be the mediator between it and the two houses. With this view, let him keep his army together, till he had brought the incendiaries to condign punishment, and extorted full redress of the grievances so severely felt both by the army and the people.[1]

The chiefs, however, who now ruled at Westminster, were not the men to surrender without a struggle. They submitted, indeed, to pass a few ordinances calculated to give satisfaction, but these were combined with others which displayed a fixed determination not to succumb to the dictates of a mutinous soldiery. A committee was established with power to raise forces for the defence of the nation: the favourite general Skippon was appointed to provide for the safety of the capital; and the most positive orders were sent to Fairfax not to suffer any one of the corps under his command to approach within forty miles of London. Every day the contest assumed a more threatening aspect. A succession of petitions, remonstrances, and declarations issued from the pens of Ireton and Lambert, guided, it was believed, by the hand of Cromwell. In addition to their former demands, it was required that all capitulations granted by military commanders during the war should be observed; that a time[a] should be fixed for the termination of the present parliament; that the House of Commons should be purged of every individual disqualified by preceding ordinances;

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, 260, 263, 277. Holles says that these petitions were drawn by Cromwell, and sent into the counties for subscriptions.–Holles, 256.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. June 14.]

and, in particular, that eleven of its members, comprising Holles, Glyn, Stapleton, Clotworthy, and Waller, the chief leaders of the Presbyterian party, and members of the committee at Derby House, should be excluded, till they had been tried by due course of law for the offence of endeavouring to commit the army with the parliament. To give weight to these demands, Fairfax, who seems to have acted as the mere organ of the council of officers,[1] marched successively to St. Alban’s, to Watford, and to Uxbridge.[a] His approach revealed the weakness of his opponents, and the cowardice, perhaps hypocrisy, of many, who foresaw the probable issue of the contest, and deemed it not their interest to provoke by a useless resistance the military chiefs, who might in a few hours be their masters.[b] Hence it happened that men, who had so clamorously and successfully appealed to the privileges of parliament, when the king demanded the five members, now submitted tamely to a similar demand, when it was made by twelve thousand men in arms. Skippon, their oracle, was one of the first deserters. He resigned the several commands which he held, and exhorted the Presbyterians to fast and pray, and submit to the will of God.[c] From that time it became their chief solicitude to propitiate the army. They granted very ingeniously leave of absence to the eleven accused members; they ordered the new levies for the defence of the city to be disbanded, and the

[Footnote 1: “From the time they declared their usurped authority at Triploe Heath (June 10th), I never gave my free consent to any thing they did; but being yet undischarged of my place, they set my name in way of course to all their papers, whether I consented or not."–Somers’s Tracts, v. 396. This can only mean that he reluctantly allowed them to make use of his name; for he was certainly at liberty to resign his command, or to protest against the measures which he disapproved.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. June 12.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. June 25.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. June 21.]

new lines of communication to be demolished; they sent a month’s pay to the forces under Fairfax, with a vote declaring them the army of the parliament, and appointed commissioners to treat with commissioners from the military council, as if the latter were the representatives of an independent and coequal authority.[1]

This struggle and its consequences were viewed with intense interest by the royalists, who persuaded themselves that it must end in the restoration of the king; but the opportunities furnished by the passions of his adversaries were as often forfeited by the irresolution of the monarch. While both factions courted his assistance, he, partly through distrust of their sincerity, partly through the hope of more favourable terms, balanced between their offers, till the contest was decided without his interference. Ever since his departure from Holmby, though he was still a captive, and compelled to follow the marches of the army, the officers had treated him with the most profound respect; attention was paid to all his wants; the general interposed to procure for him occasionally the company of his younger children; his servants, Legge, Berkeley, and Ashburnham, though known to have come from France with a message from the queen,[2] were permitted to attend him; and free access was

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 518-596. Whitelock, 251-256. Holles, 104. Journals, 249, 257, 260, 263, 275, 277, 284, 289, 291, 298. Commons’, June 7, 11, 12, 15, 18, 25, 26, 28. On divisions in general, the Presbyterians had a majority of forty; but on the 28th, the first day after the departure of their leaders, they were left in a minority of eighty-five to one hundred and twenty-one.–Ibid.]

[Footnote 2: “I returned with instructions to endeavour by the best means imaginable such a compliance between his majesty and the army, as might have influence, and beget a right understanding between his majesty and the parliament"–Ashburnham’s Letter, in 1648, p. 5.]

given to some of his chaplains, who read the service in his presence publicly and without molestation. Several of the officers openly professed to admire his piety, and to compassionate his misfortunes; even Cromwell, though at first he affected the distance and reserve of an enemy, sent him secret assurances of his attachment; and successive addresses were made to him in the name of the military, expressive of the general wish to effect an accommodation, which should reconcile the rights of the throne with those of the people. A secret negotiation followed through the agency of Berkeley and Ashburnham; and Fairfax, to[a] prepare the public for the result, in a letter to the two houses, spurned the imputation cast upon the army, as if it were hostile to monarchical government, justified the respect and indulgence with which he had treated the royal captive, and maintained that “tender, equitable, and moderate dealing towards him, his family, and his former adherents,” was the most hopeful course to lull asleep the feuds which divided the nation. Never had the king so fair a prospect of recovering his authority.[1]

In the treaty between the commissioners of the parliament and those of the army, the latter proceeded with considerable caution. The redress of military grievances was but the least of their cares; their great object was the settlement of the national tranquillity on what they deemed a solid and permanent basis. Of this intention they had suffered some hints to transpire; but before the open announcement of their plan, they resolved to bring the city, as they had brought the parliament, under subjection. London,

[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 323, 324. Ashburn. ii. 91. Also Huntingdon’s Narrative, x. 409.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. July 2.]

with its dependencies, had hitherto been the chief support of the contrary faction; it abounded with discharged officers and soldiers who had served under Essex and Waller, and who were ready at the first summons to draw the sword in defence of the covenant; and the supreme authority over the military within the lines of communication had been, by an ordinance of the last year, vested in a committee, all the members of which were strongly attached to the Presbyterian interest. To wrest this formidable weapon from the hands of their adversaries, they forwarded a request to the two houses, that the command of the London militia might be transferred from disaffected persons to men distinguished by their devotion to the cause of the country. The Presbyterians in the city were alarmed; they suspected a coalition between the king and the Independents; they saw that the covenant itself was at stake, and that the propositions of peace so often voted in parliament might in a few days be set aside. A petition was presented[a] in opposition to the demand of the army; but the houses, now under the influence of the Independents, passed[b] the ordinance; and the city, on its part, determined[c] to resist both the army and the parliament. Lord Lauderdale, the chief of the Scottish commissioners, hastened to the king to obtain his concurrence; a new covenant, devised in his favour, was exposed at Skinners’ Hall, and the citizens and soldiers, and probably the concealed royalists, hastened in crowds to subscribe their names. By it they bound themselves, in the presence of God, and at the risk of their lives and fortunes, to bring the sovereign to Westminster, that he might confirm the concessions which he had made in his letter from Holmby, and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. July 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. July 23.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. July 24.]

might confer with his parliament on the remaining propositions. But the recent converts to the cause of the army hastened to prove the sincerity of their conversion. Both Lords and Commons voted this engagement an act of treason against the kingdom; and the publication of the vote, instead of damping the zeal, inflamed the passions of the people. The citizens petitioned a second time, and received a second refusal. The moment the petitioners departed, a multitude of apprentices, supported by a crowd of military men, besieged the doors of the two houses; for eight hours they continued, by shouts and messages, to call for the repeal of the ordinance respecting the militia, and of the vote condemning the covenant; and the members, after a long resistance, worn out with fatigue, and overcome with terror, submitted to their demands. Even after they had been suffered to retire, the multitude suddenly compelled the Commons to return, and, with the speaker in the chair, to pass a vote[a] that the king should be conducted without delay to his palace at Westminster. Both houses adjourned for three days, and the two speakers, with most of the Independent party and their proselytes, amounting to eight peers and fifty-eight commoners, availed themselves of the opportunity to withdraw from the insults of the populace, and to seek an asylum in the army.[1]

In the mean while the council of officers had completed their plan “for the settlement of the nation,” which they submitted first to the consideration of Charles, and afterwards to that of the parliamentary commissioners. In many points it was similar to the

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 260, 261. Journals, ix. 377, 393. Holles, 145. Leicester’s Journal in the Sydney Papers, edited by Mr. Blencowe, p. 25.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. July 25.]

celebrated “propositions of peace;” but contained in addition several provisions respecting the manner of election, and the duration of parliament and the composition of the magistracy, which may not be uninteresting to the reader even at the present day. It proposed that a parliament should meet every year, to sit not less than a certain number of days, nor more than another certain number, each of which should be fixed by law; that if at the close of a session any parliamentary business remained unfinished, a committee should be appointed with power to sit and bring it to a conclusion; that a new parliament should be summoned every two years, unless the former parliament had been previously dissolved with its own consent; that decayed and inconsiderable boroughs should be disfranchised, and the number of county members increased, such increase being proportionate to the rates of each county in the common charges of the kingdom; that every regulation respecting the reform of the representation and the election of members should emanate from the House of Commons alone, whose decision on such matters should have the force of law, independently of the other branches of the legislature; that the names of the persons to be appointed sheriffs annually, and of those to be appointed magistrates at any time, should be recommended to the king by the grand jury at the assizes; and that the grand jury itself should be selected, not by the partiality of the sheriff, but equally by the several divisions of the county; that the excise should be taken off all articles of necessity without delay, and off all others within a limited time; that the land-tax should be equally apportioned; that a remedy should be applied to the "unequal, troublesome, and contentious way of ministers’ maintenance by tithes;” that suits at law should be rendered less tedious and expensive; that the estates of all men should be made liable for their debts; that insolvent debtors, who had surrendered all that they had to their creditors, should be discharged; and that no corporation should exact from their members oaths trenching on freedom of conscience.[1] To these innovations, great and important as they were, it was not the interest, if it had been the inclination, of Charles to make any serious objection: but on three other questions he felt much more deeply,–the church, the army, and the fate of the royalists: yet there existed a disposition to spare his feelings on all three; and after long and frequent discussion, such modifications of the original proposals were adopted, as in the opinion of his agents, Berkeley and Ashburnham, would insure his assent. 1. Instead of the abolition of the hierarchy, it was agreed to deprive it only of the power of coercion, to place the liturgy and the covenant on an equal footing, by taking away the penalties for absence from the one, and for refusal of the other; and to substitute in place of the oppressive and sanguinary laws still in force, some other provision for the discovery of popish recusants, and the restraint of popish priests and Jesuits, seeking to disturb the state. 2. To restore to the crown the command of the army and navy at the expiration of ten years. 3. And to reduce the number of delinquents among the English royalists to be excluded from pardon, to five individuals. Had the king accepted these terms, he would most probably have been replaced on the throne; for his agents, who had the best means of forming a judgment, though

[Footnote 1: Charles’s Works, 579. Parl. History, ii. 738.]

they differed on other points, agreed in this, that the officers acted uprightly and sincerely; but he had unfortunately persuaded himself–and in that persuasion he was confirmed both by the advice of several faithful royalists and by the interested representations of the Scottish commissioners–that the growing struggle between the Presbyterians and Independents would enable him to give the law to both parties; and hence, when “the settlement” was submitted to him for his final approbation, he returned an unqualified refusal. The astonishment of his agents was not less than that of the officers. Had he dissembled, or had he changed his mind? In either case both had been deceived. They might suppress their feelings; but the agitators complained aloud, and a party of soldiers, attributing the disappointment to the intrigues of Lord Lauderdale, burst at night into the bedchamber of that nobleman, and ordered him to rise and depart without delay. It was in vain, that he pleaded his duty as commissioner from the estates of Scotland, or that he solicited the favour of a short interview with the king: he was compelled to leave his bed and hasten back to the capital.[1]

Before this, information of the proceedings in London had induced Fairfax to collect his forces and march towards the city. On the way he was joined by the speakers of both houses, eight lords and fifty-eight commoners, who in a council held at Sion House solemnly bound themselves “to live and die with the army.” Here it was understood that many royalists

[Footnote 1: Compare the narratives of Berkeley, 364, Ashburnham, ii. 92, Ludlow, i. 174, and Huntingdon (Journals, x. 410) with the proposals of the army in Charles’s Works, 578. The insult to Lauderdale is mentioned in the Lords’ Journals, ix. 367.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. July 30.]

had joined the Presbyterians, and that a declaration had been circulated in the name of the king, condemning all attempts to make war on the parliament. The officers, fearing the effect of this intelligence on the minds of the military, already exasperated by the refusal of their proposals, conjured Charles to write a conciliatory letter to the general, in which he should disavow any design of assisting the enemy, should thank the army for its attention to his comfort, and should commend the moderation of their plan of settlement in many points, though he could not consent to it in all. The ill-fated monarch hesitated; the grace of the measure was lost by a delay of twenty-four hours; and though the letter was at last[a] sent, it did not arrive before the city had[b] made an offer of submission. In such circumstances it could serve no useful purpose. It was interpreted as an artifice to cover the king’s intrigues with the Presbyterians, instead of a demonstration of his good will to the army.[1]

To return to the city, Holles and his colleagues had resumed the ascendancy during the secession of the Independents. The eleven members returned to the house; the command of the militia was restored to the former committee; and a vote was passed that the king should be invited to Westminster. At the same time the common council resolved to raise by subscription a loan of ten thousand pounds, and to add auxilairies to the trained bands to the amount of eighteen regiments. Ten thousand men were already in arms; four hundred barrels of gunpowder, with other military stores,

[Footnote 1: Journals, 359, 375. Heath, 140. Ludlow, i. 181. Charles afterwards disavowed the declaration, and demanded that the author and publisher should be punished.–Whitelock, 267. There are two copies of his letter, one in the Clarendon Papers, ii. 373; another and shorter in the Parliamentary History, xv. 205.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. August 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. August 4.]

were drawn from the magazine in the Tower; and the Presbyterian generals, Massey, Waller, and Poyntz, gladly accepted the command.[1] But the event proved that these were empty menaces. In proportion as it was known that Fairfax had begun his march, that he had reviewed the army on Hounslow Heath, and that he had fixed his head-quarters at Hammersmith, the sense of danger cooled the fervour of enthusiasm, and the boast of resistance was insensibly exchanged for offers of submission.[a] The militia of Southwark openly fraternized with the army; the works on the line of communication were abandoned; and the lord mayor, on a promise that no violence should be offered to the inhabitants, ordered the gates to be thrown open. The next morning was celebrated the triumph of the Independents.[b] A regiment of infantry, followed by one of cavalry, entered the city; then came Fairfax on horseback, surrounded by his body-guards and a crowd of gentlemen; a long train of carriages, in which were the speakers and the fugitive members, succeeded; and another regiment of cavalry closed the procession. In this manner, receiving as they passed the forced congratulations of the mayor and the common council, the conquerors marched to Westminster, where each speaker was placed in his chair by the hand of the general.[2] Of the lords who had remained in London after the secession, one only, the earl of Pembroke, ventured to appear; and he was suffered to make his peace by a declaration that he considered all the proceedings during the absence of

[Footnote 1: Journals, x. 13, 16, 17.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 261-264. Leicester’s Journal, 27. Baillie calls this surrender of the city “an example rarely paralleled, if not of treachery, yet at least of childish improvidence and base cowardice” (ii. 259). The eleven members instantly fled.–Leicester, ibid.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. August 5.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. August 6.]

the members compulsory, and therefore null. But in the lower house the Presbyterians and their adherents composed a more formidable body; and by their spirit and perseverance, though they could not always defeat, frequently embarrassed the designs of their opponents. To many things they gave their assent; they suffered Maynard and Glyn, two members, to be expelled, the lord mayor, one of the sheriffs, and four of the aldermen, to be sent to the Tower, and the seven peers who sat during the secession of their colleagues, to be impeached. But a sense of danger induced them to oppose a resolution sent from the Lords, to annul all the votes passed from the 20th of July to the 6th of August. Four times,[a] contrary to the practice of the house, the resolution was brought forward, and as often, to the surprise of the Independents, was rejected. Fairfax hastened to the aid of his friends. In a letter to the speaker, he condemned the conduct of the Commons as equivalent to an approval of popular violence, and hinted the necessity of removing from the house the enemies of the public tranquillity. The next morning[b] the subject was resumed: the Presbyterians made the trial of their strength on an amendment, and finding themselves outnumbered, suffered the resolution to pass without a division.[1]

The submission of the citizens made a considerable change in the prospects of the captive monarch. Had any opposition been offered, it was the intention of the officers (so we are told by Ashburnham) to have unfurled the royal standard, and to have placed Charles at their head. The ease with which they had subdued their opponents convinced them of their own superiority

[Footnote 1: Journals, 375, 385, 388, 391-398. Commons’, iv. Aug. 9, 10, 17, 19, 20.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. August 9, 10, 17, 19.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. August 20.]

and rendered the policy of restoring the King a more doubtful question. Still they continued to treat him with respect and indulgence. From Oatlands he was transferred[a] to the palace of Hampton Court. There he was suffered to enjoy the company of his children, whenever he pleased to command their attendance, and the pleasure of hunting, on his promise not to attempt an escape; all persons whom he was content to see found ready admission to his presence; and, what he prized above all other concessions, he was furnished with the opportunity of corresponding freely and safely with the queen at Paris.[1] At the same time the two houses, at the requisition of the Scottish commissioners, submitted[b] “the propositions" once more to the royal consideration; but Charles replied,[c] that the plan suggested by the army was better calculated to form the basis of a lasting peace, and professed his readiness to treat respecting that plan with commissioners appointed by the parliament, and others by the army.[2] The officers applauded this answer; Cromwell in the Commons spoke in its favour with a vehemence which excited suspicion; and, though it was ultimately voted[d] equivalent to a refusal, a grand committee was appointed[e] “to take the whole matter respecting the king into consideration.” It had been calculated that this attempt to amalgamate the plan of the parliament with that of the army might be accomplished in the space of

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. 381, Appendix, xli. Rushw. vii. 795. Memoirs of Hamiltons, 316. Herbert, 48. Ashburn. ii. 93, 95.]

[Footnote 2: Of this answer, Charles himself says to the Scottish commissioners. “Be not startled at my answer which I gave yesterday to the two houses; for if you truly understand it, I have put you in a right way, where before you were wrong."–Memoirs of Hamiltons, 323.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. August 24.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Sept. 8.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. Sept. 9.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1647. Sept. 21.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1647. Sept. 22.]

twenty days; but it occupied more than two months; for there was now a third house to consult, the council of war, which debated every clause, and notified its resolves to the Lords and Commons, under the modest, but expressive, name of the desires of the army.[1]

While the king sought thus to flatter the officers, he was, according to his custom, employed in treating with the opposite party.[2] The marquess of Ormond, and the lord Capel,[3] with the Scottish commissioners, waited on him from London; and a resolution was[a] formed that in the next spring, the Scots should enter England with a numerous army, and call on the Presbyterians for their aid; that Charles, if he were at liberty, otherwise the prince of Wales, should sanction the enterprise by his presence; and that Ormond should resume the government of Ireland, while Capel summoned to the royal standard the remains of the king’s party in England. Such was the outline of the plan; the minor details had not been arranged, when Cromwell, either informed by his spies, or prompted by his suspicions, complained to Ashburnham of the incurable duplicity of his master, who was

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, i. 184. Whitelock, 269. Huntingdon in Journals, x. 410. Journals, v. Sept. 22. On the division, Cromwell was one of the tellers for the Yea, and Colonel Rainsborough, the chief of the Levellers, for the No. It was carried by a majority of 84 to 34.–Ibid.]

[Footnote 2: In vindication of Charles it has been suggested that he was only playing at the same game as his opponents, amusing them as they sought to amuse him. This, however, is very doubtful as far as it regards the superior officers, who appear to me to have treated with him in good earnest, till they were induced to break off the negotiation by repeated proofs of his duplicity, and the rapid growth of distrust and disaffection in the army. I do not, however, give credit to Morrice’s tale of a letter from Charles to Henrietta intercepted by Cromwell and Ireton.]

[Footnote 3: Capel was one of the most distinguished of the royal commanders, and had lately returned from beyond the sea with the permission of parliament.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. October.]

at the same time soliciting the aid, and plotting the destruction of the army.[1]

But by this time a new party had risen, equally formidable to royalists, Presbyterians, and Independents. Its founders were a few fanatics in the ranks, who enjoyed the reputation of superior godliness. They pretended not to knowledge or abilities; they were but humble individuals, to whom God had given reason for their guide, and whose duty it was to act as that reason dictated. Hence they called themselves Rationalists, a name which was soon exchanged for the more expressive appellation of Levellers. In religion they rejected all coercive authority; men might establish a public worship at their pleasure, but, if it were compulsory, it became unlawful by forcing conscience, and leading to wilful sin: in politics they taught that it was the duty of the people to vindicate their own rights and do justice to their own claims. Hitherto the public good had been sacrificed to private interest; by the king, whose sole object was the recovery of arbitrary power; by the officers, who looked forward to commands, and titles, and emoluments; and by the parliament, which sought chiefly the permanence of its own authority. It was now time for the oppressed to arise, to take the cause into their own hands, and to resolve “to part with their lives, before they would part with their freedom."[2] These doctrines

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 70-72-75. Ashburnham, ii. 94. Of the disposition of the Scottish parliament, we have this account from Baillie: "If the king be willing to ratify our covenant, we are all as one man to restore him to all his rights, or die by the way; if he continue resolute to reject our covenant, and only to give us some parts of the matter of it, many here will be for him, even on these terms; but divers of the best and wisest are irresolute, and wait till God give more light."–Baillie, ii. 260.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Papers, ii. App. xl. Walker, History of Independents, 194. Rushworth, vii. 845. Hutchinson, 287. Secretary Nicholas, after mentioning the Rationalists, adds, “There are a sect of women lately come from foreign parts, and lodged in Southwark, called Quakers, who swell, shiver, and shake; and when they come to themselves (for in all the time of their fits Mahomet’s holy ghost converses with them) they begin to preach what hath been delivered to them by the spirit"–Clarendon Papers, ii. 383.]

were rapidly diffused: they made willing converts of the dissolute, the adventurous, and the discontented; and a new spirit, the fruitful parent of new projects, began to agitate the great mass of the army. The king was seldom mentioned but in terms of abhorrence and contempt; he was an Ahab or Coloquintida, the everlasting obstacle to peace, the cause of dissension and bloodshed. A paper[a] entitled “The Case of the Army,” accompanied with another under the name of “The Agreement of the People,” was presented to the general by the agitators of eleven regiments. They offered,[b] besides a statement of grievances, a new constitution for the kingdom. It made no mention of king or lords. The sovereignty was said to reside in the people, its exercise to be delegated to their representatives, but with the reservation of equality of law, freedom of conscience, and freedom from forced service in the time of war; three privileges of which the nation would never divest itself; parliaments were to be biennial, and to sit during six months; the elective franchise to be extended, and the representation to be more equally distributed. These demands of the Levellers were strenuously supported by the colonels Pride and Rainsborough, and as fiercely opposed by Cromwell and Ireton. The council of officers yielded so far as to require that no more addresses should be made to the king; but the two houses voted the papers destructive

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Oct. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Nov. 1.]

of the government, and ordered the authors to be prosecuted; though at the same time, to afford some satisfaction to the soldiery, they resolved[a] that the king was bound to give the royal assent to all laws for the public good, which had been passed and presented to him by the Lords and Commons.[1]

It was now some time since the king had begun to tremble for his safety. He saw that the violence of the Levellers daily increased; that the officers, who professed to be his friends, were become objects of suspicion; that Ireton had been driven from the council, and Cromwell threatened with impeachment; that several regiments were in a state of complete insubordination; and that Fairfax himself doubted of his power to restore the discipline of the army. Charles had formerly given his word of honour to the governor, Colonel Whalley, not to attempt an escape: he now withdrew it under the pretence that of late he had been as narrowly watched as if no credit were due to his promise. His guards were immediately doubled; his servants, with the exception of Legge, were dismissed; and the gates were closed against the admission of strangers. Yet it may be doubted whether these precautions were taken with any other view than to lull the suspicion of the Levellers; for he still possessed the means of conferring personally with Ashburnham and Berkeley, and received from Whalley repeated hints of the dangerous designs of his enemies. But where was he to seek an asylum? Jersey, Berwick, the Isle of Wight, and the residence of the Scottish commissioners in London were proposed. At first the commissioners expressed a willingness to

[Footnote 1: Claren. Papers, ii, App. xl. xli. Journ. Nov. 5, 6. Rush. vii. 849 857, 860, 863. Whitelock, 274-277.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Nov. 6.]

receive him; the next day they withdrew their consent, and he fixed, as a last resource, on the Isle of Wight. On November 10th his apprehensions were wound up to the highest pitch, by some additional and most alarming intelligence; the next evening[a] he was missing. At supper-time Whalley entered his apartment, but, instead of the king, found on his table several written papers, of which one was an anonymous letter, warning him of danger to his person, and another, a message from himself to the two houses, promising, that though he had sought a more secure asylum, he should be always ready to come forth, “whenever he might be heard with honour, freedom, and safety."[1]

This unexpected escape drew from the parliament threats of vengeance against all persons who should presume to harbour the royal fugitive; but in the course of three days the intelligence arrived, that he was again a prisoner in the custody of Colonel Hammond, who had very recently been appointed governor of the Isle of Wight. The king, accompanied by Legge, groom of the chamber, had on the evening of his departure descended the back stairs into the garden, and repaired to a spot where Berkeley and Ashburnham waited[b] his arrival. The night was dark and stormy, which facilitated their escape; but, when they had crossed the river at Thames Ditton, they lost their way, and it was daybreak before they reached Sutton, where they mounted their horses. The unfortunate

[Footnote 1: See Ashburnham’s letter to the speaker on Nov. 26, p. 2; his memoir, 101-112; Berkeley, 373-375; Journals, ix. 520; Rush. vii. 871; Clarendon, iii. 77; Mem. of Hamiltons, 324; Whitelock, 278. That a letter from Cromwell was received or read by the king, is certain (see Journals, x. 411; Berkeley, 377); that it was written for the purpose of inducing him to escape, and thus fall into the hands of the Levellers, is a gratuitous surmise of Cromwell’s enemies.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Nov. 11.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Nov. 12.]

monarch had still no fixed plan. As they proceeded in a southerly direction, he consulted his companions; and after some debate resolved to seek a temporary asylum at Tichfield House, the residence of the countess of Southampton, whilst Ashburnham and Berkeley should cross over to the Isle of Wight, and sound the disposition of Hammond the governor, of whom little more was known than that he was nephew to one of the royal chaplains. When Hammond first learned[a] the object of the messengers, he betrayed considerable alarm, under the impression that the king was actually on the island; but, having recovered his self-possession, he reminded them that he was but a servant bound to obey the orders of his employers, and refused to give any other pledge than that he would prove himself an honest man. How they could satisfy themselves with this ambiguous promise, is a mystery which was never explained–each subsequently shifting the blame to the other–but they suffered him to accompany them to the king’s retreat, and even to take with him a brother officer, the captain of Cowes Castle.

During their absence Charles had formed a new plan of attempting to escape by sea, and had despatched a trusty messenger to look out for a ship in the harbour of Southampton. He was still meditating on this project when Ashburnham returned, and announced that Hammond with his companion was already in the town, awaiting his majesty’s commands. The unfortunate monarch exclaimed, “What! have you brought him hither? Then I am undone." Ashburnham instantly saw his error. It was not, he replied, too late. They were but two, and might be easily despatched. Charles paced the room a few minutes, and then rejected the sanguinary hint. Still he clung to

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Nov. 13.]

the vain hope that a ship might he procured; but at the end of two hours, Hammond became impatient; and the king, having nerved his mind for the interview, ordered him to be introduced, received him most graciously, and, mingling promises with flattery, threw himself on his honour. Hammond, however, was careful not to commit himself; he replied in language dutiful, yet ambiguous; and the king, unable to extricate himself from the danger, with a cheerful countenance, but misboding heart, consented to accompany him to the island. The governor ordered every demonstration of respect to be paid to the royal guest, and lodged him in Carisbrook Castle.[1]

The increasing violence of the Levellers, and the mutinous disposition of the army, had awakened the most serious apprehensions in the superior officers; and Fairfax, by the advice of the council, dismissed the agitators to their respective regiments,[a] and ordered the several corps to assemble in three brigades on three different days. Against the time a remonstrance was prepared in his name, in which he complained of the calumnies circulated among the soldiers, stated the objects which he had laboured to obtain, and offered to persist in his endeavours, provided the men would return to their ancient habits of military obedience. All looked forward with anxiety to the result; but no one with more apprehension than Cromwell. His life was at stake. The Levellers had threatened to make him pay with his head the forfeit of his intrigues with Charles; and the flight of that prince, by disconcerting their plans, had irritated their former animosity. On the appointed day the first

[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 525. Rushworth, vii. 874. Ashburnham, ii. Berkeley, 377-382. Herbert, 52. Ludlow, i. 187-191.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Nov. 8.]

brigade, that on which the officers could rely, mustered in a field between Hertford and Ware; and the remonstrance was read by order of Fairfax to each regiment in succession. It was answered with acclamations; the men hastened to subscribe an engagement to obey the commands of the general; and the sowers of discord, the distributors of seditious pamphlets, were pointed out, and taken into custody. From this corps Fairfax proceeded to two regiments, which had presumed to come on the ground without orders. The first, after some debate, submitted; the second was more obstinate. The privates had expelled the majority of the officers, and wore round their hats this motto: “The people’s freedom, and the soldiers’ rights.” Cromwell darted into the ranks to seize the ringleaders; his intrepidity daunted the mutineers; one man was immediately shot, two more were tried and condemned on the spot, and several others were reserved as pledges for the submission of their comrades.[1] By this act of vigour it was thought that subordination had been restored; but Cromwell soon discovered that the Levellers constituted two-thirds of the military force, and that it was necessary for him to retrace his steps, if he wished to retain his former influence. With that view he made a public acknowledgment of his error, and a solemn promise to stand or fall with the army. The conversion of the sinner was hailed with acclamations of joy, a solemn fast was kept to celebrate the event; and Cromwell in the assembly of officers confessed, weeping as he spoke,

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 278. Journals, ix. 527. Ludlow, i. 192. It was reported among the soldiers that the king had promised to Cromwell the title of earl with a blue ribbon, to his son the office of gentleman of the bedchamber to the prince, and to Ireton the command of the forces in Ireland.–Holles, 127.]

that “his eyes, dazzled by the glory of the world, had not clearly discerned the work of the Lord; and therefore he humbled himself before them, and desired the prayers of the saints that God would forgive his self-seeking.” His fellow-delinquent Ireton followed in the same repentant strain; both poured forth their souls before God in fervent and extemporary prayer; and “never,” so we are assured, “did more harmonious music ascend to the ear of the Almighty."[1]

The king had yet no reason to repent of his confidence in Hammond; but that governor, while he granted every indulgence to his captive, had no intention of separating his own lot from that of the army. He consulted the officers at the head-quarters, and secretly resolved to adhere to their instructions. Charles recommenced his former intrigues. Through the agency of Dr. Gough, one of the queen’s chaplains, he sought to prevail on the Scottish commissioners to recede from their demand that he should confirm the covenant: he sent Sir John Berkeley to Cromwell and his friends, to remind them of their promises, and to solicit their aid towards a personal treaty; and by a message[a] to the parliament he proposed, in addition to his former offers, to surrender the command of the army during his life, to exchange the profits of the Court of Wards for a yearly income, and to provide funds for the discharge of the moneys due to the military and to the public creditors. The neglect with which this message was received, and the discouraging answer[b] returned by the officers, awakened his apprehensions; they were confirmed by the Scottish

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, ii. App. xliv. Berkeley, 385. Whitelock, 284.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Nov. 16.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Dec. 8.]

commissioners, who while they complained of his late offer as a violation of his previous engagement, assured him that many of his enemies sought to make him a close prisoner, and that others openly talked of removing him either by a legal trial, or by assassination. These warnings induced him to arrange a plan of escape: application was made to the queen for a ship[a] of war to convey him from the island; and Berwick was selected as the place of his retreat.[1] He had, however, but little time to spare. As their ultimatum, and the only condition on which they would consent to a personal treaty, the houses demanded the royal assent to four bills which they had prepared. The first of these, after vesting the command of the army in the parliament for twenty years, enacted, that after that period it might be restored to the crown, but not without the previous consent of the Lords and Commons; and that still, whenever they should declare the safety of the kingdom to be concerned, all bills passed by them respecting the forces by sea or land should be deemed acts of parliament, even though the king for the time being should refuse his assent; the second declared all oaths, proclamations, and proceedings against the parliament during the war, void and of no effect: the third annulled all titles of honour granted since the 20th of May, 1642, and deprived all peers to be created hereafter of the right of sitting in parliament, without the consent of the two houses; and the fourth gave to the houses themselves the power of adjourning from place to place at their discretion.[2][b] The Scots, to delay the proceedings, asked

[Footnote 1: Memoirs of Hamiltons, 325-333. Ludlow, i. 195-201. Berkeley, 383.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, ix. 575. Charles’s Works, 590-593. Now let the reader turn to Clarendon, History, iii. 88. He tells us, that by one, the king was to have confessed himself the author of the war, and guilty of all the blood which had been spilt; by another, he was to dissolve the government of the church, and grant all lands belonging to the church to other uses; by a third, to settle the militia, without reserving so much power to himself as any subject was capable of; and in the last place, he was in effect to sacrifice all those who had served him, or adhered to him, to the mercy of the parliament. When this statement is compared with the real bills, it may be judged how little credit is due to the assertions of Clarendon, unless they are supported by other authorities.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Dec. 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Dec. 15.]

for a copy of the bills, and remonstrated against the alterations which had been made in the propositions of peace. Their language was bold and irritating; they characterized the conduct of the parliament as a violation of the league and covenant; and they openly charged the houses with suffering themselves to be controlled by a body, which owed its origin and its subsistence to their authority. But the Independents were not to be awed by the clamour of men whom they knew to be enemies under the name of allies; they voted[a] the interference of any foreign nation in acts of parliament a denial of the independence of the kingdom, and ordered[b] the four bills to be laid before the king for his assent without further delay. The Scots hastened to Carisbrook, in appearance to protest against them, but with a more important object in view. They now relaxed from their former obstinacy; they no longer insisted on the positive confirmation of the covenant, but were content with a promise that Charles should make every concession in point of religion which his conscience would allow. The treaty which had been so long in agitation between them was privately signed; and the king returned[c] this answer to the two houses, that neither his present sufferings, nor the apprehension of worse treatment, should ever induce him to give his assent to any bills

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Dec. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Dec. 24.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. Dec. 28.]

as a part of the agreement, before the whole was concluded.[1]

Aware of the consequences of his refusal, Charles had resolved to anticipate the vengeance of the parliament by making his escape the same evening to a ship which had been sent by the queen, and had been waiting for him several days in Southampton Water; but he was prevented by the vigilance of Hammond, who closed the gates on the departure of the commissioners, doubled the guards, confined the royal captive to his chamber, and dismissed Ashburnham, Berkeley, Legge, and the greater part of his attendants.[2] An attempt to raise in his favour the inhabitants of the island was instantly suppressed, and its author, Burley, formerly a captain in the royal army, suffered the punishment of a traitor. The houses resolved[a] (and the army promised to live and die with them in defence of the resolution)[3] that they would receive no additional message from the king; that they would send no address or application to him; that if any other person did so without leave, he should be subject to the penalties of high treason; and that the committee of public safety should be renewed to sit and act alone, without the aid of foreign coadjutors. This last hint was understood by the Scots: they made a demand[b] of the hundred thousand pounds due to them by the

[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 575, 578, 582, 591, 604, 615, 621. Charles’s Works, 594. Memoirs of Hamiltons, 334.]

[Footnote 2: Ashburnham, ii. 121. Berkeley, 387, 393.]

[Footnote 3: On Jan 11, before the vote passed, an address was presented from the general and the council of war by seven colonels and other officers to the House of Commons, expressive of the resolution of the army to stand by the parliament: and another to the House of Lords, expressive of their intention to preserve inviolate the rights of the peerage. Of the latter no notice is taken in the journals of the house.–Journ. v. Jan. 11. Parl. Hist. vi. 835.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Jan. 3 and Jan. 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Jan. 17.]

treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention of returning immediately to their own parliament.[1]

The king appeared to submit with patience to the[a] new restraints imposed on his freedom; and even affected an air of cheerfulness, to disguise the design which he still cherished of making his escape. The immediate charge of his person had been intrusted to four warders of approved fidelity, who, two at a time, undertook the task in rotation. They accompanied the captive wherever he was, at his meals, at his public devotions, during his recreation on the bowling-green, and during his walks round the walls of the castle. He was never permitted to be alone, unless it were in the retirement of his bedchamber; and then one of the two warders was continually stationed at each of the doors which led from that apartment. Yet in defiance of these precautions (such was the ingenuity of the king, so generous the devotion of those who sought to serve him) he found the means of maintaining a correspondence with his friends on the coast of Hampshire, and through them with the English royalists, the Scottish commissioners in Edinburgh, the queen at Paris, and the duke of York at St. James’s, who soon afterwards, in obedience to the command of[b] his father, escaped in the disguise of a female to Holland.[2]

[Footnote 1: The vote of non-addresses passed by a majority of 141 to 92. Journals, v. Jan. 3. See also Jan. 11, 15, 1648; Lords’ Journals, ix. 640, 662; Rushworth, vii. 953, 961, 965; Leicester’s Journal, 30.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, x. 35, 76, 220. Rushworth, vii. 984, 1002, 1067, 1109. Clarendon, iii. 129. One of those through whom Charles corresponded with his friends was Firebrace, who tells us that he was occasionally employed by one of the warders to watch for him at the door of the king’s bedchamber, and on such occasions gave and received papers through a small crevice in the boards. See his account in the additions to Herbert’s Memoirs, p. 187. The manner of the duke’s escape is related in his Life, i. 33, and Ellis, 2nd series, iii. 329.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Feb. 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. April. 17.]

In the mean while an extraordinary ferment seemed to agitate the whole mass of the population. With the exception of the army, every class of men was dissatisfied. Though the war had ceased twelve months before, the nation enjoyed few of the benefits of peace. Those forms and institutions, the safeguards of liberty and property, which had been suspended during the contest, had not been restored; the committees in every county continued to exercise the most oppressive tyranny; and a monthly tax was still levied for the support of the forces, exceeding in amount the sums which had been exacted for the same purpose during the war. No man could be ignorant that the parliament, nominally the supreme authority, was under the control of the council of officers; and the continued captivity of the king, the known sentiments of the agitators, and, above all, the vote of non-addresses, provoked a general suspicion that it was in contemplation to abolish the monarchical government, and to introduce in its place a military despotism. Four-fifths of the nation began to wish for the re-establishment of the throne. Much diversity of opinion prevailed with respect to the conditions; but all agreed that what Charles had so often demanded, a personal treaty, ought to be granted, as the most likely means to reconcile opposite interests and to lead to a satisfactory arrangement.

Soon after the passing of the vote of non-addresses,[a] the king had appealed to the good sense of the people through the agency of the press. He put it to them to judge between him and his opponents, whether by his answer to the four bills he had given any reasonable

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648 Jan. 18.]

cause for their violent and unconstitutional vote; and whether they, by the obstinate refusal of a personal conference, had not betrayed their resolve not to come to any accommodation.[1] The impression made by this paper called for an answer: a long and laboured vindication of the proceedings of the House of Commons was prepared, and after many erasures and amendments approved; copies of it were allotted to the members to be circulated among their constituents, and others were sent to the curates to be read by them to their parishioners.[2] It contained a tedious enumeration of all the charges, founded or unfounded, which had ever been made against the king from the commencement of his reign; and thence deduced the inference that, to treat with a prince so hostile to popular rights, so often convicted of fraud and dissimulation, would be nothing less than to betray the trust reposed in the two houses by the country. But the framers of the vindication marred their own object. They had introduced much questionable matter, and made numerous statements open to refutation: the advantage was eagerly seized by the royalists; and, notwithstanding the penalties recently enacted on account of unlicensed publications, several answers, eloquently and convincingly written, were circulated in many parts of the country. Of these the most celebrated came from the pens of Hyde the chancellor, and of Dr. Bates, the king’s physician.[3]

But, whilst the royal cause made rapid progress among the people, in the army itself the principles of the Levellers had been embraced by the majority of

[Footnote 1: King’s Works, 130. Parl. Hist. iii. 863.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, v. Feb. 10, 11. Parl. Hist. iii. 847. Perrinchiefe, 44.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. Parl. Hist. iii. 866. King’s Works, 132.]

the privates, and had made several converts among the officers. These fanatics had discovered in the Bible, that the government of kings was odious in the sight of God,[1] and contended that in fact Charles had now no claim to the sceptre. Protection and allegiance were reciprocal. At his accession he had bound himself by oath to protect the liberties of his subjects, and by the violation of that oath he had released the people from the obligation of allegiance to him. For the decision of the question he had appealed to the God of battles, who, by the result, had decided against his pretensions. He therefore was answerable for the blood which had been shed; and it was the duty of the representatives of the nation to call him to justice for the crimes and, in order to prevent the recurrence of similar mischiefs, to provide for the liberties of all, by founding an equal commonwealth on the general consent. Cromwell invited the patrons of this doctrine to meet at his house the grandees (so they were called) of the parliament and army. The question was argued; but both he and his colleagues were careful to conceal their real sentiments. They did not openly contradict the principles laid down by the Levellers, but they affected to doubt the possibility of reducing them to practice. The truth was, that they wished not to commit themselves by too explicit an avowal before they could see their way plainly before them.[2]

In this feverish state of the public mind in England, every eye was turned towards the proceedings in Scotland. For some time a notion had been cherished by the Scottish clergy, that the king at Carisbrook had not only subscribed the covenant, but had solemnly

[Footnote 1: 1 Kings, viii. 8.]

[Footnote 2: Ludlow, i. 206. Whitelock, 317.]

engaged to enforce it throughout his dominions; and the prospect of a speedy triumph over the Independents induced them to preach a crusade from the pulpit in favour of the kirk and the throne. But the return of the commissioners, and the publication of “the agreement” with the king, bitterly disappointed their hopes. It was found that Charles had indeed consented to the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, but only as an experiment for three years, and with the liberty of dissent both for himself, and for those who might choose to follow his example. Their invectives were no longer pointed against the Independents; “the agreement" and its advocates became the objects of their fiercest attacks. Its provisions were said to be unwarranted by the powers of the commissioners, and its purpose was pronounced an act of apostasy from the covenant, an impious attempt to erect the throne of the king in preference to the throne of Christ. Their vehemence intimidated the Scottish parliament, and admonished the duke of Hamilton to proceed with caution. That nobleman, whose imprisonment ended with the surrender of Pendennis, had waited on the king in Newcastle; a reconciliation followed; and he was now become the avowed leader of the royalists and moderate Presbyterians. That he might not irritate the religious prejudices of his countrymen, he sought to mask his real object, the restoration of the monarch, under the pretence of suppressing heresy and schism; he professed the deepest veneration for the covenant, and the most implicit deference to the authority of the kirk; he listened with apparent respect to the remonstrances of the clerical commission, and openly solicited its members to aid the parliament with their wisdom, and to state their desires. But these were mere words intended to lull suspicion. By dint of numbers (for his party comprised two-thirds of the convention), he obtained the appointment of a committee of danger; this was followed by a vote to place the kingdom in a posture of defence; and the consequence of that vote was the immediate levy of reinforcements for the army. But his opponents under the earl of Argyle threw every obstacle in his way. They protested in parliament against the war; the commissioners of the kirk demanded that their objections should be previously removed; the women cursed the duke as he passed, and pelted him with stones from their windows; and the ministers from their pulpits denounced the curse of God on all who should take a share in the unholy enterprise. Forty thousand men had been voted; but though force was frequently employed, and blood occasionally shed, the levy proceeded so slowly, that even in the month of July the grand army hardly exceeded one-fourth of that number.[1]

By the original plan devised at Hampton Court, it had been arranged that the entrance of the Scots into England should be the signal for a simultaneous rising of the royalists in every quarter of the kingdom. But the former did not keep their time, and the zeal of the latter could not brook delay.[a] The first who proclaimed the king, was a parliamentary officer, Colonel Poyer, mayor of the town, and governor of the castle, of Pembroke. He refused to resign his military appointment at the command of Fairfax, and, to justify

[Footnote 1: Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 339, 347, 353. Thurloe, i. 94. Rushworth, vii. 1031, 48, 52, 67, 114, 132. Two circumstantial and interesting letters from Baillie, ii. 280-297. Whitelock, 305. Turner, 52.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. March 3.]

his refusal, unfurled the royal standard. Poyer was joined by Langherne and Powel, two officers whose forces had lately been disbanded. Several of the men hastened to the aid of their former leaders; the Cavaliers ran to arms in both divisions of the principality; a force of eight thousand men was formed; Chepstow was surprised, Carnarvon besieged, and Colonel Fleming defeated.[a] By these petty successes the unfortunate men were lured on to their ruin. Horton checked their progress; Cromwell followed with five regiments to punish their presumption. The tide immediately changed. Langherne was defeated; Chepstow was recovered; the besiegers of Carnarvon were cut to pieces.[b] On the refusal of Poyer to surrender, the lieutenant-general assembled his corps after sunset, and the fanatical Hugh Peters foretold that the ramparts of Pembroke, like those of Jericho, would fall before the army of the living God. From prayer and sermon the men hastened to the assault; the ditch was passed, the walls were scaled; but they found the garrison at its post, and, after a short but sanguinary contest, Cromwell ordered a retreat. A regular siege was now formed; and the Independent general, notwithstanding his impatience to proceed to the north, was detained more than six weeks before this insignificant fortress.[1]

Scarcely a day passed, which was not marked by some new occurrence indicative of the approaching contest.[c] An alarming tumult in the city, in which the apprentices forced the guard, and ventured to engage the military under the command of the general, was quickly followed by similar disturbances in

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, x. 88, 253. Rushworth, vii. 1016, 38, 66, 97, 129. Heath, 171. Whitelock, 303, 305. May, 116.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. May 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. May 20.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. April 9.]

Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, Exeter, and several towns.[a] They were, indeed, suppressed by the vigilance of Fairfax and the county committees; but the cry of “God and the king,” echoed and re-echoed by the rioters on these occasions, sufficiently proved that the popular feeling was setting fast in favour of royalty. At the same time petitions from different public bodies poured into the two houses, all concurring in the same prayer, that the army should be disbanded, and the king brought back to his capital.[1] The Independent leaders, aware that it would not be in their power to control the city while their forces were employed in the field, sought a reconciliation.[b] The parliament was suffered to vote that no change should be made in the fundamental government of the realm by king, lords, and commons; and the citizens in return engaged themselves to live and die with the parliament. Though the promises on both sides were known to be insincere, it was the interest of each to dissemble. Fairfax withdrew his troops from Whitehall and the Mews; the charge of the militia was once more intrusted to the lord mayor and the aldermen; and the chief command was conferred on Skippon, who, if he did not on every subject agree with the Independents, was yet distinguished by his marked opposition to the policy of their opponents.[c]

The inhabitants of Surrey and Essex felt dissatisfied with the answers given to their petitions; those of Kent repeatedly assembled to consider their grievances, and to consult on the means of redress. These meetings, which originated with a private gentleman of the name of Hales, soon assumed the character of

[Footnote 1: Journals, 243, 260, 267, 272. Commons’, April 13, 27, May 16. Whitelock, 299, 302, 303, 305, 306.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. April 28.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. May 2.]

loyalty and defiance. Associations were formed, arms were collected, and on an appointed day[a] a general rising took place. The inhabitants of Deal distinguished themselves on this occasion; and Rainsborowe, the parliamentarian admiral, prepared to chastise their presumption. Leaving orders for the fleet to follow, he proceeded[b] in his barge to reconnoitre the town; but the men, several of whom had families and relatives in it, began to murmur, and Lindale, a boatswain in the admiral’s ship, proposed to declare for the king. He was answered with acclamations; the officers were instantly arrested; the crews of the other ships followed the example; the arguments and entreaties of Rainsborowe himself, and of the earl of Warwick, who addressed them in the character of lord high admiral, were disregarded, and the whole fleet, consisting of six men-of-war fully equipped for the summer service, sailed under the royal colours to Helvoetsluys, in search of the young duke of York, whom they chose for their commander-in-chief.[1] But the alarm excited by this revolt at sea was quieted by the success of Fairfax against the insurgents on land. The Cavaliers had ventured to oppose him[c] in the town of Maidstone, and for six hours, aided by the advantage of their position, they resisted the efforts of the enemy; but their loss was proportionate to their valour, and two hundred fell in the streets, four hundred were made prisoners. Many of the countrymen, discouraged by this defeat, hastened to their homes. Goring, earl of Newport, putting himself at the head of a different body, advanced[d] to Blackheath, and solicited admission into the city. It was a moment big with the most important consequences. The king’s friends formed a

[Footnote 1: Life of James II. i. 41.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. May 23.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. May 27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. June 1.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. June 2.]

numerous party; the common council wavered; and the parliament possessed no armed force to support its authority. The leaders saw that they had but one resource, to win by conciliation. The aldermen imprisoned at the request of the army were set[a] at liberty; the impeachment against the six lords was discharged; and the excluded members were permitted to resume their seats. These concessions, aided by the terror which the victory at Maidstone inspired, and by the vigilance of Skippon, who intercepted all communication between the royalists, and the party at Blackheath, defeated the project of Goring. That commander, having received a refusal, crossed[b] the river, with five thousand horse, was joined by Lord Capel with the royalists from Hertfordshire, and by Sir Charles Lucas with a body of horse from Chelmsford, and assuming the command of the whole, fixed his head-quarters in Colchester. The town had no other fortification than a low rampart of earth; but, relying on his own resources and the constancy of his followers, he resolved to defend it against the enemy, that he might detain Fairfax and his army in the south, and keep the north open to the advance of the Scots. This plan succeeded; Colchester was assailed and defended with equal resolution; nor was its fate decided till the failure of the Scottish invasion had proved the utter hopelessness of the royal cause.[1]

It soon appeared that the restoration of the impeached and excluded members, combined with the departure of the officers to their commands in the army, had imparted a new tone to the proceedings in

[Footnote 1: Journals, x. 276, 278, 279, 283, 289, 297, 301, 304. Commons, May 24, 25, June 4, 8. Whitelock, 307, 308, 309, 310. Clarendon, iii. 133, 151, 154.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. June 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. June 4.]

parliament. Holles resumed not only his seat, but his preponderance in the lower house. The measures which his party had formerly approved were again adopted; and a vote was passed to open a new treaty with the king, on condition that he should previously engage to give the royal assent to three bills, revoking all declarations against the parliament, establishing the Presbyterian discipline for the term of three, and vesting the command of the army and navy in certain persons during that of ten years. But among the lords a more liberal spirit prevailed. The imprisonment of the six peers had taught them a salutary lesson. Aware that their own privileges would infallibly fall with the throne, they rejected the three bills of the Commons, voted a personal treaty without any previous conditions, and received from the common council an assurance that, if the king were suffered to come to London, the city would guarantee both the royal person and the two houses from insult and danger. But Holles and his adherents refused to yield; conference after conference was held; and the two parties continued for more than a month to debate the subject without interruption from the Independents. These had no leisure to attend to such disputes. Their object was to fight and conquer, under the persuasion that victory in the field would restore to them the ascendancy in the senate.[1]

It was now the month of July, and the English royalists had almost abandoned themselves to despair, when they received the cheering intelligence that the duke of Hamilton had at last redeemed his promise, and entered[a] England at the head of a numerous army.[a]

[Footnote 1: Journals, 308, 349, 351, 362, 364, 367. Commons, July 5. Whitelock, 315, 316, 318, 319. Ludlow, i. 251.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. April 28.]

The king’s adherents in the northern counties had already surprised Berwick and Carlisle; and, to facilitate his entry, had for two months awaited with impatience his arrival on the borders. The approach of Lambeth, the parliamentary general, compelled them to seek shelter within the walls of Carlisle, and the necessity of saving that important place compelled the duke to despatch a part of his army to its relief. Soon afterwards[a] he arrived himself. Report exaggerated his force to thirty thousand men, though it did not in fact amount to more than half that number; but he was closely followed by Monroe, who led three thousand veterans from the Scottish army in Ireland, and was accompanied or preceded by Sir Marmaduke Langdale, the commander of four thousand Cavaliers, men of approved valour, who had staked their all on the result. With such an army a general of talent and enterprise might have replaced the king on his throne; but Hamilton, though possessed of personal courage, was diffident of his own powers, and resigned himself to the guidance of men who sacrificed the interests of the service to their private jealousies and feuds. Forty days were consumed in a short march of eighty miles; and when the decisive battle was fought, though the main body had reached the left bank of the Ribble near Preston, the rear-guard, under Monroe, slept in security at Kirkby Lonsdale. Lambert had retired slowly before the advance of the Scots, closely followed by Langdale and his Cavaliers; but in Otley Park he was joined by Cromwell, with several regiments which had been employed in the reduction of Pembroke. Their united force did not exceed nine thousand men; but the impetuosity of the general despised inequality of numbers; and the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. July 8.]

ardour of his men induced him to lead them without delay against the enemy. From Clithero, Langdale fell back on the Scottish army near Preston, and warned the duke to prepare for battle on the following day.[a] Of the disasters which followed, it is impossible to form any consistent notion from the discordant statements of the Scottish officers, each of whom, anxious to exculpate himself, laid the chief blame on some of his colleagues. This only is certain, that the Cavaliers fought with the obstinacy of despair; that for six hours they bore the whole brunt of the battle; that as they retired from hedge to hedge they solicited from the Scots a reinforcement of men and a supply of ammunition; and that, unable to obtain either, they retreated into the town, where they discovered that their allies had crossed to the opposite bank, and were contending with the enemy for the possession of the bridge. Langdale, in this extremity, ordered his infantry to disperse, and, with the cavalry and the duke, who had refused to abandon his English friends, swam across the Ribble. Cromwell won the bridge, and the royalists fled in the night toward Wigan. Of the Scottish forces, none but the regiments under Monroe and the stragglers who rejoined him returned to their native country. Two-thirds of the infantry, in their eagerness to escape, fell into the hands of the neighbouring inhabitants; nor did Baillie, their general, when he surrendered at Warrington, number more than three thousand men under their colours. The duke wandered as far as Uttoxeter with the cavalry; there his followers mutinied,[b] and he yielded himself a prisoner to General Lambert and the Lord Grey of Groby. The Cavaliers disbanded[c] themselves in Derbyshire; their gallant leader, who travelled in

[Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 17.] [Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 20.] [Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 25.]

the disguise of a female, was discovered and taken in the vicinity of Nottingham: but Lady Savile bribed his keeper: dressed in a clergyman’s cassock he escaped to the capital; and remained there in safety with Dr. Barwick, being taken for an Irish minister driven from his cure by the Irish Catholics.[1]

On the very day on which the Scots began their march, a feeble attempt had been made to assist their advance by raising the city of London. Its author was one who by his inconstancy had deservedly earned the contempt of every party,–the earl of Holland. He had during the contest passed from the king to the parliament, and from the parliament to the king. His ungracious reception by the royalists induced him to return to their opponents, by whom he was at first treated with severity, afterwards with neglect. Whether it were resentment or policy, he now professed himself a true penitent, offered to redeem his past errors by future services, and obtained from the prince of Wales a commission to raise forces. As it had been concerted between him and Hamilton, on the 5th of July, he marched[a] at the head of five hundred

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, x. 455-458. Rushworth, vii. 1227, 1242. Barwicci Vita, 66. The narrative in Burnet’s Memoirs of the Hamiltons (355-365) should be checked by that in Clarendon (iii. 150, 160). The first was derived from Sir James Turner (Turner’s Memoirs, 63), who held a command in the Scottish army; the second from Sir Marmaduke Langdale. According to Turner, Langdale was ignorant, or kept the Scots in ignorance, of the arrival of Cromwell and his army; according to Langdale, he repeatedly informed them of it, but they refused to give credit to the information. Langdale’s statement is confirmed by Dachmont, who affirmed to Burnet, that “on fryday before Preston the duke read to Douchel and him a letter he had from Langdale, telling how the enemy had rendesvoused at Oatley and Oatley Park, wher Cromwell was,"–See a letter from Burnet to Turner in App. to Turner’s Memoirs, 251. Monroe also informed the duke, probably by Dachmont, of Cromwell’s arrival at Skipton.–Ibid, 249.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. July 5.]

horse, in warlike array from his house in the city, and having fixed his quarters in the vicinity of Kingston, sent messages to the parliament and the common council, calling on them to join with him in putting an end to the calamities of the nation. On the second day,[a] through the negligence, it was said, of Dalbier, his military confidant, he was surprised, and after a short conflict, fled with a few attendants to St. Neots; there a second action followed,[b] and the earl surrendered at discretion to his pursuers. His misfortune excited little interest; but every heart felt compassion for two young noblemen whom he had persuaded to engage in this rash enterprise, the duke of Buckingham and his brother the Lord Francis Villiers. The latter was slain at Kingston; the former, after many hair-breadth escapes, found an asylum on the continent.[1]

The discomfiture of the Scottish army was followed by the surrender of Colchester. While there was an object to fight for, Goring and his companions had cheerfully submitted to every privation; now that not a hope remained, they offered to capitulate, and received for answer that quarter would be granted to the privates, but that the officers had been declared traitors by the parliament, and must surrender at discretion. These terms were accepted;[c] the council deliberated on the fate of the captives; Goring, Capel, and Hastings, brother to the earl of Huntingdon, were reserved for the judgment of the parliament; but two, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, because they were not men of family, but soldiers of fortune,[2] were

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 121, 176. Whitelock, 317, 318, 320. Lords’ Journals, 367. Commons, July 7, 12. Leicester’s Journal, 35.]

[Footnote 2: This is the reason assigned by Fairfax himself. Memoirs, 50.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. July 7.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. July 10.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. August 29.]

selected for immediate execution. Both had been distinguished by their bravery, and were reckoned among the first commanders in the royal service. Lucas, tearing open his doublet, exclaimed, “Fire, rebels!” and instantly fell. Lisle ran to him, kissed his dead body, and turning to the soldiers, desired them to advance nearer. One replied, “Fear not, sir, we shall hit you.” “My friends,” he answered, “I have been nearer when you have missed me.” The blood of these brave men impressed a deep stain on the character of Fairfax, nor was it wiped away by the efforts of his friends, who attributed their death to the revengeful counsels of Ireton.[1]

At this time the prince of Wales had been more than six weeks in the Downs. As soon as he heard of the revolt of the fleet, he repaired to the Hague, and taking upon himself the command, hastened with nineteen sail to the English coast. Had he appeared before the Isle of Wight, there can be little doubt that Charles would have recovered his liberty; but the council with the prince decided[a] that it was more for the royal interest to sail to the month of the river, where they long continued to solicit by letters the wavering disposition of the parliament and the city. While Hamilton advanced, there seemed a prospect of success; the destruction of his army extinguished their hopes. The king, by a private message, suggested that before their departure from the coast, they should free him from his captivity. But the mariners proved that they were the masters. They demanded to fight the hostile fleet under the earl of

[Footnote 1: Journals, x. 477. Rushworth, vii. 1242, 1244. Clarendon, iii, 177. Fairfax says in his vindication that they surrendered “at mercy, which means that some are to suffer, some to be spared."–Memoirs, p. 540.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. July 20.]

Warwick, who studiously avoided an engagement, that he might be joined by a squadron from Portsmouth. During two days the royalists offered[a] him battle; by different manoeuvres he eluded their attempts; and on the third day the want of provisions compelled the prince to steer for the coast of Holland, without paying attention to the request of his royal father. Warwick, who had received his reinforcements, followed at a considerable distance; but, though he defended his conduct on motives of prudence, he did not escape the severe censure of the Independents and Levellers, who maintained that the cause had always been betrayed when it was intrusted to the cowardice or disaffection of noble commanders.[1]

It is now time to revert to the contest between the two houses respecting the proposed treaty with the king. Towards the end of July the Commons had yielded[b] to the obstinacy of the Lords; the preliminary conditions on which they had insisted were abandoned,[c] and the vote of non-addresses was repealed. Hitherto these proceedings had been marked with the characteristic slowness of every parliamentary measure; but the victory of Cromwell over Hamilton, and the danger of interference on the part of the army, alarmed the Presbyterian leaders; and fifteen commissioners, five lords and ten commoners, were appointed[d] to conduct the negotiation.[2] At length they arrived;[e] Charles repaired[f] from his prison in Carisbrook Castle to the neighbouring town of Newport;

[Footnote 1: Lords’ Journals, x. 399, 414, 417, 426, 444, 483, 488, 494. Clarendon Papers, ii. 412, 414.]

[Footnote 2: They were the earls of Northumberland, Salisbury, Pembroke, and Middlesex, the lords Say and Seale, Lord Wenman, Sir Henry Vane, junior, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, and Holles, Pierrepoint, Brown, Crew, Glyn, Potts, and Bulkely.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. August 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. July 28.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. August 3.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. Sept. 1.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1648. Sept. 15.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1648. Sept. 18.]

he was suffered to call around him his servants, his chaplains, and such of his counsellors as had taken no part in the war; and, as far as outward appearances might be trusted, he had at length obtained the free and honourable treaty which he had so often solicited. Still he felt that he was a captive, under promise not to leave the island till twenty days after the conclusion of the treaty, and he soon found, in addition, that he was not expected to treat, but merely to submit. How far the two houses might have yielded in other circumstances is uncertain; but, under the present superiority of the army, they dared not descend from the lofty pretensions which they had previously put forth. The commissioners were permitted to argue, to advise, to entreat; but they had no power to concede; their instructions bound them to insist on the king’s assent to every proposition which had been submitted to his consideration at Hampton Court. To many of these demands Charles made no objection; in lieu of those which he refused, he substituted proposals of his own, which were forwarded to the parliament, and voted unsatisfactory. He offered new expedients and modifications; but the same answer was invariably returned, till the necessity of his situation wrung from the unfortunate prince his unqualified assent to most of the articles in debate. On four points only he remained inflexible. Though he agreed to suspend for three years, he refused to abolish entirely, the functions of the bishops; he objected to the perpetual alienation of the episcopal lands, but proposed to grant leases of them for lives, or for ninety-nine years, in favour of the present purchasers; he contended that all his followers, without any exception, should be admitted to compound for their delinquency; and he protested that, till his conscience were satisfied of the lawfulness of the covenant, he would neither swear to it himself, nor impose it upon others. Such was the state of the negotiation, when the time allotted by the parliament expired;[a] and a prolongation for twenty days was voted.[1]

The Independents from the very beginning had disapproved of the treaty. In a petition presented[b] by “thousands of well-affected persons in and near London,” they enumerated the objects for which they had fought, and which they now claimed as the fruit of their victory. Of these the principal were, that the supremacy of the people should be established against the negative voice of the king and of the lords; that to prevent civil wars, the office of the king and the privileges of the peers should be clearly defined; that a new parliament, to be elected of course and without writs, should assemble every year, but never for a longer time than forty or fifty days; that religious belief and worship should be free from restraint

[Footnote 1: The papers given in during this treaty may be seen in the Lords’ Journals, x. 474-618. The best account is that composed by order of the king himself, for the use of the prince of Wales.–Clarendon Papers, ii. 425-449. I should add, that a new subject of discussion arose incidentally during the conferences. The lord Inchiquin had abandoned the cause of the parliament in Ireland, and, at his request, Ormond had been sent from Paris by the queen and the prince, to resume the government, with a commission to make peace with the Catholic party. Charles wrote to him two letters (Oct. 10, 28.–Carte, ii. App. xxxi. xxxii.), ordering him to follow the queen’s instructions, to obey no commands from himself as long as he should be under restraint, and not to be startled at his concessions respecting Ireland, for they would come to nothing. Of these letters the houses were ignorant; but they got possession of one from Ormond to the Irish Catholics, and insisted that Charles should order the lord lieutenant to desist. This he eluded for some time, alleging that if the treaty took effect, their desire was already granted by his previous concessions; if it did not, no order of his would be obeyed. At last he consented, and wrote the letter required.–Journals, x. 576-578, 597, 618. Clarendon Papers, ii. 441, 445, 452.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Nov. 5.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Sept. 11.]

or compulsion; that the proceedings in law should be shortened, and the charges ascertained; that tithes for the support of the clergy, and perpetual imprisonment for debt, should be abolished; and that the parliament “should lay to heart the blood spilt, and the rapine perpetrated by commission from the king, and consider whether the justice of God could be satisfied, or his wrath be appeased, by an act of oblivion.” This instrument is the more deserving of attention, because it points out the political views which actuated the leaders of the party.[1]

In the army, flushed as it was with victory, and longing for revenge, maxims began to prevail of the most dangerous tendency in respect of the royal captive. The politicians maintained that no treaty could be safely made with the king, because if he were under restraint, he could not be bound by his consent; if he were restored to liberty, he could not be expected to make any concessions. The fanatics went still further. They had read in the book of Numbers that “blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it;” and hence they inferred that it was a duty, imposed on them by the God who had given them the victory, to call the king to a strict account for all the blood which had been shed during the civil war. Among these, one of the most eminent was Colonel Ludlow, a member of parliament, who, having persuaded himself that the anger of God could be appeased only by the death of Charles, laboured, though in vain, to make Fairfax a convert to his opinion. He proved more successful with Ireton, whose regiment petitioned[a] the commander-in-chief,

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 335.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Oct. 18.]

that crime might be impartially punished without any distinction of high or low, rich or poor; that all who had contrived or abetted the late war might receive their just deserts; and that whosoever should speak or act in favour of Charles, before that prince had been acquitted of shedding innocent blood, should incur the penalties of treason. The immediate object of this paper was to try the general disposition of the army. Though it did not openly express, it evidently contemplated the future trial of the king, and was followed by another petition[a] from the regiment of Colonel Ingoldsby, which, in plainer and bolder terms, demanded that the monarch and his adherents should be brought to justice; condemned the treaty between him and the parliament as dangerous and unjust; and required the appointment of a council of war to discover an adequate remedy for the national evils. Fairfax had not the courage to oppose what, in his own judgment, he disapproved; the petitions were laid before an assembly of officers; and the result of their deliberation was a remonstrance[b] of enormous length, which, in a tone of menace and asperity, proclaimed the whole plan of the reformers. It required that “the capital and grand author of all the troubles and woes which the kingdom had endured, should be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief of which he had been guilty;” that a period should be fixed for the dissolution of the parliament; that a more equal representation of the people should be devised; that the representative body should possess the supreme power, and elect every future king; and that the prince so elected should be bound to disclaim all pretentions to a negative voice in the passing of laws, and to subscribe to that form of government which he

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Oct. 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Nov. 16.]

should find established by the present parliament. This remonstrance was addressed to the lower house alone, for the reformers declared themselves[a] unable to understand on what ground the lords could claim co-equal power with the representatives of the people, in whom alone the sovereignty resided.[1] It provoked a long and animated debate; but the Presbyterians met its advocates without fear, and silenced them[b] by an overwhelming majority. They felt that they were supported by the general wish of the nation, and trusted that if peace were once established by agreement with the king, the officers would act dare to urge their pretensions. With this view they appointed a distant day for the consideration of the remonstrance, and instructed the commissioners at Newport to hasten the treaty to a speedy conclusion.[2]

The king now found himself driven to the last extremity. The threats of the army resounded in his ears; his friends conjured him to recede from his former answers; and the commissioners declared their conviction, that without full satisfaction, the two houses could not save him from the vengeance of his enemies. To add to his alarm, Hammond, the governor of the island, had received a message from Fairfax to repair without delay to the head-quarters at Windsor. This was followed by the arrival[c] of Colonel Eure, with orders to seize the king, and confine[d] him again in Carisbrook Castle, or, if he met with opposition, “to act as God should direct him." Hammond replied with firmness, that in military matters he would obey his general; but as to the royal person, he had received

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 343, 346, 355. Rushworth, vii. 1298, 1311, 1331.]

[Footnote 2: Journals of Commons, Nov. 20, 24, 30. There were two divisions relating to this question; in the first the majority was 94 to 60, in the second 125 to 58.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Nov. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Nov. 20.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. Nov. 25.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. Nov. 26.]

the charge from the parliament, and would not suffer the interference of any other authority. Eure departed; but Charles could no longer conceal from himself the danger which stared him in the face; his constancy or obstinacy relented; and he agreed,[a] after a most painful struggle, and when the time was run to the last minute, to remit the compositions of his followers to the mercy of parliament; to consent to the trial of the seven individuals excepted from pardon, provided they were allowed the benefit of the ancient laws; and to suspend the functions and vest in the crown the lands of the bishops, till religion should be settled, and the support of its ministers determined by common consent of the king and the two houses. By this last expedient it was hoped that both parties would be satisfied; the monarch, because the order was not abolished, nor its lands alienated for ever; the parliament, because neither one nor the other could be restored without its previous consent.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, 449-454. Journals, x. 620-622. The royalists excepted from mercy were the marquess of Newcastle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, Lord Digby, Sir Richard Grenville, Mr. Justice Jenkins, Sir Francis Dorrington, and Lord Byron. It appears to me difficult to read the letters written by Charles during the treaty to his son the prince of Wales (Clarendon Papers, ii. 425-454), and yet believe that he acted with insincerity. But how then, asks Mr. Laing (Hist. of Scotland, iii. 411), are we to account for his assertion to Ormond, that the treaty would come to nothing, and for his anxiety to escape manifested by his correspondence with Hopkins?–Wagstaff’s Vindication of the Royal Martyr, 142-161. 1. Charles knew that, besides the parliament, there was the army, which had both the will and the power to set aside any agreement which might be made between him and the parliament; and hence arose his conviction that “the treaty would come to nothing.” 2. He was acquainted with all that passed in the private councils of his enemies; with their design to bring him to trial and to the scaffold; and he had also received a letter, informing him of an intention to assassinate him during the treaty.–Herbert, 134. Can we be surprised, if, under such circumstances, he sought to escape? Nor was his parole an objection. He conceived himself released from it by misconduct on the part of Hammond, who, at last, aware of that persuasion, prevailed on him, though with considerable difficulty, to renew his pledge.–Journals, x. 598. After this renewal he refused to escape even when every facility was offered him.–Rushworth, vii. 1344.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Nov. 27.]

In the morning, when the commissioners took their leave,[a] Charles addressed them with a sadness of countenance and in a tone of voice which drew tears from all his attendants. “My lords,” said he, “I believe we shall scarce ever see each other again. But God’s will be done! I have made my peace with him, and shall undergo without fear whatever he may suffer men to do to me. My lords, you cannot but know that in my fall and ruin you see your own, and that also near you. I pray God send you better friends than I have found. I am fully informed of the carriage of them who plot against me and mine; but nothing affects me so much as the feeling I have of the sufferings of my subjects, and the mischief that hangs over my three kingdoms, drawn upon them by those who, upon pretences of good, violently pursue their own interests and ends.” Hammond departed at the same time with the commissioners, and the command at Carisbrook devolved on Boreman, an officer of the militia, at Newport on Rolfe, a major in the army. To both he gave a copy of his instructions from the parliament for the safety of the royal person; but the character of Rolfe was known; he had been charged with a design to take the king’s life six months before, and had escaped a trial by the indulgence of the grand jury, who ignored the bill, because the main fact was attested by the oath of only one witness.[2]

The next morning[b] a person in disguise ordered one

[Footnote 1: Appendix to Eveyln’s Memoirs, ii. 128.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, x. 615, 345, 349, 358, 370, 390. Clarendon, iii. 234.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Nov. 28.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Nov. 29.]

of the royal attendants to inform the king that a military force was on its way to make him prisoner. Charles immediately consulted the duke of Richmond, the earl of Lindsey, and Colonel Coke, who joined in conjuring him to save his life by an immediate escape. The night was dark and stormy; they were acquainted with the watchword; and Coke offered him horses and a boat. But the king objected, that he was bound in honour to remain twenty days after the treaty, nor would he admit of the distinction which they suggested, that his parole was given not to the army, but to the parliament. It was in vain that they argued and entreated: Charles, with his characteristic obstinacy,[a] retired to rest about midnight; and in a short time Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbett arrived with a troop of horse and a company of foot. Boreman refused to admit him into Carisbrook. But Rolfe offered him aid at Newport; at five the king was awakened by a message that he must prepare to depart; and about noon he was safely lodged in Hurst Castle, situate on a solitary rock, and connected by a narrow causeway, two miles in length, with the opposite coast of Hampshire.[1]

The same day the council of officers published a menacing declaration against the House of Commons. It charged the majority with apostasy from their former principles, and appealed from their authority to “the extraordinary judgment of God and of all good people;” called on the faithful members to protest against the past conduct of their colleagues, and to place themselves under the protection of the army; and asserted that since God had given to the officers the power, he had also made it their duty, to

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vii. 1344-1348, 1351. Herbert, 113, 124.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Nov. 30.]

provide for the settlement of the kingdom and the punishment of the guilty.[a] In the pursuit of these objects, Fairfax marched several regiments to London, and quartered them at Whitehall, York House, the Mews, and in the skirts of the city.[1]

The reader will recollect the pusillanimous conduct of the Presbyterian members on the approach of the army in the year 1646.[b] On the present occasion they resolved to redeem their character. They betrayed no symptom of fear, no disposition to retire, or to submit. Amidst the din of arms and the menaces of the soldiers, they daily attended their duty in parliament, declared that the seizure of the royal person had been, made without their knowledge or consent, and proceeded to consider the tendency of the concessions made by Charles in the treaty of Newport. This produced the longest and most animated debate hitherto known in the history of parliament. Vane drew a most unfavourable portrait of the king, and represented all his promises and professions as hollow and insincere; Fiennes became for the first time the royal apologist, and refuted the charges brought by his fellow commissioner; and Prynne, the celebrated adversary of Laud, seemed to forget his antipathy to the court, that he might lash the presumption and perfidy of the army. The debate continued by successive adjournments three days and a whole night; and on the last division in the morning a resolution was carried by a majority of thirty-six, that the offers of the sovereign furnished a sufficient ground for the future settlement of the kingdom.[2][c]

[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vii. 1341, 1350. Whitelock, 358.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Dec. 1, 2, 3, 5. Clarendon Papers, ii. App, xlviii. Cobbett, Parl. Hist. 1152. In some of the previous divisions, the house consisted of two hundred and forty members; but several seem to have retired during the night; at the conclusion there were only two hundred and twelve.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Dec. 5]

But the victors were not suffered to enjoy their triumph. The next day Skippon discharged the guards of the two houses, and their place was supplied by a regiment of horse and another of foot from the[a] army. Colonel Pride, while Fairfax, the commander-in-chief, was purposely employed in a conference with some of the members, stationed himself in the lobby: in his hand he held a list of names, while the Lord Grey stood by his side to point out the persons of the members; and two-and-fifty Presbyterians, the most distinguished of the party by their talents or influence, were taken into custody and conducted to different places of confinement. Many of those who passed the ordeal on this, met with a similar treatment on the following day; numbers embraced the opportunity to retire into the country; and the house was found, after repeated purifications, to consist of about fifty individuals, who, in the quaint language of the time, were afterwards dignified with the honourable appellation of the “Rump."[1]

Whether it were through policy or accident, Cromwell was not present to take any share in these extraordinary proceedings. After his victory at Preston he had marched in pursuit of Monroe, and had besieged the important town of Berwick. But his real views were not confined to England. The defeat of the Scottish royalists had raised the hopes of their opponents in their own country. In the western shires the curse of Meroz had been denounced from

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 358, 359. Commons’ Journals, Dec. 6, 7. This was called Pride’s purge. Forty-seven members were imprisoned, and ninety-six excluded.–Parl. Hist. iii. 1248.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 6.]

the pulpit against all who refused to arm in defence of the covenant; the fanatical peasants marshalled themselves under their respective ministers; and Loudon and Eglington, assuming the command, led them to Edinburgh.[1] This tumultuary mass, though joined by Argyle and his Highlanders, and by Cassilis with the people of Carrick and Galloway, was no match for the disciplined army under Lanark and Monroe; but Cromwell offered to advance to their support, and the[a] two parties hastened to reconcile their differences by a treaty, which secured to the royalists their lives and[b] property, on condition that they should disband their forces. Argyle with his associates assumed the name and the office of the committee of the estates; Berwick and Carlisle were delivered to the English[c] general; and he himself with his army was invited to the capital. Amidst the public rejoicing, private conferences of which the subject never transpired, were repeatedly held; and Cromwell returning to[d] England, left Lambeth with two regiments of horse, to support the government of his friends till they could raise a sufficient force among their own party.[2] His progress through the northern counties was slow;[e] nor did he reach the capital till the day after the exclusion of the Presbyterian members. His late victory had rendered him the idol of the soldiers: he was conducted with acclamations of joy to the

[Footnote 1: This was called the inroad of the Whiggamores; a name given to these peasants either from whiggam, a word employed by them in driving their horses, or from whig (Anglicč whey), a beverage of sour milk, which formed one of the principal articles of their meals.–Burnet’s History of his Own Times, i. 43. It soon came to designate an enemy of the king, and in the next reign was transferred, under the abbreviated form of whig, to the opponents of the court.]

[Footnote 2: Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 367-377. Guthrie, 283-299. Rushworth, vii. 1273, 1282, 1286, 1296, 1325.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Sept. 26.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Sept. 30.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. Oct. 4.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. Oct. 11.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1648. Dec. 7.]

royal apartments in Whitehall, and received the next day the thanks of the House of Commons for his distinguished services to the two kingdoms. Of his sentiments with respect to the late proceedings no doubt was entertained. If he had not suggested, he had at least been careful to applaud the conduct of the officers, and in a letter to Fairfax he blasphemously attributed it to the inspiration of the Almighty.[1]

The government of the kingdom had now devolved in reality on the army. There were two military councils, the one select, consisting of the grandees, or principal commanders, the other general, to which the inferior officers, most of them men of levelling principles, were admitted. A suspicion existed that the former aimed at the establishment of an oligarchy: whence their advice was frequently received with jealousy and distrust, and their resolutions were sometimes negatived by the greater number of their inferiors. When any measure had received the approbation of the general council, it was carried to the House of Commons, who were expected to impart to it the sanction of their authority. With ready obedience[a] they renewed the vote of non-addresses, resolved that the re-admission of the eleven expelled members was dangerous in its consequences, and contrary to the usages of the house, and declared that the treaty in the Isle of Wight, and the approbation given to the[b] royal concessions, were dishonourable to parliament, destructive of the common good, and a breach of the public faith.[2] But these were only preparatory measures:

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 8. Whitelock, 362. Rushworth, vii. 1339.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Dec. 3, 13, 14, 20. Whitelock, 362, 363. Clarendon Papers, ii. App. xlix.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 12.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Dec. 13.]

they were soon called upon to pass a vote, the very mention of which a few years before would have struck the boldest among them with astonishment and terror.

It had long been the conviction of the officers that the life of the king was incompatible with their safety. If he were restored, they would become the objects of royal vengeance; if he were detained in prison, the public tranquillity would be disturbed by a succession of plots in his favour. In private assassination there was something base and cowardly from which the majority revolted; but to bring him to public justice, was to act openly and boldly; it was to proclaim their confidence in the goodness of their cause; to give to the world a splendid proof of the sovereignty of the people and of the responsibility of kings.[1][a] When the motion was made in the Commons, a few ventured to oppose it, not so much with the hope of saving the life of Charles, as for the purpose of transferring the odium of his death on its real authors. They suggested that the person of the king was sacred; that history afforded no precedent of a sovereign compelled to plead before a court of judicature composed of his own subjects; that measures of vengeance could only serve to widen the bleeding wounds of the country; that it was idle to fear any re-action in favour of the monarch, and it was now time to settle on a permanent basis the liberties of the country. But their opponents were clamorous, obstinate, and menacing. The king, they maintained, was the capital delinquent; justice required that he should suffer as well as the minor offenders. He had been guilty of treason against the people, it remained for their representatives to bring

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, Hist. iii. 249.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 29.]

him to punishment; he had shed the blood of man, God made it a duty to demand his blood in return. The opposition was silenced; and a committee of thirty-eight members was appointed to receive information and to devise the most eligible manner of proceeding. Among the more influential names were those of Widdrington and Whitelock, Scot and Marten. But the first two declined to attend; and, when the clerk brought them a summons, retired into the country.[1]

[a]At the recommendation of this committee, the house passed a vote declaratory of the law, that it was high treason in the king of England, for the time being, to levy war against the parliament and kingdom of England; and this was followed up with an ordinance erecting a high court of justice to try the question of fact, whether Charles Stuart, king of England, had or had not been guilty of the treason described in the preceding vote. But the subserviency of the Commons was not imitated by the Lords. They saw the approaching ruin of their own order in the fall of the sovereign; and when the vote and ordinance were transmitted to their house, they rejected both without a dissentient voice, and then adjourned for a week.[b] This unexpected effort surprised, but did not disconcert, the Independents.[c] They prevailed on the Commons to vote that the people are the origin of all just power, and from this theoretical truth proceeded to deduce two practical falsehoods. As if no portion of that power had been delegated to the king and the lords, they determined that “the Commons of England assembled in parliament, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme authority:” and thence inferred

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 23. Whitelock, 363.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan. 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Jan. 4.]

that “whatsoever is enacted and declared for law by the Commons in parliament hath force of law, and concludes all the people of the nation, although the consent and concurrence of the king and the House of Peers be not had thereunto.” But even in that hypothesis, how could the house, constituted as it then was, claim to be the representative of the people? It was in fact the representative of the army only, and not a free but an enslaved representative, bound to speak with the voice, and to enregister the decrees of its masters.[1] Two days later an act for the trial of the king was passed by the authority of the Commons only.

In the mean while Cromwell continued to act his accustomed part. Whenever he rose in the house, it was to recommend moderation, to express the doubts which agitated his mind, to protest that, if he assented to harsh and ungracious measures, he did it with reluctance, and solely in obedience to the will of the Almighty. Of his conduct during the debate on the king’s trial we have no account; but when it was suggested to dissolve the upper house, and transfer its members to that of the Commons, he characterized the proposal as originating in revolutionary phrensy; and, on the introduction of a bill to alter the form of the great seal, adopted a language which strongly marks the hypocrisy of the man, though it was calculated to make impression on the fanatical minds of his hearers.[a] "Sir,” said he, addressing the speaker, “if any man whatsoever have carried on this design of deposing the king, and disinheriting his posterity, or if any man have still such a design, he must be the greatest

[Footnote 1: Journals, x. 641. Commons, Jan. 1, 2, 4, 6. Hitherto the Lords had seldom exceeded seven in number; but on this occasion they amounted to fourteen–Leicester’s Journal, 47.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 9.]

traitor and rebel in the world; but since the providence of God has cast this upon us, I cannot but submit to Providence, though I am not yet prepared to give you my advice."[1]

The lord general, on the contrary, began to assume a more open and a bolder tone. Hitherto, instead of leading, he had been led. That he disapproved of much that had been done, we may readily believe; but he only records his own weakness, where he alleges in excuse of his conduct that his name had been subscribed to the resolves of the council, whether he consented or not. He had lately shed the blood of two gallant officers at Colchester, but no solicitations could induce him to concur in shedding the blood of the king. His name stood at the head of the commissioners: he attended at the first meeting, in which no business was transacted, but he constantly refused to be present at their subsequent sittings, or to subscribe his name to their resolutions.[A] This conduct surprised and mortified the Independents: it probably arose from the influence of his wife, whose desperate

[Footnote 1: For Cromwell’s conduct see the letters in the Appendix to the second volume of the Clarendon Papers, 1. li. The authenticity of this speech has been questioned, as resting solely on the treacherous credit of Perrinchiefe; but it occurs in a letter written on the 11th of January, which describes the proceedings of the 9th, and therefore cannot, I think, be questioned. By turning to the Journals, it will be found that on that day the house had divided on a question whether any more messages should be received from the Lords, which was carried, in opposition to Ludlow and Marten. “Then,” says the letter, “they fell on the business of the king’s trial.” On this head nothing is mentioned in the Journals; but a motion which would cause frequent allusions to it, was made and carried. It was for a new great seal, on which should be engraven the House of Commons, with this inscription:–"In the first year of freedom, by God’s blessing restored, 1648.” Such a motion would naturally introduce Cromwell’s speech respecting the deposition of the king and the disherison of his posterity.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 3.]

loyalty will soon challenge the attention of the reader.[1]

Before this the king, in anticipation of his subsequent trial, had been removed to the palace of St.[a] James’s. In the third week of his confinement in Hurst Castle, he was suddenly roused out of his sleep at midnight by the fall of the drawbridge and the trampling of horses. A thousand frightful ideas rushed on his mind, and at an early hour in the morning, he desired his servant Herbert to ascertain the cause; but every mouth was closed, and Herbert returned with the scanty information that a Colonel Harrison had arrived. At the name the king turned pale, hastened into the closet, and sought to relieve his terrors by private devotion. In a letter which he had received at Newport, Harrison had been pointed out to him as a man engaged to take his life. His alarm, however, was unfounded. Harrison was a fanatic, but no murderer: he sought, indeed, the blood of the king, but it was his wish that it should be shed by the axe of the executioner, not by the dagger of the assassin. He had been appointed to superintend the removal of the royal captive, and had come to arrange matters with the governor, of whose fidelity some suspicion existed. Keeping himself private during the days he departed in the night; and two days later Charles was conducted with a numerous[b] escort to the royal palace of Windsor.[2]

Hitherto, notwithstanding his confinement, the king had always been served with the usual state; but at Windsor his meat was brought to table uncovered and[c] by the hands of the soldiers; no say was given; no

[Footnote 1: Nalson, Trial of Charles I. Clarendon Papers, ii. App. ii.]

[Footnote 2: Herbert, 131-136, Rushworth, vii. 1375.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 18.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Dec. 23.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. Dec. 27.]

cup presented on the knee. This absence of ceremony made on the unfortunate monarch a deeper impression than could have been expected. It was, he said, the denial of that to him, which by ancient custom was due to many of his subjects; and rather than submit to the humiliation, he chose to diminish the number of the dishes, and to take his meals in private. Of the proceedings against him he received no official intelligence; but he gleaned the chief particulars through the inquiries of Herbert, and in casual conversation with Witchcott the governor. The information was sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; but Charles was of a most sanguine temperament, and though he sought to fortify his mind against the worst, he still cherished a hope that these menacing preparations were only intended to extort from him the resignation of his crown. He relied on the interposition of the Scots, the intercession of foreign powers, and the attachment of many of his English subjects. He persuaded himself that his very enemies would blush to shed the blood of their sovereign; and that their revenge would be appeased, and their ambition sufficiently gratified, by the substitution in his place of one of his younger children on the throne.[1]

But these were the dreams of a man who sought to allay his fears by voluntary delusions. The princes of Europe looked with cold indifference on his fate. The king of Spain during the whole contest had maintained a friendly correspondence with the parliament. Frederic III. king of Denmark, though he was his

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 155, 157. Whitelock, 365. Sir John Temple attributed his tranquillity “to a strange conceit of Ormond’s working for him in Ireland. He still hangs upon that twigg; and by the enquireys he made after his and Inchiquin’s conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."–In Leicester’s Journal, 48.]

cousin-german, made no effort to save his life; and Henrietta could obtain for him no interposition from France, where the infant king had been driven from his capital by civil dissension, and she herself depended for subsistence on the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, the leader of the Fronde.[1] The Scottish parliament, indeed, made a feeble effort in his favour. The commissioners subscribed a protest against the proceedings of the Commons, by whom it was never answered; and argued the case with Cromwell, who referred them to the covenant, and maintained, that if it was their duty to punish the malignants in general, it was still more so to punish him who was the chief of the malignants.[2]

As the day of trial approached, Charles resigned the hopes which he had hitherto indulged; and his removal to Whitehall admonished him to prepare for that important scene on which he was soon to appear. Without information or advice, he could only resolve to maintain the port and dignity of a king, to refuse the authority of his judges, and to commit no act unworthy of his exalted rank and that of his ancestors.[a] On the 20th of January the commissioners appointed by the act assembled in the painted chamber, and proceeded in state to the upper end of Westminster Hall.[b] A chair of crimson velvet had been placed for the lord president, John Bradshaw, serjeant-at-law; the others, to the number of sixty-six, ranged themselves on either side, on benches covered with scarlet; at the feet of the president sat two clerks at a table on which lay the sword and the mace; and directly opposite stood a chair intended for the king. After the preliminary

[Footnote 1: Memoirs of Retz, i. 261.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Jan. 6, 22, 23. Parl. Hist. iii. 1277. Burnett’s Own Times, i. 42.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan 19] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan 20]

formalities of reading the commission, and calling over the members, Bradshaw ordered the prisoner to be introduced.[1]

Charles was received at the door by the serjeant-at-arms, and conducted by him within the bar. His step was firm, his countenance erect and unmoved. He did not uncover; but first seated himself, then rose, and surveyed the court with an air of superiority, which abashed and irritated his enemies. While the clerk read the charge, he appeared to listen with indifference; but a smile of contempt was seen to quiver on his lips at the passage which described him as a “tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public and implacable enemy to the commonwealth of England.” At the conclusion Bradshaw called on him to answer; but he demanded by what lawful authority he had been brought thither. He was king of England; he acknowledged no superior upon earth; and the crown, which he had received from his ancestors, he would transmit unimpaired by any act of his to his posterity. His case, moreover, was the case of all the people of England; for if force without law could alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, there was no man who could be secure of his life or liberty for an hour. He was told that the court sat by the authority of the House of

[Footnote 1: The commissioners according to the act (for bills passed by the Commons alone were now denominated acts), were in number 133, chosen out of the lower house, the inns of court, the city, and the army. In one of their first meetings they chose Bradshaw for their president. He was a native of Cheshire, bred to the bar, had long practised in the Guildhall, and had lately before been made serjeant. In the first list of commissioners his name did not occur; but on the rejection of the ordinance by the upper house, the names of six lords were erased, and his name with those of five others was substituted. He obtained for the reward of his services the estate of Lord Cottington, the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, and the office of president of the council.]

Commons. But where, he asked, were the Lords? Were the Commons the whole legislature? Were they free? Were they a court of judicature? Could they confer on others a jurisdiction which they did not possess themselves? He would never acknowledge an usurped authority. It was a duty imposed upon him by the Almighty to disown every lawless power, that invaded either the rights of the crown or the liberties of the subject. Such was the substance of his discourse, delivered on three different days, and amidst innumerable interruptions from the president, who would not suffer the jurisdiction of the court to be questioned, and at last ordered the “default and contempt of the prisoner” to be recorded.

The two following days the court sat in private, to receive evidence that the king had commanded in several engagements, and to deliberate on the form of judgment to be pronounced.[a] On the third Bradshaw took his seat, dressed in scarlet; and Charles immediately demanded to be heard. He did not mean, he said, on this occasion either to acknowledge or deny the authority of the court; his object was to ask a favour, which would spare them the commission of a great crime, and restore the blessing of tranquillity to his people. He asked permission to confer with a joint committee of the Lords and Commons. The president replied that the proposal was not altogether new, though it was now made for the first time by the king himself; that it pre-supposed the existence of an authority co-ordinate with that of the Commons, which could not be admitted; that its object could only be to delay the proceedings of the court, now that judgment was to be pronounced. Here he was interrupted by the earnest expostulation of Colonel Downes, one of the members. The king was immediately

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 27.]

removed; the commissioners adjourned into a neighbouring apartment, and almost an hour was spent in private and animated debate. Had the conference been granted, Charles would have proposed (so at least it was understood) to resign the crown in favour of the prince of Wales.

When the court resumed, Bradshaw announced to him the refusal of his request, and proceeded to animadvert in harsh and unfeeling language on the principal events of his reign. The meek spirit of the prisoner was roused; he made an attempt to speak, but was immediately silenced with the remark, that the time for his defence was past; that he had spurned the numerous opportunities offered to him by the indulgence of the court; and that nothing remained for his judges but to pronounce sentence; for they had learned from holy writ that “to acquit the guilty was of equal abomination as to condemn the innocent.” The charge was again read, and was followed by the judgment, “that the court, being satisfied in conscience that he, the said Charles Stuart, was guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused, did adjudge him as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by severing his head from his body.” The king heard it in silence, sometimes smiling with contempt, sometimes raising his eyes to heaven, as if he appealed from the malice of men to the justice of the Almighty. At the conclusion the commissioners rose in a body to testify their assent, and Charles made a last and more earnest effort to speak; but Bradshaw ordered him to be removed, and the guards hurried him out of the hall.[1]

[Footnote 1: See the Trial of Charles Stuart, with additions by Nalson, folio, London, 1735.]

During this trial a strong military force had been kept under arms to suppress any demonstration of popular feeling in favour of the king. On the first day, when the name of Fairfax, as one of the commissioners, was called, a female voice cried from the gallery, “He has more wit than to be here.” On another occasion, when Bradshaw attributed the charge against the king to the consentient voice of the people of England, the same female voice exclaimed, “No, not one-tenth of the people.” A faint murmur of approbation followed, but was instantly suppressed by the military. The speaker was recognised to be Lady Fairfax, the wife of the commander-in-chief; and these affronts, probably on that account, were suffered to pass unnoticed.[1]

When Coke, the solicitor-general, opened the pleadings, the king gently tapped him on the shoulder with his cane, crying, “Hold, hold.” At the same moment the silver head of the cane fell off, and rolled on the floor. It was an accident which might have happened at any time; but in this superstitions age it could not fail to be taken for an omen. Both his friends and enemies interpreted it as a presage of his approaching decapitation.[2]

On one day, as the king entered the court, he heard behind him the cry of "Justice, justice;” on another, as he passed between two lines of soldiers, the word “execution” was repeatedly sounded in his ears. He bore these affronts with patience, and on

[Footnote 1: Nalson’s Trial. Clarendon, iii. 254. State Trials, 366, 367, 368, folio, 1730.]

[Footnote 2: Nalson. Herbert, 165. “He seemed unconcerned; yet told the bishop, it really made a great impression on him; and to this hour, says he, I know not possibly how it should come."–Warwick, 340.]

his return said to Herbert, “I am well assured that the soldiers bear me no malice. The cry was suggested by their officers, for whom they would do the like if there were occasion."[1]

On his return from the hall, men and women crowded behind the guards, and called aloud, “God preserve your majesty.” But one of the soldiers venturing to say, “God bless you, Sir,” received a stroke on the head from an officer with his cane. “Truly,” observed the king, “I think the punishment exceeded the offence."[2]

By his conduct during these proceedings, Charles had exalted his character even in the estimation of his enemies: he had now to prepare himself for a still more trying scene, to nerve his mind against the terrors of a public and ignominious death. But he was no longer the man he had been before the civil war. Affliction had chastened his mind; he had learned from experience to submit to the visitations of Providence; and he sought and found strength and relief in the consolations of religion. The next day, the Sunday, was spent by him at St. James’s, by the commissioners at Whitehall.[a] They observed a fast, preached on the judgments of God, and prayed for a blessing on the commonwealth. He devoted his time to devotional exercises in the company of Herbert and of Dr. Juxon, bishop of London, who at the request of Hugh Peters (and it should be recorded to the honour of that fanatical preacher) had been permitted to attended the monarch. His nephew the prince elector, the duke of Richmond, the marquess of Hertford, and several other noblemen, came to the door of his bedchamber, to pay their last respects to

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 163, 164.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 163, 165.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 28.]

their sovereign; but they were told in his name that he thanked them for their attachment, and desired their prayers; that the shortness of his time admonished him to think of another world; and that the only moments which he could spare must be given to his children. These were two, the Princess Elizabeth and the duke of Gloucester, the former wept for her father’s fate; the latter, too young to understand the cause, joined his tears through sympathy. Charles placed them on his knees, gave them such advice as was adapted to their years, and seemed to derive pleasure from the pertinency of their answers. In conclusion, he divided a few jewels between them, kissed them, gave them his blessings and hastily retired to his devotions.[1]

On the last night of his life he slept soundly about four hours, and early in the morning[a] awakened Herbert, who lay on a pallet by his bed-side. "This,” he said, “is my second marriage-day. I would be as trim as may be; for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus.” He then pointed out the clothes which he meant to wear, and ordered two shirts, on account of the severity of the weather; “For,” he observed, “were I to shake through cold, my enemies would attribute it to fear, I would have no such imputation. I fear not death. Death is not terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared."[2]

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 169-180. State Trials, 357-360.]

[Footnote 2: Herbert, 183-185, I may here insert an anecdote, which seems to prove that Charles attributed his misfortunes in a great measure to the counsels of Archbishop Laud. On the last night of his life, he had observed that Herbert was restless during his sleep, and in the morning insisted on knowing the cause. Herbert answered that he was dreaming. He saw Laud enter the room; the king took him aside, and spoke to him with a pensive countenance; the archbishop sighed, retired, and fell prostrate on the ground. Charles replied, “It is very remarkable; but he is dead. Yet had we conferred together during life, ’tis very likely (albeit I loved him well) I should have said something to him, might have occasioned his sigh."–Herbert’s Letter to Dr. Samways, published at the end of his Memoirs, p. 220.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.]

The king spent an hour in privacy with the bishop; Herbert was afterwards admitted; and about ten o’clock Colonel Hacker announced that it was time to proceed to Whitehall. He obeyed, was conducted on foot, between two detachments of military, across the park, and received permission to repose himself in his former bedchamber. Dinner had been prepared for him; but he refused to eat, though afterwards, at the solicitation of the bishop, he took the half of a manchet and a glass of wine. Here he remained almost two hours, in constant expectation of the last summons, spending his time partly in prayer and partly in discourse with Dr. Juxon. There might have been nothing mysterious in the delay; if there was, it may perhaps be explained from the following circumstances.

Four days had now elapsed since the arrival of ambassadors from the Hague to intercede in his favour. It was only on the preceding evening that they had obtained audiences of the two houses, and hitherto no answer had been returned. In their company came Seymour, the bearer of two letters from the prince of Wales, one addressed to the king, the other to the Lord Fairfax. He had already delivered the letter, and with it a sheet of blank paper subscribed with the name and sealed with the arms of the prince. It was the price which he offered to the grandees of the army for the life of his father. Let them fill it up with the conditions: whatever they might be, they were already granted; his seal and signature were affixed.[1] It is not improbable that this offer may have induced the leaders to pause. That Fairfax laboured to postpone the execution, was always asserted by his friends; and we have evidence to prove that, though he was at Whitehall, he knew not, or at least pretend not to know, what was passing.[2]

In the mean while Charles enjoyed the consolation of learning that his son had not forgotten him in his distress. By the indulgence of Colonel Tomlinson, Seymour was admitted, delivered the letter, and received the royal instructions for the prince. He was hardly gone, when Hacker arrived with the fatal summons. About two o’clock the king proceeded through the long gallery, lined on each side with soldiers, who, far from insulting the fallen monarch, appeared by their sorrowful looks to sympathize with his fate. At the end an aperture had been made in the wall, through which he stepped at once upon the scaffold. It was hung with black; at the farther end were seen the two executioners, the block, and the axe; below

[Footnote 1: For the arrival of the ambassadors see the Journals of the House of Commons on the 26th. A fac-simile of the carte-blanche, with the signature of the prince, graces the title-page of the third volume of the Original Letters, published by Mr. Ellis.]

[Footnote 2: “Mean time they went into the long gallery, where, chancing to meet the general, he ask’d Mr. Herbert how the king did? Which he thought strange.... His question being answered, the general seem’d much surprised."–Herbert, 194. It is difficult to believe that Herbert could have mistaken or fabricated such a question, or that Fairfax would have asked it, had he known what had taken place. To his assertion that Fairfax was with the officers in Harrison’s room, employed in “prayer or discourse,” it has been objected that his name does not occur among the names of those who were proved to have been there at the trial of the regicides. But that is no contradiction. The witnesses speak of what happened before, Herbert of what happened during, the execution. See also Ellis, 2nd series, iii. 345.]

appeared in arms several regiments of horse and foot; and beyond, as far as the eye was permitted to reach, waved a dense and countless crowd of spectators. The king stood collected and undismayed amidst the apparatus of death. There was in his countenance that cheerful intrepidity, in his demeanour that dignified calmness, which had characterized, in the hall of Fotheringay, his royal grandmother, Mary Stuart. It was his wish to address the people; but they were kept beyond the reach of his voice by the swords of the military; and therefore confining his discourse to the few persons standing with him on the scaffold, he took, he said, that opportunity of denying in the presence of his God the crimes of which he had been accused. It was not to him, but to the houses of parliament, that the war and all its evils should be charged. The parliament had first invaded the rights of the crown by claiming the command of the army; and had provoked hostilities by issuing commissions for the levy of forces, before he had raised a single man. But he had forgiven all, even those, whoever they were (for he did not desire to know their names), who had brought him to his death. He did more than forgive them, he prayed that they might repent. But for that purpose they must do three things; they must render to God his due, by settling the church according to the Scripture; they must restore to the crown those rights which belonged to it by law; and they must teach the people the distinction between the sovereign and the subject; those persons could not be governors who were to be governed, they could not rule, whose duty it was to obey. Then, in allusion to the offers formerly made to him by the army, he concluded with, these words:–"Sirs, it was for the liberties of the people that I am come here. If I would have assented to an arbitrary sway, to have all things changed according to the power of the sword, I needed not to have come hither; and therefore, I tell you (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge), that I am the martyr of the people.”

Having added, at the suggestion of Dr. Juxon, “I die a Christian according to the profession of the church of England, as I found it left me by my father,” he said, addressing himself to the prelate, “I have on my side a good cause, and a gracious God.”

BISHOP.–There is but one stage more; it is turbulent and troublesome, but a short one. It will carry you from earth to heaven, and there you will find joy and comfort.

KING.–I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown.

BISHOP.–You exchange an earthly for an eternal crown–a good exchange.

Being ready, he bent his neck on the block, and after a short pause, stretched out his hand as a signal. At that instant the axe descended; the head rolled from the body; and a deep groan burst from the multitude of the spectators. But they had no leisure to testify their feelings; two troops of horse dispersed them in different directions.[1]

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 189-194. Warwick, 344. Nalson, Trial of Charles Stuart. The royal corpse, having been embalmed, was after some days delivered to the earl of Richmond for private interment at Windsor. That nobleman, accompanied by the marquess of Hertford, the earls of Southampton and Lindsey, Dr. Juxon, and a few of the king’s attendants, deposited it in a vault in the choir of St. George’s chapel, which already contained the remains of Henry VIII. and of his third queen, Jane Seymour.–Herbert, 203. Blencowe, Sydney Papers, 64. Notwithstanding such authority, the assertion of Clarendon that the place could not be discovered threw some doubt upon the subject. But in 1813 it chanced that the workmen made an aperture in a vault corresponding in situation, and occupied by three coffins; and the prince-regent ordered an investigation to ascertain the truth. One of the coffins, in conformity with the account of Herbert, was of lead, with a leaden scroll in which were cut the words “King Charles.” In the upper lid of this an opening was made; and when the cerecloth and unctuous matter were removed, the features of the face, as far as they could be distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles I. To complete the proof, the head was found to have been separated from the trunk by some sharp instrument, which had cut through the fourth, vertebra of the neck.–See “An Account of what appeared on opening the coffin of King Charles I. by Sir Henry Halford, bart.” 1813. It was observed at the same time, that “the lead coffin of Henry VIII. had been beaten in about the middle, and a considerable opening in that part exposed a mere skeleton of the king.” This may, perhaps, be accounted for from a passage in Herbert, who tells us that while the workmen were employed about the inscription, the chapel was cleared, but a soldier contrived to conceal himself, descended into the vault, cut off some of the velvet pall, and "wimbled a hole into the largest coffin.” He was caught, and “a bone was found about him, which, he said, he would haft a knife with."–Herbert 204. See note (C).]

Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles Stuart; an awful lesson to the possessors of royalty, to watch the growth of public opinion, and to moderate their pretensions in conformity with the reasonable desires of their subjects. Had he lived at a more early period, when the sense of wrong was quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his reign would probably have been marked with fewer violations of the national liberties. It was resistance that made him a tyrant. The spirit of the people refused to yield to the encroachments of authority; and one act of oppression placed him under the necessity of committing another, till he had revived and enforced all those odious prerogatives, which, though usually claimed, were but sparingly exercised, by his predecessors. For some years his efforts seemed successful; but the Scottish insurrection revealed the delusion; he had parted with the real authority of a king, when he forfeited the confidence and affection of his subjects.

But while we blame the illegal measures of Charles, we ought not to screen from censure the subsequent conduct of his principal opponents. From the moment that war seemed inevitable, they acted as if they thought themselves absolved from all obligations of honour and honesty. They never ceased to inflame the passions of the people by misrepresentation and calumny; they exercised a power far more arbitrary and formidable than had ever been claimed by the king; they punished summarily, on mere suspicion, and without attention to the forms of law; and by their committees they established in every county a knot of petty tyrants, who disposed at will of the liberty and property of the inhabitants. Such anomalies may, perhaps, be inseparable from the jealousies, the resentments, and the heart-burnings, which are engendered in civil commotions; but certain it is that right and justice had seldom been more wantonly outraged, than they were by those who professed to have drawn the sword in the defence of right and justice.

Neither should the death of Charles be attributed to the vengeance of the people. They, for the most part, declared themselves satisfied with their victory; they sought not the blood of the captive monarch; they were even, willing to replace him on the throne, under those limitations which they deemed necessary for the preservation of their rights. The men who hurried him to the scaffold were a small faction of bold and ambitious spirits, who had the address to guide the passions and fanaticism of their followers, and were enabled through them to control the real sentiments of the nation. Even of the commissioners appointed to sit in judgment on the king, scarcely one-half could be induced to attend at his trial; and many of those who concurred in his condemnation subscribed the sentence with feelings of shame and remorse. But so it always happens in revolutions: the most violent put themselves forward; their vigilance and activity seem to multiply their number; and the daring of the few wins the ascendancy over the indolence or the pusillanimity of the many.

Chapter IV.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

Establishment Of The Commonwealth–Punishment Of The Royalists–Mutiny And Suppression Of The Levellers–Charles Ii Proclaimed In Scotland–Ascendancy Of His Adherents In Ireland–Their Defeat At Rathmines–Success Of Cromwell In Ireland–Defeat Of Montrose, And Landing Of Charles In Scotland-Cromwell Is Sent Against Him–He Gains A Victory At Dunbar–The King Marches Into England–Loses The Battle Of Worcester–His Subsequent Adventures And Escape.

When the two houses first placed themselves in opposition to the sovereign, their demands were limited to the redress of existing grievances; now that the struggle was over, the triumphant party refused to be content with anything less than the abolition of the old, and the establishment of a new and more popular form of government. Some, indeed, still ventured to raise their voices in favour of monarchy, on the plea that it was an institution the most congenial to the habits and feelings of Englishmen. By these it was proposed that the two elder sons of Charles should be passed by, because their notions were already formed, and their resentments already kindled; that the young duke of Gloucester, or his sister Elizabeth, should be placed on the throne; and that, under the infant sovereign, the royal prerogative should be circumscribed by law, so as to secure from future encroachment the just liberties of the people. But the majority warmly contended for the establishment of a commonwealth. Why, they asked, should they spontaneously set up again the idol which it had cost them so much blood and treasure to pull down? Laws would prove but feeble restraints on the passions of a proud and powerful monarch. If they sought an insuperable barrier to the restoration of despotism, it could be found only in some of those institutions which lodge the supreme power with the representatives of the people. That they spoke their real sentiments is not improbable, though we are assured, by one who was present at their meetings, that personal interest had no small influence in their final determination. They had sinned too deeply against royalty to trust themselves to the mercy, or the moderation, of a king. A republic was their choice, because it promised to shelter them from the vengeance of their enemies, and offered to them the additional advantage of sharing among themselves all the power, the patronage, and the emoluments of office.[1]

In accordance with this decision, the moment the head of the royal victim fell[a] on the scaffold at Whitehall, a proclamation was read in Cheapside, declaring it treason to give to any person the title of king without the authority of parliament; and at the same time was published the vote of the 4th of January, that the supreme authority in the nation resided in the representatives of the people. The peers, though aware of their approaching fate, continued to sit; but, after a pause of a few days, the Commons resolved: first,[b] that the House of Lords, and, next,[c] that the office of king, ought to be abolished. These votes, though the acts

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 391.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 6.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Feb. 7.]

to be ingrafted on them were postponed, proved sufficient; from that hour the kingship (the word by which the royal dignity was now designated), with the legislative and judicial authority of the peers, was considered extinct, and the lower house, under the name of the parliament of England, concentrated within itself all the powers of government.[1]

The next measure was the appointment, by the Commons, of a council of state, to consist of forty-one members, with powers limited in duration to twelve months. They were charged[a] with the preservation of domestic tranquillity, the care and disposal of the military and naval force, the superintendence of internal and external trade, and the negotiation of treaties with foreign powers. Of the persons selected[b] for this office, three-fourths possessed seats in the house; and they reckoned among them the heads of the law, the chief officers in the army, and five peers, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke, and Salisbury, with the Lord Grey of Werke, who condescended to accept the appointment, either through attachment to the cause, or as a compensation for the loss of their hereditary rights.[2] But at the very outset a schism appeared among the new counsellors. The oath required of them by the parliament contained an approval of the king’s trial, of the vote against the Scots and their English associates, and of the abolition of monarchy and of the House of Lords. By Cromwell and

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 7. Cromwell voted in favour of the House of Lords.–Ludlow, i. 246. Could he be sincere? I think not.]

[Footnote 2: The earl of Pembroke had the meanness to solicit and accept the place of representative for Berkshire; and his example was imitated by two other peers, the earl of Salisbury and Lord Howard of Escrick, who sat for Lynn and Carlisle.–Journals, April 16, May 5 Sept. 18. Leicester’s Journal, 72.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 13.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 14.]

eighteen others, it was taken cheerfully, and without comment; by the remaining twenty-two, with Fairfax at their head, it was firmly but respectfully refused.[a] The peers alleged that it stood not with their honour to approve upon oath of that which had been done in opposition to their vote; the commoners, that it was not for them to pronounce an opinion on judicial proceedings of which they had no official information. But their doubts respecting transactions that were past formed no objection to the authority of the existing government. The House of Commons was in actual possession of the supreme power. From that house they derived protection, to it they owed obedience, and with it they were ready to live and die. Cromwell and his friends had the wisdom to yield; the retrospective clauses were expunged,[b] and in their place was substituted a general promise of adhesion to the parliament, both with respect to the existing form of public liberty, and the future government of the nation, "by way of a republic without king or house of peers."[1]

This important revolution drew with it several other alterations. A representation of the House of Commons superseded the royal effigy on the great seal, which was intrusted to three lords-commissioners, Lysle, Keble, and Whitelock; the writs no longer ran in the name of the king, but of "the keepers of the liberty of England by authority of parliament;” new commissions were issued to the judges, sheriffs, and magistrates; and in lieu of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, was required an engagement to be true to the commonwealth of England. Of the

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 7, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22. Whitelock, 378, 382, 383. The amended oath is in Walker, part ii. 130.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 22.]

judges, six resigned; the other six consented to retain their situations, if parliament would issue a proclamation declaratory of its intention to maintain the fundamental laws of the kingdom. The condition was accepted and fulfilled;[1] the courts proceeded to hear and determine causes after the ancient manner; and the great body of the people scarcely felt the important change which had been made in the government of the country. For several years past the supreme authority had been administered in the name of the king by the two houses at Westminster, with the aid of the committee at Derby House; now the same authority was equally administered in the name of the people by one house only, and with the advice of a council of state.

The merit or demerit of thus erecting a commonwealth on the ruins of the monarchy chiefly belongs to Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and Marten, who by their superior influence guided and controlled the opinions and passions of their associates in the senate and the army. After the king’s death they derived much valuable aid from the talents of Vane,[2] Whitelock, and St. John; and a feeble lustre was shed on their cause by the accession of the five peers

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 8. Yet neither this declaration nor the frequent remonstrances of the lawyers could prevent the house from usurping the office of the judges, or from inflicting illegal punishments. Thus, for example, on the report of a committee, detailing the discovery of a conspiracy to extort money by a false charge of delinquency, the house, without hearing the accused, or sending them before a court of justice, proceeded to inflict on some the penalties of the pillory, fine, and imprisonment, and adjudged Mrs. Samford, as the principal, to be whipped the next day from Newgate to the Old Exchange, and to be kept to hard labour for three months.–Journals, 1650, Feb. 2, Aug. 13.]

[Footnote 2: Immediately after Pride’s purge, Vane, disgusted at the intolerance of his own party, left London, and retired to Raby Castle; he was now induced to rejoin them, and resumed his seat on Feb. 26.]

from the abolished House of Lords. But, after all, what right could this handful of men have to impose a new constitution on the kingdom? Ought they not, in consistency with their own principles, to have ascertained the sense of the nation by calling a new parliament? The question was raised, but the leaders, aware that their power was based on the sword of the military, shrunk from the experiment; and, to elude the demands of their opponents, appointed a committee to regulate the succession of parliaments and the election of members; a committee, which repeatedly met and deliberated, but never brought the question to any definitive conclusion. Still, when the new authorities looked around the house, and observed the empty benches, they were admonished of their own insignificance, and of the hollowness of their pretensions. They claimed the sovereign authority, as the representatives of the people; but the majority of those representatives had been excluded by successive acts of military violence; and the house had been reduced from more than five hundred members, to less than one-seventh of that number. For the credit and security of the government it was necessary both to supply the deficiency, and, at the same time, to oppose a bar to the introduction of men of opposite principles. With this view, they resolved[a] to continue the exclusion of those who had on the 5th of December assented to the vote, that the king’s “concessions were a sufficient ground to proceed to a settlement;” but to open the house to all others who should previously enter on the journals their dissent from that resolution.[1] By this expedient, and by occasional writs for elections in those places where

[Footnote 1: Journ. Feb. 1. Walker, part ii. 115. Whitelock, 376.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 1.]

the influence of the party was irresistible, the number of members gradually rose to one hundred and fifty, though it was seldom that the attendance of one-half, or even of one-third, could be procured.

During the war, the dread of retaliation had taught the two parties to temper with moderation the license of victory. Little blood had been shed except in the field of battle. But now that check was removed. The fanatics, not satisfied with the death of the king, demanded, with the Bible in their hands, additional victims; and the politicians deemed it prudent by the display of punishment to restrain the machinations of their enemies. Among the royalists in custody were the duke of Hamilton (who was also earl of Cambridge in England), the earl of Holland, Goring, earl of Norwich, the Lord Capel, and Sir John Owen, all engaged in the last attempt for the restoration of Charles to the throne. By a resolution of the House of Commons in November, Hamilton had been adjudged to pay a fine of one hundred thousand pounds, and the other four to remain in perpetual imprisonment; but after the triumph of the Independents, this vote had been rescinded,[a] and a high court of justice was now established to try the same persons on a charge of high treason. It was in vain that Hamilton pleaded[b] the order of the Scottish parliament under which he had acted; that Capel demanded to be brought before his peers, or a jury of his countrymen, according to those fundamental laws which the parliament had promised to maintain; that all invoked the national faith in favour of that quarter which they had obtained at the time of their surrender. Bradshaw, the president, delivered the opinions of the court. To Hamilton, he replied,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 10.]

that, as an English earl, he was amenable to the justice of the country; to Capel, that the court had been established by the parliament, the supreme authority to which all must submit; to each, that quarter given on the field of battle insured protection from the sword of the conqueror, but not from the vengeance of the law. All five were condemned[a] to lose their heads; but the rigour of the judgment was softened[b] by a reference to the mercy of parliament. The next day the wives of Holland and Capel, accompanied by a long train of females in mourning, appeared at the bar, to solicit the pardon of the condemned. Though their petitions were rejected, a respite for two days was granted. This favour awakened new hopes; recourse was had to flattery and entreaty; bribes were offered and accepted; and the following morning[c] new petitions were presented. The fate of Holland occupied a debate of considerable interest. Among the Independents he had many personal friends, and the Presbyterians exerted all their influence in his favour. But the saints expatiated on his repeated apostasy from the cause; and, after a sharp contest, Cromwell and Ireton obtained a majority of a single voice for his death. The case of Goring was next considered. No man during the war had treated his opponents with more bitter contumely, no one had inflicted on them deeper injuries; and yet, on an equal division, his life was saved by the casting voice of the speaker. The sentences of Hamilton and Capel were affirmed by the unanimous vote of the house; but, to the surprise of all men, Owen, a stranger, without friends or interest, had the good fortune to escape. His forlorn condition moved the pity of Colonel Hutchinson; the efforts of Hutchinson

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 6.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 7.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 8.]

were seconded by Ireton; and so powerful was their united influence, that they obtained a majority of five in his favour. Hamilton, Holland, and Capel died[a] on the scaffold, the first martyrs of loyalty after the establishment of the commonwealth.[1]

But, though the avowed enemies of the cause crouched before their conquerors, there was much in the internal state of the country to awaken apprehension in the breasts of Cromwell and his friends. There could be no doubt that the ancient royalists longed for the opportunity of avenging the blood of the king; or that the new royalists, the Presbyterians, who sought to re-establish the throne on the conditions stipulated by the treaty in the Isle of Wight, bore with impatience the superiority of their rivals. Throughout the kingdom the lower classes loudly complained of the burthen of taxation; in several parts they suffered under the pressure of penury and famine. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers perished through want; and it was certified by the magistrates of Cumberland that thirty thousand families in that county “had neither seed nor bread corn, nor the means of procuring either."[2] But that which chiefly created alarm was the progress made among the military by the “Levellers,” men of consistent principles and uncompromising conduct under the guidance of Colonel John Lilburne, an officer distinguished by his talents, his eloquence, and

[Footnote 1: If the reader compares the detailed narrative of these proceedings by Clarendon (iii. 265-270), with the official account in the Journals (March 7, 8), he will be surprised at the numerous inaccuracies of the historian. See also the State Trials; England’s Bloody Tribunal; Whitelock, 386; Burnet’s Hamiltons, 385; Leicester’s Journal, 70; Ludlow, i. 247; and Hutchinson, 310.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 398, 399.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Mar. 9.]

his courage.[1] Lilburne, with his friends, had long cherished a suspicion that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison sought only their private aggrandizement under the mantle of patriotism; and the recent changes had converted this suspicion into conviction. They observed that the same men ruled without control in the general council of officers, in the parliament, and in the council of state. They contended that every question was first debated and settled in the council of officers, and that, if their determination was afterwards adopted by the house, it was only that it might go forth to the public under the pretended sanction of the representatives of the nation; that the council of state had been vested with powers more absolute and oppressive than had ever been exercised by the late king; and that the High Court of Justice had been established by the party for the purpose of depriving their victims of those remedies which would be afforded by the ordinary courts of law. In some of their publications they went further. They maintained that the council of state was employed as an experiment on the patience of the nation; that it was intended to pass from the tyranny of a few to the tyranny of one; and that Oliver Cromwell was the man who aspired to that high but dangerous pre-eminence.[2]

A plan of the intended constitution, entitled “the

[Footnote 1: Lilburne in his youth had been a partisan of Bastwick, and had printed one of his tracts in Holland. Before the Star-chamber he refused to take the oath ex officio, or to answer interrogatories, and in consequence was condemned to stand in the pillory, was whipped from the Fleet-prison to Westminster, receiving five hundred lashes with knotted cords, and was imprisoned with double irons on his hands and legs. Three years later (1641), the House of Commons voted the punishment illegal, bloody, barbarous, and tyrannical.–Burton’s Diary, iii. 503, note.]

[Footnote 2: See England’s New Chains Discovered, and the Hunting of the Foxes, passim; the King’s Pamphlets, No. 411, xxi.; 414, xii. xvi.]

agreement of the people,” had been sanctioned by the council of officers, and presented[a] by Fairfax to the House of Commons, that it might be transmitted to the several counties, and there receive the approbation of the inhabitants. As a sop to shut the mouth of Cerberus, the sum of three thousand pounds, to be raised from the estates of delinquents in the county of Durham, had been voted[b] to Lilburne; but the moment he returned from the north, he appeared at the bar of the house, and petitioned against “the agreement,” objecting in particular to one of the provisions by which the parliament was to sit but six months, every two years, and the government of the nation during the other eighteen months was to be intrusted to the council of state. His example was quickly followed; and the table was covered with a succession of petitions from officers and soldiers, and “the well-affected” in different counties, who demanded that a new parliament should be holden every year; that during the intervals the supreme power should be exercised by a committee of the house; that no member of the last should sit in the succeeding parliament; that the self-denying ordinance should be enforced; that no officer should retain his command in the army for more than a certain period; that the High Court of Justice should be abolished as contrary to law, and the council of state, as likely to become an engine of tyranny; that the proceedings in the courts should be in the English language, the number of lawyers diminished, and their fees reduced; that the excise and customs should be taken away, and the lands of delinquents sold for compensation to the well-affected; that religion should be “reformed according to the mind of God;” that no one should be molested or incapacitated

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 26.]

on account of conscience; that tithes should be abolished; and that the income of each minister should be fixed at one hundred pounds per annum, to be raised by a rate on his parishioners.[1]

Aware of the necessity of crushing the spirit of opposition in the military, general orders were issued[a] by Fairfax, prohibiting private meetings of officers or soldiers “to the disturbance of the army;” and on the receipt[b] of a letter of remonstrance from several regiments, four of the five troopers by whom it was signed were condemned[c] by a court-martial to ride the wooden horse with their faces to the tail, to have their swords broken over their heads, and to be afterwards cashiered. Lilburne, on the other hand, laboured to inflame the general discontent by a succession of pamphlets, entitled, “England’s New Chains Discovered," "The Hunting of the Foxes from Newmarket and Triploe Heath to Whitehall by five small Beagles” (in allusion to the five troopers), and the second part of “England’s New Chains.” The last he read[d] to a numerous assembly at Winchester House; by the parliament it was voted[e] a seditious and traitorous libel, and the author, with his associates, Walwyn, Prince, and Overton; was committed,[f] by order of the council, to close custody in the Tower.[2]

It had been determined to send to Ireland a division of twelve thousand men; and the regiments to be employed were selected by ballot, apparently in the fairest manner. The men, however, avowed a resolution not to march. It was not, they said, that they

[Footnote 1: Walker, 133. Whitelock, 388, 393, 396, 398, 399. Carte, Letters, i. 229.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 385, 386, 392. Council Book in the State-paper Office, March 27, No. 17; March 29, No. 27. Carte, Letters, i. 273, 276.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 22.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 1.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 3.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 25.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. March 27.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. March 29.]

refused the service; but they believed the expedition to be a mere artifice to send the discontented out of the kingdom; and they asserted that by their engagement on Triploe Heath they could not conscientiously move a step till the liberties of the nation were settled on a permanent basis. The first act of mutiny occurred in Bishopsgate. A troop of horse refused to obey their colonel; and, instead of marching out of the city, took possession of the colours. Of these, five were condemned to be shot; but one only, by name Lockyer, suffered. At his burial a thousand men, in files, preceded the corpse, which was adorned with bunches of rosemary dipped in blood; on each side rode three trumpeters, and behind was led the trooper’s horse, covered with mourning; some thousands of men and women followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts, and were received at the grave by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants of London and Westminster. This extraordinary funeral convinced the leaders how widely the discontent was spread, and urged them to the immediate adoption of the most decisive measures.[1]

The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds, and Horton, though quartered in different places, had already[a] elected their agents, and published their resolution to adhere to each other, when the house commissioned Fairfax to reduce the mutineers, ordered Skippon to secure the capital from surprise, and declared it treason for soldiers to conspire the death of the general or lieutenant-general, or for any person to endeavour to alter the government, or to affirm that the parliament or council of state was either tyrannical or unlawful.[2]

[Footnote 1: Walker, 161. Whitelock, 399.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, May 1, 14. Whitelock, 399.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 7.]

At Banbury, in Oxfordshire, a Captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred men, published a manifesto, entitled “England’s Standard Advanced," in which he declared that, if Lilburne, or his fellow-prisoners, were ill-treated, their sufferings should he avenged seventy times seven-fold upon their persecutors. His object was to unite some of the discontented regiments; but Colonel Reynolds surprised him at Banbury, and prevailed on his followers to surrender without loss of blood.[1] Another party, consisting of ten troops of horse, and more than a thousand strong, proceeded from Salisbury to Burford, augmenting their numbers as they advanced. Fairfax and Cromwell, after a march of more than forty miles during the day, arrived soon afterwards,[a] and ordered their followers to take refreshment. White had been sent to the insurgents with an offer of pardon on their submission; whether he meant to deceive them or not, is uncertain; he represented the pause on the part of the general as time allowed them to consult and frame their demands; and at the hour of midnight, while they slept in security, Cromwell forced his way into the town, with two thousand men, at one entrance, while Colonel Reynolds, with a strong body, opposed their exit by the other. Four hundred of the mutineers were made prisoners, and the arms and horses of double that number were taken. One cornet and two corporals suffered death; the others, after a short imprisonment, were restored to their former regiments.[2]

This decisive advantage disconcerted all the plans of the mutineers. Some partial risings in the

[Footnote 1: Walker, ii. 168. Whitelock, 401.]

[Footnote 2: King’s Pamphlets, No. 421, xxii.; 422, i. Whitelock, 402.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 14.]

counties of Hants, Devon, and Somerset were quickly suppressed; and Thompson, who had escaped[a] from Banbury and retired to Wellingborough, being deserted by his followers, refused quarter, and fell[b] fighting singly against a host of enemies.[1] To express the national gratitude for this signal deliverance, a day of thanksgiving was appointed; the parliament, the council of State, and the council of the army assembled[c] at Christ-church; and, after the religious service of the day, consisting of two long sermons and appropriate prayers, proceeded to Grocer’s Hall, where they dined by invitation from the city. The speaker Lenthall, the organ of the supreme authority, like former kings, received the sword of state from the mayor, and delivered it to him again. At table, he was seated at the head, supported on his right hand by the lord general, and on the left by Bradshaw, the president of the council; thus exhibiting to the guests the representatives of the three bodies by which the nation was actually governed. At the conclusion of the dinner, the lord mayor presented one thousand pounds in gold to Fairfax in a basin and ewer of the same metal, and five hundred pounds, with a complete service of plate, to Cromwell.[2]

The suppression of the mutiny afforded leisure to the council to direct its attention to the proceedings in Scotland and Ireland. In the first of these kingdoms, after the departure of Cromwell, the supreme authority had been exercised by Argyle and his party, who were supported, and at the same time controlled, by the paramount influence of the kirk. The forfeiture

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 403.]

[Footnote 2: Leicester’s Journal, 74. Whitelock (406) places the guests in a different order.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 31.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. June 7.]

and excommunication of the “Engagers” left to their opponents the undisputed superiority in the parliament and all the great offices of the state. From the part which Argyle had formerly taken in the surrender of the king, his recent connection with Cromwell, and his hostility to the engagement, it was generally believed that he had acted in concert with the English Independents. But he was wary, and subtle, and flexible. At the approach of danger he could dissemble; and, whenever it suited his views, could change his measures without changing his object. At the beginning of January the fate with which Charles was menaced revived the languid affection of the Scots. A cry of indignation burst from every part of the country: he was their native king–would they suffer him to be arraigned as a criminal before a foreign tribunal? By delivering him to his enemies, they had sullied the fair fame of the nation–would they confirm this disgrace by tamely acquiescing in his death? Argyle deemed it prudent to go with the current of national feeling;[1] he suffered a committee to be appointed in parliament, and the commissioners in London received instructions to protest against the trial and condemnation of the king. But these instructions disclose the timid fluctuating policy of the man by whom they were dictated. It is vain to look in them for those warm and generous sentiments which the case demanded. They are framed with hesitation and caution; they betray a

[Footnote 1: Wariston had proposed (and Argyle had seconded him) to postpone the motion for interference in the King’s behalf till the Lord had been sought by a solemn fast, but “Argyle, after he saw that it was carried by wottes in his contrarey, changed his first opinione with a faire appologey, and willed them then presently to enter on the business."–Balfour, iii. 386.]

consciousness of weakness, a fear of provoking enmity, and an attention to private interest; and they show that the protestors, if they really sought to save the life of the monarch, were yet more anxious to avoid every act or word which might give offence to his adversaries.[1]

The commissioners delivered the paper, and the Scottish parliament, instead of an answer, received the news of the king’s execution. The next day the chancellor, attended by the members, proceeded to the cross in Edinburgh, and proclaimed Charles, the son of the deceased prince, king of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland.[a] But to this proclamation was appended a provision, that the young prince, before he could enter on the exercise of the royal authority, should satisfy the parliament of his adhesion both to the national covenant of Scotland, and to the solemn league and covenant between the two kingdoms.[2]

At length, three weeks after the death of the king, whose life it was intended to save, the English parliament condescended to answer the protestation of the Scots, but in a tone of contemptuous indifference, both as to the justice of their claim and the consequences of their anger.[b] Scotland, it was replied, might perhaps have no right to bring her sovereign to a public trial, but that circumstance could not affect the right of England. As the English parliament did not intend to trench on the liberties of others, it would not permit others to trench upon its own. The recollection of the evils inflicted on the nation by the misconduct of the king, and the consciousness that they

[Footnote 1: See the instructions in Balfour, iii. 383; and Clarendon, iii. 280.]

[Footnote 2: Balfour, iii. 387. Clarendon, iii. 284.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 17.]

had deserved the anger of God by their neglect to punish his offences, had induced them to bring him to justice, a course which they doubted not God had already approved, and would subsequently reward by the establishment of their liberties. The Scots had now the option of being freemen or slaves; the aid of England was offered for the vindication of their rights; if it were refused, let them beware how they entailed on themselves and their posterity the miseries of continual war with their nearest neighbour, and of slavery under the issue of a tyrant.[1]

The Scottish commissioners, in reply,[a] hinted that the present was not a full parliament; objected to any alteration in the government by king, lords, and commons; desired that no impediment should be opposed to the lawful succession of Charles II.; and ended by protesting that, if such things were done, the Scots were free before God and man from the guilt, the blood, the calamities, which it might cost the two kingdoms. Having delivered this paper, they hastened to Gravesend. Their object was to proceed to the United Provinces, and offer the Scottish crown on certain conditions to the young king. But the English leaders resolved to interrupt their mission. The answer which they had given was voted[b] a scandalous libel, framed for the purpose of exciting sedition; the commissioners were apprehended[c] at Gravesend as national offenders, and Captain Dolphin received orders to conduct them under a guard to the frontiers of Scotland.[2]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 17, 20. Clarendon, iii. 282.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Feb. 26, 28. Whitelock, 384. Balfour, iii. 388, 389. Carte, Letters, i. 233. Dolphin received a secret instruction not to dismiss Sir John Chiesley, but to keep him as a hostage, till he knew that Mr. Rowe, the English agent in Edinburgh, was not detained.–Council Book, March 2.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 24.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 26.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 2.]

This insult, which, though keenly felt, was tamely borne, might retard, it could not prevent, the purposes of the Scottish parliament. The earl of Cassilis, with four new commissioners, was appointed[a] to proceed to Holland, where Charles, under the protection of his brother-in-law, the prince of Orange, had resided since the death of his father.[1] His court consisted at first of the few individuals whom that monarch had placed around him, and whom he now swore of his privy council. It was soon augmented by the earl of Lanark, who, on the death of his brother, became duke of Hamilton, the earl of Lauderdale, and the earl of Callendar, the chiefs of the Scottish Engagers; these were followed by the ancient Scottish royalists, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth, and in a few days appeared Cassilis, with his colleagues, and three deputies from the church of Scotland, who brought with them news not likely to insure them a gracious reception, that the parliament, at the petition of the kirk, had sent to the scaffold[b] the old marquess of Huntley, forfaulted for his adhesion to the royal cause in the year 1645. All professed to have in view the same object–the restoration of the young king; but all were divided and alienated from each other by civil and religious bigotry. By the commissioners, the Engagers, and by both, Montrose and his friends, were shunned as traitors to their country, and sinners excommunicated by the kirk. Charles was perplexed by the conflicting opinions of these several advisers. Both the commissioners and Engagers, hostile as they were to each

[Footnote 1: Whatever may have been the policy of Argyle, he most certainly promoted this mission, and “overswayed the opposition to it by his reason, authority, and diligence,"–Baillie, ii. 353.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 17.] [Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 26.]

other, represented his taking of the covenant as an essential condition; while Montrose and his English counsellors contended that it would exasperate the Independents, offend the friends of episcopacy, and cut off all hope of aid from the Catholics, who could not be expected to hazard their lives in support of a prince sworn to extirpate their religion.[1]

While the question was yet in debate, an event happened to hasten the departure of Charles from the Hague. Dr. Dorislaus, a native of Holland, but formerly a professor of Gresham College, and recently employed to draw the charge against the king, arrived as envoy from the parliament to the States.[a] That very evening, while he sat at supper in the inn, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the room, dragged him from his chair, and murdered him on the floor.[2] Though the assassins were suffered to escape, it was soon known that they were Scotsmen, most of them followers of Montrose; and Charles, anticipating the demand of justice from the English parliament, gave his final answer to the commissioners, that he was, and always had been, ready to provide for the security of their religion, the union between the kingdoms, and the internal peace and prosperity of Scotland; but that their other demands were irreconcilable with his conscience, his liberty, and his honour.[b] They

[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 287-292. Baillie, ii. 333. Carte, Letters, i. 238-263. In addition to the covenant, the commissioners required the banishment of Montrose, from which they were induced to recede, and the limitation of the king’s followers to one hundred persons.–Carte, Letters, i. 264, 265, 266, 268, 271.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, iii. 293. Whitelock, 401. Journals, May 10. The parliament settled two hundred pounds per annum on the son, and gave five hundred pounds to each of the daughters of Dorislaus.–Ib. May 16. Two hundred and fifty pounds was given towards his funeral.–Council Book, May 11.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 19.]

acknowledged that he was their king; it was, therefore, their duty to obey, maintain, and defend him; and the performance of this duty he should expect from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. They departed with this unsatisfactory answer; and Charles, leaving the United Provinces, hastened to St. Germain in France, to visit the queen his mother, with the intention of repairing, after a short stay, to the army of the royalists in Ireland.[1]

That the reader may understand the state of Ireland, he must look back to the period when the despair or patriotism of Ormond surrendered to the parliament the capital of that kingdom.[a] The nuncio, Rinuccini, had then seated himself in the chair of the president of the supreme council at Kilkenny; but his administration was soon marked by disasters, which enabled his rivals to undermine and subvert his authority.[b] The Catholic army of Leinster, under Preston, was defeated on Dungan Hill by Jones, the governor of Dublin, and that of Munster, under the Viscount Taafe, at Clontarf, by the Lord Inchiquin.[2][c] To Rinuccini

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iii. 405; and the Proceedings of the Commissioners of the Church and Kingdoms of Scotland with his Majestie at the Hague. Edinburgh, printed by Evan Tyler, 1649.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, 833, 916. In the battle of Dungan Hill, at the first charge the Commander of the Irish cavalry was slain: his men immediately fled; the infantry repelled several charges, and retired into a bog, where they offered to capitulate. Colonel Flower said he had no authority to grant quarter, but at the same time ordered his men to stand to their arms, and preserved the lives of the earl of Westmeath, Lieutenant-General Bryne, and several officers and soldiers who repaired to his colours. “In the mean time the Scotch colonel Tichburn, and Colonel Moor, of Bankhall’s regiments, without mercy put the rest to the sword." They amounted to between three and four thousand men.–Belling’s History of the late Warre in Ireland, MS. ii. 95. I mention this instance to show that Cromwell did not introduce the practice of massacre. He followed his predecessors, whose avowed object it was to exterminate the natives.]]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. July.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Nov. 13.]

himself these misfortunes appeared as benefits, for he distrusted Preston and Taafe on account of their attachment to Ormond; and their depression served to exalt his friend and protector, Owen Roe O’Neil, the leader of the men of Ulster. But from such beginnings the nation at large anticipated a succession of similar calamities; his adversaries obtained a majority in the general assembly; and the nuncio, after a declaration that he advanced no claim to temporal authority, prudently avoided a forced abdication, by offering to resign his office.[a] A new council, consisting, in equal number, of men chosen out of the two parties, was appointed; and the marquess of Antrim, the Lord Muskerry, and Geoffrey Brown, were despatched to the queen mother, and her son Charles, to solicit assistance in money and arms, and to request that the prince would either come and reside in Ireland, or appoint a Catholic lieutenant in his place.[b] Antrim hoped to obtain this high office for himself; but his colleagues were instructed to oppose his pretensions and to acquiesce in the re-appointment of the marquess of Ormond.[1]

During the absence of these envoys, the Lord Inchiquin unexpectedly declared, with his army, in favour of the king against the parliament, and instantly proposed an armistice to the confederate Catholics, as friends to the royal cause. By some the overture was indignantly rejected. Inchiquin, they said, had been their most bitter enemy; he had made it his delight to shed the blood of Irishmen, and to pollute and destroy their altars. Besides, what pledge could be

[Footnote 1: Philopater Irenaeus, 50-60. Castlehaven, Memoirs, 83.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Jan. 4] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Feb. 27]

given for the fidelity of a man who, by repeatedly changing sides, had already shown that he would always accommodate his conscience to his interest? It were better to march against him now that he was without allies; and, when he should be subdued, Jones with the parliamentary army would necessarily fall. To this reasoning it was replied, that the expedition would require time and money; that provision for the free exercise of religion might be made in the articles; and that, at a moment when the Catholics solicited a reconciliation with the king, they could not in honour destroy those who drew the sword in his favour. In defiance of the remonstrances made by Rinuccini and eight of the bishops, the treaty proceeded;[a] and the nuncio believing, or pretending to believe, that he was a prisoner in Kilkenny, escaped in the night over the wall of the city, and was received at Maryborough with open arms by his friend O’Neil.[b] The council of the Catholics agreed to the armistice, and sought by repeated messages to remove the objections of the nuncio.[c] But zeal or resentment urged him to exceed his powers.[d] He condemned the treaty, excommunicated its abettors, and placed under an interdict the towns in which it should be admitted. But his spiritual weapons were of little avail. The council, with fourteen bishops, appealed from his censures; the forces under Taafe, Clanricard, and Preston, sent back his messengers;[e] and, on the departure of O’Neil, he repaired to the town of Galway, where he was sure of the support of the people, though in opposition to the sense of the mayor and the merchants. As a last effort, he summoned a national synod at Galway;[f] but the council protested against it; Clanricard surrounded the town with his army; and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. April 27.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. May 9.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. May 22.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. May 27.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1648. May 31.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1648. Sept. 1.]

the inhabitants, opening the gates, made their submission.[1]

War was now openly declared between the two parties. On the one hand, Jones in Dublin, and Monk in Ulster, concluded truces with O’Neil, that he might be in a better condition to oppose the common enemy; on the other, Inchiquin joined with Preston to support the authority of the council against O’Neil. Inroads were reciprocally made; towns were taken and retaken; and large armies were repeatedly brought in face of each other. The council, however, began to assume a bolder tone:[a] they proclaimed O’Neil a rebel and traitor; and, on the tardy arrival of Ormond with the commission of lord-lieutenant, sent to Rinuccini himself an order to quit the kingdom,[b] with the information that they had accused him to the pope of certain high crimes and misdemeanors.[2]

[Footnote 1: See Desiderata Cur. Hib. ii. 511; Carte, ii. 20, 31-36; Belling, in his MS. History of the late War in Ireland, part iv. 1-40. He has inserted most of the papers which passed between the parties in this work. See also Philopater Irenaeus, i. 60, 86; ii. 90, 94; Walsh, History and Vindication, App. 33-40; Ponce, 90.]

[Footnote 2: The charge may be seen in Philopater Iren. i. 150-160; Clarendon, viii. 68. Oxford, 1726. It is evident that the conduct of Rinuccini in breaking the first peace was not only reprehensible in itself, but productive of the most calamitous consequences both to the cause of royalty and the civil and religious interests of the Irish Catholics. The following is the ground on which he attempts to justify himself. Laying it down as an undeniable truth that the Irish people had as good a right to the establishment of their religion in their native country, as the Covenanters in Scotland, or the Presbyterians in England, he maintains that it was his duty to make this the great object of his proceedings. When the peace was concluded, Charles was a prisoner in the hands of the Scots, who had solemnly sworn to abolish the Catholic religion; and the English royalists had been subdued by the parliament, which by repeated votes and declarations had bound itself to extirpate the Irish race, and parcel out the island among foreign adventurers. Now there was no human probability that Charles would ever be restored to his throne, but on such conditions as the parliament and the Scots should prescribe; and that, on their demand, he would, after some struggle, sacrifice the Irish Catholics, was plain from what had passed in his different negotiations with the parliament, from his disavowal of Glamorgan’s commission, and from the obstinacy with which his lieutenant, Ormond, had opposed the claims of the confederates. Hence he inferred that a peace, which left the establishment of religion to the subsequent determination of the king, afforded no security, but, on the contrary, was an abandonment of the cause for which the Catholics had associated; and that it therefore became him, holding the situation which he did, to oppose it by every means in his power.–MS. narrative of Rinuccini’s proceedings, written to be delivered to the pope; and Ponce, 271.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Sept. 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Oct. 19.]

But he continued to issue his mandates in defiance of their orders and threats; nor was it till after the new pacification between Charles and the confederates had been published, and the execution of the king had fixed the public opinion on the pernicious result of his counsels,[a] that shame and apprehension drove him from Ireland to France,[b] whence, after a few months, he was recalled to Rome.

The negotiation between Ormond and the Catholics had continued for three months;[c] in January the danger which threatened the royal person induced the latter to recede from their claims, and trust to the future gratitude and honour of their sovereign. They engaged to maintain at their own expense an army of seventeen thousand five hundred men, to be employed against the common enemy; and the king, on his part, consented that the free exercise of the Catholic worship should be permitted; that twelve commissioners of trust appointed by the assembly should aid the lord-lieutenant in the internal administration; that the Court of Wards and several other grievances should be abolished; that a parliament should be called as soon as the majority of commissioners might deem it expedient, and in that parliament the persecuting laws on the subject of religion, with others injurious to the trade and commerce

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Feb. 23.]

of Ireland, should be repealed, and the independence of the Irish on the English parliament should be established.[1]

The royal interest was now predominant in Ireland. The fleet under Prince Rupert rode triumphant off the coast; the parliamentary commanders, Jones in Dublin, Monk in Belfast, and Coote in Londonderry, were almost confined within the limits of their respective garrisons; and Inchiquin in Munster, the Scottish regiments in Ulster, and the great body of the Catholics adhering to the supreme council, had proclaimed the king, and acknowledged the authority of his lieutenant. It was during this favourable state of things that Charles received and accepted the invitation of Ormond;[a] but his voyage was necessarily delayed through want of money, and his ardour was repeatedly checked by the artful insinuation of some among his counsellors, who secretly feared that, if he were once at the head of a Catholic army, he would listen to the demands of the Catholics for the establishment of their religion.[2] On the contrary, to the leaders in London, the danger of losing Ireland became a source of the most perplexing solicitude. The office of lord lieutenant was offered to Cromwell.[b] He affected to hesitate; at his request two officers from each corps received orders to meet him at Whitehall, and seek the Lord in prayer;[c] and, after a delay of two weeks, he condescended to submit his shoulders to the burthen, because he had now learned that it was the will of Heaven.[3][d] Hi demands,

[Footnote 1: Phil. Iren. i. 166. Walsh, App. 43-64. Whitelock, 391. Charles approved and promised to observe this peace.–Carte’s Letters, ii. 367.]

[Footnote 2: Carte, Letters, i. 258, 262.]

[Footnote 3: Journals, March 30. Whitelock, 389, 391, 392.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 29.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 23.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 29.]

however, were so numerous, the preparations to be made so extensive, that it was necessary to have recourse in the interval to other expedients for the preservation of the forces and places which still admitted the authority of the parliament. One of these was to allure to the cause of the Independents the Catholics of the two kingdoms; for which purpose, the sentiments of Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir John Winter were sounded,[a] and conferences were held, through the agency of the Spanish ambassador, with O’Reilly and Quin, two Irish ecclesiastics.[b] It was proposed that toleration should be granted for the exercise of the Catholic worship, without any penal disqualifications, and that the Catholics in return should disclaim the temporal pretensions of the pope, and maintain ten thousand men for the service of the commonwealth.

In aid of this project, Digby, Winter, and the Abbé Montague were suffered to come to England under the pretence of compounding for their estates; and the celebrated Thomas White, a secular clergyman, published a work entitled "The Grounds of Obedience and Government,” to show that the people may be released from their obedience to the civil magistrate by his misconduct; and that, when he is once deposed (whether justly or unjustly makes no difference), it may be for the common interest to acquiesce in his removal, rather than attempt his restoration.

That this doctrine was satisfactory to the men in power, cannot be doubted; but they had so often reproached the late king with a coalition with the papists, that they dared not to make the experiment, and after some time, to blind perhaps the eyes of the people, severe votes were passed against

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. April.]

Digby, Montague, and Winter, and orders were given for the apprehension of priests and Jesuits.[1]

In Ireland an attempt was made to fortify the parliamentary party with the friendly aid of O’Neil.[a] That chieftain had received proposals from Ormond, but his jealousy of the commissioners of trusts, his former adversaries, provoked him to break off the treaty with the lord lieutenant,[b] and to send a messenger of his own with a tender of his services to Charles.[c] Immediately the earl of Castlehaven, by order of Ormond, attacked and reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy;[d] and O’Neil, in revenge, listened to the suggestions of Monk, who had retired before the superior force of the Scottish royalists from Belfast to Dundalk.[e] A cessation of hostilities was concluded for three months;[f] and the proposals of the Irish chieftain, modified by Monk, were transmitted to England for the ratification of parliament. By the "grandees” it was thought imprudent to submit them to an examination, which would make them public; but the answer returned satisfied the contracting parties:[g] Monk supplied O’Neil with ammunition, and O’Neil undertook to intercept the communication between the Scottish regiments of the north and the grand army under Ormond in the heart of the kingdom.[2]

[Footnote 1: On this obscure subject may be consulted Walker, ii. 150; Carte’s Collection of Letters, i. 216, 219, 221, 222, 224, 267, 272, 297; ii. 363, 364; and the Journals, Aug. 31.]

[Footnote 2: O’Neil demanded liberty of conscience for himself, his followers, and their posterity; the undisturbed possession of their lands, as long as they remained faithful to the parliament; and, in return for his services, the restoration of his ancestor’s estate, or an equivalent. (See both his draft, and the corrected copy by Monk, in Philop. Iren. i. 191, and in Walker, ii. 233-238.) His agent, on his arrival in London, was asked by the grandees why he applied to them, and refused to treat with Ormond. He replied, because the late king had always made them fair promises; but, when they had done him service, and he could make better terms with their enemies, had always been ready to sacrifice them. Why then did not O’Neil apply to the parliament sooner? Because the men in power then had sworn to extirpate them; but those in power now professed toleration and liberty of conscience.–Ludlow, i. 255. The agreement made with him by Monk was rejected (Aug. 10), because, if we believe Ludlow, the Ulster men had been the chief actors in the murder of the English, and liberty of religion would prove dangerous to public peace. But this rejection happened much later. It is plain that Jones, Monk, Coote, and O’Neil understood that the agreement would be ratified, though it was delayed.–Walker, ii 198, 231, 245. See King’s Pamphlets, 428, 435, 437.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. August 31.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 20.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 16.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 21.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. April 25.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. May 8.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1649. May 22.]

Though the parliament had appointed Cromwell lord lieutenant of Ireland, and vested the supreme authority, both civil and military, in his person for three years, he was still unwilling to hazard his reputation, and his prospects in a dangerous expedition without the adequate means of success.[a] Out of the standing army of forty-five thousand men, with whose aid England was now governed, he demanded a force of twelve thousand veterans, with a plentiful supply of provisions and military stores, and the round sum of one hundred thousand pounds in ready money.[1] On the day of his departure, his friends assembled at Whitehall; three ministers solemnly invoked the blessing of God on the arms of his saints; and three officers, Goff, Harrison and the lord lieutenant himself, expounded the scriptures “excellently well, and pertinently to the occasion."[b] After these outpourings of the spirit, Cromwell mounted his carriage, drawn by six horses. He was accompanied by the great officers of state and of the army; his life-guard, eighty young men, all of quality, and several holding

[Footnote 1: Cromwell received three thousand pounds for his outfit, ten pounds per day as general while he remained in England, and two thousand pounds per quarter in Ireland, besides his salary as lord lieutenant.–Council Book, July 12, No, 10.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. June 22.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. July 10.]

commissions as majors and colonels, delighted the spectators with their splendid uniforms and gallant bearing; and the streets of the metropolis resounded, as he drove towards Windsor, with the acclamations of the populace and the clangour of military music.[1] It had been fixed that the expedition should sail from Milford Haven; but the impatience of the general was checked by the reluctance and desertion of his men. The recent transaction between Monk and O’Neil had diffused a spirit of distrust through the army. It was pronounced an apostasy from the principles on which they had fought. The exaggerated horrors of the massacre in 1641 were recalled to mind; the repeated resolutions of parliament to extirpate the native Irish, and the solemn engagement of the army to revenge the blood which had been shed, were warmly discussed; and the invectives of the leaders against the late king, when he concluded a peace with the confederate Catholics, were contrasted with their present backsliding, when they had taken the men of Ulster for their associates and for their brethren in arms. To appease the growing discontent, parliament annulled the agreement. Monk, who had returned to England, was publicly assured that, if he escaped the punishment of his indiscretion, it was on account of his past services and good intentions. Peters from the pulpit employed his eloquence to remove the blame from the grandees; and, if we may judge from the sequel, promises were made, not only that the good cause should be supported, but that the duty of revenge should be amply discharged.[2]

While the army was thus detained in the neighbourhood

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 413. Leicester’s Journal, 76.]

[Footnote 2: Walker, ii. 230, 243. Whitelock, 416. Leicester’s Journal, 82.]

of Milford Haven, Jones, in Dublin, reaped the laurels which Cromwell had destined for himself. The royal army advanced on both banks of the Liffy to the siege of that capital;[a] and Ormond, from his quarters at Finglass, ordered certain works to be thrown up at a place called Bogatrath. His object was to exclude the horse of the garrison from the only pasturage in their possession; but by some mishap, the working party did not reach the spot till an hour before sunrise; and Jones, sallying from the walls, overpowered the guard, and raised an alarm in the camp.[b] The confusion of the royalists encouraged him to follow up his success. Regiment after regiment was beaten: it was in vain that Ormond, aroused from his sleep, flew from post to post; the different corps acted without concert; a general panic ensued, and the whole army on the right bank fled in every direction. The artillery, tents, baggage, and ammunition fell into the hands of the conquerors, with two thousand prisoners, three hundred of whom were massacred in cold blood at the gate of the city. This was called the battle of Rathmines, a battle which destroyed the hopes of the Irish royalists, and taught men to doubt the abilities of Ormond. At court, his enemies ventured to hint suspicions of treason; but Charles, to silence their murmurs and assure him of the royal favour, sent him the order of the garter.[1][c]

The news of this important victory[d] hastened the

[Footnote 1: King’s Pamphlets, No. 434, xxi. Whitelock, 410, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9. Clarendon, viii. 92, 93. Carte, Letters, ii. 394, 402, 408. Baillie, ii. 346. Ludlow, i. 257, 258. Ormond, before his defeat, confidently predicted the fall of Dublin (Carte, letters, ii. 383, 389, 391); after it, he repeatedly asserts that Jones, to magnify his own services, makes the royalists amount to eighteen, whereas, in reality, they were only eight, thousand men.–Ibid. 402, 413.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. August 1.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. August 13.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. August 18.]

departure of Cromwell. He sailed from Milford with a single division; his son-in-law, Ireton, followed with the remainder of the army, and a fortnight was allowed to the soldiers to refresh themselves after their voyage. The campaign was opened with the siege of Drogheda.[a] Ormond had thrown into the town a garrison of two thousand five hundred chosen men, under the command of Sir Arthur Aston, an officer who had earned a brilliant reputation by his services to the royal cause in England during the civil war. On the eighth day a sufficient breach had been effected in the wall:[b] the assailants on the first attempt were driven back with immense loss. They returned a second, perhaps a third, time to the assault, and their perseverance was at last crowned with success. But strong works with ramparts and pallisades had been constructed within the breach, from which the royalists might have long maintained a sanguinary and perhaps doubtful conflict. These entrenchments, however, whether the men were disheartened by a sudden panic, or deceived by offers of quarter–for both causes have been assigned–the enemy was suffered to occupy without resistance. Cromwell (at what particular moment is uncertain) gave orders that no one belonging to the garrison should be spared; and Aston, his officers and men, having been previously disarmed, were put to the sword. From thence the conquerors, stimulated by revenge and fanaticism, directed their fury against the townsmen, and on the next morning one thousand unresisting victims were immolated together within the walls of the great church, whither they had fled for protection.[1][c]

[Footnote 1: See Carte’s Ormond, ii. 84; Carte, Letters, iv. 412; Philop. Iren. i. 120; Whitelock, 428; Ludlow, i. 261; Lynch, Cambrensis Eversos, in fine; King’s Pamph. 441, 447; Ormond in Carte’s Letters, ii. 412; and Cromwell in Carlyle’s Letters and Speeches, i. 457.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Sept. 3.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Sept. 11.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Sept. 12.]

From Drogheda the conqueror led his men, flushed with slaughter, to the seige of Wexford. The mayor and governor offered to capitulate; but whilst their commissioners were treating with Cromwell, an officer perfidiously opened the castle to the enemy; the adjacent wall was immediately scaled;[a] and, after a stubborn but unavailing resistance in the market-place, Wexford was abandoned to the mercy of the assailants. The tragedy, so recently acted at Drogheda, was renewed. No distinction was made between the defenceless inhabitant and the armed soldier; nor could the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females, who had gathered round the great cross, preserve them from the swords of these ruthless barbarians. By Cromwell himself, the number of the slain is reduced to two, by some writers it has been swelled to five, thousand.[1]

Ormond, unable to interrupt the bloody career of his adversary, waited with impatience for the determination of O’Neil. Hitherto that chieftain had faithfully performed his engagements with the parliamentary commanders. He had thrown impediments in the way of the royalists; he had compelled Montgomery to raise the siege of Londonderry, and had rescued Coote and his small army, the last hope of the parliament in Ulster, from the fate which seemed to await them. At first the leaders in London had hesitated, now after the victory of Rathmines they publicly refused, to ratify the treaties made with him by their officers.[2] Stung

[Footnote 1: See note (D).]

[Footnote 2: Council Book, Aug. 6, No. 67, 68, 69, 70. Journals, Aug. 10, 24. Walker, ii. 245-248. King’s Pamphlets, No. 435, xi.; 437, xxxiii. The reader must not confound this Owen Roe O’Neil with another of the same name, one of the regicides, who claimed a debt of five thousand and sixty-five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence of the parliament, and obtained an order for it to be paid out of the forfeited lands in Ireland.–Journ. 1653, Sept. 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Oct 12.]

with indignation, O’Neil accepted the offers of Ormond, and marched from Londonderry to join the royal army; but his progress was retarded by sickness, and he died at Clocknacter in Cavan. His officers, however, fulfilled his intentions; the arrival of the men of Ulster revived the courage of their associates; and the English general was successively foiled in his attempts upon Duncannon and Waterford. His forces already began to suffer from the inclemency of the season, when Lord Broghill, who had lately returned from England, debauched the fidelity of the regiments under Lord Inchiquin. The garrisons of Cork, Youghal, Bandon, and Kinsale declared for the parliament, and Cromwell seized the opportunity to close the campaign and place his followers in winter quarters.[1]

But inactivity suited not his policy or inclination. After seven weeks of repose he again summoned them into the field;[a] and at the head of twenty thousand men, well appointed and disciplined, confidently anticipated the entire conquest of Ireland. The royalists were destitute of money, arms, and ammunition; a pestilential disease, introduced with the cargo of a ship from Spain, ravaged their quarters; in the north, Charlemont alone acknowledged the royal authority; in Leinster and Munster, almost every place of importance had been wrested from them by force or perfidy; and even in Connaught, their last refuge, internal dissension prevented that union which alone could save them from utter destruction. Their misfortunes called into

[Footnote 1: Phil. Iren. i. 231. Carte’s Ormond, ii. 102. Desid. Curios. Hib. ii. 521.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 29.]

action the factions which had lain dormant since the departure of the nuncio. The recent treachery of Inchiquin’s forces had engendered feelings of jealousy and suspicion; and many contended that it was better to submit at once to the conqueror than to depend on the doubtful fidelity of the lord lieutenant. Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came, he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience;[1] but the rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with indiscriminate slaughter.[2] Proceeding on this plan, one day granting quarter, another putting the leaders only to the sword, and on the next immolating the whole garrison, hundreds of human beings at a time, he quickly reduced most of the towns and castles in the three counties of Limerick, Tipperary, and Kilkenny. But this bloody policy at length recoiled upon its author. Men, with no alternative but victory or death, learned to fight with the energy of despair. At the siege of Kilkenny the assailants, though twice repulsed from the breach, were, by the timidity of some of the inhabitants,

[Footnote 1: Liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal belief, not of external worship.–See his letter in Phil. Iren. i. 270.]

[Footnote 2: The Irish commanders disdained to imitate the cruelty of their enemies. “I took,” says Lord Castlehaven, “Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred men) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the like with me, as any of mine should fall in his power. But he little valued my civility. For, in a few days after, he besieged Gouvan; and the soldiers mutinying, and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the governor, Hammond, and some other officers, to be put to death."–Castlehaven, 107. Ormond also says, in one of his letters, “the next day Rathfarnham was taken by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels making use of a victory."–Carte, Letters, ii. 408.]

admitted within the walls; yet, so obstinate was the resistance of the garrison, that, to spare his own men, the general consented to grant them honourable terms. From Kilkenny he proceeded to the town of Clonmel,[a] where Hugh, the son of the deceased O’Neil, commanded with one thousand two hundred of the best troops of Ulster. The duration of the siege exhausted his patience; the breach was stormed a second time; and, after a conflict of four hours, the English were driven back with considerable loss.[b] The garrison, however, had expended their ammunition; they took advantage of the confusion of the enemy to depart during the darkness of the night; and the townsmen the next morning, keeping the secret, obtained from Cromwell a favourable capitulation.[1][c] This was his last exploit in Ireland. From Clonmel he was recalled to England to undertake a service of greater importance and difficulty, to which the reader must now direct his attention.

The young king, it will be remembered, had left the Hague on his circuitous route to Ireland, whither he had been called by the advice of Ormond and the wishes of the royalists.[d] He was detained three months at St. Germains by the charms of a mistress or the intrigues of his courtiers, nor did he reach the island of Jersey till long after the disastrous battle of Rathmines.[e] That event made his further progress a matter of serious discussion; and the difficulty was increased by the arrival of Wynram of Libertoun, with addresses from the parliament and the kirk of Scotland.[f] The first offered, on his acknowledgment of their authority as a parliament, to treat with him respecting the

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 449, 456. Castlehaven, 108. Ludlow, i. 265. Perfect Politician, 70.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 28.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. May 8.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 10.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. June.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. September.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. October.]

conditions proposed by their former commissioners; but the latter, in language unceremonious and insulting, laid before him the sins of his youth; his refusal to allow the Son of God to reign over him in the pure ordinances of church government and worship; his cleaving to counsellors who never had the glory of God or the good of his people before their eyes; his admission to his person of that “fugacious man and excommunicate rebel, James Graham” and, above all, “his giving the royal power and strength to the beast,” by concluding a peace “with the Irish papists, the murderers of so many Protestants.” They bade him remember the iniquities of his father’s house, and be assured that, unless he laid aside the “service-book, so stuffed with Romish corruptions, for the reformation of doctrine and worship agreed upon by the divines at Westminster,” and approved of the covenant in his three kingdoms, without which the people could have no security for their religion or liberty, he would find that the Lord’s anger was not turned away, but that his hand was still stretched against the royal person and his family.[1]

This coarse and intemperate lecture was not calculated to make a convert of a young and spirited prince. Instead of giving an answer, he waited to ascertain the opinion of Ormond; and at last, though inclination prompted him to throw himself into the arms of his Irish adherents, he reluctantly submitted to the authority of that officer, who declared, that the only way to preserve Ireland was by provoking a war between England and Scotland[2]. Charles now condescended[a]

[Footnote 1: Clar. State Papers, iii. App. 89-92. Carte’s Letters, i. 323. Whitelock, 439. The address of the kirk was composed by Mr. Wood, and disapproved by the more moderate.–Baillie, ii. 339, 345.]

[Footnote 2: Carte’s Letters, i. 333, 340.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 11.]

to give to the convention the title of estates of parliament, appointed Breda, a small town, the private patrimony of the prince of Orange, for the place of treaty; and met[a] there the new commissioners, the earls of Cassilis and Lothian, with two barons, two burgesses, and three ministers. Their present scarcely differed from their former demands; nor were they less unpalatable to the king. To consent to them appeared to him an apostasy from the principles for which his father fought and died; an abandonment of the Scottish friends of his family to the mercy of his and their enemies. On the other hand, the prince of Orange importuned him to acquiesce; many of his counsellors suggested that, if he were once on the throne, he might soften or subdue the obstinacy of the Scottish parliament; and his mother, by her letters, exhorted him not to sacrifice to his feelings this his last resource, the only remaining expedient for the recovery of his three kingdoms. But the king had still another resource; he sought delays; his eyes were fixed on the efforts of his friends in the north of Scotland; and he continued to indulge a hope of being replaced without conditions on the ancient throne of his ancestors.[1]

Before the king left St. Germains[b] he had given to Montrose a commission to raise the royal standard in Scotland. The fame of that nobleman secured to him a gracious reception from the northern sovereigns; he visited each court in succession; and in all obtained permission to levy men, and received aid either in money or in military stores. In autumn he despatched the first expedition of twelve thousand men from

[Footnote 1: Carte’s Letters, i. 338, 355. Whitelock, 430. Clarendon, iii. 343.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August.]

Gottenburg under the Lord Kinnoul; but the winds and waves fought against the royalists; several sail were lost among the rocks; and, when Kinnoul landed[a] at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, he could muster only eighty officers and one hundred common soldiers out of the whole number. But Montrose was not to be appalled by ordinary difficulties. Having received[b] from the new king the order of the garter, he followed with five hundred men, mostly foreigners; added them to the wreck of the first expedition, and to the new levies, and then found himself at the head of a force of more than one thousand men. His banners on which was painted a representation of the late king decapitated, with this motto, “Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord,” was intrusted to young Menzies of Pitfoddels, and a declaration was circulated through the Highlands, calling upon all true Scotsmen to aid in establishing their king upon the throne, and in saving him from the treachery of those, who, if they had him in their power, would sell him as they had sold his father to English rebels. Having transported[c] his whole force from Holm Sound to the Northern extremity of Caithness, he traversed that and the neighbouring county of Sutherland, calling on the natives to join the standard of their sovereign. But his name had now lost that magic influence which success had once thrown around it; and the several clans shunned his approach through fear, or watched his progress as foes. In the mean time his declaration had been solemnly burnt[d] by the hangman in the capital; the pulpits had poured out denunciations against the “rebel and apostate Montrose, the viperous brood of Satan, and the accursed of God and the kirk;” and a force of four thousand regulars had been collected

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. October.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Jan. 12.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. March.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Feb. 9.]

on Brechin Moor under the command of General Leslie, who was careful to cut off every source of information from the royalists. Montrose had reached[a] the borders of Ross-shire, when Colonel Strachan, who had been sent forward to watch his motions, learned[b] in Corbiesdale that the royalists, unsuspicious of danger, lay at the short distance of only two miles.

Calling his men around him under the cover of the long broom on the moor, he prayed, sang a psalm, and declared that he had consulted the Almighty, and knew as assuredly as there was a God in heaven, that the enemies of Christ were delivered into their hands. Then dividing his small force of about four hundred men into several bodies, he showed at first a single troop of horse, whom the royalists prepared to receive with their cavalry; but after a short interval, appeared a second, then a third, then a fourth; and Montrose believing that Leslie’s entire army was advancing, ordered the infantry to take shelter among the brushwood and stunted trees on a neighbouring eminence. But before this movement could be executed, his horse were broken, and his whole force lay at the mercy of the enemy. The standard-bearer with several officers and most of the natives were slain; the mercenaries made a show of resistance, and obtained quarter; and Montrose, whose horse had been killed under him, accompanied by Kinnoul, wandered on foot, without a guide, up the valley of the Kyle, and over the mountains of Sutherland. Kinnoul, unable to bear the hunger and fatigue, was left and perished; Montrose, on the third day,[c] obtained refreshment at the hut of a shepherd; and, being afterwards discovered, claimed the protection of Macleod of Assynt, who had formerly served under him in the royal army. But the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. April 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. April 30.]

fidelity of the laird was not proof against temptation; he sold[a] the king’s lieutenant for four hundred bolls of meal; and Argyle and his associates, almost frantic with joy, passed an act to regulate the ignominious treatment to which their captive should be subjected, the form of the judgment to be pronounced, and the manner of his subsequent execution. When Montrose reached[b] the capital, he found the magistrates in their robes waiting to receive him. First the royal officers, twenty-three in number, were ranged in two files, and ordered to walk forward manacled and bareheaded; next came the hangman with his bonnet on his head, dressed in the livery of his office, and mounted on his horse that drew a vehicle of new form devised for the occasion; and then on this vehicle was seen Montrose himself, seated on a lofty form, and pinioned, and uncovered. The procession paraded slowly through the city from the Watergate to the common jail, whilst the streets resounded with shouts of triumph, and with every expression of hatred which religious or political fanaticism could inspire.[1]

From his enemies Montrose could expect no mercy; but his death was hastened, that the king might not have time to intercede in his favour. The following day, a Sunday, was indeed given to prayer; but on the next the work of vengeance was resumed, and the captive was summoned[c] before the parliament. His features, pale and haggard, showed the fatigue and privations which he had endured; but his dress was

[Footnote 1: Carte’s Letters, i. 345. Balfour, iii. 432, 439; iv. 8-13. Whitelock, 435, 452, 453, 454, 455. Clarendon, iii. 348-353. Laing, iii. 443. The neighbouring clans ravaged the lands of Assynt to revenge the fate of Montrose, and the parliament granted in return to Macleod twenty thousand pounds Scots out of the fines to be levied on the royalists in Caithness and Orkney.–Balf. iv. 52, 56.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. May 18.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 20.]

splendid, his mien fearless, his language calm, firm, and dignified. To the chancellor, who, in a tone of bitterness and reprobation, enumerated the offences with which he was charged, he replied, that since the king had condescended to treat with them as estates, it became not a subject to dispute their authority; but that the apostasy and rebellion with which they reproached him were, in his estimation, acts of duty. Whatever he had done, either in the last or present reign, had been done with the sanction of the sovereign. If he had formerly taken up arms, it had been to divert his countrymen from the impious war which they waged against the royal authority in England; if now, his object was to accelerate the existing negotiation between them and their new king. As a Christian, he had always supported that cause which his conscience approved; as a subject, he always fought in support of his prince; and as a neighbour, he had frequently preserved the lives of those who had forfeited them against him in battle. The chancellor, in return, declared him a murderer of his fellow-subjects, an enemy to the covenant and the peace of the kingdom, and an agitator, whose ambition had helped to destroy the father, and was now employed for the destruction of the son. Judgment, which had been passed in parliament some days before, was then pronounced, by the dempster, that James Graham should be hanged for the space of three hours on a gibbet thirty feet high, that his head should be fixed on a spike in Edinburgh, his arms on the gates of Perth or Stirling, his legs on those of Glasgow and Aberdeen, and his body be interred by the hangman on the burrowmuir, unless he were previously released from excommunication by the kirk. During this trying scene, his enemies eagerly watched his demeanour. Twice, if we may believe report, he was heard to sigh, and his eyes occasionally wandered along the cornice of the hall. But he stood before them cool and collected; no symptom of perturbation marked his countenance, no expression of complaint or impatience escaped his lips; he showed himself superior to insult, and unscarred at the menaces of death.

The same high tone of feeling supported the unfortunate victim to the last gasp. When the ministers admonished[a] him that his punishment in this world was but a shadow of that which awaited him in the next, he indignantly replied, that he gloried in his fate, and only lamented that he had not limbs sufficient to furnish every city in Christendom with proofs of his loyalty. On the scaffold, he maintained the uprightness of his conduct, praised the character of the present king, and appealed from the censures of the kirk to the justice of Heaven. As a last disgrace, the executioner hung round his neck his late declaration, with the history of his former exploits. He smiled at the malice of his enemies, and said that they had given. him a more brilliant decoration than the garter with which he had been honoured by his sovereign. Montrose, by his death, won more proselytes to the royal cause than he had ever made by his victories. He was in his thirty-eighth year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 13, 15, 16, 19-22. Wishart, 389. Clar. iii. 353-356. Whitelock, 456. Colonel Hurry, whom the reader has seen successively serving under the king and the parliament in the civil war; Spotiswood, the grandson of the archbishop of that name; Sir W. Hay, who had been forefaulted as a Catholic in 1647; Sibbald, the confidential envoy of Montrose, and several others, were beheaded. Of the common soldiers, some were given to different lords to be fishermen or miners, and the rest enrolled in regiments in the French service.–Balfour, iv. 18, 27, 28, 32, 33, 44.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 21.]

Long before this the commissioners from both parties had met at Breda; and, on the very day of the opening of the conferences, Charles had despatched[a] an order to Montrose to proceed according to his instructions, and to bear in mind that the success of the negotiation at Breda depended on the success of his arms in Scotland. A month afterwards[b] he commended in strong terms the loyalty of Lord Napier, and urged him to repair without delay to the aid of his lieutenant. It is impossible after this to doubt of his approbation of the attempt; but, when the news arrived of the action at Corbiesdale, his eyes were opened to the danger which threatened him; the estates, in the insolence of victory, might pass an act to exclude him at once from the succession to the Scottish throne. Acting, therefore, after the unworthy precedent set by his father respecting the powers given to Glamorgan, he wrote[c] to the parliament, protesting that the invasion made by Montrose had been expressly forbidden by him, and begging that they “would do him the justice to believe that he had not been accessory to it in the least degree;” in confirmation of which the secretary at the same time assured Argyle that the king felt no regret for the defeat of a man who had presumed to draw the sword “without and contrary to the royal command.” These letters arrived[d] too late

[Footnote 1: Carte, iv. 626.]

[Footnote 2: Napier’s Montrose, ii. 528. Yet on May 5th the king signed an article, stipulating that Montrose should lay down his arms, receiving a full indemnity for all that was past.–Carte, iv. 630. This article reached Edinburgh before the execution of Montrose, and was kept secret. I see not, however, what benefit he could claim from it. He had not laid down arms in obedience to it; for he had been defeated a week before it was signed.]

[Footnote 3: Balfour, iv. 24, 25. Yet on May 15th Charles wrote to Montrose to act according to the article in the last note.–Ibid.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 15.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 12.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. May 25.]

to be of injury to the unfortunate victim, whose limbs were already bleaching on the gates of the principal towns in Scotland; but the falsehood so confidently put forth must cover with infamy the prince who could thus, to screen himself from the anger of his enemies, calumniate the most devoted of his followers, one who had so often perilled, and at length forfeited, his life in defence of the throne.

Charles had now no resource but to submit with the best grace to the demands of the Scots. He signed the treaty,[a] binding himself to take the Scottish covenant and the solemn league and covenant; to disavow and declare null the peace with the Irish, and never to permit the free exercise of the Catholic religion in Ireland, or any other part of his dominions; to acknowledge the authority of all parliaments held since the commencement of the late war; and to govern, in civil matters, by advice of the parliament, in religious, by that of the kirk.[1] These preliminaries being settled,[b] he embarked on board a small squadron furnished by the prince of Orange, and, after a perilous navigation of three weeks, during which he had to contend with the stormy weather, and to elude the pursuit of the parliamentary cruisers, he arrived in safety in the Frith of Cromartie.[c] The king was received with the honours due to his dignity; a court with proper officers was prepared for him at Falkland, and the sum of one hundred thousand pounds Scots, or nine thousand pounds English, was voted for the monthly expense of his household. But the parliament had previously[d] passed an act banishing from Scotland several of the royal favourites by name, and excluding the “engagers” from the verge of the court, and all employment

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 147.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 13.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. June 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. June 23.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. June 4.]

in the state. After repeated applications, the duke of Buckingham, the Lord Wilmot, and a few English servants, who took the covenant, obtained permission to remain with the king; many of the Scottish exiles embraced the opportunity to withdraw from notice into the western isles, or the more distant parts of the country.[1]

It was the negotiation between the Scots and their nominal king that arrested Cromwell in the career of victory, and called him away from the completion of his conquest. The rulers of the commonwealth were aware of the intimate connection which the solemn league and covenant had produced between the English Presbyterians and the kirk of Scotland, whence they naturally inferred that, if the pretender to the English were once seated on the Scottish throne, their own power would he placed on a very precarious footing. From the first they had watched with jealousy the unfriendly proceedings of the Scottish parliament. Advice and persuasion had been tried, and had failed. There remained the resource of war; and war, it was hoped, would either compel the Scots to abandon the claims of Charles, or reduce Scotland to a province of the commonwealth. Fairfax, indeed (he was supposed to be under the influence of a Presbyterian wife and of the Presbyterian ministers), disapproved of the design;[2] but his disapprobation, though lamented in public, was privately hailed as a benefit by those who were acquainted with the aspiring designs of Cromwell, and built on his elevation the flattering hope of their own greatness. By their means, as soon as the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 41, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67, 73, 77, 78. Whitelock, 462. Clarendon, iii. 346, 356, 357.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 438.]

lord lieutenant had put his troops into winter quarters, an order was obtained from parliament for him to attend his duty in the house; but he resumed his military operations,[a] and two months were suffered to elapse before he noticed the command of the supreme authority, and condescended to make an unmeaning apology for his disobedience.[b] On the renewal of the order,[c] he left the command in Ireland to Ireton, and, returning to England, appeared in his seat.[d] He was received with acclamations; the palace of St. James’s was allotted for his residence, and a valuable grant of lands was voted[e] as a reward for his eminent services. In a few days followed the appointment of Fairfax to the office of commander-in-chief,[f] and of Cromwell to that of lieutenant-general of the army designed to be employed in Scotland. Each signified his “readiness to observe the orders of the house;” but Fairfax at the same time revealed his secret and conscientious objections to the council of state. A deputation of five members, Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelock, and St. John, waited on him at his house;[g] the conference was opened by a solemn invocation of the Holy Spirit, and the three officers prayed in succession with the most edifying fervour. Then Fairfax said that, to his mind, the invasion of Scotland appeared a violation of the solemn league and covenant which he had sworn to observe. It was replied that the Scots themselves had broken the league by the invasion of England under the duke of Hamilton; and that it was always lawful to prevent the hostile designs of another power. But he answered that the Scottish parliament had given satisfaction by the punishment of the guilty; that the probability of hostile designs ought indeed to lead to measures of precaution, but that certainty was

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 8.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 2.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 30.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. June 4.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. June 12.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. June 14.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1650. June 24.]

required to justify actual invasion. No impression was made on his mind; and, though Cromwell and his brother officers earnestly solicited him to comply, “there was cause enough,” says one of the deputation, “to believe that they did not overmuch desire it."[1] The next day[a] another attempt ended with as little success; the lord general alleging the plea of infirm health and misboding conscience, sent back the last commission, and at the request of the house, the former also; and the chief command of all the forces raised, or to be raised by order of parliament, was conferred on Oliver Cromwell.[b] Thus this adventurer obtained at the same time the praise of moderation and the object of his ambition. Immediately he left the capital for Scotland;[c] and Fairfax retired to his estate in Yorkshire, where he lived with the privacy of a country gentleman, till he once more drew the sword, not in support of the commonwealth, but in favour of the king.[2]

To a spectator who considered the preparations of the two kingdoms, there could be little doubt of the result. Cromwell passed the Tweed[d] at the head of sixteen thousand men, most of them veterans, all habituated to military discipline, before the raw levies of the Scots had quitted their respective shires. By order of the Scottish parliament, the army had been fixed at thirty thousand men; the nominal command had been given to the earl of Leven, the real, on account of the age and infirmities of that officer, to his relative, David Leslie, and instructions had been

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 460, 462. Ludlow says, “he acted his part so to the life, that I really thought him in earnest; but the consequence made it sufficiently evident that he had no such intention” (i. 272). Hutchinson, who was present on one of these occasions, thought him sincere.–Hutchinson, 315.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 438, 450, 457. Journals, Jan. 8, Feb. 25, March 30, April 15, May 2, 7, 30, June 4, 12, 14, 25, 26.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. June 26.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. June 29.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. July 16.]

issued that the country between Berwick and the capital should be laid waste, that the cattle and provisions should be removed or destroyed, and that the inhabitants should abandon their homes under the penalties of infamy, confiscation, and death. In aid of this measure, reports were industriously circulated of the cruelties exercised by Cromwell in Ireland; that, wherever he came, he gave orders to put all the males between sixteen and sixty to death, to deprive all the boys between six and sixteen of their right hands, and to bore the breasts of the females with red-hot irons. The English were surprised at the silence and desolation which reigned around them; for the only human beings whom they met on their march through this wilderness, were a few old women and children who on their knees solicited mercy. But Cromwell conducted them by the sea coast; the fleet daily supplied them with provisions, and their good conduct gradually dispelled the apprehensions of the natives.[1] They found[a] the Scottish levies posted behind a deep intrenchment, running from Edinburgh to Leith, fortified with numerous batteries, and flanked by the cannon of the castle at one extremity, and of the harbour at the other. Cromwell employed all his art to provoke Leslie to avoid an engagement. It was in vain that for more than a month the former marched and countermarched; that he threatened general, and made partial, attacks. Leslie remained fixed within his lines; or, if he occasionally moved,

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 465, 466, 468. Perfect Diurnal, No. 324. See the three declarations: that of the parliament on the marching of the army; of the army itself, addressed “to all that are saints and partakers of the faith of God’s elect in Scotland;” and, the third, from Cromwell, dated at Berwick, in the Parliamentary History, xix. 276, 298, 310; King’s Pamphlets, 473.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. July 28.]

watched the motions of the enemy from the nearest mountains, or interposed a river or morass between the two armies. The English began to be exhausted with fatigue; sickness thinned their ranks; the arrival of provisions depended on the winds and waves; and Cromwell was taught to fear, not the valour of the enemy, but the prudence of their general.[1]

The reader will already have observed how much at this period the exercises of religion were mixed up with the concerns of state and even the operations of war. Both parties equally believed that the result of the expedition depended on the will of the Almighty, and that it was, therefore, their duty to propitiate his anger by fasting and humiliation. In the English army the officers prayed and preached: they “sanctified the camp,” and exhorted the men to unity of mind and godliness of life. Among the Scots this duty was discharged by the ministers; and so fervent was their piety, so merciless their zeal, that, in addition to their prayers, they occasionally compelled the young king to listen to six long sermons on the same day, during which he assumed an air of gravity, and displayed feelings of devotion, which ill-accorded with his real disposition. But the English had no national crime to deplore; by punishing the late king, they had atoned for the evils of the civil war; the Scots, on the contrary, had adopted his son without any real proof of his conversion, and therefore feared that they might draw down on the country the punishment due to his sins and those of his family. It happened[a] that Charles, by the advice of the earl of Eglington, presumed to visit the army on the Links of

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 87, 88, 90. Whitelock, 467, 468.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. July 29.]

Leith. He was received with shouts of enthusiasm by the soldiers, who, on their knees, pledged the health of their young sovereign; but the committee of the kirk complained[a] that his presence led to ebriety and profaneness, and he received a request,[b] equivalent to a command, to quit the camp. The next day a declaration was made, that the company of malignants, engagers, and enemies to the covenant, could not fail of multiplying the judgments of God upon the land; an inquiry was instituted into the characters of numerous individuals; and eighty officers, with many of their men, were cashiered,[c] that they might not contaminate by their presence the army of the saints.[1] Still it was for Charles Stuart, the chief of the malignants, that they were to fight, and therefore from him, to appease the anger of the Almighty, an expiatory declaration was required[d] in the name of the parliament and the kirk.

In this instrument he was called upon to lament, in the language of penitence and self-abasement, his father’s opposition to the work of God and to the solemn league and covenant, which had caused the blood of the Lord’s people to be shed, and the idolatry of his mother, the toleration of which in the king’s house could not fail to be a high provocation against him who is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children; to declare that he had subscribed the covenant with sincerity of heart, and would have no friends nor enemies but those who were friends or enemies to it; to acknowledge the sinfulness of the treaty with the bloody rebels in Ireland, which he was made to pronounce null and void; to detest popery and prelacy, idolatry and heresy, schism

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 86, 89.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 2.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 3.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. August 5.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. August 9.]

and profaneness; and to promise that he would accord to a free parliament in England the propositions of the two kingdoms, and reform the church of England according to the plan devised by the assembly of divines at Westminster.[1]

When first this declaration, so humbling to his pride, so offensive to his feelings, was presented[a] to Charles for his signature, he returned[b] an indignant refusal; a little reflection induced him to solicit the advice of the council, and the opinion of the principal ministers. But the godly refused to wait; the two committees of the kirk and kingdom protested[c] that they disowned the quarrel and interest of every malignant party, disclaimed the guilt of the king and his house, and would never prosecute his interest without his acknowledgment of the sins of his family and of his former ways, and his promise of giving satisfaction to God’s people in both kingdoms. This protestation was printed and furtively sent to the English camp; the officers of the army presented[d] to the committee of estates a remonstrance and supplication expressive of their adhesion; and the ministers maintained from their pulpits that the king was the root of malignancy, and a hypocrite, who had taken the covenant without an intention of keeping it. Charles, yielding to his own fears and the advice of his friends; at the end of three days subscribed,[e] with tears, the obnoxious instrument. If it were folly in the Scots to propose to the young prince a declaration so repugnant to his feelings and opinions, it was greater folly still to believe that professions of repentance extorted

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 92. Whitelock, 469. “A declaration by the king’s majesty to his subjects of the kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland." Printed 1650.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 10.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 13.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. August 14.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. August 15.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. August 16.]

with so much violence could be sincere or satisfactory; yet his subscription was received with expressions of joy and gratitude; both the army and the city observed a solemn fast for the sins of the two kings, the father and the son; and the ministers, now that the anger of Heaven had been appeased, assured their hearers of an easy victory over a “blaspheming general and a sectarian army."[1]

If their predictions were not verified, the fault was undoubtedly their own. The caution and vigilance of Leslie had triumphed over the skill and activity of “the blasphemer.” Cromwell saw no alternative but victory or retreat: of the first he had no doubt, if he could come in contact with the enemy; the second was a perilous attempt, when the passes before him were pre-occupied, and a more numerous force was hanging on his rear. At Musselburg, having sent the sick on board the fleet (they suffered both from the “disease of the country,” and from fevers caused by exposure on the Pentland hills), he ordered[a] the army to march the next morning to Haddington, and thence to Dunbar; and the same night a meteor, which the imagination of the beholders likened to a sword of fire, was seen to pass over Edinburgh in a south-easterly direction, an evident presages in the opinion of the Scots, that the flames of war would be transferred

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 91, 92, 95. The English parliament in their answer exclaim: “What a blessed and hopeful change is wrought in a moment in this young king! How hearty is he become to the cause of God and the work of reformation. How readily doth he swallow down these bitter pills, which are prepared for and urged upon him, as necessary to effect that desperate care under which his affairs lie! But who sees not the crass hypocrisy of this whole transaction, and the sandy and rotten foundation of all the resolutions flowing hereupon?"–See Parliamentary History, xix. 359-386.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 30.]

to the remotest extremity of England.[1] At Dunbar, Cromwell posted his men in the vicinity of Broxmouth House; Leslie with the Scots moving along the heights of Lammermuir, occupied[a] a position on the Doon Hill, about two miles to the south of the invaders; and the advanced posts of the armies were separated only by a ravine of the depth and breadth of about thirty feet. Cromwell was not ignorant of the danger of his situation; he had even thought of putting the infantry on board the fleet, and of attempting to escape with the cavalry by the only outlet, the high road to Berwick; but the next moment he condemned the thought as “a weakness of the flesh, a distrust in the power of the Almighty;” and ordered the army “to seek the Lord, who would assuredly find a way of deliverance for his faithful servants.” On the other side the committees of the kirk and estates exulted in the prospect of executing the vengeance of God upon “the sectaries;” and afraid that the enemy should escape, compelled their general to depart from his usual caution, and to make preparation for battle. Cromwell, with his officers, had spent part of the day in calling upon the Lord; while he prayed, the enthusiast felt an enlargement of the heart, a buoyancy of spirit, which he took for an infallible presage of victory; and, beholding through his glass the motion in the Scottish camp, he exclaimed, “They are coming down; the Lord hath delivered them into our hands."[2] During the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 94.]

[Footnote 2: Sagredo, the Venetian ambassador, in his relation to the senate, says that Cromwell pretended to have been assured of the victory by a supernatural voice. Prima che venisse alla battaglia, diede cuore ai soldati con assicurargli la vittoria predettagli da Dio, con una voce, che lo aveva a mezza notte riscosso dal sonno. MS. copy in my possession.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 31.]

night, he advanced the army to the edge of the ravine; and at an early hour in the morning[a] the Scots attempted to seize the pass on the road from Dunbar to Berwick. After a sharp contest, the Scottish lancers, aided by their artillery, charged down the hill, drove the brigade of English cavalry from its position, and broke through the infantry, which had advanced to the support of the horse. At that moment the sun made its appearance above the horizon; and Cromwell, turning to his own regiment of foot, exclaimed, “Let the Lord arise, and scatter his enemies.” They instantly moved forward with their pikes levelled; the horse rallied; and the enemy’s lancers hesitated, broke, and fled. At that moment the mist dispersed, and the first spectacle which struck the eyes of the Scots, was the route of their cavalry. A sudden panic instantly spread from the right to the left of their line; at the approach of the English they threw down their arms and ran. Cromwell’s regiment halted to sing the 117th Psalm; but the pursuit was continued for more than eight miles; the dead bodies of three thousand Scots strewed their native soil; and ten thousand prisoners, with the artillery, ammunition, and baggage, became the reward of the conquerors.[1]

Cromwell now thought no more of his retreat. He marched back to the capital; the hope of resistance was abandoned; Edinburgh and Leith opened their gates, and the whole country to the Forth submitted

[Footnote 1: Carte’s Letters, i. 381. Whitelock, 470, 471. Ludlow, i. 283. Balfour, iv. 97. Several proceedings, No. 50. Parl. Hist. xix. 343-352, 478. Cromwelliana, 89. Of the prisoners, five thousand one hundred, something more than one-half, being wounded, were dismissed to their homes, the other half were driven “like turkies” into England. Of these, one thousand six hundred died of a pestilential disease, and five hundred were actually sick on Oct 31.–Whitelock, 471. Old Parl. Hist. xix. 417.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 3.]

to the will of the English general. Still the presumption of the six ministers who formed the committee of the kirk was not humbled. Though their predictions had been falsified, they were still the depositaries of the secrets of the Deity; and, in a “Short Declaration and Warning,” they announced[a] to their countrymen the thirteen causes of this national calamity, the reasons why “God had veiled for a time his face from the sons of Jacob.” It was by the general profaneness of the land, by the manifest provocations of the king and the king’s house, by the crooked and precipitant ways of statesmen in the treaty of Breda, by the toleration of malignants in the king’s household, by suffering his guard to join in the battle without a previous purgation, by the diffidence of some officers who refused to profit by advantages furnished to them by God, by the presumption of others who promised victory to themselves without eyeing of God, by the rapacity and oppression exercised by the soldiery, and by the carnal self-seeking of men in power, that God had been provoked to visit his people with so direful and yet so merited a chastisement.[1]

To the young king the defeat at Dunbar was a subject of real and ill-dissembled joy. Hitherto he had been a mere puppet in the hands of Argyle and his party; now their power was broken, and it was not impossible for him to gain the ascendancy. He entered into a negotiation with Murray, Huntley, Athol, and the numerous royalists in the Highlands; but the secret, without the particulars, was betrayed to Argyle,[b] probably by Buckingham, who disapproved of the project; and all the cavaliers but three received an order to leave the court in twenty-four hours–the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 98-107.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 12.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Sept. 27.]

kingdom in twenty days. The vigilance of the guards prevented the execution of the plan which had been laid; but one afternoon, under pretence of hawking, Charles escaped[a] from Perth, and riding forty-two miles, passed the night in a miserable hovel, called Clova, la the braes of Angus. At break of day he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery, who advised him[b] to return, while the Viscount Dudhope urged him to proceed to the mountains, where he would be joined by seven thousand armed men. Charles wavered; but Montgomery directed his attention to two regiments of horse that waited at a distance to intercept his progress, and the royal fugitive consented[c] to return to his former residence in Perth.[1]

The Start (so this adventure was called) proved, however, a warning to the committee of estates. They prudently admitted the apology of the king, who attributed[d] his flight to information that he was that day to have been delivered to Cromwell; they allowed[e] him, for the first time, to preside at their deliberations; and they employed his authority to pacify the royalists in the Highlands, who had taken arms[f] in his name under Huntley, Athol, Seaforth, and Middleton. These, after a long negotiation, accepted an act of indemnity, and disbanded their forces.[2]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 109, 113, 114. Baillie, ii. 356. Whitelock, 476. Miscellanea Aulica, 152. It seems probable from some letters published in the correspondence of Mr. Secretary Nicholas, that Charles had planned his escape from the “villany and hypocrisy” of the party, as early as the day of the battle of Dunbar.–Evelyn’s Mem. v. 181-186, octavo.]

[Footnote 2: Balfour, iv. 118, 123, 129-135, 160. Baillie, ii. 356. A minister, James Guthrie, in defiance of the committee of estates, excommunicated Middleton; and such was the power of the kirk, that even when the king’s party was superior, Middleton was compelled to do penance in sackcloth in the church of Dundee, before he could obtain absolution preparatory to his taking a command in the army.–Baillie, 357. Balfour, 240.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 4.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 5.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 6.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Oct. 10.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Oct. 12.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. Nov. 4.]

In the mean while Cromwell in his quarters at Edinburgh laboured to unite the character of the saint with that of the conqueror; and, surrounded as he was with the splendour of victory, to surprise the world by a display of modesty and self-abasement. To his friends and flatterers, who fed his vanity by warning him to be on his guard against its suggestions, he replied, that he “had been a dry bone, and was still an unprofitable servant,” a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty power; if God had risen in his wrath, if he had bared his arm and avenged his cause, to him, and to him alone, belonged the glory.[1] Assuming the office of a missionary, he exhorted his officers in daily sermons to love one another, to repent from dead works, and to pray and mourn for the blindness of their Scottish adversaries; and, pretending to avail himself of his present leisure, he provoked a theological controversy with the ministers in the castle of Edinburgh, reproaching them with pride in arrogating to themselves the right of expounding the true sense of the solemn league and covenant; vindicating the claim of laymen to preach the gospel and exhibit their spiritual gifts for the edification of their brethren; and maintaining that, after the solemn fasts observed by both nations, after their many and earnest appeals to the God of armies, the victory gained at Dunbar must be admitted an evident manifestation of the divine will in favour of the English commonwealth. Finding that he made no proselytes of his opponents, he published his arguments for the instruction of the Scottish people; but his zeal did not

[Footnote 1: See a number of letters in Milton’s State Papers, 18-35.]

escape suspicion; and the more discerning believed that, under the cover of a religious controversy, he was in reality tampering with the fidelity of the governor.[1]

In a short time his attention was withdrawn to a more important controversy, which ultimately spread the flames of religious discord throughout the nation. There had all along existed a number of Scots who approved of the execution of the late king, and condemned even the nominal authority given to his son. Of these men, formidable by their talents, still more formidable by their fanaticism, the leaders were Wariston, the clerk register in the parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers in the kirk. In parliament the party, though too weak to control, was sufficiently strong to embarrass, and occasionally to influence, the proceedings; in the kirk it formed indeed the minority, but a minority too bold and too numerous to be rashly irritated or incautiously despised.[2] After the defeat at Dunbar, permission was cheerfully granted by the committee of estates for a levy of troops in the associated counties of Renfrew, Air, Galloway, Wigton, and Dumfries, that part of Scotland where fanaticism had long fermented, and the most rigid notions prevailed. The crusade was preached by Gillespie; his efforts were successfully seconded by the other ministers, and in a short time four regiments of horse, amounting almost to five thousand men, were raised under Strachan, Kerr, and two other colonels. The real design now began to unfold itself. First, the officers refused to serve under Leslie; and the parliament consented to exempt them from his authority. Next, they hinted doubts of the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 158-163.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, ii. 353.]

lawfulness of the war in which they were engaged; and Cromwell, in whose army Strachan had fought at Preston, immediately[a] opened a correspondence with him.[1] Then came the accident of “the start,” which embittered and emboldened the zeal of the fanatics; and in a long remonstrance, subscribed by ministers and elders, by officers and soldiers, and presented[b] in their name to Charles and the committee of estates, they pronounced[c] the treaty with the king unlawful and sinful, disowned his interest in the quarrel with the enemy, and charged the leading men in the nation with the guilt of the war, which they had provoked by their intention of invading England. The intemperate tone and disloyal tendency of this paper, whilst it provoked irritation and alarm at Perth, induced Cromwell to advance with his army from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and Hamilton. But the western forces (so they were called) withdrew to Dumfries, where a meeting was held with Wariston, and a new draught of the remonstrance, in language still more energetic and vituperative, was adopted. On the return[d] of Cromwell to the capital, his negotiation with the officers was resumed, while Argyle and his friends laboured on the opposite side to mollify the obstinacy of the fanatics. But reasoning was found useless; the parliament condemned[e] the remonstrance as a scandalous and seditious libel; and, since Strachan had resigned[f] his commission, ordered Montgomery with three new regiments to take the command of the whole force. Kerr, however, before his arrival, had led[g] the western levy to attack Lambert in his

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 350-352. Strachan was willing to give assurance not to molest England in the king’s quarrel. Cromwell insisted that Charles should be banished by act of parliament, or imprisoned for life.–Ib. 352.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 4.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 17.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 22.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Oct. 30.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Nov. 25.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. Nov. 28.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1650. Dec. 1.]

quarters at Hamilton; he was taken prisoner, designedly if we may believe report, and his whole army was dispersed. Soon afterwards Strachan, with sixty troopers, passed over to Lambert, and the associated counties, left without defence, submitted to the enemy. Still the framers and advocates of the remonstrance, though they knew that it had been condemned by the state and the kirk, though they had no longer an army to draw the sword in its support, adhered pertinaciously to its principles; the unity of the Scottish church was rent in twain, and the separation was afterwards widened by a resolution of the assembly,[a] that in such a crisis all Scotsmen might be employed in the service of the country.[1] Even their common misfortunes failed to reconcile these exasperated spirits; and after the subjugation of their country, and under the yoke of civil servitude, the two parties still continued to persecute each other with all the obstinacy and bitterness of religious warfare. The royalists obtained the name of public resolutioners; their opponents, of protestors or remonstrants.[2]

Though it cost the young prince many an internal struggle, yet experience had taught him that he must soothe the religious prejudices of the kirk, if he hoped ever to acquire the preponderance in the state. On the first day of the new year,[b] he rode in procession to the church of Scone, where his ancestors had been accustomed to receive the Scottish crown: there on his knees, with his arm upraised, he swore by the Eternal

[Footnote 1: With the exception of persons “excommunicated, notoriously profane, or flagitious, and professed enemies and opposers of the covenant and cause of God."–Wodrow, Introd. iii.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, ii. 348, 354-364. Balfour, iv. 136, 141-160, 173-178, 187, 189. Whitelock, 475, 476, 477, 484. Sydney Papers, ii. 679. Burnet’s Hamiltons, 425.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Dec. 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Jan. 1.]

and Almighty God to observe the two covenants; to establish the presbyterial government in Scotland and in his family; to give his assent to acts for establishing it in his other dominions; to rule according to the law of God and the lovable laws of the land; to abolish and withstand all false religions; and to root out all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God, convicted by the true church of God. Argyle then placed the crown upon his head, and seated him on the throne, and both nobility and people swore allegiance to him “according to the national covenant, and the solemn league and covenant.” At the commencement, during the ceremony, and after the conclusion, Douglas, the minister, addressed the king, reminding him that he was king by compact with his people; that his authority was limited by the law of God, the laws of the people, and the association of the estates with him in the government; that, though every breach did not dissolve the compact, yet every abuse of power to the subversion of religion, law, or liberty, justified opposition in the people; that it was for him, by his observance of the covenant, to silence those who doubted his sincerity; that the evils which had afflicted his family arose out of the apostasy of his father and grandfather; and that, if he imitated them, he would find that the controversy between him and God was not ended, but would be productive of additional calamities. The reader may imagine what were the feelings of Charles while he listened to the admonitions of the preacher, and when he swore to perform conditions which his soul abhorred, and which he knew that on the first opportunity he should break or elude.[1] But he passed with credit through the

[Footnote 1: See “The forme and order of the Coronation of Charles II., as it was acted and done at Scoune, the first day of January, 1651.” Aberdene, 1651.]

ceremony; the coronation exalted him in the eyes of the people; and each day brought to him fresh accessions of influence and authority. The kirk delivered Strachan as a traitor and apostate to the devil; and the parliament forefaulted his associates, of whom several hastened to make their peace by a solemn recantation. Deprived of their support, the Campbells gradually yielded to the superior influence of the Hamiltons. Vexation, indeed, urged them to reproach the king with inconstancy and ingratitude; but Charles, while he employed every art to lull the jealousy of Argyle, steadily pursued his purpose; his friends, by submitting to the humbling ceremony of public penance, satisfied the severity of the kirk; and by the repeal[a] of the act of classes, they were released from all previous forfeitures and disqualifications. In April the king, with Leslie and Middleton as his lieutenants, took the command of the army, which had been raised by new levies to twenty thousand men, and, having fortified the passages of the Forth, awaited on the left bank the motions of the enemy.[1]

In the mean while Cromwell had obtained[b] possession of the castle of Edinburgh through the perfidy or the timidity of the governor. Tantallon had been taken by storm, and Dumbarton had been attempted, but its defences were too strong to be carried by force,

[Footnote 1: Carte, Letters, ii. 26, 27. Balfour, iv. 240, 268, 281, 301. It appears from this writer that a great number of the colonels of regiments were royalists or engagers (p. 210, 213). The six brigades of horse seem to have been divided equally between old Covenanters and royalists. The seventh was not given to any general, but would be commanded by Hamilton, as the eldest colonel.–Ib. 299-301. It is therefore plain that with the king for commander-in-chief the royalists had the complete ascendancy.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. May 21.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Dec. 19.]

and its garrison too honest to be corrupted with money.[1] In February the lord general was afflicted[a] with an ague, so ruinous to his health, and so obstinate in its duration, that in May he obtained permission to return to England, with the power of disposing, according to his judgment, of the chief command.[2] A rapid and unexpected improvement[b] induced him to remain; and in July he marched with his army towards Stirling. The Scots faced him in their intrenched camp at Torwood; he turned aside to Glasgow; they took[c] a position at Kilsyth; he marched[d] back to Falkirk; and they resumed their position at Torwood. While by these movements the English general occupied the attention of his opponents, a fleet of boats had been silently prepared and brought to the Queensferry; a body of men crossed the frith, and fortified a hill near Inverkeithing; and Lambert immediately followed[e] with a more numerous division. The Scots despatched Holburn with orders to drive the enemy into the sea; he was himself charged[f] by Lambert with a superior force, and the flight of his men gave to the English possession of the fertile and populous county of Fife. Cromwell hastened to transport his army to the left bank of the river, and advance on the rear of the Scots. They retired: Perth, the seat of government, was besieged; and in a few days[g] the colours of the commonwealth floated on its walls.[3]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 229, 249, 296. Baillie, ii. 368.]

[Footnote 2: The council had sent two physicians to attend him. His answer to Bradshaw of March 24th runs in his usual style. “Indeed, my lord, your service needs not me. I am a poor creature, and have been a dry bone, and am still an unprofitable servant to my master and to you."–New Parl. Hist. iii. 1363.]

[Footnote 3: Balfour, 313. Journals, May 27. Leicester’s Journal, 109. Whitelock, 490, 494, 497, 498, 499. Heath, 392, 393. According to Balfour, the loss on each side was “almost alyke,” about eight hundred men killed; according to Lambert, the Scots lost two thousand killed, and fourteen hundred taken prisoners; the English had only eight men slain; “so easy did the Lord grant them that mercy."–Whitelock, 501. I observe that in all the despatches of the commanders for the commonwealth their loss is miraculously trifling.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Feb. 21.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. May 27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. July 3.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. July 13.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. July 17.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1651. July 21.] [Sidenote g: A.D. 1651. August.]

In the Scottish leaders the progress of the English excited the most fearful anticipations; to Charles it suggested the execution of what had long been his favourite object. The country to the south was clear of the enemy; and a proclamation[a] to the army announced his resolve of marching into England, accompanied by such of his Scottish subjects as were willing to share the fortunes and the perils of their sovereign. The boldness of the attempt dazzled the judgment of some; and the confidence of the young king dispelled the apprehensions of others. Their knowledge that, in case of failure, he must expect to meet with the same fate as his father, justified a persuasion that he possessed secret assurances of a powerful co-operation from the royalists and the Presbyterians of England. Argyle (nor was it surprising after the decline of his influence at court) solicited and obtained permission to retire to his own home; a few other chieftains followed his example; the rest expressed their readiness to stake their lives on the issue of the attempt, and the next morning eleven, some say fourteen, thousand men began[b] their march from Stirling, in the direction of Carlisle.[1]

Cromwell was surprised and embarrassed. The Scots had gained three days’ march in advance, and his army was unprepared to follow them at a moment’s notice. He wrote[c] to the parliament to rely on his industry and despatch; he sent[d] Lambert from Fifeshire with three thousand cavalry to hang on the rear, and ordered[e]

[Footnote 1: Leicester’s Journal, 110. Whitelock, 501. Clarendon, iii. 397.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. July 30.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. July 31.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. August 4.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. August 5.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. August 7.]

Harrison with an equal number from Newcastle, to press on the flank of the enemy; and on the seventh day led his army of ten thousand men by the eastern coast, in the direction of York. The reduction of Scotland, a more easy task after the departure of the royal forces, was left to the activity of Monk, who had five thousand infantry and cavalry under his command.

So rapid was the advance of Charles, that he traversed the Lowlands of Scotland, and the northern counties in England, without meeting a single foe. Lambert had joined Harrison near Warrington; their united forces amounted to nine thousand men; and their object was to prevent the passage of the Mersey. But they arrived[a] too late to break down the bridge; and, after a few charges, formed in battle array on Knutsford Heath. The king, leaving them on the left, pushed forward till he reached[b] Worcester, where he was solemnly proclaimed by the mayor, amidst the loud acclamations of the gentlemen of the county, who, under a suspicion of their loyalty, had been confined in that city by order of the council.[2]

At the first news of the royal march, the leaders at Westminster abandoned themselves to despair. They believed that Cromwell had come to a private understanding with the king; that the Scots would meet with no opposition in their progress; and that the Cavaliers would rise simultaneously in every part of the kingdom.[3] From these terrors they were relieved by the arrival of despatches from the general, and by the indecision of the royalists, who, unprepared for the event, had hitherto made no movement; and with the

[Transcriber’s Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]

[Footnote 1: Leicester’s Journal, iii. 117. Balfour, iv. 314.]

[Footnote 2: Leicester’s Journal, 113, 114. Whitelock, 502, 503. Clarendon, iii. 402.]

[Footnote 3: Hutchinson, 336.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 16.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 22.]

revival of their hopes the council assumed a tone of defiance, which was supported by measures the most active and energetic. The declaration of Charles,[a] containing a general pardon to all his subjects, with the exception of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Cook, was burnt in London by the hands of the hangman; and a counter proclamation was published,[b] pronouncing Charles Stuart, his aiders and abettors, guilty of high treason. All correspondence with him was forbidden under the penalty of death; it was ordered that all persons known or suspected of attachment to his cause should be placed in custody, or confined to their own houses; and the militia of several counties, “tried and godly people,” were called forth, and marched towards the expected scene of action.[1] But Charles had to contend not only with the activity of his enemies, but with the fanaticism of his followers. The Presbyterians of Lancashire had promised to rise, and Massey, a distinguished officer of that persuasion, was sent before to organize the levy; but the committee of the kirk forbade him to employ any man who had not taken the covenant; and, though Charles annulled their order, the English ministers insisted that it should be obeyed. Massey remained after the army had passed, and was joined by the earl of Derby, with sixty horse and two hundred and sixty foot, from the Isle of Man. A conference was held at Wigan; but reasoning and entreaty were employed in vain; the ministers insisted that all the Catholics who had been enrolled should be dismissed; and that the salvation of the kingdom should be entrusted to the elect of God, who had taken the covenant. In the mean while Cromwell had despatched Colonel Lilburne, with his

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 12.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 11.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 25.]

regiment of horse, into the county, and ordered reinforcements to join him from Yorkshire and Cheshire. Derby, with the concurrence of the royalists in Manchester, undertook to surprise Lilburne in his quarters near that town, but was himself surprised by Lilburne, who marched on the same day[a] to observe the earl’s motions. They met unexpectedly in the lane leading from Chorley to Wigan. The heads of the opposite columns repeatedly charged each other; but the desperate courage of the Cavaliers was foiled by the steadiness and discipline of their opponents; the Lord Widrington, Sir Thomas Tildesly, Colonel Throckmorton, Boynton, Trollop, and about sixty of their followers were slain, and above three hundred privates made prisoners. The earl himself, who had received several slight wounds on the arms and shoulders, fled to Wigan with the enemy at his heels. Observing a house open, he flung himself from his horse, and sprung into the passage. A female barred the door behind him; the pursuers were checked for an instant; and when they began to search the house, he had already escaped through the garden. Weak with fatigue and the loss of blood, he wandered in a southerly direction, concealing himself by day, and travelling by night, till he found[b] a secure asylum, in a retired mansion, called Boscobel House, situate between Brewood and Tong Castle, and the property of Mrs. Cotton, a Catholic recusant and royalist. There he was received and secreted by William Penderell and his wife, the servants entrusted with the care of the mansion; and having recovered his strength, was conducted by the former to the royal army at Worcester.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 503, 504. Clarendon, iii. 399, 403. Memoirs of the Stanleys, 112-114. Journals, Aug. 29. Leicester’s Journal, 116. Boscobel, 6-8. Boscobel afterwards belonged to Bas. Fitzherbert, Mrs. Cotton’s son-in-law.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 29.]

The occurrences of each day added to the disappointment of Charles and the confidence of his enemies. He had summoned[a] by proclamation all his male subjects between the age of sixteen and sixty to join his standard at the general muster[b] of his forces, on the 26th of August, in the Pitchcroft, the meadows between the city and the river. A few of the neighbouring gentlemen with their tenants, not two hundred in number, obeyed the call;[1] and it was found that the whole amount of his force did not exceed twelve (or according to Cromwell, sixteen)[2] thousand men, of whom one-sixth part only was composed of Englishmen. But while a few straggling royalists thus stole into his quarters, as if it were to display by their paucity the hopelessness of his cause, the daily arrival of hostile reinforcements swelled the army in the neighbourhood to more than thirty thousand men. At length Cromwell arrived,[c] and was received with enthusiasm. The royalists had broken down an arch of the bridge over the Severn at Upton; but a few soldiers passed on a beam in the night; the breach was repaired, and Lambert crossed with ten thousand men to the right bank. A succession of partial but obstinate actions alternately raised and depressed the hopes of the two parties; the grand attempt was reserved by the lord general for his

[Footnote 1: They were lord Talbot, son to the earl of Shrewsbury, “with about sixty horse; Mr. Mervin Touchet, Sir John Packington, Sir Walter Blount, Sir Ralph Clare, Mr. Ralph Sheldon, of Beoly, Mr. John Washbourn, of Wichinford, with forty horse; Mr. Thomas Hornyhold, of Blackmore-park, with forty horse; Mr. Thomas Acton, Mr. Robert Blount, of Kenswick, Mr. Robert Wigmore, of Lucton, Mr. F. Knotsford, Mr. Peter Blount, and divers others."–Boscobel, 10.]

[Footnote 2: Cary’s Memorials, ii. 361.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 23.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 26.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. August 28.]

auspicious day, the 3rd of September, on which twelve months before he had defeated the Scots at Dunbar. On that morning Fleetwood, who had advanced from Upton to Powick,[a] was ordered to force the passage of the Team, while Cromwell, to preserve the communication, should throw a bridge of boats across the Severn at Bunshill, near the confluence of the two rivers. About one in the afternoon, while Charles with his staff observed from the tower of the cathedral the positions of the enemy, his attention was drawn by a discharge of musketry near Powick. He descended immediately, rode to the scene of action, and ordered Montgomery with a brigade of horse and foot to defend the line of the Team and oppose the formation of the bridge. After a long and sanguinary struggle, Fleetwood effected a passage just at the moment when Cromwell, having completed the work, moved four regiments to his assistance. The Scots, though urged by superior numbers, maintained the most obstinate resistance; they disputed every field and hedge, repeatedly charged with the pike to check the advance of the enemy, and, animated by the shouts of the combatants on the opposite bank, sought to protract the contest with the vain hope that, by occupying the forces of Fleetwood, they might insure the victory to their friends, who were engaged with Cromwell.

That commander, as soon as he had secured the communication across the river, ordered a battery of heavy guns to play upon Fort Royal, a work lately raised to cover the Sidbury gate of the city, and led his troops in two divisions to Perrywood and Red-hill. To Charles this seemed a favourable opportunity of defeating one half of the hostile force, while the other

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 3.]

half was separated from it by the Severn. Leading out the whole of his disposable infantry, with the duke of Hamilton’s troop of horse, and the English volunteers, he marched to attack the enemy in their position, and fought at the head of the Highlanders with a spirit worthy of a prince who staked his life for the acquisition of a crown. Fortune favoured his first efforts. The militia regiments shrunk from the shock, and the guns of the enemy became the prize of the assailants. But Cromwell had placed some veteran battalions in reserve. They restored the battle; and the royalists, in their turn, began to retreat. Still they remained unbroken, availing themselves of every advantage of the ground to check the enemy, and anxiously expecting the aid of their cavalry, which, under the command of Leslie, had remained in the city. From what cause it happened is unknown; but that officer did not appear on the field till the battle was lost, and the infantry, unable to resist the superior pressure of the enemy, was fleeing in confusion to the gate under the shelter of the fort. The fugitives rallied in Friar-street, and Charles, riding among them, endeavoured by his words and gestures to re-animate their courage. Instead of a reply, they hung down their heads, or threw away their arms. “Then shoot me dead,” exclaimed the distressed prince, “rather than let me live to see the sad consequences of this day.” But his despair was as unavailing as had been his entreaties; and his friends admonished him to provide for his safety, for the enemy had already penetrated within the walls.

We left Fleetwood on the right bank pushing the Scots slowly before him. At length they resigned the hope of resistance; their flight opened to him the way to St. John’s, and its timid commander yielded at the first summons. On the other bank, Cromwell stormed the Fort Royal, put its defenders, fifteen hundred men, to the sword, and turned the guns upon the city. Within the walls irremediable confusion prevailed, and the enemy began to pour in by the quay, the castle hill, and the Sidbury gate. Charles had not a moment to spare. Placing himself in the midst of the Scottish cavalry, he took the northern road by the gate of St. Martin’s, while a few devoted spirits, with such troopers as dared to followed them, charged down Sidbury-street in the contrary direction.[1] They accomplished their purpose. The royal party cleared the walls, while they arrested the advance, and distracted the attention of the enemy. It was past the hour of sunset; and before dark all resistance ceased. Colonel Drummond surrendered the castle hill on conditions; the infantry in the street were killed or led prisoners to the cathedral; and the city was abandoned during the obscurity of the night to the licentious passions of the victors.[2]

In this disastrous battle the slain on the part of the royalists amounted to three thousand men, the taken to a still greater number. The cavalry escaped in separate bodies; but so depressed was their courage, so bewildered were their counsels, that they successively surrendered to smaller parties of their pursuers. Many officers of distinction attempted, single and disguised,

[Footnote 1: These were the earl of Cleveland, Sir James Hamilton, Colonel Careless, and captains Hornyhold, Giffard, and Kemble.–Boscobel, 20.]

[Footnote 2: See Blount, Boscobel, 14-22; Whitelock, 507, 508; Bates, part ii. 221; Parl. Hist. xx. 40, 44-55; Ludlow, i. 314. Nothing can be more incorrect than Clarendon’s account of this battle, iii. 409. Even Cromwell owns that “it was as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever he had seen."–Cary’s Memorials, ii. 356.]

to steal their way through the country; but of these the Scots were universally betrayed by their accent, whilst the English, for the most part, effected their escape.[1] The duke of Hamilton had been mortally wounded on the field of battle; the earls of Derby, Rothes, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale; the lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison; and the generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery, were made prisoners, at different times and in separate places. But the most interesting inquiry regarded the fortune of the young king. Though the parliament offered[a] a reward of one thousand pounds for his person, and denounced the penalties of treason against those who should afford him shelter; though parties of horse and foot scoured the adjacent counties in search of so valuable a prize; though the magistrates received orders to arrest every unknown person, and to keep a strict watch on the sea-ports in their neighbourhood, yet no trace of his flight, no clue to his retreat, could be discovered. Week after week passed

[Footnote 1: Thus the duke of Buckingham was conducted by one Mathews, a carpenter, to Bilstrop, and thence to Brooksby, the seat of Lady Villiers, in Leicestershire; Lord Talbot reached his father’s house at Longford in time to conceal himself in a close place in one of the out-houses. His pursuers found his horse yet saddled, and searched for him during four or five days in vain. May was hidden twenty-one days in a hay-mow, belonging to Bold, a husbandman, at Chessardine, during all which time a party of soldiers was quartered in the house.–Boscobel, 35-37. Of the prisoners, eight suffered death, by judgment of a court-martial sitting at Chester. One of these was the gallant earl of Derby, who pleaded that quarter had been granted to him by Captain Edge, and quarter ought to be respected by a court-martial. It was answered that quarter could be granted to enemies only, not to traitors. He offered to surrender his Isle of Man in exchange for his life, and petitioned for “his grace the lord general’s, and the parliament’s mercy.” But his petition was not delivered by Lenthall before it was too late. It was read in the house on the eve of his execution, which took place at Bolton, in Lancashire, Oct. 15, 1651.–State Trials, v. 294. Heath 302. Leicester’s Journal, 121. Journals, Oct. 14.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 10.]

away; of almost every other individual of note the fate was ascertained; that of Charles Stuart remained an impenetrable mystery. At last, when a belief prevailed, both among his friends and foes, that he had met with death from the peasantry, ignorant of his person and quality, the intelligence arrived, that on the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle, he had landed in safety at Fécamp, on the coast of Normandy.

The narrative of his adventures during this period of suspense and distress exhibits striking instances of hair-breadth escapes on the part of the king, and of unshaken fidelity on that of his adherents. During the night after the battle he found himself in the midst of the Scottish cavalry, a body of men too numerous to elude pursuit, and too dispirited to repel an enemy. Under cover of the darkness, he separated from them with about sixty horse; the earl of Derby recommended to him, from his own experience, the house of Boscobel as a secure retreat; and Charles Giffard undertook, with the aid of his servant Yates, to conduct him to Whiteladies, another house belonging to Mrs. Cotton, and not far distant from Boscobel. At an early hour in the morning, after a ride of five-and-twenty miles, they reached Whiteladies;[a] and while the others enjoyed a short repose from their fatigue, the king withdrew to an inner apartment, to prepare himself for the character which he had been advised to assume. His hair was cut close to the head, his hands and face were discoloured, his clothes were exchanged for the coarse and threadbare garments of a labourer, and a heavy wood-bill in his hand announced his pretended employment. At sunrise the few admitted to the secret took their leave of

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept.]

him with tears, and, summoning their companions to horseback, rode away, they scarcely knew whither but with the cheering hope that they should draw the attention of the enemy from the retreat of the king to the pursuit of themselves. In less than an hour a troop of horse from Cotsal, under the command of Colonel Ashenhurst, arrived at Whiteladies; but the king was already gone; a fruitless search only provoked their impatience, and they hastily followed the track of the other fugitives.

Charles was now in the hands, and entirely at the mercy, of four brothers (John, the fifth, had taken charge of the Lord Wilmot), labouring men, of the name of Penderell, and of Yates, his former guide, who had married a sister of the Penderells. He could not conceal from himself that their poverty might make them more accessible to temptation; but Derby and Giffard had conjured him to dismiss such thoughts; they were men of tried fidelity, who, born in the domain, and bred in the principles of a loyal and Catholic family, had long been successfully employed in screening priests and Cavaliers from the searches of the civil magistrates and military officers.[1] By one of them, surnamed the trusty Richard, he was led into

[Footnote 1: The Penderells, whom this event has introduced to the notice of the reader, were originally six brothers, born at Hobbal Grange, in the parish of Tong. John, George, and Thomas served in the armies of Charles I. Thomas was killed at Stowe; the other two survived the war, and were employed as woodwards at Boscobel. Of the remaining three, William took care of the house; Humphrey worked at the mill, and Richard rented part of Hobbal Grange. After the Restoration, the five brothers waited on the king at Whitehall on the 13th of June, 1660, and were graciously received, and dismissed with a princely reward. A pension was also granted to them and their posterity. In virtue of which grant two of their descendants, Calvin Beaumont Winstanley, and John Lloyd, were placed on the pension list on the 6th of July, 1846, for the sum of twenty-five pounds to each.]

the thickest part of the adjoining wood, while the others posted themselves at convenient stations, to descry and announce the approach of the enemy. The day was wet and stormy; and Richard, attentive to the accommodation of his charge, who appeared sinking under the fatigue, caused by his efforts in the battle and the anxiety of his flight, spread a blanket for him under one of the largest trees, and ordered the wife of Yates to bring him the best refreshment which her house could afford. Charles was alarmed at the sight of this unexpected visitant. Recovering himself, he said, “Good woman, can you be faithful to a distressed Cavalier?"–"Yes, sir,” she replied, “and I will die sooner than betray you.” He was afterwards visited by Jane, the mother of the Penderells. The old woman kissed his hands, fell on her knees, and blessed God that he had chosen her sons to preserve, as she was confident they would, the life of their sovereign.

It had been agreed between the king and Wilmot, that each should make the best of his way to London, and inquire for the other by the name of Ashburnham, at the Three Cranes in the Vintry. By conversation with his guardian, Charles was induced to adopt a different plan, and to seek an asylum among the Cavaliers in Wales, till a ship could be procured for his transportation to France. About nine in the evening they left the wood together for the house of Mr. Wolf, a Catholic recusant at Madeley, not far from the Severn; but an accidental alarm lengthened their road, and added to the fatigue of the royal wanderer.[1]

[Footnote 1: The mill at Evelyn was filled with fugitives from the battle: the miller, espying Charles and his guide, and afraid of a discovery, called out “rogues;” and they, supposing him an enemy, turned up a miry lane, running at their utmost speed,–Boscobel, 47. Account from the Pepys MS. p. 16.]

They reached Madeley at midnight; Wolf was roused from his bed, and the strangers obtained admission. But their host felt no small alarm for their safety. Troops were frequently quartered upon him; two companies of militia actually kept watch in the village and the places of concealment in his house had been recently discovered. As the approach of daylight[a] made it equally dangerous to proceed or turn back he secreted them behind the hay in an adjoining barn, and despatched messengers to examine the passages of the river. Their report that all the bridges were guarded, and all the boats secured, compelled the unfortunate prince to abandon his design. On the return of darkness he placed himself again under the care of his trusty guide, and with a heavy and misboding heart, retraced his steps towards his original destination, the house at Boscobel.

At Boscobel he found Colonel Careless, one of those devoted adherents who, to aid his escape from Worcester, had charged the enemy at the opposite gate. Careless had often provoked, and as often eluded, the resentment of the Roundheads; and experience had made him acquainted with every loyal man, and every place of concealment, in the country. By his persuasion Charles consented to pass the day[b] with him amidst the branches of an old and lofty oak.[1] This

[Footnote 1: This day Humphrey Penderell, the miller, went to Skefnal to pay taxes, but in reality to learn news. He was taken before a military officer, who knew that Charles had been at Whiteladies, and tempted, with threats and promises, to discover where the king was; but nothing could be extracted from him, and he was allowed to return.–Boscobel, 55. This, I suspect, to be the true story; but Charles himself, when he mentions the proposal made to Humphrey attributes it to a man, at whose house he had changed his clothes.–Account from the Pepys MS. p. 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 5.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 6.]

celebrated tree, which was afterwards destroyed to satisfy the veneration of the Cavaliers, grew near to the common path in a meadow-field, which lay in the centre of the wood. It had been partially lopped a few years before, and the new shoots had thrown round it a thick and luxuriant foliage. Within this cover the king and his companion passed the day. Invisible themselves, they occasionally caught a glimpse of the red-coats (so the soldiers were called) passing among the trees, and sometimes saw them looking into the meadow. Their friends, William Penderell and his wife, whom Charles called my dame Joan, stationed themselves near, to give warning of danger; he pretending to be employed in his duty as woodward, and she in the labour of gathering sticks for fuel. But there arose no cause of immediate alarm; the darkness of the night relieved them from their tedious and irksome confinement; and Charles, having on his return to the house examined the hiding-place, resolved to trust to it for his future security.[1]

The next day, Sunday,[a] he spent within doors or in the garden. But his thoughts brooded over his forlorn and desperate condition; and the gloom on his countenance betrayed the uneasiness of his mind. Fortunately in the afternoon he received by John Penderell a welcome message from Lord Wilmot, to meet him that night at the house of Mr. Whitgrave, a recusant, at Moseley. The king’s feet were so swollen and blistered by his recent walk to and from Madeley,

[Footnote 1: Careless found means to reach London, and cross the sea to Holland, where he carried the first news of the king’s escape to the princess of Orange. Charles gave him for his coat of arms, by the name of Carlos, an oak in a field, or, with a fesse, gules, charged with three royal crowns, and for his crest a crown of oak leaves, with a sword and sceptre, crossed saltierwise.–Boscobel, 85.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1651. Sept. 7.]

that he gladly accepted the offer of Humphrey’s horse from the mill; nor did the appearance of the monarch disgrace that of the steed. He wore a coat and breeches of coarse green cloth, both so threadbare that in many places they appeared white, and the latter “so long that they came down to the garter;” his doublet was of leather, old and soiled; his shoes were heavy and slashed for the ease of his feet; his stockings of green yarn had been much worn, were darned at the knees, and without feet; and an old grey steeple-crowned hat, without band or lining, with a crooked thorn stick, completed the royal habiliments. The six brothers attended him with arms; two kept in advance, two followed behind, and one walked on each side. He had not gone far before he complained to Humphrey of the heavy jolting pace of the horse. “My liege,” replied the miller, “you do not recollect that he carries the weight of three kingdoms on his back.”

At Moseley, cheered by the company of Wilmot, and the attention of Whitgrave and his chaplain, Mr. Hudlestone,[1] he recovered his spirits, fought the battle of Worcester over again, and declared that, if he could find a few thousand men who had the courage to stand by him, he would not hesitate to meet his enemies a second time in the field. A new plan of escape was now submitted to his approbation. The daughter of Colonel Lane, of Bentley, had obtained from the governor of Stafford a pass to visit Mrs.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Whitgrave had served as lieutenant, Hudlestone as gentleman volunteer in the armies of Charles I. The latter was of the family at Hutton John, in Cumberland. Leaving the service, he took orders, and was at this time a secular priest, living with Mr. Whitgrave. He afterwards became a Benedictine monk, and was appointed one of the queen’s chaplains.]

Norton, a relation near Bristol. Charles consented to assume the character of her servant, and Wilmot departed on the following night to make arrangements for his reception. In the mean time, to guard against a surprise, Hudlestone constantly attended the king; Whitgrave occasionally left the house to observe what passed in the street; and Sir John Preston, and two other boys, the pupils of Hudlestone, were stationed as sentinels at the garret windows.[1] But the danger of discovery increased every hour. The confession of a cornet, who had accompanied him, and was afterwards made prisoner, divulged the fact that Charles had been left at Whiteladies; and the hope of reward stimulated the parliamentary officers to new and more active exertions. The house of Boscobel, on the day after the king’s departure,[a] was successively visited by two parties of the enemy; the next morning a second and more rigorous search was made at Whiteladies; and in the afternoon the arrival of a troop of horse alarmed the inhabitants of Moseley. As Charles, Whitgrave, and Hudlestone were standing near a window, they observed a neighbour run hastily into the house, and in an instant heard the shout of “Soldiers, soldiers!” from the foot of the staircase. The king was immediately shut up in the secret place; all the other doors were thrown open; and Whitgrave descending, met the troopers in front of his house. They seized him as a fugitive Cavalier from Worcester; but he convinced them by the testimony of his neighbours, that for several weeks he had not quitted Moseley, and with much difficulty prevailed on them to depart without searching the house.

[Footnote 1: Though ignorant of the quality of the stranger, the boys amused the king by calling themselves his life-guard.–Boscobel, 78.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 9.]

That night[a] Charles proceeded to Bentley. It took but little time to transform the woodcutter into a domestic servant, and to exchange his dress of green jump for a more decent suit of grey cloth. He departed on horseback with his supposed mistress behind him, accompanied by her cousin, Mr. Lassells; and, after a journey of three days, reached[b] Abbotsleigh, Mr. Norton’s house, without interruption or danger. Wilmot stopped at Sir John Winter’s, a place in the neighbourhood. On the road, he had occasionally joined the royal party, as it were by accident; more generally he preceded or followed them at a short distance. He rode with a hawk on his fist, and dogs by his side; and the boldness of his manner as effectually screened him from discovery as the most skilful disguise.

The king, on his arrival,[c] was indulged with a separate chamber, under pretense of indisposition; but the next morning he found himself in the company of two persons, of whom one had been a private in his regiment of guards at Worcester, the other a servant in the palace at Richmond, when Charles lived there several years before. The first did not recognise him, though he pretended to give a description of his person; the other, the moment the king uncovered, recollected the features of the prince, and communicated his suspicions to Lassells. Charles, with great judgment, sent for him, discovered himself to him as an old acquaintance, and required his assistance. The man (he was butler to the family) felt himself honoured by the royal confidence, and endeavoured to repay it by his services. He removed to a distance from the king two individuals in the house of known republican principles; he inquired, though without success, for a

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 11.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 14.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Sept. 15.]

ship at Bristol to carry him to France or Spain; and he introduced Lord Wilmot to his chamber at the hour of midnight. There they sat in council, and resolved[a] that the king should remove the next day to the house of Colonel Windham, a Cavalier whom he knew, at Trent, near Sherburn; that a messenger should be despatched to prepare the family for his arrival; and that to account for the sudden departure of Miss Lane, a counterfeit letter should be delivered to her, stating that her father was lying at the point of death. The plan succeeded; she was suffered[b] to depart, and in two days the prince reached[c] his destination. The following morning[d] Miss Lane took her leave, and hastened back with Lassells to Bentley.[1]

In his retirement at Trent, Charles began to indulge the hope of a speedy liberation from danger. A ship was hired at Lyme to convey a nobleman and his servant (Wilmot and the king) to the coast of France; the hour and the place of embarkation were fixed; and a widow, who kept a small inn at Charmouth, consented to furnish a temporary asylum to a gentleman in disguise, and a young female who had just escaped from the custody of a harsh and unfeeling guardian. The next evening[e] Charles appeared in a servant’s dress, with Juliana Coningsby riding behind him, and accompanied by Wilmot and Windham. The hostess received the supposed lovers with a hearty welcome; but their patience was soon put to the severest trial; the night[f] passed away, no boat entered the creek, no ship could be descried in the offing; and the disappointment gave birth to a thousand jealousies

[Footnote 1: This lady received a reward of one thousand pounds for her services, by order of the two houses.–C. Journals, 1660, December 19, 21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 17.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 18.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Sept. 19.] [Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. Sept. 20.] [Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. Sept. 23.] [Sidenote f: A.D. 1651. Sept. 24.]

and apprehensions. At dawn of day the whole party separated; Wilmot, with a servant, going to Lyme to inquire after the master of the vessel; Charles, with his companions, proceeding to Bridport to wait the return of Wilmot. In Bridport he found fifteen hundred soldiers preparing to embark on an expedition against Jersey; but, unwilling to create a real, by seeking to eschew an imaginary, danger, he boldly pushed forward to the inn, and led the horses through the crowd with a rudeness which provoked complaint. But a new danger awaited him at the stable. The hostler challenged him as an old acquaintance, pretending to have known him in the service of Mr. Potter, at Exeter. The fact was that, during the civil war, Charles had lodged at that gentleman’s house. He turned aside to conceal his alarm; but had sufficient presence of mind to avail himself of the partial mistake of the hostler, and to reply, “True, I once lived a servant with Mr. Potter; but as I have no leisure now, we will renew our acquaintance on my return to London over a pot of beer.”

After dinner, the royal party joined Wilmot out of the town. The master of the ship had been detained at home by the fears and remonstrances of his wife, and no promises could induce him to renew his engagement. Confounded and dispirited, Charles retraced his steps to Trent; new plans were followed by new disappointments; a second ship, provided by Colonel Philips at Southampton, was seized[a] for the transportation of troops to Jersey; and mysterious rumours in the neighbourhood rendered[b] unsafe the king’s continuance at Colonel Windham’s.[1] At Heale, the residence

[Footnote 1: A reward of one thousand pounds was afterwards given to Windham.–C. Journals, Dec. 17, 1660.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 25.] [Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 8.]

of the widow Hyde, near Salisbury, he found a more secure retreat in a hiding-place for five days, during which Colonel Gunter, through the agency of Mansel, a loyal merchant, engaged[a] a collier, lying at New Shoreham. Charles hastened[b] through Hambleton to Brighton, where he sat down to supper with Philips, Gunter, Mansel, and Tattershall the master of the vessel. At table, Tattershall kept his eyes fixed on the king; after supper, he called Mansel aside and complained of fraud. The person in grey was the king; he knew him well, having been detained by him in the river, when, as prince of Wales, he commanded the royal fleet in 1648. This information was speedily communicated to Charles, who took no notice of it to Tattershall; but, to make sure of his man, contrived to keep the party drinking and smoking round the table during the rest of the night.

Before his departure, while he was standing alone in a room, the landlord entered, and, going behind him, kissed his hand, which rested on the back of a chair, saying at the same time, “I have no doubt that, if I live, I shall be a lord, and my wife a lady.” Charles laughed, to show that he understood his meaning, and joined the company in the other apartment. At four in the morning they all proceeded[c] to Shoreham; on the beach his other attendants took their leave, Wilmot accompanied him into the bark. There Tattershall, falling on his knee, solemnly assured him, that whatever might be the consequence, he would put him safely on the coast of France. The ship floated with the tide, and stood with easy sail towards the Isle of Wight, as if she were on her way to Deal, to which port she was bound. But at five in the afternoon, Charles, as he had previously concerted with Tattershall,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 14.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 15.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Oct. 16.]

addressed the crew. He told them that he and his companion were merchants in distress, flying from their creditors; desired them to join him in requesting the master to run for the French coast; and, as a further argument, gave them twenty shillings to drink. Tattershall made many objections; but, at last, with apparent reluctance, took the helm, and steered across the Channel. At daybreak[a] they saw before them the small town of Fécamp, at the distance of two miles; but the tide ebbing, they cast anchor, and soon afterwards descried to leeward a suspicious sail, which, by her manner of working, the king feared, and the master believed, to be a privateer from Ostend. She afterwards proved to be a French hoy; but Charles waited not to ascertain the fact; the boat was instantly lowered, and the two adventurers were rowed safely into the harbour.[1]

The king’s deliverance was a subject of joy to the nations of Europe, among whom the horror excited by the death of the father had given popularity to the exertions of the son. In his expedition into England they had followed him with wishes for his success;

[Footnote 1: For the history of the king’s escape, see Blount’s Boscobel, with Claustrum Regale reseratum; the Whitgrave manuscript, printed in the Retrospective Review, xiv. 26. Father Hudleston’s Relation; the True Narrative and Relation in the Harleian Miscellany, iv. 441, an account of his majesty’s escape from Worcester, dictated to Mr. Pepys by the king himself, and the narrative given by Bates in the second part of his Elenchus. In addition to these, we have a narrative by Clarendon, who professes to have derived his information from Charles and the other actors in the transaction, and asserts that “it is exactly true; that there is nothing in it, the verity whereof can justly be suspected” (Car. Hist. iii. 427, 428); yet, whoever will compare it with the other accounts will see that much of great interest has been omitted, and much so disfigured as to bear little resemblance to the truth. It must be that the historian, writing in banishment, and at a great distance of time, trusted to his imagination to supply the defect of his memory.–See note (E). See also Gunter’s narrative in Cary, ii. 430.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 17.]

after his defeat at Worcester they were agitated with apprehensions for his safety. He had now eluded the hunters of his life; he appeared before them with fresh claims on their sympathy, from the spirit which he had displayed in the field, and the address with which he had extricated himself from danger. His adventures were listened to with interest; and his conduct was made the theme of general praise. That he should be the heir to the British crowns, was the mere accident of birth; that he was worthy to wear them, he owed to the resources and energies of his own mind. In a few months, however, the delusion vanished. Charles had borne the blossoms of promise; they were blasted under the withering influence of pleasure and dissipation.

But from the fugitive prince we must now turn back to the victorious general who proceeded from the field of battle in triumph to London. The parliament seemed at a loss to express its gratitude to the man to whose splendid services the commonwealth owed its preservation. At Ailesbury Cromwell was met by a deputation of the two commissioners of the great seal, the lord chief justice, and Sir Gilbert Pickering; to each of whom, in token of his satisfaction, he made a present of a horse and of two Scotsmen selected from his prisoners. At Acton he was received by the speaker and the lord president, attended by members of parliament and of the council, and by the lord mayor with the aldermen and sheriffs; and heard from the recorder, in an address of congratulation, that he was destined “to bind kings in chains, and their nobles in fetters of iron." He entered[a] the capital in the state carriage, was greeted with the acclamations of the people as the procession passed through the city, and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 12.]

repaired to the palace of Hampton Court, where apartments had been fitted up for him and his family at the public expense. In parliament it was proposed that the 3rd of September should be kept a holiday for ever in memory of his victory; a day was appointed for a general thanksgiving; and in addition to a former grant of lands to the amount of two thousand five hundred pounds per annum, other lands of the value of four thousand pounds were settled on him in proof of the national gratitude. Cromwell received these honours with an air of profound humility. He was aware of the necessity of covering the workings of ambition within his breast with the veil of exterior self-abasement; and therefore professed to take no merit to himself, and to see nothing in what he had done, but the hand of the Almighty, fighting in behalf of his faithful servants.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 509. Ludlow, i. 372. Heath, 301. Journals, Sept. 6, 9, 11, 19. “Next day, 13th, the common prisoners were brought through Westminster to Tuthill fields–a sadder spectacle was never seen except the miserable place of their defeat–and there sold to several merchants, and sent to the Barbadoes."–Heath, 301. Fifteen hundred were granted as slaves to the Guinea merchants, and transported to the Gold Coast in Africa.–Parl. Hist. iii. 1374.]

This eBook of “The History of England” (From The First Invasion By The Romans To The Accession Of King George The Fifth, 1912) by John Lingard, D.D. and Hilaire Belloc, B.A. with an introduction by His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons belongs to the public domain.