# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.
REIGN OF CHARLES I. (Concluded.)
For a long time, during these transactions that we have recorded, the difference of opinion betwixt the presbyterians and the independents had been growing more marked and determined. The latter, from a small knot of dissenters, had grown into a considerable one, and the more influential, because the most able and active, leaders of both parliament and the army were of that sect. Under the head of independents, however, ranged themselves, so far as politics were concerned, a great variety of other dissenters—Arminians, millenaries, baptists and anabaptists, familists, enthusiasts, seekers, perfectists, Socinians, Arians, and others—all of whom claimed freedom of worship, according to their peculiar faiths. On the other hand, the presbyterians, backed by the Scots, were set on establishing as thorough a religious despotism as either popery or Laud had ever contemplated. Their tenets and form of government were alone to be ​tolerated. They were as resolute sticklers for conformity as the catholics, or Charles and Laud themselves. They set up the same claims to be superior to the state, and allowed of no appeal from their tribunals to those of the civil magistrate. Having established the directory for the form of worship, they erected an assembly, with its synods, and divided the whole kingdom into provinces, the provinces into classes, the classes into presbyteries or elderships. They declared that "the keys of the kingdom of heaven were committed to the officers of the church, by virtue whereof they have power 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." They claimed a right to inquire into the private lives of individuals, and of suspending the unworthy from the sacrament.
All these assumptions the independents denied, and would not admit any authority over the free action of individual congregations. The commons, through the influence of Selden and "Whitelock, proposed to the assembly of divines nine questions respecting the nature and object of the divine right to which they aspired, and before they could answer these, the army and the independents, its leaders, had effected still more embarrassing changes. The king being conquered, and the Scots withdrawn, the contest lay no longer betwixt the king and parliament, but betwixt the presbyterians and independents, or, what was nearly synonymous, the parliament and the army.
The king was conducted to Holmby by easy journeys, and treated by his attendants with courtesy. The people Socked to see him, and showed that the traditions of royalty were yet strong in them. They received him with acclamations, uttered prayers for his preservation, and not a few of them pressed forward to be touched for the "evil." On his arrival at Holmby, he found a great number of ladies and gentlemen assembled to welcome him, with every demonstration of pleasure, and his house and table well appointed and supplied. He passed his time in reading, in riding about the country, and in different amusements—as chess and bowls, riding to Althorpe, or even to Harrowden, because there was no good bowling-green at Holmby. One thing only he complained of, and requested an alteration in. The parliament sent him clergymen of their own persuasion to attend him; he begged that any two out of his twelve chaplains might be substituted, but was refused. The presbyterian ministers allotted him were Thomas Herbert, and Harrington, the author of "Oceana," with whose conversation Charles was much pleased on all subjects but religion and form of government. But though Charles passed the bulk of his time in relaxation, he was not insensible to his situation; and when he had been left there for three months without notice, he addressed to them a letter, in which he proposed to allow presbyterian church government for three years, his own liberty of worship being granted, and twenty clergymen of the church of England admitted to the Westminster assembly; the question of religion at the end of that period to be finally settled by himself and the two houses in the usual way, and that the command of the army should also be left to parliament for ten years, and then to revert to him. The lords gladly assented, but the commons did not entertain it, and other matters soon drew their attention.
The presbyterians had, during the active engagements of the army, and the consequent absence of the leading independents, strengthened their ranks by many new members of parliament, and they now set about to reduce the power of their opponents by disbanding the greater part of the army. They decreed in February that three thousand horse, twelve hundred dragoons, and eight thousand four hundred foot, should be withdrawn from Fairfax's army and sent to Ireland, and that besides one thousand dragoons and five thousand four hundred horse, all the rest of the army should be disbanded, except as many soldiers as were necessary to man the forty-five castles and fortresses which remained. This would have completely prostrated the power of the independents; and Cromwell, on whose shrewd character and military success they now looked with terror, would have been first sacrificed, as well as Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Skippon, Harrison, Algernon Sidney, and others, who had fought the real battle of the late contest. The heads of the presbyterians in parliament consisted of unsuccessful commanders—Hollis, Waller, Harley, Stapleton, and others, who hated the successful ones, both on account of their brilliant success, and of their religion. Fairfax, though a presbyterian, went along with his officers in all the love of toleration.
It was voted in the commons, not only that no officer under Fairfax should have higher rank than that of colonel, but that no one should hold a commission who did not take the covenant and conform to the government of the church as fixed by parliament. This would have been a sweeping measure, had the parliament not had a very obvious party motive in it, and had it paid its soldiers, and been in a condition to discharge them. But at this moment they were immensely in arrears with the pay of the army, and that body, feeling its strength, at once broke up its cantonments round Nottingham, and marched towards London, halting only at Saffron Walden. This movement created a terrible alarm in the city, parliament regarded it as a menace, but Fairfax excused it on the plea of the exhausted state of the country round their old quarters. The commons hastened to vote sixty thousand pounds towards the payment of arrears, which amounted to forty-three weeks for the horse and eighteen for the infantry. In the city, the council and the presbyterians got up a petition to both houses, praying that the army might be removed further from the city; but at the same moment a more starting one was in progress from the independents, addressed to "the supreme authority of the nation, the commons in parliament assembled." It not only gave this significant hint of its opinions where the real power of the state lay, but denounced the house of lords as assuming undue authority, and complained of the persecution and exclusion from all places of trust of those who could not conform to the church government imposed. The house of commons condemned this republican petition, and ordered the army not to approach nearer than twenty-five miles of London. A deputation was sent down to Saffron Walden, where Fairfax summoned a convention of officers to answer them. These gentlemen, on the mention of being sent to Ireland, said they mast know, before they could decide, what regiments, what commanders were to go, and whether they were sure of getting their arrears and their future ​daily pay. They demanded their arrears and some recompense for past services. The commissioners not being able to answer these demands, returned and reported to the commons, mentioning also a petition in progress in the army. Alarmed at this, the commons summoned to their bar some of the principal officers—lieutenant-general Hammond, colonel Robert Hammond, his brother, colonel Robert Lilburn, lieutenant-colonel Grimes, and colonel Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, a member of the house; and they voted that three regiments, commanded by the stanch presbyterian officers, Poyntz, Copley, and Bethell, should remain at home. But what roused the army more than all besides, was a motion made by Denzell Hollis, and carried, that the army's petition, which was not yet presented, was an improper petition, and that all who were concerned in it should be proceeded against as enemies to the state, and disturbers of the public peace.
This declaration of the 30th of March was little short of an act of madness. It could only excite the indignation of a power against which the parliament, grown unpopular, and divided against itself, was but as a reed in a whirlwind. The officers pronounced it "a blot of infamy" upon them, and the parliament was glad to attempt to lay the storm by voting, on the 8th of April, that the regiments of Fairfax, Cromwell, Rossiter, Whalley, and Graves, should remain in England. A week afterwards the commons sent down another deputation, accompanied by the earl of Warwick, who harangued the officers earnestly to engage for Ireland, promising that major-general Skippon should command them. Many were pleased with them, but more cried out, "Fairfax and Cromwell! Give us Fairfax and Cromwell, and then we all go!"
On the return of the deputation without success, the commons debated whether they should not disband the whole army. Hollis strongly recommended it, and that they should give the soldiers six weeks' pay on disbanding, he thought it would be easy then to engage the men to go to Ireland under other officers, and that four of those officers who were regarded as most hostile in this movement, should be summoned to the bar of the house. How miserably he was mistaken was immediately shown, for a petition was presented that very day, the 27th of April, signed by lieutenant-general Hammond, fourteen colonels and lieutenant-colonels, six majors, and one hundred and thirty captains, lieutenants, and other commissioned officers. It was drawn up in energetic language, complaining of the calumnies spread abroad regarding the array, and enumerating the services they had done, the sacrifices they had made for the commonwealth, and praying for the payment of the soldiers' arrears. It declared, indeed, that this movement of petitioning had commenced amongst the soldiers, and that the officers had been induced to take it up to prevent anything unacceptable to the house being put forward.
But the petition of the officers did not prevent the position of the men. When they saw the commons did not immediately comply with the petition of the officers, smarting under the vote of disbandment, coupled with the withholding of their pay, both horse, dragoons, and infantry, went on their own way. They had lately entered into an association to make their complaints known. The officers had established a military council, to consist on and take care of the interests of the army, and the men established a council too. Two commissioned officers, but not exceeding in rank ensigns, and two private soldiers from each regiment, met from time to time to discuss the wants of the army. They were called adjutators or assistants in the cause, and the word soon became corrupted into agitators. Thus there was a sort of army parliament—the officers representing the peers, the soldiers the commons. The whole scheme has been, and it is probable very justly, ascribed to the genius of Cromwell. What confirms the supposition is, that an old friend of his, Berry, a captain, became its president, and that Ayres and Desborough, his two particular friends, the latter of whom had married his sister, were in close communication with the leading officers amongst the agitators. Whitelock soon gives us this curious passage:—
"On the 30th of April, 1647, whilst the debate on the petition and vindication of the army was going on, major-general Skippon produced a letter presented to him the day before by some troopers on behalf of eight regiments of the army of horse, wherein they expressed some reasons why they could not engage in the service of Ireland under the present conduct, under the proposed commandership of Skippon and Massey (the latter of whom they did not trust), and complained of the many scandals and false suggestions which were of late raised against the army and their proceedings. That they were taken as enemies; that they saw designs upon them, and upon many of the godly party in the kingdom. That they could not engage for Ireland, till they were satisfied in their expectations, and their just desires granted. Three troopers, Edward Sexby, William Allen, Thomas Sheppard, who brought this letter, were examined in the house touching the drawing and subscribing of it, and whether their officers were engaged in it or not. They affirmed that it was drawn up at a rendezvous of those eight regiments, and afterwards at several meetings by agents or agitators for each regiment, and that few of their officers knew or took notice of it.
"Those troopers being demanded whether they had not been cavaliers, it was attested by Skippon that they had constantly served the parliament, and some of them from the beginning of the war. Being asked concerning the meaning of some expressions in the petition, especially concerning 'certain men aiming at sovereignty,' they answered that the letter being a joint act of those regiments, they could not give a punctual answer, being only agents; but if they might have the queries in writing, they would carry them to those regiments, and return their answers. They were ordered to attend the house upon summons."
These movements on the part of the army, and the zealous manner in which Cromwell rose and vindicated the conduct of the soldiers on this occasion, warning the house not to drive so loyal and meritorious a body as the army to desperation, caused them to order him, Skippon, and Fleetwood to go down to the army and quieten its discontent by assuring the soldiers of pay and indemnification. These officers went, and met the officers on the 7th of May, who demanded time to prepare an answer after consulting their ​regiments. There appeared to have been doubts and dissension sown by the presbyterians, and as the different regiments came to opposite conclusions, the parliament thought it might venture to disband them. On the 25th it was settled that such regiments as did not volunteer for Ireland should be disbanded at fixed times and places. Fairfax, pleading indisposition, left the house and hastened down to the army, and immediately marched it from Saffron Walden to Bury St. Edmunds. The soldiers declared that they would not disband till they were paid, and demanded a rendezvous, declaring that if the officers did not grant it, they would hold it themselves. Fairfax announced this to the parliament, praying it to adopt soothing measures; and that, though he was compelled to comply with a measure out of order, he would do what he could to preserve it. The house, on the 28th, sent down the earl of Warwick, the lord Delawar, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and three other members of the commons, to promise eight weeks pay, and to see the disbanding effected. On hearing the terms from the commissioners, the soldiers exclaimed—"Eight weeks pay! We want nearer eight times eight!" There was universal confusion; the men refused to disband without full payment. They hastened to their rendezvous at Bury St. Edmunds, each man paying fourpence towards the expenses; and they ordered that the army should draw together, and a general rendezvous be held on the 4th of June. At Oxford the solders seized the disbanding money as part payment, and demanded the rest, or no disbanding.
On the 4th and 5th of June, accordingly, the grand rendezvous was held on Kentford Heath, near Newmarket: a strange and daring spectacle of an army not obeying as armies are wont, like blind automata, but acting and reasoning together like men. They entered into a covenant to see justice done to one and all, and not till then to listen to any other orders or terms. Meantime, a still more extraordinary scene had taken place, of which the direct springs may be guessed, but which springs were so closely concealed, that no clever historian could ever lay them bare. Scarcely was the honourable house of commons in possession of the news of the Kentford Heath rendezvous, when it was paralysed by this still more amazing announcement.
The house of lords, not liking the proceedings of the army, had ordered the king for greater safety to be removed from Holmby to Oatlands, nearer the capital. The army anticipated that move, and by whose orders no man knows, nor ever will know, cornet Joyce, of Whalley's regiment, followed by a strong party of horse, presented himself on the 3rd of June, a little after midnight, at Holmby House. After surrounding the house with his troop, said to be one thousand strong, he knocked and demanded admittance, telling major-general Brown and colonel Graves, that he was come to speak to the king. "From whom?" demanded these officers, awoke from their sleep. "From myself," said Joyce; whereat they laughed. But Joyce told them it was no laughing matter. They then advised him to draw off his troops, and in the morning he should see the commissioners. Joyce replied that he was not come there to be advised by them, or to talk to the commissioners, but to speak to the king; and speak to him he would, and soon. At this threat Brown and Graves bade their soldiers stand to; their arms, and defend the place; but the soldiers, instead of that, threw open the doors, and bade their old comrades welcome. Joyce then went direct to the chamber of the commissioners, and informed them that there was a design to seize the king, and place him at the head of an army to put down that under general Fairfax; and that to prevent another war, he was come to secure the person of the king, and see that he was not led into further mischief; for, added the cornet, "there be some who endeavour to pull down king and people, and set up themselves."
The commissioners desired him not to disturb the king's sleep, but to wait till morning, and they would tell his majesty of his arrival and business. In the morning Joyce found that Brown had contrived to send off Graves to fetch up the king's guard; and "some of his damning blades did say and swear they would fetch a party." But Joyce—a stout fellow for a tailor, which he had been—did not trouble himself about that, for he knew the guard would not move, as they did not—at length insisted on being admitted to the king himself. According to Joyce's own account, it was ten o'clock in the evening again when he was ushered, with two or three of his followers, into the royal presence. The soldiers took off their hats, and displayed no rudeness, but a blunt proceeding to business. According to Clarendon, the cornet told the king that he was sorry to have disturbed his sleep, but that he must go with him. Charles asked whither? He said to the army. But where was the army? replied the king. The cornet said they would show him. His majesty asked by what authority they came. Joyce said "by this!" and showed him his pistol, and desired his majesty to cause himself to be dressed, because it was necessary they should make haste. The king sent for the commissioners, who asked Joyce whether he had any order from parliament?—He said no. From the general?—No. What, then, was his authority?—to whom he gave the same reply as to the king, by holding up his pistol. They said they would write to the parliament to learn its pleasure, to which Joyce replied, they could do so, but the king meantime must go with him.
CROMWELL DISCOVERING THE KINGS LETTER, AT THE BLUE BOAR IN HOLBORN.
The news of these proceedings of the army carried consternation into the two houses of parliament, and into the city, where the presbyterian party was in full strength, they ordered the immediate arrest of Cromwell, which they had been intending some time, but they were informed that he left town the very same morning that Joyce appeared at Holmby—a significant fact—and was seen riding away with only one attendant. He reached the headquarters of the army with his horse all in a foam. The house voted to sit all the next day, though it were Sunday, and have Mr. Marshall to pray for them. Rumour declared that the army was on its march, and would be there the next day at noon. The house ordered the committee of safety to sit up all night, taking measures for the protection of the city; the train-bands to be called out, and all the lines of communication guarded. The next day the shops were all shut, the town in indescribable confusion, and terror in every face, as though the army was already there. The parliament wrote to Fairfax, commanding that the army should not infringe the order of the two houses, by coming within twenty-five miles of London, and that the king should be returned to the care of the commissioners who attended him at Holmby, and colonel Rossitor's regiment be the guard of his person. Fairfax replied that the army had reached St. Albans before he received their conmmand, but it should proceed no further; that he had sent colonel Whalley with his regiment to meet his majesty on his way from Holmby, and offered to return him thither, but that he preferred the air of Newmarket, and that all care should be taken of his person.
In fact, Charles was delighted with the change. He had escaped from the harsh keeping and the strict regimen of the presbyterians, whom he detested, and felt himself, as it were, a king again at the head of an army: the dissensions now rushing on so hotly betwixt his enemies, wonderfully encouraging his hopes of making friends of the more liberal party. He was in a condition of comparatively greater freedom and respect in the army than he had been at Holmby: a larger number of troops and much superior officers. He was relieved from the presence of Mr. Agitator Joyce. All restraint being taken off from persons resorting to him, he saw every day the faces of many that were grateful to him. No sooner did he ask for the attendance of his own chaplains, than those he named, Drs. Sheldon, Morley, Sandereon, and Hammond, were sent for, and performed the service regularly, no one being forbidden to attend. The king was left to his leisure and his friends, only removing with the army as it moved, and in all places he was as well provided for and accommodated, as he had been in any progress. The best gentlemen, Clarendon admits, of the several counties through which he passed, daily resorted to him without distinction. He was attended by some of his old trusty servants in the places nearest his person. On hearing of his present condition, the queen sent Sir John Berkeley from Paris, and his old groom of the chambers, who had been living at Rouen, to be with him again, and they were freely admitted by Cromwell and Ireton. "Many good officers," says Clarendon, "who had served his majesty faithfully, were civilly received by the officers of the army, and lived quietly in their quarters, which they could not do anywhere else, which raised a great reputation to the army throughout England, and as much reproach upon parliament." This was raised still more by the army's address to parliament, desiring that "care might be taken for settling the king's rights, according to the several professions they had made in their declarations; and that the royal party might be treated with more candour and less rigour." Even the most devoted of royalists, Sir Philip Warwick, says, "The deep and bloody-hearted independents all this while used the king very civilly, admitting several of his servants and some of his chaplains to attend him, and officiate by the service-book."
The commons ordered all officers to attend their regiments, and sent down commissioners to acquaint the army of the votes of the two houses. The army gave the commissioners such a reception as no commissioners had ever witnessed before. Twenty-one thousand men had assembled to a rendezvous on Triploe Heath, near Royston, and the general and the commissioners rode to each regiment, to acquaint them with the parliamentary votes as to their instalment of pay, their disbanding, and their not approaching within twenty-five miles of London. The answer was sent up in shouts of "Justice! justice!" A petition also from the well-affected people of Essex was delivered on the field to the general in presence of the commissioners, against the disbanding, declaring "that the commonwealth had many enemies, who watched for such an opportunity to destroy the good people." A memorial was, moreover, drawn up and signed by the general and all the chief officers, to the lord mayor and corporation of London, warning them against false representations of the intentions of the army, for that the war being at an and, all that they desired and prayed for was, that the peace of the kingdom should be settled according to the declarations of parliament before the army was called out, and that being done, the army should be paid before disbanding.
So far from pacifying the parliament, these proceedings alarmed it infinitely more, and it issued an order that the army should not come within forty-five miles of the capital. On its part, the army collected addresses from Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and all the surrounding counties, praying the purgation of the house from all such members as were disqualified from sitting there by corruption, delinquency, abuse of the state, or undue election; and on the 16th of June, from its headquarters, St. Albans, the army formally impeached of high treason eleven of the most active presbyterian members—Hollis, Waller, Clotworthy, Stapleton, Lewis, Slaynard, Massey, Harley, Long, Glynne, and Nichols. This impeachment was presented to the house by ​twelve officers of the army, coionels, lieutenant-colonels, majors, and captains; and within a few days the general and officers sent a letter to the house, informing it that they should appoint proper person to conduct the impeachment, and make good their charges; and desired the house to suspend the accused forthwith, as it was not fitting that those persons who had done their best to prejudice the army, should sit as judges of their own actions.
This, says Clarendon, was an arrow cut of their own quiver, which the commons did not expect; and though it was a legitimate consequence of the impeachments of Finch, Strafford, Laud, and others, they endeavoured to set it at defiance. The parliament and its army were, in fact, come to the pass which the brave old royalist. Sir Jacob Astley, had foreseen when he surrendered his regiment at Stowe, in 1646—"You have done your work, my masters, and may go and play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves."
The army, to settle the matter, marched from St. Albans to Uxbridge, and at that sight the eleven members, Hollis and the rest, withdrew from the house of commons, and the commons assumed a modest and complying behaviour, voting the army under Fairfax to be the real army of England, and worthy of all respect. They sent certain proposals to Fairfax, which induced him to remove his headquarters from Uxbridge to Wycombe. The eleven members, looking on this as a degree of submission to parliament, immediately plucked up their courage, and Hollis and the rest appeared in their places, preferring charges in return against the officers, and demanding a fair trial. But they soon perceived their mistake, and, soliciting the speaker's leave of absence, and his passport to go out of the kingdom, disappeared.
At this juncture Charles, emboldened by the courtesy of the army, requested permission to see his children. He had been necessarily quartered, according to the movements of the army, at Newmarket, Royston, Hatfield House, Woburn Abbey, Windsor Castle, and was now residing at Caversham, a house of lord Craven's, near Reading. The parliament had tried in vain to get him out of the army's hands, by issuing a declaration to the kingdom, representing him as in restraint, and professing their readiness "to bring him with honour to his parliament, which had been their intention from the beginning." But the army appealed to the king himself, if he had not more liberty with them, more freedom to see his friends, than he had ever had in the hands of the parliament; and Charles expressed his readiness to remain, only desiring that both parties should hasten their arrangements, that the kingdom might come to peace and happiness, in which he should not be without a share.
Fairfax informed the parliament of his majesty's request to see his children, which was at once complied with. These were the duke of York, now about fifteen, the princess Elizabeth, a year or two younger than the duke, and the duke of Gloucester, about seven years of age. Charles, the prince of Wales, was, as we know, now in France, and the eldest daughter married to the prince of Orange. The youngest, Henrietta, who was born at Exeter, during the queen's visit to England, the king had never seen, for though the queen left her behind after the surrender of Exeter, her governess, the countess of Morton, bad contrived to carry her away to France, to the queen, whilst Charles was at Newcastle. Lady Merton was a Villiers, and, like most of that family, remarkably handsome; yet she contrived to act the beggar woman from Oatlands to Dover, having an artificial hump on her back, on which she carried the child, calling it her boy. But her own looks offered not the greatest danger of discovery; it was the little girl's indignation at her rags and disguise, telling almost every one that noticed her, that she was not a little beggar boy, but the princess. With the three remaining children Charles was allowed to spend a couple of days, and this privilege was afterwards frequently repeated. The interview was so affecting, that it drew tears even from Cromwell, which his enemies have attributed to his hypocrisy. There is no doubt, however, that they were real, and that Cromwell was at this time much disposed towards restoring the king under proper restrictions, though he treated him with much dignity, and did not condescend, like Fairfax, to kiss his hand.
The struggle betwixt the army and parliament, that is, betwixt the presbyterian and independent interests, was all this time raging. For six weeks the army was advancing or retiring, according as the parliament acted; the parliament only giving way through intimidation. According as the affairs stood, the city was peaceful or in alarm, now shutting all its shops, now much negotiation going on; the army lying still near, and paid more duly, out of terror, by the parliament. At length, the army had so far succeeded as to have the insulting declaration of Hollis, "the blot of ignominy," erased from the journals of the house, and the ordinance of the 4th of May, procured by Hollis, for the placing the militia of the city in more exclusively presbyterian hands, revoked. But towards the end of July, the strong presbyterian element in the city was again in such ferment, that it forgot its terrors of the army, and proceeded to daring extremities. The presbyterian faction demanded that conventicles, that is, all meeting-houses of all classes, except presbyterian, should be closed, and called all the citizens to meet in Guildhall, to hear the covenant read, and sign an engagement, soldiers, sailors, citizens, and apprentices, to drive away the army and bring the king to Westminster, and make a treaty with him. A hundred thousand signatures were put to this paper; and had the courage been half as great as the bluster, the army had been swept to destruction. On the 26th of July, a few days afterwards, a vast rabble surrounded the houses of parliament, calling on both lords and commons to restore the order regarding the city militia; they crowded into the houses with their hats on, crying, "Vote! vote!" and their numbers keeping the doors open. Under this intimidation both lords and commons voted the restoration of the presbyterian ordinance for the change of the militia, and adjourned to Friday.
On Friday the two houses met, but were astonished to find that their speakers had fled, accompanied by several members of both houses, and were gone to the army. It was found that Sir Henry Vane, the earl of Northumberland, the earl of Warwick, and other lords and commoners were gone. Had it been only Sir Henry Vane and the independents who had gone, it would have astonished nobody; ​but neither Lenthal, the speaker of the commons, nor the earl of Manchester, the speaker of the lords, were suspected of any great leaning to the army, whilst Warwick was a stanch presbyterian, and Northumberland so much in the raven at that party as to have the care of his royal children. This circumstance showed the violence of the mob which had forced parliament, and rendered moderate men resolved to escape rather than submit to be its puppets There were no less than fifteen lords and a hundred commoners who had thus resented mob intimidation.
On making this lamentable discovery, the two houses elected temporary speakers, and issued orders forbidding the army to advance, recalling the eleven fugitive members, and ordered Massey, Waller, and Toyntz, to call out the city militia, and defend the city.
No sooner had Fairfax heard the news of these proceedings, than he instantly sent the king to Hampton Court, and marched from Bedford to Hounslow Heath, where he ordered a general rendezvous of the whole army. On Hounslow Heath, at the appointed rendezvous, the speakers of the two houses, with their maces, and attended by the fugitive lords and commons, stated to the general that they had not freedom in Westminster, but were in danger of their lives from tumult, and claimed the protection of the army. The general and the officers received the speakers and members with profound respect, and assured them they would reinstate therein in their proper places, or perish in the attempt. Nothing, in fact, could have been such a God-send to the army, for besides their own grievances, they had the grievances of the coerced members to redress, and the sanctity of parliament to defend. They ordered the most careful accommodations for the comfort of the members, and a guard to attend them, consulting them on all their measures. Fairfax quartered his army about Hounslow, Brentford, Twickenham, and the adjacent villages, at the same time grieving colonel Rainsborough to cross the Thames at Hampton Court with a brigade of horse and foot, and cannon, and to secure Southwark and the works which covered the end of London Bridge.
Meantime, never was London in a more terrible confusion. The commons having no mace of their own, sent for the city mace. The colonels were in all haste calling out the militia. On Saturday and Monday the shops were all shut, nothing going on but enlisting and mustering. St. James's fields were all in a stir with driving and manœuvring; news constantly coming of the approach of the army. "Massey," says Whitelock, "sent out scouts to Brentford; but ten men of the army beat thirty of his, and took a flag from them. The city militia and common council sate late, and a great number of people attended at Guildhall. When a scout came in and brought news that the army made a halt, or other good intelligence, they cried, 'One and all!' But if the scouts brought word that the army was advancing, then they would cry as loud, 'Treat! treat! treat!' and thus they spent the night."
Tuesday, August the 3rd, was a fearful day. The people of Southwark declared that they would not fight against the army, and went in crowds to Guildhall, demanding peace, at which Poyntz lost all patience, drew his sword, and slashed many of them, some mortally.
The Southwarkers kept their word, for they received Rainsborough and his troops; the militia openly fraternised with the soldiers, shaking hand,s with them through the gates, and abandoned the works which protected the city to them. Rainsborough took possession, without opposition, of all the forts and works on that side of the river from Southwark to Gravesend. In the morning the authorities of the city, finding that Southwark was in possession of the army, and the city gate on that side in their hands, they were completely prostrated, and hastened to make their submission. Poyntz, accustomed to conquest in the field, and the hardihood of the presbyterian soldiers, was filled with contempt for these cringing, cowering citizens. What! had they not ten thousand men in arms, a loan of ten thousand pound on foot, and orders to raise auxiliary troops to the amount of eighteen regiments! Had they not plenty of ammunition and arms in the Tower, whence they had drawn four hundred barrels of gunpowder, and other material for present defence? But all availed not; the citizens hastened to lay themselves and the city at the feet of Fairfax. He had fixed his headquarters at Hammersmith, but he met the civic authorities at Holland House, Kensington, where he dictated the following conditions:—That they should abandon the parliament now sitting and the eleven impeached members; should restore the militia to the independents; surrender all their forts, including the Tower; recall their declarations, and conduct themselves peaceably.
On Friday, the 6th of August, Fairfax entered the city, preceded by a regiment of infantry and another of cavalry. He was on horseback, attended by his body-guards and a crowd of gentlemen. A long train of carriages, containing the fugitive speakers and members, lords and commons, followed, and then another regiment of cavalry. The soldiers marched three abreast, with boughs of laurel in their hats. The late turbulent multitudes completed their shame by raising forced acclamations as they passed. Fairfax thus proceeded through Hyde Park, where the corporation met him, and offered him a great gold cup, which he curtly declined, and so rode on to the houses of parliament, where he replaced the speakers in their respective chairs, and the members in their old places. Not one of the lords, who had remained, except the earl of Pembroke, ventured to appear, and he declared that he considered all the proceedings since the departure of the speakers as null. No sooner were the speakers in their places, than they voted thanks to the general and the army; made Fairfax commander of all the forces in England and Wales, and constable of the Tower. It ordered a gratuity of a months' pay for the army, and that the city militia should be divided, and Southwark, Westminster, and the Tower Hamlets should command their own. The lords voted all acts of parliament from the departure of the speakers on the 26th of June, to their return on the 6th of August, void; but the resolution did not pass the commons, where there was a large body of presbyterians, without much opposition.
The eleven impeached members fled, and were allowed to escape into France, whereupon they were voted guilty of high treason, as well as the lord mayor and four aldermen of London, two officers of the trained-band, and the earls of ​Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middleton. the lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The civic officers were sent to the Tower, The city was ordered to find the one hundred thousand pounds voted for the army. Fairfax distributed different regiments about Whitehall and the houses of parliament for their protection, and others in the Strand, Holborn, and Southwark, to keep the city in quiet. His headquarters were moved to Putney, with forces at Chelsea and Fulham, On Sunday he and the officers attended the preaching of Hugh Peters, the army chaplain, at Putney Church, and this the independents were in full power, and the presbyterians signally humbled.
Before, and also whilst these events had been taking place, the army had made overtures to the king for peace, and a solid settlement of the kingdom. As we have seen, from the moment that the king came into their hands, they had treated him in a far different style to the presbyterians. He seemed, in his freedom of action, in the admission of his children and friends in his society, in the respect and even friendliness shown him, to feel himself a king again. There were many reasons why the independents should desire to close with the king. Though they had the army with them, they knew that the presbyterians were far more numerous. London was vehemently presbyterian, and the Scots were ready to back that party, because essentially the same in religion as themselves. The independents and all the dissenters who ranged themselves under their banners were anxious for religious liberty; the Scotch and English presbyterians had no more idea of such a thing as belonging to Christianity, than had the catholics or the church of England as represented by Charles and Laud. If they prevailed, a despotism, as iron and as illiberal, would be established, as that which they had fought to put down; nay, far more so, for it was a despotism based on a sour and ascetic view of religion, which had no taste or tolerance for the elegancies of life, or the intellectual amenities of literature. To a faith so gloomy and crabbed, Shakespeare was a godless stage-player, and Sydney and Spenser high priests of Baal, of vain and carnal imaginations. To save England from a regimen so barbarous, a fanaticism so curdling and congelant of all the nobler feelings and sunnier views of life and even of religion, was an object of extreme desire to all those who, with their own high tone of zeal and language, began to see the ampler light and breathe the milder atmosphere of Christ's gentle and beneficent faith.
From the moment that the king was received by the army, he seems to have won on the goodwill of the officers. Fairfax, on meeting him on his way from Holmby, kissed his hand, and treated him with all the deference due to the sovereign. Cromwell and Ireton, though they did not so for condescend, and kept a degree of distant reserve, as remembering that they had to treat Charles as an enemy, were soon softened, and Cromwell sent him assurances of his attachment, and of his desire to see his affairs set right. Many of the officers openly expressed commiseration of his misfortunes, and admiration of his real piety, and his amiable domestic character. It was not long before such relations were established with him, and with his confidential friends, Berkeley, Ashburnham, and Legge, that secret negotiations were commenced for a settlement of all the difficulties betwixt him and his people. The officers made him several public addresses expressive of their sincere desire to see a pacification effected; and Fairfax, to prepare the way, addressed a letter to the two houses, repelling the aspersion cast upon the army, of its being hostile to the monarchy, and avowing that "tender, equitable, and moderate dealings towards him, his family, and his former adherents," should be adopted to heal the feuds of the nation.
It has been the fashion to consider Cromwell as a consummate hypocrite, and to regard all that he did as a part acted, for the ultimate attainment of his own ends. This is the view which Clarendon has taken of him; but whatever he might do at a later period, everything shows that at this time both he and his brother officers were most really in earnest, and, could Charles have been brought to subscribe to any terms except such as gave up the nation to his uncontrolled will, at this moment his troubles would have been at an end, and he would have found himself on a constitutional throne, with every means of honour and happiness in his tower. Nothing more convincingly demonstrates this than the conditions which the parliament submitted to them. They, in fact, greatly resembled the celebrated conditions of peace offered at Uxbridge, with several propositions regarding parliament and taxation, which mark a wonderfully improved political knowledge and liberality in the officers. They did not even insist on the abolition of the hierarchy, but merely stipulated for the toleration of the other opinions, taking away all penalties for not attending church, and for attending what were called conventicles. The command of the army by parliament was to be restricted to ten years; only five of the royalist adherents were to be excluded from pardon, and some less objectionable mode for protecting the state against catholic designs than the present oppressive laws against recusants was to be devised.
Parliaments were to continue two years, unless dissolved earlier by their own consent, and were to sit every year for a prescribed term, or a shorter one, if business permitted. Rotten boroughs, or such as were insignificant, were to be disfranchised, and a greater number of members returned from the counties in proportion to the amount of rates, and all that regarded election of members or reforms of the commons should belong exclusively to the commons. There were very judicious regulations for the nomination of sheriffs and of magistrates; the excise was to be taken from all articles of life at once, and from all other articles very shortly; the land tax to be fairly and equally apportioned; the irritating maintenance of the clergy by tithes was to be done away with; suits at law to be made less expensive; all men to be made liable for their debts; and insolvent debtors, who had surrendered all their property to their creditors, were to be discharged.
It will be seen that even yet, we have not established so full and admirable a reform of parliament as this, and the terms regarding the church were such as the king was not likely to obtain from the presbyterians except through the parliament. The whole presented a system of government, which for liberality, broad toleration, wisdom of finance, and judicious balance of power betwixt the different estates of the government, the world had never yet had in idea, far less in example. Charles's own friends and advisers were ​charmed with it, and flattered themselves that at length they saw a prospect of ending all troubles; but they were quickly undeceived, and struck down in dumb astonishment by Charles rejecting them.
Carisbrook Castle, Isle of Wight.
Charles was still the same man; he was at the same moment secretly listening to the overtures of the Scotch commissioners, who were jealous of the army, and instead of seizing the opportunity to be once more a king, and a powerful and beloved king, he was flattering himself with the old idea that he would bring the two great factions "to extirpate each other." Sir John Berkeley, his earnest adviser, says, "What with having so concurring a second as Mr. Ashburnham, and what with the encouraging messages of lord Lauderdale and others from the presbyterian party and the city of London, who pretended to despise the army, and to oppose them to death, his majesty seemed very much elated; inasmuch that when the proposals were solemnly sent to him, and his concurrence most humbly and earnestly desired, his majesty, not only to the astonishment of Ireton and the rest, but even to mine, entertained them with very tart and bitter discourses, saying sometimes that he would have no man suffer for his sake, and that he repented of nothing so much as the bill against the lord Strafford—which, though most true, was unpleasant for them to hear; that he would have the church established according to law, by the proposals. They replied it was none of their work to do it; that it was enough for them to waive the point, and they hoped enough for his majesty, since he had waived the government of the church in Scotland. His majesty said that he hoped God had forgiven him that sin, and repeated often, 'You cannot be without me; you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you!'"
It was still the old man! the old intolerable, incorrigible talk. He could not give up a single proposition to save all the rest, his life, his family, his crown, and kingdom. The officers looked at one another in amazement; the king's friends in consternation. Sir John Berkeley whispered in his ear, that his majesty seemed to have some secret strength that they did not know of; on which Charles seemed to recollect himself, and spoke more softly; but it was too late, for colonel Rainsborough, who was least inclined for the pacification, rode to the army, and made known the king's obstinacy. The agitators rushed together in crowds, and, excessively chagrined at the rejection of such terms, burst into the bed-chamber of lord Lauderdale, whom they suspected of having thus perverted the king's mind, and compelled him, spite of his standing in his position as commissioner from the states of Scotland, to rise, and get off back again to the capital.
CROMWELL SUPPRESSING THE MUTINY
The levellers were, in fact, a set of men amongst whom Lilburne, now colonel John Lilburne, was a leading character. They had imbibed from the Old Testament, which was their favourite study, a spirit of republicanism combined with a wild fanatic style of language. They found in the remarks on monarchs in the Scriptures, on the election of Saul by Israel, a clear denunciation of all kings, and they declared they would no longer seek after kings who aimed only at absolute power, nor after lords who sought only honours and places, but they would have a free government by a parliament, and a free religion. They drew up a paper called "The Case of the Army," and another called "The Agreement of the People," which were presented to the general and the agitators of the eleven regiments. Religious republicanism was abroad in the army, and they drew up a new constitution, at which a biennial parliament, with six monthly sessions, widely extended franchise, and a more equally distributed representation, was at the head. There were to be neither king nor lords in their system. Colonels Pride and Rainsborough supported their views: Cromwell and Ireton strenuously opposed them. They were, therefore, immediately the objects of attack, and represented as being in a close and secret compact with the king, the Ahab of the nation, to betray the people. Lilburne was busily employed in writing and printing violent denunciations in flaming style, and strongly garnished with Bible terms. Parliament denounced the doctrines of the levellers as destructive of all government, and ordered the authors to be prosecuted; but Lilburne against John and John against Lilburne was not so easily extinguished.
Whilst this fanatic effervescence had broken out in the army, the presbyterians in parliament and the Scottish commissioners made one effort more for the recovery of their ascendancy. Regarding the religious toleration proposed in the array conditions as something horrible and monstrously wicked, they drew up fresh proposals of their own, and presented them to the king. If Charles could not endure the army proposals, he was not likely to accept those of the presbyterians, who gave no place to his own church at all; and he told them that he liked those of the army better. This answer Berkeley showed to the officers of the army before it was sent; they highly approved of it, and promised to do all they could in the house to get an order voted for a personal treaty, "and," Berkeley adds, "to my understanding, performed it, for both Cromwell and Ireton, with Vane and all their friends, seconded with great resolution this desire of his majesty." Cromwell, indeed, he says, spoke so zealously in its favour, that it only increased, both in the house and out of it, the suspicion of his having made a compact with the king to restore him. The more the officers argued for a personal treaty, the more the presbyterians in the house opposed it; but at length a resolution was carried for it. It was thought that it would occupy twenty days, but it went on for two months, and came to nothing—other and strange events occurring.
The levellers, after this display of zeal on the part of Cromwell, vowed that they would kill both him and the king, whom they not only styled an Ahab and a Coloquintida, a man of blood, and the everlasting obstacle to peace and liberty, but demanded his head as the cause of the murder of thousands of freeborn Englishmen. Cromwell declared that his life was not safe in his own quarters, and we are assured that Lilburne and another agitator named Wildman had agreed to assassinate him, as a renegade and traitor to liberty. To check this wild and dangerous spirit in the army, Cromwell and Ireton recommended that it should be drawn closer together, and thus more under the immediate discipline of its chief officers. This was agreed upon, and a general rendezvous was appointed to take place at Ware on the 16th of November.
During the interval, Charles was royally lodged at Hampton Court, and was freely permitted to have his children with him, but all the time he was at his usual work of plotting. The marquis of Ormond having surrendered his command in Ireland to the parliament, was come hither, and lord Capel, who had been one of Charles's most distinguished commanders, being also permitted by parliament to return from abroad, a scheme was laid, whilst Charles was amusing the army and parliament with the discussion of the "Proposals," that the next spring, through the Scottish commissioners, who were also in the plot, a Scottish army should enter England, forty thousand strong, and calling on the presbyterians to join them, should march forward. At the same time Ormond should lead an army from Ireland, whilst Capel summoned the rest of the king's friends in ​England to join the converging forces, and plant the king on the throne.
But this wholesale conspiracy could not escape the secret agents of Cromwell; the whole was revealed to him, and he bitterly upbraided Ashburnham with the incurable duplicity of his master, who, whilst he was negotiating with the army, was planning its destruction. There appears, moreover, every reason to believe that Cromwell discovered deeper and more personal treason in Charles towards himself. Morrice, in his life of lord Orrery, declares that Cromwell himself related to lord Broghill, that at this crisis, when Cromwell was asserting himself to bring about the agreement with the king; be and Ireton were informed by one of their spies, who belonged to the king's bed-chamber, that their doom was fixed, and that they might convince themselves of it by intercepting a secret messenger of the king's, who would that night sleep at the Blue Boar, in Holborn, and who carried his despatches sewed up in the skirt of his saddle. That Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, waited that evening, and seized the saddle, where they found a letter in which the king informed the queen that he was now courted by both factions, and that that which bid the highest for him should have him, but he thought he should close with the Scots rather than the other.
This not only agrees with the fact that he was at that moment planning the Scotch invasion, but lord Bolingbroke assured Pope and lord Marchmont, that lord Oxford had often told him that he had seen and handled an original letter that Charles I. wrote to the queen in answer to one of hers that had been intercepted, and then forwarded to him; wherein she had reproached him for having made too great concessions to these villains, namely, that Cromwell should be lieutenant of Ireland for life without account; that that country should be in the hands of the party; and that Cromwell should have a garter, &c. That in this letter of the king's it was said that she might leave him to manage, who was better acquainted with all the circumstances than she could be; but she might be entirely easy as to the concessions he should make, for he should know in due time how to deal with the rogues, who, instead of a silken garter, should be fitted with a hempen cord.
From this moment, whatever was the cause, and the preceding incidents appear both certain and sufficient, Cromwell, Ireton, and the army in general, came to the conclusion that all attempts to bring so double-faced and intriguing a person to any honourable and enduring terms were vain. That if he were restored to power, he would use it to destroy every one who had been compelled to oppose his despotic plans; if he were not restored, they would be in a perpetual state of plottings, alarms, and disquietudes, destructive of all comfort or prosperity to the nation. As the officers drew back from further intercourse with the king, the menaces of the levellers became louder; and there were not wanting persons to carry these threats to the king. He saw the levellers growing in violence, and in numbers, in fact, leveller and agitator were synonymous terms; the infection had spread through the greater part of the army. The fact of the officers having been friendly with him, had made them suspicious to the men; they had driven Ireton from the council, and there were loud threats of impeaching Cromwell. Several regiments were in a state of insubordination, and it was doubtful whether, at the approaching rendezvous, Fairfax could maintain the discipline of the army. The reports of the proceedings of the levellers, who really threatened to seize his person to prevent the parliament or officers agreeing with him, and their truculent manifestos, were all diligently carried to him by the Scottish commissioners, who, according to Berkeley, "were the first that presented his dangers to him." He was assured by Mr. Ackworth, that colonel Rainsborough, the favourite of the levellers, meant to kill him; and Clarendon says that "every day he received little billets or letters, secretly conveyed to him without any name, which advertised him of wicked designs upon his life;" many, he adds, who repaired to him brought the same advice from men of unquestionable sincerity.
Charles resolved to escape, and, as he was in some cases as religiously scrupulous of his word as he was in others reckless of it, he withdrew his promise not to attempt to escape, on the plea that he found himself quite as rigourously watched as if he were not on honour. Colonel Whalley, who commanded his guard, immediately ordered it to be doubled, and dismissed all his servants except Legge, refusing further admittance to him. Notwithstanding this, he found means of communicating with Ashburnham and Berkeley, and consulted with them on the means of escape, and the place to escape to. He proposed the city, and Ashburnham advised him to go to the house of the lord mayor, in London, there to meet the Scottish commissioners, agree with them on their last propositions, and then send for the lords. Berkeley disapproved of this, believing they would not bring over the common; and then Ashburnham recommended the king to flee to the Isle of Wight, and throw himself on the generosity of colonel Hammond, the governor there. This, he says, he did, because colonel Hammond had a few days before told him he was going down to him government, "because he found the army was resolved to break all promises with the king, and that he would hare nothing to with such perfidious actions."
This seems to have inspired a belief in these men that Hammond was secretly in favour of the king, strengthened, no doubt, by the fact that Dr. Hammond, the king's chaplain, was his uncle, and had lately introduced him to his majesty as an ingenuous and repentant youth, notwithstanding his post, of real loyalty. They forgot that Hammond had another uncle, lieutenant-general Hammond, who was as democratic as the chaplain was loyal, and was a great patron of the adjutators. They seem to have reckoned as little on the honour of the young man, who was a gentleman and officer, and had married a daughter of John Hampden.
There were other schemes, one to seek refuge in Sir John Oglander's House, in the Isle of Wight, and there was a talk of a ship being ordered to be somewhere ready for him; but when the escape was made, it appeared to have been just as ill contrived as all the rest of Charles's escapes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had contrived to meet the king in the evening in the gallery of Hampton Court, and settled the mode of escape. It was the king's custom, on the Mondays and Thursdays, to write letters for the foreign post, and in the ​evenings he left his bed-chamber betwixt five and six o'clock, and went to prayers, and thence to supper. On one of these evenings, Thursday, the 11th of November, colonel Whalley, finding the king much later than usual in leaving his chamber, became uneasy, went thither, and found him gone. On the table he had left some letters, one to the parliament, another to the commissioners, and a third to colonel Whalley. In the letter to the parliament, he said liberty was as necessary to kings as others; that he had endured a long captivity in the hope that it might lead to a good peace, but that as it did not, he had withdrawn himself; that wherever he might be, he should earnestly desire a satisfactory agreement without further bloodshed, and was ready to break through his cloud of retirement, and show himself Pater patriæ, whenever he could be heard with honour, freedom, and safety.
It appeared that he had escaped by the way of Paradise, a place so called in the gardens; his cloak was found lying in the gallery, and there were tramplings about a back gate leading to the waterside. Legge accompanied him down the backstairs, and Ashburnham and Berkeley joined them at the gate. The night was dark and stormy, which favoured their escape. They crossed the river at Thames Ditton, and made for Sutton, in Hampshire, where they had horses in readiness. Why they had not provided horses at a nearer point does not appear. In the night they lost their way in the forest, and reaching Sutton only at day break, and hearing that a county committee on parliamentary business was sitting there, they got out their horses, and rode away towards Southampton.
That night Cromwell was aroused from his bed at Putney, with a startling express that the king had escaped. He despatched a letter to the speaker, Lenthal, that night, dated twelve o'clock, with the news for parliament, and the news was the next morning announced to both houses. The confusion may be imagined; orders were issued to close all the ports, and all who concealed the place of the king's retreat, or harboured his person, were declared guilty of high treason, and menaced with loss of all their estate, and with death without mercy. On the 13th, colonel Whalley gave a narrative to the lords of the particulars of his escape as far as known. It appeared that the repeated howling of a greyhound in the king's chamber, first assured them that he could not be there, and in his letter to Whalley, he desired him to send this black bitch to the duke of Richmond. On Monday the 15th, a letter from colonel Hammond, from the Isle of Wight, much to the relief of parliament and army, announced that the absconded king was safe in his hands at Carisbrook Castle.
Both Ashburnham and Berkeley have left narratives of the escape, which, however, differ greatly in many particulars; but the following particulars appear to be pretty near the truth:—That on approaching Southampton, the king appeared apprehensive of proceeding to the Isle of Wight, till he knew how the governor would receive him, and therefore they proceeded to lord Southampton's, at Tichfield, where the mother of lord Southampton was, and to whom Charles at once made himself known, having perfect confidence in her honour. He sent Ashburnham to see after the mysterious ship, who returned, not having been able to find any such ship, and so being refreshed, the king sent on Ashburnham and Berkeley to the Isle of Wight, to sound the governor. On informing him that the king had escaped, and proposed to come to him, colonel Hammond turned very pale, and trembled very much, exclaiming that they had ruined him by bringing the king to him, for his loyalty and regard for the king was such, that he could not willingly do anything to his injury, at the same time that he was placed in a great trust by the parliament, and was bound in honour and duty not to betray it. Both of the narrators confess that they did not think it proper, under the circumstances, that the king should trust himself to the governor, as well they might not; yet when colonel Hammond demanded where the king was, they were weak enough to tell him. The governor immediately proposed to go to the king, to which they strangely consented, on condition that he should take no other person with him. Yet, say they, at Cowes Castle he took Basket, the governor of the castle, with him. These unaccountable messengers then put back across the Solent, and arriving at Tichfield, Ashburnham went up and told his majesty what he had done, the others staying below. When Charles heard that they had brought the governor, he exclaimed, "O Jack, thou hast undone me!" Ashburnham, hearing that, fell into a violent fit of weeping, and told Charles that he had not brought him without providing a remedy. The king insisted on knowing what that was, and Ashburnham said that the governor and Basket were but two; if he disapproved of seeing them, he would go down and kill them both; that he had considered it, and settled that to be the best, because he felt sure that the governor would have sent spies after them and seized the king, but now he would prevent that.
The king, hearing that, paced the room some time, and said he had sent to engage a ship at Southampton, and expected every minute to hear of it, and in that case he would contrive to get away, but he would not hear of the murder of Hammond; and after waiting two hours, and no ship arriving, and Hammond growing impatient, he allowed him to come up. The king told Hammond that he had come to put himself in his care, believing him loyal, and one that would not betray him. Hammond expressed himself as highly honoured by his majesty's confidence, but would only promise to do all he could for his majesty consistent with his duty as a man of honour. There was, however, nothing for it now but to go with him, Charles and his attendants probably thinking they could win him over. Charles was conducted to Carisbrook with all respect, and was much comforted on the way by gentlemen who flocked to see him, and assured him that the whole island was in his favour except the governors of the forts and Hammond's captains. Charles was treated most courteously by Hammond, and suffered to ride about the island, where he saw no measures taken to prevent his escape, if he desired it, so delicately did Hammond manage the matter; though he proved himself, when the trial was made, to have taken all necessary precaution for his prisoner's security. Charles was greatly pleased with the apparent result of his flight. Charles's friends at a distance were equally satisfied by his representations, and Hammond and his officers appeared to have no greater desire than that he and the parliament ​should come to satisfactory terms. What raised Charles's confidence in Hammond's honour still higher, was that on the news of Charles's retreat reaching Loudon, the parliament sent to the governor, desiring him to send up the king's three attendants, Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, but he refused.
Scarcely had Charles reached Carisbrook, when he learned the result of the military rendezvous. The plans of the agitators had threatened, if successful, equal disaster to himself as to Cromwell. If they triumphed over their commanders, they vowed to kill Cromwell for having, as they believed, concerted with Charles his escape to the Isle of Wight, and to put down both king and lords. This turbulence forboded universal anarchy, but Fairfax and Cromwell determined to meet it boldly, and make an end of it. On the day appointed, the army mustered in a field betwixt Hereford and Ware, and a remonstrance, drawn up in the name of Fairfax, was read to them. In this he told them of the great objects for which the array was striving, but which could only be attained by union and subordination. Only two regiments in the field showed a refractory spirit—Harrison's horse and Lilburne's foot. These men had expelled many of their' officers, and came on to the ground with a motto round their hats—"The people's freedom and the soldiers' rights." As these men showed a mutinous spirit, Cromwell, followed by some of his most trusty officers, dished into their ranks, and according to Clarendon, "knocked two or three of their ringleaders on the head with his own hand, then charged the rest with his troop, and took such a number of them as he thought fit, whereof he presently caused some to be hanged, and sent others to London for a more formal trial. By two or three such encounters, for the obstinacy continued long, he totally subdued that spirit in the army, though it continued and increased very much in the kingdom, and if it had not been encountered at that time with that rough and brisk temper of Cromwell, it would presently have produced all imaginable confusion in the parliament, army, and kingdom."
According to Whitelock and Ludlow, the real facts were different, and more accordant with what followed. Cromwell did not knock several of them on the head, but brought out a number of the ringleaders, who were judged by a court martial on the spot, one man shot, two more condemned, and several others reserved as pledges for the submission of their comrades. But the spirit itself was not extinguished, it pervaded three-fourths of the army, and the quick genius of Cromwell saw that to attempt to trample it out would be impossible, and not more impossible than absurd. There was but a slight shade of difference, indeed, betwixt the ideas of the soldiers and his own. Their violation of discipline had misled his judgment: his and their convictions wore the same. He had already expressed his conviction openly that this kingdom would be far happier with a government like that of Holland, that is, a republic, with a stadtholder, as near as possible the ideal which he afterwards worked out. No sooner did he perceive this than he at once acknowledged his error. Historians have ridiculed the manner of his doing it, and treated it as a piece of his consummate cant. In the assembly of the officers he confessed, weeping as he spoke, that "his mind, dazzled by the glory of the world, had not clearly discovered the work of the Lord; and therefore had humbled himself before them, and desired the prayers of the saints that God would forgive his self-seeking." But that which appears cant to the worldly spirit of the present age, was the real spirit and manner of that time. It was a time filled with the effervescence of religious faith; from the general study of the Bible among the people, its language, its tone, were become the popular language and tone; the heroes of the Old Testament, especially, were the heroes of its admiration, and nothing so completely proves their earnestness as the simple and unshrinking openness with which they avowed their religion, and placed it foremost in their words and actions. It does not follow that the world, and its motives and its ambitions, did not mingle largely with this religious orgasm; nothing is so subtle and deceptive as human nature, and the love of self was always contrived to steal in under the colour of the love of God, more or less, in every historic phenomenon. The besetting sin of Cromwell was ambition; there is no doubt that he afterwards became signally "dazzled by the glory of the world, so that he did not always clearly discern the work of the Lord;" but he was undoubtedly in earnest, and as undoubtedly was deeply religious, even when he was swayed aside by the mighty temptations of his position. He now confessed himself wrong and the army right, and declared his resolution to stand or fall with it. This was the only thing wanting to complete the triumph of the army and of democratic principles. The soldiers already knew that he was the military genius of the age, and as he now avowed himself one with them in faith and opinion, they received the confession with universal acclamations, and from that moment he was the hero, the idol, and the soul of the army. Ireton made the same confession, and took the same vow, and so far from "that spirit being totally subdued in the array," as Clarendon asserts, it became its entire life, and the pledge of its predominance.
Charles again employed the time on his hands in negotiation. As the army had restored unity to itself, he sought to obtain its concurrence to a personal treaty, and sent Berkeley to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, at Windsor. On his way there he fell in with cornet Joyce, who carried off the king from Holmby, who informed him of an ominous proposition discussed by the agitators, namely, to bring the king to trial; not, he said, with any design of putting him to death, but to prove on evidence who really bore the blame of the war. This prelude did but too truly prefigure the interview itself. The general, Cromwell, and Ireton, received him with severe aspects and distant coldness, and informed him that they were but the servants of the parliament, and referred him to it. He was not prevented by this, however, from sending a secret message to Cromwell, reminding him of his promises, and letting him know that he had secret instructions from the king to him. But Cromwell had now had too convincing proofs of the king's duplicity; he refused to receive the letters, informed Berkeley that he would do all in his power towards effecting a real peace, but was not disposed to risk his head for the king's sake. Repulsed here, Charles applied to parliament, which sent him four propositions as the basis of agreement, namely, that his majesty should concur in the bill for settling the militia; should ​recall all the proclamations, oaths, &c., against parliament; should disqualify all peers made since the renewal of the great seal from sitting in the house of peers; and should pass a bill for the adjournment of parliament being placed in the power of the houses themselves. These bills were sent by commissioners to Carisbrook, but the Scottish commissioners, who dreaded the acceptance of these bills, as rendering the English parliament independent of the league and covenant, hastened there, too, with a modified treaty of their own. Charles, thus encouraged, refused the four bills; the commissioners kissed hands and returned, and Charles signed the proposals of the Scots, which guaranteed the independence of their own religion, on condition of finding an army of forty thousand men for the restoration of the king.
Carisbrook, Isle of Wight.
Charles was not left long in ignorance of the effect of his refusal of the parliamentary proposals, and of the discovery of his secret treaty with the Scots. Colonel Hammond received orders to take every measure for the safe keeping of the king, and for preventing the lurking of suspicious vessels in Southampton Water, as it was known that a vessel was engaged by the queen to carry away Charles and land him at Berwick, in readiness to co-operate with the Scottish movement. Hammond at once dismissed Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley, with all other royalists, from the island, sent away a vessel supposed to be the very one engaged by the queen, and put the king under close surveillance and a double guard. He was no longer an apparently free guest, but a close prisoner.
​This treatment only doubled his determination to escape. Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, though banished from the island, kept saddle horses on the coast ready, in case of the king's escaping from the castle; and his friends from all quarters corresponded with him, and their letters were conveyed to Lira by one Henry Firebrace, who was in some employment in the castle, and was occasionally, he tells his, employed by one of the warders to take his place before the king's chamber door, when he put the correspondence intrusted to him through a crevice of the door. The whole island resented the incarceration of the king, and there were loud threats of rising and liberating him by force. One captain Burley was mad enough to make the attempt. At midnight a drum was beaten. Burley put himself at the head of a rabble in Newport, without, as reported, having one musket among them, and was speedily taken and executed.
John Bradshaw, From an authentic Portrait.
On the 3rd January the two houses discussed the relations with the king, and in the commons the plainest republican sentiments were avowal. The refusal of the four bills of the king was deemed convincing proof that no possibility was left of ever coming to an agreement with him. Sir Thomas Wroth declared that kings of late had conducted themselves more like inmates of Bedlam than anything else; and that for his part he did not care what government was set up if it were not by kings or devils. Ireton contended that the relation of king and subjects implied mutual bonds and duties. The king was to protect the people, and the people to maintain the king in his duty; but that Charles had abandoned his duty, had ceased to protect his people, nay, had made war on them, and therefore had annulled the compact. That seeing this, the army was resolved to stand by the parliament for the establishment of national right. Cromwell, after numbers had proceeded in a like strain, asserted that it was time to fulfil the wearied expectation of ​the people, and to show that they could govern and defend the kingdom by their own power, and to decide that there was nothing to be hoped from a man whose heart God had plainly hardened in obstinacy. In fact, in parliament, almost as much as in the army, a large party had come to the conclusion, from the 8th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings, that it was odious in the sight of God to be governed by a king.
The result was a vote that parliament would make no further applications or addresses to the king, nor receive any message from him, except by full consent of both houses, under penalty of high treason. The lords concerned in the vote, and a public declaration was circulated to that effect; and that the committee of public safety should again sit and act alone, without the aid of any foreign coadjutors. This was a plain hint to the Scots of the knowledge of parliament of their late treaty. Hitherto they had formed part of the committee of both kingdoms, so that they had shared the government of England. This was withdrawn; they therefore demanded the payment of the last one hundred thousand pounds due to them by the treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention to return on receiving it.
This decided step of parliament, and this rigour with which the king was guarded, put the Scots, the presbyterians, the royalists, all on the alert. They stirred up everywhere a feeling of commiseration for him, as harshly and arbitrarily used; it was represented that the vote of non-address amounted to a declaration that all attempts at reconciliation were at an end, and that the independents meant to proceed to put the doctrines of the army in force, and put the king to death. These efforts were productive of a rapidly and widely spread sensation in the king's favour, and very soon formidable insurrections were on foot. The king himself omitted no means of attempting his escape. By his plans his second son, the duke of York, had effected his escape from the care of the earl of Northumberland in female attire, and got to Holland. Towards the end of March Charles tried to escape out of the window of his chamber. A silken cord was prepared to let him down, and to prove the safety of the descent, Firebrace crushed himself betwixt the iron stanchions of the window, and let himself down; but the king, in assaying to follow, stuck fast, and, after violent efforts, found it impossible to get through. Oliver Cromwell announced to Hammond in a letter still extant, that parliament was informed that aqua-fortis had been sent down to corrode this obstructing bar; that the attempt was to be renewed during the coming dark nights, and that captain Titus and some others about the king were not to be trusted. At the same time he informs him the commons, in reward of his vigilance and services in securing and keeping the king, had raised his pay from ten to twenty pounds a week, had voted him one thousand pounds, and settled upon him and his heirs five hundred pounds per annum.
The reaction in favour of the king now began to discover itself on all sides. The king published an appeal to the nation against the proceedings of parliament, which seemed to cut off all further hope of accommodation. Parliament issued a counter-statement, and numerous rejoinders were the consequence, the most able from the pen of Hyde, the chancellor, and Dr. Bates, the king's physician. Whilst these elements of strife were brewing in England, the duke of Hamilton, released from Pendennis Castle, and restored to the favour of the king, returned to Scotland, and the marquis of Ormond to Ireland, to muster forces to operate with a simultaneous rising in England. The Scotch muster proceeded with considerable vigour, though stoutly opposed by the duke of Argyll, and the work of revolt commenced in March, in Wales. Poyer, the mayor of Pembroke, and governor of the castle, declared for the king, and, at the summons of Fairfax, refused to yield up his command. Powell and Langherne, two officers of disbanded regiments, joined him, and many of then old soldiers followed them. The royalists ran to arms, eight thousand men were soon afoot in the principality, Chepstow and Carnarvon surprised, and colonel Fleming killed. Cromwell was despatched to reduce these forces at the head of five regiments. He quickly recovered Carnarvon and Chepstow, defeated Langherne, and summoned Poyer to surrender. But Pembroke stood out, and was not reduced till July, though colonel Horton encountered Langherne at St. Fagan's, near Cardiff, and completely routed him.
Meantime, in other quarters insurrections broke out. On the 9th of April a mob of apprentices and other young fellows attacked the train-bands in Moorfields, struck the captain, took his colours, and marched with them to Westminster, crying, "King Charles! king Charles!" There they were attacked and dispersed, but they rallied again in the city, broke open houses to obtain arms, and frightened the mayor so, that he took refuge in the Tower. The next day Fairfax dispersed them, but not without bloodshed. Soon after three hundred men from Surrey surrounded the parliament houses, cursing the parliament, insulting the soldiers, and demanding the restoration of the king. They were not repulsed without killing some of them. Similar outbreaks took place in Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, and other places. Pontefract Castle was suprised by eighty cavaliers, each with a soldier mounted behind him.
Parliament, at the same time, was besieged with petitions or the disbanding the army and restoring the king. To allay the ferment in the capital, whilst the army was engaged in the provinces, parliament passed a resolution that no change should be made in the government by kings, lords, and commons. Fairfax withdrew his troops from the Mews and Whitehall, and major-general Skippon was made commander of the city militia, to act in concert with the lord mayor and corporation. The men of Kent and Essex rose in great numbers for the king. At Deal, off which colonel Rainsborough, now acting as admiral, was lying, the people rose; the fleet, consisting of six men-of-war, revolted, hoisted the royal colours, and sailed to Helvoetsluys, where they called for the duke of York to take the command. The effect of this event was neutralised, however, by a victory which Fairfax obtained on the 1st of June over the royalists at Maidstone, where, after a hard fight of six hours, he slew two hundred in the streets, and took four hundred prisoners. This defeat prevented the junction of this body with another under colonel Goring, now earl of Newport, who marched to Blackheath, and demanded entrance into the city. The independent party were in a ​perilous position there. There was, as we have seen, a numerous body in London in favour of the king, who had no reliance on the militia. To conciliate public opinion, the parliament ordered the release of the aldermen imprisoned at the desire of the army, and revoked the impeachment against the six lords and eleven commons. Hollis and his associates resumed their seats and their old measures, voted for a renewed negotiation with the king on condition that he should restore presbyterianism, and give the command of the army to parliament for ten years. Luckily for the independents, the lords rejected these propositions, and voted a treaty without any conditions. At the same time the common council, showing a decided leaning towards the king, offered to protect him from danger and insult if he would come to the capital. The danger to the independent interest was only repelled by the obstinacy of their old enemy Hollis, who would consent to nothing which did not establish presbyterianism.
Whilst these discussions agitated the city, Fairfax marched on Goring, who quitted Blackheath, crossed the Thames into Essex with five thousand horse, where he was joined by lord Capel, with royalists from Hertfordshire, and Sir Charles Lucas, with a body of horse from Chelmsford. They concentrated their united force at Colchester, where they determined to hold out till the advance of the Scots, and thus detain the commander-in-chief in the south. The Scots were now in reality on the march. The duke of Hamilton had not been able to muster more than a fourth of his promised forty thousand. Though he proclaimed everywhere that Charles had promised to take the covenant and uphold the presbyterian religion, Argyll and the old covenanting body wholly distrusted these assurances; the assembly of the kirk demanded proofs of the king's engagement; the ministers from the pulpits denounced the curse of Meroz on all who engaged in this unholy war, and the women cursed the duke as he passed, and pelted him with stones from their windows.
The English royalists under Langdale, about four thousand brave cavaliers, had surprised Berwick and Carlisle, and awaited with impatience Hamilton's arrival. Lambert, the parliamentary general, advanced and besieged Carlisle, and Hamilton was urged to advance and relieve it. He sent forward a detachment, and on the 8th of July arrived himself, being already supported by three thousand veterans from the Scottish army in Ireland, and, now uniting with Sir Marmaduke Langdale, he presented a formidable force. Lambert retired at his approach, and had Hamilton been a man of any military talent, he might have struck an effective blow. But from the moment that he crossed the border, he appeared to have lost all energy. His army was paralysed by internal dissensions. The Scotch presbyterian soldiers were scandalised at having to fight side by side with Langdale's prelatists and papists, whom they had been accustomed to see ranged against them as the enemies of the covenant. In forty days he had advanced only eighty miles, and when he reached the left bank of the Ribble, near Preston, Cromwell had reduced Pembroke, marched rapidly northward through Gloucester, Warwick, Leicester, to Nottingham, where he left his prisoners safe with colonel Hutchinson, governor of the castle, and soon joined Lambert at Otley Park, and forced back Langdale from Clitheroe on the main body at Preston. Hamilton at the last moment was all unprepared. Monroe with his veterans, lay still at Kirby Lonsdale. Yet Hamilton, with his fourteen thousand, should have been a match for Cromwell, Lambert, and Lilburne's nine thousand. But Cromwell attacked them with such vigour, that after a hard battle of six hours, he routed the whole force. The cavaliers fought like lions, and only retreated from hedge to hedge before the foe, calling repeatedly on the Scots for reinforcements and ammunition, but not being able to get either, retreated into the town. There they discovered that their allies were engaged in a fierce contest with the enemy for possession of the bridge. Cromwell won the bridge, and the Scots fled in the night towards Wigan. Hamilton retreated with some of the English towards Warrington. Lieutenant-general Baillie, with a great party of the Scotch army, surrendered on quarter in that town. Monroe, who was lying at Kirby, ignorant of the battle or the coming up of the fugitives, retreated to Scotland—the only body of Scots who regained their country. Hamilton, on the 20th of August, three days after the battle, was overtaken by Lambert and lord Grey of Groby, and surrendered at Uttoxeter. Langdale's cavaliers dispersed in Derbyshire, and he himself, in woman's apparel, was discovered at Widnerpool, in Nottinghamshire; but by the contrivance of lady Saville, escaped dressed as a clergyman, to London, where he remained with Dr. Barwick in the character of an Irish minister driven from his parish by the papists. So ended duke Hamilton's boasted invasion. This blow totally annihilated his party in Scotland; Argyll and the covenanters rose into the ascendant. Argyll soon after this seized a ship containing ten thousand stand of arms, which had been sent from Denmark for Hamilton's expedition. He invited Cromwell to Edinburgh, where he was received with great distinction, and was honoured by the thanks of the Scottish ministers as the preserver of Scotland under God. The members of the function of Hamilton were declared enemies to religion and the kingdom, and incapable of serving in parliament or the assembly of the kirk. On the 16th of August Cromwell left Edinburgh, the duke of Argyll and the nobles of that party accompanying him some miles on his way, and taking leave of him with many demonstrations of respect.
At the same time that the Scots began their march, a rising which had been made in concert with Hamilton, took place in London. The earl of Holland, who had become contemptible to all parties, by twice going over to the parliament, and twice falling back to the king, entered London with five hundred horse, and called on the citizens to join him for king Charles. The inhabitants had been too recently punished for their apprentice rising to make a second experiment. Holland fell back, therefore, on Kingston-on-Thames, where he was attacked and defeated by Sir Michael Levesey, and lord Francis Villiers, brother to the young duke of Buckingham, was slain. Holland had induced the brother of Buckingham himself to follow him; the latter escaped to the continent, and returned at the restoration, like most of his party, no better for his experience. Holland and colonel Dalbier retreated to St. Neots, where a party of soldiers sent by Fairfax from Colchester met them, and took Holland ​and killed Dalbier, who was cut to pieces by the soldiers on account of his having been a renegade from the parliamentary army.
The fate of the Scottish army decided that of Goring at Colchester. There was nothing further to stand out for; he surrendered at discretion, and was sent to prison to await the award of parliament, with lord Capel, and Hastings, the brother of the earl of Huntingdon; but two of his officers, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, the brother of lord Lucas, and heir to his title and estates, were shot. All sides were growing savage. These two officers fell bravely, and deserved a better fate. Lucas, tearing open his doublet, cried, "Fire, rebels!" and instantly fell. Lisle ran to him, kissed his dead body, and then turning to the soldiers, told them to come nearer. One of them said, "I'll warrant you we shall hit you." He replied, "Friends, I have been nearer, when you have missed me." The death of these noble fellows sullied the fair reputation of Fairfax, who afterwards deeply regretted it.
On the revolt of the ships at Deal, under the command of Rainsborough, whom they left ashore, the parliament appointed the earl of Warwick, the brother of the earl of Holland, but more in the confidence of the reformers, lord admiral of the fleet, and sent him to oppose the insurgent fleet. No sooner was it heard in Paris that the English ships had sailed for Holland, and called on the duke of York to command them, than it was thought highly expedient that the prince of Wales should hasten thither himself and take the command. Accordingly, he travelled in all haste to the Hague, accompanied by prince Rupert, and the lords Hopton and Colepepper. The prince was received with acclamations by the fleet at Helvoetsluys, and with other vessels, making altogether nineteen, he sailed to the coast of England. It was thought by that party that it was best to sail along the English coast, showing their strength for some time, and then to proceed to the mouth of the Thames. At that time the insurrection in Kent was proceeding under Hales, L'Estraune, and the earl of Norwich, which Fairfax soon dealt with at Maidstone; but whilst it was in force the prince might have made a safe descent on the Isle of Wight, and attempted The rescue of his father. The castle of Carisbrook was not strong, and there were few forces besides its garrison in the island; but though Charles anxiously expected the coming of the fleet, and sent repeated messages, no attention was paid to them. For nearly a month the prince had the full command of the coast. Fairfax was engaged with the insurgents at Colchester, and the rest of the army was equally occupied in Wales, and in waiting for the approach of the invasion from Scotland; yet he made no movement whatever for the rescue of his father, which every one would have thought would be the first thing. Many have been the surmises on this head, and the general opinion seems to have been that the relations of the queen and lord Jermyn now were such, that of all things, Charles was not wanted there. Others repel this as a vile and unfounded calumny, which we leave, as not affecting the main current of history, but Clarendon, the great champion of the royal party, himself makes no scruple in stating that there was cause of some kind for not seeking to liberate the king. "It cannot be imagined," he says. "how wonderfully fearful some persons in France were that he should have made his escape, and the dread they had of his coming thither."
Warwick posted himself at the mouth of the Thames, to prevent any advance towards London, or any relief to the city of Colchester; but he did not deem himself strong enough till he should be joined by another fleet under Sir George Ayscough, from Portsmouth. With this arrival Warwick was in a condition to attack the prince's fleet, but he lay still, nor did the prince appear more inclined to assail him. He was satisfied to intercept merchantmen coming into port, and demanding their ransom from the city. This occasioned a brisk correspondence betwixt the city and the prince, under cover of which proposals were made by the prince and his counsellors for the city opening its gates and declaring for the king. But the demand of the prince for ten thousand pounds as ransom of the merchant ships, disgusted the city, and presently after came the news of the total defeat of the Scotch army at Preston. On this the prince sailed away again to Helvoetsluys, without attempting anything more. His fleet, according to Clarendon, like the court and army of his father, was rusted with factions, and so incapable of any decided course of action. But the earl of Warwick did not present a more flattering aspect! Though it is confessed that he was amply strong enough after Ayscough's junction to have beaten the prince, he satisfied himself with watching him off, and following him at a respectful distance to the Dutch coast. He is said there to halve persuaded the disappointed sailors to return to the service of the parliament, and thus recovered most of the ships. But the public was greatly dissatisfied with his conduct, and the independents did not hesitate to declare that they were always betrayed by the cowardice or disaffection of noble commanders. The whole war bore striking evidences of this fact; and Clarendon asserts that Warwick had an understanding with his brother Holland, and would almost certainly have gone over had the Scottish invasion succeeded. Clarendon asserts that the parliament of Scotland had sent lord Lauderdale to the Hague, to invite prince Charles to go to Scotland and put himself at the head of affairs there for Ms father, in order to encourage the endeavour to put down the independents, who were at once hostile to the king and the solemn league and covenant; but that the news of the defeat of Hamilton arriving, defeated that object. By the end of August all the attempts of the royalists were crushed.
The presbyterians took the opportunity whilst Fairfax, Cromwell, and the leading independents were absent with the army, to propose a fresh treaty with Charles. On hearing of this movement, Cromwell wrote to the parliament, to remind it of its vote of non-addresses, and that to break it and make fresh overtures to the king, who would still adhere to his inadmissible demands, would be an eternal disgrace to them. But the immediate defeat of Hamilton so much raised the terror of the presbyterians at the overwhelming weight which this would give to the army and the independent party, that they hastened the business. Charles readily acceded to it, and would fain have obtained his wish of carrying on the negotiation in London, especially as a large party there were urgent for accommodation with him. But the parliament dared not thus far run counter to the ​victorious army, and a compromise was effected. Charles was permitted to choose any place on the Isle of Wight where the conference should take place, and he decided on the town of Newport. From the parliament five lords, including Northumberland and Pembroke, and ten commissioners, including Vane the younger, Grimstone, Hollis, and Pierpont, were appointed commissioners, and on Charles's part appeared the duke of Richmond, the marquis of Hertford, the earls of Southampton and Lindsay, with other gentlemen, and a number of his chaplains and lawyers. These were not admitted to sit with the parliamentary commissioners and the king, were not to interpose any opinions or arguments during the discussion, which were to be direct from Charles; but they were suffered to be in the room behind a curtain, where they could hear all, and to whom Charles was at liberty to retire and consult them. The conditions were the same submitted at Hampton Court, and the king again consented to the surrender of the command of the army for ten years; but he would not accede to the abolition of episcopacy, but merely its suspension for three years; that the episcopal lands should not be forfeited, but granted on long leases, and he would not bind himself to accept the covenant. In fact, he stood just as rooted to his own notions, as if he had even the most distant chance of ever obtaining them. In vain the presbyterians knelt and prayed him with tears to concede, to prevent the utter ruin of both himself and them. The commission met on the 18th of September, and it was limited to the 4th of November; but that time arrived and nothing further was concluded. The commissioners took their leave and proceeded to Cowes, but they were met by a resolution of the commons to prolong the conference to the 21st, which was afterwards extended to the 25th.
There were signs and circumstances enough abroad to have brought any other man to make the best terms he could. On the 11th of September, previous to the meeting of the commission, a petition of many thousands of well-affected men in the cities of London and Westminster, in the borough of Southwark, and the neighbouring villages, "had been presented, praying that justice might be done on the chief author of the great bloodshed which had been perpetrated in the war." They called for the execution of Holland, Hamilton, Capel, Goring, and the rest of the royalist officers now confined at Windsor. Clarendon says, that Capel, at the execution of Lisle and Lucas at Colchester, had spoken so fiercely about it, saying they had better shoot all the rest of the prisoners, and had so upbraided Ireton in particular, to whose vindictive disposition he attributed the bloody deed, that the army was vehement for the death of these men. Numbers of other petitions to the same effect came up from the country and from the regiments, declaring that after so many miraculous deliverances from their treacherous and implacable enemies by the Almighty, it was sinful to delay any longer the punishment of these instruments of cruelty, and especially of the king, the chief offender, the raiser of the war, and the stubborn rejecter of all offers. The army was the more vehement, because one of their most gallant and long-tried leaders, colonel Rainsborough, and been foully murdered by a number of the royalists. After the revolt of the fleet, he was sent to relieve the castle of Pontefract. He had arrived at Doncaster when Sir John Digby and colonel Morrice, who commanded in Pontefract for the king, determined, says Clarendon, "to make a noble attempt." This noble attempt was to get admittance to him on pretence of having a letter to him from Cromwell, and to assassinate him. They proceeded on Sunday, the 29th of October, to Doncaster, with a party of twelve horse. They were readily admitted to the town on the credit of their message, and Digby and Morrice, with one man, went into the room where Rainsborough was in bed, whilst the other horsemen rode on to the bridge leading to the Pontefract road, and held the guard in conversation till their commanders should come. The murderers then went upstairs to Rainsborough, told him he was their prisoner, and that he must choose whether he would go with them or be killed. He rose to go, but in coming out of the house, and not seeing a troop of horse as he expected, but only one man, he immediately cried a rescue, when the assassins thrust him through, and galloping to the bridge, they and their horsemen killed such of the guard as opposed, and rode off. "There was not an officer in the army," Clarendon says, "whom Cromwell would not as willingly have lost as Rainsborough;" and "the gallant party," as he called them, not only gloried in their base deed, but contemplated others of the same kind.
No wonder that the army was become impatient of further tolerance of such an enemy. Colonel Ludlow, who was also a member of parliament, protested that it was time that the country laid to heart the blood spilt, and the rapine perpetrated by commission from the king, and to consider whether the justice of God could be satisfied, or His wrath appeased, if they granted an act of oblivion as the king demanded. No; the blood of murdered thousands cried from the ground; as the Book of Numbers declared, "blood defiled the land, and the kind could not be cleansed except by the blood of him who shed it." He failed in converting Fairfax to his creed on this head; but Ireton was a more willing listener, and he joined his regiment in petitioning, on the 18th of October, that crime might be impartially punished, without any distinction of high or low, and that whoever should speak or act in favour of the king, before he had been tried and acquitted of shedding innocent blood, should be adjudged guilty of high treason. The example was followed by several other regiments; on the 21st Ingoldby's regiment petitioned in direct terms for the trial of the king, and declared the treaty at Newport a trap; and on the 16th of November a long and stern remonstrance was addressed by the assembled officers of the army to the house of commons, demanding that "the capital and grand author of all the troubles and woes which the nation had endured, should be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief of which he had been guilty; that the lords should be abolished, and the supreme power vested in the commons. That if the country desired any more kings, they should be elected by the commons; that a period should be fixed for the close of this parliament; and that any future king should be sworn to govern by the aid of parliament alone." This startling remonstrance was signed by Rushworth, the historian, secretary to Fairfax, the general himself accompanying the remonstrance by a letter. A violent debate upon this ​remonstrance took place in the house; but Cromwell was now fast advancing to the capital, and the house adjourned.
Hurst Castle, Hampshire.
All these ominous proceedings wore lost on Charles; whilst he was negotiating, he was, in his usual manner, secretly corresponding with his party in various quarters, apologising for the smallest concessions, on the principle that he did not mean to abide by them. On the 24th of October, after conceding the command of the army, he wrote to Sir William Hopkins, "To deal freely with you, the great concessions I made to-day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done it." He had written on the 10th of October to Ormond in Ireland, with which country he had agreed to have no further intercourse, telling him that the treaty would come to nothing, and encouraging him privately to prosecute the scheme for a rising there with all his vigour, and to let all his friends know that it was by his command, but not openly, or this would, of course, knock the treaty on the head. But a letter of Ormond's fell into their hands, by which they discovered for what he had been sent over from France to Ireland, and the commissioners would not proceed till Charles had publicly written to deny any authority from him to Ormond. All the while that the negotiations were proceeding, he was expecting the execution of a plan for his escape; and he told Sir Philip Warwick that if his friends could not rescue him by the time he had demanded relief, yet he would hold it, till he had made some stone in that building his tombstone.
With such a man all treaty had long been hopeless; he would never consent to the demands upon him, and without his consent the whole war had been in vain; nay, did he consent, it was equally certain, that once at liberty, he would break every engagement. What was to be done? The independents and the army had come to a solemn conviction that there was but one way out of it. The king must be tried for his treason to the nation, and dealt with as any other incorrigible malefactor.
Cromwell, on his way back from Scotland, had called at Pontefract, to take vengeance on the assassins of colonel Rainsborough, but finding affairs pressing in London, left Lambert to reduce the place and secure the murderers, and hastened towards the capital. He had relied much on colonel Hammond to keep the king safe, and not to give him up into the hands of parliament, till full justice had been obtained. But no result accruing from the treaty, the commissioners prepared to take their leave of the king on the 28th. On the 25th Hammond had received an order from Fairfax to proceed to headquarters at Windsor, and on the 26th colonel Ewer, a zealous republican, arrived at Newport to take charge of the king, and confine him in Carisbrook Castle, or elsewhere.
REMOVAL, OF CHARLES FROM HURST CASTLE.
Commissioners took their leave, Charles solemnly warning the lords of the party that in his ruin they saw their own. Though he had given up everything at the last moment, he could not flatter himself that this would be accepted, because he knew that the army, which held the real power, had protested against this treaty altogether, as a violation of the vote of non-addresses, and had no faith in his observance of any conditions whatever. With the commissioners, Hammond also took his leave, and the king was left in the hands of major Rolfe, a man who had been charged with a design to take away the king's life six months before. But Charles was not intended to remain in this man's custody; a body of troops under lieutenant-colonel Cobbet was already on its way to receive the charge. The friends of the king, on learning this, once more implored him to endeavour to escape. The duke of Richmond, the earl of Lindsay, and colonel Coke, urged him to instant flight; they acquainted him with the watchword, and Coke told him he had a boat and horses ready. But all their persuasions were vain; Charles would not move. He pleaded that he had given his parole to the parliament for twenty days after the treaty. And this was the same man who had been writing north and south during the whole treaty, to assure his friends that ho meant to break his word on every point of the treaty, the first moment that he was at liberty. The real reason, we may believe, why Charles did not attempt to escape, was, that he had no-hope of it. In all his attempts he never had escaped, and must have had a full conviction that he never could. At five in the morning Cobbet and his troop arrived, and the king was informed that he must arise and accompany it.
The king, greatly agitated, demanded to see the order for his removal, and to know whither they designed to carry him. Cobbet told him they should take him out of the island, but would not show his order. His nobles, bishops, and officers of his household crowded round in alarm and confusion, but there was no alternative; the king was obliged to take his leave of them, with much sorrow, and was conducted to Hurst Castle, on the opposite coast of Hampshire. "The place," says Warwick, "stood in the sea, for every tide the water surrounded it, and it contained only a few dog-lodgings for soldiers, being chiefly designed for a platform to command the ships." The sight of this dreary place struck a serious terror of assassination into his heart, for he never would believe that, though the levellers talked of it, they would ever dare to bring an anointed king to a public trial. Unfortunately, his own officers had lately been rendering assassination familiar to the public mind, for besides the gallant colonel Rainsborough, they had murdered several other officers of less note, and there was a rumour that they had made a compact to get rid of the king's enemies in this manner. Charles, however, was to learn that the officers of the parliamentary army disdained murder, and dared arraign a king.
The same day that Charles was transferred to Hurst Castle, the parliament negatived the motion that the parliamentary remonstrance should be taken into consideration, and it voted a letter of Fairfax's, demanding pay for the army, or threatening to take it where it could be found, a high and unbeseeming letter. The same day, too, the council of officers addressed a declaration to parliament, assuring it that, seeing that their remonstrance was rejected, they were come to the conclusion that the parliament had betrayed its trust to the people, and that the army would, therefore, appeal from their authority "to the extraordinary judgment of God, and all good people." They called on all faithful members to put their confidence in the army, and protest with them against the conduct of their colleagues. Parliament, on its part, sent to Fairfax an order that the army should not advance any nearer to the capital. But the army was advancing—several regiments from the neighbourhood of York—with the avowal that they were following the directions of Providence.
On the 1st of December the commons met, and as if indifferent to the advance of the army, voted thanks to Hollis, Pierpont, and lord Wenman, for their care and pains in the good treaty at Newport, and proceeded to read twice the report of the commissioners. Hollis, who, with his accused colleagues, was again in the house, moved that the king's answer should be voted satisfactory; but that question was adjourned till the next day, when the house adjourned again till the 4th of December—Fairfax, in defiance of their prohibition, having that day marched into the city, and quartered his troops round Whitehall, York House, St. James's, the Mews, and other places. On the 4th they went into the question of the treaty again, having debated all Friday and Saturday; and again on Monday continued the debate all day until five o'clock the next morning, Tuesday. Such a debate of three days and a night had never yet been known, for no subject of such supreme importance had ever yet come before parliament. Oliver Cromwell arrived in the midst of this memorable debate.
Sir Harry Vane the younger said that the treaty had been carried on for months, and that although the king had appeared to concede much at the last moment, yet they had his own declaration that he did not hold himself bound by promises which he might make, and that it was the conviction of himself, and thousands of others, that the king was not to be trusted. That he, therefore, moved that the house should return at once to its vote of non-addresses, which it ought never to have violated, should cease all negotiations, and settle the commonwealth on another model. Sir Henry Mildmay said the king was no more to be trusted than a caged lion set at liberty. This was the conviction of the whole body of the independents, and no doubt a solid and rational conviction. But the king did not lack defenders: Fiennes, to the astonishment of his party, advocated the adoption of the report, and even Prynne, who had suffered so under it, became a pleader for royalty, that he might chastise independency and the army. On a ​division it was found that a majority of thirty-six, being one hundred and forty against one hundred and four, had voted the concessions of Charles at Newport satisfactory, and offering sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom.
But the army, or, in other words, the independent and republican cause, was not going thus to be defeated. This great and determined party had come to the conclusion that the king, with whom they had been contending for twenty years, and whose lawless ambition, combined with an obstinacy and perfidiousness as unconquerable, had deluged the country with blood, and rent asunder its finest minds, was a perfectly hopeless subject, and could only be replaced in power to renew the same struggles, the same divisions, and the same bloodshed. To permit the presbyterian party, Scotch and English, to make terms with him, was only to exchange one phasis of religious despotism for another, and they were resolved to go through with their work. It may be said that they were themselves now exercising an arbitrary power, and resisting the legitimate influence of the very government by parliament which they had lately pronounced supreme. And there is no doubt that both they and the presbyterians had long outstripped the limits of constitutional conduct, and that there could be only one excuse for it, that they were become arbitrary to save the nation. Patriotism was their plea, and so long as they were purely patriotic, it was a good plea. In all ages men have been compelled to assume the supreme power to put down tyranny, and their cause was their justification. This was the justification of this new patriotic party, and in so for as they act in accordance with their professions, it is a justification perfect and unassailable. As they and the presbyterians had been warranted in taking arms against Charles, they were now warranted in taking arms against Charles and presbyterianism coalescing to reinstate a perfect Proteus of absolutism, and to set up intolerant presbyterianism in the place of intolerant episcopacy. Nothing but the righteous cause of freedom, political and religious, could justify the proceedings now taken; but so long as that freedom was alone pursued, the justification was not only complete but glorious. They were now entering on a course which had no precedent, into which nothing but the most deep-seated sense of its necessity and its sacredness could have made them daring enough to enter, and through which nothing but a pure though a stern conscience could have supported them. According to the motive and the integrity of the unexampled deed, must they come out covered with eternal renown, or eternal infamy. They had weighed all costs and perils, and they went on with the same calm intrepidity with which they had entered the smoke of battle after battle, and had borne thence the banners of a victory which they themselves felt to come from God.
On the morning of the 6th of December major-general Skippon discharged the train-bands which had guarded the two houses of parliament, and colonel Rich's cavalry and colonel Pride's regiment of foot took their places. Colonel Pride took the lead in the proceeding, which has thence acquired the name of Pride's Purge. The army determined to purge the parliament of all those who were weak enough or mischievous enough to consent to the return of the king on his own promises, which had long ceased to mean anything but deceit. Fairfax was engaged in conversation with some of the members, and colonel Pride, placing some of his soldiers in the Court of Requests, and others in the lobby of the commons, stood in the latter place with a list of its members in his hand, and as they approached—lord Grey of Groby, who stood by him as one of the door-keepers, informing him who the members were—he stopped such as were in his list, and sent them to the Queen's Court, the Court of Wards, and other places appointed for their detention, by the general and council of the army. Fifty-two of the leading presbyterians were thus secured, and the next day, others who had passed the first ordeal were also removed, so that Pride's Purge had left only about fifty members for a house, who were independents, for others had fled into the country, or hidden themselves in the city to escape arrest. On the whole, forty-seven members were imprisoned, and ninety-six excluded. The purged remainder acquired the well-known name of the Rump.
The independents were now uncontrolled; the royal party in Scotland, weakened by the defeat of Hamilton's army, were opposed by the covenanters, who again denounced the curse of Meroz from the pulpit against all who did not rise in defence of the solemn league and covenant. Loudon and Eglington were appointed commanders, and the earl of Argyll, with his Highlanders, joining them, they, with the forces of Cassilis from Carrick and Galloway, marched to Edinburgh. This wild army advancing from the west, were called the Whiggamores, either from whiggam, a phrase used in driving their horses, or whig (whey), a beverage of sour milk, which was one of their articles of food. Whichever it was, the term was soon used to designate an enemy of the king, and in the next reign was adopted as a nickname for the opponents of the court, whence our political term whig. Lord Lanark and Monroe were glad to treat with the whiggamores, and disbanded their troops, so that Argyll being a great partisan of Cromwell's, nothing more was to be feared in the north On Cromwell's visit Berwick and Carlisle had been surrendered to him.
On the sitting of the purged parliament on the 6th, the first day of Pride's weeding out the suspected members, Cromwell appeared in his place, and was received with acclamations for his services in the north. The 8th was kept as a solemn fast, and a collection was made for the wives and widows of the poor soldiers. They then adjourned to the 11th, and on Sunday, Hugh Peters, the great enthusiast of republicanism, preached a sermon in St. Margaret's, Westminster, from the text, "Bind your king with chains, and your nobles with fetters of iron;" and he did not hesitate in the sermon to characterise the king as Barabbas, the great murderer, tyrant, and traitor. It was remarkable that not only four earls and twenty commoners of note sate out this sermon, but the prince palatine himself, Charles's nephew. Charles's own family, whatever their pretences, had clearly given him up to his fate, or the prince, with his powerful fleet, would never have scoured the coasts of the south of England for several weeks without a single attempt to save his father, the impetuous prince Rupert being on board, and one of his chief counsellors.
​Instead of the house of commons sitting according to adjournment, on the 11th, the military councils, the select committee, and the general sate, and framed a new scheme of government. It was called "A new representative, or an agreement of the people." The composition was said to be Ireton's, but had probably been framed by Cromwell, Ireton, Peters, Vane, Pride, and the leading republicans. It was but an amplification of the late remonstrance; it proposed that the present parliament, which had now sate eight years, should be finally dissolved in April next, and a new one elected according to this formula. It declared that officers and malignants should be incapable of electing or being elected; that the house of commons should consist of three hundred members, and the representation of the country should be more equal. These propositions, having been sanctioned by the general council of soldiers and inferior officers, were carried to parliament. The commons went the next day and readily voted these measures, as well as that both the commons and lords, by violating the vote of non-addresses, had committed an act most unparliamentary and detrimental to the kingdom, and that the treaty at Newport was a monstrous error, disgrace, and peril to the country. They again restored the order expelling the eleven presbyterian members from the house.
On the 16th a strong party of horse was despatched under colonel Harrison to remove the king thence to Windsor Castle. It was at midnight on the 18th when Harrison arrived, and the king was awoke from his sleep by the trampling of horses and the fall of the drawbridge. He was greatly alarmed at the occurrence in that solitary place, and early woke his servant Herbert, and demanded what it was. Herbert told him that it was the arrival of colonel Harrison which had occasioned the noise. At that name Charles turned pale, for he had been secretly informed that Harrison was appointed to assassinate him. He bade Herbert wait in the ante-room, and hastened into his closet to control his terrors by prayer. He was completely unmanned, and shed tears, saying, "I trust in God, who is my helper, but I would not be surprised; this is a place fit for such a purpose." After an hour he called in Herbert, and bade him go and learn the particulars, and on his return Herbert informed him that Harrison was only come to remove him to Windsor. This greatly relieved him, and on the morrow he set out under a strong escort. No Harrison appeared, for he had withdrawn again in the night, having arranged for the king's departure. At the entrance of Farnham, another body of horse appeared drawn up in good order, and at its head an officer gallantly mounted and armed. He wore a montier cap, a buff coat, and a rich fringed crimson sash about his waist. As the king rode by at an easy pace, as one who delighted in seeing men well mounted and armed, the officer gave the monarch a military obeisance, which Charles politely acknowledged.
On inquiring the name of this officer, it proved to be Harrison, and the king at once declared that he did not look like a murderer. Harrison was the son of a butcher near Nantwich, who had articled him to a lawyer, but at the breaking out of the war, being a decided independent, he took arms, and now was numbered amongst the trustiest officers of the army, and held scarcely inferior to Cromwell or Ireton. At the place where they stopped for the night, Charles took Harrison by the arm, and leading him to a window, told him candidly that he had been informed that he intended to assassinate him; to which Harrison replied, according to Clarendon, that "his majesty need not entertain any such apprehension or imagination—that the parliament had too much honour and justice to cherish so foul an intention; and assured him that whatever the parliament resolved to do, would be very public, and in a way of justice to which the world should be witness, and would never endure a thought of secret violence: which his majesty could not persuade himself to believe, nor did he imagine they durst ever produce him in the sight of the people under any form whatever of a public trial."
As they approached Bagshot, the king desired to stop and dine at lord Newburgh's, who had married the lady Aubigny, whose husband was killed at Edge Hill, to which Harrison reluctantly consented, first sending forward scouts to search the park and environs of the house, to ascertain that there was no force prepared for a suprise. A surprise was, indeed, intended, but of another kind. Lord and lady Newburgh had been corresponding with Charles in cipher, and had concocted the mad scheme of giving Charles a horse of unrivalled fleetness, on which, watching his opportunity, he could escape by dashing off and outriding his guard. He was to complain of his horse being lame or sluggish, and to say at Bagshot he would borrow another. But luckily for himself—as he might have been shot in attempting to escape, and thus have deprived history of one of its greatest lessons—the horse intended for him had received a severe kick, and lord Newburgh had no other horse fleeter than those on which the troopers were mounted. The king, therefore, seeing himself well watched, and every soldier riding with his pistol on cock, gave up the idea. At Windsor, where they arrived on the 23rd of December, Charles seemed to feel himself rather a king again than a prisoner. According to the earl of Leicester's journal in the Sydney Papers, he appeared as merry as usual, and declared that he had no fear. He made a jest of the proceedings in parliament for calling him to trial, saying that "he had yet three games to play, the least of which gave him hope of regaining all." These were probably still some secret plans of escape; the exertions of Holland in his favour, where the prince of Orange, at the instance of the prince of Walas, promised to intercede, and the plottings of Ormond in Ireland, for Sir John Temple says, "he has a strange conceit of Ormond's working for him. He still hangs upon that twig, and by the inquiries which he made after his and Inchiquin's conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."
Sir John also notes that the king took no notice of the parliamentary proceedings, but "gave orders very lately for sowing the seed of some Spanish melons which he would have set at Wimbledon."
The strange infatuation of this most extraordinary monarch, has nothing like it short of insanity; still scheming, plotting, unconvinced of his danger to the end. On the very day that he reached Windsor, the house of commons, or the Rump fragment of it, appointed a committee of thirty-eight "to consider of drawing up a charge against the king, and all other delinquents that may be thought fit ​to bring to condign punishment." That, one would think, was a fearful vote, but it passed unheeded on the besotted king On the 1st of January, 1649, the committee made the following report:—"That the said Charles Stuart, being admitted king of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; and by his trust, oath, and office, being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power, to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people; yea, to take away and make void the foundations thereof, and of all redress and remedy of misgovernment, which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the people's behalf, in the right and power of frequent and successive parliaments, or national meetings in council; he, the said Charles Stuart, for accomplishing of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament, and the people therein represented." The report, therefore, declared that he should be brought to judgment for his treason to the nation.
The next day the ordinance of the commons confirming the report was sent up to the lords, or at least to the few of them remaining, only amounting to about a dozen, who rejected it without a dissenting voice, and then adjourned. The commons immediately closed their doors, and passed a resolution that the commons of England in parliament assembled were, under God, the origin of all just power as the representatives of the people; that whatsoever they decreed was law, and did not require any concurrence from the lords.
But nothing was more notorious than that this junta of the commons was not the commons; was not the sole representatives of the people, but had forcibly turned out of doors the majority of those representatives; even if it were true, which it was not, that the consent of neither king nor lords was necessary to establish constitutional law. The whole was no longer a parliament or a constitution, but a revolution, and must be justified alone on the necessity of revolution, and of the national salvation no other way to be attained. The army, and not parliament, was the ruling power, and was seeking to introduce a form of government unknown to England through all past history, and by means equally unknown. Monarchs had been deposed, as Richard II., but that had been by a rival faction, and under the plea, though forced, of abdication. Bolingbroke had never presumed to try and execute a king as a traitor to the realm, and he remained an unquestionable usurper. The parliament was, therefore, now using means unknown to the constitution for an event equally unknown to it, and which, therefore, as we have said, could be justified by no constitutional principles or forms, but must stand on its own merits, appealing to the common sense of posterity for its justification. They had taken upon them to destroy the ancient constitution, and construct a new one, and its intrinsic merits could alone indemnify them to the world. The clinging to the old parliamentary power was but a concession to the prejudices of the public, and to abate somewhat the force of appearance in a violence, which, though they contended, and which we believe was an absolute necessity, was yet a violence beyond all historic precedent.
On the 6th of January the commons passed the ordinance for the trial of the king. By it they erected a high court of justice for trying him, and proceeding to judgment against him. It consisted of no less than a hundred and thirty-five commissioners, of whom twenty were to form a quorum. Amongst the commissioners named were Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, Waller, Skippon, Walley, Pride, Ewer, Tomlinson, altogether three generals and thirty-four colonels of the army; there were three lords, Grey of Groby, Monson, and Lisle; most of the members of the Rump; aldermen Wilson, Pennington, Fawkes, and Andrews; Bradshaw, Thorpe, Nicholas, serjeants-at-law; twenty-two knights and baronets, besides some citizens and country gentlemen. Of these commissioners no more than eighty assembled. On the 8th, fifty assembled in the Painted Chamber, Fairfax at their head, and ordered that on the morrow the herald should proclaim the approaching trial, and invite all people to bring in what matters of fact they had against Charles Stuart. Accordingly that was done both at Westminster and in the city the same day, the 9th. The commons ordered the great seal in use to be broken up, and a new seal introduced, bearing the inscription, "The Great Seal of England," and on the reverse, "In the first year of Freedom, by God's blessing restored, 1648," i.e., 1649, new style.
The commissioners then appointed John Bradshaw, a native of Cheshire, and a barrister of Gray's Inn, who had practised much in Guildhall, and had lately been made a Serjeant, lord president of the High Court; Mr. Steel, attorney-general; Mr. Coke, solicitor-general; Messrs. Dorislaus and Aske, as counsel for the commonwealth; and appointing the old Courts of Chancery and King's Bench, at the upper end of Westminster Hall, as the place of trial, they fixed the day for the 19th of January.
Charles still could not realise the awful event that awaited him. He could not persuade himself that any body of men, however powerful, could dare to violate "the divinity that doth hedge about a king." Amid all the evils or ghastly fortunes of crowned heads, none had yet come in so questionable a shape. He relied on the sacred descent from a hundred monarchs, and on the interference of foreign potentates should any actual desecration menace him. But thee foreign potentates, though some of them were nearly allied in blood, and all had a common interest in preventing such a catastrophe and example, looked on with cold indifference. In France, Henrietta, so far from being able to obtain aid, saw the infant king driven from his capital by insurgents, and was herself only saved from starvation by cardinal de Retz, the leader of the Fronde. The king of Denmark, his cousin-german, made no effort in his favour; the states of Holland promised, but contented themselves with something short of a remonstrance; and the king of Spain had long been in friendly correspondence with the parliament. The Scottish estates alone expressed their decided dissent from the proceedings, and endeavoured to move ​Cromwell; but he referred them to their own league and covenant, and contended that if it were necessary to punish malignants, it was pre-eminently so to punish the chief and instigator of malignants.
When Charles was removed to St. James's, he began to think more seriously of his situation. There he was consigned to the keeping of Tomlinson, a colonel of foot, who treated him not as a crowned head, but as a prisoner who must not, on any account, be suffered to escape. No one was suffered to see him but the soldiers of his guard, who, day and night, remained in his chamber, never suffering him to go into another room for prayer or any other purpose; and lest any of them should be corrupted by him, the same men never came twice on that duty.
On the 20th of January the commissioners assembled in the Painted Chamber to the number of sixty-six, and proceeded in state to Westminster Hall. The decisive hour was now come! The great hour of the teaching and the liberation of nations was come! The sublime drama of king and people was already composed; its characters were already in existence; the stage and machinery were prepared. Kings had for ages proclaimed their divine commission and appointment to rule, and trample down nations and laws at their pleasure; priests and nobles had echoed and applauded these vaunts, and they who had dared to deny them, had fallen in their blood. Tyranny, with its self-seeking favourites and its armed myrmidons, had ridden royally over human rights, with hurrahs from the silken minions behind its chariots, and groans of crushed hearts beneath its wheels. Patriots had risen, had dared, perished, and left behind adored but ineffectual names. Bloody blocks, prisons with their freezing dungeons, their racks and secret horrors, had done their work on the noblest of God's creation. Thrones and crowns, and coronets glittered gaily where the brave had fallen and the righteous had been condemned; but the hour of retribution was now come. The grandest spectacle in the history of man had now to be exhibited. The tears, and prayers, and blood of the saints of liberty should be proved not to have been spent in vain. It must be given to England, as the portion of its eternal fame, to avenge the scorn and sufferings of the fallen hosts of patriots; to assert the rights, not of cities, but of nations; not of nations, but of mankind. Royalty had long enough lorded it over patriotism—patriotism should now rule, arraign, and condemn royalty. The people of England had erected its tribunal in the face of Heaven and of all nations, formally to impeach, try, condemn, and punish absolutism in the person of one of its most earnest and most determined champions. The scene was one to hold in statue-like stillness the eyes of angels and of men; the lesson one to strike terror through the hearts of all monarchs, and to go forth as the charter of liberty to the ends of the earth and of all time.
It may be imagined that such a spectacle drew immense throngs. Every avenue to the hall was guarded by soldiers, and others stood armed within it. The open space below the bar was densely crowded, and equally packed throngs of nobles, gentlemen, and ladies, looked down from the galleries right and left. A chair of crimson velvet stood elevated on thrice steps towards the upper end of the hall, and behind and in a line with him right and left the commissioners took the seats placed for them, which were covered with scarlet. Before the president stood a long table on which lay the mace and sword, and just below him, at its head, sate two clerks. At the bottom of the table, directly opposite to the president, was placed a chair for the king.
After the commission had been read, Bradshaw ordered the prisoner to be brought to the bar. He had been brought from Whitehall, to which he had been removed from St. James's, in a sedan chair, and the serjeant-at-arms conducted him to the bar. His step was firm, and his countenance, though serious, unmoved. He seated himself covered, according to the wont, not of a prisoner, but of a king; then rose and surveyed the court and crowds around him. The commissioners all sate with their hats on, and Charles eyed them sternly. He then glanced round on the people in the galleries and those around with an air of superiority,and reseated himself. Bradshaw then addressed him to this effect:—"Charles Stuart, king of England,—The commons of England, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which are fixed upon you as the principal author of them, have resolved to make inquisition for blood; and, according to that debt and due they owe to justice, to God, the kingdom, and themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgment, and for that purpose have constituted this high court of justice before which you are brought." Coke, the solicitor-general, then rose to make the charge against him, but Charles, rising and crying, "Hold! hold!" tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. In doing this the gold head dropped from his cane, and though he took it up with an air of indifference, it was an incident that made a deep impression both on him and the spectators. He mentioned the circumstance to the bishop of London, who attended him in private, with much concern, and those who saw it regarded it as an especial omen.
Coke, however, went on, and desired the clerk to read the charge, and whilst it was reading, Charles again cried, "Hold!" but as the clerk continued, he sate down, looking very stern; but when the words of the charge declaring him to be a tyrant and traitor were read, he is said to have laughed outright. When the charge was finished, Bradshaw demanded what he had to say in reply to it; but he in his turn demanded by what authority he had been brought there? And he asserted very forcibly that he was king; acknowledged no authority superior to his own, and would not by any act of his diminish or yield up that authority, but leave it to his posterity as he had derived it from his ancestors. He reminded them that he had lately, in the Isle of Wight, treated with a number of lords and gentlemen; that they were upon the conclusion of that treaty, and he wanted to know by what authority he had, under such circumstances, been brought thence.
KING CHARLES SUMMONED TO EXECUTION
The two following days were spent by the court in receiving evidence of the king's having not only commenced the war on his subjects, but had commanded personally in it, and in settling the form of judgment to be pronounced. On the third day, when Charles was again brought forward, the same painful scene was renewed of the king's denying the court, refusing to plead, and yet insisting on being heard. Bradshaw told him in vain that if he pleaded, admitting the authority of the court, he would be at liberty to make any observation in his defence that he pleased; but that in no court could it be otherwise. He then demanded a hearing before a committee of both houses, but he was reminded that the authority of the lords was no longer admitted. He assured him that though he contended that he had no superior in the state, the law was his superior, and that there was a power superior to the law—the people, the parent or author of the law—which was not of yesterday, but the law of old. That there were such things as parliaments, which the people had constructed for their protection, and these parliaments he had endeavoured to put down and destroy. That what his endeavours had been all along for the crushing of parliament, had been' notorious to the whole kingdom. "And truly, sir," he continued, "in that you did strike at all, for the great bulwark of the liberties of the people is the parliament of England. Could you but have confounded that, you had at one blow cut off the neck of England. But God hath been pleased to confound your design, to break your forces, to bring your person into custody, that you might be responsible to justice."
He then combated Charles' argument, that there was no law or example of people deposing or destroying their kings. He quoted many instances from foreign nations, in which they had resisted, fought against, and destroyed their kings. That his own country of Scotland, before all others, abounded with instances of the deposition, and putting to death of their sovereigns. That his grandmother had been set aside, and his own father, a mere infant, set in her place. He referred to the depositions of Edward II. and Richard II., which he contended were effected by parliament, and said that their crimes were not a tenth part so capital against the nation as those laid to his charge. As Charles again continued to reply and argue without submitting to plead, Bradshaw told him the court had given him too much liberty already, and ordered the sentence to be read. But here John Downes, one of the commissioners, a citizen of London, said to those near him, "Have we hearts of stone? Are we men?" and then rising and trembling violently, exclaimed, "My lord, I am not satisfied to give my consent to the sentence. I desire the court may adjourn to hear me." They therefore adjourned, but in half an hour returned with an unanimous verdict of guilty.
Bradshaw then proceeded to pronounce the sentence. When the names of the commissioners were read that morning, on that of Fairfax having been called, a female voice from one of the galleries had cried out, "Not such a fool as to come here to-day." When the name of Cromwell was read, the same voice had exclaimed, "A rogue and a traitor." As Bradshaw now went on to say, the king has been called to answer by the people, before the commons of England assembled in parliament, the same female voice shouted, "It is false! not one half-quarter of them!"
There was a great excitement; all turned towards the gallery whence the voice came, from amid a group of masked ladies. Axtell, the officer commanding the soldiers, ordered them brutally to fire into the group; but the soldiers hesitated, and a lady rose and walked out of the gallery. It was seen to be lady Fairfax, the wife of the commander-in-chief, a woman of very ancient and noble family, the Veres of Tilbury, who had come to object most decidedly to the extreme measures of the army, and had prevailed on her husband to keep away from the court.
After order was restored, Bradshaw ordered the charge to be read, the king still interfering; and then Bradshaw passed the sentence, "That the court being satisfied in conscience that he, 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."
After the sentence was pronounced, Charles again requested to be heard; but Bradshaw told him that after the sentence it could not be allowed, and ordered the guards to take him away. The royalist writers state that ​during the trial the people had cried, "Justice! justice!" whilst others cried, "God save the king!" but that after the king was condemned, the soldiers, as he passed, insulted him in the grossest manner, spitting on him, blowing their tobacco in his face, throwing their pipes at him, and yelling in his ears, "Justice! justice! execution! execution!" But the popular party utterly denied the truth of these assertions; that they were got up to make the case of Charles resemble that of our Saviour, to render his judges odious, and himself a sacred martyr. One soldier, Herbert says, as the king was proceeding to his sedan chair, said, "God help and save your majesty!" and that Axtel struck him down with his cane, on which the king said, "Poor fellow, it is a heavy blow for a small offence." To the hired hootings of the military, Herbert says that he merely remarked, "Poor souls! they would say the same to their generals for sixpence."
Charles went back to St. James's Palace, where he spent the remainder of the day, Sunday, the 28th of January, and Monday, the 29th, the execution being fixed for Tuesday, the 30th. He had the attendance of Juxton, the late bishop of London, and the next morning he received the last visit of his only two remaining children in England, the duke of Gloucester and the princess Elizabeth. The princess was not twelve, and the king, setting her on his knee, began speaking to her—"But, sweetheart," he said, "thou wilt forget what I tell thee." The little girl, bursting into tears, promised to write down all that passed, and she did so. In her account, preserved in the "Reliquiæ Sacræ" she says, amongst other things, that he commanded her to tell her mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same for her to the last. That he died a glorious death for the laws and religion of the land. To the duke of Gloucester he said, "Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head. Heed what I say, they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say; you must not be a king as long as your brothers Charles and James live; therefore, I charge you, do not be made a king by them." At which the child, sighing deeply, replied, "I will be torn in pieces first." "And these words coming unexpectedly from so young a child," says the princess, "rejoiced my father exceedingly." The whole interview was extremely affecting.
"It may not," says Clarendon, "be unfit to pause in this place and take a view, and behold with what countenance the kings and princes of Christendom had their eyes fixed on this woful, bloody spectacle; how they looked upon that issue of blood, at which their own seemed to be so prodigally poured on; with what consternation their hearts laboured to see the impious hands of the lowest and basest subjects bathing in the bowels and reeking blood of their sovereign; a brother king, the anointed of the lord, dismembered as a malefactor; what combination and union was entered into, to take vengeance upon those monsters, and to vindicate the royal blood thus wickedly split. Alas! there was not a murmur amongst any of them at it.
"Cardinal Mazarin—who, in the infancy of the French king managed that sceptre, had long adored the conduct of Cromwell, and sought his friendship by a lower and viler application than was suitable to the purple of a cardinal— sent now to be admitted as a merchant, to traffic in the purchase of the rich goods and jewels of the rifled crown, of which he purchased the rich beds, hangings, and carpets, which furnished his palace at Paris. The king of Spain had, from the beginning of the rebellion, kept Don Alonza de Cardenas, who had been his ambassador to the king, still residing at London; and he had, upon several occasions, many audiences from the parliament, and several treaties on foot; and as soon as this dismal murder was over, that ambassador, who had always a great malignity towards the king, bought many pictures and other precious goods appertaining to the crown, and being sent in ships to Corunna, in Spain, were carried thence to Madrid, upon eighteen mules. Christina, the queen of Sweden, purchased the choice of all the medals and jewels, and some pictures of a great price, and received Cromwell's ambassador with great joy and pomp, and made an alliance with them. The archduke Leopold, who was governor of Flanders, disbursed a great sum of money for many of the best pictures which adorned the several palaces of the king, which were all brought by him to Brussels, and thence carried by him into Germany. In this manner did the neighbouring princes join to assist Cromwell with very great sums of money, whereby ho was enabled to prosecute and finish his wicked victory over what yet remained unconquered, and to extinguish monarchy in this renowned kingdom; whilst they enriched and adorned themselves with the ruins and spoils of the surviving heir, without applying any part thereof to his relief, in the greatest necessities ever king was subject to. And that which is stranger than all this, though they pretended that they took care to preserve it for the true owner, not one of all these princes ever returned any of their unlawful purchases to the king after the blessed restoration."
Every one must regret and condemn the sale of those noble works of art, both British and foreign, which Charles had collected, and which the leaders of the commonwealth had sent out of the kingdom. Travellers who now gaze on those at the Escurial, or at those in the Belvidere Palace at Vienna, the especial selection of Rubens' own gallery of his works, with British subjects besides, must deplore this proceeding. But it may be said in vindication of the monarchs thus attacked by the historian of royalty, that there was not one whom Charles had not contrived to make as implacably his enemy as he had done his own subjects. His treatment of the king of Spain about the marriage of his sister, his after quarrel with and attack on France, the neglect of the generals of queen Christina, the daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, when fighting for his sister and her son in Germany, and the very dubious prospect of ever being repaid by Charles II., remove the wonder and the blame from those royal persons in a great measure.
As to Charles's own family, the immediate prospect of his death at last roused them Queen Henrietta—though the French memoir writers positively declare that she had, during the king's life, a child by lord Jermyn—whom she soon after married—which is stated as an undoubted fact by bishop Burnet—at the news of the king's danger, wrote a very earnest letter to the speaker of the commons, praying to be allowed to come to England, to endeavour to persuade the king to consent to all their desires. But it was too ​late; the parliament had made up its mind, and woulld not allow the letter to be read. Prince Charles also sent over a carte blanche signed by his own hand and sealed with his seal, and a letter to Fairfax, saying that they had only to write on the carte blanche the terms of the grant of his father's life, and that his seal and signature thus made them obligatory upon him. They might thus have accepted even his abdication, or any the amplest conditions for his restoration; but they declined the offer. The States of Holland, too, sent an embassage to intercede for his life, but neither to that nor to the remonstrance of the Scottish parliament did they return any answer till all was over.
Charles slept well, but woke early, and bade his man Herbert rise and dress him with care, for it was his second marriage day, and he would be as trim as possible. Whilst Herbert dressed him, he told him he had dreamt of archbishop Laud, who, on the king speaking seriously to him, had sighed and fallen prostrate. Charles said, had he not been dead, he might possibly have said something to Laud to cause him to sigh; so that it is possible he felt that Laud's proceedings and advice had brought things to this pass. He desired to have two shirts on, as the weather was very cold; as if he shook, the rogues would think it was through fear. He observed that he was glad he had slept at St. James's, as the walk through the park would warm him. At ten o'clock the summons came—colonel Hacker knocked at the door to say they were ready. Hacker turned pale on seeing the king come out, and was much affected. Ten companies of infantry formed a double line on each side of his path, and a detachment preceded him with banners flying and drums beating.
On the king's right walked Juxton, on his left the parliamentary colonel Tomlinson, bareheaded. The king walked through the park at a brisk rate, and said to the guard, "Come, my good fellows, step on apace." He pointed out a tree planted by his brother Henry, and on arriving at Whitehall, he ascended the stairs with a light step, passed through the long gallery, and went to his chamber, where he remained with Juxton in religious exercise. It was past one o'clock before he was summoned to the scaffold, where the executioner, Brandon, and Hulet, a sergeant appointed to assist him, were ready disguised in black masks, awaited him. The scaffold was raised in the street, in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and he passed through a window which had been taken out, upon it. All was hung with black cloth, and in the middle of the scaffold stood the block, with the axe enveloped in black crape lying on it.
Charles made a speech, in which he denied making war on the parliament, but the parliament on him, by claiming the militia. That church, lords, and commons, had been subverted with the sovereign power; that if he would have consented to reign by the mere despotism of the sword, he might have lived and remained king. He declared that he forgave all his enemies; and yet when the executioner knelt and begged his forgiveness, he said, "No, I forgive no subject of mine, who comes deliberately to shed my blood." He declared that the nation would never prosper till they placed his son on the throne; and to the last moment, rooted in his theory of divine right, denied that the people ought to have any share in the government, that being a thing "nothing pertaining to them," and yet that "he died the martyr of the people."
Whilst he spoke some one disturbed the axe, on which he turned and said, "Have a care of the axe; if the edge be spoiled, it will be the worse for me." After concluding his speech, he put up his hair under a cap, and the bishop observed, "There is but one stage more, widely though turbulent and troublesome, is yet a very short one. Consider it will carry you a great way—even from earth to heaven." "I go," said the king, "from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible, where no disturbance can take place." "You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown—a good exchange," replied the bishop. The king then took off his cloak, and gave his George to Juxton, saying impressively, "Remember!" The warning being supposed, as the medallion of the George concealed a portrait of Henrietta, to regard a message to his wife. Having laid his head on the block, the executioner severed it at a single stroke, and Hulet, the sergeant, holding it up, cried, "Here is the head of a traitor." At that sight a universal groan seemed to go through the crowd.
The body lay at Whitehall, to be embalmed, till the 7th of February, when it was conveyed to Windsor, and laid in the vault of St. George's Chapel, near the coffins of Henry III. and Jane Seymour. The day was very snowy, and the coffin being deposited without any service, was left without any inscription except the words, "Charles Rex, 1648," the letters of which were cut out of a band of lead by the gentlemen present, with their penknives, and the lead folded round the coffin. In this condition it was discovered in 1813, when George IV., attended by Sir Henry Halford, had it opened, and found proof that the head had been separated from the body.
Such was the end of Charles I., the martyr of absolutism and of the kingcraft in which his father had fatally educated him. In his private character, the most amiable of men—in his public one, the most pestilent of kings; honourably faithful to his inherited and destructive dogmas, perfidious to the last in all his dealings with the parliament and people. Whilst we sympathise with his misfortunes, and deplore his bloody end, we are bound to admit that he brought them down entirely on himself, and that his doom, though severe, was just and necessary. His execution has, by a modern writer, been pronounced a political blunder, because the very act which extinguished his life, raised a new king into his place. But this circumstance had been well foreseen, and thoroughly weighed by the reformers. There were three proposals discussed by them—one to restore him under cogent restrictions, that was the proposal of the presbyterians; the second to try, condemn, and depose him, but to spare his life, and detain him in custody; the third, to put him to death. But to the first it was objected, that twenty-two years of sad experience and undetermined struggle in parliament and in the battle-field, had proved, beyond hope of change, that on the very first opportunity he would break through every condition, and resume the old and sanguinary conflict. To the second it was objected, that so long as he lived, though in strict custody, he would be the nucleus of perpetual plots, feuds, and miseries; that ​his genius was essentially for intrigue, and no one could foresee what turn of affairs might occur to favour him and his partizans. That, as it regarded the third, though it was true, as Clarendon says, many officers contended "that the son could pretend to no right whilst he was alive, yet, if the father were dead, he would presently call himself king, and others would call him so too; "still, admitting this, the objection could not outweigh the advantages of condignly punishing him; that it was necessary to show to kings and to nations, that treason in monarchs should meet with its reward as much as in subjects; that thousands had fallen by the hands of kings on the charge of breach of trust towards them, and that it was necessary for pure and equal justice that kings should suffer for flagrant breach of trust to their people; that Charles had been the cause of the bloody death of thousands, and that his death ought to be placed as a warning against such perpetrations of calamities by kings on their subjects in future; that if the death was due, no fear of inconvenience should suffer them to shrink from demanding it; that if they believed another form of government, or the election of another king, was more deserving of support, it became them, as brave men and Englishmen, to defend and maintain that position at all hazards. This was the conclusion at which they arrived, and the act of the whole people in 1688 confirmed the propriety of their decision to all posterity.