II. THE GREAT REBELLION (concluded)…

II. THE GREAT REBELLION (concluded)

The Assembly at Westminster--Trial and Death of Laud--Negotiations at Uxbridge--Meeting of the Commissioners--Impossibility of a Settlement--Prospect of Help to the King from the Continent--Charles agrees to the demands of the Irish Catholics--Discipline and Spirit of the Parliamentary Army--Campaign of the New-modelled Army--Hunting the King--Battle of Naseby--Fairfax in the West--Exploits of Montrose--Efforts of Charles to join Him--Battle of Kilsyth--Fall of Bristol--Battle of Philiphaugh--Last Efforts of the Royalists--Charles Offers to Treat--Discovery of his Correspondence with Glamorgan--Charles Intrigues with the Scots--Flight from Oxford--Surrender to the Scots at Newark--Consequent Negotiations--Proposals for Peace--Surrender of Charles to Parliament.

Whilst these events were happening in the field and the Parliament, other events were occurring also both in England and Scotland, the account of which, not to interrupt the narrative of the higher transactions, has been deferred. From the month of June, 1643, the Synod of divines at Westminster had been at work endeavouring to establish a national system of faith and worship. This Westminster Assembly consisted of one hundred and twenty individuals appointed by the Lords and Commons. They included not only what were called pious, godly, and judicious divines, but thirty laymen, ten lords, and twenty commoners, and with them sat the Scottish commissioners. The Scottish and English Presbyterians had a large majority, and endeavoured to fix on the nation their gloomy, ascetic, and persecuting notions; but they found a small but resolute party of a more liberal faith, the Independents, including Vane, Selden, and others, whose bearing and spirit, backed by Cromwell, Whitelock, St. John, and others in Parliament, were more than a match for this overbearing intolerance. On the subject of Church government, therefore, there could be no agreement. Cromwell demanded from the House of Commons an act of toleration, and that a Committee should be formed of deputies from both Houses and from the Assembly to consider it. The subject was long and fiercely debated, the Lords Say and Wharton, Sir Henry Vane, and St. John contending for the independence of the Church from all bishops, synods, and ruling powers. The only thing agreed on was, that the English Common Prayer-book should be disused, and a Directory of worship introduced which should regulate the order of the service, the administration of the Sacrament, the ceremonies of marriage and burial--but left much liberty to the minister in the matter of his sermons. This Directory was, by an ordinance of both Houses, ordered to be observed both in England and Scotland.

Poor old Archbishop Laud, who was still in prison, was in the turmoil of civil war almost totally forgotten. But the Puritans of England and the people of Scotland needed only a slight reminder to demand the punishment of the man who, with so high a hand, had trodden down their liberties and their religion. This was given them by the Lords, who, insisting on appointing ministers to livings in his gift, called on Laud to collate the vacant benefices to such persons as they should nominate. The king forbade him to obey. At length, in February, 1643, the rectory of Chartham, in Kent, became vacant by the death of the incumbent, the Lords nominated one person, the king another, and Laud, placed in a dilemma dangerous to his life under his circumstances, endeavoured to excuse himself by remaining passive. But the Lords, in the month of April, sent him a peremptory order, and on his still delaying, sent a request to the Commons to proceed with his trial. There were fourteen articles of impeachment already hanging over his head, and the Commons appointed Prynne, still smarting under the ear-lopping, branding, and cruelties of the archbishop, to collect evidence and co-operate with a Committee on the subject.

What an apparition must that earless man, with those livid brand marks on his cheeks, have been as he entered the cell of Laud, and told him that the day of retribution was come! Prynne collected all his papers, even the diary which he had been so long employed in writing, as the defence of his past life, and sought everywhere for remaining victims and witnesses of the archbishop's persecutions and cruelties, to bring them up against him. In six months the Committee had obtained evidence enough to furnish ten new articles of impeachment against him, and on the 4th of March, 1644, more than three years after his commitment, Laud was called upon to take his trial. He demanded time to consult his papers, and to have them for that purpose restored, to have counsel, and money out of the proceeds of his estate to pay his fees and other expenses. He was not likely to find much more tenderness from his enemies than he had showed to them; the Scots demanded stern justice upon him, as the greatest enemy which their country had known for ages. Time was given him till the 12th of March, when he was brought to the bar of the House of Lords. There, after the once haughty but now humbled priest had been made to kneel a little, Mr. Serjeant Wild opened the case against him, and went over, at great length, the whole story of his endeavours to introduce absolutism in Church and State in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dreadful cruelties and oppressions which he had inflicted on the king's subjects in the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts.

When he had done, Laud defended himself from a written paper, contending that though he had leaned towards the law, he had never intended to overthrow the laws, and that he had in the Church laboured only for the support of the external form of worship, which had been neglected. But the hearers had not forgotten the "Thorough," nor the utter suppression of all forms of religion but his own, the sweeping away utterly of the faith of Scotland, and the substitution of Arminianism and the liturgy.

It was not till the 2nd of September that Laud was called to the bar of the Lords to deliver his recapitulation of the arguments in answer to his charges. Mr. Samuel Brown, a member of the Commons, and a Manager of the trial, replied to them. Laud was then allowed counsel to speak to the parts of law, who took the same course of defence as had been taken in the case of Strafford, declaring that the prisoner's offence did not amount to high treason, and the Commons then adopted their plan in Strafford's case, of proceeding by attainder. He was, therefore, on the 2nd of November, brought to the bar of their own House, where Mr. Brown repeated the sum of the evidence produced in the Lords, and Laud was called on to reply himself to the charges. He demanded time to prepare his answer, and obtained eight days. On the 11th of November he was heard, and Brown in reply; and the Commons the same day passed their Bill of Attainder, finding him fully convicted of the offences charged against him. On the 16th they sent up this Bill to the Lords; but it was not till the 4th of January, 1645, that the Lords also passed the Bill, and soon after fixed the day of his execution for the 10th. The last effort to save the old man's life was by the production of a pardon which had been prepared at Oxford, as soon as the danger of his conviction was seen, and was signed and sealed by the king. This pardon was read in both Houses, but was declared of no effect, the king having no power to pardon a crime adjudged by Parliament. On the appointed day, the archbishop was beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile some useless negotiations had been set on foot by the Presbyterian party at Uxbridge.

Charles had, during the last summer, after every temporary success, proposed negotiations, thus showing his readiness to listen to accommodation, and throwing on the Parliament the odium of continued warfare. At the same time it must be confessed that he was by no means inclined to accept terms which would surrender altogether his prerogative, or sacrifice the interests of those who had ventured everything for him. He was constantly exhorted by the queen from France to make no peace inconsistent with his honour, or the interests of his followers. She contended that he must stipulate for a bodyguard, without which he could enjoy no safety, and should keep all treaty regarding religion to the last, seeing plainly the almost insuperable difficulty on that head; for since nothing would satisfy the Puritans but the close binding down of the Catholics, that would effectually cut off all hope of his support from Ireland, or from the Catholics of England. Charles, in fact, was in a cleft stick, and the contentions of his courtiers added so much to his embarrassments, that he got rid of the most troublesome by sending them to attend the queen in France. He then assembled his Parliament for the second time, but it was so thinly attended, and the miserable distractions which rent his Court were so completely imported into its debates, that he was the more disposed to accept the offer of negotiation with the Parliament. His third proposal, happening to be favoured by the recommendation of the Scots, was at length acceded to by Parliament, but the terms recommended by the Scots--the recognition of Presbytery as the national religion, and the demands of the Parliament of the supreme control not only of the revenue but of the army--rendered negotiations from the first hopeless.

In November, 1644, the propositions of the Scots, drawn up by Johnston of Wariston, were sent to the king by a Commission consisting of the Earl of Denbigh, the Lords Maynard and Wenman, and Mr. Pierpoint, Denzil Holles, and Whitelock, accompanied by the Scottish Commissioners--Lord Maitland, Sir Charles Erskine, and Mr. Barclay.

Charles probably received a private copy of the propositions, for he received the Commissioners most ungraciously. They were suffered to remain outside the gates of Oxford in a cold and wet day for several hours, and then conducted by a guard, more like prisoners than ambassadors, to a very mean inn. On the propositions being read by the Earl of Denbigh, Charles asked him if they had power to treat, to which the earl replied in the negative, saying that they were commissioned to receive his majesty's answer. "Then," said Charles, rudely, "a letter-carrier might have done as much as you." The earl, resenting this, said, "I suppose your majesty looks upon us as persons of another condition than letter-carriers." "I know your condition," retorted the king, "but I repeat it, that your condition gives you no more power than a letter-carrier." Whilst Denbigh had read over the list of persons who were to be excepted from the conditions of the treaty, Rupert and Maurice, who were of the excepted, and were present, laughed in the earl's face. This insolence displeased even the king, and he bade them be quiet. The interview terminated, however, as unfavourably as it began. The king gave them a reply but sealed up, and not addressed to the Parliament or anybody. The commissioners refused to carry an answer of which they did not know the particulars, on which Charles insolently remarked, "What is that to you, who are but to carry what I send; and if I choose to send the song of Robin Hood or Little John, you must carry it?" As they could get nothing else, not even an address upon it to Parliament, the commissioners, wisely leaving it to Parliament to treat the insult as they deemed best, took their leave with it.

When this document was presented to both Houses on the 29th of November, 1644, assembled for the purpose, it was strongly urged by many to refuse it; but this was overruled by those who wisely would throw no obstacle in the way of negotiation; and the king thought well immediately to send the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Southampton with a fuller answer. They, on their part, found a safe-conduct refused them by Essex, then the commander, unless he were acknowledged by the king as general of the army of the Parliament of England, and the Commons informed them that they would receive no further Commission which was not addressed to the Parliament of England assembled at Westminster, and the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland. With this the king was compelled to comply; but at the same time he wrote to the queen--"As to my calling those at London a Parliament, if there had been two besides myself of my opinion, I had not done it; and the argument that prevailed with me was that the calling did no wise acknowledge them to be a Parliament, upon which construction and condition I did it, and no otherwise."

Under these unpromising circumstances, Commissioners on both sides were at length appointed, who met on the 29th of January, in the little town of Uxbridge. Uxbridge was within the Parliamentary lines, and the time granted for the sitting was twenty days. The Commissioners on the part of the king were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton, Chichester, and Kingston, the Lords Capel, Seymour, Hatton, and Colepepper, Secretary Nicholas, Sir Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Edward Lane, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Sir Thomas Gardener, Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. Palmer, and Dr. Stewart. On that of the Parliament appeared the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Denbigh, Lord Wenman, Sir Henry Vane the younger, Denzil Holles, Pierpont, St. John, Whitelock, Crew, and Prideaux. The Scottish Commissioners were the Earl of Loudon, the Marquis of Argyll, the Lords Maitland and Balmerino, Sir Archibald Johnston, Sir Charles Erskine, Sir John Smith, Dundas, Kennedy, Robert Barclay, and Alexander Henderson. John Thurloe, afterwards Oliver Cromwell's secretary, and the friend of Milton, was secretary for the English Parliament, assisted by Mr. Earle, and Mr. Cheesly was secretary for the Scottish Commissioners.

The four propositions submitted to the king by the Parliament concerning religion were, that the Common Prayer Book should be withdrawn, the Directory of the Westminster divines substituted, that he should confirm the assemblies and synods of the Church, and take the Solemn League and Covenant. These, contrary to the warning of Queen Henrietta, were brought on first, and argued with much learning and pertinacity, and as little concession on either side, for four days. Then there arose other equally formidable subjects, the command of the army and navy, the cessation of the war in Ireland; and the twenty days being expired, it was proposed to prolong the term, but this was refused by the two Houses of Parliament, and the Commissioners, separated, mutually satisfied that nothing but the sword would settle these questions. The Royalists had not been long in discovering that Vane, St. John, and Prideaux had come to the conference, not so much to treat, as to watch the proceedings of the Presbyterian deputies, and to take care that no concessions should be made inimical to the independence of the Church.

Gloomy as to the general eye must have appeared the prospects of the king at this period, he was still buoyed up by various hopes. He had been using every exertion to obtain aid from the Continent, and at length was promised an army of ten thousand men by the Duke of Lorraine, and Goffe was sent into Holland to prepare for their being shipped over. On the other hand, he had made up his mind to concede most of their demands to the Irish Catholics, on condition of receiving speedily an army thence. He wrote to Ormond, telling him that he had clearly discovered, by the treaty of Uxbridge, that the rebels were aiming at nothing less than the total subversion of the Crown and the Church; that they had made the Earl of Leven commander of all the English as well as Scottish forces in Ireland, and therefore he could no longer delay the settlement of Ireland in his favour, through scruples that at another time would have clung to him. He therefore authorised him to grant the suspension of Poynings' Act, and to remove all the penal acts against the Catholics on condition that they at once gave him substantial aid against the rebels of Scotland and Ireland. At this moment, too, the news of the successes of Montrose in Scotland added to his confidence.

The two armies in England now prepared to try their strength. Charles, lying at Oxford, had a considerable number of troops: the west of England was almost entirely in his interest, north and south Wales were wholly his, excepting the castles of Pembroke and Montgomery. He had still Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract; but his army, though experienced in the field, was not well disciplined. The Parliamentary army, now new-modelled, presented a very different spectacle to that of the king. The strictest discipline was introduced, and the men were called upon to observe the duties of religion. The officers had been selected from those who had served under Essex, Manchester, and the other lords; but having cleared the command of the aristocratic element, a new spirit of activity and zeal was infused into it. The king's officers ridiculed the new force, which had no leaders of great name except Sir Thomas Fairfax, and was brought together in so new a shape, that it appeared a congregation of raw soldiers. The ridicule of the Cavaliers even infected the adherents of the Commonwealth, and there was great scepticism as to the result of such a change. May, the Parliamentary historian, says, never did an army go forth who had less the confidence of their friends, or more the contempt of their enemies. But both parties were extremely deceived. Cromwell was now the real soul of the movement, and the religious enthusiasm which glowed in him was diffused through the whole army. The whole system seemed a revival of that of the pious Gustavus Adolphus--no man suffered a day to go over without religious service, and never commenced a battle without prayer. The soldiers now employed their time in zealous military exercises and in equally zealous prayer and singing of psalms. They sang in their march, they advanced into battle with a psalm. The letters of Cromwell to the Parliament, giving an account of the proceedings of the army, are full of this religious spirit, which it has been the custom to treat as cant, but which was the genuine expression of his feelings, and was shown by effects such as cant and sham never produce. Victory, which he and his soldiers ascribed only to God, success the most rapid and wonderful, attended him.

It is remarkable that the very man who had introduced the Self-denying Ordinance was the only man who was never debarred by it from pursuing his military career. This has, therefore, been treated as an artifice on his part; but, on the contrary, it was the mere result of circumstances. Cromwell was the great military genius of the age. Every day the success of his plans and actions was bursting more and more on the public notice, and no one was more impressed by the value of his services than the new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax. He had sent Cromwell, Massey, and Waller into the West, before laying down their commissions, to attack Colonel Goring, who was threatening the Parliamentary lines. They had driven him back towards Wells and Glastonbury, and not deeming it safe to push farther with their small force into a quarter where the Royal interest was so strong, and Cromwell advising Parliament to send more troops to Salisbury to defend that point against Rupert, who was reported at Trowbridge, he had returned to Windsor to resign his command according to the Ordinance. There, however, he found the Parliament had suspended the Ordinance in his instance for forty days, in order that he might execute a service of especial consequence, and which it particularly wished him to undertake. This was to attack a body of two thousand men conveying the king's artillery from Oxford to Worcester, to which place Rupert had marched, having defeated Colonel Massey at Ledbury.

This was on the 22nd of April, and Cromwell took horse the next morning, dashed rapidly into Oxfordshire and at Islip Bridge routed the enemy, consisting of four regiments of cavalry, took many of their officers, and especially those of the queen's regiment, seizing the standard which she had presented to it with her own hands. Many of the fugitives got into Bletchington House, which Cromwell immediately assaulted and took. The king was so enraged at the surrender of Bletchington, that he ordered the commander, Colonel Windebank, to be shot, and no prayers or entreaties could save him. Cromwell next sent off his cannon and stores to Abingdon, and pushed on to Radcot Bridge, or Bampton-in-the-Bush, where others of the enemy had fled: here he defeated them, and took their leaders Vaughan and Littleton. Cromwell next summoned Colonel Burgess, the governor of the garrison at Faringdon, to surrender; but he was called away to join the main army, the king being on the move.

Charles, in fact, issued from Oxford, and, joined by both Rupert and Maurice, advanced to relieve Chester, then besieged by Sir William Brereton. Fairfax, instead of pursuing him, thought it a good opportunity to take Oxford and prevent his returning there; but the king's movements alarmed him for the safety of the eastern counties, to which he had despatched Cromwell to raise fresh forces and strengthen their defences. Cromwell was recalled, and Fairfax set out in pursuit of the king. Charles relieved Chester by the very news of his march. Brereton retired from before it, and the Scottish army, which was advancing southward, fell back into Westmoreland and Cumberland, to prevent a rumoured junction of the king and the army of Montrose. Whatever had been Charles's intentions in this movement, he wheeled aside and directed his way through Staffordshire into Leicestershire, and took Leicester by assault. From Leicester he extended his course eastward, and took up his headquarters at Daventry, where he amused himself with hunting, and Rupert and his horse with foraging and plundering the whole country round.

Fairfax, now apprehensive of the royal intentions being directed to the eastern counties, which had hitherto been protected from the visitations of his army, pushed forward to prevent this, and came in contact with the king's outposts on the 13th of June, near Borough Hill. Charles fired his huts, and began his march towards Harborough, intending, perhaps, to proceed to the relief of Pontefract and Scarborough; but Fairfax did not allow him to get far ahead. A council of war was called, and in the midst of it Cromwell rode into the lines at the head of six hundred horse. It was now determined to bring the king to action. Harrison and Ireton, officers of Cromwell--soon to be well known--led the way after the royal army, and Fairfax, with his whole body, was at once in full chase. The king was in Harborough, and a council being called, it was considered safer to turn and fight than to pursue their way to Leicester like an army flying from the foe. It was therefore resolved to wheel about and meet the enemy.

At five o'clock the next morning, the 14th of June, the advanced guards of each army approached each other on the low hills a little more than a mile from the village of Naseby, in Northamptonshire, nearly midway between Market Harborough and Daventry. The Parliament army ranged itself on a hill yet called the Mill Hill, and the king's on a parallel hill, with its back to Harborough. The right wing was led by Cromwell, consisting of six regiments of horse, and the left, consisting of nearly as many, was, at his request, committed to his friend, Colonel Ireton, a Nottinghamshire man. Fairfax and Skippon took charge of the main body, and Colonels Pride, Rainsborough, and Hammond brought up the reserves. Rupert and his brother Maurice led on the right wing of Charles's army, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left, Charles himself the main body, and Sir Jacob Astley, the Earl of Lindsay, the Lord Baird, and Sir George Lisle the reserves. The word for the day of the Royalists was, "God and Queen Mary!" that of the Parliamentarians, "God our strength!" A wide moorland, called Broad Moor, lay between them. The Cavaliers made themselves very merry at the new-modelled army of Roundheads, for which they had the utmost contempt, having nothing aristocratic about it, and its head being farmer Cromwell, or the brewer of Huntingdon, as they pleased to call him. They expected to sweep them away like dust, and Rupert, making one of his headlong charges, seemed to realise their anticipations, for he drove the left wing of the Roundheads into instant confusion and flight, took Ireton prisoner, his horse being killed under him, and himself wounded severely in two places; and, in his regular way, Rupert galloped after the fugitives, thinking no more of the main battle. But the scattered horse, who had been diligently taught to rally, collected behind him, returned to the defence of their guns, and were soon again ready for action. On the other hand, Cromwell had driven the left wing of the king's army off the field, but took care not to pursue them too far. He sent a few companies of horse to drive them beyond the battle, and with his main body he fell on the king's flank, where at first the royal foot was gaining the advantage. This unexpected assault threw them into confusion, and the soldiers of Fairfax's front, which had given way, rallying and falling in again with the reserves as they came to the rear, were brought up by their officers, and completed the rout. Rupert, who was now returning from the chase, rode up to the waggon-train of the Parliamentary army, and, ignorant of the state of affairs, offered quarter to the troops guarding the stores. The reply was a smart volley of musketry, and falling back and riding forward to the field, he found an overwhelming defeat. His followers stood stupefied at the sight, when Charles, riding up to them in despair, cried frantically, "One charge more, and the victory is ours yet!" But it was in vain, the main body was broken, that of Fairfax was complete; the artillery was seized, and the Roundheads were taking prisoners as fast as they could promise them quarter. Fairfax and Cromwell the next moment charged the dumfoundered horse, and the whole fled at full gallop on the road towards Leicester, pursued almost to the gates of the town by Cromwell's troopers.

The slaughter at this battle was not so great as might have been expected. But though the loss on the Parliamentarian side was small, amounting to about two hundred men, the Royalists had one thousand killed. Five thousand prisoners were taken, including a great number of officers, and a considerable number of ladies in carriages. All the king's baggage and artillery, with nine thousand stand of arms, were taken, and amongst the carriages that of the king containing his private papers: a fatal loss, for it contained the most damning evidences of the king's double-dealing and mental reservations, which the Parliament took care to publish, to Charles's irreparable damage. Clarendon accuses the Roundheads of killing above a hundred women, many of them of quality, but other evidence proves that this was false, the only women who were rudely treated being a number of wild Irish ones, who were armed with skeans--knives a foot long--and who used them like so many maniacs.

The next day Fairfax sent Colonel Fiennes and his regiment to London with the prisoners and the colours taken, above a hundred of them, and he prayed that a day of thanksgiving might be appointed for the victory. But the most essential fruit of the victory was the reading in Parliament of the king's letters. In these the affair of the Duke of Lorraine came to light--the attempt to bring in the Lorrainers, the French, the Danes, and the Irish to put down the Parliament, whilst Charles had been making the most sacred protestations to that body that he abhorred bringing in foreign soldiers. There appeared his promise to give the Catholics full liberty of conscience, whilst he had been vowing constantly that he would never abrogate the laws against Popery; and his letter to his wife, showing that at the treaty of Uxbridge he was merely conceding the name of a Parliament, with a full determination, on the first opportunity, to declare it no Parliament at all. These exposures were so dreadful, and gave such an assurance that the king was restrained by no moral principle, that the Royalists would not believe the documents genuine till they had examined them for themselves; and for this examination the Parliament wisely gave the amplest facilities. There were copies of his letters to the queen, in which he complained of the quarrels and harassing jealousies of his own courtiers and supporters, and of his getting rid of as many as he could by sending them on one pretence or another to her. The sight of these things struck his own party dumb with a sense of his hollowness and ingratitude; and the battle of Naseby itself was declared far less fatal to his interests than the contents of his cabinet. From this moment his ruin was certain, and the remainder of the campaign was only the last feeble struggles of the expiring Cause. His adherents stood out rather for their own chance of making terms than from any possible hope of success.

The defeated and dishonoured king did not stop to pass a single night at Leicester, but rode on to Ashby that evening, and after a few hours' rest pursued his course towards Hereford. At Hereford Rupert, fearful of the Parliamentary army attacking their only remaining strong quarter, the West, left the king and hastened to Bristol to put it into a state of defence. Charles himself continued his march into Wales, and took up his headquarters at Raglan Castle, the seat of the Marquis of Worcester. There, pretty sure that Fairfax was intending to go westward, he spent the time as though nothing had been amiss, hunting like his father, when he should have been studying the retrieval of his affairs, and passing the evenings in entertainments and giving of audiences. The most probable cause of Charles thus spending his time there and at Cardiff, to which he next retired, is that he had been urging the despatch of an Irish army, and was expecting it there. At the same time he could there more easily communicate with Rupert regarding the defence of the west of England.

The Parliament forces under Cromwell marched on Bristol where Rupert lay, whilst Fairfax met and defeated Goring at Langport, and then besieged and took Bridgewater on the 23rd of July. Matters now appeared so threatening that Rupert proposed to Charles to sue for peace; but the king rejected the advice with warmth, declaring that, though as soldier and statesman he saw nothing but ruin before him, yet as a Christian he was sure God would not prosper rebels, and that nothing should induce him to give up the Cause. He avowed that whoever stayed by him must do so at the cost of his life, or of being made as miserable as the violence of insulting rebels could make him. But by the grace of God he would not alter, and bade Rupert not on any consideration "to hearken after treaties." He would take no less than he had asked for at Uxbridge.

Charles, blind to the last, was still hoping for assistance from Ireland, and was elated by the news of successes from Montrose.

It will be recollected that the Earls of Antrim and Montrose had been engaged by Charles to exert themselves in Ireland and Scotland on his behalf. Their first attempt was to take vengeance on the Covenanting Earl of Argyll, who had so much contributed to defeat the king's attempts on the Scottish Church and Government. Montrose, therefore, unfurled the royal standard as the king's lieutenant-general at Dumfries; but having before been a strong Covenanter, he did not all at once win the confidence of the Royalists. His success was so poor that he returned to England. At Carlisle he was more effective in serving the king, and was made a marquis in consequence. After the battle of Marston Moor he again returned into the Highlands, and there learned the success of Antrim's labours in Ireland. He had sent over a body of fifteen hundred men under the command of his kinsman Alaster Macdonald, surnamed MacColl Keitache, or Colkitto. They landed at Knoidart, but a fleet of the Duke of Argyll's burnt their ships, and hung in their rear waiting a fitting chance to destroy them. To their surprise they received no welcome from the Scottish Royalists. However, they continued their march to Badenoch, ravaging the houses and farms of the Covenanters, but every day menaced by the gathering hosts of their foes, and learning nothing of their ally Montrose. At last Montrose obtained tidings of them: they met at Blair Athol, in the beginning of August, 1644. Montrose assumed the command, and published the royal commission. At the sight of a native chief the Highlanders flocked to his standard, and the Covenanters saw to their astonishment an army of between three and four thousand men spring at once, as it were, out of the ground. Montrose wrote to Charles that if he could receive five hundred horse on his way, he would soon be in England with twenty thousand men.

The movements and exploits of Montrose now became rather a story of romance than of sober modern warfare. Argyll and Lord Elcho dogged his steps, but he advanced or disappeared, with his half-clad Irish and wild mountaineers, amongst the hills in a manner that defied arrest. At Tippermuir, in Perthshire, he defeated Elcho, took his guns and ammunition, and surprised and plundered the town of Perth. As was constantly the case, the Highlanders, once loaded with booty, slipped off to their homes; and, left alone with his Irish band, who were faithful because their way home was cut off, he retreated northward, in hope of joining the clan Gordon. Montrose found himself stopped at the Bridge of Dee by two thousand seven hundred Covenanters under Lord Balfour of Burleigh, but he managed to cross at a ford higher up, and, falling on their rear, threw them into a panic. They fled to Aberdeen, pursued by the Irish and Highlanders, and the whole mass of pursuers and pursued rushed wildly into the city together. The place was given up to plunder, and for three days Aberdeen became a scene of horror and revolting licence, as it had been from an attack of Montrose four years before, when fighting on the other side. The approach of Argyll compelled the pillagers to fly into Banffshire, and, following the banks of the Spey, he crossed the hills of Badenoch, and, after a series of wild adventures in Athol, Angus, and Forfar, he was met by the Covenanters at Fyvie Castle, and compelled to retreat into the mountains. His followers then took their leave of him, worn out with their rapid flights and incessant skirmishes, and he announced his intention of withdrawing for the winter into Badenoch.

The Earl of Argyll, on his part, retired to Inverary and sent his followers home. He felt secure in the mighty barrier of mountains around, which in summer offered a terrible route to an army, but which, now blockaded with snow, he deemed impregnable. But he was deceived; the retirement of Montrose was a feint. He was busily employed in rousing the northern clans to a sweeping vengeance on Argyll, and the prospect of a rich booty. In the middle of December he burst through all obstacles, threaded the snow-laden defiles of the mountains, and descended with fire and sword into the plains of Argyleshire. The earl was suddenly roused by the people from the hills, whose dwellings were in flames behind them, and only effected his escape by pushing across Loch Fyne in an open boat. Montrose divided his host into three columns, which spread themselves over the whole of Argyleshire, burning and laying everything waste. Argyll had set a price upon Montrose's head; and Montrose now reduced his splendid heritage to a black and frightful desert. The villages and cottages were burnt down, the cattle destroyed or driven off, and the people slain wherever found with arms in their hands. This miserable and melancholy state of things lasted from the 13th of December to the end of January, 1645.

Argyll by that time had mustered the Clan Campbell, and Lord Seaforth the mountaineers of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, to bear down on the invaders. Montrose, therefore, led forth his Highlanders and Irish to encounter them, and came first on Argyll and his army at Inverlochy Castle, in Lochaber. There he totally defeated Argyll, and slew nearly fifteen hundred of his people. This success brought to his standard the clan Gordon and others. The whole north was in their power, and they marched from Inverlochy to Elgin and Aberdeen. At Brechin they were met by Baillie with a strong force, which protected Perth; but Montrose marched to Dunkeld, and thence to Dundee, which he entered, and began plundering, when Baillie arrived with his Covenanters and caused him to retire. Once more he escaped to the mountains, but this time not without severe losses, for his indignant foes pursued him for threescore miles, cutting off many of his soldiers, besides those that had perished in the storming of Dundee. When he appeared again it was at Auldearn, a village near Nairn, where, on the 9th of May, he defeated the Covenanters (under John Urry or Hurry) after a bloody battle, two thousand men being said to be left upon the field.

The General Assembly addressed a sharp remonstrance to the king, which was delivered to him soon after the battle of Naseby, but it produced no effect. In fact, it was more calculated to inflame a man of Charles's obstinate temper, for it recapitulated all his crimes against Scotland, from his first forcing the Common Prayer upon them till then, and called on him to fall down at the footstool of the Almighty and acknowledge his sins, and no longer steep his kingdom in blood. They did not merely remonstrate; the Covenanters continued to fight. But, unfortunately, their commanders having divided their forces, as Urry was defeated at Auldearn, so Baillie was soon afterwards routed at Alford, in Aberdeenshire, with such effect that scarcely any but his principal officers and the cavalry escaped. Again the Covenanters raised a fresh army of ten thousand men, and sent them against Montrose; and the Scottish army, which lay on the borders of England under the Earl of Leven, commenced their march southward, to attack the king himself. On the 2nd of July, the very day on which Montrose won the battle of Alford, they were at Melton Mowbray, whence they marched through Tamworth and Birmingham into Worcestershire and Herefordshire. On the 22nd they stormed Canon-Frome, a garrison of the king's between Worcester and Hereford; and, as they were pressing on, Charles sent Sir William Fleming to endeavour to seduce the old Earl of Leven and the Earl of Callender from their faith to Parliament by magnificent promises, but they sent his letters to the Parliament and marched on and laid siege to Hereford.

Charles, thus pressed by the Scottish army, quitted Cardiff and made a grand effort to reach the borders of Scotland to effect a junction with Montrose. He flattered himself that could he unite his forces with those of Montrose, by the genius of that brilliant leader his losses would be retrieved, and that he should bear down all before him. But he was not destined to accomplish this object. He at first approached Hereford, as if he designed the attempt of raising the siege; but this was too hazardous, and, dismissing his foot, he dashed forward with his cavalry to cut his way to the North. But the Earl of Leven sent after him Sir David Leslie, with nearly the whole body of the Scottish cavalry; and from the North, the Parliamentarian commanders, Poyntz and Rossiter, put themselves in motion to meet him. He had made a rapid march through Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to Doncaster, when these counter-movements of the enemy convinced him that to reach the Border was hopeless; and he made a sudden divergence south-east, to inflict a flying chastisement on those counties of the Eastern Association, which had so long kept him at bay, and sent out against him the invincible Cromwell and his Ironsides. These were now engaged in the West, and he swept through Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, ravaging and plundering without stint or remorse. On the 24th of August he took Huntingdon itself by assault; he did not delay, however, but continued his marauding course through Woburn and Dunstable, thence into Buckinghamshire, and so to Oxford, where he arrived on the 28th. In this flying expedition, Charles and his soldiers had collected much booty from his subjects, and especially from the town of Huntingdon, no doubt with much satisfaction, from its being Cromwell's place of residence.

At Oxford Charles received the cheering news that Montrose had achieved another brilliant victory over the Covenanters. He had, on again issuing from the mountains, menaced Perth, where the Scottish Parliament was sitting, and then descended into the Lowlands. It was evident that he was acting in concert with the king, who at that very time was making his hurried march for the Border. Montrose crossed the Forth near Stirling, where at Kilsyth he was met by Baillie and his new army. The Committee of Estates insisted on Baillie giving battle. Fasting and prayer for four days had been held, and they were confident of success. But at the first charge the cavalry of the Covenanters were scattered, the infantry fled almost without a blow, and such was the fury of the pursuit, that five thousand of them were slain (August 15, 1645). This victory opened all the Lowlands to the Royalists. Argyll and the principal nobles escaped by sea to England. Glasgow opened its gates to the conqueror, and the magistrates of Edinburgh hastened to implore his clemency towards the city, and to propitiate him by liberating all the Royalist prisoners, promising obedience to the king. Most of these liberated prisoners, and many of the nobility, joined the standard of Montrose.

Had the king been able to effect a junction with him at this moment, the result must have been important, but it could only have occasioned more bloodshed, without insuring any decided victory, for all England was by this time in the hands of the Parliament. Sir David Leslie, instead of following the king with his cavalry southward again, had continued his march northward, to prevent any inroad on the part of Montrose, and the Earl of Leven, quitting Hereford, advanced northward to support him. Charles immediately left Oxford, and advanced to Hereford, where he was received in triumph. Thence he set out to relieve Rupert, who was besieged by Fairfax and Cromwell in Bristol; but on reaching Raglan Castle, he heard the appalling news that it had surrendered. The prince had promised to hold it for four months, yet he surrendered it in the third week of the siege. Fairfax having decided to storm it on the 10th of September, 1645, this was done accordingly. It was assaulted by the troops under Colonel Welden, Commissary-general Ireton, Cromwell, Fairfax, General Skippon, Colonels Montague, Hammond, Rich, and Rainsborough, from different sides at the same time. The town was set on fire in three places by the Royalists themselves, and Rupert, foreseeing the total destruction of the city, capitulated. He was allowed to march out, and was furnished with a convoy of cavalry, and the loan of one thousand muskets to protect them from the people on the way to Oxford, for he had made himself so detested by his continual ravagings of the inhabitants that they would have knocked him and his men on the head. Even as he passed out of the city the people crowded round with fierce looks, and muttered, "Why not hang him?"

We have Cromwell's account of the taking of the place. He says that the royal fort was victualled for three hundred and twenty days, and the castle for nearly half as long, and that there were abundant stores of ammunition, with one hundred and forty cannon mounted, between two and three thousand muskets, and a force of nearly six thousand men in foot, horse, train-bands, and auxiliaries. Well might Charles feel confounded at the surrender. He was so exasperated that he overwhelmed Rupert with reproaches: he even accused him of cowardice or treason, revoked his commission, and bade him quit the kingdom. He ordered the Council to take him into custody if he showed any contumacy. He arrested Rupert's friend, Colonel Legge, and gave the prince's office of Governor of Oxford to Sir Thomas Glenham. And yet Rupert appears to have only yielded to necessity. He was more famous at the head of a charge of horse than for defending cities. Bristol was carried by storm by a combination of the best troops and the most able commanders of the Parliament army, and was already burning in three places. Further resistance could only have led to indiscriminate massacre. But allowance must be made for the irritation of Charles. The fall of Bristol was a most disheartening event, and it was followed by news still more prostrating.

The success of Montrose had proved the ruin of his army. A Highland force is like a Highland torrent; under its clan chiefs it is impetuous and overwhelming; but it is soon exhausted. The soldiers, gathered only for the campaign, no sooner collected a good booty than they walked off back to their mountains, and thus no Highland force, under the old clan system, ever effected any lasting advantage, especially in the Lowlands. So it was here; Montrose's descent from the hills resembled the torrent, and disappeared without any traces but those of ravage. He had secured no fortified places, nor obtained any permanent possession. He executed a few incendiaries, as they were called, at Glasgow, and then advanced towards the Border, still in hope of meeting the royal forces. But the Gordon clan had disappeared; Colkitto had led back the other Highlanders to their mountains, and Montrose found himself at the head of only about six hundred men, chiefly the remains of the Irish. Meanwhile, Sir David Leslie, with his four thousand cavalry, was steadily advancing towards the Forth, to put himself between Montrose and the Highlands, and then suddenly wheeling westward, he returned on the unwary marquis, and surprised the commander who had before been accustomed to surprise every one else.

Montrose was in Selkirk busy writing despatches to the king, and his little army was posted at Philiphaugh. Leslie had approached cautiously, and, favoured by the unvigilant carelessness of the Royalists, came one night into their close vicinity. Early in the morning, under cover of a thick fog, he crossed the Ettrick, and appeared to their astonishment in the encampment on the Haugh. Notwithstanding their surprise, the soldiers formed hastily into a compact body; and Montrose, being informed of the danger, flew to the rescue at the head of a body of horse; but the odds were too great, the troops were surrounded and cut to pieces. In vain they begged quarter. Sir David consented, but the ministers raised a fierce shout of indignation, denounced the sparing of a single "malignant" as a sin, and the whole body was massacred (September 13, 1645).

Before receiving this disastrous news, Charles resolved to make another effort to form a junction with Montrose. He retraced his steps through Wales, and advanced to the relief of Chester, which was invested by the Parliamentarians. He reached that place on the 22nd of September, and posted the bulk of his cavalry on Rowton Heath, near the city, under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, himself being able to get into the city with a small body of troopers. But the next morning his cavalry at Rowton Heath was attacked by Poyntz, the Parliamentary general, who had been carefully following on the king's heels, and now, having his little army penned between his troops and those of the Parliamentary besiegers, a simultaneous attack was made on the Royalists from both sides. More than six hundred of Charles's troopers were cut to pieces, one thousand more obtained quarter, and the rest were dispersed on all sides. The king escaped out of the city and fled to Denbigh with the remnant of his cavalry. By this blow the only port which had been left open for his expected succours from Ireland was closed. Still the news of Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh had not reached him, and Lord Digby advised the king to allow him to make the attempt to reach him with the seventeen hundred cavalry still remaining. Charles accepted the offer, but before Digby left, it was agreed that the king should get into his castle of Newark, as the securest place for him to abide the result. Having seen his majesty safely there, Digby set out northward. At Doncaster he defeated a Parliamentary force, but was a few days after defeated himself by another at Sherburn. Notwithstanding this, with the remainder of his horse he pushed forward, entered Scotland, and reached Dumfries, but finding Montrose already defeated, he returned to the Border, and at Carlisle disbanded the troop. Sir Marmaduke Langdale and the officers retired to the Isle of Man, the men got home as they could, and Digby passed over to Ireland, to the Marquis of Ormond. But the greatest loss which Digby had made during this expedition was that of his portfolio with his baggage, at Sherburn. In this, as in the king's at Naseby, the most unfortunate discoveries were made of his own proceedings, and of his master's affairs. There was a revelation of plottings and agents in sundry counties for bringing foreign forces to put down the Parliament. Goffe was in Holland promoting a scheme for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the daughter of the Prince of Orange, and for forces to be furnished in consequence. There were letters of the queen to Ireland, arranging to bring over ten thousand men, and of Lord Jermyn--who was living in Paris with the queen in such intimacy as to occasion much scandal--to Digby himself, regarding probable assistance from the King of Denmark, the Duke of Lorraine, and the Prince of Courland, and of money from the Pope. But perhaps the most mischievous was a letter from Digby, written a few days before, letting out how much the Marquis of Ormond was secretly in the king's interest, though appearing to act otherwise. These disclosures were precisely such as must wonderfully strengthen the Parliament with the public, and sink the king still lower.

The king's ruin was virtually complete. The enemy was pressing close on his quarters, and at midnight, on the 3rd of November, he quitted Newark with five hundred horse, and reached Belvoir, where the governor, Sir Gervas Lucas, attended him with his troop till break of day. Thence the king made a harassing and dangerous journey to Oxford, pursued by detachments of the enemy as he passed Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the garrison sallying and killing some of his attendants. In the evening Charles was obliged to rest for five hours at Northampton, and then push forward by Banbury, and so reached Oxford the next evening, "finishing," says Clarendon, "the most tedious and grievous march that our king was exercised in." In truth, never was king reduced to such a melancholy and pitiable condition--a condition which cannot be contemplated without commiseration, blind and incorrigible believer as he was in the divine right of despotism.

Whilst Charles had been making these unhappy tours and detours, Fairfax and Cromwell had been clearing away his garrisons, and driving back his troops into the farthest West. Cromwell first addressed himself by command of Parliament to reduce Winchester, Basing House, Langford House, and Donnington Castle. On Sunday, September 28th, he appeared before Winchester, which surrendered after a breach had been made; and, on the 16th of October he also carried Basing by storm. Basing House and Donnington had long annoyed Parliament and the country with their royal garrisons, so that there was no travelling the Western road for them. Basing House belonged to the Marquis of Winchester, and was one of the most remarkable places in the country. Hugh Peters, who was sent up by Cromwell to give an account of the taking of it to Parliament, declaring that its circumvallation was above a mile in circumference. It had stood many a siege, one of four years, without any one being able to take it. Cromwell, however, now bombarded and stormed it, taking prisoners the marquis, Sir Robert Peak, and other distinguished officers. Eight or nine gentlewomen of rank ran out as the soldiers burst in, and were treated with some unceremonious freedoms, but, says Peters, "not uncivilly, considering the action in hand."

Having demolished Basing, Cromwell next summoned Langford House, near Salisbury, and thence he was called in haste down into the West, where Fairfax and he drove back Goring, Hopton, Astley, and others, beating them at Langport, Torrington, and other places, storming Bridgewater, and forcing them into Cornwall, where they never left them till they had reduced them altogether in the spring of 1646.

Charles lying now at Oxford, his council, seeing that his army was destroyed, except the portion that was cooped up by the victorious generals in the West, and which every day was forced into less compass, advised him strongly to treat with the Parliament, as his only chance. They represented that they had no funds even for subsistence, except what they seized from the country around, which exasperated the people, and made them ready to rise against them. There were some circumstances yet in his favour, and these were the jealousies and divisions of his enemies. The Parliament and country were broken up into two great factions of Presbyterians and Independents. The Presbyterians were by far the most numerous, and were zealously supported by the Scots, who were nearly all of that persuasion, and desired to see their form of religion prevail over the whole country. They were as fiercely intolerant as the Catholics, and would listen to nothing but the entire predominance of their faith and customs. But the Independents, who claimed and offered liberty of conscience, and protested against any ruling church, possessed almost all the men of intellect in Parliament, and the chiefs at the head of the army. Cromwell, in his letter from the field of Naseby, called for toleration of conscience, and Fairfax urged the same doctrine in all his despatches from the West. There was, moreover, a jealousy growing as to the armies of the Scots, who had got most of the garrisons in the North of England and Ireland into their hands. These divisions opened to Charles a chance of treating with one party at the expense of the other, and in his usual way he made overtures to all. To the Scots he offered full concession of all their desires, and great advantages from the influence which their alliance with him would give. To the Independents he offered the utmost toleration of religious opinion, and all the rewards of pre-eminence in the State and the army. To the Presbyterians he was particularly urged by the queen to promise the predominance of their Church and the like advantages. With the Catholics of Ireland he was equally in treaty; but whilst his secret negotiations were going on in Ireland, the Scots endeavoured to bring theirs to a close, by applying to the queen in Paris. Three great changes had taken place, all favourable to Charles. Both the king, Louis XIII., and Richelieu, were dead. Richelieu had never forgiven Charles's attempts on La Rochelle, and his effort to raise the Huguenots into an independent power in France, nor his movements in Flanders against his designs. Mazarin, who now succeeded as the minister of Louis XIV., had no particular resentment against Charles, and though cautious in taking direct measures against the English Parliament, did not oppose any of the attempts at pacification between the king and his subjects. The Scots had always found Richelieu their ally, and they now applied to his successor to assist them in bringing matters to bear with Charles. In consequence of this, Montreuil was sent over to London, who conferred with the Scottish Commissioners, and then conveyed to Charles their proposals. But the king, who had promised them all concessions consistent with his honour, found the very first proposition to be that Episcopacy should be for ever abolished not only in Scotland, but in England, and Presbytery made the Established Church. He had conceived that they would be satisfied with the supremacy of their faith in their own country, and he at once refused this demand. It was in vain that Montreuil pointed out to him that the Scots and the Presbyterians of England were agreed upon this point, and that consequently any arrangement with the latter party must inevitably be upon the same basis. Charles declared that rather than consent to any such terms, he would agree with the Independents. Montreuil replied that the Scots sought only to make him king, first having their own wishes as to religion gratified; but the Independents, he was confident, contemplated nothing less than the subversion of his throne. He informed him that the queen had given to Sir Robert Murray a written promise that the king would accede to the demand of the Scots, which promise was now in the hands of the Scottish Commissioners; moreover, that this was the earnest desire of the queen, the queen-regent of France, and of Mazarin.

Nothing, however, could shake Charles's resolution on this head, and he therefore made a direct application to Parliament to treat for an accommodation. They received his offer coolly, almost contemptuously. He desired passports for his Commissioners, or a safe-conduct for himself, that they might treat personally; but it was bluntly refused, on the ground that he was not to be trusted, having, on all similar occasions, employed the opportunities afforded to endeavour to corrupt the fidelity of the Commissioners. Not to appear, however, to reject the treaty, they sent fresh proposals to him, but so much more stringent than those at Uxbridge, that it was plain that they were rather bent on delaying than treating. The king was now in a very different position since the battle of Naseby and the fall of Bristol; and it was obviously the interest of Parliament to allow Fairfax and Cromwell to put down his last remains of an army in the West, when they would have nothing to do but to shut up the king in Oxford, and compel him to submit at discretion. Montreuil, seeing this, again urged him to come to terms with the Scots, and that not a moment was to be lost. But nothing could move him to consent to their demand of a universal Presbyterianism, and he again, on the 26th of January, 1646, demanded a personal interview with the Parliament at Westminster. His demand, however, arrived at a most unfortunate crisis, for the discovery of his negotiations with the Irish Catholics had just been made: the entire correspondence was in the hands of the Commons, and the whole House was in the most violent ferment of indignation. The king's letter was thrown aside and left without notice.

On October 17th, 1645, the titular Archbishop of Tuam was killed in a skirmish between two parties of Scots and Irish near Sligo, and in his carriage were discovered copies of a most extraordinary negotiation, which had been going on for a long time in Ireland between Charles and the Catholics, for the restoration of popish predominance in that country, on condition of their sending an army to put down the Parliament in England.

We have already spoken of the confederate Irish Catholics, who maintained an army for their own defence, and had a council at Kilkenny. Charles had instructed the Marquis of Ormond, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to make a peace with these Confederates: he had some time ago obtained a cessation of hostilities, but they would not consent to a permanent peace, nor to furnish the king troops until they obtained a legal guarantee for the establishment of their own religion. Lord Ormond, in his endeavours, did not satisfy the king, or rather his position disabled him from consenting publicly to such a treaty, as it would have roused all the Protestants, and the Scottish and English Parliaments against him. Charles, therefore, who was always ready with some underhand intrigue to gain his ends, and break his bargain when it became convenient, sent over Lord Herbert, the son of the Marquis of Worcester, and whom he now created Earl of Glamorgan, to effect this difficult matter.

Glamorgan was as zealous in his loyalty as in his speculative pursuits. He and his father had spent two hundred thousand pounds in the king's cause, and he was now engaged in an enterprise where he risked everything for Charles--name, honour, and life. He was furnished with a warrant which authorised him to concede the demands of the Catholics regarding their religion, and to engage them to send over ten thousand men. After many difficulties he reached Dublin, communicated to Ormond the plan, saw with him the Catholic deputies in Dublin, and then hastened to Kilkenny, to arrange with the council there. But at this time occurred the revelation of the scheme by the seizure of the Archbishop of Tuam's papers. The Parliament was thrown into a fury; the Marquis of Ormond, to make his loyalty appear, seized Glamorgan, and put him into prison, and the king sent a letter to the two Houses of Parliament, utterly disavowing the commission of Glamorgan, and denouncing the warrant in his name as a forgery. All this had been agreed upon before between the king and Glamorgan, should any discovery take place; and on searching for Glamorgan's papers a warrant was found, not sealed in the usual manner, and the papers altogether informal, so that the king might by this means be able to disavow them. But that Ormond and the council of Kilkenny had seen a real and formal warrant, there can be no question. The king, by a second letter to the two Houses, reiterated his disavowal of the whole affair, and assured them that he had ordered the privy council in Dublin to proceed against Glamorgan for his presumption. The proceedings were conducted by Lord Digby, who assumed a well-feigned indignation against Glamorgan, accusing him of high treason. The animus with which this accusation appeared to be made has induced many to believe that Digby was really incensed, because he had not been let wholly into the secret of Glamorgan's commission; and his letter to the king on the subject, noticed by Clarendon as rude and unmanly, would seem to confirm this. However, Glamorgan, on his part, took the whole matter very cheerfully, allowed the king's disclaimers without a remonstrance or evidence of vexation, and produced a copy of his secret treaty with the Catholics, in which he had inserted an article called a defeasance, by which the king was bound by the treaty no further than he pleased till he had seen what the Catholics did for him, and by which the Catholics were to keep this clause secret till the king had done all in his power to secure their claims.

Surely such a system of royal and political hocus-pocus had never been concerted before. Ormond, on seeing the defeasance, declared that it was quite satisfactory, binding the king to nothing; in fact, he had to avoid the danger of alarming the Catholics and losing their army for the king; and the Protestants having seen the affected zeal to prosecute Glamorgan had become greatly appeased. Glamorgan was, therefore, liberated, and hastened again to Kilkenny to urge on the sending of the forces. But the late disclosures had not been without their effect. One part of the council insisted on the full execution of the king's warrant, the open acknowledgment of Catholicism as the established religion, and the pope's nuncio, Runcini, who had lately arrived, strongly urged them to stand by that demand. But another part of the council were more compliant, and by their aid Glamorgan obtained five thousand men, with whom he marched to Waterford, to hasten their passage for the relief of Chester, where Lord Byron was driven to extremities by the Parliamentarians. There, however, he received the news that Chester had fallen, and there was not a single port left where Glamorgan could land his troops; he therefore disbanded them.

Despite the failure of his efforts, the unfortunate monarch still endeavoured to negotiate some terms for himself, first with one party and then with another, or with all together. The Parliament had treated with contempt two offers of negotiation from him. They did not even deign him an answer. But his circumstances were now such that he submitted to insults that a short time before would have been deemed incredible. On the 29th of January, 1646, he made his second offer; he repeated it on the 23rd of March. He offered to disband his forces, dismantle his garrisons--he had only five, Pendennis in Cornwall, Worcester, Newark, Raglan, and Oxford--and to take up his residence at Westminster, near the Parliament, on a guarantee that he and his followers should be suffered to live in honour and safety, and his adherents should retain their property. But the Parliament were now wholly in the ascendant, and they made the wretched king feel it. Instead of a reply, they issued an order that if he should come within their lines, he should be conducted to St. James's, his followers imprisoned, and none be allowed to have access to him. At the same time they ordered all Catholics, and all who had borne arms for the king, to depart within six days, or expect to be treated as spies, and dealt with by martial law.

But whilst thus ignominiously repelled by Parliament, Montreuil was still pursuing negotiations on his behalf with the Scots. He obtained for the purpose the post of agent from the French Court to Scotland, and with some difficulty obtained from the Parliament leave to visit the king at Oxford with letters from the King of France and the Queen Regent, before proceeding northwards. He employed his time there in urging Charles to agree with the Scots by conceding the point of religion; and at length it was concluded that Charles should force his way through the Parliamentary army investing Oxford, and that the Scots at Newark should send three hundred horse to receive him, and escort him to their army. Montreuil delivered to Charles an engagement from the Scottish commissioners for the king's personal safety, his conscience, and his honour, as well as for the security and religious freedom of his followers. This was also guaranteed by the King and Queen Regent of France on behalf of the Scots who had applied to them for their good offices. Charles wrote to Ormond in Ireland, informing him that he had received this security, and on the 3rd of April, 1646, Montreuil set forward northwards.

Montreuil carried with him an order from the king to Lord Bellasis, to surrender Newark into the hands of the Scots, but on arriving at Southwell, in the camp of the Scots, he was astonished to find that the leaders of the army professed ignorance of the conditions made with the Scottish Commissioners in London. They would not, therefore, undertake the responsibility of meeting and escorting the king--which they declared would be a breach of the solemn league and covenant between the two nations--till they had conferred with their Commissioners, and made all clear. The security mentioned by Charles to Ormond would, if this were true, have been from the Commissioners only; and there must have been gross neglect in not apprising the officers of it. Montreuil was greatly disconcerted by this discovery, burnt the order for the surrender of Newark, and wrote to Charles to inform him of the unsatisfactory interview with the Scots. It is doubtful whether Charles ever received this letter. At all events, impatient of some results, for the Parliamentary army was fast closing round Oxford, he snatched at another chance. Captain Fawcett, Governor of Woodstock, sent to tell him that that garrison was reduced to extremities, and to inquire whether he might expect relief, or whether he should surrender it on the best terms he could obtain. Charles immediately applied to Colonel Rainsborough, the chief officer conducting the siege of Oxford, for passports for the Earl of Southampton and Lindsay, Sir William Fleetwood, and Mr. Ashburnham, to treat with him about the surrender of Woodstock; but the main thing was to propose the coming of the king to them on certain conditions. Rainsborough and the other officers appeared much pleased, but said they could not decide so important an affair without reference to their superior officers, but if the offer were entertained, they would the next day send a pass for them to come and complete the negotiation. If the pass did not come, it must be understood that the offer was not accepted. No pass came, and the king was reduced to great straits, for the Parliamentarian armies were coming closer and closer. He applied then to Ireton who was posted at Woodstock, but he returned him no answer; to Vane, but he referred him to Parliament; and thus was the humiliated king treated with the most insulting contempt. It was believed that it was the intention of Parliament to keep Charles there till Fairfax and Cromwell, who were now marching up from the west, should arrive, when they would capture him and have him at their mercy.

At length Montreuil informed Charles that deputies from the army had met the Commissioners at Royston, and that it was settled to receive the king. There are conflicting accounts of the proceedings at this period. Clarendon and Ashburnham, who have both left narratives, vary considerably. Ashburnham, the king's groom of the chambers, says that word was sent that David Leslie would meet his majesty at Gainsborough with two thousand horse, but Montreuil's message was that the Scots would send a strong party to Burton-on-Trent, beyond which they could not go with that force, but would send a few straggling horse to Harborough, and if the king informed them of the day he would be there, they would not fail him. As to a proposal that Charles was impolitic enough to make to these Scottish Covenanters, to form a junction with Montrose, a man whom they hated with a deadly hatred for his ravages and slaughters of their party, they treated it with scorn; and, says Montreuil, "with regard to the Presbyterian government, they desire his majesty to agree with them as soon as he can. Such is the account they make here of the engagement of the king, my master, and of the promises I had from their party in London." He adds that if any better conditions could be had from any other quarter, these ought not to be thought of. Montreuil wrote twice more, the last time on the 20th of April, expressing no better opinion of the Scots, and saying that they would admit none of his majesty's followers save his two nephews, Rupert and Maurice, and such servants as were not excepted from the pardon; and that they could not then refuse to give them up to the Parliament, but would find means to let them escape.

A gloomier prospect for the king than the one in that quarter could scarcely present itself. It appears that he had not yet agreed to the ultimatum of the Scots--the concession of the supremacy of the Presbyterian Church--and therefore there was no actual treaty between them. But all other prospects were closed; Charles must choose between the Scots and the Parliament, the latter body pursuing a contemptuous and ominous silence. Fairfax and Cromwell were now within a day's march of the city, and Charles made his choice of the Scots. Yet so undecided even at the moment of escaping from the city was he, that he would not commit himself irrevocably to the Scots, by announcing to them his departure and the direction of his journey. It is remarkable, indeed, that he had not before, or even now, thought of endeavouring to escape to Ireland, and making a second stand there with the confederates, or of getting to the Continent and awaiting a turn of fortune. But he seemed altogether like a doomed mortal who could not fly his fate.

About two o'clock on the morning of the 27th of April, Charles set out from Oxford, disguised as the servant of Ashburnham. He had his hair cut short by Ashburnham, and rode after that gentleman and Hudson the chaplain, who knew the country well and was their guide. They rode out unsuspected over Magdalen Bridge, Charles having, groom-like, a cloak strapped round his waist. To prevent particular attention or pursuit, several others of them rode out at the same time in different directions. Charles and his pretended masters got without suspicion through the lines of the Parliamentary army, and reached Henley-on-Thames. But now that he was in temporary safety, he appeared more undecided than ever. He did not attempt to send word to the Scots to meet him; but, says Clarendon, he was uncertain whether to go to the Scottish army, or to get privately into London, and lie concealed there till he might choose what was best. Clarendon declares that he still thought so well of the City of London, as not to have been unwilling to have found himself there. But certainly the City had never shown itself more favourable to him than the Parliament; and now with the Parliament in the ascendant, it was not likely that it would undertake to contend with it for the protection or rights of the king. Charles still trusted that he might hear of Montrose making a fresh movement on his behalf, in which case he would endeavour to get to him; and he never for long after abandoned the hope of still hearing something from Ireland in his favour. From Henley, he therefore directed his way to Slough, thence to Uxbridge, Hillingdon, Brentford, so near did he reach London, and then again off to Harrow. His uncertainty increased more and more. He proceeded towards St. Albans, and near that town was alarmed by the sound of horses' feet behind them. It was only a drunken man; but to avoid danger they kept out of St. Albans, and continued through the bye-ways to Harborough, where he was on the 28th. Two days afterwards he reached Downham in Norfolk, and spent some time in inquiring after a vessel that might carry him to Newcastle or Scotland. He seems to have expected at Harborough some message from the Scots or from Montreuil, but as none was there, he had despatched Hudson to Montreuil at Southwell. No prospect of escape by sea offering--for the coasts were strictly guarded by the Parliamentary vessels--Charles determined to go over to the Scots on Hudson returning with a message from Montreuil that they still declared that they would receive the king on his personal honour; that they would press him to do nothing contrary to his conscience; that Ashburnham and Hudson should be protected; that if the Parliament refused, on a message from the king, to restore him to his rights and prerogatives, they would declare for him, and take all his friends under their protection; and that if the Parliament did agree to restore the king, not more than four of his friends should be punished, and that only by banishment. All this Montreuil, according to Hudson's own account afterwards to Parliament, assured Charles by note, but added that the Scots would only give it by word of mouth and not by writing.

At the best this was suspicious; but where was the king to turn? He was treated with the most contemptuous silence by the Parliament, which was at this very moment hoping to make him unconditionally their prisoner. Fairfax had drawn his lines of circumvallation round Oxford five days after the king's departure, ignorant that he had escaped, and in the full hope of taking him. For nine days Charles was wandering about, nobody knowing where he was, and during that time Clarendon says he had been in different gentlemen's houses, where "he was not unknown, but untaken notice of."

On the 5th of May he resolved, on the report of Hudson, to go to the Scots, and accordingly, early on that morning he rode into Southwell, to Montreuil's lodgings, and announced his intention. The manner in which he was received there is related in very contradictory terms by Ashburnham and Clarendon. Ashburnham says that some of the Scottish Commissioners came to Montreuil's lodgings to receive him, and accompanied him with a troop of horse to the headquarters of the Scottish army at Kelham, where they went after dinner, and were well received, many lords coming instantly to wait on him with professions of joy that his majesty had so far honoured their army as to think it worthy of his presence after so long an opposition. Clarendon, on the other hand, declares that "very early in the morning he went to the general's lodgings, and discovered himself to him, who either was, or seemed to be, exceedingly surprised and confounded at his majesty's presence, and knew not what to say, but presently gave notice to the committee, who were no less perplexed."

Both of them, however, agree that the Scots soon convinced Charles that they considered that he had surrendered himself unconditionally into their hands; that he had not complied with their terms, and that there was no treaty actually between them; and from all that appears, this was the case. Charles had trusted to the assurances of Montreuil, and had really no written evidence of any engagement on the part of the Scots, nor was any ever produced. Some of the lords, says Ashburnham, desiring to know how they might best testify their gratitude to his majesty for the confidence he had reposed in them, he replied that the only way was to apply themselves to the performance of the conditions on which he had come to them. At the word "conditions," Lord Lothian expressed much surprise, and declared he knew of no conditions concluded, nor did he believe any of the Commissioners residing with the army knew of such. On this Charles desired Montreuil to present a summary of the conditions concluded with the Commissioners in London, sanctioned by the King of France. It should, however, be borne in mind that since then the army Commissioners had met with the commissioners from London at Royston, and had agreed to the terms to be offered to the king. When Ashburnham, therefore, affirms that many of the Commissioners of the army still protested their ignorance of these conditions, it can only mean that such conditions were not concluded with the king, either there or anywhere, for Charles had never consented to accept them. When Charles, therefore, asked them what they meant, then, by inviting him to come to them, and why they had sent word that all differences were reconciled, and that David Leslie should meet him with an escort of horse, they replied that this was on the understanding that his majesty meant to accept their terms, from which they had never receded, and that they now thought that by his coming to them he had meant to accept the cardinal condition--the taking of the Covenant.

Charles must have been well aware of the truth of all this, but he was a man who played fast and loose so constantly, that it was impossible to make any treaty with him. At the very time that he was preparing to leave Oxford, so alive were all these quibbles and evasions in his mind, that he wrote to Lord Digby, expressing his intention to get to London if he could, "not," he says, "without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with me, for extirpating one another, that I shall really be king again." This proves that on setting out from Oxford, he had held himself loose from any compact with the Scots, and did not mean to go to them at all if he could manage to cozen the Presbyterians or Independents to take his part, and "extirpate one another."

Such a man was as slippery as an eel. He now insisted solemnly on the existence of the very conditions that he had purposely kept clear of. The Scots stood by their offered terms, and exhorted him to accept the Covenant, entreating him with tears and on their knees to take it, or to sanction the Presbyterian worship if he could not adopt it, and pledging themselves on that condition to fight for him to the last man. But this Charles would not do. He was still--though beaten and voluntarily surrendered to his enemies--as full of the persuasion of the divinity of kingship as ever. He therefore undertook to give the word to the guard, in virtue of his being the chief person in the army; but old Leven quickly undeceived him, by saying, "I am the older soldier; your majesty had better leave that office to me."

It was now necessary to apprise the Parliament of the king having entered their camp--a piece of intelligence which produced a wonderful sensation. Fairfax had already announced to the Parliament that the king had escaped out of Oxford, and was believed to have gone towards London, whereupon the two Houses had issued a proclamation forbidding any one to harbour or conceal his person on pain of high treason, and of forfeiting the whole of their estate, and being put to death without mercy. All Papists and other disaffected persons were ordered, on the supposition that the king might be in London, to remove before the 12th of May to twenty-five miles' distance from the metropolis, leaving, before they went, a notice at Goldsmiths' Hall of the places to which they intended to retire. When the letter arrived from the Scottish Commissioners, the Parliament was filled with jealousy and alarm. There had long been a feeling of the design of the Scots, supported by the Presbyterians, assuming an undue power; and now to hear that they had the king in their hands was most embarrassing. They instantly sent word to the Scots that his majesty must be disposed of according to the will of the two Houses of Parliament, and that for the present he must be sent to Warwick Castle; that Ashburnham and Hudson, the king's attendants, should be sent for by the sergeant-at-arms or his deputy, to be dealt with as delinquents; and that a narrative must be prepared of the manner in which the king came to the Scottish camp, and forthwith sent to the two Houses. To enforce these orders, they commanded Poyntz to watch the Scottish army with five thousand men, and Sir Thomas Fairfax to prepare to follow him.

The Scots were not prepared to enter into a civil war with England for the restoration of the king, who would not comply even with their propositions; but they knew too well the power they possessed in the possession of his person, to let the Parliament frighten them out of their advantage till they had secured their own terms with them. They therefore immediately addressed a letter to the Parliament, expressing their astonishment at finding the king coming among them, for which they solemnly but untruly protested there had been no treaty nor capitulation. Perhaps they saved their word by meaning no treaty concluded. They assured the two Houses that they would do everything possible to maintain a right understanding between the two kingdoms, and therefore solicited their advice, as they had also sent to solicit that of the Committee of Estates in Scotland, as to the best measures to be adopted for the satisfactory settlement of the affairs of the kingdom. Charles also sent to Parliament, repeating his offers of accommodation and requesting the two Houses to forward to him the propositions for peace. To show his sincerity, he ordered his officers to surrender the fortresses still in their hands to the Committee of both kingdoms for the English Parliament. He had offered to surrender them to the Scots, but they refused to accept them, knowing that it must embroil them with the Parliament. This surrender on the part of the king, on the 10th of June, closed the war. The last to pull down the royal standard was the old Marquis of Worcester, the father of Glamorgan, who held Raglan Castle, and who, though he was eighty years of age, was compelled by Parliament to travel from Raglan to London, where he immediately died. Worcester had refused to give up Raglan, as it was his own house. He did not surrender it till the 19th of August. Oxford was given up on the 24th of June. Rupert and Maurice were suffered to withdraw to the Continent. The Duke of York, Charles's second son, was sent up to London to the custody of Parliament, and put under the care of the Earl of Northumberland.

Things being in this position, and both Charles and the Scots being anxious to keep at a distance from Fairfax and his army till the terms were settled, the Scots rapidly retreated to Newcastle, carrying the king with them.

The treaty between the Scots and the English Parliament was now carried on with much diplomacy on both sides, and was not finally settled till the 16th of January, 1647. The Scots, soon after leaving Newark, proposed a meeting with the Parliamentary Commissioners, to explain the reasons of their retreat northwards, and also for not surrendering Ashburnham and Hudson; but the meeting did not take place, and soon after Ashburnham contrived to escape and get into France, to the queen. Charles said that he could have escaped, too, had he been so disposed; but Hudson attempting it, was stopped.

Charles did not neglect to try the effect of brilliant promises on David Leslie and others of the Scottish officers, if they would side with him and make a junction with Montrose for his restoration. He offered to make David Earl of Orkney, but the Committee of Estates sent the Earls of Argyll and Loudon, and Lord Lanark, to Newcastle, to see that all was kept in order in the camp; and they told Charles plainly that he must take the Covenant, and order Montrose to disband his forces in the Highlands, if he expected them to do anything important for him. Charles consented to order the disbanding of Montrose's followers and his retirement to France, but he could not bring himself to accept the Covenant. In fact, on the same day that he gave the order to surrender his remaining fortresses, he sent a letter to the English Parliament, informing them that he was in full freedom, and in a capacity to settle with them a peace, and offering to leave the question of religion to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, to place the militia in their hands as proposed at Uxbridge, for seven years, and, in short, to do all in his power to settle the kingdom without further effusion of blood. The Parliament, however, knew that he was in no condition to make war on them, and were too sensible of their power to notice such overtures, further than that they thought his terms now too high.

At this very time Charles was in active secret endeavour to obtain an army from Ireland and France. Glamorgan and the Pope's nuncio were busy in Ireland; the queen was equally busy in France; Mazarin again promised her ten thousand men, and incited Lord Jermyn to seize Jersey and Guernsey; and the king, though he had ordered Montrose to disband his forces and quit Scotland, desired him to be ready to raise the royal standard once more in the Highlands in conjunction with the French and Irish. All these wild schemes, however, were knocked on the head by the Earl of Ormond making peace with the Parliament on condition that he should recover his estates. He surrendered the Castle of Dublin and the fortresses to Parliament, went over to England, and all hope of aid from Ireland was at an end.

Whilst these political designs were in agitation, Charles was deeply engaged with the religious difficulty of giving up Episcopacy and consenting to the dominance of Presbyterianism. He consulted Juxon, the ex-Bishop of London, and gave him leave to advise with Dr. Sheldon and the late Bishop of Salisbury, whether he might not accept Presbyterianism as a man under compulsion, and therefore not really bound by it; and he was at the same time engaged with Alexander Henderson on the Scriptural authority of Episcopacy or Presbyterianism. During this dispute, in which each champion supported his opinion with Scriptural passages, and yet came no nearer than such disputants ever do, the Scottish divine was taken ill and died, and the Royalists declared that the king had so completely worsted him that he died of chagrin.

On the 23rd of July the English Parliament at length made proposals of peace, sending the Earls of Pembroke, Denbigh, and Montague, and six members of the Commons, to Newcastle, to treat with him. The conditions were not so favourable as those offered at Uxbridge, things, indeed, being now very different; the great point, however, being the abandonment of Episcopacy. They were to receive an answer or return in ten days; but the king would not yield the question of the Church. The Scottish Commissioners were present, and urged the king warmly to consent to the conditions, and thus to restore peace. The Earls of Loudon and Argyll implored it on their knees. Then Loudon, Chancellor of Scotland, told him "that the consequences of his answer to the propositions were so great, that on it depended the ruin of his crown and kingdoms; that the Parliament, after many bloody battles, had got the strongholds and forts of the kingdom into their hands; that they had his revenue, excise, assessments, sequestrations, and power to raise all the men and money in the kingdom; that they had gained victory over all, and that they had a strong army to maintain it, so that they might do what they would with Church or State; that they desired neither him nor any of his race longer to reign over them, and had sent these propositions to his majesty, without the granting whereof the kingdom and his people would not be in safety; that if he refused to assent, he would lose all his friends in Parliament, lose the city, and lose the country; and that all England would join against him as one man to process and depose him, and to set up another Government; and that both kingdoms for safety would be compelled to agree to settle religion and peace without him, to the ruin of his majesty and posterity;" and he concluded by saying, "that if he left England, he would not be allowed to go and reign in Scotland." This, it must be confessed, was plain and honest, and therefore loyal and patriotic speaking. The General Assembly of the Kirk had already come to this conclusion; but all was lost on the king.

Parliament now having proved that all negotiation was useless, their Commissioners returned, and reported that they could obtain no answer from the king, except that he was ready to come up to London and treat in person. A Presbyterian member, on hearing this report, exclaimed--"What will become of us, now the king has rejected our propositions?" "Nay," replied an Independent member, "what would have become of us had he accepted them?" And really it is difficult to see what could have been the condition of the kingdom had a man of Charles's incorrigible character been again admitted to power. The Parliament returned thanks to the Scottish Commissioners for their zealous co-operation in the endeavour to arrange matters with the king--a severe blow to Charles, who had till now clung to the hope of seizing some advantage from the jealousies which for many months had prevailed between the Parliament and the Scottish army.

On the 12th of August the Scottish Commissioners presented a paper to the House of Lords, stating that the kingdom of Scotland had, on the invitation of both Houses, carefully undertaken and faithfully managed their assistance in the kingdom towards obtaining the ends expressed in the covenant; and as the forces of the common enemy were now broken and destroyed, through the blessing of God, they were willing to surrender up the fortresses in their hands, and retire into their own country, on a reasonable compensation being made for their sufferings and expenses. They stated truly that many base calumnies and execrable aspersions had been cast upon them by printed pamphlets and otherwise, which they had not suffered to turn them from that brotherly affection which was requisite for the great end in view, and which they trusted would yet be effected, notwithstanding the lamentable refusal of their propositions by the king. They claimed, moreover, still to be consulted on the measure for accomplishing the common object of peace for the kingdom. The Commons appointed a committee to settle the accounts between them. The Scots demanded six hundred thousand pounds as the balance due, but agreed to receive four hundred thousand pounds, one half of which was to be paid before quitting the kingdom.

Scarcely had this amicable arrangement been made, when the two English Houses of Parliament passed a resolution that the disposal of the king's person belonged to them. This alarmed the Scots, who instantly remonstrated, saying that as Charles was king of Scotland as well as of England, both nations had an equal right to be consulted regarding the disposal of his person. This is a sufficient answer to the calumny so zealously propagated by the Royalists that the Scots had sold the king to the Parliament. On the contrary, they had claimed a sum of money as a just payment of their expenses and services, and the person or liberty of the king had not entered at all into the bargain. This bargain, in fact, was made five months--that is, on the 5th of September--before they delivered up the king, that is, on the 30th of January, 1647, and during these five months they were zealously engaged in contending for the personal security of the monarch to the very verge of a civil war. All this time they strove equally to induce Charles to accept the terms, which would have removed all difficulties. From September 21st, when the English Parliament voted this resolution, to October 13th, a fierce contest was carried on on this subject, and various conferences were held. The Scots published their speeches on these occasions; the English seized them, and imprisoned the printers; there was imminent danger of civil war, and on the 13th of October the Commons voted payment for the army for the next six months, giving an unmistakable proof of their resolve on the question.

All this was beheld with delight by Charles; and he wrote to his wife that he believed yet that they would have to restore him with honour. He believed one party or the other would, to settle the question, concede all to him, and with his sanction put the other down. For some time the public spirit in Scotland favoured his hopes. The question was discussed there with as much vehemence as in England. His friends exerted themselves, the national feeling was raised in his favour, and the Scottish Parliament passed a vote on the 10th of December, under the management of the Hamiltons, that they would exert all their power and influence to maintain the monarchical system of government, and the king's title to the English crown, which it was now notorious that the Independents sought to subvert. This gave wonderful spirit to the royal party; but the Commission of the Kirk instantly reminded Parliament that Charles had steadily refused to take the Covenant, and that even if he were deposed in England, he could not be allowed to come into Scotland; or if he did enter it, his royal functions must be suspended till he had embraced the Covenant, and given freedom to their religion. This brought the Parliament to reflection, and the next day it rescinded the resolution.

This dashed the last hopes of the king, and, now that it was too late, he began seriously to contemplate escape to the Continent. Montreuil wrote to the French Court on the 21st of January, 1647--the very day that the money was paid to the Scots, and a receipt given previous to their departure--that Charles still continued to dream of escaping, though to himself it appeared impossible, unless the Scots had rather see him do so than fall into the hands of the Independents. The king had arranged with Sir Robert and William Murray his scheme of escape in disguise, but it was found impossible. Once more, therefore, he wrote to the Parliament of England for permission to go to London and open a free debate with both Houses for the settlement of all differences. The message received no notice whatever; but the two Houses went on debating as to the disposal of the king's person. The Lords voted that he should be allowed to come to Newmarket; the Commons that he should go to Holmby, in Northampton, one of his houses, to which he was considerably attached. After further debate this was agreed to by the Lords.

The Scots, seeing that they must yield up the person of Charles to the English Parliament or prepare to fight for it, asked themselves what they were to gain by a civil war for a king who would not move one jot towards complying with their wishes? They made one more effort to persuade him to take the Covenant, but in vain. In reply to their solicitation, he made this ominous reply:--"It is a received opinion by many, that engagements, acts, or promises of a restrained person, are neither valid nor obligating; how true or false this is I will not now dispute, but I am sure if I be not free, I am not fit to answer your or any propositions." And he demanded if he went to Scotland whether he should be free, with honour and safety. It was clear what was in his mind--that if he did take the Covenant he would be at liberty to break it when he had the power; and as the Scots had determined that they would not receive him into Scotland at the certain cost of civil war, when they could with such a person have no possible guarantee of his keeping his engagements even were he brought to make them, they replied that he must at once accept their propositions, or they must leave him to the resolution of Parliament. Two days afterwards (the 16th of January, 1647), the Parliament of Scotland acceded to the demand of the English Parliament that the king should be given up, a promise being exacted that respect should be had to the safety of his person in the defence of the true religion, and the liberties of the two kingdoms, according to the Solemn League and Covenant. More was demanded by the Scots, namely, that no obstacle should be opposed to the legitimate succession of his children, and no alteration made in the existing government of the kingdom. To this the Lords fully assented, but the Commons took no notice of it.

On the 5th of January the two hundred thousand pounds, engaged to be paid to the Scots before leaving England, arrived at Newcastle, in thirty-six carts, under a strong escort, and having been duly counted, a receipt was signed on the 21st at Northallerton, and on the 30th Charles was committed to the care of the English Commissioners, consisting of three lords and six commoners, the Earl of Pembroke being at their head. He professed to be pleased with the change, as it would bring him nearer to his Parliament. The Scots, having finished their business in England, evacuated Newcastle, and marched away into their own country.

In all these transactions we have endeavoured in vain to discover any ground for the common calumny against the Scots, that they bought and sold the king. On the contrary, we have shown that all contract regarding their reimbursements and remunerations was completed five months before the delivery of the king; and that they did all in their power to induce him to accept their Covenant, and with that their pledge to defend him to the last drop of their blood. Montreuil says, that even at the last moment the Earls of Lauderdale and Traquair again pressed the king to consent to accept the Covenant and establish Presbyterianism, and they would convey him to Berwick and compel the English to be satisfied with what he had thus offered them. He stated that the Scots offered him (Montreuil) twenty thousand Jacobuses to persuade the king to comply, but that he could not prevail. It must be remembered, too, that when they did surrender him, it was only on promise of safety to his person, and that they delivered him not to the Independents, who made no secret of their designs against the monarchy, but to their fellow believers, the Parliament, which entertained no such intentions, and had already offered Charles the same terms on the same conditions.

Before the close of this year, that is in September, the Earl of Essex died; Ireton married Bridget Cromwell, second daughter of Oliver Cromwell; and a great number of officers in the army were again in Parliament--the Self-denying Ordinance, having served its turn, being no more heard of.

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III. END OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I

Differences between the Presbyterians and Independents--The King at Holmby--Attempt to Disband the Army--Consequent Petitions to Parliament--The Adjutators--Meeting at Newmarket--Seizure of the King--Advance of the Army on London--Stubbornness of the Presbyterians--The Army Marches through London--Its Proposals to Charles--Their Rejection--The King throws away his Best Chances--The Levellers--Cromwell's Efforts on behalf of Charles--Renewed Intrigues of Charles--Flight to Carisbrooke--Attempts to Rescue the King--Charles Treats with the Scots--Consequent Reaction in his Favour--Battle of Preston and Suppression of the Insurrection--Cromwell at Edinburgh--The Prince of Wales in Command of the Fleet--Negotiations at Newport--Growing Impatience of the Army--Petitions for the King's Trial--Charles's Blindness and Duplicity--He is Removed to Hurst Castle--Pride's Purge--Supremacy of the Independents--The Whiggamores--Hugh Peters' Sermon in St. Margaret's, Westminster--Ordinance for the King's Trial--Trial and Execution of Charles I.

For a long time the difference of opinion between 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 army were of that sect. Under the head of Independents, however, ranged themselves, so far as politics were concerned, a 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 bent on establishing a religious despotism. 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 had 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 persons, 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 having withdrawn, the contest lay no longer between the king and Parliament, but between 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 flocked 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 to have altered. 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 Parliament 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 was to be finally settled by himself and the two Houses in the usual way, and the command of the army was also to be left to Parliament for ten years, and then to revert to him. The Lords gladly assented to this offer, but the Commons did not entertain it, and other matters soon claimed 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--Holles, 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 farther from London; but at the same moment a more startling 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 opinion 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 must 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 staunch Presbyterian officers Poyntz, Copley, and Bethell should remain at home. But what roused the army more than all besides, was a motion made by Denzil Holles, 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. Holles 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 army, 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 from being put forward.

But the petition of the officers did not prevent the petition 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, 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 consult 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.

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 quiet its discontent by assuring the soldiers of pay and indemnification. These three, on the 7th of May, met the officers, 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 Delaware, 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 soldiers 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. 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. Meanwhile, 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 2nd 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 that soon. At this threat Brown and Graves bade their soldiers stand to their arms and defend the place; but the soldiers, instead, 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, and 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? 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 meanwhile must go with him.

Finding that the soldiers sent for would not come, and that the officers of the guard said that Joyce's troop were not soldiers of one regiment, but drawn from several regiments, and that Joyce was not their proper officer, it was clear that there was a general design in the affair, and the king said he would go with them at six in the morning. At the hour appointed the king appeared on horseback, and found the troop all mounted and ready. The king had overnight demanded of Joyce whether he should be forced to do anything against his conscience, and whether he should have his servants with him; and Joyce replied that there was no intention to lay any constraint on his majesty, only to prevent his being made use of to break up the army before justice had been done to it. Before starting, Charles again demanded from Joyce, in the presence of the troop, where was his commission, enjoining him to deal ingenuously with him, and repeating, "Where, I ask you again, is your commission?" "Here," said Joyce, "behind me," pointing to the soldiers. Charles smiled, and said, "It is a fair commission, and as well written as I have ever seen a commission written in my life; a company of handsome, proper gentlemen, as I have seen a great while. But what if I should refuse to go with you? I hope you would not force me. I am your king; you ought not to lay violent hands on your king. I acknowledge none to be above me here but God." He then demanded again whither they proposed to conduct him. Oxford and Cambridge were named, to both of which places Charles objected. Newmarket was next named, and to that he consented. So the first day they rode to Hinchinbrook, and the next to Childersley, near Newmarket.

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 foam. The House voted to sit all the next day, though it was 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 shut, the town was 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, that the king should be returned to the care of the Commissioners who attended him at Holmby, and that Colonel Rossiter's regiment should guard his person. Fairfax replied that the army had reached St. Albans before he received their command, but it should proceed no farther; 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 between his enemies wonderfully encouraging his hopes of making friends of the more liberal party. He was in a condition of greater freedom and respect in the army than he had been at Holmby: there was a larger number of troops and the officers were superior. He was relieved from the presence of Cornet 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, Sanderson, 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 inform 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 end, 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 it was disbanded.

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 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 at St. Albans, the army formally impeached of high treason eleven of the most active Presbyterian members. This impeachment was presented to the House by twelve officers of the army--colonels, lieutenant-colonels, majors, and captains. Within a few days the General and officers sent a letter to the House, informing it that they would appoint proper persons 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 out of their own quiver, which the Commons did not expect; and though it was a legitimate consequence of the impeachments of 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 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 courage, and Holles 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.

The struggle between the army and Parliament--that is, between 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 affairs stood, the City was either peaceful or in alarm, now shutting its shops, now carrying on much negotiation; the army lying still near, and paid more regularly, out of terror, by the Parliament. At length the army had so far succeeded as to have the insulting declaration of Holles--"the blot of ignominy"--erased from the journals of the House, and the ordinance of the 4th of May--procured by Holles--for the placing of the militia of the City in more exclusively Presbyterian hands--revoked. But towards the end of July the strong Presbyterian element in London 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, the meeting-houses of all classes, except Presbyterians--should be closed, and called on 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 Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons, nor the Earl of Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was suspected of any great leaning to the army, whilst Warwick was a staunch Presbyterian, and Northumberland so much in the favour of that party as to have the care of the 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 Poyntz to call out the 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 them in their proper places, or perish in the attempt. Nothing, in fact, could have been such a godsend 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 accommodation 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 ordering 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.

Meanwhile, never was London in 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, August 1 and 2, the shops were all shut, nothing going on but enlisting and mustering. St. James's Fields were in a stir with drilling; 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 sat 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 hands with them through the gates, and abandoned to them the works which protected the City. 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, 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 pounds arranged 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 the proceedings since the departure of the Speakers as null. No sooner were the Speakers in their places than Parliament 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 month's 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 train-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 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 thus 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 to 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 Scottish 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.

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 far 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 between 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 power. Nothing more convincingly demonstrates this than the conditions which the Parliament submitted to him. 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 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 of 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 was to be fairly and equally apportioned; the irritating maintenance of the clergy by tithes was to be done away with; suits at law were 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.

The whole project was decidedly creditable to the officers of the army. 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.

Charles was still the same man; he was at the same moment secretly listening to the overtures of the Scottish Commissioners, who were jealous of the army, and instead of seizing the opportunity to be once more 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 bedchamber of Lord Lauderdale, whom they suspected of having thus perverted the king's mind, and compelled him, in spite of his standing in his position as Commissioner from the Estates of Scotland, to rise, and get off back again to Edinburgh.

At this crisis the alarm at the proceedings in London, and the march upon it just related, took place. Still the officers did not cease their exertions to persuade the king to adopt the proposals; but he was waiting to see what turn affairs would take, and listening at the same time to the Scots and the Irish Catholics. This idea was so little concealed that, talking with Ireton, he let slip the observation, "I shall play my game as well as I can." On which Ireton replied, "If your Majesty has a game to play, you must give us leave also to play ours." As the bluster of the City seemed to subside before the approaching army, Charles sent Berkeley to ask the officers, "If he should accept the proposals, what would ensue?" They said, "We will offer them to the Parliament." "And if they should reject them, what then?" The rest of the officers hesitating to answer such a question, Rainsborough said bluntly, "If they won't agree, we will make them!" to which all the rest instantly assented. Berkeley carried this decisive answer to Charles, but there, he says, he had very different work; he was just as unyielding as ever. Cromwell and Ireton then begged that though the king would not sign the proposals, he would at least write a kind letter to the army, which should show the country that they were doing nothing contrary to his Majesty's mind. With the co-operation of Berkeley, Ashburnham, and others of the king's friends, they met at Windsor, and drew up such a letter, but they could not prevail on him to sign it till the City had yielded, and it was too late. Still the officers, to prove that their triumph had not altered in the least their desire for agreement with the king, again voted the proposals as their terms of settlement. Charles renewed his discussion with them, and was every day sending messages by Ashburnham to Cromwell and Ireton, yet never coming nearer; but, on the other hand, bringing those officers into suspicion with a new and fanatic party which had arisen, which originally called themselves Rationalists, but soon after Levellers.

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, a 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.

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 ascendency. Regarding the religious toleration proposed in the army 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, 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 free-born 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.

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 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 manifestoes, were all diligently carried to Charles 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 rigorously watched as if he were not on honour. Colonel Whalley, who commanded his guard, at once ordered it to be doubled, and dismissed all the king's 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 suggested 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 Commons; 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 his government, "because he found the army was resolved to break all promises with the king, and that he would have nothing to do 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, and, 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 bedchamber between five and six o'clock and went to prayers, and thence to supper. On one of these evenings, Thursday, the 11th of November, 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 the father of his country whenever he could be heard with honour, freedom, and safety.

It appeared that he had escaped by 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 daybreak, 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 at once despatched a letter to the Speaker, Lenthall, dated twelve o'clock, with the tidings for Parliament, and the news was announced next morning to both Houses. The confusion may be imagined; orders were issued to close all ports; and those 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 of November 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. However, 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 Carisbrooke Castle.

Charles was at first treated by Colonel Hammond with great leniency, and 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 too truly prefigured the interview itself. Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton received Berkeley with severe aspects and distant coldness, and told 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 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, etc., 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 Carisbrooke; but the Scottish Commissioners, who dreaded the acceptance of them 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.

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 ship had been engaged by the queen to carry off Charles and land him at Berwick, in readiness to co-operate with the Scottish movement. Hammond 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 strict 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 Carisbrooke; and his friends from all quarters corresponded with him, and their letters were conveyed to him by Henry Firebrace, who was in some employment in the castle, and was occasionally engaged by one of the warders to take his place before the king's chamber-door, when he put the correspondence entrusted 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 a single musket among them, and was speedily taken and executed.

On the 3rd of January, 1648, the two Houses discussed the relations with the king, and in the Commons the plainest Republican sentiments were avowed. The refusal of the four Bills by the king was deemed convincing proof that no possibility was left of ever coming to agreement with him. Sir Thomas Wroth declared that kings of late had conducted themselves more like inmates of Bedlam than anything else, and that 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 many 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 hardened in obstinacy. In fact, in Parliament, almost as much as in the army, a large party had come to the conclusion 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 concurred in the vote, and a public declaration was circulated to that effect; and it was also agreed 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 that Parliament knew 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; the Scots therefore demanded the payment of the last one hundred thousand pounds due to them by the treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention to retire on receiving it.

This decided step of Parliament, and the rigour with which Charles 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 give effect to the doctrines of the army and put the king to death. These efforts were productive of a rapidly and widely spreading sentiment in the king's favour, and 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 made 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 forced himself between the iron stanchions of the window and let himself down; but the king, in essaying to follow, stuck fast, and, after violent efforts, found it impossible to get through. Cromwell announced to Hammond, in a letter still extant, that Parliament was informed that aquafortis 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 informed him that 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. Charles 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 Scottish muster proceeded with 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 their old soldiers followed them. The Royalists ran to arms, eight thousand men were soon afoot in the Principality, Chepstow and Carnarvon were surprised, and Colonel Fleming was 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.

Meanwhile, 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 some of them being killed. Similar outbreaks took place in Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, and other places. Pontefract Castle was surprised by eighty cavaliers, each with a soldier mounted behind him.

Parliament, at the same time, was besieged with petitions for 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 Commoners. Holles and his associates resumed their seats and their old measures, voted for a renewed negotiation with Charles 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 Holles, 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 Scottish 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 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 Kirkby 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; they called 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 Scottish army, surrendered on quarter in that town. Monroe, who was lying at Kirkby, ignorant of the battle or of 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 Widmerpool, 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 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 faction 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, 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 returning to the king, entered London with five hundred horse, and called on the citizens to join him for 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 himself had induced the brother of Buckingham 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. Neot's, 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'Estrange, 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 Carisbrooke was not strong, and there were few forces besides its garrison in the island; but though Charles anxiously expected 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 occupied in Wales, and in waiting for the approach of the invasion from Scotland; yet the heir-apparent made no movement for the rescue of his father, which everyone would have thought would have been the first thing with him.

Warwick posted himself at the mouth of the Thames, to prevent any advance towards London, or any relief to 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 then demand their ransom from the City. This occasioned a brisk correspondence between London 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 Scottish 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 followed him at a respectful distance to the Dutch coast. He is said there to have 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 declares 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 his 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 defeated that object. By the end of August all the attempts of the Royalists were crushed.

The Presbyterians took the opportunity while 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 dare not thus far run counter to the victorious army, and a compromise was effected. Charles was permitted to choose any place in 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 Commoners, including Vane the younger, Grimstone, Holles, and Pierpoint, 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, and were not to interpose 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 to consult them. The conditions were the same as were 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 to its suspension for three years; moreover, the episcopal lands were not to 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 as great a chance as ever of obtaining them. In vain the Presbyterians prayed him with tears to yield, to prevent the utter ruin of 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 of November.

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, before 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, had been foully murdered by a number of Royalists.

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 land 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 Ingoldsby'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.

All these ominous proceedings were 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 concession 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 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 the hands of the Independents, 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 requested relief, yet he would still hold on, 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 of November. 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 Carisbrooke Castle, or elsewhere.

Hammond, who knew well what was the meaning of this, refused to give up his charge, declaring that in all military matters he would obey his general, but that this charge was committed to him by the Parliament, and that he would yield it to no order but theirs. Ewer returned, but the next day was the last day of the Commissioners. Charles, seeing the desperate pass at which matters had arrived, suddenly gave way, and agreed that the seven individuals excepted from pardon should take their trials--namely, the Marquis of Newcastle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who had been confined in Nottingham Castle, but had escaped, Lord Digby, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Francis Doddrington, Lord Byron, and Mr. Justice Jenkins; that the bishops should be abolished, and their lands vested in the Crown till a final settlement of religion.

When the Commissioners took their leave, Charles warned 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 departed, and Charles 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 he 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 convey 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 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 Holles, Pierpoint, and Lord Wenman, for their care and pains in the good treaty at Newport, and proceeded to read twice the report of the Commissioners. Holles, who, with his accused colleagues, was again in the House, moved that the king's answer should be voted satisfactory; but that question was postponed 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 around 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 on Monday they continued the debate all day until five o'clock the next morning, Tuesday. Such a debate of three days and a night had not hitherto 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 severely 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.

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 doorkeepers, informing him who the members were--he stopped such as were on 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 Eglinton 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 the 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 sat out this sermon, but the Prince Palatine himself, Charles's nephew. The king'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 sat, 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 sat 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 the next day 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 to Windsor Castle. 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." 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.

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. 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; Mr. Dorislaus and Mr. 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. 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.

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 for the President stood elevated on three 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, sat 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 sat with their hats on, and Charles eyed them sternly. He then glanced round on the people in the galleries and those around him 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 sat down, looking very stern; but when the words of the charge declaring him to be a tyrant and a 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.

This was very true, and would have been unanswerable, had he, as he asserted, treated with them honestly and uprightly; but we know that at the very time that he was carrying on that treaty, and to the very last, he was also carrying on a secret correspondence with Ormond in Ireland, his wife in France, and with other parties, informing them that he was only doing this because there was no help for it; but that he had games to play which would still defeat the whole affair. He was meaning nothing less, and privately declaring nothing less, than that he would, on the first opportunity, be as despotic as ever. He continued, however, to demand, "By what authority am I here? I mean lawful authority, for there are many unlawful authorities in the world--thieves and robbers by the highways. Remember, I am your lawful king: let me know by what lawful authority I am seated here; resolve me that, and you shall hear more from me." Bradshaw told him that he might have observed that he was there by the authority of the people of England, whose elected king he was. That afforded Charles another answer. "England," he said, "never was an elective but an hereditary kingdom for nearly these thousand years. I stand more for the liberty of my people than any here that are come to be my pretended judges." Bradshaw might have told him that the people thought it time to put an end to the hereditary form, and adopt a new one; but he replied, "Sir, how well you have managed your trust is known. If you do not acknowledge the authority of the court I must proceed." Charles, however, turned to another weak place in his adversary's answer, and exclaimed, "I see no House of Lords that may constitute a Parliament, and the king, too, must be in and part of a Parliament." It was unquestionable that Charles could not be answered on the constitutional ground, but only on the revolutionary one, on that principle of the power and right of the people to revolutionise, and shape anew their constitution (which in 1688 was acknowledged and established as a great fact of the rights of nations), and Bradshaw brought forward that plea--"If you are not satisfied with our authority, we are satisfied with it, which we have from God and the people." He informed Charles that he would be expected to answer, and adjourned the court till Monday.

The two following days were spent in receiving evidence of the king's having not only commenced the war on his subjects, but of his having 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; and 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's 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. Charles's own country of Scotland, before all others, abounded with instances of the deposition and putting to death of their sovereigns. His grandmother had been so set aside, and his own father, a mere infant, put in her place. The Lord President then 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 in this 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 a 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 being called, a female voice from one of the galleries cried out, "He has more wit than be here." When the name of Cromwell was read, the same voice exclaimed, "A rogue and a traitor." As Bradshaw now went on to say, the king had 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, brutally ordered them 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 had been 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; declaring that they were got up to make the case of Charles resemble that of the 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 Axtell 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 Juxon, 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, that his love would be the same for her to the last; and 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.

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; for 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 Juxon, 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 Juxon 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, 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. Church, Lords, and Commons had, he said, been subverted with the sovereign power; if he would have consented to reign by the mere despotism of the sword, he asserted that 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 said 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, he 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, which, 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 Juxon, saying impressively, "Remember!" The warning is supposed, as the medallion of the George concealed a portrait of Henrietta, to have regarded 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 VIII. and Jane Seymour. The day was very snowy, and the coffin being deposited without any service, was left without any inscription except the words, "Carolus 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.

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