LV. CHARLES I
{1641.} THE Scots, who began these fatal commotions, thought that they had finished a very perilous undertaking much to their profit and reputation. Besides the large pay voted them for lying in good quarters during a twelvemonth, the English parliament had conferred on them a present of three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly assistance.[*] In the articles of pacification, they were declared to have ever been good subjects; and their military expeditions were approved of, as enterprises calculated and intended for his majesty's honor and advantage. To carry further the triumph over their sovereign, these terms, so ignominious to him, were ordered by a vote of parliament to be read in all churches, upon a day of thanksgiving appointed for the national pacification;[**] all their claims for the restriction of prerogative were agreed to be ratified; and, what they more valued than all these advantages, they had a near prospect of spreading the Presbyterian discipline in England and Ireland, from the seeds which they had scattered of their religious principles. Never did refined Athens so exult in diffusing the sciences and liberal arts over a savage world, never did generous Rome so please herself in the view of law and order established by her victorious arms, as the Scots now rejoiced in communicating their barbarous zeal and theological fervor to the neighboring nations.
* Nalson, vol. i. p. 747. May, p. 104.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 365. Clarendon, vol. ii p. 293.
Charles, despoiled in England of a considerable part of his authority, and dreading still further encroachments upon him, arrived in Scotland, with an intention of abdicating almost entirely the small share of power which there remained to him, and of giving full satisfaction, if possible, to his restless subjects in that kingdom.
The lords of articles were an ancient institution in the Scottish parliament. They were constituted after this manner: The temporal lords chose eight bishops: the bishops elected eight temporal lords: these sixteen named eight commissioners of counties, and eight burgesses, and without the previous consent of the thirty-two, who were denominated lords of articles, no motion could be made in parliament. As the bishops were entirely devoted to the court, it is evident, that all the lords of articles, by necessary consequence, depended on the king's nomination; and the prince, besides one negative after the bills had passed through parliament, possessed indirectly another before their introduction; a prerogative of much greater consequence than the former. The bench of bishops being now abolished, the parliament laid hold of the opportunity, and totally set aside the lords of articles: and till this important point was obtained, the nation, properly speaking, could not be said to enjoy any regular freedom.[*]
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding this institution, to which there is no parallel in England, the royal authority was always deemed much lower in Scotland than in the former kingdom. Bacon represents it as one advantage to be expected from the union, that the too extensive prerogative of England would be abridged by the example of Scotland, and the too narrow prerogative of Scotland be enlarged from the imitation of England. The English were at that time a civilized people, and obedient to the laws; but among the Scots it was of little consequence how the laws were framed, or by whom voted, while the exorbitant aristocracy had it so much in their power to prevent their regular execution.
The peers and commons formed only one house in the Scottish parliament: and as it had been the practice of James, continued by Charles, to grace English gentlemen with Scottish titles, all the determinations of parliament, it was to be feared, would in time depend upon the prince, by means of these votes of foreigners, who had no interest or property in the nation. It was therefore a law deserving approbation, that no man should be created a Scotch peer, who possessed not ten thousand marks (above five hundred pounds) of annual rent in the kingdom.[**]
A law for triennial parliaments was likewise passed; and it was ordained, that the last act of every parliament should be to appoint the time and place for holding the parliament next ensuing.[***]
* Burnet, Mem.
** Burnet, Mem.
*** Burnet, Mem.
The king was deprived of that power formerly exercised of issuing proclamations which enjoined obedience under the penalty of treason; a prerogative which invested him with the whole legislative authority, even in matters of the highest importance.[*]
So far was laudable: but the most fatal blow given to royal authority, and what in a manner dethroned the prince, was the article, that no member of the privy council, in whose hands during the king's absence the whole administration lay, no officer of state, none of the judges, should be appointed but by advice and approbation of parliament. Charles even agreed to deprive of their seats four judges who had adhered to his interests; and their place was supplied by others more agreeable to the ruling party. Several of the Covenanters were also sworn of the privy council. And all the ministers of state, counsellors, and judges, were by law to hold their places during life or good behavior.[**]
The king while in Scotland conformed himself entirely to the established church, and assisted with great gravity at the long prayers and longer sermons with which the Presbyterians endeavored to regale him. He bestowed pensions and preferments on Henderson, Gillespy, and other popular preachers, and practised every art to soften, if not to gain, his greatest enemies. The earl of Argyle was created a marquis, Lord Loudon an earl, Lesley was dignified with the title of earl of Leven.[***] His friends he was obliged for the present to neglect and overlook: some of them were disgusted; and his enemies were not reconciled, but ascribed all his caresses and favors to artifice and necessity.
* Burnet, Mem.
** Burnet, Mem.
*** Clarendon, vol. ii p. 309.
Argyle and Hamilton, being seized with an apprehension, real or pretended, that the earl of Crawfurd and others meant to assassinate them, left the parliament suddenly, and retired into the country; but upon invitation and assurances, returned in a few days. This event, which had neither cause nor effect that was visible, nor purpose, nor consequence, was commonly denominated the incident. But though the incident had no effect In Scotland; what was not expected, it was attended with consequences in England. The English parliament, which was now assembled, being willing to awaken the people's tenderness by exciting their fears, immediately took the alarm; as if the malignants--so they called the king's party--had had laid a plot at once to murder them and all the godly in both kingdoms. They applied therefore to Essex, whom the king had left general in the south of England; and he ordered a guard to attend them.[*]
But while the king was employed in pacifying the commotions in Scotland, and was preparing to return to England, in order to apply himself to the same salutary work in that kingdom, he received intelligence of a dangerous rebellion broken but in Ireland, with circumstances of the utmost horror, bloodshed, and devastation. On every side this unfortunate prince was pursued with murmurs, discontent, faction, and civil wars, and the fire from all quarters, even by the most independent accidents, at once blazed up about him.
The great plan of James in the administration of Ireland, continued by Charles, was, by justice and peace to reconcile that turbulent people to the authority of laws; and, introducing art and industry among them, to cure them of that sloth and barbarism to which they had ever been subject. In order to serve both these purposes, and at the same time secure the dominion of Ireland to the English crown, great colonies of British had been carried over, and, being intermixed with the Irish, had every where introduced a new face of things into that country. During a peace of near forty years, the inveterate quarrels between the nations seemed, in a great measure, to be obliterated; and though much of the landed property forfeited by rebellion had been conferred on the new planters, a more than equal return had been made, by their instructing the natives in tillage, building, manufactures, and all the civilized arts of life.[**] This had been the course of things during the successive administrations of Chichester, Grandison, Falkland, and, above all, of Strafford. Under the government of this latter nobleman, the pacific plans, now come to great maturity, and forwarded by his vigor and industry, seemed to have operated with full success, and to have bestowed at last on that savage country the face of a European settlement.
* Whitlocke, p. 40. Dugdale, p. 72. Burnet's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, p. 184, 185. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 299.
** Sir John Temple's Irish Rebellion, p. 12.
After Strafford fell a victim to popular rage, the humors excited in Ireland by that great event could not suddenly be composed, but continued to produce the greatest innovations in the government.
The British Protestants transplanted into Ireland, having every moment before their eyes all the horrors of Popery, had naturally been carried into the opposite extreme, and had universally adopted the highest principles and practices of the Puritans. Monarchy, as well as the hierarchy, was become odious to them; and every method of limiting the authority of the crown, and detaching themselves from the king of England, was greedily adopted and pursued. They considered not, that as they scarcely formed the sixth part of the people, and were secretly obnoxious to the ancient inhabitants, their only method of supporting themselves was by maintaining royal authority, and preserving a great dependence on their mother country. The English commons, likewise, in their furious persecution of Strafford, had overlooked the most obvious consequences; and, while they imputed to him as a crime every discretionary act of authority, they despoiled all succeeding governors of that power by which alone the Irish could be retained in subjection. And so strong was the current for popular government in all the three kingdoms, that the most established maxims of policy were every where abandoned, in order to gratify this ruling passion.
Charles, unable to resist, had been obliged to yield to the Irish, as to the Scottish and English parliaments; and found, too, that their encroachments still rose in proportion to his concessions. Those subsidies which themselves had voted, they reduced, by a subsequent vote, to a fourth part; the court of high commission was determined to be a grievance; martial law abolished; the jurisdiction of the council annihilated; proclamations and acts of state declared of no authority; every order or institution which depended on monarchy was invaded; and the prince was despoiled of all his prerogative, without the least pretext of any violence or illegality in his administration.
The standing army of Ireland was usually about three thousand men; but, in order to assist the king in suppressing the Scottish Covenanters, Strafford had raised eight thousand more, and had incorporated with them a thousand men drawn from the old army; a necessary expedient for bestowing older and discipline on the new-levied soldiers. The private men in this army were all Catholics; but the officers, both commission and non-commission, were Protestants, and could entirely be depended on by Charles. The English commons entertained the greatest apprehensions on account of this army, and never ceased soliciting the king till he agreed to break it. Nor they consent to any proposal for augmenting the standing army to five thousand men; a number which the king deemed necessary for retaining Ireland in obedience.
Charles, thinking it dangerous that eight thousand men accustomed to idleness, and trained to the use of arms, should be dispersed among a nation so turbulent and unsettled, agreed with the Spanish ambassador to have them transported into Flanders, and enlisted in his master's service. The English commons, pretending apprehensions, lest regular bodies of troops, disciplined in the Low Countries, should prove still more dangerous, showed some aversion to this expedient; and the king reduced his allowance to four thousand men. But when the Spaniards had hired ships for transporting these troops, and the men were ready to embark, the commons, willing to show their power, and not displeased with an opportunity of curbing and affronting the king, prohibited every one from furnishing vessels for that service. And thus the project formed by Charles, of freeing the country from these men was unfortunately disappointed.[*]
The old Irish remarked all these false steps of the English, and resolved to take advantage of them. Though their animosity against that nation, for want of an occasion to exert itself, seemed to be extinguished, it was only composed into a temporary and deceitful tranquillity.[**] Their interests, both with regard to property and religion, secretly stimulated them to a revolt. No individual of any sept, according to the ancient customs, had the property of any particular estate; but as the whole sept had a title to a whole territory, they ignorantly preferred this barbarous community before the more secure and narrower possessions assigned them by the English. An indulgence, amounting almost to a toleration, had been given to the Catholic religion: but so long as the churches and the ecclesiastical revenues were kept from the priests, and they were obliged to endure the neighborhood of profane heretics, being themselves discontented, they continually endeavored to retard any cordial reconciliation between the English and the Irish nations.
* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 281. Rush. vol. v. p, 381. Dugdale, p. 78 May, book ii. p. 3.
** Temple, p. 14
There was a gentleman called Roger More, who, though of a narrow fortune, was descended from an ancient Irish family and was much celebrated among his countrymen for valor and capacity. This man first formed the project of expelling the English, and asserting the independency of his native country.[*]
* Nalson, vol. iii. p. 543.
He secretly went from chieftain to chieftain, and roused up every latent principle of discontent. He maintained a close correspondence with Lord Maguire and Sir Phelim O'Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish. By conversation, by letters, by his emissaries, he represented to his countrymen the motives of a revolt. He observed to them, that, by the rebellion of the Scots, and factions of the English, the king's authority in Britain was reduced to so low a condition, that he never could exert himself with any vigor in maintaining the English dominion over Ireland: that the Catholics in the Irish house of commons, assisted by the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative and the power of the lieutenant, as would much facilitate the conducting to its desired effect any conspiracy or combination which could be formed: that the Scots, having so successfully thrown off dependence on the crown of England, and assumed the government into their own hands, had set an example to the Irish, who had so much greater oppressions to complain of: that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions, suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties were but a handful in comparison of the natives: that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions through out the whole kingdom: that a great body of men, disciplined by the government, were now thrown loose, and were ready for any daring or desperate enterprise: that though the Catholics had hitherto enjoyed, in some tolerable measure, the exercise of their religion, from the moderation of their indulgent prince, they must henceforth expect that the government will be conducted by other maxims and other principles: that the Puritanical parliament, having at length subdued their sovereign, would no doubt, as soon as they had consolidated their authority, extend their ambitious enterprises to Ireland, and make the Catholics in that kingdom feel the same furious persecution, to which their brethren in England were at present exposed: and that a revolt in the Irish, tending only to vindicate their native liberty against the violence of foreign invaders, could never at any time be deemed rebellion, much less during the present confusions, when their prince was in a manner a prisoner, and obedience must be paid, not to him, but to those who had traitorously usurped his lawful authority.[*]
By these considerations, More engaged all the heads of the native Irish into the conspiracy. The English of the pale, as they were called, or the old English planters, being all Catholics, it was hoped would afterwards join the party which restored their religion to its ancient splendor and authority. The intention was, that Sir Phelim O'Neale and the other conspirators should begin an insurrection on one day throughout the provinces, and should attack all the English settlements; and that, on the same day, Lord Maguire and Roger More should surprise the Castle of Dublin. The commencement of the revolt was fixed on the approach of winter, that there might be more difficulty in transporting forces from England. Succors to themselves and supplies of arms they expected from France, in consequence of a promise made them by Cardinal Richelieu. And many Irish officers, who served in the Spanish troops, had engaged to join them, as soon as they saw an insurrection entered upon by their Catholic brethren. News, which every day arrived from England, of the fury expressed by the commons against all Papists, struck fresh terror into the Irish nation, and both stimulated the conspirators to execute their fatal purpose, and gave them assured hopes of the concurrence of all their country men.[**]
Such propensity to a revolt was discovered in all the Irish, that it was deemed unnecessary, as it was dangerous to intrust the secret to many hands; and the appointed day drew nigh, nor had any discovery been yet made to the government. The king, indeed, had received information from his ambassadors, that something was in agitation among the Irish in foreign parts; but though he gave warning to the administration in Ireland, the intelligence was entirely neglected.[***]
* Temple, p. 72, 73, 78. Dugdale, p. 73.
** Dugdale, p. 74.
*** Bush vol. v. p. 408. Nalson, vol ii. p. 565.
Secret rumors likewise were heard of some approaching conspiracy; but no attention was paid to them. The earl of Leicester, whom the king had appointed lieutenant, remained in London, The two justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlace, were men of small abilities; and, by an inconvenience common to all factious times, owed their advancement to nothing but their zeal for the party by whom every thing was now governed. Tranquil from their ignorance and inexperience, these men indulged themselves in the most profound repose, on the very brink of destruction.
But they were awakened from their security on the very day before that which was appointed for the commencement of hostilities. The Castle of Dublin, by which the capital was commanded, contained arms for ten thousand men, with thirty-five pieces of cannon, and a proportionable quantity of ammunition; yet was this important place guarded, and that too without any care, by no greater force than fifty men. Maguire and More were already in town with a numerous band of their partisans; others were expected that night and next morning they were to enter upon what they esteemed the easiest of all enterprises, the surprisal of the castle. O'Conolly, an Irishman, but a Protestant, betrayed the conspiracy to Parsons.[*] The justices and council fled immediately for safety into the castle, and reënforced the guards. The alarm was conveyed to the city, and all the Protestants prepared for defence. More escaped; Maguire was taken; and Mahone, one of the conspirators, being likewise seized, first discovered to the justices the project of a general insurrection, and redoubled the apprehensions which already were universally diffused throughout Dublin.[**]
But though O'Conolly's discovery saved the castle from a surprise, the confession extorted from Mahone came too late to prevent the intended insurrection. O'Neale and his Confederates had already taken arms in Ulster. The Irish, every where intermingled with the English, needed but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin hostilities against a people whom they hated on account of their religion, and envied for their riches and prosperity.[***]
* Rush, vol. v. p. 399. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 520. May, book ii p. 6
** Temple p 17, 18, 19, 20. Rush. vol. v p. 400.
*** Ten ple, p. 39, 40, 79.
The houses, cattle, goods, of the unwary English were first seized. Those who heard of the commotions in their neighborhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and assembling for mutual protection, remained at home in hopes of defending their property, and fell thus separately into the hands of their enemies.[*] After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cruelty, and the most barbarous that ever in any nation was known or heard of, began its operations. A universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition was spared. The wife weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke.[**] The old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and were confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first assault: destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends: all connections were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected. Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound peace and full security were massacred by their nearest neighbors, with whom they had long upheld a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices.[***]
But death was the lightest punishment inflicted by those rebels. All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear almost incredible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion encouraged by the utmost license, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity, unless the pity inherent in human breasts be destroyed by that contagion of example which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behavior.
The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings, and compassionate to those of others, here emulated their more robust companions in the practice of every cruelty.[****] Even children, taught by the example and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, essayed their feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children of the English.[v]
* Temple, p. 42.
** Temple, p. 40.
*** Temple, p. 39, 40
**** Temple, p. 96, 101. Rush. vol. v. p. 415.
v Temple, p. 100
The very avarice of the Irish was not a sufficient restraint to their cruelty. Such was their frenzy, that the cattle which they had seized, and by rapine made their own, yet, because they bore the name of English, were wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned loose into the woods or deserts.[*]
The stately buildings or commodious habitations of the planters, as if upbraiding the sloth and ignorance of the natives, were consumed with fire, or laid level with the ground. And where the miserable owners, shut up in their houses, and preparing for defence, perished in the flames, together with their wives and children, a double triumph was afforded to their insulting foes.[**]
If any where a number assembled together, and, assuming courage from despair, were resolved to sweeten death by revenge on their assassins, they were disarmed by capitulations and promises of safety, confirmed by the most solemn oaths. But no sooner had they surrendered, than the rebels, with perfidy equal to their cruelty, made them share the fate of their unhappy countrymen.[***]
Others, more ingenious still in their barbarity, tempted their prisoners, by the fond love of life, to imbrue their hands in the blood of friends, brothers, parents; and having thus rendered them accomplices in guilt, gave them that death which they sought to shun by deserving it.[****]
Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of religion resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these murderers, but to enforce their blows, and to steel their hearts against every movement of human or social sympathy. The English, as heretics, abhorred of God and detestable to all holy men, were marked out by the priests for slaughter; and of all actions, to rid the world of these declared enemies to Catholic faith and piety, was represented as the most meritorious.[v] Nature, which in that rude people was sufficiently inclined to atrocious deeds, was further stimulated by precept: and national prejudices empoisoned by those aversions, more deadly and incurable, which arose from an enraged superstition. While death finished the sufferings of each victim, the bigoted assassins, with joy and exultation, still echoed in his expiring ears, that these agonies were but the commencement of torments infinite and eternal.[v*]
* Temple, p. 84.
** Temple, p. 99, 106. Rash. vol. v. p. 414
*** Whitlocke, p. 47. Rush. vol. v. p. 416.
**** Temple, p 100.
v Temple, p. 85, 106.
v* Temple, p 94, 107, 108. Rush. vol. v. p. 407.
Such were the barbarities by which Sir Phelim O'Neale and the Irish in Ulster signalized their rebellion; an event memorable in the annals of human kind, and worthy to be held in perpetual detestation and abhorrence. The generous nature of More was shocked at the recital of such enormous cruelties. He flew to O'Neale's camp; but found that his authority, which was sufficient to excite the Irish to an insurrection, was too feeble to restrain their inhumanity. Soon after, he abandoned a cause polluted by so many crimes; and he retired into Flanders. Sir Phelim, recommended by the greatness of his family, and perhaps too by the unrestrained brutality of his nature, though without any courage or capacity, acquired the entire ascendent over the northern rebels.[*] The English colonies were totally annihilated in the open country of Ulster: the Scots at first met with more favorable treatment. In order to engage them to a passive neutrality, the Irish pretended to distinguish between the British nations; and, claiming friendship and consanguinity with the Scots, extended not over them the fury of their massacres. Many of them found an opportunity to fly the country; others retired into places of security, and prepared themselves for defence; and by this means the Scottish planters, most of them at least, escaped with their lives.[**]
From Ulster the flames of rebellion diffused themselves in an instant over the other three provinces of Ireland. In all places, death and slaughter were not uncommon; though the Irish in these other provinces pretended to act with moderation and humanity. But cruel and barbarous was their humanity! Not content with expelling the English their houses, with despoiling them of their goodly manors, with wasting their cultivated fields, they stripped them of their very clothes, and turned them out, naked and defenceless, to all the severities of the season.[***] The heavens themselves, as if conspiring against that unhappy people, were armed with cold and tempest unusual to the climate, and executed what the merciless sword had left unfinished.[****] The roads were covered with crowds of naked English, hastening towards Dublin and the other cities which yet remained in the hands of their countrymen. The feeble age of children, the tender sex of women, soon sunk under the multiplied rigors of cold and hunger.
* Temple, p. 44.
** Temple, p. 41 Rush, i. p. 416.
*** Temple, p. 42.
**** Temple, p. 64
Here the husband, bidding a final adieu to his expiring family, envied them that fate which, he himself expected so soon to share: there the son, having long supported his aged parent, with reluctance obeyed his last commands, and, abandoning him in this uttermost distress, reserved himself to the hopes of avenging that death which all his efforts could not prevent nor delay. The astonishing greatness of the calamity deprived the sufferers of any relief from the view of companions in affliction. With silent tears, or lamentable cries, they hurried on through the hostile territories, and found every heart which was not steeled by native barbarity, guarded by the more implacable furies of mistaken piety and religion.[*]
The saving of Dublin preserved in Ireland the remains of the English name. The gates of that city, though timorously opened, received the wretched supplicants, and presented to the view a scene of human misery beyond what any eye had ever before beheld.[**] Compassion seized the amazed inhabitants, aggravated with the fear of like calamities; while they observed the numerous foes, without and within, which every where environed them, and reflected on the weak resources by which they were themselves supported. The more vigorous of the unhappy fugitives, to the number of three thousand, were enlisted into three regiments; the rest were distributed into the houses; and all care was taken, by diet and warmth, to recruit their feeble and torpid limbs. Diseases of unknown name and species, derived from these multiplied distresses, seized many of them, and put a speedy period to their lives: others, having now leisure to reflect on their mighty loss of friends and fortune, cursed that being which they had saved. Abandoning themselves to despair, refusing all succor, they expired; without other consolation than that of receiving among their countrymen the honors of a grave, which, to their slaughtered companions, had been denied by the inhuman barbarians.[***]
* Temple, p. 88.
** Temple, p. 62.
**** Temple, p. 43, 62.
By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties are supposed to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand: by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to forty thousand; if this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat exaggerated.
The justices ordered to Dublin all the bodies of the army which were not surrounded by the rebels; and they assembled a force of one thousand five hundred veterans. They soon enlisted and armed from the magazines above four thousand men more. They despatched a body of six hundred men to throw relief into Tredah, besieged by the Irish. But these troops, attacked by the enemy, were seized with a panic, and were most of them put to the sword. Their arms, falling into the hands of the Irish, supplied them with what they most wanted.[*] The justices, willing to foment the rebel lion in a view of profiting by the multiplied forfeitures, henceforth thought of nothing more than providing for their own present security and that of the capital. The earl of Ormond, their general, remonstrated against such timid, not to say base and interested counsels; but was obliged to submit to authority.
The English of the pale, who probably were not at first in the secret, pretended to blame the insurrection, and to detest the barbarity with which it was accompanied.[**] By their protestations and declarations, they engaged the justices to supply them with arms, which they promised to employ in defence of the government.[***] But in a little time, the interests of religion were found more prevalent over them than regard and duty to their mother country. They chose Lord Gormanstone their leader; and, joining the old Irish, rivalled them in every act of violence towards the English Protestants. Besides many smaller bodies dispersed over the kingdom, the principal army of the rebels amounted to twenty thousand men, and threatened Dublin with an immediate siege.[****]
Both the English and Irish rebels conspired in one imposture, with which they seduced many of their deluded countrymen: they pretended authority from the king and queen, but chiefly from the latter, for their insurrection; and they affirmed, that the cause of their taking arms was to vindicate royal prerogative, now invaded by the Puritanical parliament.[v] Sir Phelim O'Neale, having found a royal patent in Lord Caulfield's house, whom he had murdered, tore off the seal, and affixed it to a commission which he had forged for himself.[v*]
* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 905.
** Temple, p. 33. Rush. vol. v. p. 402.
*** Temple, p. 60. Borlase, Hist. p. 28.
**** Whitlocke, p. 49.
v Rush. vol. v. p. 400, 401.
v* Rush. vol. v. p. 402.
The king received an account of this insurrection by a messenger despatched from the north of Ireland. He immediately communicated his intelligence to the Scottish parliament. He expected that the mighty zeal expressed by the Scots for the Protestant religion, would immediately engage them to fly to its defence where it was so violently invaded; he hoped that their horror against Popery, a religion which now appeared in its most horrible aspect, would second all his exhortations: he had observed with what alacrity they had twice run to arms, and assembled troops in opposition to the rights of their sovereign: he saw with how much greater facility they could now collect forces which had been very lately disbanded, and which had been so long inured to military discipline. The cries of their affrighted and distressed brethren in Ireland, he promised himself, would powerfully incite them to send over succors, which could arrive so quickly, and aid them with such promptitude in this uttermost distress. But the zeal of the Scots, as is usual among religious sects, was very feeble when not stimulated either by faction or by interest. They now considered themselves entirely as a republic, and made no account of the authority of their prince, which they had utterly annihilated. Conceiving hopes from the present distresses of Ireland, they resolved to make an advantageous bargain for the succors with which they should supply their neighboring nation. And they cast their eye towards the English parliament, with whom they were already so closely connected, and who could alone fulfil any articles which might be agreed on. Except despatching a small body to support the Scottish colonies in Ulster, they would therefore go no further at present than sending commissioners to London in order to treat with that power to whom the sovereign authority was now in reality transferred.[*]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 407.
The king, too, sensible of his utter inability to subdue the Irish rebels, found himself obliged, in this exigency, to have recourse to the English parliament, and depend on their assistance for supply. After communicating to them the intelligence which he had received, he informed them, that the insurrection was not, in his opinion, the result of any rash enterprise, but of a formed conspiracy against the crown of England. To their care and wisdom, therefore, he said, he committed the conduct and prosecution of the war, which, in a cause so important to national and religious interests, must of necessity be immediately entered upon, and vigorously pursued.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 301.
The English parliament was now assembled, and discovered in every vote the same dispositions in which they had separated. The exalting of their own authority, the diminishing of the king's, were still the objects pursued by the majority. Every attempt which had been made to gain the popular leaders, and by offices to attach them to the crown, had failed of success, either for want of skill in conducting it, or by reason of the slender preferments which it was then in the king's power to confer. The ambitious and enterprising patriots disdained to accept, in detail, of a precarious power, while they deemed it so easy, by one bold and vigorous assault, to possess themselves forever of the entire sovereignty. Sensible that the measures which they had hitherto pursued rendered them extremely obnoxious to the king; were many of them in themselves exceptionable; some of them, strictly speaking, illegal; they resolved to seek their own security, as well as greatness, by enlarging popular authority in England. The great necessities to which the king was reduced; the violent prejudices which generally, throughout the nation, prevailed against him; his facility in making the most important concessions; the example of the Scots, whose encroachments had totally subverted monarchy; all these circumstances further instigated the commons in their invasion of royal prerogative. And the danger to which the constitution seemed to have been so lately exposed, persuaded many that it never could be sufficiently secured, but by the entire abolition of that authority which had invaded it.
But this project it had not been in the power, scarcely in the intention of the popular leaders to execute, had it not been for the passion which seized the nation for Presbyterian discipline, and for the wild enthusiasm which at that time accompanied it. The license which the parliament had bestowed on this spirit, by checking ecclesiastical authority; the countenance and encouragement with which they had honored it; had already diffused its influence to a wonderful degree; and all orders of men had drunk deep of the intoxicating poison. In every discourse or conversation this mode of religion entered; in all business it had a share; every elegant pleasure or amusement it utterly annihilated; many vices or corruptions of mind it promoted: even diseases and bodily distempers were not totally exempted from it; and it became requisite, we are told, for all physicians to be expert in the spiritual profession, and by theological considerations to allay those religious terrors with which their patients were so generally haunted. Learning itself, which tends so much to enlarge the mind and humanize the temper, rather served on this occasion to exalt that epidemical frenzy which prevailed. Rude as yet, and imperfect, it supplied the dismal fanaticism with a variety of views, founded it on some coherency of system, enriched it with different figures of elocution; advantages with which a people totally ignorant and barbarous had been happily unacquainted.
From policy, at first, and inclination, now from necessity the king attached himself extremely to the hierarchy: for like reasons, his enemies were determined, by one and the same effort, to overpower the church and monarchy.
While the commons were in this disposition, the Irish rebellion was the event which tended most to promote the views in which all their measures terminated. A horror against the Papists, however innocent, they had constantly encouraged, a terror from the conspiracies of that sect, however improbable, they had at all times endeavored to excite. Here was broken out a rebellion, dreadful and unexpected; accompanied with circumstances the most detestable of which there ever was any record; and what was the peculiar guilt of the Irish Catholics, it was no difficult matter, in the present disposition of men's minds, to attribute to that whole sect, who were already so much the object of general abhorrence. Accustomed in all invectives to join the prelatical party with the Papists, the people immediately supposed this insurrection to be the result of their united counsels. And when they heard that the Irish rebels pleaded the king's commission for all their acts of violence, bigotry, ever credulous and malignant, assented without scruple to that gross imposture, and loaded the unhappy prince with the whole enormity of a contrivance so barbarous and inhuman.[*] [8]
* See note H. at the end of the volume
By the difficulties and distresses of the crown, the commons, who possessed alone the power of supply, had aggrandized themselves; and it seemed a peculiar happiness, that the Irish rebellion had succeeded at so critical a juncture to the pacification of Scotland. That expression of the king's, by which he committed to them the care of Ireland, they immediately laid hold of, and interpreted in the most, unlimited sense. They had on other occasions been gradually encroaching on the executive power of the crown, which forms its principal and most natural branch of authority; but with regard to Ireland, they at once assumed it, fully and entirely, as if delivered over to them by a regular gift or assignment. And to this usurpation the king was obliged passively to submit; both because of his inability to resist, and lest he should still more expose himself to the reproach of favoring the progress of that odious rebellion.
The project of introducing further innovations in England being once formed by the leaders among the commons, it became a necessary consequence, that their operations with regard to Ireland should, all of them, be considered as subordinate to the former, on whose success, when once undertaken, their own grandeur, security, and even being, must entirely depend. While they pretended the utmost zeal against the Irish insurrection, they took no steps towards its suppression, but such as likewise tended to give them the superiority in those commotions which, they foresaw, must so soon be excited in England.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p, 435. Sir Ed. Walker p 6.
The extreme contempt entertained for the natives in Ireland, made the popular leaders believe that it would be easy at any time to suppress their rebellion, and recover that kingdom: nor were they willing to lose, by too hasty success, the advantage which that rebellion would afford them in their projected encroachments on the prerogative. By assuming the total management of the war, they acquired the courtship and dependence of every one who had any connection with Ireland, or who was desirous of enlisting in these military enterprises: they levied money under pretence of the Irish expedition; but reserved it for purposes which concerned them more nearly: they took arms from the king's magazines; but still kept them with a secret intention of employing them against himself: whatever law they deemed necessary for aggrandizing themselves, was voted, under color of enabling them to recover Ireland; and if Charles withheld the royal assent, his refusal was imputed to those pernicious counsels which had at first excited the Popish rebellion, and which still threatened total destruction to the Protestant interest throughout all his dominions.[*] And though no forces were for a long time sent over to Ireland, and very little money remitted during the extreme distress of that kingdom, so strong was the people's attachment to the commons, that the fault was never imputed to those pious zealots, whose votes breathed nothing but death and destruction to the Irish rebels.
* Nalson, vol. ii. p 318. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 590.
To make the attack on royal authority by regular approaches, it was thought proper to frame a general remonstrance of the state of the nation; and accordingly the committee, which at the first meeting of parliament had been chosen for that purpose, and which had hitherto made no progress in their work, received fresh injunctions to finish that undertaking.
The committee brought into the house that remonstrance which has become so memorable, and which was soon afterwards attended with such important consequences. It was not addressed to the king; but was openly declared to be an appeal to the people. The harshness of the matter was equalled by the severity of the language. It consists of many gross falsehoods, intermingled with some evident truths: malignant insinuations are joined to open invectives; loud complaints of the past, accompanied with jealous prognostications of the future. Whatever unfortunate, whatever invidious, whatever suspicious measure had been embraced by the king, from the commencement of his reign, is insisted on and aggravated with merciless rhetoric: the unsuccessful expeditions to Cadiz and the Isle of Rhé are mentioned; the sending of ships to France for the suppression of the Hugonots; the forced loans; the illegal confinement of men for not obeying illegal commands; the violent dissolution of four parliaments; the arbitrary government which always succeeded; the questioning, fining, and imprisoning of members for their conduct in the house; the levying of taxes without consent of the commons; the introducing of superstitious innovations into the church, without authority of law: in short, every thing which, either with or without reason, had given offence during the course of fifteen years, from the accession of the king to the calling of the present parliament. And though all these grievances had been already redressed, and even laws enacted for future security against their return, the praise of these advantages was ascribed, not to the king, but to the parliament, who had extorted his consent to such salutary statutes. Their own merits too, they asserted, towards the king, were no less eminent than towards the people. Though they had seized his whole revenue, rendered it totally precarious, and made even their temporary supplies be paid to their own commissioners, who were independent of him, they pretended that they had liberally supported him in his necessities. By an insult still more egregious, the very giving of money to the Scots for levying war against their sovereign, they represented as an instance of their duty towards him. And all their grievances, they said, which amounted to no less than a total subversion of the constitution, proceeded entirely from the formed combination of a Popish faction, who had ever swayed the king's counsels, who had endeavored, by an uninterrupted effort, to introduce their superstition into England and Scotland, and who had now at last excited an open and bloody rebellion in Ireland.[*]
This remonstrance, so full of acrimony and violence, was a plain signal for some further attacks intended on royal prerogative, and a declaration, that the concessions already made, however important, were not to be regarded as satisfactory. What pretensions would be advanced, how unprecedented, how unlimited, were easily imagined; and nothing less was foreseen, whatever ancient names might be preserved, than an abolition, almost total, of the monarchical government of England. The opposition, therefore, which the remonstrance met with in the house of commons was great. For above fourteen hours the debate was warmly managed; and from the weariness of the king's party, which probably consisted chiefly of the elderly people, and men of cool spirits, the vote was at last carried by a small majority of eleven.[**] Some time after, the remonstrance was ordered to be printed and published, without being carried up to the house of peers for their assent and concurrence.
* Rush. vol. v. p. 438. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 694.
** Whitlocke, p. 49. Dugdale, p. 71. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 668.
When this remonstrance was dispersed, it excited every where the same violent controversy which attended it when introduced into the house of commons. This parliament, said the partisans of that assembly, have at length profited by the fatal example of their predecessors; and are resolved, that the fabric which they have generously undertaken to wear for the protection of liberty, shall not be left to future ages insecure and imperfect. At the time when the petition of right, that requisite vindication of a violated constitution, was extorted from the unwilling prince, who but imagined that liberty was at last secured, and that the laws would thenceforth maintain themselves in opposition to arbitrary authority? But what was the event? A right was indeed acquired to the people, or rather their ancient right was more exactly defined; but as the power of invading it still remained in the prince, no sooner did an opportunity offer, than he totally disregarded all laws and preceding engagements, and made his will and pleasure the sole rule of government. Those lofty ideas of monarchical authority, which he has derived from his early education, which are united in his mind with the irresistible illusions of self-love, which are corroborated by his mistaken principles of religion, it is in vain to hope that, in his more advanced age, he will sincerely renounce from any subsequent reflection or experience. Such conversions, if ever they happen, are extremely rare; but to expect that they will be derived from necessity, from the jealousy and resentment of antagonists, from blame, from reproach, from opposition, must be the result of the fondest and most blind credulity. These violences, however necessary, are sure to irritate a prince against limitations so cruelly imposed upon him; and each concession which he is constrained to make, is regarded as a temporary tribute paid to faction and sedition, and is secretly attended with a resolution of seizing every favorable opportunity to retract it. Nor should we imagine that opportunities of that kind will not offer in the course of human affairs. Governments, especially those of a mixed kind, are in continual fluctuation: the humors of the people change perpetually from one extreme to another: and no resolution can be more wise, as well as more just, than that of employing the present advantages against the king, who had formerly pushed much less tempting ones to the utmost extremities against, his people and his parliament. It is to be feared, that if the religious rage which has seized the multitude be allowed to evaporate, they will quickly return to the ancient ecclesiastical establishment; and with it embrace those principles of slavery which it inculcates with such zeal on its submissive proselytes. Those patriots who are now the public idols, may then become the objects of general detestation; and equal shouts of joy attend their ignominious execution, with those which second their present advantages and triumphs. Nor ought the apprehension of such an event to be regarded in them as a selfish consideration: in their safety is involved the security of the laws. The patrons of the constitution cannot suffer without a fatal blow to the constitution: and it is but justice in the public to protect, at any hazard, those who have so generously exposed themselves to the utmost hazard for the public interest. What though monarchy, the ancient government of England, be impaired, during these contests, in many of its former prerogatives: the laws will flourish the more by its decay; and it is happy, allowing that matters are really carried beyond the bounds of moderation, that the current at least runs towards liberty, and that the error is on that side which is safest for the general interests of mankind and society.
The best arguments of the royalists against a further attack on the prerogative, were founded more on opposite ideas which they had formed of the past events of this reign, than on opposite principles of government. Some invasions, they said, and those too of moment, had undoubtedly been made on national privileges: but were we to look for the cause of these violences, we should never find it to consist in the wanton tyranny and injustice of the prince, not even in his ambition or immoderate appetite for authority. The hostilities with Spain, in which the king on his accession found himself engaged, however imprudent and unnecessary, had proceeded from the advice, and even importunity of the parliament; who deserted him immediately after they had embarked him in those warlike measures. A young prince, jealous of honor, was naturally afraid of being foiled in his first enterprise, and had not as yet attained such maturity of counsel, as to perceive that his greatest honor lay in preserving the laws inviolate, and gaining the full confidence of his people. The rigor of the subsequent parliaments had been extreme with regard to many articles, particularly tonnage and poundage; and had reduced the king to an absolute necessity, if he would preserve entire the royal prerogative, of levying those duties by his own authority, and of breaking through the forms, in order to maintain the spirit of the constitution. Having once made so perilous a step, he was naturally induced to continue, and to consult the public interest by imposing ship money, and other moderate though irregular burdens and taxations. A sure proof that he had formed no system for enslaving his people is, that the chief object of his government has been to raise a naval, not a military force; a project useful, honorable, nay, indispensably requisite, and, in spite of his great necessities, brought almost to a happy conclusion. It is now full time to free him from all these necessities, and to apply cordials and lenitives, after those severities which have already had their full course against him. Never was sovereign blessed with more moderation of temper, with more justice, more humanity, more honor, or a more gentle disposition. What pity that such a prince should so long have been harassed with rigors, suspicions, calumnies, complaints, encroachments; and been forced from that path, in which the rectitude of his principles would have inclined him to have constantly trod! If some few instances are found of violations made on the petition of right, which he himself had granted, there is an easier and more natural way for preventing the return of like inconveniencies, than by a total abolition of royal authority. Let the revenue be settled, suitably to the ancient dignity and splendor of the crown; let the public necessities be fully supplied; let the remaining articles of prerogative be left untouched; and the king, as he has already lost the power, will lay aside the will, of invading the constitution. From what quarter can jealousies now arise? What further security can be desired or expected? The king's preceding concessions, so far from being insufficient for public security, have rather erred on the other extreme; and, by depriving him of all power of self-defence, are the real cause why the commons are emboldened to raise pretensions hitherto unheard of in the kingdom, and to subvert the whole system of the constitution. But would they be content with moderate advantages, is it not evident that, besides other important concessions, the present parliament may be continued, till the government be accustomed to the new track, and every part be restored to full harmony and concord? By the triennial act, a perpetual succession of parliaments is established, as everlasting guardians to the laws, while the king possesses no independent power or military force by which he can be supported in his invasion of them. No danger remains but what is inseparable from all free constitutions, and what forms the very essence of their freedom; the danger of a change in the people's disposition, and of general disgust contracted against popular privileges To prevent such an evil, no expedient is more proper than to contain ourselves within the bounds of moderation, and to consider, that all extremes naturally and infallibly beget each other. In the same manner as the past usurpations of the crown, however excusable on account of the necessity or provocations whence they arose, have excited an immeasurable appetite for liberty; let us beware, lest our encroachments, by introducing anarchy, make the people seek shelter under the peaceable and despotic rule of a monarch. Authority, as well as liberty, is requisite to government; and is even requisite to the support of liberty itself, by maintaining the laws, which can alone regulate and protect it. What madness, while every thing is so happily settled under ancient forms and institutions, now more exactly poised and adjusted, to try the hazardous experiment of a new constitution, and renounce the mature wisdom of our ancestors for the crude whimseys of turbulent innovators! Besides the certain and inconceivable mischiefs of civil war, are not the perils apparent, which the delicate frame of liberty must inevitably sustain amidst the furious shock of arms? Whichever side prevails, she can scarcely hope to remain inviolate, and may suffer no less, or rather greater injuries from the boundless pretensions of forces engaged in her cause, than from the invasion of enraged troops enlisted on the side of monarchy.
The king, upon his return from Scotland, was received in London with the shouts and acclamations of the people, and with every demonstration of regard and affection.[*] Sir Richard Gournay, lord mayor, a man of moderation and authority, had promoted these favorable dispositions, and had engaged the populace, who so lately insulted the king, and who so soon after made furious war upon him, to give him these marks of their dutiful attachment. But all the pleasure which Charles reaped from this joyous reception, was soon damped by the remonstrance of the commons, which was presented him, together with a petition of a like strain. The bad counsels which he followed are there complained of; his concurrence in the Irish rebellion plainly insinuated; the scheme laid for the introduction of Popery and superstition inveighed against; and, as a remedy for all these evils, he is desired to intrust every office and command to persons in whom his parliament should have cause to confide.[**]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 429.
** Bush. vol. v. p. 437. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 692.
By this phrase, which is so often repeated in all the memorials and addresses of that time, the commons meant themselves and their adherents.
As soon as the remonstrance of the commons was published the king dispersed an answer to it. In this contest, he lay under great disadvantages. Not only the ears of the people were extremely prejudiced against him; the best topics upon which he could justify, at least apologize for his former conduct, were such as it was not safe or prudent for him at this time to employ. So high was the national idolatry towards parliaments, that to blame the past conduct of these assemblies would have been very ill received by the generality of the people. So loud were the complaints against regal usurpations, that had the king asserted the prerogative of supplying, by his own authority, the deficiencies in government arising from the obstinacy of the commons, he would have increased the clamors with which the whole nation already resounded. Charles, therefore, contented himself with observing in general, that even during that period so much complained of, the people enjoyed a great measure of happiness, not only comparatively, in respect of their neighbors, but even in respect of those times which were justly accounted the most fortunate. He made warm protestations of sincerity in the reformed religion; he promised indulgence to tender consciences with regard to the ceremonies of the church; he mentioned his great concessions to national liberty; he blamed the infamous libels every where dispersed against his person and the national religion; he complained of the general reproaches thrown out in the remonstrance with regard to ill counsels, though he had protected no minister from parliamentary justice, retained no unpopular servant, and conferred offices on no one who enjoyed not a high character and estimation in the public. "If, notwithstanding this," he adds, "any malignant party shall take heart, and be willing to sacrifice the peace and happiness of their country to their own sinister ends and ambition, under whatever pretence of religion and conscience; if they shall endeavor to lessen my reputation and interest, and to weaken my lawful power and authority; if they shall attempt, by discountenancing the present laws, to loosen the bands of government, that all disorder and confusion may break in upon us; I doubt not but God in his good time will discover them to me, and that the wisdom and courage of my high court of parliament will join with me in their suppression and punishment."[*] Nothing shows more evidently the hard situation in which Charles was placed, than to observe that he was obliged to confine himself within the limits of civility towards subjects who had transgressed all bounds of regard, and even of good manners, in the treatment of their sovereign.
The first instance of those parliamentary encroachments which Charles was now to look for, was the bill for pressing soldiers to the service of Ireland. This bill quickly passed the lower house. In the preamble, the king's power of pressing, a power exercised during all former times, was declared illegal, and contrary to the liberty of the subject. By a necessary consequence, the prerogative, which the crown had ever assumed, of obliging men to accept of any branch of public service, was abolished and annihilated; a prerogative, it must be owned, not very compatible with a limited monarchy. In order to elude this law, the king offered to raise ten thousand volunteers for the Irish service: but the commons were afraid lest such an army should be too much at his devotion. Charles, still unwilling to submit to so considerable a diminution of power, came to the house of peers, and offered to pass the law without the preamble; by which means, he said, that ill-timed question with regard to the prerogative would for the present be avoided, and the pretensions of each party be left entire. Both houses took fire at this measure, which, from a similar instance, while the bill of attainder against Strafford was in dependence, Charles might foresee would be received with resentment. The lords, as well as commons, passed a vote, declaring it to be a high breach of privilege for the king to take notice of any bill which was in agitation in either of the houses, or to express his sentiments with regard to it, before it be presented to him for his assent in a parliamentary manner. The king was obliged to compose all matters by an apology.[**]
* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 748.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 457, 458, etc. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 327. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 738, 750, 751, etc.
The general question, we may observe, with regard to privileges of parliament, has always been, and still continues, one of of the greatest mysteries in the English constitution; and in some respects, notwithstanding the accurate genius of that government, these privileges are at present as undetermined as were formerly the prerogatives of the crown. Such privileges as are founded on long precedent cannot be controverted: but though it were certain, that former kings had not in any instance taken notice of bills lying before the houses, (which yet appears to have been very common,) it follows not, merely from their never exerting such a power, that they had renounced it, or never were possessed of it. Such privileges also as are essential to all free assemblies which deliberate, they may be allowed to assume, whatever precedents may prevail: but though the king's interposition, by an offer or advice, does in some degree overawe or restrain liberty; it may be doubted whether it imposes such evident violence as to entitle the parliament, without any other authority or concession, to claim the privilege of excluding it. But this was the favorable time for extending privileges; and had none more exorbitant or unreasonable been challenged, few bad consequences had followed. The establishment of this rule, it is certain, contributes to the order and regularity, as well as freedom, of parliamentary proceedings.
The interposition of peers in the election of commoners was likewise about this time declared a breach of privilege, and continues ever since to be condemned by votes of the commons, and universally practised throughout the nation.
Every measure pursued by the commons, and, still more, every attempt made by their partisans, were full of the most inveterate hatred against the hierarchy, and showed a determined resolution of subverting the whole ecclesiastical establishment. Besides numberless vexations and persecutions which the clergy underwent from the arbitrary power of the lower house, the peers, while the king was in Scotland, having passed an order for the observance of the laws with regard to public worship, the commons assumed such authority, that, by a vote alone of their house, they suspended those laws, though enacted by the whole legislature: and they particularly forbade bowing at the name of Jesus; a practice which gave them the highest scandal, and which was one of their capital objections against the established religion.[*] They complained of the king's filling five vacant sees, and considered it as an insult upon them, that he should complete and strengthen an order which they intended soon entirely to abolish.[**] They had accused thirteen bishops of high treason, for enacting canons without consent of parliament,[***] though, from the foundation of the monarchy, no other method had ever been practised: and they now insisted that the peers, upon this general accusation, should sequester those bishops from their seats in parliament, and commit them to prison.
* Rush. vol. v. p. 385, 386. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 482.
** Nalson, vol. ii. p 511.
*** Rush. vol. v. p. 359
Their bill for taking away the bishops' votes had last winter been rejected by the peers: but they again introduced the same bill, though no prorogation had intervened; and they endeavored, by some minute alterations, to elude that rule of parliament which opposed them. And when they sent up this bill to the lords, they made a demand, the most absurd in the world, that the bishops, being all of them parties, should be refused a vote with regard to that question.[*] After the resolution was once formed by the commons, of invading the established government of church and state, it could not be expected that their proceedings, in such a violent attempt, would thenceforth be altogether regular and equitable: but it must be confessed that, in their attack on the hierarchy, they still more openly passed all bounds of moderation; as supposing, no doubt, that the sacredness of the cause would sufficiently atone for employing means the most irregular and unprecedented. This principle, which prevails so much among zealots, never displayed itself so openly as during the transactions of this whole period.
* Clarendon. vol. ii. p. 304.
But, notwithstanding these efforts of the commons, they could not expect the concurrence of the upper house either to this law, or to any other which they should introduce for the further limitation of royal authority. The majority of the peers adhered to the king, and plainly foresaw the depression of nobility, as a necessary consequence of popular usurpations on the crown. The insolence, indeed, of the commons, and their haughty treatment of the lords, had already risen to a great height, and gave sufficient warning of their future attempts upon that order. They muttered somewhat of their regret that they should be obliged to save the kingdom alone, and that the house of peers would have no part in the honor. Nay, they went so far as openly to tell the lords, "That they themselves were the representative body of the whole kingdom, and that the peers were nothing but individuals who held their seats in a particular capacity; and therefore, if their lordships will not consent to the passing of acts necessary for the preservation of the people, the commons, together with such of the lords as are more sensible of the danger, must join together, and represent the matter to his majesty."[*] So violent was the democratical, enthusiastic spirit diffused throughout the nation, that a total confusion of all rank and order was justly to be apprehended; and the wonder was, not that the majority of the nobles should seek shelter under the throne, but that any of them should venture to desert it. But the tide of popularity seized many, and carried them wide of the most established maxims of civil policy. Among the opponents of the king are ranked the earl of Northumberland, lord admiral, a man of the first family and fortune, and endowed with that dignified pride which so well became his rank and station: the earl of Essex, who inherited all his father's popularity, and having from his early youth sought renown in arms, united to a middling capacity that rigid inflexibility of honor which forms the proper ornament of a nobleman and a soldier: Lord Kimbolton, soon after earl of Manchester, a person distinguished by humanity, generosity, affability, and every amiable virtue. These men, finding that their credit ran high with the nation, ventured to encourage those popular disorders, which, they vainly imagined, they possessed authority sufficient to regulate and control.
In order to obtain a majority in the upper house, the commons had recourse to the populace, who on other occasions had done them such important service. Amidst the greatest security, they affected continual fears of destruction to themselves and the nation, and seemed to quake at every breath or rumor of danger. They again excited the people by never-ceasing inquiries after conspiracies, by reports of insurrections, by feigned intelligence of invasions from abroad, by discoveries of dangerous combinations at home among Papists and their adherents. When Charles dismissed the guard which they had ordered during his absence, they complained; and upon his promising them a new guard, under the command of the earl of Lindesey, they absolutely refused the offer, an were well pleased to insinuate, by this instance of jealousy, that their danger chiefly arose from the king himself.[**]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 415.
** Journ. 30th Nov. 1641 Nalson, vol ii. y 688.
They ordered halberts to be brought into the hall where they assembled, and thus armed themselves against those conspiracies with which, they pretended, they were hourly threatened. As stories of plots, however ridiculous, were willingly attended to, and were dispersed among the multitude, to whose capacity they were well adapted. Beale, a tailor, informed the commons that, walking in the fields, he had hearkened to the discourse of certain persons unknown to him, and had heard them talk of a most dangerous conspiracy. A hundred and eight ruffians, as he learned, had been appointed to murder a hundred and eight lords and commoners, and were promised rewards for these assassinations, ten pounds for each lord, forty shillings for each commoner. Upon this notable intelligence, orders were issued for seizing priests and Jesuits, a conference was desired with the lords, and the deputy lieutenants of some suspected counties were ordered to put the people in a posture of defence.[*]
The pulpits likewise were called in aid, and resounded with the dangers which threatened religion from the desperate attempts of Papists and malignants. Multitudes flocked towards Westminster, and insulted the prelates and such of the lords as adhered to the crown. The peers voted a declaration against those tumults, and sent it to the lower house; but these refused their concurrence.[**] Some seditious apprentices, being seized and committed to prison, immediately received their liberty, by an order of the commons.[***] The sheriffs and justices having appointed constables with strong watches to guard the parliament, the commons sent for the constables, and required them to discharge the watches, convened the justices, voted their orders a breach of privilege, and sent one of them to the Tower.[****]
* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 646. Journ. 16th Nov. 1641. Dugdale, p. 79.
** Rush. part. iii. vol. i. p. 710.
*** Nalson, vol ii. p 784, 792.
**** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 792. Journ. 27th, 28th, and 29th of Dec. 1641.
Encouraged by these intimations of their pleasure, the populace crowded about Whitehall, and threw out insolent menaces against Charles himself. Several seduced officers and young gentlemen of the inns of court, during this time of disorder and danger, offered their service to the king. Between them and the populace there passed frequent skirmishes, which ended not without bloodshed. By way of reproach, these gentlemen gave the rabble the appellation of Roundheads, on account of the short cropped hair which they wore: these called the others Cavaliers. And thus the nation, which was before sufficiently provided with religious as well as civil causes of quarrel, was also supplied with party names, under which the factions might rendezvous and signalize their mutual hatred.[*]
Meanwhile the tumults still continued, and even increased about Westminster and Whitehall. The cry incessantly resounded against "bishops and rotten-hearted lords."[**] The former especially, being distinguishable by their habit, and being the object of violent hatred to all the sectaries, were exposed to the most dangerous insults.[***] Williams, now created archbishop of York, having been abused by the populace, hastily called a meeting of his brethren. By his advice, a protestation was drawn and addressed to the king and the house of lords. The bishops there set forth, that though they had an undoubted right to sit and vote in parliament, yet in coming thither, they had been menaced, assaulted, affronted, by the unruly multitude, and could no longer with safety attend their duty in the house. For this reason they protested against all laws, votes, and resolutions, as null and invalid, which should pass during the time of their constrained absence. This protestation, which, though just and legal, was certainly ill-timed, was signed by twelve bishops, and communicated to the king, who hastily approved of it. As soon as it was presented to the lords, that house desired a conference with the commons, whom they informed of this unexpected protestation. The opportunity was seized with joy and triumph. An impeachment of high treason was immediately sent up against the bishops, as endeavoring to subvert the fundamental laws, and to invalidate the authority of the legislature.[****] They were, on the first demand, sequestered from parliament, and committed to custody. No man in either house ventured to speak a word in their vindication; so much displeased was every one at the egregious imprudence of which they had been guilty. One person alone said, that he did not believe them guilty of high treason; but that they were stark mad, and therefore desired they might be sent to bedlam.[v]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 339.
** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 336.
*** Dugdale, p. 78.
**** Whitlocke, p. 51. Rush. vol. v. p. 466. Nalson, vol. ii. p, 794.
v Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 355.
{1642.} A few days after, the king was betrayed into another indiscretion, much more fatal; an indiscretion to which all the ensuing disorders and civil wars ought immediately and directly to be ascribed; this was the impeachment of Lord Kimbolton and the five members.
When the commons employed in their remonstrance language so severe and indecent, they had not been actuated entirely by insolence and passion; their views were more solid and profound. They considered that in a violent attempt, such as an invasion of the ancient constitution, the more leisure was afforded the people to reflect, the less would they be inclined to second that rash and dangerous enterprise: that the peers would certainly refuse their concurrence; nor were there any hopes of prevailing on them, but by instigating the populace to tumult and disorder: that the employing of such odious means for so invidious an end would, at long-run, lose them all their popularity, and turn* the tide of favor to the contrary party; and that, if the king only remained in tranquillity, and cautiously eluded the first violence of the tempest he would in the end certainly prevail, and be able at least to preserve the ancient laws and constitution. They were therefore resolved, if possible, to excite him to some violent passion, in hopes that he would commit indiscretions of which they might make advantage.
It was not long before they succeeded beyond their fondest wishes. Charles was enraged to find that all his concessions but increased their demands; that the people who were returning to a sense of duty towards him, were again roused to sedition and tumults; that the blackest calumnies were propagated against him, and even the Irish massacre ascribed to his counsels and machinations; and that a method of address was adopted not only unsuitable towards so great a prince, but which no private gentleman could bear without resentment. When he considered all these increasing acts of insolence in the commons, he was apt to ascribe them in a great measure to his own indolence and facility. The queen and the ladies of the court further stimulated his passion, and represented that, if he exerted the vigor and displayed the majesty of a monarch, the daring usurpations of his subjects would shrink before him. Lord Digby, a man of fine parts but full of levity, and hurried on by precipitate passions, suggested like counsels; and Charles, who, though commonly moderate in his temper, was ever disposed to hasty resolutions, gave way to the fatal importunity of his friends and servants.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 360.
Herbert, attorney-general, appeared in the house of peers and in his majesty's name entered an accusation of high treason against Lord Kimbolton and five commoners, Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Hambden, Pym, and Strode. The articles were, that they had traitorously endeavored to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom, to deprive the king of his regal power, and to impose on his subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical authority: that they had endeavored, by many foul aspersions on his majesty and his government, to alienate the affections of his people, and make him odious to them: that they had attempted to draw his late army to disobedience of his royal commands, and to side with them in their traitorous designs: that they had invited and encouraged a foreign power to invade the kingdom: that they had aimed at subverting the rights and very being of parliament: that, in order to complete their traitorous designs, they had endeavored, as far as in them lay, by force and terror to compel the parliament to join with them; and to that end had actually raised and countenanced tumults against the king and parliament: and that they had traitorously conspired to levy, and actually had levied war against the king.[*]
* Whitlocke, p. 50. Rush. vol. v. p. 473. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 811. Franklyn, p. 906.
The whole world stood amazed at this important accusation, so suddenly entered upon without concert, deliberation, or reflection. Some of these articles of accusation, men said, to judge by appearance, seem to be common between the impeached members and the parliament; nor did these persons appear any further active in the enterprises of which they were accused, than so far as they concurred with the majority in their votes and speeches. Though proofs might perhaps be produced of their privately inviting the Scots to invade England, how could such an attempt be considered as treason, after the act of oblivion which had passed, and after that both houses, with the king's concurrence, had voted that nation three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly assistance? While, the house of peers are scarcely able to maintain their independency, or to reject the bills sent them by the commons, will they ever be permitted by the populace, supposing them inclined, to pass a sentence which must totally subdue the lower house, and put an end to their ambitious undertakings? These five members, at least Pym, Hambden and Hollis, are the very heads of the popular party; and if these be taken off, what fate must be expected by their followers, who are, many of them, accomplices in the same treason? The punishment of leaders is ever the last triumph over a broken and routed party; but surely was never before attempted, in opposition to a faction, during the full tide of its power and success.
But men had not leisure to wonder at the indiscretion of this measure: their astonishment was excited by new attempts, still more precipitate and imprudent. A serjeant at arms, in the king's name, demanded of the house the five members: and was sent back without any positive answer. Messengers were employed to search for them, and arrest them. Their trunks, chambers, and studies were sealed and locked. The house voted all these acts of violence to be breaches of privilege, and commanded every one to defend the liberty of the members.[*] The king, irritated by all this opposition, resolved next day to come in person to the house, with an intention to demand, perhaps seize in their presence, the persons whom he had accused.
This resolution was discovered to the countess of Carlisle, sister to Northumberland, a lady of spirit, wit, and intrigue.[**] She privately sent intelligence to the five members; and they had time to withdraw, a moment before the king entered. He was accompanied by his ordinary retinue, to the number of above two hundred, armed as usual, some with halberts, some with walking swords. The king left them at the door, and he himself advanced alone through the hall, while all the members rose to receive him.
* Whitlocke, p. 50 Rush. vol. v. p. 474, 475.
** Whitlocke, p. 51. Warwick, p. 204.
The speaker withdrew from his chair, and the king took possession of it. The speech which he made was as follows: "Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming to you. Yesterday I sent a serjeant at arms to demand some who, by my order, were accused of high treason. Instead of obedience, I received a message. I must here declare to you, that though no king that ever was in England could be more careful of your privileges than I shall be, yet in cases of treason no person has privilege. Therefore am I come to tell you, that I must have these men wheresoever I can find them. Well, since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect that you will send them to me as soon as they return. But I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way; for I never meant any other. And now, since I see I cannot do what I came for, I think this is no unfit occasion to repeat what I have said formerly, that whatever I have done in favor and to the good of my subjects, I do intend to maintain it."[*]
When the king was looking around for the accused members, he asked the speaker, who stood below, whether any of these persons were in the house. The speaker, falling on his knee, prudently replied, "I have, sir, neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the house is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am. And I humbly ask pardon, that I cannot give any other answer to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me."[**]
The commons were in the utmost disorder; and when the king was departing, some members cried aloud, so as he might hear them, "Privilege! privilege!" And the house immediately adjourned till next day.[***]
* Whitloeke, p. 50.
** Whitlocke, p. 50. May, book ii. p. 20.
*** Whitlocke, p. 51.
That evening the accused members, to show the greater apprehension, removed into the city, which was their fortress. The citizens were the whole night in arms. Some people, who were appointed for that purpose, or perhaps actuated by their own terrors, ran from gate to gate, crying out that the cavaliers were coming to burn the city, and that the king himself was at their head.
Next morning, Charles sent to the mayor, and ordered him to call a common council immediately. About ten o'clock, he himself, attended only by three or four lords, went to Guildhall. He told the common council, that he was sorry to hear of the apprehensions entertained of him; that he was come to them without any guard, in order to show how much he relied on their affections; and that he had accused certain men of high treason, against whom he would proceed in a legal way, and therefore presumed that they would not meet with protection in the city. After many other gracious expressions, he told one of the sheriffs, who of the two was thought the least inclined to his service, that he would dine with him. He departed the hall without receiving the applause which he expected. In passing through the streets, he heard the cry, "Privilege of parliament! privilege of parliament!" resounding from all quarters. One of the populace, more insolent than the rest drew nigh to his coach, and called out with a loud voice, "To your tents, O Israel!" the words employed by the mutinous Israelites when they abandoned Rehoboam, their rash and ill-counselled sovereign,[*]
When the house of commons met, they affected the greatest dismay; and adjourning themselves for some days, ordered a committee to sit in Merchant Tailors Hall in the city. The committee made an exact inquiry into all circumstances attending the king's entry into the house: every passionate speech, every menacing gesture of any, even the meanest of his attendants, was recorded and aggravated. An intention of offering violence to the parliament, of seizing the accused members in the very house, and of murdering all who should make resistance, was inferred. And that unparalleled breach of privilege--so it was called--was still ascribed to the counsel of Papists and their adherents. This expression, which then recurred every moment in speeches and memorials, and which at present is so apt to excite laughter in the reader, begat at that time the deepest and most real consternation throughout the kingdom.
A letter was pretended to be intercepted, and was communicated to the committee, who pretended to lay great stress upon it. One Catholic there congratulates another on the accusation of the members; and represents that incident as a branch of the same pious contrivance which had excited the Irish insurrection, and by which the profane heretics would soon be exterminated in England.[**]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 479. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 301.
** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 836.
The house again met; and, after confirming the votes of their committee, instantly adjourned, as if exposed to the most imminent perils from the violence of their enemies. This practice they continued for some time. When the people, by these affected panics, were wrought up to a sufficient degree of rage and terror, it was thought proper that the accused members should, with a triumphant and military procession, take their seats in the house. The river was covered with boats and other vessels, laden with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for fight. Skippon, whom the parliament had appointed, by their own authority, major-general of the city militia,[*] conducted the members, at the head of this tumultuary army, to Westminster Hall. And when the populace, by land and by water, passed Whitehall, they still asked, with insulting shouts, "What has become of the king and his cavaliers? And whither are they fled?"[**]
* Nalson, vol. ii. p 833.
** Whitlocke. p. 52 Dugdale, p. 82. Clarendon, vol ii p. 380.
The king, apprehensive of danger from the enraged multitude, had retired to Hampton Court, deserted by all the world, and overwhelmed with grief, shame, and remorse, for the fatal measures into which he had been hurried. His distressed situation he could no longer ascribe to the rigors of destiny, or the malignity of enemies: his own precipitancy and indiscretion must bear the blame of whatever disasters should henceforth befall him. The most faithful of his adherents, between sorrow and indignation, were confounded with reflections on what had happened, and what was likely to follow. Seeing every prospect blasted, faction triumphant, the discontented populace inflamed to a degree of fury, they utterly despaired of success in a cause to whose ruin friends and enemies seemed equally to conspire.
The prudence of the king, in his conduct of this affair, nobody pretended to justify. The legality of his proceedings met with many and just apologies, though generally offered to unwilling ears. No maxim of law, it was said, is more established, or more universally allowed, than that privilege of parliament extends not to treason, felony, or breach of peace; nor has either house, during former ages, ever pretended, in any of those cases, to interpose in behalf of its members. Though some inconveniencies should result from the observance of this maxim, that would not be sufficient, without other authority, to abolish a principle established by uninterrupted precedent, and founded on the tacit consent of the whole legislature. But what are the inconveniencies so much dreaded? The king, on pretence of treason, may seize any members of the opposite faction, and for a time gain to his partisans the majority of voices. But if he seize only a few, will he not lose more friends by such a gross artifice than he confines enemies? If he seize a great number, is not this expedient force, open and barefaced? And what remedy at all times against such force, but to oppose to it a force which is superior? Even allowing that the king intended to employ violence, not authority, for seizing the members; though at that time, and ever afterwards, he positively asserted the contrary; yet will his conduct admit of excuse. That the hall where the parliament assembles is an inviolable sanctuary, was never yet pretended. And if the commons complain of the affront offered them, by an attempt to arrest their members in their very presence, the blame must lie entirely on themselves! who had formerly refused compliance with the king's message, when he peaceably demanded these members. The sovereign is the great executor of the laws; and his presence was here legally employed, both in order to prevent opposition, and to protect the house against those insults which their disobedience had so well merited.
Charles knew to how little purpose he should urge these reasons against the present fury of the commons. He proposed, therefore, by a message, that they would agree upon a legal method by which he might carry on his prosecution against the members, lest further misunderstandings happen with regard to privilege. They desired him to lay the grounds of accusation before the house; and pretended that they must first judge whether it were proper to give up their members, to a legal trial. The king then informed them, that he would waive, for the present, all prosecution: by successive messages he afterwards offered a pardon to the members; offered to concur in any law that should acquit or secure them; offered any reparation to the house for the beach of privilege, of which, he acknowledged, they had reason to complain.[*] They were resolved to accept of no satisfaction, unless he would discover his advisers in that illegal measure; a condition to which, they knew that, without rendering himself forever vile and contemptible, he could not possibly submit. Meanwhile, they continued to thunder against the violation of parliamentary privileges, and by their violent outcries to inflame the whole nation. The secret reason of their displeasure, however obvious, they carefully concealed. In the king's accusation of the members, they plainly saw his judgment of late parliamentary proceedings; and every adherent of the ruling faction dreaded the same fate, should royal authority be reëstablished in its ancient lustre. By the most unhappy conduct, Charles, while he extremely augmented in his opponents the will, had also increased the ability of hurting him.
* Dugdale, p. 84. Rush, vol v. p. 484, 488, 492, etc.
The more to excite the people, whose dispositions were already very seditious, the expedient of petitioning was renewed. A petition from the county of Buckingham was presented to the house by six thousand subscribers, who promised to live and die in defence of the privileges of parliament.[*] The city of London, the county of Essex, that of Hertford, Surrey, Berks, imitated the example. A petition from the apprentices was graciously received.[**] Nay, one was encouraged from the porters, whose numbers amounted, as they said, to fifteen thousand.[***] The address of that great body contained the same articles with all the others; the privileges of parliament, the danger of religion, the rebellion of Ireland, the decay of trade. The porters further desired, that justice might be done upon offenders, as the atrociousness of their crimes had deserved. And they added, "That if such remedies were any longer suspended, they should be forced to extremities not fit to be named, and make good the saying, that 'Necessity has no law.'"[****]
Another petition was presented by several poor people, or beggars, in the name of many thousands more; in which the petitioners proposed as a remedy for the public miseries "That those noble worthies of the house of peers, who concur with the happy votes of the commons, may separate themselves from the rest, and sit and vote as one entire body." The commons gave thanks for this petition.[v]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 487.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 462.
*** Dugdale, p. 87.
**** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 412.
v Clarendon, vol. li. p. 413.
The very women were seized with the same rage. A brewer's wife, followed by many thousands of her sex, brought a petition to the house, in which the petitioners expressed their terror of the Papists and prelates, and their dread of like massacres, rapes, and outrages, with those which had been committed upon their sex in Ireland. They had been necessitated, they said, to imitate the example of the women of Tekoah: and they claimed equal right with the men, of declaring by petition their sense of the public cause; because Christ had purchased them at as dear a rate, and in the free enjoyment of Christ consists equally the happiness of both sexes. Pym came to the door of the house; and having told the female zealots that their petition was thankfully accepted and was presented in a seasonable time, he begged that their prayers for the success of the commons might follow their petition. Such low arts of popularity were affected, and by such illiberal cant were the unhappy people incited to civil discord and convulsions.
In the mean time, not only all petitions which favored the church or monarchy, from whatever hand they came, were discouraged, but the petitioners were sent for, imprisoned, and prosecuted as delinquents; and this unequal conduct was openly avowed and justified. Whoever desire a change, it was said, must express their sentiments; for how otherwise shall they be known? But those who favor the established government in church or state, should not petition; because they already enjoy what they wish for.[*]
The king had possessed a great party in the lower house, as appeared in the vote for the remonstrance; and this party, had every new cause of disgust been carefully avoided, would soon have become the majority, from the odium attending the violent measures embraced by the popular leaders. A great majority he always possessed in the house of peers, even after the bishops were confined or chased away; and this majority could not have been overcome but by outrages which, in the end, would have drawn disgrace and ruin on those who incited them. By the present fury of the people, as by an inundation, were all these obstacles swept away, and every rampart of royal authority laid level with the ground. The victory was pursued with impetuosity by the sagacious commons, who knew the importance of a favorable moment in all popular commotions. The terror of their authority they extended over the whole nation; and all opposition, and even all blame vented in private conversation, were treated as the most atrocious crimes by these severe inquisitors. Scarcely was it permitted to find fault with the conduct of any particular member, if he made a figure in the house; and reflections thrown out on Pym were at this time treated as breaches of privilege. The populace without doors were ready to execute, from the least hint, the will of their leaders; nor was it safe for any member to approach either house, who pretended to control or oppose the general torrent. After so undisguised a manner was this violence conducted, that Hollis, in a speech to the peers, desired to know the names of such members as should vote contrary to the sentiments of the commons:[**] and Pym said in the lower house, that the people must not be restrained in the expressions of their just desires.[***]
* Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 449.
** King's Declaration of 12th of August, 1642
*** King's Declaration of 12th August, 1642.
By the flight, or terror, or despondency of the king's party, an undisputed majority remained everywhere to their opponents; and the bills sent up by the commons, which had hitherto stopped with the peers, and would certainly have been rejected, now passed, and were presented for the royal assent. These were, the pressing bill with its preamble, and the bill against the votes of the bishops in parliament. The king's authority was at that time reduced to the lowest ebb. The queen too, being secretly threatened with an impeachment, and finding no resource in her husband's protection, was preparing to retire into Holland. The rage of the people was, on account of her religion, as well as her spirit and activity, universally levelled against her. Usage the most contumelious she had hitherto borne with silent indignation. The commons, in their fury against priests, had seized her very confessor, nor would they release him upon her repeated applications. Even a visit of the prince to his mother had been openly complained of, and remonstrances against it had been presented to her.[*] Apprehensive of attacks still more violent, she was desirous of facilitating her escape; and she prevailed with the king to pass these bills, in hopes of appeasing for a time the rage of the multitude.[**]
These new concessions, however important, the king immediately found to have no other effect than had all the preceding ones: they were made the foundation of demands still more exorbitant. From the facility of his disposition, from the weakness of his situation, the commons believed that he could now refuse them nothing. And they regarded the least moment of relaxation in their invasion of royal authority as highly impolitic, during the uninterrupted torrent of their successes. The very moment they were informed of these last acquisitions, they affronted the queen by opening some intercepted letters written to her by Lord Digby: they carried up an impeachment against Herbert, attorney-general, for obeying his master's commands in accusing their members.[***] And they prosecuted with fresh vigor their plan of the militia, on which they rested all future hopes of an uncontrolled authority.
* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 512.
** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 428.
*** Rush. vol. v. p. 489. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 385.
The commons were sensible that monarchical government, which during so many ages had been established in England, would soon regain some degree of its former dignity, after the present tempest was overblown; nor would all their new invented limitations be able totally to suppress an authority to which the nation had ever been accustomed. The sword alone, to which all human ordinances must submit, could guard their acquired power, and fully insure to them personal safety against the rising indignation of their sovereign. This point, therefore, became the chief object of their aims. A large magazine of arms being placed in the town of Hull, they despatched thither Sir John Hotham, a gentleman of considerable fortune in the neighborhood, and of an ancient family, and they gave him the authority of governor. They sent orders to Goring, governor of Portsmouth, to obey no commands but such as he should receive from the parliament. Not content with having obliged the king to displace Lunsford, whom he had appointed governor of the Tower,[*] they never ceased soliciting him till he had also displaced Sir John Biron, a man of unexceptionable character, and had bestowed that command on Sir John Conyers, in whom alone, they said, they could repose confidence. After making a fruitless attempt, in which the peers refused their concurrence, to give public warning, that the people should put themselves in a posture of defence against the enterprises of "Papists and other ill-affected persons,"[**] they now resolved, by a bold and decisive stroke, to seize at once the whole power of the sword, and to confer it entirely on their own creatures and adherents.
* Rush. voL v. p. 459.
** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 850.
The severe votes passed in the beginning of this parliament against lieutenants and their deputies, for exercising powers assumed by all their predecessors, had totally disarmed the crown, and had not left in any magistrate military authority sufficient for the defence and security of the nation. To remedy this inconvenience now appeared necessary. A bill was introduced, and passed the two houses, which restored to lieutenants and deputies the same powers of which the votes of the commons had bereaved them; but at the same time the names of all the lieutenants were inserted in the bill; and these consisted entirely of men in whom the parliament could confide. And for their conduct they were accountable, by the express terms of the bill, not to the king, but to the parliament.
The policy pursued by the commons, and which had hitherto succeeded to admiration, was, to astonish the king by the boldness of their enterprises, to intermingle no sweetness with their severity, to employ expressions no less violent than their pretensions, and to make him sensible in what little estimation they held both his person and his dignity. To a bill so destructive of royal authority, they prefixed, with an insolence seemingly wanton, a preamble equally dishonorable to the personal character of the king. These are the words: "Whereas there has been of late a most dangerous and desperate design upon the house of commons, which we have just cause to believe an effect of the bloody counsels of Papists and other ill-affected persons who have already raised a rebellion in the kingdom of Ireland. And whereas, by reason of many discoveries, we cannot but fear they will proceed, not only to stir up the like rebellions and insurrections in this kingdom of England, but also to back them with forces from abroad," etc.[*]
Here Charles first ventured to put a stop to his concessions, and that not by a refusal, but a delay. When this demand was made,--a demand, which, if granted, the commons justly regarded as the last they should ever have occasion to make,--he was at Dover, attending the queen and the princess of Orange in their embarkation. He replied, that he had not now leisure to consider a matter of so great importance, and must therefore respite his answer till his return.[**] The parliament instantly despatched another message to him, with solicitations still more importunate. They expressed their great grief on account of his majesty's answer to their just and necessary petition. They represented, that any delay during dangers and distractions so great and pressing, was not less unsatisfactory and destructive than an absolute denial. They insisted, that it was their duty to see put in execution a measure so necessary for public safety. And they affirmed, that the people in many counties had applied to them for that purpose, and in some places were, of themselves and by their own authority, providing against those urgent dangers with which they were threatened.[***]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 519.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 521.
*** Rush, vol. v. p. 521.
Even after this insolence, the king durst not venture upon a flat denial. Besides excepting to the preamble, which such dishonor upon him, and protesting the innocence of his intentions when he entered the house of commons, he only desired that the military authority, if it were defective, should first be conferred upon the crown; and he promised to bestow commissions, but such as should be revocable at pleasure, on the same persons whom the parliament had named in the bill.[*] By a former message, he had expressed his wishes that they would lay before him, in one view, all the concessions which they deemed requisite for the settlement of the nation. They pretended, that they were exposed to perils so dreadful and imminent, that they had not leisure for such a work.[**] The expedient proposed by the king seemed a sufficient remedy during this emergence, and yet maintained the prerogatives of the crown entire and unbroken.
But the intentions of the commons were wide of this purpose, and their panics could be cured by one remedy alone. They instantly replied, that the dangers and distempers of the nation were such as could endure no longer delay; and unless the king speedily complied with their demands, they should be constrained, for the safety of prince and people, to dispose of the militia by the authority of both houses, and were resolved to do it accordingly. They asserted, that those parts of the kingdom which had, from their own authority, put themselves in a posture of defence during these prevailing fears and jealousies, had acted suitably to the declarations and directions of both houses, and conformably to the laws of the kingdom. And while they thus menaced the king with their power they invited him to fix his residence at London, where they knew he would be entirely at mercy.[***]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 521.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 516, 517.
*** Rush, part iii. vol. i. chap. iv. p. 523.
"I am so much amazed at this message," said the king in his prompt reply, "that I know not what to answer. You speak of jealousies and fears. Lay your hands on your hearts, and ask yourselves whether I may not likewise be disturbed with fears and jealousies, and if so, I assure you that this message has nothing lessened them.
"As to the militia, I thought so much of it before I gave that answer, and am so much assured that the answer is agreeable to what in justice or reason you can ask, or I in honor grant, that I shall not alter it in any point.
"For my residence near you, I wish it might be safe and honorable, and that I had no cause to absent myself from Whitehall: ask yourselves whether I have not.[*]
"What would you have? Have I violated your laws? Have I denied to pass any bill for the ease and security of my subjects? I do not ask what you have done for me.
"Have any of my people been transported with fears and apprehensions? I offer as free and general a pardon as yourselves can devise. All this considered, there is a judgment of Heaven upon this nation if these distractions continue.
"God so deal with me and mine as all my thoughts and intentions are upright for the maintenance of the true Protestant profession, and for the observance and preservation of the laws; and I hope God will bless and assist those laws for my preservation."[**]
No sooner did the commons despair of obtaining the king's consent to their bill, than they instantly voted, that those who advised his majesty's answer were enemies to the state, and mischievous projectors against the safety of the nation; that this denial is of such dangerous consequence, that, if his majesty persist in it, it will hazard the peace and tranquillity of all his kingdoms, unless some speedy remedy be applied by the wisdom and authority of both houses; and that such of the subjects as have put themselves in a posture of defence against the common danger, have done nothing but what is justifiable, and approved by the house.[***]
Lest the people might be averse to the seconding of all these usurpations, they were plied anew with rumors of danger, with the terrors of invasion, with the dread of English and Irish Papists; and the most unaccountable panics were spread throughout the nation. Lord Digby having entered Kingston in a coach and six, attended by a few livery servants, the intelligence was conveyed to London; and it was immediately voted, that he had appeared in a hostile manner, to the terror and affright of his majesty's subjects, and had levied war against the king and kingdom.[****] Petitions from all quarters loudly demanded of the parliament to put the nation in a posture of defence; and the county of Stafford in particular expressed such dread of an insurrection among the Papists, that every man, they said, was constrained to stand upon his guard, not even daring to go to church unarmed.[v]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 524.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 532.
*** Rush. part. iii. vol. i. chap. iv. p. 524.
**** Clarendon. Rush., part. iii. vol. i. chap, ii p. 495.
v Dugdale, p. 80.
That the same violence by which he had so long been oppressed might not still reach him, and extort his consent to the militia bill, Charles had resolved to remove farther from London; and accordingly, taking the prince of Wales and the duke of York along with him, he arrived by slow journeys at York, which he determined for some time to make the place of his residence. The distant parts of the kingdom, being removed from that furious vortex of new principles and opinions which had transported the capital, still retained a sincere regard for the church and monarchy; and the king here found marks of attachment beyond what he had before expected.[*]
* Warwick, p. 203.
From all quarters of England, the prime nobility and gentry, either personally or by messages and letters, expressed their duty towards him; and exhorted him to save himself and them from that ignominious slavery with which they were threatened. The small interval of time which had passed since the fatal accusation of the members, had been sufficient to open the eyes of many, and to recover them from the astonishment with which at first they had been seized. One rash and passionate attempt of the king's seemed but a small counterbalance to so many acts of deliberate violence which had been offered to him and every branch of the legislature; and, however sweet the sound of liberty, many resolved to adhere to that moderate freedom transmitted them from their ancestors, and now better secured by such important concessions, rather than, by engaging in a giddy search after more independence, run a manifest risk either of incurring a cruel subjection, or abandoning all law and order.
Charles, finding himself supported by a considerable party in the kingdom, began to speak in a firmer tone, and to retort the accusations of the commons with a vigor which he had not before exerted. Notwithstanding their remonstrances, and menaces, and insults, he still persisted in refusing their bill; and they proceeded to frame an ordinance, in which, by the authority of the two houses, without the king's consent, they named lieutenants for all the counties, and conferred on them the command of the whole military force, of all the guards, garrisons, and forts of the kingdom. He issued proclamations against this manifest usurpation; and, as he professed a resolution strictly to observe the law himself, so was he determined, he said, to oblige every other person to pay it a like obedience The name of the king was so essential to all laws, and so familiar in all acts of executive authority, that the parliament was afraid, had they totally omitted it, that the innovation would be too sensible to the people. In all commands, therefore, which they conferred, they bound the persons to obey the orders of his majesty signified by both houses of parliament. And inventing a distinction, hitherto unheard of, between the office and the person of the king, those very forces which they employed against him they levied in his name and by his authority.[*]
It is remarkable how much the topics of argument were now reversed between the parties. The king, while he acknowledged his former error, of employing a plea of necessity in order to infringe the laws and constitution, warned the parliament not to imitate an example on which they threw such violent blame; and the parliament, while they clothed their personal fears or ambition under the appearance of national and imminent danger, made unknowingly an apology for the most exceptionable part of the king's conduct. That the liberties of the people were no longer exposed to any peril from royal authority, so narrowly circumscribed, so exactly defined, so much unsupported by revenue and by military power, might be maintained upon very plausible topics: but that the danger, allowing it to have any existence, was not of that kind, great, urgent, inevitable, which dissolves all law and levels all limitations, seems apparent from the simplest view of these transactions. So obvious indeed was the king's present inability to invade the constitution, that the fears and jealousies which operated on the people, and pushed them so furiously to arms, were undoubtedly not of a civil, but of a religious nature. The distempered imaginations of men were agitated with a continual dread of Popery, with a horror against prelacy, with an antipathy to ceremonies and the liturgy, and with a violent affection for whatever was most opposite to these objects of aversion. The fanatical spirit, let loose, confounded all regard to ease, safety, interest; and dissolved every moral and civil obligation.[**] [9]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 526.
** See note I, at the end of the volume.
Each party was now willing to throw on its antagonist the odium of commencing a civil war; but both of them prepared for an event which they deemed inevitable. To gain the people's favor and good opinion was the chief point on both sides. Never was there a people less corrupted by vice, and more actuated by principle, than the English during that period: never were there individuals who possessed more capacity, more courage, more public spirit, more disinterested zeal. The infusion of one ingredient in too large a proportion had corrupted all these noble principles, and converted them into the most virulent poison. To determine his choice in the approaching contests, every man hearkened with avidity to the reasons proposed on both sides. The war of the pen preceded that of the sword, and daily sharpened the humors of the opposite parties. Besides private adventurers without number, the king and parliament themselves carried on the controversy by messages, remonstrances, and declarations; where the nation was really the party to whom all arguments were addressed. Charles had here a double advantage. Not only his cause was more favorable, as supporting the ancient government in church and state against the most illegal pretensions; it was also defended with more art and eloquence. Lord Falkland had accepted the office of secretary; a man who adorned the purest virtue, with the richest gifts of nature, and the most valuable acquisitions of learning. By him, assisted by the king himself, were the memorials of the royal party chiefly composed. So sensible was Charles of his superiority in this particular, that he took care to disperse every where the papers of the parliament together with his own, that the people might be the more enabled, by comparison, to form a judgment between them: the parliament, while they distributed copies of their own, were anxious to suppress all the king's compositions.[*]
To clear up the principles of the constitution, to mark the boundaries of the powers intrusted by law to the several members, to show what great improvements the whole political system had received from the king's late concessions, to demonstrate his entire confidence in his people, and his reliance on their affections, to point out the ungrateful returns which had been made him, and the enormous encroachments, insults, and indignities to which he had been exposed; these were the topics which, with so much justness of reasoning and propriety of expression, were insisted on in the king's declarations and remonstrances.[**] [11]
* Rush. vol. v. p. 751.
** See note K, at the end of the volume.
Though these writings were of consequence, and tended much to reconcile the nation to Charles, it was evident that they would not be decisive, and that keener weapons must determine the controversy. To the ordinance of the parliament concerning the militia, the king opposed his commissions of array. The counties obeyed the one or the other, according as they stood affected. And in many counties, where the people were divided, mobbish combats and skirmishes ensued.[*] The parliament on this occasion went so far as to vote, "That when the lords and commons in parliament, which is the supreme court of judicature, shall declare what the law of the land is, to have this not only questioned, but contradicted, is a high breach of their privileges."[**] This was a plain assuming of the whole legislative authority, and exerting it in the most material article, the government of the militia. Upon the same principles they pretended, by a verbal criticism on the tense of a Latin verb, to ravish from the king his negative voice in the legislature.[***]
The magazine of Hull contained the arms of all the forces levied against the Scots; and Sir John Hotham, the governor, though he had accepted of a commission from the parliament, was not thought to be much disaffected to the church and monarchy. Charles therefore entertained hopes that if he presented himself at Hull before the commencement of hostilities, Hotham, overawed by his presence, would admit him with his retinue; after which he might easily render himself master of the place. But the governor was on his guard. He shut the gates, and refused to receive the king, who desired leave to enter with twenty persons only. Charles immediately proclaimed him traitor, and complained to the parliament of his disobedience. The parliament avowed and justified the action.[****]
* May, book ii. p. 99.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 534.
*** The king, by his coronation oath, promises that he would maintain the laws and customs which the people had chosen, "quas vulgus elegerit:" the parliament pretended, that elegerit meant shall choose; and, consequently, that the king had no right to refuse any bills which should be presented him. See Rush. vol. v. p. 580.
**** Whitlocke, p. 55. Rush. vol. v. p. 565 etc. May, book ii p. 51.
The county of York levied a guard for the king of six hundred men; for the kings of England had hitherto lived among their subjects like fathers among their children, and had derived all their security from the dignity of their character, and from the protection of the laws. The two houses, though they had already levied a guard for themselves, had attempted to seize all the military power, all the navy, and all the forts of the kingdom, and had openly employed their authority in every kind of warlike preparations, yet immediately voted, "That the king, seduced by wicked counsel, intended to make war against his parliament, who, in all their consultations and actions, had proposed no other end but the care of his kingdoms, and the performance of all duty and loyalty to his person; that this attempt was a breach of the trust reposed in him by his people, contrary to his oath, and tending to a dissolution of the government; and that whoever should assist him in such a war, were traitors to the fundamental laws of the kingdom."[*]
The armies which had been everywhere raised on pretence of the service in Ireland, were henceforth more openly enlisted by the parliament for their own purposes, and the command of them was given to the earl of Essex. In London, no less than four thousand men enlisted in one day.[**] And the parliament voted a declaration, which they required every member to subscribe, that they would live and die with their general.
They issued orders for bringing in loans of money and plate, in order to maintain forces which should defend the king and both houses of parliament; for this style they still preserved. Within ten days, vast quantities of plate were brought to their treasurers. Hardly were there men enough to receive it, or room sufficient to stow it; and many with regret were obliged to carry back their offerings, and wait till the treasurers could find leisure to receive them; such zeal animated the pious partisans of the parliament, especially in the city. The women gave up all the plate and ornaments of their houses, and even their silver thimbles and bodkins, "in order to support the good cause against the malignants."[***]
* Whitlocke, p. 57. Rush. vol. v. p. 717. Dugdale, p. 93. May, book 11. p. 54.
** Vicar's God in the Mount.
*** Whitlocke, p. 58. Dugdale, p. 96, 99.
Meanwhile the splendor of the nobility with which the king was environed much eclipsed the appearance at Westminster. Lord Keeper Littleton, after sending the great seal before him, had fled to York. Above forty peers of the first rank attended the king,[*] whilst the house of lords seldom consisted of more than sixteen members. Near the moiety, too, of the lower house absented themselves from counsels which they deemed so full of danger. The commons sent up an impeachment against nine peers, for deserting their duty in parliament. Their own members, also, who should return to them, they voted not to admit till satisfied concerning the reason of their absence.
Charles made a declaration to the peers who attended him, that he expected from them no obedience to any commands which were not warranted by the laws of the land. The peers answered this declaration by a protest, in which they declared their resolution to obey no commands but such as were warranted by that authority.[**] By these deliberate engagements, so worthy of an English prince and English nobility, they meant to confound the furious and tumultuary resolutions taken by the parliament.
* May, book ii. p. 59.
** Rush vol. v. p. 626, 627. May, book ii. p. 86. Warwick, p. 210.
The queen, disposing of the crown jewels in Holland, had been enabled to purchase a cargo of arms and ammunition. Part of these, after escaping many perils, arrived safely to the king. His preparations were not near so forward as those of the parliament. In order to remove all jealousy, he had resolved that their usurpations and illegal pretensions should be apparent to the whole world; and thought that to recover the confidence of the people was a point much more material to his interest, than the collecting of any magazines, stores, or armies which might breed apprehensions of violent or illegal counsels. But the urgent necessity of his situation no longer admitted of delay. He now prepared himself for defence. With a spirit, activity, and address, which neither the one party apprehended nor the other expected, he employed all the advantages which remained to him, and roused up his adherents to arms. The resources of this prince's genius increased in proportion to his difficulties, and he never appeared greater than when plunged into the deepest perils and distresses. From the mixed character, indeed, of Charles, arose in part the misfortunes in which England was at this time involved. His political errors, or rather weaknesses, had raised him inveterate enemies: his eminent moral virtues had procured him zealous partisans; and between the hatred of the one, and the affections of the other, was the nation agitated with the most violent convulsions.
That the king might despair of all composition, the parliament sent him the conditions on which they were willing to some to an agreement. Their demands, contained in nineteen propositions, amounted to a total abolition of monarchical authority. They required that no man should remain in the council who was not agreeable to parliament; that no deed of the king's should have validity unless it passed the council, and was attested under their hand; that all the officers of state and principal judges should be chosen with consent of parliament, and enjoy their offices for life; that none of the royal family should marry without consent of parliament or council; that the laws should be executed against Catholics; that the votes of Popish lords should be excluded; that the reformation of the liturgy and church government should, have place according to advice of parliament; that the ordinance with regard to the militia be submitted to; that the justice of parliament pass upon all delinquents; that a general pardon be granted, with such exceptions as should be advised by parliament that the forts and castles be disposed of by consent of parliament; and that no peer be made but with consent of both houses.[*]
"Should I grant these demands," said the king in reply, "I may be waited on bareheaded; I may have my hand kissed; the title of majesty may be continued to me; and 'the king's authority, signified by both houses,' may still be the style of your commands; I may have swords and maces carried before me, and please myself with the sight of a crown and sceptre, (though even these twigs would not long flourish when the stock upon which they grew was dead;) but as to true and real power, I should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king."[**] War on any terms was esteemed, by the king and all the counsellors, preferable to so ignominious a peace. Charles accordingly resolved to support his authority by arms. "His towns," he said, "were taken from him, his ships, his arms, his money; but there still remained to him a good cause, and the hearts of his loyal subjects, which, with God's blessing, he doubted not would recover all the rest." Collecting, therefore, some forces, he advanced southwards; and at Nottingham he erected his royal standard, the open signal of discord and civil war throughout the kingdom.
* Rush. vol. v. p. 722. May, book ii. p. 54.
** Rush. vol. v, p. 728. Warwick, p, 189.
LVI. CHARLES I
{1642.} When two names so sacred in the English constitution as those of king and parliament were placed in opposition, no wonder the people were divided in their choice, and were agitated with the most violent animosities and factions.
The nobility and more considerable gentry, dreading a total confusion of rank from the fury of the populace, enlisted themselves in defence of the monarch, from whom they received and to whom they communicated their lustre. Animated with the spirit of loyalty derived from their ancestors they adhered to the ancient principles of the constitution, and valued themselves on exerting the maxims, as well as inheriting the possessions of the old English families. And while they passed their time mostly at their country seats, they were surprised to hear of opinions prevailing with which they had ever been unacquainted, and which implied not a limitation, but an abolition almost total of monarchical authority.
The city of London, on the other hand, and most of the great corporations, took part with the parliament, and adopted with zeal those democratical principles, on which the pretensions of that assembly were founded. The government of cities, which even under absolute monarchies is commonly republican, inclined them to this party: the small hereditary influence which can be retained over the industrious inhabitants of towns, the natural independence of citizens, and the force of popular currents over those more numerous associations of mankind; all these causes gave their authority to the new principles propagated throughout the nation. Many families, too, which had lately been enriched by commerce, saw with indignation that, notwithstanding their opulence, they could not raise themselves to a level with the ancient gentry: they therefore adhered to a power by whose success they hoped to acquire rank and consideration.[*] And the new splendor and glory of the Dutch commonwealth, where liberty so happily supported industry, made the commercial part af the nation desire to see a like form of government established in England.
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 4.
The genius of the two religions, so closely at this time interwoven with politics, corresponded exactly to these divisions. The Presbyterian religion was new, republican, and suited to the genius of the populace: the other had an air of greater show and ornament, was established on ancient authority, and bore an affinity to the kingly and aristocratical parts of the constitution. The devotees of Presbytery became of course zealous partisans of the parliament: the friends of the Episcopal church valued themselves on defending the rights of monarchy.
Some men also there were of liberal education, who, being either careless or ignorant of those disputes bandied about by the clergy of both sides, aspired to nothing but an easy enjoyment of life, amidst the jovial entertainment and social intercourse of their companions. All these flocked to the king's standard, where they breathed a freer air, and were exempted from that rigid preciseness and melancholy austerity which reigned among the parliamentary party.
Never was a quarrel more unreal than seemed at first than between the contending parties: almost every advantage lay against the royal cause. The king's revenue had been seized from the beginning by the parliament, who issued out to him from time to time small sums for his present subsistence; and as soon as he withdrew to York, they totally stopped all payments. London, and all the seaports, except Newcastle, being in their hands, the customs yielded them a certain and considerable supply of money; and all contributions, loans, and impositions were more easily raised from the cities, which possessed the ready money, and where men lived under their inspection, than they could be levied by the king in those open countries which after some time declared for him.
The seamen naturally followed the disposition of the sea ports to which they belonged: and the earl of Northumberland, lord admiral, having embraced the party of the parliament, had appointed, at their desire, the earl of Warwick to be his lieutenant; who at once established his authority in the fleet, and kept the entire dominion of the sea in the hands of that assembly.
All the magazines of arms and amunition were from the first seized by the parliament; and their fleet intercepted the greater part of those which were sent by the queen from Holland. The king was obliged, in order to arm his followers, to borrow the weapons of the train bands, under promise of restoring them as soon as peace should be settled in the kingdom.
The veneration for parliaments was at this time extreme throughout the nation.[*] The custom of reviling those assemblies for corruption, as it had no pretence, so was it unknown during all former ages. Few or no instances of their encroaching ambition or selfish claims had hitherto been observed. Men considered the house of commons in no other light than as the representatives of the nation, whose interest was the same with that of the public, who were the eternal guardians of law and liberty, and whom no motive, but the necessary defence of the people, could ever engage in an opposition to the crown. The torrent, therefore, of general affection ran to the parliament. What is the great advantage of popularity, the privilege of affixing epithets fell of course to that party. The king's adherents were the wicked and the malignant: their adversaries were the godly and the well-affected. And as the force of the cities was more united than that of the country, and at once gave shelter and protection to the parliamentary party, who could easily suppress the royalists in their neighborhood, almost the whole kingdom, at the commencement of the war, seemed to be in the hands of the parliament.[**]
* Walker p 336.
** Warwick, p. 318.
What alone gave the king some compensation for all the advantages possessed by his adversaries was, the nature and qualities of his adherents. More bravery and activity were hoped for from the generous spirit of the nobles and gentry, than from the base disposition of the multitude. And as the men of estates, at their own expense, levied and armed their tenants, besides an attachment to their masters, greater force and courage were to be expected in these rustic troops, than in the vicious and enervated populace of cities.
The neighboring states of Europe, being engaged in violent wars, little interested themselves in these civil commotions; and this island enjoyed the singular advantage (for such it surely was) of fighting out its own quarrels without the interposition of foreigners. France, from policy, had fomented the first disorders in Scotland, had sent over arms to the Irish rebels, and continued to give countenance to the English parliament; Spain, from bigotry, furnished the Irish with some supplies of money and arms. The prince of Orange, closely allied to the crown, encouraged English officers who served in the Low Countries to enlist in the king's army: the Scottish officers, who had been formed in Germany and in the late commotions, chiefly took part with the parliament.
The contempt entertained by the parliament for the king's party was so great, that it was the chief cause of pushing matters to such extremities against him; and many believed that he never would attempt resistance, but must soon yield to the pretensions, however enormous, of the two houses. Even after his standard was erected, men could not be brought to apprehend the danger of a civil war; nor was it imagined that he would have the imprudence to enrage his implacable enemies, and render his own condition more desperate, by opposing a force which was so much superior. The low condition in which he appeared at Nottingham confirmed all these hopes. His artillery, though far from numerous, had been left at York for want of horses to transport it. Besides the trained bands of the county, raised by Sir John Digby, the sheriff, he had not gotten together above three hundred infantry. His cavalry, in which consisted his chief strength, exceeded not eight hundred, and were very ill provided with arms. The forces of the parliament lay at Northampton, within a few days' march of him, and consisted of above six thousand men, well armed and well appointed. Had these troops advanced upon him, they must soon have dissipated the small force which he had assembled. By pursuing him in his retreat, they had so discredited his cause and discouraged his adherents, as to have forever prevented his collecting an army able to make head against them. But the earl of Essex, the parliamentary general, had not yet received any orders from his masters.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 1, 2.
What rendered them so backward, after such precipitate steps as they had formerly taken, is not easily explained. It is probable, that in the extreme distress of his party consisted the present safety of the king. The parliament hoped that the royalists, sensible of their feeble condition, and convinced of their slender resources, would disperse of themselves, and leave their adversaries a victory so much the more complete and secure, as it would be gained without the appearance of force, and without bloodshed. Perhaps, too, when it became necessary to make the concluding step, and offer barefaced violence to their sovereign, their scruples and apprehensions, though not sufficient to overcome their resolutions, were able to retard the execution of them.[*]
Sir Jacob Astley, whom the king had appointed major-general of his intended army, told him, that he could not give him assurance but he might be taken out of his bed, if the rebels should make a brisk attempt to that purpose. All the king's attendants were full of well-grounded apprehensions. Some of the lords having desired that a message might be sent to the parliament with overtures to a treaty, Charles, who well knew that an accommodation in his present condition meant nothing but a total submission, hastily broke up the council lest this proposal should be further insisted on. But next day the earl of Southampton, whom no one could suspect of base or timid sentiments, having offered the same advice in council it was hearkened to with more coolness and deliberation. He urged, that though such a step would probably increase the insolence of the parliament, this was so far from being an objection, that such dispositions must necessarily turn to the advantage of the royal cause: that if they refused to treat, which was more probable, the very sound of peace was so popular, that nothing could more disgust the nation than such haughty severity: that if they admitted of a treaty, their proposals, considering their present situation, would be so exorbitant, as to open the eyes of their most partial adherents, and turn the general favor to the king's party: and that, at worst, time might be gained by this expedient, and a delay of the imminent danger with which the king was at present threatened.[**]
Charles, on assembling the council, had declared against all advances towards an accommodation; and had said that, having now nothing left him but his honor, this last possession he was resolved steadily to preserve, and rather to perish than yield any further to the pretensions of his enemies:[***] but, by the unanimous desire of the counsellors, he was prevailed on to embrace Southampton's advice. That nobleman, therefore, with Sir John Colepeper and Sir William Uvedale, was despatched to London with offers of a treaty.[****]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 18.
** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 7.
*** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 7.
**** Rush. vol. v. p. 784.
The manner in which they were received gave little hopes of success. Southampton was not allowed by the peers to take his seat; but was ordered to deliver his message to the usher, and immediately to depart the city: the commons showed little better disposition towards Colepeper and Uvedale.[*] Both houses replied, that they could admit of no treaty with the king till he took down his standard, and recalled his proclamations, in which the parliament supposed themselves to be declared traitors. The king, by a second message, denied any such intention against the two houses; but offered to recall these proclamations, provided the parliament agreed to recall theirs, in which his adherents were declared traitors. They desired him, in return, to dismiss his forces, to reside with his parliament, and to give up delinquents to their justice; that is abandon himself and his friends to the mercy of his enemies.[**] Both parties flattered themselves that, by these messages and replies, they had gained the ends which they proposed.[***] The king believed that the people were made sufficiently sensible of the parliament's insolence and aversion to peace: the parliament intended, by this vigor in their resolutions, to support the vigor of their military operations.
The courage of the parliament was increased, besides their great superiority of force, by two recent events which had happened in their favor. Goring was governor of Portsmouth, the best fortified town in the kingdom, and by its situation of great importance. This man seemed to have rendered himself an implacable enemy to the king, by betraying, probably magnifying, the secret cabals of the army; and the parliament thought that his fidelity to them might on that account be entirely depended on. But the same levity of mind still attended him, and the same disregard to engagements and professions. He took underhand his measures with the court, and declared against the parliament. But though he had been sufficiently supplied with money, and long before knew his danger, so small was his foresight, that he had left the place entirely destitute of provisions, and in a few days he was obliged to surrender to the parliamentary forces.[****]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 10.
** Rush. vol. v. p. 786. Dugdale, p. 102.
*** Whitlocke, p. 59.
**** Rush, vol. v. p. 683. Whitlocke, p. 60. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 19.
The marquis of Hertford was a nobleman of the greatest quality and character in the kingdom, and, equally with the king, descended by a female from Henry VII. During the reign of James, he had attempted, without having obtained the consent of that monarch, to marry Arabella Stuart, a lady nearly related to the crown; and, upon discovery of his intentions, had been obliged for some time to fly the kingdom. Ever after, he was looked on with an evil eye at court, from which in a great measure he withdrew; and living in an independent manner, he addicted himself entirely to literary occupations and amusements. In proportion as the king declined in popularity, Hertford's character flourished with the people; and when this parliament assembled, no nobleman possessed more general favor and authority. By his sagacity he soon perceived that the commons, not content with correcting the abuses of government, were carried, by the natural current of power and popularity, into the opposite extreme, and were committing violations, no less dangerous than the former, upon the English constitution. Immediately he devoted himself to the support of the king's falling authority, and was prevailed with to be governor to the young prince and reside at court; to which, in the eyes of all men, he gave by his presence a new lustre and authority. So high was his character for mildness and humanity, that he still preserved, by means of these popular virtues, the public favor; and every one was sensible of the true motive of his change. Notwithstanding his habits of ease and study, he now exerted himself in raising an army for the king; and being named general of the western counties, where his interest chiefly lay, he began to assemble forces in Somersetshire. By the assistance of Lord Seymour, Lord Paulet, John Digby, son of the earl of Bristol, Sir Francis Hawley, and others, he had drawn together some appearance of an army; when the parliament, apprehensive of the danger, sent the earl of Bedford with a considerable force against him. On his approach Hertford was obliged to retire into Sherborne Castle; and finding that place untenable, he himself passed over into Wales, leaving Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir John Berkeley, Digby and other officers, with their horse, consisting of about a hundred and twenty, to march into Cornwall, in hopes of finding that county better prepared for their reception.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. vi. p. 2, 3, etc.
All the dispersed bodies of the parliamentary army were now ordered to march to Northampton; and the earl of Essex who had joined them, found the whole amount to fifteen thousand men.[*] The king, though his camp had been gradually reënforced from all quarters, was sensible that he had no army which could cope with so formidable a force, and he thought it prudent, by slow marches, to retire to Derby, thence to Shrewsbury, in order to countenance the levies which his friends were making in those parts. At Wellington, a day's march from Shrewsbury, he made a rendezvous of all his forces, and caused his military orders to be read at the head of every regiment. That he might bind himself by reciprocal ties, he solemnly made the following declaration before his whole army.
"I do promise, in the presence of Almighty God, and as I hope for his blessing and protection, that I will, to the utmost of my power, defend and maintain the true reformed Protestant religion established in the church of England, and, by the grace of God, in the same will live and die.
"I desire that the laws may ever be the measure of my government, and that the liberty and property of the subject may be preserved by them with the same care as my own just rights. And if it please God, by his blessing on this army raised for my necessary defence, to preserve me from the present rebellion, I do solemnly and faithfully promise, in the sight of God, to maintain the just privileges and freedom of parliament, and to govern, to the utmost of my power, by the known statutes and customs of the kingdom; and particularly to observe inviolably the laws to which I have given my consent this parliament. Meanwhile, if this emergence, and the great necessity to which I am driven, beget any violation of law, I hope it shall be imputed by God and man to the authors of this war; not to me, who have so earnestly labored to preserve the peace of the kingdom.
"When I willingly fail in these particulars, I shall expect no aid or relief from man, nor any protection from above: but in this resolution I hope for the cheerful assistance of all good men, and am confident of the blessing of Heaven."[*]
* Whitlocke, p. 60., Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 15, 17. Dugdale, p. 104.
Though the concurrence of the church undoubtedly increased the king's adherents, it may safely be affirmed, that the high monarchical doctrines, so much inculcated by the clergy, had never done him any real service. The bulk of that generous train of nobility and gentry who now attended the king in his distresses, breathed the spirit of liberty as well as of loyalty; and in the hopes alone of his submitting to a legal and limited government, were they willing in his defence to sacrifice their lives and fortunes.
While the king's army lay at Shrewsbury, and he was employing himself in collecting money, which he received, though in no great quantities, by voluntary contributions, and by the plate of the universities, which was sent him, the news arrived of an action, the first which had happened in these wars, and where he was successful.
On the appearance of commotions in England, the princes Rupert and Maurice, sons of the unfortunate palatine, had offered their service to the king; and the former at that time commanded a body of horse, which had been sent to Worcester in order to watch the motions of Essex, who was marching towards that city. No sooner had the prince arrived, than he saw some cavalry of the enemy approaching the gates. Without delay, he briskly attacked them, as they were defiling from a lane, and forming themselves. Colonel Sandys, who led them, and who fought with valor, being mortally wounded, fell from his horse. The whole party was routed, and was pursued above a mile. The prince, hearing of Essex's approach, retired to the main body.[*] This rencounter, though in itself of small importance, mightily raised the reputation of the royalists, and acquired to Prince Rupert the character of promptitude and courage; qualities which he eminently displayed during the whole course of the war.
The king, on mustering his army, found it amount to ten thousand men. The earl of Lindesey, who in his youth had sought experience of military service in the Low Countries,[**] was general; Prince Rupert commanded the horse; Sir Jacob Astley, the foot; Sir Arthur Aston, the dragoons; Sir John Heydon, the artillery. Lord Bernard Stuart was at the head of a troop of guards. The estates and revenue of this single troop, according to Lord Clarendon's computation, were at least equal-to those of all the members who at the commencement of war voted in both houses. Their servants, under the command of Sir William Killigrew, made another troop, and always marched with their masters.[***]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 25. May. book iii. p. 10.
** He was then Lord Willoughby.
*** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 41. Warwick, p. 231.
With this army the king left Shrewsbury, resolving to give battle as soon as possible to the army of the parliament, which he heard was continually augmenting by supplies from London. In order to bring on an action, he directed his march towards the capital, which he knew the enemy would not abandon to him. Essex had now received his instructions. The import of them was, to present a most humble petition to the king, and to rescue him and the royal family from those desperate malignants who had seized their persons.[*] Two days after the departure of the royalists from Shrewsbury, he left Worcester. Though it be commonly easy in civil wars to get intelligence, the armies were within six miles of each other ere either of the generals was acquainted with the approach of his enemy. Shrewsbury and Worcester, the places from which they set out, are not above twenty miles distant; yet had the two armies marched ten days in this mutual ignorance: so much had military skill, during a long peace, decayed in England.[**]
* Whitlocke, p. 59. Clarendon, vol. iii, p. 27, 28, etc.
** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 44.
The royal army lay near Banbury; that of the parliament, at Keinton, in the county of Warwick. Prince Rupert sent intelligence of the enemy's approach. Though the day was far advanced, the king resolved upon the attack: Essex drew up his men to receive him. Sir Faithful Fortescue, who had levied a troop for the Irish wars, had been obliged to serve in the parliamentary army, and was now posted on the left wing, commanded by Ramsay, a Scotchman. No sooner did the king's army approach, than Fortescue, ordering his troop to discharge their pistols in the ground, put himself under the command of Prince Rupert. Partly from this incident, partly from the furious shock made upon them by the prince, that whole wing of cavalry immediately fled, and were pursued for two miles. The right wing of the parliament's army had no better success. Chased from their ground by Wilmot and Sir Arthur Aston, they also took to flight. The king's body of reserve, commanded by Sir John Biron, judging, like raw soldiers, that all was over, and impatient to have some share in the action, heedlessly followed the chase which their left wing had precipitately led them. Sir William Balfour, who commanded Essex's reserve, perceived the advantage: he wheeled about upon the king's infantry, now quite unfurnished of horse; and he made great havoc among them. Lindesey, the general, was mortally wounded, and taken prisoner. His son, endeavoring his rescue, fell likewise into the enemy's hands. Sir Edmund Verney, who carried the king's standard, was killed, and the standard taken; but it was afterwards recovered. In this situation, Prince Rupert, on his return, found affairs. Every thing bore the appearance of a defeat, instead of a victory, with which he had hastily flattered himself. Some advised the king to leave the field; but that prince rejected such pusillanimous counsel. The two armies faced each other for some time, and neither of them retained courage sufficient for a new attack. All night they lay under arms; and next morning found themselves in sight of each other. General, as well as soldier, on both sides, seemed averse to renew the battle. Essex first drew off, and retired to Warwick. The king returned to his former quarters. Five thousand men are said to have been found dead on the field of battle, and the loss of the two armies, as far as we can judge by the opposite accounts, was nearly equal. Such was the event of this first battle fought at Keinton, or Edge Hill.[*]
Some of Essex's horse, who had been driven off the field in the beginning of the action, flying to a great distance, carried news of a total defeat, and struck a mighty terror into the city and parliament. After a few days, a more just account arrived; and then the parliament pretended to a complete victory.[**] The king also, on his part, was not wanting to display his advantages; though, except the taking of Banbury a few days after, he had few marks of victory to boast of. He continued his march, and took possession of Oxford, the only town in his dominions which was altogether at his devotion.
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 44, etc. May, book iii. p. 16, etc.
** Whitlocke, p. 61. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 59.
After the royal army was recruited and refreshed, as the weather still continued favorable, it was again put in motion, A party of horse approached to Reading, of which Martin was appointed governor by the parliament. Both governor and garrison were seized with a panic, and fled with precipitation to London. The king, hoping that every thing would yield before him, advanced with his whole army to Reading. The parliament, who, instead of their fond expectations that Charles would never be able to collect an army, had now the prospect of a civil war, bloody, and of uncertain event; were further alarmed at the near approach of the royal army, while their own forces lay at a distance. They voted an address for a treaty. The king's nearer approach to Colebroke quickened their advances for peace. Northumberland and Pembroke, with three commoners, presented the address of both houses; in which they besought his majesty to appoint some convenient place where he might reside, till committees could attend him with proposals. The king named Windsor, and desired that their garrison might be removed, and his own troops admitted into that castle.[*]
Meanwhile Essex, advancing by hasty marches, had arrived at London. But neither the presence of his army, nor the precarious hopes of a treaty, retarded the king's approaches. Charles attacked at Brentford two regiments quartered there, and after a sharp action beat them from that village, and took, about five hundred prisoners. The parliament had sent orders to forbear all hostilities, and had expected the same from the king; though no stipulations to that purpose had been mentioned by their commissioners. Loud complaints were raised against this attack, as if it had been the most apparent perfidy and breach of treaty.[**] Inflamed with resentment, as well as anxious for its own safety, the city marched its trained bands in excellent order, and joined the army under Essex. The parliamentary army now amounted to above twenty-four thousand men, and was much superior to that of the king.[***] After both armies had faced each other for some time, Charles drew off and retired to Reading, thence to Oxford.
While the principal armies on both sides were kept in inaction by the winter season, the king and parliament were employed in real preparations for war, and in seeming advances towards peace. By means of contributions or assessments levied by the horse, Charles maintained his cavalry; by loans and voluntary presents sent him from all parts of the kingdom, he supported his infantry: but the supplies were still very unequal to the necessities under which he labored.[****]
* Whitlocke, p. 62. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 73.
** Whitlocke, p. 62. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 75.
*** Whitlocke, p. 62.
**** Clarendon, vol. iii p. 87.
The parliament had much greater resources for money; and had by consequence every military preparation in much greater order and abundance. Besides an imposition levied in London, amounting to the five-and-twentieth part of every one's substance, they established on that city a weekly assessment of ten thousand pounds, and another of twenty-three thousand five hundred and eighteen on the rest of the kingdom.[*] And as their authority was at present established in most counties, they levied these taxes with regularity; though they amounted to sums much greater than the nation had formerly paid to the public.
{1643.} The king and parliament sent reciprocally their demands; and a treaty commenced, but without any cessation of hostilities, as had at first been proposed. The earl of Northumberland and four members of the lower house came to Oxford, as commissioners.[**] In this treaty, the king perpetually insisted on the reëstablishment of the crown in its legal powers, and on the restoration of his constitutional prerogative:[***] the parliament still required new concessions, and a further abridgment of regal authority, as a more effectual remedy to their fears and jealousies. Finding the king supported by more forces and a greater party than they had ever looked for, they seemingly abated somewhat of those extravagant conditions which they had formerly claimed; but their demands were still too high for an equal treaty. Besides other articles, to which a complete victory alone could entitle them, they required the king, in express terms, utterly to abolish Episcopacy; a demand which before they had only insinuated; and they required, that all other ecclesiastical controversies should be determined by their assembly of divines; that is, in the manner the most repugnant to the inclinations of the king and all his partisans. They insisted, that he should submit to the punishment of his most faithful adherents. And they desired him to acquiesce in their settlement of the militia, and to confer on their adherents the entire power of the sword. In answer to the king's proposal, that his magazines, towns, forts, and ships should be restored to him, the parliament required that they should be put into such hands as they could confide in:[****] the nineteen propositions which they formerly sent to the king, showed their inclination to abolish monarchy: they only asked at present the power of doing it.
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 171.
** Whitlocke, p. 6*.
*** Rush, vol. vi. p. 202.
**** Rush, vol. vi. p. 166. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 119.
And having now in the eye of the law been guilty of treason, by levying war against their sovereign, it is evident that their fears and jealousies must on that account have multiplied extremely, and have rendered their personal safety, which they interwove with the safety of the nation, still more incompatible with the authority of the monarch. Though the gentleness and lenity of the king's temper might have insured them against schemes of future vengeance, they preferred, as is no doubt natural, an independent security, accompanied too with sovereign power, to the station of subjects, and that not entirely guarded from all apprehensions of danger.[*] [12]
The conferences went no further than the first demand on each side. The parliament, finding that there was no likelihood of coming to any agreement, suddenly recalled their commissioners.
A military enterprise, which they had concerted early in the spring, was immediately undertaken. Reading, the garrison of the king's which lay nearest to London, was esteemed a place of considerable strength in that age, when the art of attacking towns was not well understood in Europe, and was totally unknown in England. The earl of Essex sat down before this place with an army of eighteen thousand men, and carried on the siege by regular approaches. Sir Arthur Aston, the governor, being wounded, Colonel Fielding succeeded to the command. In a little time, the town was found to be no longer in a condition of defence; and though the king approached with an intention of obliging Essex to raise the siege, the disposition of the parliamentary army was so strong as rendered the design impracticable. Fielding, therefore, was contented to yield the town, on condition that he should bring off all the garrison with the honors of war, and deliver up deserters. This last article was thought so ignominious and so prejudicial to the king's interests, that the governor was tried by a council of war, and condemned to lose his life for consenting to it. His sentence was afterwards remitted by the king.[**]
* See note L, at the end of the volume.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 265, etc. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 237, 238, etc.
Essex's army had been fully supplied with all necessaries from London; even many superfluities and luxuries were sent them by the care of the zealous citizens; yet the hardships which they suffered from the siege during so early a season had weakened them to such a degree, that they were no longer fit for any new enterprise. And the two armies for some time encamped in the neighborhood of each other, without attempting on either side any action of moment.
Besides the military operations between the principal armies which lay in the centre of England, each county, each town, each family almost, was divided within itself; and the most violent convulsions shook the whole kingdom. Throughout the winter, continual efforts had every where been made by each party to surmount its antagonist; and the English, roused from the lethargy of peace, with eager though unskilful hands employed against their fellow-citizens their long-neglected weapons. The furious zeal for liberty and Presbyterian discipline, which had hitherto run uncontrolled throughout the nation, now at last excited an equal ardor for monarchy and Episcopacy, when the intention of abolishing these ancient modes of government was openly avowed by the parliament. Conventions for neutrality, though in several counties they had been entered into and confirmed by the most solemn oaths, yet being voted illegal by the two houses, were immediately broken;[*] and the fire of discord was spread into every quarter. The altercation of discourse, the controversies of the pen, but above all the declamations of the pulpit, indisposed the minds of men towards each other, and propagated the blind rage of party.[**] Fierce, however, and inflamed as were the dispositions of the English, by a war both civil and religious, that great destroyer of humanity, all the events of this period are less distinguished by atrocious deeds either of treachery or cruelty, than were ever any intestine discords which had so long a continuance; a circumstance which will be found to reflect great praise on the national character of that people now so unhappily roused to arms.
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 137, 139.
** Dugdale, p. 95.
In the north, Lord Fairfax commanded for the parliament, the earl of Newcastle for the king. The latter nobleman began those associations which were afterwards so much practised in other parts of the kingdom. He united in a league for the king the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the bishopric, and engaged some time after other counties in the same association. Finding that Fairfax, assisted by Hotham and the garrison of Hull, was making progress in the southern parts of Yorkshire, he advanced with a body of four thousand men, and took possession of York. At Tadcaster, he attacked the forces of the parliament, and dislodged them: but his victory was not decisive. In other rencounters, he obtained some inconsiderable advantages. But the chief benefit which resulted from his enterprises was, the establishing of the king's authority in all the northern provinces.
In another part of the kingdom, Lord Broke was killed by a shot while he was taking possession of Lichfield for the parliament.[*] After a sharp combat near Stafford, between the earl of Northampton and Sir John Gell, the former, who commanded the king's forces, was killed while he fought with great valor; and his forces, discouraged by his death, though they had obtained the advantage in the action, retreated into the town of Stafford.[**]
Sir William Waller began to distinguish himself among the generals of the parliament. Active and indefatigable in his operations, rapid and enterprising, he was fitted by his genius to the nature of the war; which, being managed by raw troops, conducted by unexperienced commanders, afforded success to every bold and sudden undertaking. After taking Winchester and Chichester, he advanced towards Gloucester, which was in a manner blockaded by Lord Herbert, who had levied considerable forces in Wales for the royal party.[***] While he attacked the Welsh on one side, a sally from Gloucester made impression on the other. Herbert was defeated; five hundred of his men killed on the spot; a thousand taken prisoners; and he himself escaped with some difficulty to Oxford. Hereford, esteemed a strong town, defended by a considerable garrison, was surrendered to Waller, from the cowardice of Colonel Price, the governor. Tewkesbury underwent the same fate. Worcester refused him admittance; and Waller, without placing any garrisons in his new conquests, retired to Gloucester, and he thence joined the army under the earl of Essex.[****]
* He had taken possession of Lichfield, and was viewing from a window St. Chad's cathedral, in which a party of the royalists had fortified themselves. He was cased in complete armor, but was shot through the eye by a random ball. Lord Broke was a zealous Puritan; and had formerly said, that he hoped to see with his eyes the ruin of all the cathedrals of England. It was a superstitious remark of the royalists, that he was killed on St. Chad's day by a shot from St. Chad's cathedral, which pierced that very eye by which he hoped to see the ruin of all cathedrals. Dugdale, p. 118. Clarendon, etc.
* Whitlocke, p. 66. Rush. vol. vi. p. 152. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 151.
* Rush. vol. vi. D. 92, 100.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 262.
But the most memorable actions of valor during this winter season were performed in the west. When Sir Ralph Hopton with his small troop, retired into Cornwall before the earl of Bedford, that nobleman, despising so inconsiderable a force, abandoned the pursuit, and committed the care of suppressing the royal party to the sheriffs of the county. But the affections of Cornwall were much inclined to the king's service. While Sir Richard Duller and Sir Alexander Carew lay at Launceston, and employed themselves in executing the parliament's ordinance for the militia, a meeting of the county was assembled at Truro; and after Hopton produced his commission from the earl of Hertford, the king's general, it was agreed to execute the laws, and to expel these invaders of the county. The train bands were accordingly levied, Launceston taken, and all Cornwall reduced to peace and to obedience under the king.
It had been usual for the royal party, on the commencement of these disorders, to claim on all occasions the strict execution of the laws, which, they knew, were favorable to them; and the parliament, rather than have recourse to the plea of necessity, and avow the transgression of any statute, had also been accustomed to warp the laws, and by forced constructions to interpret them in their own favor.[*]
* Clarerdon, vol. iii. p. 130.
But though the king was naturally the gainer by such a method of conducting war, and it was by favor of law that the train, bands were raised in Cornwall, it appeared that those maxims were now prejudicial to the royal party. These troops could not legally, without their own consent, be carried out of the county; and consequently it was impossible to push into Devonshire the advantage which they had obtained. The Cornish royalists, therefore, bethought themselves of levying a force which might be more serviceable. Sir Bevil Granville, the most beloved man of that country, Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir Nicholas Slanning, Arundel, and Trevannion undertook as their own charges to raise an army for the king; and their great interest in Cornwall soon enabled them to effect their purpose. The parliament, alarmed at this appearance of the royalists, gave a commission to Ruthven, a Scotchman, governor of Plymouth, to march with all the forces to Dorset. Somerset, and Devon, and make an entire conquest of Cornwall. The earl of Stamford followed him at some distance With a considerable supply. Ruthven, having entered Cornwall by bridges thrown over the Tamar, hastened to an action, lest Stamwood should join him, and obtain the honor of that victory which he looked for with assurance. The royalists in like manner were impatient to bring the affair to a decision before Ruthven's army should receive so considerable a reënforcement. The battle was fought on Bradoc Down; and the king's forces, though inferior in number, gave a total defeat to their enemies. Ruthven, with a few broken troops, fled to Saltash; and when that town was taken, he escaped with some difficulty, and almost alone, into Plymouth. Stamford retired, and distributed his forces into Plymouth and Exeter.
Notwithstanding these advantages, the extreme want both of money and ammunition under which the Cornish royalists labored, obliged them to enter into a convention of neutrality with the parliamentary party in Devonshire; and this neutrality held all the winter season. In the spring, it was broken by the authority of the two houses; but war recommenced with great appearance of disadvantage to the king's party. Stamford, having assembled a strong body of near seven thousand men, well supplied with money, provisions, and ammunition, advanced upon the royalists, who were not half his number, and were oppressed by every kind of necessity. Despair, joined to the natural gallantry of these troops, commanded by the prime gentry of the county, made them resolve by one vigorous effort, to overcome all these disadvantages. Stamford being encamped on the top of a high hill near Stratum, they attacked him in four divisions, at five in the morning, having lain all night under arms. One division was commanded by Lord Mohun and Sir Ralph Hopton, another by Sir Bevil Granville and Sir John Berkeley, a third by Slanning and Trevannion, a fourth by Basset and Godolphin. In this manner the action began; the king's forces pressing with vigor those four ways up the hill, and their enemies obstinately defending themselves. The fight continued with doubtful success, till word was brought to the chief officers of the Cornish, that their ammunition was spent to less than four barrels of powder. This defect, which they concealed from the soldiers, they resolved to supply by their valor. They agreed to advance without firing till they should reach the top of the hill, and could be on equal ground with the enemy. The courage of the officers was so well seconded by the soldiers, that the royalists began on all sides to gain ground. Major-General Chidley, who commanded the parliamentary army, (for Stamford kept at a distance,) failed not in his duty; and when he saw his men recoil, he himself advanced with a good stand of pikes, and piercing into the thickest of the enemy, was at last overpowered by numbers, and taken prisoner. His army, upon this disaster, gave ground apace; insomuch that the four parties of the royalists, growing nearer and nearer as they ascended, at length met together upon the plain at the top; where they embraced with great joy, and signalized their victory with loud shouts and mutual congratulations.[*]
After this success, the attention both of king and parliament was turned towards the west, as to a very important scene of action. The king sent thither the marquis of Hertford and Prince Maurice, with a reënforcement of cavalry; who, having joined the Cornish army, soon overran the county of Devon; and advancing into that of Somerset, began to reduce it to obedience. On the other hand, the parliament, having supplied Sir William Waller, in whom they much trusted, with a complete army, despatched him westwards, in order to check the progress of the royalists. After some skirmishes, the two armies met at Lansdown, near Bath, and fought a pitched battle, with great loss on both sides, but without any decisive event.[**] The gallant Granville was there killed; and Hopton, by the blowing up of some powder, was dangerously hurt.
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 267, 273. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 269, 279.
** Rush, vol. vi. p. 284. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 282.
The royalists next attempted to march eastwards, and to join their forces to the king's at Oxford: but Waller hung on their rear, and infested their march till they reached the Devizes. Reënforced by additional troops, which flocked to him from all quarters, he so much surpassed the royalists in number, that they durst no longer continue their march, or expose themselves to the hazard of an action. It was resolved that Hertford and Prince Maurice should proceed with the cavalry; and, having procured a reënforcement from the king, should hasten back to the relief of their friends. Waller was so confident of taking this body of infantry, now abandoned by the horse, that he wrote to the parliament that their work was done, and that by the next post he would inform them of the number and quality of the prisoners. But the king, even before Hertford's arrival, hearing of the great difficulties to which his western army was reduced, had prepared a considerable body of cavalry, which he immediately despatched to their succor under the command of Lord Wilmot. Waller drew up on Roundway Down, about two miles from the Devizes, and advancing with his cavalry to fight Wilmot, and prevent his conjunction with the Cornish infantry, was received with equal valor by the royalists. After a sharp action, he was totally routed, and flying with a few horse, escaped to Bristol. Wilmot, seizing the enemy's cannon, and having joined his friends whom he came to relieve, attacked Waller's infantry with redoubled courage, drove them off the field, and routed and dispersed the whole army.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 285. Clarendoo. vol. iii. p. 29l.
This important victory, following so quick after many other successes, struck great dismay into the parliament, and gave an alarm to their principal army, commanded by Essex. Waller exclaimed loudly against that general, for allowing Wilmot to pass him, and proceed without any interruption to the succor of the distressed infantry at the Devizes. But Essex, finding that his army fell continually to decay after the siege of Reading, was resolved to remain upon the defensive; and the weakness of the king, and his want of all military stores, had also restrained the activity of the royal army. No action had happened in that part of England, except one skirmish, which of itself was of no great consequence, and was rendered memorable by the death alone of the famous Hambden.
Colonel Urrey, a Scotchman, who served in the parliamentary army, having received some disgust, came to Oxford and offered his services to the king. In order to prove the sincerity of his conversion, he informed Prince Rupert of the loose disposition of the enemy's quarters, and exhorted him to form some attempt upon them. The prince, who was entirely fitted for that kind of service, falling suddenly upon the dispersed bodies of Essex's army, routed two regiments of cavalry and one of infantry, and carried his ravages within two miles of the general's quarters. The alarm being given, every one mounted on horseback, in order to pursue the prince, to recover the prisoners, and to repair the disgrace which the army had sustained. Among the rest Hambden, who had a regiment of infantry that lay at a distance, joined the horse as a volunteer; and overtaking the royalists on Chalgrave field, entered into the thickest of the battle. By the bravery and activity of Rupert, the king's troops were brought off, and a great booty, together with two hundred prisoners, was conveyed to Oxford. But what most pleased the royalists was the expectation that some disaster had happened to Hambden their capital and much dreaded enemy. One of the prisoners taken in the action, said, that he was confident Mr. Hambden was hurt: for he saw him, contrary to his usual custom, ride off the field before the action was finished; his head hanging down, and his hands leaning upon his horse's neck. Next day the news arrived, that he was shot in the shoulder with a brace of bullets, and the bone broken. Some days after, he died, in exquisite pain, of his wound; nor could his whole party, had their army met with a total overthrow, have been thrown into greater consternation. The king himself so highly valued him, that, either from generosity or policy, he intended to have sent him his own surgeon to assist at his cure.[*] [13]
* See note M, at the end of the volume.
Many were the virtues and talents of this eminent personage; and his valor during the war had shone out with a lustre equal to that of the other accomplishments by which he had ever been distinguished. Affability in conversation; temper, art, and eloquence in debate; penetration and discernment in counsel; industry, vigilance, and enterprise in action; all these praises are unanimously ascribed to him by historians of the most opposite parties. His virtue, too, and integrity in all the duties of private life, are allowed to have been beyond exception: we must only be cautious, notwithstanding his generous zeal for liberty, not hastily to ascribe to him the praises of a good citizen. Through all the horrors of civil war, he sought the abolition of monarchy, and subversion of the constitution; an end which, had it been attainable by peaceful measures, ought carefully to have been avoided by every lover of his country. But whether, in the pursuit of this violent enterprise, he was actuated by private ambition or by honest prejudices, derived from the former exorbitant powers of royalty, it belongs not to an historian of this age, scarcely even to an intimate friend, positively to determine.
Essex, discouraged by this event, dismayed by the total rout of Waller, was further informed, that the queen, who landed at Burlington Bay, had arrived at Oxford, and had brought from the north a reënforcement of three thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse. Dislodging from Thame and Aylesbury, where he had hitherto lain, he thought proper to retreat nearer to London; and he showed to his friends his broken and disheartened forces, which a few months before he had led into the field in so flourishing a condition. The king, freed from this enemy, sent his army westward under Prince Rupert; and, by their conjunction with the Cornish troops, a formidable force, for numbers as well as reputation and valor, was composed. That an enterprise correspondent to men's expectations might be undertaken, the prince resolved to lay siege to Bristol, the second town for riches and greatness in the kingdom. Nathaniel Fiennes, son of Lord Say he himself, as well as his father, a great parliamentary leader was governor, and commanded a garrison of two thousand five hundred foot, and two regiments, one of horse, another of dragoons. The fortifications not being complete or regular, it was resolved by Prince Rupert to storm the city, and next morning, with little other provisions suitable to such a work besides the courage of the troops, the assault began. The Cornish in three divisions attacked the west side, with a resolution which nothing could control; but though the middle division had already mounted the wall, so great was the disadvantage of the ground, and so brave the defence of the garrison, that in the end the assailants were repulsed with a considerable loss both of officers and soldiers. On the prince's side, the assault was conducted with equal courage, and almost with equal loss, but with better success. One party, led by Lord Grandison, was indeed beaten off, and the commander himself mortally wounded: another, conducted by Colonel Bellasis, met with a like fate: but Washington, with a less party, finding a place in the curtain weaker than the rest, broke in, and quickly made room for the horse to follow. By this irruption, however, nothing but the suburbs was yet gained: the entrance into the town was still more difficult: and by the loss already sustained, as well as by the prospect of further danger, every one was extremely discouraged; when, to the great joy of the army, the city beat a parley. The garrison was allowed to march out with their arms and baggage, leaving their cannon, ammunition, and colors. For this instance of cowardice, Fiennes was afterwards tried by a court martial, and condemned to lose his head; but the sentence was remitted by the general.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi p. 284. Clarendon, vol. iii. p 293, 294, etc.
Great complaints were made of violences exercised on the garrison, contrary to the capitulation. An apology was made by the royalists, as if these were a retaliation for some violences committed on their friends at the surrender of Reading. And under pretence of like retaliations, but really from the extreme animosity of the parties, were such irregularities continued during the whole course of the war.[*]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 297
The loss sustained by the royalists in the assault of Bristol was considerable. Five hundred excellent soldiers perished. Among those of condition were Grandison, Slanning, Trevannion, and Moyle; Bellasis, Ashley, and Sir John Owen were wounded; yet was the success upon the whole so considerable, as mightily raised the courage of the one party and depressed that of the other. The king, to show that he was not intoxicated with good fortune, nor aspired to a total victory over the parliament, published a manifesto, in which he renewed the protestation formerly taken, with great solemnity, at the head of his army, and expressed his firm intention of making peace upon the reestablishment of the constitution. Having joined the camp at Bristol, and sent Prince Maurice with a detachment into Devonshire, he deliberated how to employ the remaining forces in an enterprise of moment. Some proposed, and seemingly with reason, to march directly to London, where every thing was in confusion, where the army of the parliament was baffled, weakened, and dismayed, and where, it was hoped, either by an insurrection of the citizens, by victory, or by treaty, a speedy end might be put to the civil disorders. But this undertaking, by reason of the great number and force of the London militia, was thought by many to be attended with considerable difficulties. Gloucester, lying within twenty miles, presented an easier, yet a very important conquest. It was the only remaining garrison possessed by the parliament in those parts. Could that city be reduced, the king held the whole course of the Severn under his command; the rich and malecontent counties of the west, having lost all protection from their friends, might be forced to pay high contributions as an atonement for their disaffection; an open communication could be preserved between Wales and these new conquests; and half of the kingdom being entirely freed from the enemy, and thus united into one firm body, might be employed in reestablishing the king's authority throughout the remainder. These were the reasons for embracing that resolution, fatal, as it was ever esteemed to the royal party.[*]
The governor of Gloucester was one Massey, a soldier of fortune, who, before he engaged with the parliament, had offered his service to the king; and as he was free from the fumes of enthusiasm, by which most of the officers on that side were intoxicated, he would lend an ear, it was presumed, to proposals for accommodation. But Massey was resolute to preserve an entire fidelity to his masters; and though no enthusiast himself, he well knew how to employ to advantage that enthusiastic spirit so prevalent in his city and garrison. The summons to surrender allowed two hours for an answer; but before that time expired, there appeared before the king two citizens, with lean, pale, sharp, and dismal visages; faces so strange and uncouth, according to Clarendon, figures so habited and accoutred, as at once moved the most severe countenance to mirth, and the most cheerful heart to sadness; it seemed impossible that such messengers could bring less than a defiance. The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the godly city of Gloucester; and extremely ready were they, according to the historian, to give insolent and seditious replies to any question; as if their business were chiefly, by provoking the king, to make him violate his own safe-conduct. The answer from the city was in these words: "We, the inhabitants, magistrates, officers, and soldiers within the garrison of Gloucester, unto his majesty's gracious message, return this humble answer: that we do keep this city, according to our oaths and allegiance, to and for the use of his majesty and his royal posterity; and do accordingly conceive ourselves wholly bound to obey the commands of his majesty, signified by both houses of parliament, and are resolved, by God's help, to keep this city accordingly."[**] After these preliminaries, the siege was resolutely undertaken by the army, and as resolutely sustained by the citizens and garrison.
* Whitlocke, p. 69. May, book iii. p. 91.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 287. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 315. May, book iii. p. 96.
When intelligence of the siege of Gloucester arrived in London, the consternation among the inhabitants was as great as if the enemy were already at their gates. The rapid progress of the royalists threatened the parliament with immediate subjection: the factions and discontents among themselves in the city, and throughout the neighboring counties, prognosticated some dangerous division or insurrection. Those parliamentary leaders, it must be owned, who had introduced such mighty innovations into the English constitution, and who had projected so much greater, had not engaged in an enterprise which exceeded their courage and capacity. Great vigor, from the beginning, as well as wisdom, they had displayed in all their counsels; and a furious, headstrong body, broken loose from the restraint of law, had hitherto been retained in subjection under their authority, and firmly united by zeal and passion, as by the most legal and established government. A small committee, on whom the two houses devolved their power, had directed all their military operations, and had preserved a secrecy in deliberation, and a promptitude in execution, beyond what the king, notwithstanding the advantages possessed by a single leader, had ever been able to attain. Sensible that no jealousy was by their partisans entertained against them, they had on all occasions exerted an authority much more despotic than the royalists, even during the pressing exigencies of war, could with patience endure in their sovereign. Whoever incurred their displeasure, or was exposed to their suspicions, was committed to prison, and prosecuted under the notion of delinquency: after all the old jails were full, many new ones were erected; and even the ships were crowded with the royalists, both gentry and clergy, who anguished below decks, and perished in those unhealthy confinements: they imposed taxes, the heaviest and of the most unusual nature, by an ordinance of the two houses; they voted a commission for sequestrations; and they seized, wherever they had power, the revenues of all the king's party;[*] and knowing that themselves, and all their adherents, were, by resisting the prince, exposed to the penalties of law, they resolved, by a severe administration, to overcome those terrors, and to retain the people in obedience by penalties of a more immediate execution. In the beginning of this summer, a combination, formed against them in London, had obliged them to exert the plenitude of their authority.
* The king afterwards copied from this example; but, as the far greater part of the nobility and landed gentry were his friends, he reaped much less profit from this measure.
Edward Waller, the first refiner of English versification, was a member of the lower house; a man of considerable fortune, and not more distinguished by his poetical genius than by his parliamentary talents, and by the politeness and elegance of his manners. As full of keen satire and invective in his eloquence, as of tenderness and panegyric in his poetry, he caught the attention of his hearers, and exerted the utmost boldness in blaming those violent counsels by which the commons were governed. Finding all opposition within doors to be fruitless, he endeavored to form a party without, which might oblige the parliament to accept of reasonable conditions, and restore peace to the nation. The charms of his conversation, joined to his character of courage and integrity, had procured him the entire confidence of Northumberland, Conway, and every eminent person of either sex who resided in London. They opened their breasts to him without reserve, and expressed their disapprobation of the furious measures pursued by the commons, and their wishes that some expedient could be found for stopping so impetuous a career. Tomkins, Waller's brother-in-law, and Chaloner, the intimate friend of Tomkins, had entertained like sentiments: and as the connections of these two gentlemen lay chiefly in the city, they informed Waller that the same abhorrence of war prevailed there among all men of reason and moderation. Upon reflection, it seemed not impracticable that a combination might be formed between the lords and citizens; and, by mutual concert, the illegal taxes be refused, which the parliament, without the royal assent, imposed on the people. While this affair was in agitation, and lists were making of such as they conceived to be well affected to their design, a servant of Tomkins, who had overheard their discourse, immediately carried intelligence to Pym. Waller, Tomkins, and Chaloner were seized, and tried by a court martial.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 326. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 249, 250, etc.
They were all three condemned, and the two latter executed on gibbets erected before their own doors. A covenant, as a test, was taken by the lords and commons, and imposed on their army, and on all who lived within their quarters. Besides resolving to amend and reform their lives, the covenanters their vow, that they will never lay down their arms so long as the Papists, now in open war against the parliament, shall by force of arms be protected from justice; they express their abhorrence of the late conspiracy; and they promise to assist to the utmost the forces raised by both houses, against the forces levied by the king.[*]
Waller, as soon as imprisoned, sensible of the great danger into which he had fallen, was so seized with the dread of death, that all his former spirit deserted him; and he confessed whatever he knew, without sparing his most intimate friends, without regard to the confidence reposed in him, without distinguishing between the negligence of familiar conversation and the schemes of a regular conspiracy. With the most profound dissimulation, he counterfeited such remorse of conscience, that his execution was put off, out of mere Christian compassion, till he might recover the use of his understanding. He invited visits from the ruling clergy of all sects; and while he expressed his own penitence, he received their devout exhortations with humility and reverence, as conveying clearer conviction and information than in his life he had ever before attained. Presents too, of which, as well as of flattery, these holy men were not insensible, were distributed among them, as a small retribution for their prayers and ghostly counsel. And by all these artifices, more than from any regard to the beauty of his genius, of which, during that time of furious cant and faction, small account would be made, he prevailed so far as to have his life spared, and a fine of ten thousand pounds accepted in lieu of it.[**]
The severity exercised against the conspiracy, or rather project of Waller, increased the authority of the parliament, and seemed to insure them against like attempts for the future. But by the progress of the king's arms, the defeat of Sir William Waller, the taking of Bristol, the siege of Gloucester, a cry for peace was renewed, and with more violence than ever. Crowds of women, with a petition for that purpose, flocked about the house, and were so clamorous and, importunate, that orders were given for dispersing them; and some of the females were killed in the fray.[***] Bedford, Holland, and Conway had deserted the parliament, and had gone to Oxford; Clare and Lovelace had followed them.[****] Northumberland had retired to his country seat: Essex himself showed extreme dissatisfaction, and exhorted the parliament to make peace.[v]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 325. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 255.
** Whitlocke, p. 66. Rush. vol. vi. p. 330. Clarendon, vol. iii p. 253, 254, etc.
*** Rush. vol. vi. p. 357.
**** Whitlocke, p. 67.
v Rush. vol. vi. p. 290.
The upper house sent down terms of accommodation, more moderate than had hitherto been insisted on. It even passed by a majority among the commons, that these proposals should be transmitted to the King. The zealots took the alarm. A petition against peace was framed in the city, and presented by Pennington, the factious mayor. Multitudes attended him, and renewed all the former menaces against the moderate party.[*] The pulpits thundered; and rumors were spread of twenty thousand Irish who had landed, and were to cut the throat of every Protestant.[**] The majority was again turned to the other side, and all thoughts of pacification being dropped, every preparation was made for resistance, and for the immediate relief of Gloucester, on which the parliament was sensible all their hopes of success in the war did so much depend.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 356.
** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 320. Rush, vol. vi. p. 588.
Massey, resolute to make a vigorous defence, and having under his command a city and garrison ambitious of the crown of martyrdom, had hitherto maintained the siege with courage and abilities, and had much retarded the advances of the king's army. By continual sallies he infested them in their trenches, and gained sudden advantages over them: by disputing every inch of ground, he repressed the vigor and alacrity of their courage, elated by former successes. His garrison, however, was reduced to the last extremity; and he failed not from time to time to inform the parliament that, unless speedily relieved, he should be necessitated, from the extreme want of provisions and ammunition, to open his gates to the enemy.
The parliament, in order to repair their broken condition, and put themselves in a posture of defence, now exerted to the utmost their power and authority. They voted that an army should be levied under Sir William Waller, whom, notwithstanding his misfortunes, they loaded with extraordinary caresses. Having associated in their cause the counties of Hertford, Essex, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, and Huntingdon, they gave the earl of Manchester a commission to be general of the association, and appointed an army to be levied under his command. But, above all, they were intent that Essex's army, on which their whole fortune depended, should be put in a condition of marching against the king. They excited afresh their preachers to furious declamations against the royal cause. They even employed the expedient of pressing, though abolished by a late law, for which they had strenuously contended.[*] And they engaged the city to send four regiments of its militia to the relief of Gloucester. All shops, meanwhile, were ordered to be shut; and every man expected, with the utmost anxiety, the event of that important enterprise.[**]
Essex, carrying with him a well-appointed army of fourteen thousand men, took the road of Bedford and Leicester: and though inferior in cavalry, yet, by the mere force of conduct and discipline, he passed over those open champaign country, and defended himself from the enemy's horse, who had advanced to meet him, and who infested him during his whole march. As he approached to Gloucester, the king was obliged to raise the siege, and open the way for Essex to enter that city. The necessities of the garrison were extreme. One barrel of powder was their whole stock of ammunition remaining; and their other provisions were in the same proportion. Essex had brought with him military stores; and the neighboring country abundantly supplied him with victuals of every kind. The inhabitants had carefully concealed all provisions from the king's army, and, pretending to be quite exhausted, had reserved their stores for that cause which they so much favored.[***]
The chief difficulty still remained. Essex dreaded a battle with the king's army, on account of its great superiority in cavalry; and he resolved to return, if possible, without running that hazard. He lay five days at Tewkesbury, which was his first stage after leaving Gloucester; and he feigned, by some preparations, to point towards Worcester. By a forced march during the night, he reached Cirencester, and obtained the double advantage of passing unmolested an open country, and of surprising a convoy of provisions which lay in that town.[****] Without delay he proceeded towards London; but when he reached Newbury, he was surprised to find that the king, by hasty marches, had arrived before him, and was already possessed of the place.
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 292.
** Rush, vol. vi. p. 292.
*** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 344.
**** Rush, vol. vi. p 292.
An action was now unavoidable; and Essex prepared for it with presence of mind, and not without military conduct. On both sides the battle was fought with desperate valor and a steady bravery. Essex's horse were several times broken by the king's, but his infantry maintained themselves in firm array; and, besides giving a continued fire, they presented an invincible rampart of pikes against the furious shock of Prince Rupert, and those gallant troops of gentry of which the royal cavalry was chiefly composed. The militia of London especially, though utterly unacquainted with action, though drawn hut a few days before from their ordinary occupations, yet having learned all military exercises, and being animated with unconquerable zeal for the cause in which they were engaged, equalled on this occasion what could be expected from the most veteran forces. While the armies were engaged with the utmost ardor, night put an end to the action and left the victory undecided. Next morning, Essex proceeded on his march; and though his rear was once put in some disorder by an incursion of the king's horse, he reached London in safety, and received applause for his conduct and success in the whole enterprise. The king followed him on his march; and having taken possession of Reading after the earl left it, he there established a garrison, and straitened by that means London and the quarters of the enemy.[*]
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 293. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 347.
In the battle of Newbury, on the part of the king, besides the earls of Sunderland and Carnarvon, two noblemen of promising hopes, was unfortunately slain, to the regret of every lover of ingenuity and virtue throughout the kingdom, Lucius Gary, Viscount Falkland, secretary of state. Before assembling the present parliament, this man, devoted to the pursuits of learning and to the society of all the polite and elegant, had enjoyed himself in every pleasure which a fine genius, a generous disposition, and an opulent fortune could afford. Called into public life, he stood foremost in all attacks on the high prerogatives of the crown; and displayed that masculine eloquence and undaunted love of liberty, which, from his intimate acquaintance with the sublime spirits of antiquity, he had greedily imbibed. When civil convulsions proceeded to extremities, and it became requisite for him to choose his side, he tempered the ardor of his zeal, and embraced the defence of those limited powers which remained to monarchy, and which he deemed necessary for the support of the English constitution. Still anxious, however, for his country, he seems to have dreaded the too prosperous success of his own party as much as of the enemy; and among his intimate friends often after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would with a sad accent reiterate the word peace. In excuse for the too free exposing of his person, which seemed unsuitable in a secretary of state, he alleged, that it became him to be more active than other men in all hazardous enterprises, lest his impatience for peace might bear the imputation of cowardice or pusillanimity. From the commencement of the war, his natural cheerfulness and vivacity became clouded; and even his usual attention to dress, required by his birth and station gave way to a negligence which was easily observable. On the morning of the battle in which he fell, he had shown some care of adorning his person; and gave for a reason, that the enemy should not find his body in any slovenly, indecent situation. "I am weary," subjoined he, "of the times, and foresee much misery to my country; but believe that I shall be out of it ere night."[*] This excellent person was but thirty-four years of age when a period was thus put to his life.
* Whitlocke, p. 70. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 350, 351, etc.
The loss sustained on both sides in the battle of Newbury, and the advanced season, obliged the armies to retire into winter quarters.
In the north, during this summer, the great interest and popularity of the earl, now created marquis of Newcastle, had raised a considerable force for the king; and great hopes of success were entertained from that quarter. There appeared, however, in opposition to him, two men on whom the event of the war finally depended, and who began about this time to be remarked for their valor and military conduct. These were Sir Thomas Fairfax, son of the lord of that name, and Oliver Cromwell. The former gained a considerable advantage at Wakefield over a detachment of royalists, and took General Goring prisoner: the latter obtained a victory at Gainsborough over a party commanded by the gallant Cavendish, who perished in the action. But both these defeats of the royalists were more than sufficiently compensated by the total rout of Lord Fairfax at Atherton Moor, and the dispersion of his army. After this victory, Newcastle, with an army of fifteen thousand men, sat down before Hull. Hotham was no longer governor of this place. That gentleman and his son partly from a jealousy entertained of Lord Fairfax, partly repenting of their engagements against the king, had entered into a correspondence with Newcastle, and had expressed an intention of delivering Hull into his hands. But their conspiracy being detected, they were arrested and sent prisoners to London; where, without any regard to their former services, they fell, both of them, victims to the severity of the parliament.[*]
Newcastle, having carried on the attack of Hull for some time, was beat off by a sally of the garrison, and suffered so much that he thought proper to raise the siege. About the same time, Manchester, who advanced from the eastern associated counties, having joined Cromwell and young Fairfax, obtained a considerable victory over the royalists at Horncastle; where the two officers last mentioned gained renown by their conduct and gallantry. And though fortune had thus balanced her favors, the king's party still remained much superior in those parts of England; and had it not been for the garrison of Hull, which kept Yorkshire in awe, a conjunction of the northern forces with the army in the south might have been made, and had probably enabled the king, instead of entering on the unfortunate, perhaps imprudent, enterprise of Gloucester, to march directly to London, and put an end to the war.[**]
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 275.
** Warwick, p. 261. Walker, p. 278. laudable.
While the military enterprises were carried on with vigor in England, and the event became every day more doubtful, both parties cast their eye towards the neighboring kingdoms, and sought assistance for the finishing of that enterprise in which their own forces experienced such furious opposition. The parliament had recourse to Scotland; the king to Ireland.
When the Scottish Covenanters obtained that end for which they so earnestly contended, the establishment of Presbyterian discipline in their own country, they were not satisfied, but indulged still in an ardent passion for propagating, by all methods, that mode of religion in the neighboring kingdoms. Having flattered themselves, in the fervor of their zeal, that by supernatural assistances they should be enabled to carry their triumphant covenant to the gates of Rome itself, it behoved them first to render it prevalent in England, which already showed so great a disposition to receive it. Even in the articles of pacification, they expressed a desire of uniformity in worship with England; and the king, employing general expressions, had approved of this inclination as pious and no sooner was there an appearance of a rupture, than the English parliament, in order to allure that nation into a close confederacy, openly declared their wishes of ecclesiastical reformation, and of imitating the example of their northern brethren.[*] When war was actually commenced, the same artifices were used, and the Scots beheld, with the utmost impatience, a scene of action of which they could not deem themselves indifferent spectators. Should the king, they said, be able by force of arms to prevail over the parliament of England, and reestablish his authority in that powerful kingdom, he will undoubtedly retract all those concessions which, with so many circumstances of violence and indignity, the Scots have extorted from him. Besides a sense of his own interest, and a regard to royal power, which has been entirely annihilated in this country, his very passion for prelacy and for religious ceremonies must lead him to invade a church which he has ever been taught to regard as anti-Christian and unlawful. Let us but consider who the persons are that compose the factions now so furiously engaged in arms. Does not the parliament consist of those very men who have ever opposed all war with Scotland, who have punished the authors of our oppressions, who have obtained us the redress of every grievance, and who, with many honorable expressions, have conferred on us an ample reward for our brotherly assistance? And is not the court full of Papists, prelates, malignants; all of them zealous enemies to our religious model, and resolute to sacrifice their lives for their idolatrous establishments? Not to mention our own necessary security can we better express our gratitude to Heaven for that pure light with which we are, above all nations, so eminently distinguished, than by conveying the same divine knowledge to our unhappy neighbors, who are wading through a sea of blood in order to attain it? These were in Scotland the topics of every conversation: with these doctrines the pulpits echoed: and the famous curse of Meroz, that curse so solemnly denounced and reiterated against neutrality and moderation, resounded from all quarters.[**]
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 390. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 68.
** Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof: because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Judges, chap. v ver. 23.
The parliament of England had ever invited the Scots, from the commencement of the civil dissensions, to interpose their mediation, which they knew would be so little favorable to the king: and the king for that very reason had ever endeavored, with the least offensive expressions, to decline it.[*] Early this spring, the earl of Loudon, the chancellor, with other commissioners, and attended by Henderson, a popular and intriguing preacher, was sent to the king at Oxford, and renewed the offer of mediation; but with the same success as before. The commissioners were also empowered to press the king on the article of religion, and to recommend to him the Scottish model of ecclesiastic worship and discipline. This was touching Charles in a very tender point: his honor his conscience, as well as his interest, he believed to be intimately concerned in supporting prelacy and the liturgy.[**] [14] He begged the commissioners, therefore, to remain satisfied with the concessions which he had made to Scotland; and having modelled their own church according to their own principles, to leave their neighbors in the like liberty, and not to intermeddle with affairs of which they could not be supposed competent judges.[***]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 398.
** See note N, at the end of the volume.
*** Bush. vol. vi. p. 462.
The divines of Oxford, secure, as they imagined, of a victory, by means of their authorities from church history, their quotations from the fathers, and their spiritual arguments, desired a conference with Henderson, and undertook by dint of reasoning to convert that great apostle of the north: but Henderson, who had ever regarded as impious the least doubt with regard to his own principles, and who knew of a much better way to reduce opponents than by employing any theological topics, absolutely refused all disputation or controversy. The English divines went away full of admiration at the blind assurance and bigoted prejudices of the man: he on his part was moved with equal wonder at their obstinate attachment to such palpable errors and delusions.
By the concessions which the king had granted to Scotland, it became necessary for him to summon a parliament once in three years; and in June of the subsequent year was fixed the period for the meeting of that assembly. Before that time elapsed, Charles flattered himself that he should be able, by some decisive advantage, to reduce the English parliament to a reasonable submission, and might then expect with security the meeting of a Scottish parliament. Though earnestly solicited by Loudon to summon presently that great council of the nation, he absolutely refused to give authority to men who had already excited such dangerous commotions, and who showed still the same disposition to resist and invade his authority. The commissioners, therefore, not being able to prevail in any of their demands, desired the king's passport for London, where they purposed to confer with the English parliament;[*] and being likewise denied this request, they returned with extreme dissatisfaction to Edinburgh.
The office of conservators of the peace was newly erected in Scotland, in order to maintain the confederacy between the two kingdoms; and these, instigated by the clergy, were resolved, since they could not obtain the king's consent, to summon in his name, but by their own authority, a convention of states; and to bereave their sovereign of this article, the only one which remained, of his prerogative. Under color of providing for national peace, endangered by the neighborhood of English armies, was a convention called; an assembly which though it meets with less solemnity, has the same authority as a parliament in raising money and levying forces. Hamilton, and his brother the earl of Laneric, who had been sent into Scotland in order to oppose, these measures, wanted either authority or sincerity; and passively yielded to the torrent. The general assembly of the church met at the same time with the convention; and exercising an authority almost absolute over the whole civil power, made every political consideration yield to their theological zeal and prejudices.
The English parliament was at that time fallen into great distress by the progress of the royal arms; and they gladly sent to Edinburgh commissioners, with ample powers to treat of a nearer union and confederacy with the Scottish nation. The persons employed were the earl of Rutland, Sir William Armyne, Sir Henry Vane the younger, Thomas Hatcher, and Henry Dailey, attended by Marshall and Nye, two clergymen of signal authority.[**]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 406.
** Whitlocke, p. 73. Rush. vol. vi. p. 466. Clarendon, vol. iii. p.300
In this negotiation, the man chiefly trusted was Vane, who, in eloquence, address, capacity, as well as in art and dissimulation, was not surpassed by any one even during that age, so famous for active talents. By his persuasion was framed, at Edinburgh, that Solemn League and Covenant, which effaced all former protestations and vows taken in both kingdoms, and long maintained its credit and authority. In this covenant, the subscribers, besides engaging mutually to defend each other against all opponents bound themselves to endeavor, without respect of persons the extirpation of Popery and prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, and profaneness; to maintain the rights and privileges of parliaments, together with the king's authority, and to discover and bring to justice all incendiaries and malignants.[*]
* Rush vol. vi. p. 478. Clarendon, vol iii. p. 373.
The subscribers of the covenant vowed also to preserve the reformed religion established in the church of Scotland; but, by the artifice of Vane, no declaration more explicit was made with regard to England and Ireland, than that these kingdoms should be reformed according to the word of God and the example of the purest churches. The Scottish zealots, when prelacy was abjured, deemed this expression quite free from ambiguity, and regarded their own model as the only one which corresponded in any degree to such a description: but that able politician had other views; and while he employed his great talents in overreaching the Presbyterians, and secretly laughed at their simplicity, he had blindly devoted himself to the maintenance of systems still more absurd and more dangerous.
In the English parliament there remained some members who, though they had been induced, either by private ambition or by zeal for civil liberty, to concur with the majority, still retained an attachment to the hierarchy, and to the ancient modes of worship. But in the present danger which threatened their cause, all scruples were laid aside; and the covenant, by whose means alone they could expect to obtain so considerable a reënforcement as the accession of the Scottish nation, was received without opposition. The parliament, therefore, having first subscribed it themselves, ordered it to be received by all who lived under their authority.
Great were the rejoicings among the Scots, that they should be the happy instruments of extending their mode of religion, and dissipating that profound darkness in which the neighboring nations were involved. The general assembly applauded this glorious imitation of the piety displayed by their ancestors who, they said, in three different applications, during the reign of Elizabeth, had endeavored to engage the English, by persuasion, to lay aside the use of the surplice, tippet, and corner-cap.[*] The convention, too, in the height of their zeal, ordered every one to swear to this covenant, under the penalty of confiscation; besides what further punishment it should please the ensuing parliament to inflict on the refusers, as enemies to God, to the king, and to the kingdom. And being determined that the sword should carry conviction to all refractory minds, they prepared themselves, with great vigilance and activity, for their military enterprises. By means of a hundred thousand pounds, which they received from England; by the hopes of good pay and warm quarters; not to mention men's favorable disposition towards the cause; they soon completed their levies. And having added to their other forces the troops which they had recalled from Ireland, they were ready, about the end of the year, to enter England, under the command of their old general, the earl of Leven, with an army of above twenty thousand men.[**]
* Rush., vol. vi. p 388.
** Clarendon, vol. iii. p 383.
The king, foreseeing this tempest which was gathering upon him, endeavored to secure himself by every expedient; and he cast his eye towards Ireland, in hopes that this kingdom, from which his cause had already received so much prejudice, might at length contribute somewhat towards his protection and security.
After the commencement of the Irish insurrection, the English parliament, though they undertook the suppression of it, had ever been too much engaged, either in military projects or expeditions at home, to take any effectual step towards finishing that enterprise. They had entered, indeed, into a contract with the Scots, for sending over an army of ten thousand men into Ireland; and in order to engage that nation in this undertaking, besides giving a promise of pay, they agreed to put Caricfergus into their hands, and to invest their general with an authority quite independent of the English government. These troops, so long as they were allowed to remain, were useful, by diverting the force of the Irish rebels, and protecting in the north the small remnants of the British planters. But except this contract with the Scottish nation, all the other measures of the parliament either were hitherto absolutely insignificant, or tended rather to the prejudice of the Protestant cause in Ireland. By continuing their violent persecution, and still more violent menaces against priests and Papists, they confirmed the Irish Catholics in their rebellion, and cut off all hopes of indulgence and toleration. By disposing beforehand of all the Irish forfeitures to subscribers or adventurers, they rendered all men of property desperate, and seemed to threaten a total extirpation of the natives.[*] And while they thus infused zeal and animosity into the enemy, no measure was pursued which could tend to support or encourage the Protestants, now reduced to the last extremities.
So great is the ascendant which, from a long course of successes, the English has acquired over the Irish nation, that though the latter, when they receive military discipline among foreigners, are not surpassed by any troops, they have never, in their own country, been able to make any vigorous effort for the defence or recovery of their liberties. In many rencounters, the English, under Lord More, Sir William St. Leger, Sir Frederic Hamilton, and others, had, though under great disadvantages of situation and numbers, put the Irish to rout, and returned in triumph to Dublin. The rebels raised the siege of Tredah, after an obstinate defence made by the garrison.[**] Ormond had obtained two complete victories at Kilrush and Ross; and had brought relief to all the forts which were besieged or blockaded in different parts of the kingdom.[***]
* A thousand acres in Ulster were given to every one that subscribed two hundred pounds, in Connaught to the subscribers of three hundred and fifty, in Munster for four hundred and fifty, in Leinster for six hundred.
* Rush vol. vi. p. 506.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 512.
But notwithstanding these successes, even the most common necessaries of life were wanting to the victorious armies. The Irish, in their wild rage against the British planters, had laid waste the whole kingdom, and were themselves totally unfit, from their habitual sloth and ignorance, to raise any convenience of human life. During the course of six months, no supplies had come from England, except the fourth part of one small vessel's lading. Dublin, to save itself from starving, had been obliged to send the greater part of its inhabitants to England. The army had little ammunition, scarcely exceeding forty barrels of gunpowder; not even shoes or clothes; and for want of food, the soldiers had been obliged to eat their own horses. And though the distress of the Irish was not much inferior,[*] besides that they were more hardened against such extremities, it was but a melancholy reflection, that the two nations, while they continued their furious animosities, should make desolate that fertile island, which might serve to the subsistence and happiness, of both.
The justices and council of Ireland had been engaged, chiefly by the interest and authority of Ormond, to fall into an entire dependence on the king. Parsons, Temple, Loftus, and Meredith, who favored the opposite party, had been removed; and Charles had supplied their place by others better affected to his service. A committee of the English house of commons, which had been sent over to Ireland in order to conduct the affairs of that kingdom, had been excluded the council, in obedience to orders transmitted from the king.[**] And these were reasons sufficient, besides the great difficulties under which they themselves labored, why the parliament was unwilling to send supplies to an army which, though engaged in a cause much favored by them, was commanded by their declared enemies. They even intercepted some small succors sent thither by the king.
The king, as he had neither money, arms, ammunition, nor provisions to spare from his own urgent wants, resolved to embrace an expedient which might at once relieve the necessities of the Irish Protestants, and contribute to the advancement of his affairs in England. A truce with the rebels, he thought, would enable his subjects in Ireland to provide for their own support, and would procure him the assistance of the army against the English parliament. But as a treaty with a people so odious for their barbarities, and still more for their religion, might be represented in invidious colors, and renew all those calumnies with which he had been loaded, it was necessary to proceed with great caution in conducting that measure. A remonstrance from the army was made to the Irish council, representing their intolerable necessities, and craving permission to leave the kingdom: and if that were refused, "We must have recourse," they said, "to that first and primary law with which God has endowed all men; we mean the law of nature, which teaches every creature to preserve itself."[***]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 555.
** Rush. vol. vi. p 530. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 167.
*** Rush. vol. vi. p. 537.
Memorials both to the king and parliament were transmitted by the justices and council, in which then wants and dangers are strongly set forth;[*] and though the general expressions in these memorials might perhaps be suspected of exaggeration, yet from the particular facts mentioned, from the confession of the English parliament itself,[**] and from the very nature of things, it is apparent that the Irish Protestants were reduced to great extremities;[***] and it became prudent in the king, if not absolutely necessary, to embrace some expedient which might secure them for a time from the ruin and misery with which they were threatened.
Accordingly the king gave orders[****] to Ormond and the justices to conclude, for a year, a cessation of arms with the council of Kilkenny, by whom the Irish were governed, and to leave both sides in possession of their present advantages. The parliament, whose business it was to find fault with every measure adopted by the opposite party, and who would not lose so fair an opportunity of reproaching the king with his favor to the Irish Papists, exclaimed loudly against this cessation. Among other reasons, they insisted upon the divine vengeance, which England might justly dread for tolerating anti-Christian idolatry, on pretence of civil contracts and political agreements.[v] Religion, though every day employed as the engine of their own ambitious purposes, was supposed too sacred to be yielded up to the temporal interests or safety of kingdoms.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 538.
** Rush, vol. vi. p. 540.
*** See further, Carte's Ormond, (vol. iii. No. 113, 127, 128, 129 134, 136, 141, 144, 149, 158, 159.) All these papers put it past doubt, that the necessities of the English army in Ireland were extreme. See further, Rush. vol. vi. p. 537. and Dugdale, p. *53 *54.
**** Rush. vol. vi p. 537, 544, 547
v Rush, vol. vi. p. 557.
After the cessation, there was little necessity, as well as no means of subsisting the army in Ireland. The king ordered Ormond, who was entirely devoted to him, to send over considerable bodies of it to England. Most of them continued in his service; but a small part, having imbibed in Ireland a strong animosity against the Catholics, and hearing the king's party universally reproached with Popery, soon after deserted to the Parliament.
Some Irish Catholics came over with these troops, and joined the royal army, where they continued the same cruelties and disorders to which they had been accustomed.[*] The parliament voted, that no quarter in any action should ever be given them; but Prince Rupert, by making some reprisals, soon repressed this inhumanity.[**]
* Whitlocke, p 78, 103.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 680, 788.