Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Lazar Liveanu and PG
Distributed Proofreaders





The History of England

From The First Invasion By The Romans To The Accession Of King George The
Fifth


BY

JOHN LINGARD, D.D. AND HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A.


With an Introduction By

HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS



IN ELEVEN VOLUMES



1912



CONTENTS of THE EIGHTH VOLUME.



CHAPTER I


CHARLES I.--_continued_.

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

Treaty proposed and refused.
Royalists.
Parliamentarians.
State of the two armies.
The king's protestation.
Battle of Edge Hill.
Action at Brentford.
King retires to Oxford.
State of the kingdom.
Treaty at Oxford.
Intrigues during the treaty.
Return of the Queen.
Fall of Reading.
Waller's plot.
Solemn vow and covenant.
Death of Hampden.
Actions of Sir William Waller.
The Lords propose a peace.
Are opposed by the Commons.
New preparations for war.
Battle of Newbury.
New great seal.
Commissioners sent to Scotland.
Solemn league and covenant.
Scots prepare for war.
Covenant taken in England.
Charles seeks aid from Ireland.
Federative assembly of the Catholics.
Their apologies and remonstrance.
Cessation concluded.
A French envoy.
Royal parliament at Oxford.
Propositions of peace.
Methods of raising money.
Battle of Nantwich.
Scottish army enters England.
Marches and Countermarches.
Rupert sent to relieve York.
Battle of Marston Moor.
Surrender of Newcastle.
Essex marches into the west.
His army capitulates.
Third Battle of Newbury.
Rise of Cromwell.
His quarrel with Manchester.
First self-denying ordinance.
Army new modelled.
Second self-denying ordinance.
Ecclesiastical concurrences.
Persecution of the Catholics.
Of the Episcopalians.
Synod of divines.
Presbyterians and Independents.
Demand of toleration.
New directory.
Trial of Archbishop Land.
His defence.
Bill of attainder.
Consent of the Lords.
Execution.


CHAPTER II.

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

Dissensions at court.
Proposal of treaty.
Negotiation at Uxbridge.
Demands of Irish Catholics.
Victories of Montrose in Scotland.
State of the two parties in England.
The army after the new model.
Battle of Naseby.
Its consequences.
Victory of Montrose at Kilsyth.
Surrender of Bristol.
Defeat of Royalists at Chester.
Of Lord Digby at Sherburn.
The king retires to Oxford.
His intrigues with the Irish.
Mission of Glamorgan.
Who concludes a secret treaty.
It is discovered.
Party violence among the parliamentarians.
Charles attempts to negotiate with them.
He disavows Glamorgan.
Who yet concludes a peace in Ireland.
King proposes a personal treaty.
Montreuil negotiates with the Scots.
Ashburnham with the Independents.
Charles escapes to the Scots.
The royalists retire from the contest.
King disputes with Henderson.
Motives of his conduct.
He again demands a personal conference.
Negotiation between the parliament and the Scots.
Expedients proposed by the king.
Scots deliver him up to the parliament.
He still expects aid from Ireland.
But is disappointed.
Religious disputes.
Discontent of the Independents.
And of the Presbyterians.


CHAPTER III.

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

The king at Holmby.
Character of Fairfax.
Opposition of the Independents.
Demands of the Army.
Refusal of parliament.
The army carries off the king.
Marches towards London.
And treats the king with indulgence.
The Independents are driven from parliament.
Charles refuses the offers of the army.
Which marches to London.
Enters the city.
And gives the law to the parliament.
The king listens to the counsels of the officers.
And intrigues against them.
Rise of the Levellers.
The king's escape.
He is secured in the Isle of Wight.
Mutiny suppressed.
King rejects four bills.
Vote of non-addresses.
King subjected to farther restraint.
Public opinion in his favour.
Levellers prevail in the army.
The Scots take up arms for the king.
Also the English royalists.
Feigned reconciliation of the army and the city.
Insurrection in Kent.
Presbyterians again superior in parliament.
Defeat of the Scots.
And of the earl of Holland.
Surrender of Colchester.
Prince of Wales in the Downs.
Treaty of Newport.
Plan of new constitution.
Hints of bringing the king to trial.
Petition for that purpose.
King's answer to the parliament.
His parting address to the commissioners.
He is carried away by the army.
Commons vote the agreement with the king.
The House of Commons is purified.
Cromwell returns from Scotland.
Independents prevail.
Resolution to proceed against the king.
Appointment of the High Court of Justice.
Hypocrisy of Cromwell.
Conduct of Fairfax.
King removed from Hurst Castle.
Few powers interest themselves in his favour.
Proceedings at the trial.
Behaviour of the king.
He proposes a private conference.
Is condemned.
Lady Fairfax.
King prepares for death.
Letter from the prince.
The king is beheaded.


CHAPTER IV.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

Establishment Of The Commonwealth--Punishment Of The Royalists--Mutiny And
Suppression Of The Levellers--Charles Ii Proclaimed In Scotland--Ascendancy
Of His Adherents In Ireland--Their Defeat At Rathmines--Success Of Cromwell
In Ireland--Defeat Of Montrose, And Landing Of Charles In Scotland-Cromwell
Is Sent Against Him--He Gains A Victory At Dunbar--The King Marches Into
England--Loses The Battle Of Worcester--His Subsequent Adventures And
Escape.

Abolition of the monarchy.
Appointment of a council of state.
Other changes.
Attempt to fill up the house.
Execution of the royalists.
Opposition of the Levellers.
Their demands.
Resisted by the government.
The mutineers suppressed.
Proceedings in Scotland.
Charles II proclaimed in Edinburgh.
Answer of the Scots.
Their deputies to the king.
Murder of Dr. Dorislaus.
State of Ireland.
Conduct of the nuncio.
His flight from Ireland.
Articles of peace.
Cromwell appointed to the command.
Treaty with O'Neil.
Cromwell departs for Ireland.
Jones gains the victory at Rathmines.
Cromwell lands.
Massacre at Drogheda.
Massacre at Wexford.
Cromwell's further progress.
Proceedings in Scotland.
Charles hesitates to accept the conditions offered by the commissioners.
Progress and defeat of Montrose.
His condemnation.
His death.
Charles lands in Scotland.
Cromwell is appointed to command in Scotland.
He marches to Edinburgh.
Proceedings of the Scottish kirk.
Expiatory declaration required from Charles.
He refuses and then assents.
Battle of Dunbar.
Progress of Cromwell.
The king escapes and is afterwards taken.
The godliness of Cromwell.
Dissensions among the Scots.
Coronation of Charles.
Cromwell lands in Fife.
Charles marches into England.
Defeat of the earl of Derby.
Battle of Worcester.
Defeat of the royalists.
The king escapes.
Loss of the royalists.
Adventures of the king at Whiteladies.
At Madeley.
In the royal oak.
At Moseley.
At Mrs. Norton's.
His repeated disappointments.
Charles escapes to France.


CHAPTER V.

Vigilance Of The Government--Subjugation Of Ireland--Of
Scotland--Negotiation With Portugal--With Spain--With The
United Provinces--Naval War--Ambition Of Cromwell--Expulsion Of
Parliament--Character Of Its Leading Members--Some Of Its Enactments.

The Commonwealth, a military government.
Opposition of Lilburne.
His trial and acquittal.
And banishment.
Plans of the royalists.
Discovered and prevented.
Execution of Love.
Transactions in Ireland.
Discontent caused by the king's declaration in Scotland.
Departure of Ormond.
Refusal to treat with the parliament.
Offer from the duke of Lorraine.
Treaty with that prince.
It is rejected.
Siege of Limerick.
Submission of the Irish.
State of Ireland.
Trials before the High Court of Justice.
Transportation of the natives.
First act of settlement.
Second act of settlement.
Transplantation.
Breach of articles.
Religious persecution.
Subjugation of Scotland.
Attempt to incorporate it with England.
Transactions with Portugal.
With Spain.
With United Provinces.
Negotiations at the Hague.
Transferred to London.
Recontre between Blake and Van Tromp.
The States deprecate a rupture.
Commencement of hostilities.
Success of De Ruyter.
Of Van Tromp over Blake.
Another battle between them.
Blake's victory.
Cromwell's ambition.
Discontent of the military.
Cromwell's intrigues.
His conference with Whitelock.
With the other leaders.
He expels the parliament.
And the council of state.
Addresses of congratulation.
Other proceedings of the late parliament.
Spiritual offences.
Reformation of law.
Forfeitures and sequestrations.
Religious intolerance.


CHAPTER VI.

THE PROTECTORATE.

Cromwell Calls The Little Parliament--Dissolves It--Makes Himself
Protector--Subjugation Of The Scottish Royalists--Peace With The Dutch--New
Parliament--Its Dissolution--Insurrection In England--Breach With
Spain--Troubles In Piedmont--Treaty With France.

Establishment of a new government.
Selection of members.
Meeting of Parliament.
Its character.
Prosecution of Lilburne.
His acquittal.
Parties in parliament.
Registration of births.
Taxes.
Reform of law.
Zeal for religion.
Anabaptist preachers.
Dissolution of parliament.
Cromwell assumes the office of protector.
Instrument of government.
He publishes ordinances.
Arrests his opponents.
Executes several royalists.
Executes Don Pantaleon Sa.
Executes a Catholic clergyman.
Conciliates the army in Ireland.
Subdues the Scottish royalists.
Incorporates Scotland.
Is courted by foreign powers.
War with the United Provinces.
Victory of the English.
The Dutch offer to negotiate.
Second victory.
Progress of the negotiation.
Articles of peace.
Secret treaty with Holland.
Negotiation with Spain.
Negotiation with France.
Negotiation respecting Dunkirk.
Cromwell comes to no decision.
The new parliament meets.
Is not favourable to his views.
Debates respecting the Instrument.
The protector's speech.
Subscription required from the members.
Cromwell falls from his carriage.
The parliament opposes his projects.
Reviews the instrument.
Is addressed by Cromwell.
And dissolved.
Conspiracy of the republicans.
Conspiracy of the royalists.
Executions.
Decimation.
Military government.
Cromwell breaks with Spain.
Secret expedition to the Mediterranean.
Another to the West Indies.
Its failure.
Troubles in Piedmont.
Insurrection of the Vaudois.
Cromwell seeks to protect them.
Sends an envoy to Turin.
Refuses to conclude the treaty with France.
The Vaudois submit and Cromwell signs the treaty.


CHAPTER VII.

Poverty And Character Of Charles Stuart--War With
Spain--Parliament--Exclusion Of Members--Punishment Of Naylor--Proposal
To Make Cromwell King--His Hesitation And Refusal--New
Constitution--Sindercomb--Sexby--Alliance With France--Parliament Of
Two Houses--Opposition In The Commons--Dissolution--Reduction Of
Dunkirk--Sickness Of The Protector--His Death And Character.

Poverty of Charles in his exile.
His court.
His amours.
His religion.
He offers himself an ally to Spain.
Account of Colonel Sexby.
Quarrel between the king and his brother.
Capture of a Spanish fleet.
Exclusion of members from parliament.
Speech of the protector.
Debate on exclusion.
Society of Friends.
Offence and punishment of Naylor.
Cromwell aspires to the title of king.
He complains of the judgment against Naylor.
Abandons the cause of the major-generals.
First mention of the intended change.
It is openly brought forward.
Opposition of the officers.
Cromwell's answer to them.
Rising of the Anabaptists.
Cromwell hesitates to accept the title.
Confers on it with the committee.
Seeks more time.
Resolves to accept the title.
Is deterred by the officers.
Refuses.
His second inauguration.
The new form of government.
Plot to assassinate him.
It is discovered.
Arrest and death of Sexby.
Blake's victory at Santa Cruz.
His death.
Alliance with France.
New parliament of two houses.
The Commons inquire into the rights of the other house.
Cromwell dissolves the parliament.
Receives addresses in consequence.
Arrival of Ormond.
Treachery of Willis.
Royal fleet destroyed.
Trials of royalists.
Execution of Slingsby and Hewet.
Battle of the Dunes.
Capitulation of Dunkirk.
Cromwell's greatness.
His poverty.
His fear of assassination.
His grief for his daughter's death.
His sickness.
His conviction of his recovery.
His danger.
His discourse.
His death.
His character.


CHAPTER VIII.

Richard Cromwell Protector--Parliament Called--Dissolved--Military
Government--Long Parliament Restored--Expelled Again--Reinstated--Monk In
London--Re-Admission Of Secluded Members--Long Parliament Dissolved--The
Convention Parliament--Restoration Of Charles II.

The two sons of Cromwell.
Richard succeeds his father.
Discontent of the army.
Funeral of Oliver.
Foreign transactions.
New parliament.
Parties in parliament.
Recognition of Richard.
And of the other house.
Charges against the late government.
The officers petition.
The parliament dissolved.
The officers recall the long parliament.
Rejection of the members formerly excluded.
Acquiescence of the different armies.
Dissension between parliament and the officers.
The officers obliged to accept new commissions.
Projects of the royalists.
Rising in Cheshire.
It is suppressed.
Renewal of the late dissension.
Expulsion of the parliament.
Government by the council of officers.
Monk's opposition.
His secrecy.
Lambert sent against him.
Parliament restored.
Its first acts.
Monk marches to York.
Monk marches to London.
Mutiny in the capital.
Monk addresses the house.
He is ordered to chastise the citizens.
He joins them.
Admits the secluded members.
Perplexity of the royalists.
Proceedings of the house.
Proceedings of the general.
Dissolution of the long parliament.
Monk's Interview with Grenville.
His message to the king.
The elections.
Rising under Lambert.
Influence of the Cavaliers in the new Parliament.
The king's letters delivered.
Declaration from Breda.
The two houses recall the King.
Charles lands at Dover.
Charles enters London.


NOTES


       *       *       *       *       *


HISTORY OF ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.


CHARLES I.--(_Continued._)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Journals, June 6.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the pacific party had to contend with men of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Warwick, 247]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2: Journals, v. 226.]

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2: Carte, iii. 90.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This disastrous battle extinguished the power of the

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 504.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

standard of orthodoxy and patriotism admitted at Westminster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER II.


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles, during his stay at Newark, was made to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2: See the same.]

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Birch, 189.]

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

For ten days the public mind in the capital had been

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to the character of the nation ought not to be lightly admitted. It is,
indeed, true that fanaticism and self-interest had steeled the breasts
of the Covenanters against the more generous impulses of loyalty and
compassion; and that, by the delivery of the king to his enemies, they
violated their previous pledge of personal safety, which, if once given,
though by word only, ought to have been sacredly fulfilled. But there is
no ground for the statement, that they held out promises to delude the
unfortunate prince. It was with reluctance that they consented to receive
him at all; and, when at last he sought an asylum in their army, he came
thither, not allured by invitation from them, but driven by necessity and
despair. 2. If the delivery of the royal person, connected as it was with
the receipt of £200,000, bore the appearance of a sale, it ought to be
remembered, that the accounts between the two nations had been adjusted in
the beginning of September; that for four months afterwards the Scots never
ceased to negotiate in favour of Charles; nor did they resign the care of
his person, till the votes of the English parliament compelled them to make
the choice between compliance or war. It may be, that in forming their
decision their personal interest was not forgotten; but there was another
consideration which had no small weight even with the friends of the
monarch. It was urged that by suffering the king to reside at Holmby, they
would do away with the last pretext for keeping on foot the army under
the command of Fairfax; the dissolution of that army would annihilate the
influence of the Independents, and give an undisputed ascendancy to the
Presbyterians; the first the declared enemies, the others the avowed
advocates of Scotland, of the kirk, and of the king; and the necessary
consequence must be, that the two parliaments would be left at liberty
to arrange, in conformity with the covenant, both the establishment of
religion and the restoration of the throne.[1]

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


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

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

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

Your constant friend,

CHARLES R."[1]

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

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

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

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

Before the conclusion of this chapter, it will be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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




CHAPTER III.


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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 335.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2: Journals, Dec. 3, 13, 14, 20. Whitelock, 362, 363. Clarendon
Papers, ii. App. xlix.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Dec. 13.]

they were soon called upon to pass a vote, the very mention of which a few
years before would have struck the boldest among them with astonishment and
terror.

It had long been the conviction of the officers that the life of the king
was incompatible with their safety. If he were restored, they would become
the objects of royal vengeance; if he were detained in prison, the public
tranquillity would be disturbed by a succession of plots in his favour. In
private assassination there was something base and cowardly from which the
majority revolted; but to bring him to public justice, was to act openly
and boldly; it was to proclaim their confidence in the goodness of their
cause; to give to the world a splendid proof of the sovereignty of the
people and of the responsibility of kings.[1][a] When the motion was made
in the Commons, a few ventured to oppose it, not so much with the hope of
saving the life of Charles, as for the purpose of transferring the odium of
his death on its real authors. They suggested that the person of the king
was sacred; that history afforded no precedent of a sovereign compelled
to plead before a court of judicature composed of his own subjects; that
measures of vengeance could only serve to widen the bleeding wounds of the
country; that it was idle to fear any re-action in favour of the monarch,
and it was now time to settle on a permanent basis the liberties of the
country. But their opponents were clamorous, obstinate, and menacing. The
king, they maintained, was the capital delinquent; justice required that he
should suffer as well as the minor offenders. He had been guilty of treason
against the people, it remained for _their_ representatives to bring

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, Hist. iii. 249.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 29.]

him to punishment; he had shed the blood of man, God made it a duty to
demand his blood in return. The opposition was silenced; and a committee of
thirty-eight members was appointed to receive information and to devise the
most eligible manner of proceeding. Among the more influential names were
those of Widdrington and Whitelock, Scot and Marten. But the first two
declined to attend; and, when the clerk brought them a summons, retired
into the country.[1]

[a]At the recommendation of this committee, the house passed a vote
declaratory of the law, that it was high treason in the king of England,
for the time being, to levy war against the parliament and kingdom of
England; and this was followed up with an ordinance erecting a high court
of justice to try the question of fact, whether Charles Stuart, king
of England, had or had not been guilty of the treason described in the
preceding vote. But the subserviency of the Commons was not imitated by the
Lords. They saw the approaching ruin of their own order in the fall of the
sovereign; and when the vote and ordinance were transmitted to their house,
they rejected both without a dissentient voice, and then adjourned for a
week.[b] This unexpected effort surprised, but did not disconcert, the
Independents.[c] They prevailed on the Commons to vote that the people are
the origin of all just power, and from this theoretical truth proceeded to
deduce two practical falsehoods. As if no portion of that power had been
delegated to the king and the lords, they determined that "the Commons
of England assembled in parliament, being chosen by and representing the
people, have the supreme authority:" and thence inferred

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 23. Whitelock, 363.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 1.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan. 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Jan. 4.]

that "whatsoever is enacted and declared for law by the Commons in
parliament hath force of law, and concludes all the people of the nation,
although the consent and concurrence of the king and the House of Peers
be not had thereunto." But even in that hypothesis, how could the house,
constituted as it then was, claim to be the representative of the people?
It was in fact the representative of the army only, and not a free but an
enslaved representative, bound to speak with the voice, and to enregister
the decrees of its masters.[1] Two days later an act for the trial of the
king was passed by the authority of the Commons only.

In the mean while Cromwell continued to act his accustomed part. Whenever
he rose in the house, it was to recommend moderation, to express the doubts
which agitated his mind, to protest that, if he assented to harsh and
ungracious measures, he did it with reluctance, and solely in obedience to
the will of the Almighty. Of his conduct during the debate on the king's
trial we have no account; but when it was suggested to dissolve the upper
house, and transfer its members to that of the Commons, he characterized
the proposal as originating in revolutionary phrensy; and, on the
introduction of a bill to alter the form of the great seal, adopted a
language which strongly marks the hypocrisy of the man, though it was
calculated to make impression on the fanatical minds of his hearers.[a]
"Sir," said he, addressing the speaker, "if any man whatsoever have carried
on this design of deposing the king, and disinheriting his posterity, or if
any man have still such a design, he must be the greatest

[Footnote 1: Journals, x. 641. Commons, Jan. 1, 2, 4, 6. Hitherto the Lords
had seldom exceeded seven in number; but on this occasion they amounted to
fourteen--Leicester's Journal, 47.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 9.]

traitor and rebel in the world; but since the providence of God has cast
this upon us, I cannot but submit to Providence, though I am not yet
prepared to give you my advice."[1]

The lord general, on the contrary, began to assume a more open and a bolder
tone. Hitherto, instead of leading, he had been led. That he disapproved of
much that had been done, we may readily believe; but he only records his
own weakness, where he alleges in excuse of his conduct that his name had
been subscribed to the resolves of the council, whether he consented or
not. He had lately shed the blood of two gallant officers at Colchester,
but no solicitations could induce him to concur in shedding the blood of
the king. His name stood at the head of the commissioners: he attended at
the first meeting, in which no business was transacted, but he constantly
refused to be present at their subsequent sittings, or to subscribe his
name to their resolutions.[A] This conduct surprised and mortified the
Independents: it probably arose from the influence of his wife, whose
desperate

[Footnote 1: For Cromwell's conduct see the letters in the Appendix to the
second volume of the Clarendon Papers, 1. li. The authenticity of this
speech has been questioned, as resting solely on the treacherous credit of
Perrinchiefe; but it occurs in a letter written on the 11th of January,
which describes the proceedings of the 9th, and therefore cannot, I think,
be questioned. By turning to the Journals, it will be found that on that
day the house had divided on a question whether any more messages should
be received from the Lords, which was carried, in opposition to Ludlow and
Marten. "Then," says the letter, "they fell on the business of the king's
trial." On this head nothing is mentioned in the Journals; but a motion
which would cause frequent allusions to it, was made and carried. It was
for a new great seal, on which should be engraven the House of Commons,
with this inscription:--"In the first year of freedom, by God's blessing
restored, 1648." Such a motion would naturally introduce Cromwell's speech
respecting the deposition of the king and the disherison of his posterity.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 3.]

loyalty will soon challenge the attention of the reader.[1]

Before this the king, in anticipation of his subsequent trial, had
been removed to the palace of St.[a] James's. In the third week of his
confinement in Hurst Castle, he was suddenly roused out of his sleep at
midnight by the fall of the drawbridge and the trampling of horses. A
thousand frightful ideas rushed on his mind, and at an early hour in the
morning, he desired his servant Herbert to ascertain the cause; but every
mouth was closed, and Herbert returned with the scanty information that a
Colonel Harrison had arrived. At the name the king turned pale, hastened
into the closet, and sought to relieve his terrors by private devotion. In
a letter which he had received at Newport, Harrison had been pointed out to
him as a man engaged to take his life. His alarm, however, was unfounded.
Harrison was a fanatic, but no murderer: he sought, indeed, the blood of
the king, but it was his wish that it should be shed by the axe of the
executioner, not by the dagger of the assassin. He had been appointed to
superintend the removal of the royal captive, and had come to arrange
matters with the governor, of whose fidelity some suspicion existed.
Keeping himself private during the days he departed in the night; and two
days later Charles was conducted with a numerous[b] escort to the royal
palace of Windsor.[2]

Hitherto, notwithstanding his confinement, the king had always been
served with the usual state; but at Windsor his meat was brought to table
uncovered and[c] by the hands of the soldiers; no say was given; no

[Footnote 1: Nalson, Trial of Charles I. Clarendon Papers, ii. App. ii.]

[Footnote 2: Herbert, 131-136, Rushworth, vii. 1375.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Dec. 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Dec. 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. Dec. 27.]

cup presented on the knee. This absence of ceremony made on the unfortunate
monarch a deeper impression than could have been expected. It was, he said,
the denial of that to him, which by ancient custom was due to many of his
subjects; and rather than submit to the humiliation, he chose to diminish
the number of the dishes, and to take his meals in private. Of the
proceedings against him he received no official intelligence; but he
gleaned the chief particulars through the inquiries of Herbert, and in
casual conversation with Witchcott the governor. The information was
sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; but Charles was of a most sanguine
temperament, and though he sought to fortify his mind against the worst, he
still cherished a hope that these menacing preparations were only intended
to extort from him the resignation of his crown. He relied on the
interposition of the Scots, the intercession of foreign powers, and the
attachment of many of his English subjects. He persuaded himself that his
very enemies would blush to shed the blood of their sovereign; and that
their revenge would be appeased, and their ambition sufficiently gratified,
by the substitution in his place of one of his younger children on the
throne.[1]

But these were the dreams of a man who sought to allay his fears by
voluntary delusions. The princes of Europe looked with cold indifference
on his fate. The king of Spain during the whole contest had maintained a
friendly correspondence with the parliament. Frederic III. king of Denmark,
though he was his

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 155, 157. Whitelock, 365. Sir John Temple attributed
his tranquillity "to a strange conceit of Ormond's working for him in
Ireland. He still hangs upon that twigg; and by the enquireys he made after
his and Inchiquin's conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."--In
Leicester's Journal, 48.]

cousin-german, made no effort to save his life; and Henrietta could obtain
for him no interposition from France, where the infant king had been
driven from his capital by civil dissension, and she herself depended for
subsistence on the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, the leader of the
Fronde.[1] The Scottish parliament, indeed, made a feeble effort in his
favour. The commissioners subscribed a protest against the proceedings
of the Commons, by whom it was never answered; and argued the case with
Cromwell, who referred them to the covenant, and maintained, that if it was
their duty to punish the malignants in general, it was still more so to
punish him who was the chief of the malignants.[2]

As the day of trial approached, Charles resigned the hopes which he had
hitherto indulged; and his removal to Whitehall admonished him to
prepare for that important scene on which he was soon to appear. Without
information or advice, he could only resolve to maintain the port and
dignity of a king, to refuse the authority of his judges, and to commit no
act unworthy of his exalted rank and that of his ancestors.[a] On the 20th
of January the commissioners appointed by the act assembled in the painted
chamber, and proceeded in state to the upper end of Westminster Hall.[b]
A chair of crimson velvet had been placed for the lord president, John
Bradshaw, serjeant-at-law; the others, to the number of sixty-six, ranged
themselves on either side, on benches covered with scarlet; at the feet
of the president sat two clerks at a table on which lay the sword and the
mace; and directly opposite stood a chair intended for the king. After the
preliminary

[Footnote 1: Memoirs of Retz, i. 261.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Jan. 6, 22, 23. Parl. Hist. iii. 1277. Burnett's Own
Times, i. 42.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan 19]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan 20]

formalities of reading the commission, and calling over the members,
Bradshaw ordered the prisoner to be introduced.[1]

Charles was received at the door by the serjeant-at-arms, and conducted by
him within the bar. His step was firm, his countenance erect and unmoved.
He did not uncover; but first seated himself, then rose, and surveyed the
court with an air of superiority, which abashed and irritated his enemies.
While the clerk read the charge, he appeared to listen with indifference;
but a smile of contempt was seen to quiver on his lips at the passage which
described him as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public and implacable
enemy to the commonwealth of England." At the conclusion Bradshaw called on
him to answer; but he demanded by what lawful authority he had been brought
thither. He was king of England; he acknowledged no superior upon earth;
and the crown, which he had received from his ancestors, he would transmit
unimpaired by any act of his to his posterity. His case, moreover, was the
case of all the people of England; for if force without law could alter the
fundamental laws of the kingdom, there was no man who could be secure of
his life or liberty for an hour. He was told that the court sat by the
authority of the House of

[Footnote 1: The commissioners according to the act (for bills passed by
the Commons alone were now denominated acts), were in number 133, chosen
out of the lower house, the inns of court, the city, and the army. In one
of their first meetings they chose Bradshaw for their president. He was a
native of Cheshire, bred to the bar, had long practised in the Guildhall,
and had lately before been made serjeant. In the first list of
commissioners his name did not occur; but on the rejection of the ordinance
by the upper house, the names of six lords were erased, and his name with
those of five others was substituted. He obtained for the reward of his
services the estate of Lord Cottington, the chancellorship of the duchy of
Lancaster, and the office of president of the council.]

Commons. But where, he asked, were the Lords? Were the Commons the whole
legislature? Were they free? Were they a court of judicature? Could they
confer on others a jurisdiction which they did not possess themselves? He
would never acknowledge an usurped authority. It was a duty imposed upon
him by the Almighty to disown every lawless power, that invaded either the
rights of the crown or the liberties of the subject. Such was the substance
of his discourse, delivered on three different days, and amidst innumerable
interruptions from the president, who would not suffer the jurisdiction of
the court to be questioned, and at last ordered the "default and contempt
of the prisoner" to be recorded.

The two following days the court sat in private, to receive evidence that
the king had commanded in several engagements, and to deliberate on the
form of judgment to be pronounced.[a] On the third Bradshaw took his seat,
dressed in scarlet; and Charles immediately demanded to be heard. He did
not mean, he said, on this occasion either to acknowledge or deny the
authority of the court; his object was to ask a favour, which would
spare them the commission of a great crime, and restore the blessing of
tranquillity to his people. He asked permission to confer with a joint
committee of the Lords and Commons. The president replied that the proposal
was not altogether new, though it was now made for the first time by
the king himself; that it pre-supposed the existence of an authority
co-ordinate with that of the Commons, which could not be admitted; that
its object could only be to delay the proceedings of the court, now that
judgment was to be pronounced. Here he was interrupted by the earnest
expostulation of Colonel Downes, one of the members. The king was
immediately

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 27.]

removed; the commissioners adjourned into a neighbouring apartment, and
almost an hour was spent in private and animated debate. Had the conference
been granted, Charles would have proposed (so at least it was understood)
to resign the crown in favour of the prince of Wales.

When the court resumed, Bradshaw announced to him the refusal of his
request, and proceeded to animadvert in harsh and unfeeling language on the
principal events of his reign. The meek spirit of the prisoner was roused;
he made an attempt to speak, but was immediately silenced with the remark,
that the time for his defence was past; that he had spurned the numerous
opportunities offered to him by the indulgence of the court; and that
nothing remained for his judges but to pronounce sentence; for they had
learned from holy writ that "to acquit the guilty was of equal abomination
as to condemn the innocent." The charge was again read, and was followed by
the judgment, "that the court, being satisfied in conscience that he, the
said Charles Stuart, was guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused,
did adjudge him as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the
good people of the nation, to be put to death by severing his head from
his body." The king heard it in silence, sometimes smiling with contempt,
sometimes raising his eyes to heaven, as if he appealed from the malice of
men to the justice of the Almighty. At the conclusion the commissioners
rose in a body to testify their assent, and Charles made a last and more
earnest effort to speak; but Bradshaw ordered him to be removed, and the
guards hurried him out of the hall.[1]

[Footnote 1: See the Trial of Charles Stuart, with additions by Nalson,
folio, London, 1735.]


During this trial a strong military force had been kept under arms to
suppress any demonstration of popular feeling in favour of the king. On
the first day, when the name of Fairfax, as one of the commissioners, was
called, a female voice cried from the gallery, "He has more wit than to be
here." On another occasion, when Bradshaw attributed the charge against the
king to the consentient voice of the people of England, the same female
voice exclaimed, "No, not one-tenth of the people." A faint murmur of
approbation followed, but was instantly suppressed by the military.
The speaker was recognised to be Lady Fairfax, the wife of the
commander-in-chief; and these affronts, probably on that account, were
suffered to pass unnoticed.[1]

When Coke, the solicitor-general, opened the pleadings, the king gently
tapped him on the shoulder with his cane, crying, "Hold, hold." At the same
moment the silver head of the cane fell off, and rolled on the floor.
It was an accident which might have happened at any time; but in this
superstitions age it could not fail to be taken for an omen. Both his
friends and enemies interpreted it as a presage of his approaching
decapitation.[2]

On one day, as the king entered the court, he heard behind him the cry of
"Justice, justice;" on another, as he passed between two lines of soldiers,
the word "execution" was repeatedly sounded in his ears. He bore these
affronts with patience, and on

[Footnote 1: Nalson's Trial. Clarendon, iii. 254. State Trials, 366, 367,
368, folio, 1730.]

[Footnote 2: Nalson. Herbert, 165. "He seemed unconcerned; yet told the
bishop, it really made a great impression on him; and to this hour, says
he, I know not possibly how it should come."--Warwick, 340.]

his return said to Herbert, "I am well assured that the soldiers bear me no
malice. The cry was suggested by their officers, for whom they would do the
like if there were occasion."[1]

On his return from the hall, men and women crowded behind the guards,
and called aloud, "God preserve your majesty." But one of the soldiers
venturing to say, "God bless you, Sir," received a stroke on the head
from an officer with his cane. "Truly," observed the king, "I think the
punishment exceeded the offence."[2]

By his conduct during these proceedings, Charles had exalted his character
even in the estimation of his enemies: he had now to prepare himself for a
still more trying scene, to nerve his mind against the terrors of a public
and ignominious death. But he was no longer the man he had been before
the civil war. Affliction had chastened his mind; he had learned from
experience to submit to the visitations of Providence; and he sought and
found strength and relief in the consolations of religion. The next day,
the Sunday, was spent by him at St. James's, by the commissioners at
Whitehall.[a] _They_ observed a fast, preached on the judgments of God,
and prayed for a blessing on the commonwealth. _He_ devoted his time to
devotional exercises in the company of Herbert and of Dr. Juxon, bishop of
London, who at the request of Hugh Peters (and it should be recorded to
the honour of that fanatical preacher) had been permitted to attended the
monarch. His nephew the prince elector, the duke of Richmond, the
marquess of Hertford, and several other noblemen, came to the door of his
bedchamber, to pay their last respects to

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 163, 164.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 163, 165.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 28.]

their sovereign; but they were told in his name that he thanked them for
their attachment, and desired their prayers; that the shortness of his time
admonished him to think of another world; and that the only moments which
he could spare must be given to his children. These were two, the Princess
Elizabeth and the duke of Gloucester, the former wept for her father's
fate; the latter, too young to understand the cause, joined his tears
through sympathy. Charles placed them on his knees, gave them such advice
as was adapted to their years, and seemed to derive pleasure from the
pertinency of their answers. In conclusion, he divided a few jewels between
them, kissed them, gave them his blessings and hastily retired to his
devotions.[1]

On the last night of his life he slept soundly about four hours, and early
in the morning[a] awakened Herbert, who lay on a pallet by his bed-side.
"This," he said, "is my second marriage-day. I would be as trim as may
be; for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus." He then
pointed out the clothes which he meant to wear, and ordered two shirts,
on account of the severity of the weather; "For," he observed, "were I to
shake through cold, my enemies would attribute it to fear, I would have no
such imputation. I fear not death. Death is not terrible to me. I bless my
God I am prepared."[2]

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 169-180. State Trials, 357-360.]

[Footnote 2: Herbert, 183-185, I may here insert an anecdote, which seems
to prove that Charles attributed his misfortunes in a great measure to the
counsels of Archbishop Laud. On the last night of his life, he had observed
that Herbert was restless during his sleep, and in the morning insisted on
knowing the cause. Herbert answered that he was dreaming. He saw Laud
enter the room; the king took him aside, and spoke to him with a pensive
countenance; the archbishop sighed, retired, and fell prostrate on the
ground. Charles replied, "It is very remarkable; but he is dead. Yet had we
conferred together during life, 'tis very likely (albeit I loved him
well) I should have said something to him, might have occasioned his
sigh."--Herbert's Letter to Dr. Samways, published at the end of his
Memoirs, p. 220.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.]


The king spent an hour in privacy with the bishop; Herbert was afterwards
admitted; and about ten o'clock Colonel Hacker announced that it was time
to proceed to Whitehall. He obeyed, was conducted on foot, between two
detachments of military, across the park, and received permission to repose
himself in his former bedchamber. Dinner had been prepared for him; but he
refused to eat, though afterwards, at the solicitation of the bishop, he
took the half of a manchet and a glass of wine. Here he remained almost
two hours, in constant expectation of the last summons, spending his time
partly in prayer and partly in discourse with Dr. Juxon. There might have
been nothing mysterious in the delay; if there was, it may perhaps be
explained from the following circumstances.

Four days had now elapsed since the arrival of ambassadors from the Hague
to intercede in his favour. It was only on the preceding evening that they
had obtained audiences of the two houses, and hitherto no answer had been
returned. In their company came Seymour, the bearer of two letters from the
prince of Wales, one addressed to the king, the other to the Lord Fairfax.
He had already delivered the letter, and with it a sheet of blank paper
subscribed with the name and sealed with the arms of the prince. It was
the price which he offered to the grandees of the army for the life of his
father. Let them fill it up with the conditions: whatever they might be,
they were already granted; his seal and signature were affixed.[1] It is
not improbable that this offer may have induced the leaders to pause. That
Fairfax laboured to postpone the execution, was always asserted by his
friends; and we have evidence to prove that, though he was at Whitehall, he
knew not, or at least pretend not to know, what was passing.[2]

In the mean while Charles enjoyed the consolation of learning that his
son had not forgotten him in his distress. By the indulgence of Colonel
Tomlinson, Seymour was admitted, delivered the letter, and received the
royal instructions for the prince. He was hardly gone, when Hacker arrived
with the fatal summons. About two o'clock the king proceeded through the
long gallery, lined on each side with soldiers, who, far from insulting the
fallen monarch, appeared by their sorrowful looks to sympathize with his
fate. At the end an aperture had been made in the wall, through which he
stepped at once upon the scaffold. It was hung with black; at the farther
end were seen the two executioners, the block, and the axe; below

[Footnote 1: For the arrival of the ambassadors see the Journals of the
House of Commons on the 26th. A fac-simile of the carte-blanche, with the
signature of the prince, graces the title-page of the third volume of the
Original Letters, published by Mr. Ellis.]

[Footnote 2: "Mean time they went into the long gallery, where, chancing to
meet the general, he ask'd Mr. Herbert how the king did? Which he
thought strange.... His question being answered, the general seem'd much
surprised."--Herbert, 194. It is difficult to believe that Herbert could
have mistaken or fabricated such a question, or that Fairfax would have
asked it, had he known what had taken place. To his assertion that
Fairfax was with the officers in Harrison's room, employed in "prayer or
discourse," it has been objected that his name does not occur among the
names of those who were proved to have been there at the trial of the
regicides. But that is no contradiction. The witnesses speak of what
happened before, Herbert of what happened during, the execution. See also
Ellis, 2nd series, iii. 345.]

appeared in arms several regiments of horse and foot; and beyond, as far
as the eye was permitted to reach, waved a dense and countless crowd of
spectators. The king stood collected and undismayed amidst the apparatus
of death. There was in his countenance that cheerful intrepidity, in his
demeanour that dignified calmness, which had characterized, in the hall of
Fotheringay, his royal grandmother, Mary Stuart. It was his wish to address
the people; but they were kept beyond the reach of his voice by the swords
of the military; and therefore confining his discourse to the few persons
standing with him on the scaffold, he took, he said, that opportunity of
denying in the presence of his God the crimes of which he had been accused.
It was not to him, but to the houses of parliament, that the war and all
its evils should be charged. The parliament had first invaded the rights of
the crown by claiming the command of the army; and had provoked hostilities
by issuing commissions for the levy of forces, before he had raised a
single man. But he had forgiven all, even those, whoever they were (for he
did not desire to know their names), who had brought him to his death. He
did more than forgive them, he prayed that they might repent. But for that
purpose they must do three things; they must render to God his due, by
settling the church according to the Scripture; they must restore to the
crown those rights which belonged to it by law; and they must teach the
people the distinction between the sovereign and the subject; those persons
could not be governors who were to be governed, _they_ could not rule,
whose duty it was to obey. Then, in allusion to the offers formerly made
to him by the army, he concluded with, these words:--"Sirs, it was for the
liberties of the people that I am come here. If I would have assented to an
arbitrary sway, to have all things changed according to the power of the
sword, I needed not to have come hither; and therefore, I tell you (and
I pray God it be not laid to your charge), that I am the martyr of the
people."

Having added, at the suggestion of Dr. Juxon, "I die a Christian according
to the profession of the church of England, as I found it left me by my
father," he said, addressing himself to the prelate, "I have on my side a
good cause, and a gracious God."

BISHOP.--There is but one stage more; it is turbulent and troublesome, but
a short one. It will carry you from earth to heaven, and there you will
find joy and comfort.

KING.--I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown.

BISHOP.--You exchange an earthly for an eternal crown--a good exchange.

Being ready, he bent his neck on the block, and after a short pause,
stretched out his hand as a signal. At that instant the axe descended; the
head rolled from the body; and a deep groan burst from the multitude of the
spectators. But they had no leisure to testify their feelings; two troops
of horse dispersed them in different directions.[1]

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 189-194. Warwick, 344. Nalson, Trial of Charles
Stuart. The royal corpse, having been embalmed, was after some days
delivered to the earl of Richmond for private interment at Windsor. That
nobleman, accompanied by the marquess of Hertford, the earls of Southampton
and Lindsey, Dr. Juxon, and a few of the king's attendants, deposited it in
a vault in the choir of St. George's chapel, which already contained the
remains of Henry VIII. and of his third queen, Jane Seymour.--Herbert, 203.
Blencowe, Sydney Papers, 64. Notwithstanding such authority, the assertion
of Clarendon that the place could not be discovered threw some doubt upon
the subject. But in 1813 it chanced that the workmen made an aperture in a
vault corresponding in situation, and occupied by three coffins; and the
prince-regent ordered an investigation to ascertain the truth. One of the
coffins, in conformity with the account of Herbert, was of lead, with a
leaden scroll in which were cut the words "King Charles." In the upper lid
of this an opening was made; and when the cerecloth and unctuous
matter were removed, the features of the face, as far as they could be
distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles I.
To complete the proof, the head was found to have been separated from the
trunk by some sharp instrument, which had cut through the fourth, vertebra
of the neck.--See "An Account of what appeared on opening the coffin of
King Charles I. by Sir Henry Halford, bart." 1813. It was observed at the
same time, that "the lead coffin of Henry VIII. had been beaten in about
the middle, and a considerable opening in that part exposed a mere skeleton
of the king." This may, perhaps, be accounted for from a passage in
Herbert, who tells us that while the workmen were employed about the
inscription, the chapel was cleared, but a soldier contrived to conceal
himself, descended into the vault, cut off some of the velvet pall, and
"wimbled a hole into the largest coffin." He was caught, and "a bone was
found about him, which, he said, he would haft a knife with."--Herbert 204.
See note (C).]


Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles Stuart; an awful lesson to
the possessors of royalty, to watch the growth of public opinion, and to
moderate their pretensions in conformity with the reasonable desires of
their subjects. Had he lived at a more early period, when the sense of
wrong was quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his reign would
probably have been marked with fewer violations of the national liberties.
It was resistance that made him a tyrant. The spirit of the people refused
to yield to the encroachments of authority; and one act of oppression
placed him under the necessity of committing another, till he had revived
and enforced all those odious prerogatives, which, though usually claimed,
were but sparingly exercised, by his predecessors. For some years his
efforts seemed successful; but the Scottish insurrection revealed the
delusion; he had parted with the real authority of a king, when he
forfeited the confidence and affection of his subjects.

But while we blame the illegal measures of Charles, we ought not to screen
from censure the subsequent conduct of his principal opponents. From the
moment that war seemed inevitable, they acted as if they thought themselves
absolved from all obligations of honour and honesty. They never ceased to
inflame the passions of the people by misrepresentation and calumny; they
exercised a power far more arbitrary and formidable than had ever been
claimed by the king; they punished summarily, on mere suspicion, and
without attention to the forms of law; and by their committees they
established in every county a knot of petty tyrants, who disposed at
will of the liberty and property of the inhabitants. Such anomalies may,
perhaps, be inseparable from the jealousies, the resentments, and the
heart-burnings, which are engendered in civil commotions; but certain it is
that right and justice had seldom been more wantonly outraged, than they
were by those who professed to have drawn the sword in the defence of right
and justice.

Neither should the death of Charles be attributed to the vengeance of the
people. They, for the most part, declared themselves satisfied with their
victory; they sought not the blood of the captive monarch; they were even,
willing to replace him on the throne, under those limitations which they
deemed necessary for the preservation of their rights. The men who hurried
him to the scaffold were a small faction of bold and ambitious spirits, who
had the address to guide the passions and fanaticism of their followers,
and were enabled through them to control the real sentiments of the nation.
Even of the commissioners appointed to sit in judgment on the king,
scarcely one-half could be induced to attend at his trial; and many of
those who concurred in his condemnation subscribed the sentence with
feelings of shame and remorse. But so it always happens in revolutions: the
most violent put themselves forward; their vigilance and activity seem to
multiply their number; and the daring of the few wins the ascendancy over
the indolence or the pusillanimity of the many.




CHAPTER IV.


THE COMMONWEALTH.

Establishment Of The Commonwealth--Punishment Of The Royalists--Mutiny And
Suppression Of The Levellers--Charles Ii Proclaimed In Scotland--Ascendancy
Of His Adherents In Ireland--Their Defeat At Rathmines--Success Of Cromwell
In Ireland--Defeat Of Montrose, And Landing Of Charles In Scotland-Cromwell
Is Sent Against Him--He Gains A Victory At Dunbar--The King Marches Into
England--Loses The Battle Of Worcester--His Subsequent Adventures And
Escape.


When the two houses first placed themselves in opposition to the sovereign,
their demands were limited to the redress of existing grievances; now that
the struggle was over, the triumphant party refused to be content with
anything less than the abolition of the old, and the establishment of a new
and more popular form of government. Some, indeed, still ventured to raise
their voices in favour of monarchy, on the plea that it was an institution
the most congenial to the habits and feelings of Englishmen. By these
it was proposed that the two elder sons of Charles should be passed by,
because their notions were already formed, and their resentments already
kindled; that the young duke of Gloucester, or his sister Elizabeth, should
be placed on the throne; and that, under the infant sovereign, the royal
prerogative should be circumscribed by law, so as to secure from future
encroachment the just liberties of the people. But the majority warmly
contended for the establishment of a commonwealth. Why, they asked, should
they spontaneously set up again the idol which it had cost them so much
blood and treasure to pull down? Laws would prove but feeble restraints on
the passions of a proud and powerful monarch. If they sought an insuperable
barrier to the restoration of despotism, it could be found only in some of
those institutions which lodge the supreme power with the representatives
of the people. That they spoke their real sentiments is not improbable,
though we are assured, by one who was present at their meetings, that
personal interest had no small influence in their final determination. They
had sinned too deeply against royalty to trust themselves to the mercy, or
the moderation, of a king. A republic was their choice, because it promised
to shelter them from the vengeance of their enemies, and offered to them
the additional advantage of sharing among themselves all the power, the
patronage, and the emoluments of office.[1]

In accordance with this decision, the moment the head of the royal victim
fell[a] on the scaffold at Whitehall, a proclamation was read in Cheapside,
declaring it treason to give to any person the title of king without the
authority of parliament; and at the same time was published the vote of the
4th of January, that the supreme authority in the nation resided in the
representatives of the people. The peers, though aware of their approaching
fate, continued to sit; but, after a pause of a few days, the Commons
resolved: first,[b] that the House of Lords, and, next,[c] that the office
of king, ought to be abolished. These votes, though the acts

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 391.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Feb. 7.]

to be ingrafted on them were postponed, proved sufficient; from that hour
the kingship (the word by which the royal dignity was now designated),
with the legislative and judicial authority of the peers, was considered
extinct, and the lower house, under the name of the parliament of England,
concentrated within itself all the powers of government.[1]

The next measure was the appointment, by the Commons, of a council of
state, to consist of forty-one members, with powers limited in duration
to twelve months. They were charged[a] with the preservation of domestic
tranquillity, the care and disposal of the military and naval force, the
superintendence of internal and external trade, and the negotiation of
treaties with foreign powers. Of the persons selected[b] for this office,
three-fourths possessed seats in the house; and they reckoned among them
the heads of the law, the chief officers in the army, and five peers, the
earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke, and Salisbury, with the Lord Grey
of Werke, who condescended to accept the appointment, either through
attachment to the cause, or as a compensation for the loss of their
hereditary rights.[2] But at the very outset a schism appeared among the
new counsellors. The oath required of them by the parliament contained
an approval of the king's trial, of the vote against the Scots and their
English associates, and of the abolition of monarchy and of the House of
Lords. By Cromwell and

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 7. Cromwell voted in favour
of the House of Lords.--Ludlow, i. 246. Could he be sincere? I think not.]

[Footnote 2: The earl of Pembroke had the meanness to solicit and accept
the place of representative for Berkshire; and his example was imitated by
two other peers, the earl of Salisbury and Lord Howard of Escrick, who sat
for Lynn and Carlisle.--Journals, April 16, May 5 Sept. 18. Leicester's
Journal, 72.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 14.]

eighteen others, it was taken cheerfully, and without comment; by the
remaining twenty-two, with Fairfax at their head, it was firmly but
respectfully refused.[a] The peers alleged that it stood not with their
honour to approve upon oath of that which had been done in opposition to
their vote; the commoners, that it was not for them to pronounce an opinion
on judicial proceedings of which they had no official information. But
their doubts respecting transactions that were past formed no objection
to the authority of the existing government. The House of Commons was
in actual possession of the supreme power. From that house they derived
protection, to it they owed obedience, and with it they were ready to
live and die. Cromwell and his friends had the wisdom to yield; the
retrospective clauses were expunged,[b] and in their place was substituted
a general promise of adhesion to the parliament, both with respect to the
existing form of public liberty, and the future government of the nation,
"by way of a republic without king or house of peers."[1]

This important revolution drew with it several other alterations. A
representation of the House of Commons superseded the royal effigy on the
great seal, which was intrusted to three lords-commissioners, Lysle, Keble,
and Whitelock; the writs no longer ran in the name of the king, but of
"the keepers of the liberty of England by authority of parliament;" new
commissions were issued to the judges, sheriffs, and magistrates; and in
lieu of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, was required an engagement
to be true to the commonwealth of England. Of the

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 7, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22. Whitelock, 378, 382,
383. The amended oath is in Walker, part ii. 130.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 22.]

judges, six resigned; the other six consented to retain their situations,
if parliament would issue a proclamation declaratory of its intention to
maintain the fundamental laws of the kingdom. The condition was accepted
and fulfilled;[1] the courts proceeded to hear and determine causes after
the ancient manner; and the great body of the people scarcely felt the
important change which had been made in the government of the country. For
several years past the supreme authority had been administered in the name
of the king by the two houses at Westminster, with the aid of the committee
at Derby House; now the same authority was equally administered in the name
of the people by one house only, and with the advice of a council of state.

The merit or demerit of thus erecting a commonwealth on the ruins of the
monarchy chiefly belongs to Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and Marten, who by
their superior influence guided and controlled the opinions and passions of
their associates in the senate and the army. After the king's death they
derived much valuable aid from the talents of Vane,[2] Whitelock, and St.
John; and a feeble lustre was shed on their cause by the accession of the
five peers

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 8. Yet neither this declaration nor the
frequent remonstrances of the lawyers could prevent the house from usurping
the office of the judges, or from inflicting illegal punishments. Thus,
for example, on the report of a committee, detailing the discovery of a
conspiracy to extort money by a false charge of delinquency, the house,
without hearing the accused, or sending them before a court of justice,
proceeded to inflict on some the penalties of the pillory, fine, and
imprisonment, and adjudged Mrs. Samford, as the principal, to be whipped
the next day from Newgate to the Old Exchange, and to be kept to hard
labour for three months.--Journals, 1650, Feb. 2, Aug. 13.]

[Footnote 2: Immediately after Pride's purge, Vane, disgusted at the
intolerance of his own party, left London, and retired to Raby Castle; he
was now induced to rejoin them, and resumed his seat on Feb. 26.]

from the abolished House of Lords. But, after all, what right could this
handful of men have to impose a new constitution on the kingdom? Ought they
not, in consistency with their own principles, to have ascertained the
sense of the nation by calling a new parliament? The question was raised,
but the leaders, aware that their power was based on the sword of the
military, shrunk from the experiment; and, to elude the demands of their
opponents, appointed a committee to regulate the succession of parliaments
and the election of members; a committee, which repeatedly met and
deliberated, but never brought the question to any definitive conclusion.
Still, when the new authorities looked around the house, and observed the
empty benches, they were admonished of their own insignificance, and of the
hollowness of their pretensions. They claimed the sovereign authority,
as the representatives of the people; but the majority of those
representatives had been excluded by successive acts of military violence;
and the house had been reduced from more than five hundred members, to
less than one-seventh of that number. For the credit and security of the
government it was necessary both to supply the deficiency, and, at the same
time, to oppose a bar to the introduction of men of opposite principles.
With this view, they resolved[a] to continue the exclusion of those who had
on the 5th of December assented to the vote, that the king's "concessions
were a sufficient ground to proceed to a settlement;" but to open the house
to all others who should previously enter on the journals their dissent
from that resolution.[1] By this expedient, and by occasional writs for
elections in those places where

[Footnote 1: Journ. Feb. 1. Walker, part ii. 115. Whitelock, 376.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 1.]

the influence of the party was irresistible, the number of members
gradually rose to one hundred and fifty, though it was seldom that the
attendance of one-half, or even of one-third, could be procured.

During the war, the dread of retaliation had taught the two parties to
temper with moderation the license of victory. Little blood had been
shed except in the field of battle. But now that check was removed. The
fanatics, not satisfied with the death of the king, demanded, with the
Bible in their hands, additional victims; and the politicians deemed it
prudent by the display of punishment to restrain the machinations of their
enemies. Among the royalists in custody were the duke of Hamilton (who was
also earl of Cambridge in England), the earl of Holland, Goring, earl of
Norwich, the Lord Capel, and Sir John Owen, all engaged in the last attempt
for the restoration of Charles to the throne. By a resolution of the House
of Commons in November, Hamilton had been adjudged to pay a fine of
one hundred thousand pounds, and the other four to remain in perpetual
imprisonment; but after the triumph of the Independents, this vote had been
rescinded,[a] and a high court of justice was now established to try the
same persons on a charge of high treason. It was in vain that Hamilton
pleaded[b] the order of the Scottish parliament under which he had acted;
that Capel demanded to be brought before his peers, or a jury of his
countrymen, according to those fundamental laws which the parliament had
promised to maintain; that all invoked the national faith in favour of that
quarter which they had obtained at the time of their surrender. Bradshaw,
the president, delivered the opinions of the court. To Hamilton, he
replied,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 1.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 10.]

that, as an English earl, he was amenable to the justice of the country; to
Capel, that the court had been established by the parliament, the supreme
authority to which all must submit; to each, that quarter given on the
field of battle insured protection from the sword of the conqueror, but not
from the vengeance of the law. All five were condemned[a] to lose their
heads; but the rigour of the judgment was softened[b] by a reference to
the mercy of parliament. The next day the wives of Holland and Capel,
accompanied by a long train of females in mourning, appeared at the bar, to
solicit the pardon of the condemned. Though their petitions were rejected,
a respite for two days was granted. This favour awakened new hopes;
recourse was had to flattery and entreaty; bribes were offered and
accepted; and the following morning[c] new petitions were presented. The
fate of Holland occupied a debate of considerable interest. Among the
Independents he had many personal friends, and the Presbyterians exerted
all their influence in his favour. But the saints expatiated on his
repeated apostasy from the cause; and, after a sharp contest, Cromwell and
Ireton obtained a majority of a single voice for his death. The case of
Goring was next considered. No man during the war had treated his opponents
with more bitter contumely, no one had inflicted on them deeper injuries;
and yet, on an equal division, his life was saved by the casting voice
of the speaker. The sentences of Hamilton and Capel were affirmed by the
unanimous vote of the house; but, to the surprise of all men, Owen, a
stranger, without friends or interest, had the good fortune to escape. His
forlorn condition moved the pity of Colonel Hutchinson; the efforts of
Hutchinson

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 8.]

were seconded by Ireton; and so powerful was their united influence, that
they obtained a majority of five in his favour. Hamilton, Holland, and
Capel died[a] on the scaffold, the first martyrs of loyalty after the
establishment of the commonwealth.[1]

But, though the avowed enemies of the cause crouched before their
conquerors, there was much in the internal state of the country to awaken
apprehension in the breasts of Cromwell and his friends. There could be no
doubt that the ancient royalists longed for the opportunity of avenging the
blood of the king; or that the new royalists, the Presbyterians, who sought
to re-establish the throne on the conditions stipulated by the treaty in
the Isle of Wight, bore with impatience the superiority of their rivals.
Throughout the kingdom the lower classes loudly complained of the burthen
of taxation; in several parts they suffered under the pressure of penury
and famine. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers perished through want;
and it was certified by the magistrates of Cumberland that thirty thousand
families in that county "had neither seed nor bread corn, nor the means of
procuring either."[2] But that which chiefly created alarm was the progress
made among the military by the "Levellers," men of consistent principles
and uncompromising conduct under the guidance of Colonel John Lilburne, an
officer distinguished by his talents, his eloquence, and

[Footnote 1: If the reader compares the detailed narrative of these
proceedings by Clarendon (iii. 265-270), with the official account in the
Journals (March 7, 8), he will be surprised at the numerous inaccuracies
of the historian. See also the State Trials; England's Bloody Tribunal;
Whitelock, 386; Burnet's Hamiltons, 385; Leicester's Journal, 70; Ludlow,
i. 247; and Hutchinson, 310.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 398, 399.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Mar. 9.]

his courage.[1] Lilburne, with his friends, had long cherished a
suspicion that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison sought only their private
aggrandizement under the mantle of patriotism; and the recent changes had
converted this suspicion into conviction. They observed that the same
men ruled without control in the general council of officers, in the
parliament, and in the council of state. They contended that every question
was first debated and settled in the council of officers, and that, if
their determination was afterwards adopted by the house, it was only
that it might go forth to the public under the pretended sanction of the
representatives of the nation; that the council of state had been vested
with powers more absolute and oppressive than had ever been exercised by
the late king; and that the High Court of Justice had been established by
the party for the purpose of depriving their victims of those remedies
which would be afforded by the ordinary courts of law. In some of their
publications they went further. They maintained that the council of state
was employed as an experiment on the patience of the nation; that it was
intended to pass from the tyranny of a few to the tyranny of one; and
that Oliver Cromwell was the man who aspired to that high but dangerous
pre-eminence.[2]

A plan of the intended constitution, entitled "the

[Footnote 1: Lilburne in his youth had been a partisan of Bastwick, and had
printed one of his tracts in Holland. Before the Star-chamber he refused
to take the oath _ex officio_, or to answer interrogatories, and in
consequence was condemned to stand in the pillory, was whipped from the
Fleet-prison to Westminster, receiving five hundred lashes with knotted
cords, and was imprisoned with double irons on his hands and legs. Three
years later (1641), the House of Commons voted the punishment illegal,
bloody, barbarous, and tyrannical.--Burton's Diary, iii. 503, note.]

[Footnote 2: See England's New Chains Discovered, and the Hunting of the
Foxes, passim; the King's Pamphlets, No. 411, xxi.; 414, xii. xvi.]

agreement of the people," had been sanctioned by the council of officers,
and presented[a] by Fairfax to the House of Commons, that it might be
transmitted to the several counties, and there receive the approbation of
the inhabitants. As a sop to shut the mouth of Cerberus, the sum of three
thousand pounds, to be raised from the estates of delinquents in the county
of Durham, had been voted[b] to Lilburne; but the moment he returned from
the north, he appeared at the bar of the house, and petitioned against "the
agreement," objecting in particular to one of the provisions by which the
parliament was to sit but six months, every two years, and the government
of the nation during the other eighteen months was to be intrusted to the
council of state. His example was quickly followed; and the table was
covered with a succession of petitions from officers and soldiers, and "the
well-affected" in different counties, who demanded that a new parliament
should be holden every year; that during the intervals the supreme power
should be exercised by a committee of the house; that no member of the last
should sit in the succeeding parliament; that the self-denying ordinance
should be enforced; that no officer should retain his command in the army
for more than a certain period; that the High Court of Justice should be
abolished as contrary to law, and the council of state, as likely to become
an engine of tyranny; that the proceedings in the courts should be in the
English language, the number of lawyers diminished, and their fees reduced;
that the excise and customs should be taken away, and the lands of
delinquents sold for compensation to the well-affected; that religion
should be "reformed according to the mind of God;" that no one should be
molested or incapacitated

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 26.]

on account of conscience; that tithes should be abolished; and that the
income of each minister should be fixed at one hundred pounds per annum, to
be raised by a rate on his parishioners.[1]

Aware of the necessity of crushing the spirit of opposition in the
military, general orders were issued[a] by Fairfax, prohibiting private
meetings of officers or soldiers "to the disturbance of the army;" and on
the receipt[b] of a letter of remonstrance from several regiments, four
of the five troopers by whom it was signed were condemned[c] by a
court-martial to ride the wooden horse with their faces to the tail, to
have their swords broken over their heads, and to be afterwards cashiered.
Lilburne, on the other hand, laboured to inflame the general discontent by
a succession of pamphlets, entitled, "England's New Chains Discovered,"
"The Hunting of the Foxes from Newmarket and Triploe Heath to Whitehall by
five small Beagles" (in allusion to the five troopers), and the second part
of "England's New Chains." The last he read[d] to a numerous assembly
at Winchester House; by the parliament it was voted[e] a seditious and
traitorous libel, and the author, with his associates, Walwyn, Prince, and
Overton; was committed,[f] by order of the council, to close custody in the
Tower.[2]

It had been determined to send to Ireland a division of twelve thousand
men; and the regiments to be employed were selected by ballot, apparently
in the fairest manner. The men, however, avowed a resolution not to march.
It was not, they said, that they

[Footnote 1: Walker, 133. Whitelock, 388, 393, 396, 398, 399. Carte,
Letters, i. 229.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 385, 386, 392. Council Book in the State-paper
Office, March 27, No. 17; March 29, No. 27. Carte, Letters, i. 273, 276.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 1.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 3.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 25.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. March 27.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. March 29.]

refused the service; but they believed the expedition to be a mere artifice
to send the discontented out of the kingdom; and they asserted that by
their engagement on Triploe Heath they could not conscientiously move a
step till the liberties of the nation were settled on a permanent basis.
The first act of mutiny occurred in Bishopsgate. A troop of horse refused
to obey their colonel; and, instead of marching out of the city, took
possession of the colours. Of these, five were condemned to be shot; but
one only, by name Lockyer, suffered. At his burial a thousand men, in
files, preceded the corpse, which was adorned with bunches of rosemary
dipped in blood; on each side rode three trumpeters, and behind was led the
trooper's horse, covered with mourning; some thousands of men and women
followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts, and were
received at the grave by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants of London and
Westminster. This extraordinary funeral convinced the leaders how widely
the discontent was spread, and urged them to the immediate adoption of the
most decisive measures.[1]

The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds,
and Horton, though quartered in different places, had already[a] elected
their agents, and published their resolution to adhere to each other, when
the house commissioned Fairfax to reduce the mutineers, ordered Skippon to
secure the capital from surprise, and declared it treason for soldiers to
conspire the death of the general or lieutenant-general, or for any person
to endeavour to alter the government, or to affirm that the parliament or
council of state was either tyrannical or unlawful.[2]

[Footnote 1: Walker, 161. Whitelock, 399.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, May 1, 14. Whitelock, 399.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 7.]


At Banbury, in Oxfordshire, a Captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred
men, published a manifesto, entitled "England's Standard Advanced,"
in which he declared that, if Lilburne, or his fellow-prisoners, were
ill-treated, their sufferings should he avenged seventy times seven-fold
upon their persecutors. His object was to unite some of the discontented
regiments; but Colonel Reynolds surprised him at Banbury, and prevailed
on his followers to surrender without loss of blood.[1] Another party,
consisting of ten troops of horse, and more than a thousand strong,
proceeded from Salisbury to Burford, augmenting their numbers as they
advanced. Fairfax and Cromwell, after a march of more than forty miles
during the day, arrived soon afterwards,[a] and ordered their followers to
take refreshment. White had been sent to the insurgents with an offer of
pardon on their submission; whether he meant to deceive them or not, is
uncertain; he represented the pause on the part of the general as time
allowed them to consult and frame their demands; and at the hour of
midnight, while they slept in security, Cromwell forced his way into the
town, with two thousand men, at one entrance, while Colonel Reynolds,
with a strong body, opposed their exit by the other. Four hundred of the
mutineers were made prisoners, and the arms and horses of double that
number were taken. One cornet and two corporals suffered death; the others,
after a short imprisonment, were restored to their former regiments.[2]

This decisive advantage disconcerted all the plans of the mutineers. Some
partial risings in the

[Footnote 1: Walker, ii. 168. Whitelock, 401.]

[Footnote 2: King's Pamphlets, No. 421, xxii.; 422, i. Whitelock, 402.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 14.]

counties of Hants, Devon, and Somerset were quickly suppressed; and
Thompson, who had escaped[a] from Banbury and retired to Wellingborough,
being deserted by his followers, refused quarter, and fell[b] fighting
singly against a host of enemies.[1] To express the national gratitude
for this signal deliverance, a day of thanksgiving was appointed; the
parliament, the council of State, and the council of the army assembled[c]
at Christ-church; and, after the religious service of the day, consisting
of two long sermons and appropriate prayers, proceeded to Grocer's Hall,
where they dined by invitation from the city. The speaker Lenthall, the
organ of the supreme authority, like former kings, received the sword of
state from the mayor, and delivered it to him again. At table, he was
seated at the head, supported on his right hand by the lord general, and on
the left by Bradshaw, the president of the council; thus exhibiting to the
guests the representatives of the three bodies by which the nation was
actually governed. At the conclusion of the dinner, the lord mayor
presented one thousand pounds in gold to Fairfax in a basin and ewer of the
same metal, and five hundred pounds, with a complete service of plate, to
Cromwell.[2]

The suppression of the mutiny afforded leisure to the council to direct its
attention to the proceedings in Scotland and Ireland. In the first of these
kingdoms, after the departure of Cromwell, the supreme authority had been
exercised by Argyle and his party, who were supported, and at the same time
controlled, by the paramount influence of the kirk. The forfeiture

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 403.]

[Footnote 2: Leicester's Journal, 74. Whitelock (406) places the guests in
a different order.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 31.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. June 7.]

and excommunication of the "Engagers" left to their opponents the
undisputed superiority in the parliament and all the great offices of the
state. From the part which Argyle had formerly taken in the surrender of
the king, his recent connection with Cromwell, and his hostility to the
engagement, it was generally believed that he had acted in concert with the
English Independents. But he was wary, and subtle, and flexible. At the
approach of danger he could dissemble; and, whenever it suited his views,
could change his measures without changing his object. At the beginning
of January the fate with which Charles was menaced revived the languid
affection of the Scots. A cry of indignation burst from every part of the
country: he was their native king--would they suffer him to be arraigned
as a criminal before a foreign tribunal? By delivering him to his enemies,
they had sullied the fair fame of the nation--would they confirm this
disgrace by tamely acquiescing in his death? Argyle deemed it prudent to
go with the current of national feeling;[1] he suffered a committee to
be appointed in parliament, and the commissioners in London received
instructions to protest against the trial and condemnation of the king. But
these instructions disclose the timid fluctuating policy of the man by whom
they were dictated. It is vain to look in them for those warm and generous
sentiments which the case demanded. They are framed with hesitation and
caution; they betray a

[Footnote 1: Wariston had proposed (and Argyle had seconded him) to
postpone the motion for interference in the King's behalf till the Lord had
been sought by a solemn fast, but "Argyle, after he saw that it was carried
by wottes in his contrarey, changed his first opinione with a
faire appologey, and willed them then presently to enter on the
business."--Balfour, iii. 386.]

consciousness of weakness, a fear of provoking enmity, and an attention to
private interest; and they show that the protestors, if they really sought
to save the life of the monarch, were yet more anxious to avoid every act
or word which might give offence to his adversaries.[1]

The commissioners delivered the paper, and the Scottish parliament, instead
of an answer, received the news of the king's execution. The next day the
chancellor, attended by the members, proceeded to the cross in Edinburgh,
and proclaimed Charles, the son of the deceased prince, king of Scotland,
England, France, and Ireland.[a] But to this proclamation was appended a
provision, that the young prince, before he could enter on the exercise of
the royal authority, should satisfy the parliament of his adhesion both to
the national covenant of Scotland, and to the solemn league and covenant
between the two kingdoms.[2]

At length, three weeks after the death of the king, whose life it was
intended to save, the English parliament condescended to answer the
protestation of the Scots, but in a tone of contemptuous indifference, both
as to the justice of their claim and the consequences of their anger.[b]
Scotland, it was replied, might perhaps have no right to bring her
sovereign to a public trial, but that circumstance could not affect the
right of England. As the English parliament did not intend to trench on the
liberties of others, it would not permit others to trench upon its own. The
recollection of the evils inflicted on the nation by the misconduct of the
king, and the consciousness that they

[Footnote 1: See the instructions in Balfour, iii. 383; and Clarendon, iii.
280.]

[Footnote 2: Balfour, iii. 387. Clarendon, iii. 284.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 17.]

had deserved the anger of God by their neglect to punish his offences, had
induced them to bring him to justice, a course which they doubted not God
had already approved, and would subsequently reward by the establishment of
their liberties. The Scots had now the option of being freemen or slaves;
the aid of England was offered for the vindication of their rights; if it
were refused, let them beware how they entailed on themselves and their
posterity the miseries of continual war with their nearest neighbour, and
of slavery under the issue of a tyrant.[1]

The Scottish commissioners, in reply,[a] hinted that the present was not
a full parliament; objected to any alteration in the government by king,
lords, and commons; desired that no impediment should be opposed to the
lawful succession of Charles II.; and ended by protesting that, if such
things were done, the Scots were free before God and man from the guilt,
the blood, the calamities, which it might cost the two kingdoms. Having
delivered this paper, they hastened to Gravesend. Their object was to
proceed to the United Provinces, and offer the Scottish crown on certain
conditions to the young king. But the English leaders resolved to interrupt
their mission. The answer which they had given was voted[b] a scandalous
libel, framed for the purpose of exciting sedition; the commissioners were
apprehended[c] at Gravesend as national offenders, and Captain Dolphin
received orders to conduct them under a guard to the frontiers of
Scotland.[2]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 17, 20. Clarendon, iii. 282.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Feb. 26, 28. Whitelock, 384. Balfour, iii. 388,
389. Carte, Letters, i. 233. Dolphin received a secret instruction not to
dismiss Sir John Chiesley, but to keep him as a hostage, till he knew that
Mr. Rowe, the English agent in Edinburgh, was not detained.--Council Book,
March 2.]


[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Feb. 24.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 2.]


This insult, which, though keenly felt, was tamely borne, might retard, it
could not prevent, the purposes of the Scottish parliament. The earl of
Cassilis, with four new commissioners, was appointed[a] to proceed to
Holland, where Charles, under the protection of his brother-in-law, the
prince of Orange, had resided since the death of his father.[1] His court
consisted at first of the few individuals whom that monarch had placed
around him, and whom he now swore of his privy council. It was soon
augmented by the earl of Lanark, who, on the death of his brother, became
duke of Hamilton, the earl of Lauderdale, and the earl of Callendar,
the chiefs of the Scottish Engagers; these were followed by the ancient
Scottish royalists, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth, and in a few days
appeared Cassilis, with his colleagues, and three deputies from the church
of Scotland, who brought with them news not likely to insure them a
gracious reception, that the parliament, at the petition of the kirk, had
sent to the scaffold[b] the old marquess of Huntley, forfaulted for his
adhesion to the royal cause in the year 1645. All professed to have in view
the same object--the restoration of the young king; but all were divided
and alienated from each other by civil and religious bigotry. By the
commissioners, the Engagers, and by both, Montrose and his friends, were
shunned as traitors to their country, and sinners excommunicated by the
kirk. Charles was perplexed by the conflicting opinions of these several
advisers. Both the commissioners and Engagers, hostile as they were to each

[Footnote 1: Whatever may have been the policy of Argyle, he most certainly
promoted this mission, and "overswayed the opposition to it by his reason,
authority, and diligence,"--Baillie, ii. 353.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 17.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 26.]

other, represented his taking of the covenant as an essential condition;
while Montrose and his English counsellors contended that it would
exasperate the Independents, offend the friends of episcopacy, and cut off
all hope of aid from the Catholics, who could not be expected to hazard
their lives in support of a prince sworn to extirpate their religion.[1]

While the question was yet in debate, an event happened to hasten the
departure of Charles from the Hague. Dr. Dorislaus, a native of Holland,
but formerly a professor of Gresham College, and recently employed to draw
the charge against the king, arrived as envoy from the parliament to the
States.[a] That very evening, while he sat at supper in the inn, six
gentlemen with drawn swords entered the room, dragged him from his chair,
and murdered him on the floor.[2] Though the assassins were suffered to
escape, it was soon known that they were Scotsmen, most of them followers
of Montrose; and Charles, anticipating the demand of justice from the
English parliament, gave his final answer to the commissioners, that he
was, and always had been, ready to provide for the security of their
religion, the union between the kingdoms, and the internal peace and
prosperity of Scotland; but that their other demands were irreconcilable
with his conscience, his liberty, and his honour.[b] They

[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 287-292. Baillie, ii. 333. Carte, Letters, i.
238-263. In addition to the covenant, the commissioners required the
banishment of Montrose, from which they were induced to recede, and the
limitation of the king's followers to one hundred persons.--Carte, Letters,
i. 264, 265, 266, 268, 271.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, iii. 293. Whitelock, 401. Journals, May 10. The
parliament settled two hundred pounds per annum on the son, and gave five
hundred pounds to each of the daughters of Dorislaus.--Ib. May 16. Two
hundred and fifty pounds was given towards his funeral.--Council Book, May
11.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 19.]

acknowledged that he was their king; it was, therefore, their duty to obey,
maintain, and defend him; and the performance of this duty he should expect
from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole
nation of Scotland. They departed with this unsatisfactory answer; and
Charles, leaving the United Provinces, hastened to St. Germain in France,
to visit the queen his mother, with the intention of repairing, after a
short stay, to the army of the royalists in Ireland.[1]

That the reader may understand the state of Ireland, he must look back to
the period when the despair or patriotism of Ormond surrendered to the
parliament the capital of that kingdom.[a] The nuncio, Rinuccini, had then
seated himself in the chair of the president of the supreme council at
Kilkenny; but his administration was soon marked by disasters, which
enabled his rivals to undermine and subvert his authority.[b] The Catholic
army of Leinster, under Preston, was defeated on Dungan Hill by Jones,
the governor of Dublin, and that of Munster, under the Viscount Taafe, at
Clontarf, by the Lord Inchiquin.[2][c] To Rinuccini

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iii. 405; and the Proceedings of the Commissioners
of the Church and Kingdoms of Scotland with his Majestie at the Hague.
Edinburgh, printed by Evan Tyler, 1649.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, 833, 916. In the battle of Dungan Hill, at the
first charge the Commander of the Irish cavalry was slain: his men
immediately fled; the infantry repelled several charges, and retired into
a bog, where they offered to capitulate. Colonel Flower said he had no
authority to grant quarter, but at the same time ordered his men to
stand to their arms, and preserved the lives of the earl of Westmeath,
Lieutenant-General Bryne, and several officers and soldiers who repaired
to his colours. "In the mean time the Scotch colonel Tichburn, and Colonel
Moor, of Bankhall's regiments, without mercy put the rest to the sword."
They amounted to between three and four thousand men.--Belling's History of
the late Warre in Ireland, MS. ii. 95. I mention this instance to show
that Cromwell did not introduce the practice of massacre. He followed his
predecessors, whose avowed object it was to exterminate the natives.]]


[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. July.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Nov. 13.]

himself these misfortunes appeared as benefits, for he distrusted Preston
and Taafe on account of their attachment to Ormond; and their depression
served to exalt his friend and protector, Owen Roe O'Neil, the leader of
the men of Ulster. But from such beginnings the nation at large anticipated
a succession of similar calamities; his adversaries obtained a majority in
the general assembly; and the nuncio, after a declaration that he advanced
no claim to temporal authority, prudently avoided a forced abdication,
by offering to resign his office.[a] A new council, consisting, in equal
number, of men chosen out of the two parties, was appointed; and the
marquess of Antrim, the Lord Muskerry, and Geoffrey Brown, were despatched
to the queen mother, and her son Charles, to solicit assistance in money
and arms, and to request that the prince would either come and reside in
Ireland, or appoint a Catholic lieutenant in his place.[b] Antrim hoped to
obtain this high office for himself; but his colleagues were instructed
to oppose his pretensions and to acquiesce in the re-appointment of the
marquess of Ormond.[1]

During the absence of these envoys, the Lord Inchiquin unexpectedly
declared, with his army, in favour of the king against the parliament, and
instantly proposed an armistice to the confederate Catholics, as friends to
the royal cause. By some the overture was indignantly rejected. Inchiquin,
they said, had been their most bitter enemy; he had made it his delight
to shed the blood of Irishmen, and to pollute and destroy their altars.
Besides, what pledge could be

[Footnote 1: Philopater Irenaeus, 50-60. Castlehaven, Memoirs, 83.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Jan. 4]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Feb. 27]

given for the fidelity of a man who, by repeatedly changing sides, had
already shown that he would always accommodate his conscience to his
interest? It were better to march against him now that he was without
allies; and, when he should be subdued, Jones with the parliamentary
army would necessarily fall. To this reasoning it was replied, that the
expedition would require time and money; that provision for the free
exercise of religion might be made in the articles; and that, at a moment
when the Catholics solicited a reconciliation with the king, they could not
in honour destroy those who drew the sword in his favour. In defiance of
the remonstrances made by Rinuccini and eight of the bishops, the treaty
proceeded;[a] and the nuncio believing, or pretending to believe, that he
was a prisoner in Kilkenny, escaped in the night over the wall of the city,
and was received at Maryborough with open arms by his friend O'Neil.[b] The
council of the Catholics agreed to the armistice, and sought by repeated
messages to remove the objections of the nuncio.[c] But zeal or resentment
urged him to exceed his powers.[d] He condemned the treaty, excommunicated
its abettors, and placed under an interdict the towns in which it should be
admitted. But his spiritual weapons were of little avail. The council,
with fourteen bishops, appealed from his censures; the forces under Taafe,
Clanricard, and Preston, sent back his messengers;[e] and, on the departure
of O'Neil, he repaired to the town of Galway, where he was sure of the
support of the people, though in opposition to the sense of the mayor and
the merchants. As a last effort, he summoned a national synod at Galway;[f]
but the council protested against it; Clanricard surrounded the town with
his army; and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. April 27.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. May 9.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1648. May 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1648. May 27.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1648. May 31.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1648. Sept. 1.]

the inhabitants, opening the gates, made their submission.[1]

War was now openly declared between the two parties. On the one hand, Jones
in Dublin, and Monk in Ulster, concluded truces with O'Neil, that he
might be in a better condition to oppose the common enemy; on the other,
Inchiquin joined with Preston to support the authority of the council
against O'Neil. Inroads were reciprocally made; towns were taken and
retaken; and large armies were repeatedly brought in face of each other.
The council, however, began to assume a bolder tone:[a] they proclaimed
O'Neil a rebel and traitor; and, on the tardy arrival of Ormond with the
commission of lord-lieutenant, sent to Rinuccini himself an order to quit
the kingdom,[b] with the information that they had accused him to the pope
of certain high crimes and misdemeanors.[2]

[Footnote 1: See Desiderata Cur. Hib. ii. 511; Carte, ii. 20, 31-36;
Belling, in his MS. History of the late War in Ireland, part iv. 1-40. He
has inserted most of the papers which passed between the parties in this
work. See also Philopater Irenaeus, i. 60, 86; ii. 90, 94; Walsh, History
and Vindication, App. 33-40; Ponce, 90.]

[Footnote 2: The charge may be seen in Philopater Iren. i. 150-160;
Clarendon, viii. 68. Oxford, 1726. It is evident that the conduct of
Rinuccini in breaking the first peace was not only reprehensible in itself,
but productive of the most calamitous consequences both to the cause of
royalty and the civil and religious interests of the Irish Catholics. The
following is the ground on which he attempts to justify himself. Laying it
down as an undeniable truth that the Irish people had as good a right
to the establishment of their religion in their native country, as the
Covenanters in Scotland, or the Presbyterians in England, he maintains that
it was his duty to make this the great object of his proceedings. When the
peace was concluded, Charles was a prisoner in the hands of the Scots,
who had solemnly sworn to abolish the Catholic religion; and the English
royalists had been subdued by the parliament, which by repeated votes and
declarations had bound itself to extirpate the Irish race, and parcel out
the island among foreign adventurers. Now there was no human probability
that Charles would ever be restored to his throne, but on such conditions
as the parliament and the Scots should prescribe; and that, on their
demand, he would, after some struggle, sacrifice the Irish Catholics,
was plain from what had passed in his different negotiations with the
parliament, from his disavowal of Glamorgan's commission, and from the
obstinacy with which his lieutenant, Ormond, had opposed the claims of the
confederates. Hence he inferred that a peace, which left the establishment
of religion to the subsequent determination of the king, afforded no
security, but, on the contrary, was an abandonment of the cause for which
the Catholics had associated; and that it therefore became him, holding
the situation which he did, to oppose it by every means in his power.--MS.
narrative of Rinuccini's proceedings, written to be delivered to the pope;
and Ponce, 271.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Sept. 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Oct. 19.]


But he continued to issue his mandates in defiance of their orders and
threats; nor was it till after the new pacification between Charles and the
confederates had been published, and the execution of the king had fixed
the public opinion on the pernicious result of his counsels,[a] that shame
and apprehension drove him from Ireland to France,[b] whence, after a few
months, he was recalled to Rome.

The negotiation between Ormond and the Catholics had continued for three
months;[c] in January the danger which threatened the royal person induced
the latter to recede from their claims, and trust to the future gratitude
and honour of their sovereign. They engaged to maintain at their own
expense an army of seventeen thousand five hundred men, to be employed
against the common enemy; and the king, on his part, consented that the
free exercise of the Catholic worship should be permitted; that twelve
commissioners of trust appointed by the assembly should aid the
lord-lieutenant in the internal administration; that the Court of Wards and
several other grievances should be abolished; that a parliament should be
called as soon as the majority of commissioners might deem it expedient,
and in that parliament the persecuting laws on the subject of religion,
with others injurious to the trade and commerce

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Jan. 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Feb. 23.]

of Ireland, should be repealed, and the independence of the Irish on the
English parliament should be established.[1]

The royal interest was now predominant in Ireland. The fleet under Prince
Rupert rode triumphant off the coast; the parliamentary commanders, Jones
in Dublin, Monk in Belfast, and Coote in Londonderry, were almost confined
within the limits of their respective garrisons; and Inchiquin in Munster,
the Scottish regiments in Ulster, and the great body of the Catholics
adhering to the supreme council, had proclaimed the king, and acknowledged
the authority of his lieutenant. It was during this favourable state of
things that Charles received and accepted the invitation of Ormond;[a] but
his voyage was necessarily delayed through want of money, and his ardour
was repeatedly checked by the artful insinuation of some among his
counsellors, who secretly feared that, if he were once at the head of a
Catholic army, he would listen to the demands of the Catholics for the
establishment of their religion.[2] On the contrary, to the leaders in
London, the danger of losing Ireland became a source of the most perplexing
solicitude. The office of lord lieutenant was offered to Cromwell.[b] He
affected to hesitate; at his request two officers from each corps received
orders to meet him at Whitehall, and seek the Lord in prayer;[c] and,
after a delay of two weeks, he condescended to submit his shoulders to the
burthen, because he had now learned that it was the will of Heaven.[3][d]
Hi demands,

[Footnote 1: Phil. Iren. i. 166. Walsh, App. 43-64. Whitelock, 391. Charles
approved and promised to observe this peace.--Carte's Letters, ii. 367.]

[Footnote 2: Carte, Letters, i. 258, 262.]

[Footnote 3: Journals, March 30. Whitelock, 389, 391, 392.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 29.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 23.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 29.]

however, were so numerous, the preparations to be made so extensive, that
it was necessary to have recourse in the interval to other expedients
for the preservation of the forces and places which still admitted the
authority of the parliament. One of these was to allure to the cause of
the Independents the Catholics of the two kingdoms; for which purpose, the
sentiments of Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir John Winter were sounded,[a] and
conferences were held, through the agency of the Spanish ambassador,
with O'Reilly and Quin, two Irish ecclesiastics.[b] It was proposed that
toleration should be granted for the exercise of the Catholic worship,
without any penal disqualifications, and that the Catholics in return
should disclaim the temporal pretensions of the pope, and maintain ten
thousand men for the service of the commonwealth.

In aid of this project, Digby, Winter, and the Abbé Montague were suffered
to come to England under the pretence of compounding for their estates; and
the celebrated Thomas White, a secular clergyman, published a work entitled
"The Grounds of Obedience and Government," to show that the people may be
released from their obedience to the civil magistrate by his misconduct;
and that, when he is once deposed (whether justly or unjustly makes no
difference), it may be for the common interest to acquiesce in his removal,
rather than attempt his restoration.

That this doctrine was satisfactory to the men in power, cannot be doubted;
but they had so often reproached the late king with a coalition with the
papists, that they dared not to make the experiment, and after some time,
to blind perhaps the eyes of the people, severe votes were passed against

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. April.]

Digby, Montague, and Winter, and orders were given for the apprehension of
priests and Jesuits.[1]

In Ireland an attempt was made to fortify the parliamentary party with
the friendly aid of O'Neil.[a] That chieftain had received proposals
from Ormond, but his jealousy of the commissioners of trusts, his
former adversaries, provoked him to break off the treaty with the lord
lieutenant,[b] and to send a messenger of his own with a tender of his
services to Charles.[c] Immediately the earl of Castlehaven, by order of
Ormond, attacked and reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy;[d] and
O'Neil, in revenge, listened to the suggestions of Monk, who had retired
before the superior force of the Scottish royalists from Belfast to
Dundalk.[e] A cessation of hostilities was concluded for three months;[f]
and the proposals of the Irish chieftain, modified by Monk, were
transmitted to England for the ratification of parliament. By the
"grandees" it was thought imprudent to submit them to an examination, which
would make them public; but the answer returned satisfied the contracting
parties:[g] Monk supplied O'Neil with ammunition, and O'Neil undertook to
intercept the communication between the Scottish regiments of the north and
the grand army under Ormond in the heart of the kingdom.[2]

[Footnote 1: On this obscure subject may be consulted Walker, ii. 150;
Carte's Collection of Letters, i. 216, 219, 221, 222, 224, 267, 272, 297;
ii. 363, 364; and the Journals, Aug. 31.]

[Footnote 2: O'Neil demanded liberty of conscience for himself, his
followers, and their posterity; the undisturbed possession of their lands,
as long as they remained faithful to the parliament; and, in return for his
services, the restoration of his ancestor's estate, or an equivalent. (See
both his draft, and the corrected copy by Monk, in Philop. Iren. i. 191,
and in Walker, ii. 233-238.) His agent, on his arrival in London, was asked
by the grandees why he applied to them, and refused to treat with Ormond.
He replied, because the late king had always made them fair promises; but,
when they had done him service, and he could make better terms with their
enemies, had always been ready to sacrifice them. Why then did not O'Neil
apply to the parliament sooner? Because the men in power then had sworn to
extirpate them; but those in power now professed toleration and liberty
of conscience.--Ludlow, i. 255. The agreement made with him by Monk was
rejected (Aug. 10), because, if we believe Ludlow, the Ulster men had been
the chief actors in the murder of the English, and liberty of religion
would prove dangerous to public peace. But this rejection happened much
later. It is plain that Jones, Monk, Coote, and O'Neil understood that the
agreement would be ratified, though it was delayed.--Walker, ii 198, 231,
245. See King's Pamphlets, 428, 435, 437.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. August 31.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 20.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 16.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. March 21.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. April 25.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. May 8.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1649. May 22.]


Though the parliament had appointed Cromwell lord lieutenant of Ireland,
and vested the supreme authority, both civil and military, in his person
for three years, he was still unwilling to hazard his reputation, and
his prospects in a dangerous expedition without the adequate means of
success.[a] Out of the standing army of forty-five thousand men, with
whose aid England was now governed, he demanded a force of twelve thousand
veterans, with a plentiful supply of provisions and military stores, and
the round sum of one hundred thousand pounds in ready money.[1] On the
day of his departure, his friends assembled at Whitehall; three ministers
solemnly invoked the blessing of God on the arms of his saints; and three
officers, Goff, Harrison and the lord lieutenant himself, expounded the
scriptures "excellently well, and pertinently to the occasion."[b] After
these outpourings of the spirit, Cromwell mounted his carriage, drawn by
six horses. He was accompanied by the great officers of state and of the
army; his life-guard, eighty young men, all of quality, and several holding

[Footnote 1: Cromwell received three thousand pounds for his outfit, ten
pounds per day as _general_ while he remained in England, and two
thousand pounds per quarter in Ireland, besides his salary as lord
lieutenant.--Council Book, July 12, No, 10.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. June 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. July 10.]

commissions as majors and colonels, delighted the spectators with their
splendid uniforms and gallant bearing; and the streets of the metropolis
resounded, as he drove towards Windsor, with the acclamations of the
populace and the clangour of military music.[1] It had been fixed that
the expedition should sail from Milford Haven; but the impatience of the
general was checked by the reluctance and desertion of his men. The recent
transaction between Monk and O'Neil had diffused a spirit of distrust
through the army. It was pronounced an apostasy from the principles on
which they had fought. The exaggerated horrors of the massacre in 1641 were
recalled to mind; the repeated resolutions of parliament to extirpate the
native Irish, and the solemn engagement of the army to revenge the blood
which had been shed, were warmly discussed; and the invectives of the
leaders against the late king, when he concluded a peace with the
confederate Catholics, were contrasted with their present backsliding,
when they had taken the men of Ulster for their associates and for their
brethren in arms. To appease the growing discontent, parliament annulled
the agreement. Monk, who had returned to England, was publicly assured
that, if he escaped the punishment of his indiscretion, it was on account
of his past services and good intentions. Peters from the pulpit employed
his eloquence to remove the blame from the grandees; and, if we may judge
from the sequel, promises were made, not only that the good cause should be
supported, but that the duty of revenge should be amply discharged.[2]

While the army was thus detained in the neighbourhood

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 413. Leicester's Journal, 76.]

[Footnote 2: Walker, ii. 230, 243. Whitelock, 416. Leicester's Journal,
82.]

of Milford Haven, Jones, in Dublin, reaped the laurels which Cromwell had
destined for himself. The royal army advanced on both banks of the Liffy to
the siege of that capital;[a] and Ormond, from his quarters at Finglass,
ordered certain works to be thrown up at a place called Bogatrath. His
object was to exclude the horse of the garrison from the only pasturage in
their possession; but by some mishap, the working party did not reach the
spot till an hour before sunrise; and Jones, sallying from the walls,
overpowered the guard, and raised an alarm in the camp.[b] The confusion
of the royalists encouraged him to follow up his success. Regiment after
regiment was beaten: it was in vain that Ormond, aroused from his sleep,
flew from post to post; the different corps acted without concert; a
general panic ensued, and the whole army on the right bank fled in every
direction. The artillery, tents, baggage, and ammunition fell into the
hands of the conquerors, with two thousand prisoners, three hundred of whom
were massacred in cold blood at the gate of the city. This was called
the battle of Rathmines, a battle which destroyed the hopes of the Irish
royalists, and taught men to doubt the abilities of Ormond. At court, his
enemies ventured to hint suspicions of treason; but Charles, to silence
their murmurs and assure him of the royal favour, sent him the order of the
garter.[1][c]

The news of this important victory[d] hastened the

[Footnote 1: King's Pamphlets, No. 434, xxi. Whitelock, 410, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7,
9. Clarendon, viii. 92, 93. Carte, Letters, ii. 394, 402, 408. Baillie, ii.
346. Ludlow, i. 257, 258. Ormond, before his defeat, confidently predicted
the fall of Dublin (Carte, letters, ii. 383, 389, 391); after it, he
repeatedly asserts that Jones, to magnify his own services, makes the
royalists amount to eighteen, whereas, in reality, they were only eight,
thousand men.--Ibid. 402, 413.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. August 1.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. August 13.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. August 18.]

departure of Cromwell. He sailed from Milford with a single division;
his son-in-law, Ireton, followed with the remainder of the army, and a
fortnight was allowed to the soldiers to refresh themselves after their
voyage. The campaign was opened with the siege of Drogheda.[a] Ormond had
thrown into the town a garrison of two thousand five hundred chosen
men, under the command of Sir Arthur Aston, an officer who had earned a
brilliant reputation by his services to the royal cause in England during
the civil war. On the eighth day a sufficient breach had been effected in
the wall:[b] the assailants on the first attempt were driven back with
immense loss. They returned a second, perhaps a third, time to the assault,
and their perseverance was at last crowned with success. But strong works
with ramparts and pallisades had been constructed within the breach, from
which the royalists might have long maintained a sanguinary and perhaps
doubtful conflict. These entrenchments, however, whether the men were
disheartened by a sudden panic, or deceived by offers of quarter--for
both causes have been assigned--the enemy was suffered to occupy without
resistance. Cromwell (at what particular moment is uncertain) gave orders
that no one belonging to the garrison should be spared; and Aston, his
officers and men, having been previously disarmed, were put to the sword.
From thence the conquerors, stimulated by revenge and fanaticism, directed
their fury against the townsmen, and on the next morning one thousand
unresisting victims were immolated together within the walls of the great
church, whither they had fled for protection.[1][c]

[Footnote 1: See Carte's Ormond, ii. 84; Carte, Letters, iv. 412; Philop.
Iren. i. 120; Whitelock, 428; Ludlow, i. 261; Lynch, Cambrensis Eversos,
in fine; King's Pamph. 441, 447; Ormond in Carte's Letters, ii. 412; and
Cromwell in Carlyle's Letters and Speeches, i. 457.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Sept. 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Sept. 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Sept. 12.]


From Drogheda the conqueror led his men, flushed with slaughter, to the
seige of Wexford. The mayor and governor offered to capitulate; but whilst
their commissioners were treating with Cromwell, an officer perfidiously
opened the castle to the enemy; the adjacent wall was immediately
scaled;[a] and, after a stubborn but unavailing resistance in the
market-place, Wexford was abandoned to the mercy of the assailants. The
tragedy, so recently acted at Drogheda, was renewed. No distinction was
made between the defenceless inhabitant and the armed soldier; nor could
the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females, who had gathered
round the great cross, preserve them from the swords of these ruthless
barbarians. By Cromwell himself, the number of the slain is reduced to two,
by some writers it has been swelled to five, thousand.[1]

Ormond, unable to interrupt the bloody career of his adversary, waited with
impatience for the determination of O'Neil. Hitherto that chieftain had
faithfully performed his engagements with the parliamentary commanders.
He had thrown impediments in the way of the royalists; he had compelled
Montgomery to raise the siege of Londonderry, and had rescued Coote and his
small army, the last hope of the parliament in Ulster, from the fate which
seemed to await them. At first the leaders in London had hesitated, now
after the victory of Rathmines they publicly refused, to ratify the
treaties made with him by their officers.[2] Stung

[Footnote 1: See note (D).]

[Footnote 2: Council Book, Aug. 6, No. 67, 68, 69, 70. Journals, Aug. 10,
24. Walker, ii. 245-248. King's Pamphlets, No. 435, xi.; 437, xxxiii. The
reader must not confound this Owen Roe O'Neil with another of the same
name, one of the regicides, who claimed a debt of five thousand and
sixty-five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence of the parliament,
and obtained an order for it to be paid out of the forfeited lands in
Ireland.--Journ. 1653, Sept. 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Oct 12.]

with indignation, O'Neil accepted the offers of Ormond, and marched from
Londonderry to join the royal army; but his progress was retarded by
sickness, and he died at Clocknacter in Cavan. His officers, however,
fulfilled his intentions; the arrival of the men of Ulster revived the
courage of their associates; and the English general was successively
foiled in his attempts upon Duncannon and Waterford. His forces already
began to suffer from the inclemency of the season, when Lord Broghill, who
had lately returned from England, debauched the fidelity of the regiments
under Lord Inchiquin. The garrisons of Cork, Youghal, Bandon, and Kinsale
declared for the parliament, and Cromwell seized the opportunity to close
the campaign and place his followers in winter quarters.[1]

But inactivity suited not his policy or inclination. After seven weeks of
repose he again summoned them into the field;[a] and at the head of twenty
thousand men, well appointed and disciplined, confidently anticipated the
entire conquest of Ireland. The royalists were destitute of money, arms,
and ammunition; a pestilential disease, introduced with the cargo of a
ship from Spain, ravaged their quarters; in the north, Charlemont alone
acknowledged the royal authority; in Leinster and Munster, almost every
place of importance had been wrested from them by force or perfidy; and
even in Connaught, their last refuge, internal dissension prevented that
union which alone could save them from utter destruction. Their misfortunes
called into

[Footnote 1: Phil. Iren. i. 231. Carte's Ormond, ii. 102. Desid. Curios.
Hib. ii. 521.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 29.]

action the factions which had lain dormant since the departure of the
nuncio. The recent treachery of Inchiquin's forces had engendered feelings
of jealousy and suspicion; and many contended that it was better to submit
at once to the conqueror than to depend on the doubtful fidelity of the
lord lieutenant. Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came,
he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience;[1] but the
rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished
with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with
indiscriminate slaughter.[2] Proceeding on this plan, one day granting
quarter, another putting the leaders only to the sword, and on the next
immolating the whole garrison, hundreds of human beings at a time, he
quickly reduced most of the towns and castles in the three counties of
Limerick, Tipperary, and Kilkenny. But this bloody policy at length
recoiled upon its author. Men, with no alternative but victory or death,
learned to fight with the energy of despair. At the siege of Kilkenny the
assailants, though twice repulsed from the breach, were, by the timidity of
some of the inhabitants,

[Footnote 1: Liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal
belief, not of external worship.--See his letter in Phil. Iren. i. 270.]

[Footnote 2: The Irish commanders disdained to imitate the cruelty of their
enemies. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the
garrison (seven hundred men) prisoners. I made a present of them to
Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the like with me, as any
of mine should fall in his power. But he little valued my civility. For,
in a few days after, he besieged Gouvan; and the soldiers mutinying, and
giving up the place with their officers, he caused the governor, Hammond,
and some other officers, to be put to death."--Castlehaven, 107. Ormond
also says, in one of his letters, "the next day Rathfarnham was taken by
storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred
soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one
creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference
betwixt our and the rebels making use of a victory."--Carte, Letters, ii.
408.]

admitted within the walls; yet, so obstinate was the resistance of the
garrison, that, to spare his own men, the general consented to grant them
honourable terms. From Kilkenny he proceeded to the town of Clonmel,[a]
where Hugh, the son of the deceased O'Neil, commanded with one thousand two
hundred of the best troops of Ulster. The duration of the siege exhausted
his patience; the breach was stormed a second time; and, after a conflict
of four hours, the English were driven back with considerable loss.[b] The
garrison, however, had expended their ammunition; they took advantage of
the confusion of the enemy to depart during the darkness of the night; and
the townsmen the next morning, keeping the secret, obtained from Cromwell a
favourable capitulation.[1][c] This was his last exploit in Ireland. From
Clonmel he was recalled to England to undertake a service of greater
importance and difficulty, to which the reader must now direct his
attention.

The young king, it will be remembered, had left the Hague on his circuitous
route to Ireland, whither he had been called by the advice of Ormond
and the wishes of the royalists.[d] He was detained three months at St.
Germains by the charms of a mistress or the intrigues of his courtiers, nor
did he reach the island of Jersey till long after the disastrous battle
of Rathmines.[e] That event made his further progress a matter of serious
discussion; and the difficulty was increased by the arrival of Wynram of
Libertoun, with addresses from the parliament and the kirk of Scotland.[f]
The first offered, on his acknowledgment of their authority as a
parliament, to treat with him respecting the

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 449, 456. Castlehaven, 108. Ludlow, i. 265. Perfect
Politician, 70.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. May 8.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. June.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. September.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. October.]

conditions proposed by their former commissioners; but the latter, in
language unceremonious and insulting, laid before him the sins of his
youth; his refusal to allow the Son of God to reign over him in the pure
ordinances of church government and worship; his cleaving to counsellors
who never had the glory of God or the good of his people before their eyes;
his admission to his person of that "fugacious man and excommunicate rebel,
James Graham" and, above all, "his giving the royal power and strength to
the beast," by concluding a peace "with the Irish papists, the murderers of
so many Protestants." They bade him remember the iniquities of his father's
house, and be assured that, unless he laid aside the "service-book, so
stuffed with Romish corruptions, for the reformation of doctrine and
worship agreed upon by the divines at Westminster," and approved of the
covenant in his three kingdoms, without which the people could have no
security for their religion or liberty, he would find that the Lord's anger
was not turned away, but that his hand was still stretched against the
royal person and his family.[1]

This coarse and intemperate lecture was not calculated to make a convert
of a young and spirited prince. Instead of giving an answer, he waited to
ascertain the opinion of Ormond; and at last, though inclination prompted
him to throw himself into the arms of his Irish adherents, he reluctantly
submitted to the authority of that officer, who declared, that the only way
to preserve Ireland was by provoking a war between England and Scotland[2].
Charles now condescended[a]

[Footnote 1: Clar. State Papers, iii. App. 89-92. Carte's Letters, i. 323.
Whitelock, 439. The address of the kirk was composed by Mr. Wood, and
disapproved by the more moderate.--Baillie, ii. 339, 345.]

[Footnote 2: Carte's Letters, i. 333, 340.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 11.]

to give to the convention the title of estates of parliament, appointed
Breda, a small town, the private patrimony of the prince of Orange, for
the place of treaty; and met[a] there the new commissioners, the earls of
Cassilis and Lothian, with two barons, two burgesses, and three ministers.
Their present scarcely differed from their former demands; nor were they
less unpalatable to the king. To consent to them appeared to him an
apostasy from the principles for which his father fought and died; an
abandonment of the Scottish friends of his family to the mercy of his and
their enemies. On the other hand, the prince of Orange importuned him to
acquiesce; many of his counsellors suggested that, if he were once on the
throne, he might soften or subdue the obstinacy of the Scottish parliament;
and his mother, by her letters, exhorted him not to sacrifice to his
feelings this his last resource, the only remaining expedient for the
recovery of his three kingdoms. But the king had still another resource;
he sought delays; his eyes were fixed on the efforts of his friends in the
north of Scotland; and he continued to indulge a hope of being replaced
without conditions on the ancient throne of his ancestors.[1]

Before the king left St. Germains[b] he had given to Montrose a commission
to raise the royal standard in Scotland. The fame of that nobleman secured
to him a gracious reception from the northern sovereigns; he visited each
court in succession; and in all obtained permission to levy men, and
received aid either in money or in military stores. In autumn he despatched
the first expedition of twelve thousand men from

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, i. 338, 355. Whitelock, 430. Clarendon, iii.
343.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August.]

Gottenburg under the Lord Kinnoul; but the winds and waves fought against
the royalists; several sail were lost among the rocks; and, when Kinnoul
landed[a] at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, he could muster only eighty officers
and one hundred common soldiers out of the whole number. But Montrose was
not to be appalled by ordinary difficulties. Having received[b] from the
new king the order of the garter, he followed with five hundred men, mostly
foreigners; added them to the wreck of the first expedition, and to the
new levies, and then found himself at the head of a force of more than one
thousand men. His banners on which was painted a representation of the late
king decapitated, with this motto, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord," was
intrusted to young Menzies of Pitfoddels, and a declaration was circulated
through the Highlands, calling upon all true Scotsmen to aid in
establishing their king upon the throne, and in saving him from the
treachery of those, who, if they had him in their power, would sell him as
they had sold his father to English rebels. Having transported[c] his whole
force from Holm Sound to the Northern extremity of Caithness, he traversed
that and the neighbouring county of Sutherland, calling on the natives to
join the standard of their sovereign. But his name had now lost that magic
influence which success had once thrown around it; and the several clans
shunned his approach through fear, or watched his progress as foes. In the
mean time his declaration had been solemnly burnt[d] by the hangman in the
capital; the pulpits had poured out denunciations against the "rebel and
apostate Montrose, the viperous brood of Satan, and the accursed of God and
the kirk;" and a force of four thousand regulars had been collected

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. October.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Jan. 12.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. March.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Feb. 9.]

on Brechin Moor under the command of General Leslie, who was careful to cut
off every source of information from the royalists. Montrose had reached[a]
the borders of Ross-shire, when Colonel Strachan, who had been sent forward
to watch his motions, learned[b] in Corbiesdale that the royalists,
unsuspicious of danger, lay at the short distance of only two miles.

Calling his men around him under the cover of the long broom on the moor,
he prayed, sang a psalm, and declared that he had consulted the Almighty,
and knew as assuredly as there was a God in heaven, that the enemies of
Christ were delivered into their hands. Then dividing his small force of
about four hundred men into several bodies, he showed at first a single
troop of horse, whom the royalists prepared to receive with their cavalry;
but after a short interval, appeared a second, then a third, then a fourth;
and Montrose believing that Leslie's entire army was advancing, ordered
the infantry to take shelter among the brushwood and stunted trees on a
neighbouring eminence. But before this movement could be executed, his
horse were broken, and his whole force lay at the mercy of the enemy. The
standard-bearer with several officers and most of the natives were slain;
the mercenaries made a show of resistance, and obtained quarter; and
Montrose, whose horse had been killed under him, accompanied by Kinnoul,
wandered on foot, without a guide, up the valley of the Kyle, and over the
mountains of Sutherland. Kinnoul, unable to bear the hunger and fatigue,
was left and perished; Montrose, on the third day,[c] obtained refreshment
at the hut of a shepherd; and, being afterwards discovered, claimed the
protection of Macleod of Assynt, who had formerly served under him in the
royal army. But the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. April 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. April 30.]

fidelity of the laird was not proof against temptation; he sold[a] the
king's lieutenant for four hundred bolls of meal; and Argyle and his
associates, almost frantic with joy, passed an act to regulate the
ignominious treatment to which their captive should be subjected, the
form of the judgment to be pronounced, and the manner of his subsequent
execution. When Montrose reached[b] the capital, he found the magistrates
in their robes waiting to receive him. First the royal officers,
twenty-three in number, were ranged in two files, and ordered to walk
forward manacled and bareheaded; next came the hangman with his bonnet on
his head, dressed in the livery of his office, and mounted on his horse
that drew a vehicle of new form devised for the occasion; and then on this
vehicle was seen Montrose himself, seated on a lofty form, and pinioned,
and uncovered. The procession paraded slowly through the city from the
Watergate to the common jail, whilst the streets resounded with shouts of
triumph, and with every expression of hatred which religious or political
fanaticism could inspire.[1]

From his enemies Montrose could expect no mercy; but his death was
hastened, that the king might not have time to intercede in his favour. The
following day, a Sunday, was indeed given to prayer; but on the next the
work of vengeance was resumed, and the captive was summoned[c] before
the parliament. His features, pale and haggard, showed the fatigue and
privations which he had endured; but his dress was

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, i. 345. Balfour, iii. 432, 439; iv. 8-13.
Whitelock, 435, 452, 453, 454, 455. Clarendon, iii. 348-353. Laing, iii.
443. The neighbouring clans ravaged the lands of Assynt to revenge the
fate of Montrose, and the parliament granted in return to Macleod twenty
thousand pounds Scots out of the fines to be levied on the royalists in
Caithness and Orkney.--Balf. iv. 52, 56.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. May 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 20.]

splendid, his mien fearless, his language calm, firm, and dignified. To the
chancellor, who, in a tone of bitterness and reprobation, enumerated the
offences with which he was charged, he replied, that since the king had
condescended to treat with them as estates, it became not a subject to
dispute their authority; but that the apostasy and rebellion with which
they reproached him were, in his estimation, acts of duty. Whatever he had
done, either in the last or present reign, had been done with the sanction
of the sovereign. If he had formerly taken up arms, it had been to divert
his countrymen from the impious war which they waged against the royal
authority in England; if now, his object was to accelerate the existing
negotiation between them and their new king. As a Christian, he had always
supported that cause which his conscience approved; as a subject, he always
fought in support of his prince; and as a neighbour, he had frequently
preserved the lives of those who had forfeited them against him in battle.
The chancellor, in return, declared him a murderer of his fellow-subjects,
an enemy to the covenant and the peace of the kingdom, and an agitator,
whose ambition had helped to destroy the father, and was now employed for
the destruction of the son. Judgment, which had been passed in parliament
some days before, was then pronounced, by the dempster, that James Graham
should be hanged for the space of three hours on a gibbet thirty feet high,
that his head should be fixed on a spike in Edinburgh, his arms on the
gates of Perth or Stirling, his legs on those of Glasgow and Aberdeen,
and his body be interred by the hangman on the burrowmuir, unless he were
previously released from excommunication by the kirk. During this trying
scene, his enemies eagerly watched his demeanour. Twice, if we may believe
report, he was heard to sigh, and his eyes occasionally wandered along
the cornice of the hall. But he stood before them cool and collected; no
symptom of perturbation marked his countenance, no expression of complaint
or impatience escaped his lips; he showed himself superior to insult, and
unscarred at the menaces of death.

The same high tone of feeling supported the unfortunate victim to the last
gasp. When the ministers admonished[a] him that his punishment in
this world was but a shadow of that which awaited him in the next, he
indignantly replied, that he gloried in his fate, and only lamented that he
had not limbs sufficient to furnish every city in Christendom with proofs
of his loyalty. On the scaffold, he maintained the uprightness of his
conduct, praised the character of the present king, and appealed from the
censures of the kirk to the justice of Heaven. As a last disgrace, the
executioner hung round his neck his late declaration, with the history of
his former exploits. He smiled at the malice of his enemies, and said that
they had given. him a more brilliant decoration than the garter with which
he had been honoured by his sovereign. Montrose, by his death, won more
proselytes to the royal cause than he had ever made by his victories. He
was in his thirty-eighth year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 13, 15, 16, 19-22. Wishart, 389. Clar. iii.
353-356. Whitelock, 456. Colonel Hurry, whom the reader has seen
successively serving under the king and the parliament in the civil war;
Spotiswood, the grandson of the archbishop of that name; Sir W. Hay, who
had been forefaulted as a Catholic in 1647; Sibbald, the confidential envoy
of Montrose, and several others, were beheaded. Of the common soldiers,
some were given to different lords to be fishermen or miners, and the rest
enrolled in regiments in the French service.--Balfour, iv. 18, 27, 28, 32,
33, 44.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 21.]

Long before this the commissioners from both parties had met at Breda;
and, on the very day of the opening of the conferences, Charles
had despatched[a] an order to Montrose to proceed according to his
instructions, and to bear in mind that the success of the negotiation
at Breda depended on the success of his arms in Scotland. A month
afterwards[b] he commended in strong terms the loyalty of Lord Napier,
and urged him to repair without delay to the aid of his lieutenant. It is
impossible after this to doubt of his approbation of the attempt; but, when
the news arrived of the action at Corbiesdale, his eyes were opened to the
danger which threatened him; the estates, in the insolence of victory,
might pass an act to exclude him at once from the succession to the
Scottish throne. Acting, therefore, after the unworthy precedent set by
his father respecting the powers given to Glamorgan, he wrote[c] to
the parliament, protesting that the invasion made by Montrose had been
expressly forbidden by him, and begging that they "would do him the justice
to believe that he had not been accessory to it in the least degree;" in
confirmation of which the secretary at the same time assured Argyle that
the king felt no regret for the defeat of a man who had presumed to draw
the sword "without and contrary to the royal command." These letters
arrived[d] too late

[Footnote 1: Carte, iv. 626.]

[Footnote 2: Napier's Montrose, ii. 528. Yet on May 5th the king signed an
article, stipulating that Montrose should lay down his arms, receiving a
full indemnity for all that was past.--Carte, iv. 630. This article reached
Edinburgh before the execution of Montrose, and was kept secret. I see not,
however, what benefit he could claim from it. He had not laid down arms in
obedience to it; for he had been defeated a week before it was signed.]

[Footnote 3: Balfour, iv. 24, 25. Yet on May 15th Charles wrote to Montrose
to act according to the article in the last note.--Ibid.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 12.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. May 25.]

to be of injury to the unfortunate victim, whose limbs were already
bleaching on the gates of the principal towns in Scotland; but the
falsehood so confidently put forth must cover with infamy the prince who
could thus, to screen himself from the anger of his enemies, calumniate the
most devoted of his followers, one who had so often perilled, and at length
forfeited, his life in defence of the throne.

Charles had now no resource but to submit with the best grace to the
demands of the Scots. He signed the treaty,[a] binding himself to take
the Scottish covenant and the solemn league and covenant; to disavow
and declare null the peace with the Irish, and never to permit the free
exercise of the Catholic religion in Ireland, or any other part of his
dominions; to acknowledge the authority of all parliaments held since the
commencement of the late war; and to govern, in civil matters, by advice of
the parliament, in religious, by that of the kirk.[1] These preliminaries
being settled,[b] he embarked on board a small squadron furnished by the
prince of Orange, and, after a perilous navigation of three weeks, during
which he had to contend with the stormy weather, and to elude the pursuit
of the parliamentary cruisers, he arrived in safety in the Frith of
Cromartie.[c] The king was received with the honours due to his dignity; a
court with proper officers was prepared for him at Falkland, and the sum
of one hundred thousand pounds Scots, or nine thousand pounds English, was
voted for the monthly expense of his household. But the parliament had
previously[d] passed an act banishing from Scotland several of the royal
favourites by name, and excluding the "engagers" from the verge of the
court, and all employment

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 147.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. June 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. June 23.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. June 4.]

in the state. After repeated applications, the duke of Buckingham, the
Lord Wilmot, and a few English servants, who took the covenant, obtained
permission to remain with the king; many of the Scottish exiles embraced
the opportunity to withdraw from notice into the western isles, or the more
distant parts of the country.[1]

It was the negotiation between the Scots and their nominal king that
arrested Cromwell in the career of victory, and called him away from the
completion of his conquest. The rulers of the commonwealth were aware of
the intimate connection which the solemn league and covenant had produced
between the English Presbyterians and the kirk of Scotland, whence they
naturally inferred that, if the pretender to the English were once
seated on the Scottish throne, their own power would he placed on a very
precarious footing. From the first they had watched with jealousy the
unfriendly proceedings of the Scottish parliament. Advice and persuasion
had been tried, and had failed. There remained the resource of war; and
war, it was hoped, would either compel the Scots to abandon the claims of
Charles, or reduce Scotland to a province of the commonwealth. Fairfax,
indeed (he was supposed to be under the influence of a Presbyterian wife
and of the Presbyterian ministers), disapproved of the design;[2] but
his disapprobation, though lamented in public, was privately hailed as a
benefit by those who were acquainted with the aspiring designs of Cromwell,
and built on his elevation the flattering hope of their own greatness. By
their means, as soon as the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 41, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67, 73, 77, 78. Whitelock,
462. Clarendon, iii. 346, 356, 357.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 438.]

lord lieutenant had put his troops into winter quarters, an order was
obtained from parliament for him to attend his duty in the house; but he
resumed his military operations,[a] and two months were suffered to elapse
before he noticed the command of the supreme authority, and condescended to
make an unmeaning apology for his disobedience.[b] On the renewal of the
order,[c] he left the command in Ireland to Ireton, and, returning to
England, appeared in his seat.[d] He was received with acclamations; the
palace of St. James's was allotted for his residence, and a valuable grant
of lands was voted[e] as a reward for his eminent services. In a few days
followed the appointment of Fairfax to the office of commander-in-chief,[f]
and of Cromwell to that of lieutenant-general of the army designed to be
employed in Scotland. Each signified his "readiness to observe the orders
of the house;" but Fairfax at the same time revealed his secret and
conscientious objections to the council of state. A deputation of five
members, Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelock, and St. John, waited on
him at his house;[g] the conference was opened by a solemn invocation of
the Holy Spirit, and the three officers prayed in succession with the most
edifying fervour. Then Fairfax said that, to his mind, the invasion of
Scotland appeared a violation of the solemn league and covenant which he
had sworn to observe. It was replied that the Scots themselves had broken
the league by the invasion of England under the duke of Hamilton; and that
it was always lawful to prevent the hostile designs of another power. But
he answered that the Scottish parliament had given satisfaction by the
punishment of the guilty; that the probability of hostile designs ought
indeed to lead to measures of precaution, but that certainty was

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. April 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 30.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. June 4.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. June 12.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. June 14.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1650. June 24.]

required to justify actual invasion. No impression was made on his mind;
and, though Cromwell and his brother officers earnestly solicited him to
comply, "there was cause enough," says one of the deputation, "to believe
that they did not overmuch desire it."[1] The next day[a] another attempt
ended with as little success; the lord general alleging the plea of infirm
health and misboding conscience, sent back the last commission, and at the
request of the house, the former also; and the chief command of all the
forces raised, or to be raised by order of parliament, was conferred on
Oliver Cromwell.[b] Thus this adventurer obtained at the same time the
praise of moderation and the object of his ambition. Immediately he
left the capital for Scotland;[c] and Fairfax retired to his estate in
Yorkshire, where he lived with the privacy of a country gentleman, till he
once more drew the sword, not in support of the commonwealth, but in favour
of the king.[2]

To a spectator who considered the preparations of the two kingdoms, there
could be little doubt of the result. Cromwell passed the Tweed[d] at the
head of sixteen thousand men, most of them veterans, all habituated to
military discipline, before the raw levies of the Scots had quitted their
respective shires. By order of the Scottish parliament, the army had been
fixed at thirty thousand men; the nominal command had been given to the
earl of Leven, the real, on account of the age and infirmities of that
officer, to his relative, David Leslie, and instructions had been

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 460, 462. Ludlow says, "he acted his part so to the
life, that I really thought him in earnest; but the consequence made it
sufficiently evident that he had no such intention" (i. 272).
Hutchinson, who was present on one of these occasions, thought him
sincere.--Hutchinson, 315.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 438, 450, 457. Journals, Jan. 8, Feb. 25, March 30,
April 15, May 2, 7, 30, June 4, 12, 14, 25, 26.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. June 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. June 29.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. July 16.]

issued that the country between Berwick and the capital should be laid
waste, that the cattle and provisions should be removed or destroyed, and
that the inhabitants should abandon their homes under the penalties of
infamy, confiscation, and death. In aid of this measure, reports were
industriously circulated of the cruelties exercised by Cromwell in Ireland;
that, wherever he came, he gave orders to put all the males between sixteen
and sixty to death, to deprive all the boys between six and sixteen of
their right hands, and to bore the breasts of the females with red-hot
irons. The English were surprised at the silence and desolation which
reigned around them; for the only human beings whom they met on their march
through this wilderness, were a few old women and children who on their
knees solicited mercy. But Cromwell conducted them by the sea coast; the
fleet daily supplied them with provisions, and their good conduct gradually
dispelled the apprehensions of the natives.[1] They found[a] the Scottish
levies posted behind a deep intrenchment, running from Edinburgh to Leith,
fortified with numerous batteries, and flanked by the cannon of the castle
at one extremity, and of the harbour at the other. Cromwell employed all
his art to provoke Leslie to avoid an engagement. It was in vain that for
more than a month the former marched and countermarched; that he threatened
general, and made partial, attacks. Leslie remained fixed within his lines;
or, if he occasionally moved,

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 465, 466, 468. Perfect Diurnal, No. 324. See the
three declarations: that of the parliament on the marching of the army; of
the army itself, addressed "to all that are saints and partakers of the
faith of God's elect in Scotland;" and, the third, from Cromwell, dated
at Berwick, in the Parliamentary History, xix. 276, 298, 310; King's
Pamphlets, 473.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. July 28.]

watched the motions of the enemy from the nearest mountains, or interposed
a river or morass between the two armies. The English began to be exhausted
with fatigue; sickness thinned their ranks; the arrival of provisions
depended on the winds and waves; and Cromwell was taught to fear, not the
valour of the enemy, but the prudence of their general.[1]

The reader will already have observed how much at this period the exercises
of religion were mixed up with the concerns of state and even the
operations of war. Both parties equally believed that the result of
the expedition depended on the will of the Almighty, and that it was,
therefore, their duty to propitiate his anger by fasting and humiliation.
In the English army the officers prayed and preached: they "sanctified the
camp," and exhorted the men to unity of mind and godliness of life. Among
the Scots this duty was discharged by the ministers; and so fervent was
their piety, so merciless their zeal, that, in addition to their prayers,
they occasionally compelled the young king to listen to six long sermons
on the same day, during which he assumed an air of gravity, and displayed
feelings of devotion, which ill-accorded with his real disposition. But
the English had no national crime to deplore; by punishing the late king,
_they_ had atoned for the evils of the civil war; the Scots, on the
contrary, had adopted his son without any real proof of his conversion, and
therefore feared that they might draw down on the country the punishment
due to his sins and those of his family. It happened[a] that Charles, by
the advice of the earl of Eglington, presumed to visit the army on the
Links of

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 87, 88, 90. Whitelock, 467, 468.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. July 29.]

Leith. He was received with shouts of enthusiasm by the soldiers, who, on
their knees, pledged the health of their young sovereign; but the committee
of the kirk complained[a] that his presence led to ebriety and profaneness,
and he received a request,[b] equivalent to a command, to quit the camp.
The next day a declaration was made, that the company of malignants,
engagers, and enemies to the covenant, could not fail of multiplying
the judgments of God upon the land; an inquiry was instituted into the
characters of numerous individuals; and eighty officers, with many of their
men, were cashiered,[c] that they might not contaminate by their presence
the army of the saints.[1] Still it was for Charles Stuart, the chief of
the malignants, that they were to fight, and therefore from him, to appease
the anger of the Almighty, an expiatory declaration was required[d] in the
name of the parliament and the kirk.

In this instrument he was called upon to lament, in the language of
penitence and self-abasement, his father's opposition to the work of God
and to the solemn league and covenant, which had caused the blood of the
Lord's people to be shed, and the idolatry of his mother, the toleration of
which in the king's house could not fail to be a high provocation against
him who is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the
children; to declare that he had subscribed the covenant with sincerity of
heart, and would have no friends nor enemies but those who were friends or
enemies to it; to acknowledge the sinfulness of the treaty with the bloody
rebels in Ireland, which he was made to pronounce null and void; to detest
popery and prelacy, idolatry and heresy, schism

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 86, 89.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 3.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. August 5.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. August 9.]

and profaneness; and to promise that he would accord to a free parliament
in England the propositions of the two kingdoms, and reform the church
of England according to the plan devised by the assembly of divines at
Westminster.[1]

When first this declaration, so humbling to his pride, so offensive to his
feelings, was presented[a] to Charles for his signature, he returned[b] an
indignant refusal; a little reflection induced him to solicit the advice
of the council, and the opinion of the principal ministers. But the godly
refused to wait; the two committees of the kirk and kingdom protested[c]
that they disowned the quarrel and interest of every malignant party,
disclaimed the guilt of the king and his house, and would never prosecute
his interest without his acknowledgment of the sins of his family and of
his former ways, and his promise of giving satisfaction to God's people
in both kingdoms. This protestation was printed and furtively sent to the
English camp; the officers of the army presented[d] to the committee of
estates a remonstrance and supplication expressive of their adhesion; and
the ministers maintained from their pulpits that the king was the root
of malignancy, and a hypocrite, who had taken the covenant without an
intention of keeping it. Charles, yielding to his own fears and the advice
of his friends; at the end of three days subscribed,[e] with tears, the
obnoxious instrument. If it were folly in the Scots to propose to the young
prince a declaration so repugnant to his feelings and opinions, it was
greater folly still to believe that professions of repentance extorted

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 92. Whitelock, 469. "A declaration by the king's
majesty to his subjects of the kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland."
Printed 1650.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 13.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. August 14.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. August 15.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. August 16.]

with so much violence could be sincere or satisfactory; yet his
subscription was received with expressions of joy and gratitude; both the
army and the city observed a solemn fast for the sins of the two kings, the
father and the son; and the ministers, now that the anger of Heaven had
been appeased, assured their hearers of an easy victory over a "blaspheming
general and a sectarian army."[1]

If their predictions were not verified, the fault was undoubtedly their
own. The caution and vigilance of Leslie had triumphed over the skill and
activity of "the blasphemer." Cromwell saw no alternative but victory or
retreat: of the first he had no doubt, if he could come in contact with the
enemy; the second was a perilous attempt, when the passes before him
were pre-occupied, and a more numerous force was hanging on his rear. At
Musselburg, having sent the sick on board the fleet (they suffered both
from the "disease of the country," and from fevers caused by exposure on
the Pentland hills), he ordered[a] the army to march the next morning to
Haddington, and thence to Dunbar; and the same night a meteor, which the
imagination of the beholders likened to a sword of fire, was seen to pass
over Edinburgh in a south-easterly direction, an evident presages in the
opinion of the Scots, that the flames of war would be transferred

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 91, 92, 95. The English parliament in their
answer exclaim: "What a blessed and hopeful change is wrought in a moment
in this young king! How hearty is he become to the cause of God and the
work of reformation. How readily doth he swallow down these bitter pills,
which are prepared for and urged upon him, as necessary to effect that
desperate care under which his affairs lie! But who sees not the crass
hypocrisy of this whole transaction, and the sandy and rotten foundation
of all the resolutions flowing hereupon?"--See Parliamentary History, xix.
359-386.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 30.]

to the remotest extremity of England.[1] At Dunbar, Cromwell posted his men
in the vicinity of Broxmouth House; Leslie with the Scots moving along the
heights of Lammermuir, occupied[a] a position on the Doon Hill, about two
miles to the south of the invaders; and the advanced posts of the armies
were separated only by a ravine of the depth and breadth of about thirty
feet. Cromwell was not ignorant of the danger of his situation; he had even
thought of putting the infantry on board the fleet, and of attempting to
escape with the cavalry by the only outlet, the high road to Berwick; but
the next moment he condemned the thought as "a weakness of the flesh, a
distrust in the power of the Almighty;" and ordered the army "to seek
the Lord, who would assuredly find a way of deliverance for his faithful
servants." On the other side the committees of the kirk and estates exulted
in the prospect of executing the vengeance of God upon "the sectaries;" and
afraid that the enemy should escape, compelled their general to depart from
his usual caution, and to make preparation for battle. Cromwell, with his
officers, had spent part of the day in calling upon the Lord; while he
prayed, the enthusiast felt an enlargement of the heart, a buoyancy of
spirit, which he took for an infallible presage of victory; and, beholding
through his glass the motion in the Scottish camp, he exclaimed, "They are
coming down; the Lord hath delivered them into our hands."[2] During the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 94.]

[Footnote 2: Sagredo, the Venetian ambassador, in his relation to the
senate, says that Cromwell pretended to have been assured of the victory
by a supernatural voice. Prima che venisse alla battaglia, diede cuore ai
soldati con assicurargli la vittoria predettagli da Dio, con una voce, che
lo aveva a mezza notte riscosso dal sonno. MS. copy in my possession.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 31.]

night, he advanced the army to the edge of the ravine; and at an early hour
in the morning[a] the Scots attempted to seize the pass on the road from
Dunbar to Berwick. After a sharp contest, the Scottish lancers, aided
by their artillery, charged down the hill, drove the brigade of English
cavalry from its position, and broke through the infantry, which had
advanced to the support of the horse. At that moment the sun made its
appearance above the horizon; and Cromwell, turning to his own regiment
of foot, exclaimed, "Let the Lord arise, and scatter his enemies." They
instantly moved forward with their pikes levelled; the horse rallied; and
the enemy's lancers hesitated, broke, and fled. At that moment the mist
dispersed, and the first spectacle which struck the eyes of the Scots, was
the route of their cavalry. A sudden panic instantly spread from the right
to the left of their line; at the approach of the English they threw down
their arms and ran. Cromwell's regiment halted to sing the 117th Psalm; but
the pursuit was continued for more than eight miles; the dead bodies of
three thousand Scots strewed their native soil; and ten thousand prisoners,
with the artillery, ammunition, and baggage, became the reward of the
conquerors.[1]

Cromwell now thought no more of his retreat. He marched back to the
capital; the hope of resistance was abandoned; Edinburgh and Leith opened
their gates, and the whole country to the Forth submitted

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, i. 381. Whitelock, 470, 471. Ludlow, i. 283.
Balfour, iv. 97. Several proceedings, No. 50. Parl. Hist. xix. 343-352,
478. Cromwelliana, 89. Of the prisoners, five thousand one hundred,
something more than one-half, being wounded, were dismissed to their homes,
the other half were driven "like turkies" into England. Of these, one
thousand six hundred died of a pestilential disease, and five hundred were
actually sick on Oct 31.--Whitelock, 471. Old Parl. Hist. xix. 417.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 3.]

to the will of the English general. Still the presumption of the six
ministers who formed the committee of the kirk was not humbled. Though
their predictions had been falsified, they were still the depositaries of
the secrets of the Deity; and, in a "Short Declaration and Warning," they
announced[a] to their countrymen the thirteen causes of this national
calamity, the reasons why "God had veiled for a time his face from the sons
of Jacob." It was by the general profaneness of the land, by the manifest
provocations of the king and the king's house, by the crooked and
precipitant ways of statesmen in the treaty of Breda, by the toleration of
malignants in the king's household, by suffering his guard to join in the
battle without a previous purgation, by the diffidence of some officers
who refused to profit by advantages furnished to them by God, by the
presumption of others who promised victory to themselves without eyeing of
God, by the rapacity and oppression exercised by the soldiery, and by the
carnal self-seeking of men in power, that God had been provoked to visit
his people with so direful and yet so merited a chastisement.[1]

To the young king the defeat at Dunbar was a subject of real and
ill-dissembled joy. Hitherto he had been a mere puppet in the hands of
Argyle and his party; now their power was broken, and it was not impossible
for him to gain the ascendancy. He entered into a negotiation with Murray,
Huntley, Athol, and the numerous royalists in the Highlands; but the
secret, without the particulars, was betrayed to Argyle,[b] probably by
Buckingham, who disapproved of the project; and all the cavaliers but three
received an order to leave the court in twenty-four hours--the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 98-107.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Sept. 27.]

kingdom in twenty days. The vigilance of the guards prevented the execution
of the plan which had been laid; but one afternoon, under pretence of
hawking, Charles escaped[a] from Perth, and riding forty-two miles, passed
the night in a miserable hovel, called Clova, la the braes of Angus. At
break of day he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery, who advised him[b] to
return, while the Viscount Dudhope urged him to proceed to the mountains,
where he would be joined by seven thousand armed men. Charles wavered; but
Montgomery directed his attention to two regiments of horse that waited at
a distance to intercept his progress, and the royal fugitive consented[c]
to return to his former residence in Perth.[1]

The Start (so this adventure was called) proved, however, a warning to the
committee of estates. They prudently admitted the apology of the king, who
attributed[d] his flight to information that he was that day to have been
delivered to Cromwell; they allowed[e] him, for the first time, to preside
at their deliberations; and they employed his authority to pacify the
royalists in the Highlands, who had taken arms[f] in his name under
Huntley, Athol, Seaforth, and Middleton. These, after a long negotiation,
accepted an act of indemnity, and disbanded their forces.[2]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 109, 113, 114. Baillie, ii. 356. Whitelock, 476.
Miscellanea Aulica, 152. It seems probable from some letters published in
the correspondence of Mr. Secretary Nicholas, that Charles had planned his
escape from the "villany and hypocrisy" of the party, as early as the day
of the battle of Dunbar.--Evelyn's Mem. v. 181-186, octavo.]

[Footnote 2: Balfour, iv. 118, 123, 129-135, 160. Baillie, ii. 356.
A minister, James Guthrie, in defiance of the committee of estates,
excommunicated Middleton; and such was the power of the kirk, that even
when the king's party was superior, Middleton was compelled to do penance
in sackcloth in the church of Dundee, before he could obtain absolution
preparatory to his taking a command in the army.--Baillie, 357. Balfour,
240.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 5.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Oct. 10.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Oct. 12.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. Nov. 4.]


In the mean while Cromwell in his quarters at Edinburgh laboured to unite
the character of the saint with that of the conqueror; and, surrounded as
he was with the splendour of victory, to surprise the world by a display
of modesty and self-abasement. To his friends and flatterers, who fed
his vanity by warning him to be on his guard against its suggestions,
he replied, that he "had been a dry bone, and was still an unprofitable
servant," a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty power; if God had
risen in his wrath, if he had bared his arm and avenged his cause, to
him, and to him alone, belonged the glory.[1] Assuming the office of a
missionary, he exhorted his officers in daily sermons to love one another,
to repent from dead works, and to pray and mourn for the blindness of their
Scottish adversaries; and, pretending to avail himself of his present
leisure, he provoked a theological controversy with the ministers in
the castle of Edinburgh, reproaching them with pride in arrogating to
themselves the right of expounding the true sense of the solemn league and
covenant; vindicating the claim of laymen to preach the gospel and
exhibit their spiritual gifts for the edification of their brethren; and
maintaining that, after the solemn fasts observed by both nations, after
their many and earnest appeals to the God of armies, the victory gained
at Dunbar must be admitted an evident manifestation of the divine will in
favour of the English commonwealth. Finding that he made no proselytes
of his opponents, he published his arguments for the instruction of the
Scottish people; but his zeal did not

[Footnote 1: See a number of letters in Milton's State Papers, 18-35.]

escape suspicion; and the more discerning believed that, under the cover of
a religious controversy, he was in reality tampering with the fidelity of
the governor.[1]

In a short time his attention was withdrawn to a more important
controversy, which ultimately spread the flames of religious discord
throughout the nation. There had all along existed a number of Scots who
approved of the execution of the late king, and condemned even the nominal
authority given to his son. Of these men, formidable by their talents,
still more formidable by their fanaticism, the leaders were Wariston, the
clerk register in the parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers
in the kirk. In parliament the party, though too weak to control, was
sufficiently strong to embarrass, and occasionally to influence, the
proceedings; in the kirk it formed indeed the minority, but a minority too
bold and too numerous to be rashly irritated or incautiously despised.[2]
After the defeat at Dunbar, permission was cheerfully granted by the
committee of estates for a levy of troops in the associated counties of
Renfrew, Air, Galloway, Wigton, and Dumfries, that part of Scotland where
fanaticism had long fermented, and the most rigid notions prevailed. The
crusade was preached by Gillespie; his efforts were successfully seconded
by the other ministers, and in a short time four regiments of horse,
amounting almost to five thousand men, were raised under Strachan, Kerr,
and two other colonels. The real design now began to unfold itself. First,
the officers refused to serve under Leslie; and the parliament consented to
exempt them from his authority. Next, they hinted doubts of the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 158-163.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, ii. 353.]

lawfulness of the war in which they were engaged; and Cromwell, in whose
army Strachan had fought at Preston, immediately[a] opened a correspondence
with him.[1] Then came the accident of "the start," which embittered and
emboldened the zeal of the fanatics; and in a long remonstrance, subscribed
by ministers and elders, by officers and soldiers, and presented[b] in
their name to Charles and the committee of estates, they pronounced[c] the
treaty with the king unlawful and sinful, disowned his interest in the
quarrel with the enemy, and charged the leading men in the nation with the
guilt of the war, which they had provoked by their intention of invading
England. The intemperate tone and disloyal tendency of this paper, whilst
it provoked irritation and alarm at Perth, induced Cromwell to advance with
his army from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and Hamilton. But the western forces
(so they were called) withdrew to Dumfries, where a meeting was held with
Wariston, and a new draught of the remonstrance, in language still more
energetic and vituperative, was adopted. On the return[d] of Cromwell to
the capital, his negotiation with the officers was resumed, while Argyle
and his friends laboured on the opposite side to mollify the obstinacy of
the fanatics. But reasoning was found useless; the parliament condemned[e]
the remonstrance as a scandalous and seditious libel; and, since Strachan
had resigned[f] his commission, ordered Montgomery with three new regiments
to take the command of the whole force. Kerr, however, before his arrival,
had led[g] the western levy to attack Lambert in his

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 350-352. Strachan was willing to give assurance
not to molest England in the king's quarrel. Cromwell insisted that Charles
should be banished by act of parliament, or imprisoned for life.--Ib. 352.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Oct. 30.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Nov. 25.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. Nov. 28.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1650. Dec. 1.]

quarters at Hamilton; he was taken prisoner, designedly if we may believe
report, and his whole army was dispersed. Soon afterwards Strachan, with
sixty troopers, passed over to Lambert, and the associated counties, left
without defence, submitted to the enemy. Still the framers and advocates of
the remonstrance, though they knew that it had been condemned by the state
and the kirk, though they had no longer an army to draw the sword in
its support, adhered pertinaciously to its principles; the unity of the
Scottish church was rent in twain, and the separation was afterwards
widened by a resolution of the assembly,[a] that in such a crisis all
Scotsmen might be employed in the service of the country.[1] Even their
common misfortunes failed to reconcile these exasperated spirits; and after
the subjugation of their country, and under the yoke of civil servitude,
the two parties still continued to persecute each other with all the
obstinacy and bitterness of religious warfare. The royalists obtained
the name of public resolutioners; their opponents, of protestors or
remonstrants.[2]

Though it cost the young prince many an internal struggle, yet experience
had taught him that he must soothe the religious prejudices of the kirk, if
he hoped ever to acquire the preponderance in the state. On the first day
of the new year,[b] he rode in procession to the church of Scone, where his
ancestors had been accustomed to receive the Scottish crown: there on his
knees, with his arm upraised, he swore by the Eternal

[Footnote 1: With the exception of persons "excommunicated, notoriously
profane, or flagitious, and professed enemies and opposers of the covenant
and cause of God."--Wodrow, Introd. iii.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, ii. 348, 354-364. Balfour, iv. 136, 141-160, 173-178,
187, 189. Whitelock, 475, 476, 477, 484. Sydney Papers, ii. 679. Burnet's
Hamiltons, 425.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Dec. 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Jan. 1.]

and Almighty God to observe the two covenants; to establish the
presbyterial government in Scotland and in his family; to give his assent
to acts for establishing it in his other dominions; to rule according to
the law of God and the lovable laws of the land; to abolish and withstand
all false religions; and to root out all heretics and enemies of the true
worship of God, convicted by the true church of God. Argyle then placed the
crown upon his head, and seated him on the throne, and both nobility and
people swore allegiance to him "according to the national covenant, and the
solemn league and covenant." At the commencement, during the ceremony, and
after the conclusion, Douglas, the minister, addressed the king, reminding
him that he was king by compact with his people; that his authority was
limited by the law of God, the laws of the people, and the association of
the estates with him in the government; that, though every breach did
not dissolve the compact, yet every abuse of power to the subversion of
religion, law, or liberty, justified opposition in the people; that it was
for him, by his observance of the covenant, to silence those who doubted
his sincerity; that the evils which had afflicted his family arose out of
the apostasy of his father and grandfather; and that, if he imitated them,
he would find that the controversy between him and God was not ended, but
would be productive of additional calamities. The reader may imagine what
were the feelings of Charles while he listened to the admonitions of the
preacher, and when he swore to perform conditions which his soul abhorred,
and which he knew that on the first opportunity he should break or
elude.[1] But he passed with credit through the

[Footnote 1: See "The forme and order of the Coronation of Charles II., as
it was acted and done at Scoune, the first day of January, 1651." Aberdene,
1651.]

ceremony; the coronation exalted him in the eyes of the people; and each
day brought to him fresh accessions of influence and authority. The
kirk delivered Strachan as a traitor and apostate to the devil; and the
parliament forefaulted his associates, of whom several hastened to make
their peace by a solemn recantation. Deprived of their support, the
Campbells gradually yielded to the superior influence of the Hamiltons.
Vexation, indeed, urged them to reproach the king with inconstancy and
ingratitude; but Charles, while he employed every art to lull the jealousy
of Argyle, steadily pursued his purpose; his friends, by submitting to the
humbling ceremony of public penance, satisfied the severity of the kirk;
and by the repeal[a] of the act of classes, they were released from all
previous forfeitures and disqualifications. In April the king, with Leslie
and Middleton as his lieutenants, took the command of the army, which had
been raised by new levies to twenty thousand men, and, having fortified
the passages of the Forth, awaited on the left bank the motions of the
enemy.[1]

In the mean while Cromwell had obtained[b] possession of the castle of
Edinburgh through the perfidy or the timidity of the governor. Tantallon
had been taken by storm, and Dumbarton had been attempted, but its defences
were too strong to be carried by force,

[Footnote 1: Carte, Letters, ii. 26, 27. Balfour, iv. 240, 268, 281,
301. It appears from this writer that a great number of the colonels of
regiments were royalists or engagers (p. 210, 213). The six brigades
of horse seem to have been divided equally between old Covenanters and
royalists. The seventh was not given to any general, but would be commanded
by Hamilton, as the eldest colonel.--Ib. 299-301. It is therefore plain
that with the king for commander-in-chief the royalists had the complete
ascendancy.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. May 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Dec. 19.]

and its garrison too honest to be corrupted with money.[1] In February the
lord general was afflicted[a] with an ague, so ruinous to his health, and
so obstinate in its duration, that in May he obtained permission to return
to England, with the power of disposing, according to his judgment, of the
chief command.[2] A rapid and unexpected improvement[b] induced him to
remain; and in July he marched with his army towards Stirling. The Scots
faced him in their intrenched camp at Torwood; he turned aside to Glasgow;
they took[c] a position at Kilsyth; he marched[d] back to Falkirk; and they
resumed their position at Torwood. While by these movements the English
general occupied the attention of his opponents, a fleet of boats had been
silently prepared and brought to the Queensferry; a body of men crossed the
frith, and fortified a hill near Inverkeithing; and Lambert immediately
followed[e] with a more numerous division. The Scots despatched Holburn
with orders to drive the enemy into the sea; he was himself charged[f]
by Lambert with a superior force, and the flight of his men gave to the
English possession of the fertile and populous county of Fife. Cromwell
hastened to transport his army to the left bank of the river, and advance
on the rear of the Scots. They retired: Perth, the seat of government, was
besieged; and in a few days[g] the colours of the commonwealth floated on
its walls.[3]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 229, 249, 296. Baillie, ii. 368.]

[Footnote 2: The council had sent two physicians to attend him. His answer
to Bradshaw of March 24th runs in his usual style. "Indeed, my lord, your
service needs not me. I am a poor creature, and have been a dry bone, and
am still an unprofitable servant to my master and to you."--New Parl. Hist.
iii. 1363.]

[Footnote 3: Balfour, 313. Journals, May 27. Leicester's Journal, 109.
Whitelock, 490, 494, 497, 498, 499. Heath, 392, 393. According to Balfour,
the loss on each side was "almost alyke," about eight hundred men killed;
according to Lambert, the Scots lost two thousand killed, and fourteen
hundred taken prisoners; the English had only eight men slain; "so easy did
the Lord grant them that mercy."--Whitelock, 501. I observe that in all
the despatches of the commanders for the commonwealth their loss is
miraculously trifling.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Feb. 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. May 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. July 3.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. July 13.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. July 17.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1651. July 21.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1651. August.]


In the Scottish leaders the progress of the English excited the most
fearful anticipations; to Charles it suggested the execution of what had
long been his favourite object. The country to the south was clear of the
enemy; and a proclamation[a] to the army announced his resolve of marching
into England, accompanied by such of his Scottish subjects as were willing
to share the fortunes and the perils of their sovereign. The boldness of
the attempt dazzled the judgment of some; and the confidence of the young
king dispelled the apprehensions of others. Their knowledge that, in case
of failure, he must expect to meet with the same fate as his father,
justified a persuasion that he possessed secret assurances of a powerful
co-operation from the royalists and the Presbyterians of England. Argyle
(nor was it surprising after the decline of his influence at court)
solicited and obtained permission to retire to his own home; a few other
chieftains followed his example; the rest expressed their readiness to
stake their lives on the issue of the attempt, and the next morning eleven,
some say fourteen, thousand men began[b] their march from Stirling, in the
direction of Carlisle.[1]

Cromwell was surprised and embarrassed. The Scots had gained three days'
march in advance, and his army was unprepared to follow them at a moment's
notice. He wrote[c] to the parliament to rely on his industry and despatch;
he sent[d] Lambert from Fifeshire with three thousand cavalry to hang on
the rear, and ordered[e]

[Footnote 1: Leicester's Journal, 110. Whitelock, 501. Clarendon, iii.
397.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. July 30.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. July 31.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. August 4.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. August 5.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. August 7.]

Harrison with an equal number from Newcastle, to press on the flank of
the enemy; and on the seventh day led his army of ten thousand men by the
eastern coast, in the direction of York. The reduction of Scotland, a more
easy task after the departure of the royal forces, was left to the activity
of Monk, who had five thousand infantry and cavalry under his command.

So rapid was the advance of Charles, that he traversed the Lowlands of
Scotland, and the northern counties in England, without meeting a single
foe. Lambert had joined Harrison near Warrington; their united forces
amounted to nine thousand men; and their object was to prevent the passage
of the Mersey. But they arrived[a] too late to break down the bridge; and,
after a few charges, formed in battle array on Knutsford Heath. The king,
leaving them on the left, pushed forward till he reached[b] Worcester,
where he was solemnly proclaimed by the mayor, amidst the loud acclamations
of the gentlemen of the county, who, under a suspicion of their loyalty,
had been confined in that city by order of the council.[2]

At the first news of the royal march, the leaders at Westminster abandoned
themselves to despair. They believed that Cromwell had come to a private
understanding with the king; that the Scots would meet with no opposition
in their progress; and that the Cavaliers would rise simultaneously in
every part of the kingdom.[3] From these terrors they were relieved by
the arrival of despatches from the general, and by the indecision of the
royalists, who, unprepared for the event, had hitherto made no movement;
and with the

[Transcriber's Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]

[Footnote 1: Leicester's Journal, iii. 117.
Balfour, iv. 314.]

[Footnote 2: Leicester's Journal, 113, 114. Whitelock, 502, 503. Clarendon,
iii. 402.]

[Footnote 3: Hutchinson, 336.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 22.]

revival of their hopes the council assumed a tone of defiance, which was
supported by measures the most active and energetic. The declaration of
Charles,[a] containing a general pardon to all his subjects, with the
exception of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Cook, was burnt in London by the hands
of the hangman; and a counter proclamation was published,[b] pronouncing
Charles Stuart, his aiders and abettors, guilty of high treason. All
correspondence with him was forbidden under the penalty of death; it was
ordered that all persons known or suspected of attachment to his cause
should be placed in custody, or confined to their own houses; and the
militia of several counties, "tried and godly people," were called forth,
and marched towards the expected scene of action.[1] But Charles had to
contend not only with the activity of his enemies, but with the fanaticism
of his followers. The Presbyterians of Lancashire had promised to rise,
and Massey, a distinguished officer of that persuasion, was sent before to
organize the levy; but the committee of the kirk forbade him to employ any
man who had not taken the covenant; and, though Charles annulled their
order, the English ministers insisted that it should be obeyed. Massey
remained after the army had passed, and was joined by the earl of Derby,
with sixty horse and two hundred and sixty foot, from the Isle of Man. A
conference was held at Wigan; but reasoning and entreaty were employed in
vain; the ministers insisted that all the Catholics who had been enrolled
should be dismissed; and that the salvation of the kingdom should be
entrusted to the elect of God, who had taken the covenant. In the mean
while Cromwell had despatched Colonel Lilburne, with his

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 12.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 25.]

regiment of horse, into the county, and ordered reinforcements to join him
from Yorkshire and Cheshire. Derby, with the concurrence of the royalists
in Manchester, undertook to surprise Lilburne in his quarters near that
town, but was himself surprised by Lilburne, who marched on the same day[a]
to observe the earl's motions. They met unexpectedly in the lane leading
from Chorley to Wigan. The heads of the opposite columns repeatedly charged
each other; but the desperate courage of the Cavaliers was foiled by the
steadiness and discipline of their opponents; the Lord Widrington, Sir
Thomas Tildesly, Colonel Throckmorton, Boynton, Trollop, and about sixty
of their followers were slain, and above three hundred privates made
prisoners. The earl himself, who had received several slight wounds on the
arms and shoulders, fled to Wigan with the enemy at his heels. Observing a
house open, he flung himself from his horse, and sprung into the passage.
A female barred the door behind him; the pursuers were checked for an
instant; and when they began to search the house, he had already escaped
through the garden. Weak with fatigue and the loss of blood, he wandered in
a southerly direction, concealing himself by day, and travelling by night,
till he found[b] a secure asylum, in a retired mansion, called Boscobel
House, situate between Brewood and Tong Castle, and the property of Mrs.
Cotton, a Catholic recusant and royalist. There he was received and
secreted by William Penderell and his wife, the servants entrusted with the
care of the mansion; and having recovered his strength, was conducted by
the former to the royal army at Worcester.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 503, 504. Clarendon, iii. 399, 403. Memoirs of the
Stanleys, 112-114. Journals, Aug. 29. Leicester's Journal, 116. Boscobel,
6-8. Boscobel afterwards belonged to Bas. Fitzherbert, Mrs. Cotton's
son-in-law.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 29.]

The occurrences of each day added to the disappointment of Charles and the
confidence of his enemies. He had summoned[a] by proclamation all his male
subjects between the age of sixteen and sixty to join his standard at the
general muster[b] of his forces, on the 26th of August, in the Pitchcroft,
the meadows between the city and the river. A few of the neighbouring
gentlemen with their tenants, not two hundred in number, obeyed the
call;[1] and it was found that the whole amount of his force did not
exceed twelve (or according to Cromwell, sixteen)[2] thousand men, of whom
one-sixth part only was composed of Englishmen. But while a few straggling
royalists thus stole into his quarters, as if it were to display by their
paucity the hopelessness of his cause, the daily arrival of hostile
reinforcements swelled the army in the neighbourhood to more than thirty
thousand men. At length Cromwell arrived,[c] and was received with
enthusiasm. The royalists had broken down an arch of the bridge over the
Severn at Upton; but a few soldiers passed on a beam in the night; the
breach was repaired, and Lambert crossed with ten thousand men to the right
bank. A succession of partial but obstinate actions alternately raised and
depressed the hopes of the two parties; the grand attempt was reserved by
the lord general for his

[Footnote 1: They were lord Talbot, son to the earl of Shrewsbury, "with
about sixty horse; Mr. Mervin Touchet, Sir John Packington, Sir Walter
Blount, Sir Ralph Clare, Mr. Ralph Sheldon, of Beoly, Mr. John Washbourn,
of Wichinford, with forty horse; Mr. Thomas Hornyhold, of Blackmore-park,
with forty horse; Mr. Thomas Acton, Mr. Robert Blount, of Kenswick, Mr.
Robert Wigmore, of Lucton, Mr. F. Knotsford, Mr. Peter Blount, and divers
others."--Boscobel, 10.]

[Footnote 2: Cary's Memorials, ii. 361.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. August 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. August 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. August 28.]

auspicious day, the 3rd of September, on which twelve months before he had
defeated the Scots at Dunbar. On that morning Fleetwood, who had advanced
from Upton to Powick,[a] was ordered to force the passage of the Team,
while Cromwell, to preserve the communication, should throw a bridge of
boats across the Severn at Bunshill, near the confluence of the two rivers.
About one in the afternoon, while Charles with his staff observed from the
tower of the cathedral the positions of the enemy, his attention was drawn
by a discharge of musketry near Powick. He descended immediately, rode to
the scene of action, and ordered Montgomery with a brigade of horse and
foot to defend the line of the Team and oppose the formation of the bridge.
After a long and sanguinary struggle, Fleetwood effected a passage just at
the moment when Cromwell, having completed the work, moved four regiments
to his assistance. The Scots, though urged by superior numbers, maintained
the most obstinate resistance; they disputed every field and hedge,
repeatedly charged with the pike to check the advance of the enemy, and,
animated by the shouts of the combatants on the opposite bank, sought to
protract the contest with the vain hope that, by occupying the forces of
Fleetwood, they might insure the victory to their friends, who were engaged
with Cromwell.

That commander, as soon as he had secured the communication across the
river, ordered a battery of heavy guns to play upon Fort Royal, a work
lately raised to cover the Sidbury gate of the city, and led his troops
in two divisions to Perrywood and Red-hill. To Charles this seemed a
favourable opportunity of defeating one half of the hostile force, while
the other

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 3.]

half was separated from it by the Severn. Leading out the whole of his
disposable infantry, with the duke of Hamilton's troop of horse, and the
English volunteers, he marched to attack the enemy in their position, and
fought at the head of the Highlanders with a spirit worthy of a prince who
staked his life for the acquisition of a crown. Fortune favoured his first
efforts. The militia regiments shrunk from the shock, and the guns of the
enemy became the prize of the assailants. But Cromwell had placed some
veteran battalions in reserve. They restored the battle; and the royalists,
in their turn, began to retreat. Still they remained unbroken, availing
themselves of every advantage of the ground to check the enemy, and
anxiously expecting the aid of their cavalry, which, under the command of
Leslie, had remained in the city. From what cause it happened is unknown;
but that officer did not appear on the field till the battle was lost, and
the infantry, unable to resist the superior pressure of the enemy, was
fleeing in confusion to the gate under the shelter of the fort. The
fugitives rallied in Friar-street, and Charles, riding among them,
endeavoured by his words and gestures to re-animate their courage. Instead
of a reply, they hung down their heads, or threw away their arms. "Then
shoot me dead," exclaimed the distressed prince, "rather than let me live
to see the sad consequences of this day." But his despair was as unavailing
as had been his entreaties; and his friends admonished him to provide for
his safety, for the enemy had already penetrated within the walls.

We left Fleetwood on the right bank pushing the Scots slowly before him. At
length they resigned the hope of resistance; their flight opened to him the
way to St. John's, and its timid commander yielded at the first summons. On
the other bank, Cromwell stormed the Fort Royal, put its defenders, fifteen
hundred men, to the sword, and turned the guns upon the city. Within the
walls irremediable confusion prevailed, and the enemy began to pour in by
the quay, the castle hill, and the Sidbury gate. Charles had not a moment
to spare. Placing himself in the midst of the Scottish cavalry, he took the
northern road by the gate of St. Martin's, while a few devoted spirits,
with such troopers as dared to followed them, charged down Sidbury-street
in the contrary direction.[1] They accomplished their purpose. The royal
party cleared the walls, while _they_ arrested the advance, and distracted
the attention of the enemy. It was past the hour of sunset; and before dark
all resistance ceased. Colonel Drummond surrendered the castle hill on
conditions; the infantry in the street were killed or led prisoners to the
cathedral; and the city was abandoned during the obscurity of the night to
the licentious passions of the victors.[2]

In this disastrous battle the slain on the part of the royalists amounted
to three thousand men, the taken to a still greater number. The cavalry
escaped in separate bodies; but so depressed was their courage, so
bewildered were their counsels, that they successively surrendered to
smaller parties of their pursuers. Many officers of distinction attempted,
single and disguised,

[Footnote 1: These were the earl of Cleveland, Sir James Hamilton, Colonel
Careless, and captains Hornyhold, Giffard, and Kemble.--Boscobel, 20.]

[Footnote 2: See Blount, Boscobel, 14-22; Whitelock, 507, 508; Bates, part
ii. 221; Parl. Hist. xx. 40, 44-55; Ludlow, i. 314. Nothing can be more
incorrect than Clarendon's account of this battle, iii. 409. Even Cromwell
owns that "it was as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever he had
seen."--Cary's Memorials, ii. 356.]

to steal their way through the country; but of these the Scots were
universally betrayed by their accent, whilst the English, for the most
part, effected their escape.[1] The duke of Hamilton had been mortally
wounded on the field of battle; the earls of Derby, Rothes, Cleveland,
Kelly, and Lauderdale; the lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison; and the
generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery, were made prisoners, at
different times and in separate places. But the most interesting inquiry
regarded the fortune of the young king. Though the parliament offered[a] a
reward of one thousand pounds for his person, and denounced the penalties
of treason against those who should afford him shelter; though parties of
horse and foot scoured the adjacent counties in search of so valuable a
prize; though the magistrates received orders to arrest every unknown
person, and to keep a strict watch on the sea-ports in their neighbourhood,
yet no trace of his flight, no clue to his retreat, could be discovered.
Week after week passed

[Footnote 1: Thus the duke of Buckingham was conducted by one Mathews, a
carpenter, to Bilstrop, and thence to Brooksby, the seat of Lady Villiers,
in Leicestershire; Lord Talbot reached his father's house at Longford in
time to conceal himself in a close place in one of the out-houses. His
pursuers found his horse yet saddled, and searched for him during four or
five days in vain. May was hidden twenty-one days in a hay-mow, belonging
to Bold, a husbandman, at Chessardine, during all which time a party of
soldiers was quartered in the house.--Boscobel, 35-37. Of the prisoners,
eight suffered death, by judgment of a court-martial sitting at Chester.
One of these was the gallant earl of Derby, who pleaded that quarter had
been granted to him by Captain Edge, and quarter ought to be respected by
a court-martial. It was answered that quarter could be granted to enemies
only, not to traitors. He offered to surrender his Isle of Man in exchange
for his life, and petitioned for "his grace the lord general's, and the
parliament's mercy." But his petition was not delivered by Lenthall before
it was too late. It was read in the house on the eve of his execution,
which took place at Bolton, in Lancashire, Oct. 15, 1651.--State Trials, v.
294. Heath 302. Leicester's Journal, 121. Journals, Oct. 14.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 10.]

away; of almost every other individual of note the fate was ascertained;
that of Charles Stuart remained an impenetrable mystery. At last, when a
belief prevailed, both among his friends and foes, that he had met
with death from the peasantry, ignorant of his person and quality, the
intelligence arrived, that on the 17th of October, forty-four days after
the battle, he had landed in safety at Fécamp, on the coast of Normandy.

The narrative of his adventures during this period of suspense and distress
exhibits striking instances of hair-breadth escapes on the part of the
king, and of unshaken fidelity on that of his adherents. During the night
after the battle he found himself in the midst of the Scottish cavalry, a
body of men too numerous to elude pursuit, and too dispirited to repel an
enemy. Under cover of the darkness, he separated from them with about sixty
horse; the earl of Derby recommended to him, from his own experience, the
house of Boscobel as a secure retreat; and Charles Giffard undertook, with
the aid of his servant Yates, to conduct him to Whiteladies, another house
belonging to Mrs. Cotton, and not far distant from Boscobel. At an early
hour in the morning, after a ride of five-and-twenty miles, they reached
Whiteladies;[a] and while the others enjoyed a short repose from their
fatigue, the king withdrew to an inner apartment, to prepare himself for
the character which he had been advised to assume. His hair was cut
close to the head, his hands and face were discoloured, his clothes were
exchanged for the coarse and threadbare garments of a labourer, and a heavy
wood-bill in his hand announced his pretended employment. At sunrise the
few admitted to the secret took their leave of

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept.]

him with tears, and, summoning their companions to horseback, rode away,
they scarcely knew whither but with the cheering hope that they should draw
the attention of the enemy from the retreat of the king to the pursuit of
themselves. In less than an hour a troop of horse from Cotsal, under the
command of Colonel Ashenhurst, arrived at Whiteladies; but the king was
already gone; a fruitless search only provoked their impatience, and they
hastily followed the track of the other fugitives.

Charles was now in the hands, and entirely at the mercy, of four brothers
(John, the fifth, had taken charge of the Lord Wilmot), labouring men, of
the name of Penderell, and of Yates, his former guide, who had married a
sister of the Penderells. He could not conceal from himself that their
poverty might make them more accessible to temptation; but Derby and
Giffard had conjured him to dismiss such thoughts; they were men of tried
fidelity, who, born in the domain, and bred in the principles of a loyal
and Catholic family, had long been successfully employed in screening
priests and Cavaliers from the searches of the civil magistrates and
military officers.[1] By one of them, surnamed the trusty Richard, he was
led into

[Footnote 1: The Penderells, whom this event has introduced to the notice
of the reader, were originally six brothers, born at Hobbal Grange, in the
parish of Tong. John, George, and Thomas served in the armies of Charles
I. Thomas was killed at Stowe; the other two survived the war, and were
employed as woodwards at Boscobel. Of the remaining three, William took
care of the house; Humphrey worked at the mill, and Richard rented part of
Hobbal Grange. After the Restoration, the five brothers waited on the king
at Whitehall on the 13th of June, 1660, and were graciously received, and
dismissed with a princely reward. A pension was also granted to them and
their posterity. In virtue of which grant two of their descendants, Calvin
Beaumont Winstanley, and John Lloyd, were placed on the pension list on the
6th of July, 1846, for the sum of twenty-five pounds to each.]

the thickest part of the adjoining wood, while the others posted themselves
at convenient stations, to descry and announce the approach of the enemy.
The day was wet and stormy; and Richard, attentive to the accommodation of
his charge, who appeared sinking under the fatigue, caused by his efforts
in the battle and the anxiety of his flight, spread a blanket for him under
one of the largest trees, and ordered the wife of Yates to bring him the
best refreshment which her house could afford. Charles was alarmed at the
sight of this unexpected visitant. Recovering himself, he said, "Good
woman, can you be faithful to a distressed Cavalier?"--"Yes, sir," she
replied, "and I will die sooner than betray you." He was afterwards visited
by Jane, the mother of the Penderells. The old woman kissed his hands, fell
on her knees, and blessed God that he had chosen _her_ sons to preserve, as
she was confident they would, the life of their sovereign.

It had been agreed between the king and Wilmot, that each should make
the best of his way to London, and inquire for the other by the name of
Ashburnham, at the Three Cranes in the Vintry. By conversation with his
guardian, Charles was induced to adopt a different plan, and to seek an
asylum among the Cavaliers in Wales, till a ship could be procured for his
transportation to France. About nine in the evening they left the wood
together for the house of Mr. Wolf, a Catholic recusant at Madeley, not far
from the Severn; but an accidental alarm lengthened their road, and added
to the fatigue of the royal wanderer.[1]

[Footnote 1: The mill at Evelyn was filled with fugitives from the battle:
the miller, espying Charles and his guide, and afraid of a discovery,
called out "rogues;" and they, supposing him an enemy, turned up a miry
lane, running at their utmost speed,--Boscobel, 47. Account from the Pepys
MS. p. 16.]

They reached Madeley at midnight; Wolf was roused from his bed, and the
strangers obtained admission. But their host felt no small alarm for their
safety. Troops were frequently quartered upon him; two companies of militia
actually kept watch in the village and the places of concealment in his
house had been recently discovered. As the approach of daylight[a] made it
equally dangerous to proceed or turn back he secreted them behind the hay
in an adjoining barn, and despatched messengers to examine the passages
of the river. Their report that all the bridges were guarded, and all the
boats secured, compelled the unfortunate prince to abandon his design. On
the return of darkness he placed himself again under the care of his trusty
guide, and with a heavy and misboding heart, retraced his steps towards his
original destination, the house at Boscobel.

At Boscobel he found Colonel Careless, one of those devoted adherents who,
to aid his escape from Worcester, had charged the enemy at the opposite
gate. Careless had often provoked, and as often eluded, the resentment of
the Roundheads; and experience had made him acquainted with every loyal
man, and every place of concealment, in the country. By his persuasion
Charles consented to pass the day[b] with him amidst the branches of an old
and lofty oak.[1] This

[Footnote 1: This day Humphrey Penderell, the miller, went to Skefnal to
pay taxes, but in reality to learn news. He was taken before a military
officer, who knew that Charles had been at Whiteladies, and tempted, with
threats and promises, to discover where the king was; but nothing could be
extracted from him, and he was allowed to return.--Boscobel, 55. This, I
suspect, to be the true story; but Charles himself, when he mentions the
proposal made to Humphrey attributes it to a man, at whose house he had
changed his clothes.--Account from the Pepys MS. p. 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 6.]

celebrated tree, which was afterwards destroyed to satisfy the veneration
of the Cavaliers, grew near to the common path in a meadow-field, which lay
in the centre of the wood. It had been partially lopped a few years before,
and the new shoots had thrown round it a thick and luxuriant foliage.
Within this cover the king and his companion passed the day. Invisible
themselves, they occasionally caught a glimpse of the red-coats (so the
soldiers were called) passing among the trees, and sometimes saw them
looking into the meadow. Their friends, William Penderell and his wife,
whom Charles called my dame Joan, stationed themselves near, to give
warning of danger; he pretending to be employed in his duty as woodward,
and she in the labour of gathering sticks for fuel. But there arose no
cause of immediate alarm; the darkness of the night relieved them from
their tedious and irksome confinement; and Charles, having on his return to
the house examined the hiding-place, resolved to trust to it for his future
security.[1]

The next day, Sunday,[a] he spent within doors or in the garden. But his
thoughts brooded over his forlorn and desperate condition; and the gloom
on his countenance betrayed the uneasiness of his mind. Fortunately in the
afternoon he received by John Penderell a welcome message from Lord Wilmot,
to meet him that night at the house of Mr. Whitgrave, a recusant, at
Moseley. The king's feet were so swollen and blistered by his recent walk
to and from Madeley,

[Footnote 1: Careless found means to reach London, and cross the sea to
Holland, where he carried the first news of the king's escape to the
princess of Orange. Charles gave him for his coat of arms, by the name of
Carlos, an oak in a field, or, with a fesse, gules, charged with three
royal crowns, and for his crest a crown of oak leaves, with a sword and
sceptre, crossed saltierwise.--Boscobel, 85.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1651. Sept. 7.]

that he gladly accepted the offer of Humphrey's horse from the mill; nor
did the appearance of the monarch disgrace that of the steed. He wore a
coat and breeches of coarse green cloth, both so threadbare that in many
places they appeared white, and the latter "so long that they came down to
the garter;" his doublet was of leather, old and soiled; his shoes were
heavy and slashed for the ease of his feet; his stockings of green yarn had
been much worn, were darned at the knees, and without feet; and an old grey
steeple-crowned hat, without band or lining, with a crooked thorn stick,
completed the royal habiliments. The six brothers attended him with arms;
two kept in advance, two followed behind, and one walked on each side. He
had not gone far before he complained to Humphrey of the heavy jolting pace
of the horse. "My liege," replied the miller, "you do not recollect that he
carries the weight of three kingdoms on his back."

At Moseley, cheered by the company of Wilmot, and the attention of
Whitgrave and his chaplain, Mr. Hudlestone,[1] he recovered his spirits,
fought the battle of Worcester over again, and declared that, if he could
find a few thousand men who had the courage to stand by him, he would not
hesitate to meet his enemies a second time in the field. A new plan of
escape was now submitted to his approbation. The daughter of Colonel Lane,
of Bentley, had obtained from the governor of Stafford a pass to visit Mrs.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Whitgrave had served as lieutenant, Hudlestone as
gentleman volunteer in the armies of Charles I. The latter was of the
family at Hutton John, in Cumberland. Leaving the service, he took orders,
and was at this time a secular priest, living with Mr. Whitgrave. He
afterwards became a Benedictine monk, and was appointed one of the queen's
chaplains.]

Norton, a relation near Bristol. Charles consented to assume the character
of her servant, and Wilmot departed on the following night to make
arrangements for his reception. In the mean time, to guard against a
surprise, Hudlestone constantly attended the king; Whitgrave occasionally
left the house to observe what passed in the street; and Sir John Preston,
and two other boys, the pupils of Hudlestone, were stationed as sentinels
at the garret windows.[1] But the danger of discovery increased every hour.
The confession of a cornet, who had accompanied him, and was afterwards
made prisoner, divulged the fact that Charles had been left at Whiteladies;
and the hope of reward stimulated the parliamentary officers to new and
more active exertions. The house of Boscobel, on the day after the king's
departure,[a] was successively visited by two parties of the enemy; the
next morning a second and more rigorous search was made at Whiteladies; and
in the afternoon the arrival of a troop of horse alarmed the inhabitants of
Moseley. As Charles, Whitgrave, and Hudlestone were standing near a window,
they observed a neighbour run hastily into the house, and in an instant
heard the shout of "Soldiers, soldiers!" from the foot of the staircase.
The king was immediately shut up in the secret place; all the other doors
were thrown open; and Whitgrave descending, met the troopers in front of
his house. They seized him as a fugitive Cavalier from Worcester; but he
convinced them by the testimony of his neighbours, that for several weeks
he had not quitted Moseley, and with much difficulty prevailed on them to
depart without searching the house.

[Footnote 1: Though ignorant of the quality of the stranger, the boys
amused the king by calling themselves his life-guard.--Boscobel, 78.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 9.]


That night[a] Charles proceeded to Bentley. It took but little time to
transform the woodcutter into a domestic servant, and to exchange his
dress of green jump for a more decent suit of grey cloth. He departed on
horseback with his supposed mistress behind him, accompanied by her cousin,
Mr. Lassells; and, after a journey of three days, reached[b] Abbotsleigh,
Mr. Norton's house, without interruption or danger. Wilmot stopped at
Sir John Winter's, a place in the neighbourhood. On the road, he had
occasionally joined the royal party, as it were by accident; more generally
he preceded or followed them at a short distance. He rode with a hawk
on his fist, and dogs by his side; and the boldness of his manner as
effectually screened him from discovery as the most skilful disguise.

The king, on his arrival,[c] was indulged with a separate chamber, under
pretense of indisposition; but the next morning he found himself in the
company of two persons, of whom one had been a private in his regiment of
guards at Worcester, the other a servant in the palace at Richmond, when
Charles lived there several years before. The first did not recognise him,
though he pretended to give a description of his person; the other, the
moment the king uncovered, recollected the features of the prince, and
communicated his suspicions to Lassells. Charles, with great judgment, sent
for him, discovered himself to him as an old acquaintance, and required his
assistance. The man (he was butler to the family) felt himself honoured
by the royal confidence, and endeavoured to repay it by his services. He
removed to a distance from the king two individuals in the house of known
republican principles; he inquired, though without success, for a

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 14.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Sept. 15.]

ship at Bristol to carry him to France or Spain; and he introduced Lord
Wilmot to his chamber at the hour of midnight. There they sat in council,
and resolved[a] that the king should remove the next day to the house of
Colonel Windham, a Cavalier whom he knew, at Trent, near Sherburn; that a
messenger should be despatched to prepare the family for his arrival; and
that to account for the sudden departure of Miss Lane, a counterfeit letter
should be delivered to her, stating that her father was lying at the point
of death. The plan succeeded; she was suffered[b] to depart, and in two
days the prince reached[c] his destination. The following morning[d] Miss
Lane took her leave, and hastened back with Lassells to Bentley.[1]

In his retirement at Trent, Charles began to indulge the hope of a speedy
liberation from danger. A ship was hired at Lyme to convey a nobleman and
his servant (Wilmot and the king) to the coast of France; the hour and
the place of embarkation were fixed; and a widow, who kept a small inn
at Charmouth, consented to furnish a temporary asylum to a gentleman in
disguise, and a young female who had just escaped from the custody of a
harsh and unfeeling guardian. The next evening[e] Charles appeared in a
servant's dress, with Juliana Coningsby riding behind him, and accompanied
by Wilmot and Windham. The hostess received the supposed lovers with a
hearty welcome; but their patience was soon put to the severest trial; the
night[f] passed away, no boat entered the creek, no ship could be descried
in the offing; and the disappointment gave birth to a thousand jealousies

[Footnote 1: This lady received a reward of one thousand pounds for her
services, by order of the two houses.--C. Journals, 1660, December 19, 21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Sept. 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Sept. 19.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. Sept. 20.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1651. Sept. 24.]

and apprehensions. At dawn of day the whole party separated; Wilmot, with a
servant, going to Lyme to inquire after the master of the vessel; Charles,
with his companions, proceeding to Bridport to wait the return of Wilmot.
In Bridport he found fifteen hundred soldiers preparing to embark on an
expedition against Jersey; but, unwilling to create a real, by seeking to
eschew an imaginary, danger, he boldly pushed forward to the inn, and led
the horses through the crowd with a rudeness which provoked complaint. But
a new danger awaited him at the stable. The hostler challenged him as
an old acquaintance, pretending to have known him in the service of Mr.
Potter, at Exeter. The fact was that, during the civil war, Charles had
lodged at that gentleman's house. He turned aside to conceal his alarm; but
had sufficient presence of mind to avail himself of the partial mistake of
the hostler, and to reply, "True, I once lived a servant with Mr. Potter;
but as I have no leisure now, we will renew our acquaintance on my return
to London over a pot of beer."

After dinner, the royal party joined Wilmot out of the town. The master of
the ship had been detained at home by the fears and remonstrances of his
wife, and no promises could induce him to renew his engagement. Confounded
and dispirited, Charles retraced his steps to Trent; new plans were
followed by new disappointments; a second ship, provided by Colonel Philips
at Southampton, was seized[a] for the transportation of troops to Jersey;
and mysterious rumours in the neighbourhood rendered[b] unsafe the king's
continuance at Colonel Windham's.[1] At Heale, the residence

[Footnote 1: A reward of one thousand pounds was afterwards given to
Windham.--C. Journals, Dec. 17, 1660.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 25.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 8.]

of the widow Hyde, near Salisbury, he found a more secure retreat in a
hiding-place for five days, during which Colonel Gunter, through the agency
of Mansel, a loyal merchant, engaged[a] a collier, lying at New Shoreham.
Charles hastened[b] through Hambleton to Brighton, where he sat down to
supper with Philips, Gunter, Mansel, and Tattershall the master of the
vessel. At table, Tattershall kept his eyes fixed on the king; after
supper, he called Mansel aside and complained of fraud. The person in grey
was the king; he knew him well, having been detained by him in the river,
when, as prince of Wales, he commanded the royal fleet in 1648. This
information was speedily communicated to Charles, who took no notice of it
to Tattershall; but, to make sure of his man, contrived to keep the party
drinking and smoking round the table during the rest of the night.

Before his departure, while he was standing alone in a room, the landlord
entered, and, going behind him, kissed his hand, which rested on the back
of a chair, saying at the same time, "I have no doubt that, if I live, I
shall be a lord, and my wife a lady." Charles laughed, to show that he
understood his meaning, and joined the company in the other apartment. At
four in the morning they all proceeded[c] to Shoreham; on the beach his
other attendants took their leave, Wilmot accompanied him into the bark.
There Tattershall, falling on his knee, solemnly assured him, that whatever
might be the consequence, he would put him safely on the coast of France.
The ship floated with the tide, and stood with easy sail towards the Isle
of Wight, as if she were on her way to Deal, to which port she was bound.
But at five in the afternoon, Charles, as he had previously concerted with
Tattershall,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Oct. 16.]

addressed the crew. He told them that he and his companion were merchants
in distress, flying from their creditors; desired them to join him in
requesting the master to run for the French coast; and, as a further
argument, gave them twenty shillings to drink. Tattershall made many
objections; but, at last, with apparent reluctance, took the helm, and
steered across the Channel. At daybreak[a] they saw before them the small
town of Fécamp, at the distance of two miles; but the tide ebbing, they
cast anchor, and soon afterwards descried to leeward a suspicious sail,
which, by her manner of working, the king feared, and the master believed,
to be a privateer from Ostend. She afterwards proved to be a French hoy;
but Charles waited not to ascertain the fact; the boat was instantly
lowered, and the two adventurers were rowed safely into the harbour.[1]

The king's deliverance was a subject of joy to the nations of Europe, among
whom the horror excited by the death of the father had given popularity to
the exertions of the son. In his expedition into England they had followed
him with wishes for his success;

[Footnote 1: For the history of the king's escape, see Blount's Boscobel,
with Claustrum Regale reseratum; the Whitgrave manuscript, printed in
the Retrospective Review, xiv. 26. Father Hudleston's Relation; the True
Narrative and Relation in the Harleian Miscellany, iv. 441, an account of
his majesty's escape from Worcester, dictated to Mr. Pepys by the king
himself, and the narrative given by Bates in the second part of his
Elenchus. In addition to these, we have a narrative by Clarendon, who
professes to have derived his information from Charles and the other actors
in the transaction, and asserts that "it is exactly true; that there is
nothing in it, the verity whereof can justly be suspected" (Car. Hist. iii.
427, 428); yet, whoever will compare it with the other accounts will see
that much of great interest has been omitted, and much so disfigured as
to bear little resemblance to the truth. It must be that the historian,
writing in banishment, and at a great distance of time, trusted to his
imagination to supply the defect of his memory.--See note (E). See also
Gunter's narrative in Cary, ii. 430.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 17.]

after his defeat at Worcester they were agitated with apprehensions for his
safety. He had now eluded the hunters of his life; he appeared before them
with fresh claims on their sympathy, from the spirit which he had displayed
in the field, and the address with which he had extricated himself from
danger. His adventures were listened to with interest; and his conduct was
made the theme of general praise. That he should be the heir to the British
crowns, was the mere accident of birth; that he was worthy to wear them,
he owed to the resources and energies of his own mind. In a few months,
however, the delusion vanished. Charles had borne the blossoms of
promise; they were blasted under the withering influence of pleasure and
dissipation.

But from the fugitive prince we must now turn back to the victorious
general who proceeded from the field of battle in triumph to London. The
parliament seemed at a loss to express its gratitude to the man to whose
splendid services the commonwealth owed its preservation. At Ailesbury
Cromwell was met by a deputation of the two commissioners of the great
seal, the lord chief justice, and Sir Gilbert Pickering; to each of whom,
in token of his satisfaction, he made a present of a horse and of two
Scotsmen selected from his prisoners. At Acton he was received by the
speaker and the lord president, attended by members of parliament and of
the council, and by the lord mayor with the aldermen and sheriffs; and
heard from the recorder, in an address of congratulation, that he was
destined "to bind kings in chains, and their nobles in fetters of iron."
He entered[a] the capital in the state carriage, was greeted with the
acclamations of the people as the procession passed through the city, and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 12.]

repaired to the palace of Hampton Court, where apartments had been fitted
up for him and his family at the public expense. In parliament it was
proposed that the 3rd of September should be kept a holiday for ever in
memory of his victory; a day was appointed for a general thanksgiving; and
in addition to a former grant of lands to the amount of two thousand five
hundred pounds per annum, other lands of the value of four thousand pounds
were settled on him in proof of the national gratitude. Cromwell received
these honours with an air of profound humility. He was aware of the
necessity of covering the workings of ambition within his breast with the
veil of exterior self-abasement; and therefore professed to take no merit
to himself, and to see nothing in what he had done, but the hand of the
Almighty, fighting in behalf of his faithful servants.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 509. Ludlow, i. 372. Heath, 301. Journals, Sept.
6, 9, 11, 19. "Next day, 13th, the common prisoners were brought through
Westminster to Tuthill fields--a sadder spectacle was never seen except the
miserable place of their defeat--and there _sold_ to several merchants, and
sent to the Barbadoes."--Heath, 301. Fifteen hundred were granted as
slaves to the Guinea merchants, and transported to the Gold Coast in
Africa.--Parl. Hist. iii. 1374.]




CHAPTER V.


Vigilance Of The Government--Subjugation Of Ireland--Of
Scotland--Negotiation With Portugal--With Spain--With The
United Provinces--Naval War--Ambition Of Cromwell--Expulsion Of
Parliament--Character Of Its Leading Members--Some Of Its Enactments.


In the preceding chapter we have followed the fortunes of Charles Stuart,
from his landing in Scotland to his defeat at Worcester and his escape to
the continent; we may now look back and direct our attention to some of the
more important events which occurred during the same period, in England and
Ireland.

1. The reader is aware that the form of government established in England
was an oligarchy. A few individuals, under the cover of a nominal
parliament, ruled the kingdom with the power of the sword. Could the sense
of the nation have been collected, there cannot be a doubt that the old
royalists of the Cavalier, and the new royalists of the Presbyterian party,
would have formed a decided majority; but they were awed into silence and
submission by the presence of a standing army of forty-five thousand men;
and the maxim that "power gives right" was held out as a sufficient reason
why they should swear fidelity to the commonwealth.[1] This numerous army,

[Footnote 1: See Marchamont Nedham's "Case of the Commonwealth Stated."
4to. London, 1650.]

the real source of their security, proved, however, a cause of constant
solicitude to the leaders. The pay of the officers and men was always in
arrear; the debentures which they received could be seldom exchanged for
money without a loss of fifty, sixty, or seventy per cent.; and the plea of
necessity was accepted as an excuse for the illegal claim of free quarters
which they frequently exercised. To supply their wants, recourse was
therefore had to additional taxation, with occasional grants from the
excise, and large sales of forfeited property;[1] and, to appease
the discontent of the people, promises were repeatedly made, that a
considerable portion of the armed force should be disbanded, and the
practice of free quarter be abolished. But of these promises, the first
proved a mere delusion; for, though some partial reductions were made, on
the whole the amount of the army continued to increase; the second was
fulfilled; but in return, the burthen of taxation was augmented; for the
monthly assessment on the counties gradually swelled from sixty to ninety,
to one hundred and twenty, and in conclusion, to one hundred and sixty
thousand pounds.[2]

Another subject of disquietude sprung out of those principles of liberty
which, even after the suppression of the late mutiny, were secretly
cherished and occasionally avowed, by the soldiery. Many, indeed, confided
in the patriotism, and submitted to the judgment, of their officers; but
there were also many who condemned the existing government as a desertion
of the

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, April 18, Oct. 4; 1650, March 30; 1651, Sept.
2, Dec. 17; 1652, April 7.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1649, April 7, Aug. 1, Dec. 7; 1650, May 21, Nov.
26; 1651, April 15, Sept. 1, Dec. 19; 1652, Dec. 10; 1653, Nov. 24.]

good cause in which they had originally embarked. By the latter Lilburne
was revered as an apostle and a martyr; they read with avidity the
publications which repeatedly issued from his cell; and they condemned as
persecutors and tyrants the men who had immured him and his companions in
the Tower. Preparations had been made[a] to bring them to trial as the
authors of the late mutiny; but, on more mature deliberation, the project
was abandoned,[b] and an act was passed making it treason to assert that
the government was tyrannical, usurped, or unlawful. No enactments,
however, could check the hostility of Lilburne; and a new pamphlet from his
pen,[c] in vindication of "The Legal Fundamental Liberties of the People,"
put to the test the resolution of his opponents. They shrunk from the
struggle; it was judged more prudent to forgive, or more dignified to
despise, his efforts; and, on his petition for leave to visit his sick
family, he obtained his discharge.[1]

But this lenity made no impression on his mind. In the course of six weeks
he published[d] two more offensive tracts, and distributed them among
the soldiery. A new mutiny broke out at Oxford; its speedy suppression
emboldened the council; the demagogue was reconducted[e] to his cell in the
Tower; and Keble, with forty other commissioners, was appointed[f] to
try him for his last offence on the recent statute of treasons. It may,
perhaps, be deemed a weakness in Lilburne that he now offered[g] on certain
conditions to transport himself to America; but he redeemed his character,
as soon as he was placed at the bar. He repelled with scorn the charges of
the

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, April 11, May 12, July 18. Council Book May 2.
Whitelock, 414.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. April 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 12.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. June 8.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. July 18.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. Sept. 14.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1649. Oct. 24.]

prosecutors and the taunts of the court, electrified the audience by
frequent appeals to Magna Charta and the liberties of Englishmen, and
stoutly maintained the doctrine that the jury had a right to judge of the
law as well as of the fact. It was in vain that the court pronounced this
opinion "the most damnable heresy ever broached in the land," and that the
government employed all its influence to win or intimidate the jurors;
after a trial of three days, Lilburne, obtained a verdict of acquittal.[1]

Whether after his liberation[a] any secret compromise took place is
uncertain. He subscribed the engagement, and, though he openly explained it
in a sense conformable to his own principles, yet the parliament made to
him out of the forfeited lands of the deans and chapters the grant[b] of
a valuable estate, as a compensation for the cruel treatment which he had
formerly suffered from the court of the Star-Chamber.[2] Their bounty,
however, wrought no change in his character. He was still the indomitable
denouncer of oppression wherever he found it, and before the end of the
next year he drew upon himself the vengeance of the men in power, by the
distribution[c] of a pamphlet which charged Sir Arthur Hazlerig and the
commissioners at Haberdashers'-hall with injustice and tyranny. This by the
house was voted a breach of privilege, and the offender was condemned[d]
in a fine of seven thousand pounds with banishment for life. Probably the
court of Star-chamber never pronounced a judgment in which the punishment
was more disproportionate to the offence. But his former enemies sought

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, Sept 11, Oct. 30. Whitelock, 424, 425. State
Trials, ii. 151.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 436. Journ. 1650, July 16, 30.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Dec. 29.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. July 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Dec. 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. Jan. 15.]

not justice on the culprit, but security to themselves. They seized the
opportunity of freeing the government from the presence of a man whom they
had so long feared; and, as he refused to kneel at the bar while judgment
was pronounced, they embodied the vote in an act of parliament. To save his
life, Lilburne submitted; but his residence on the continent was short: the
reader will soon meet with him again in England.[1]

The Levellers had boldly avowed their object; the royalists worked in the
dark and by stealth; yet the council by its vigilance and promptitude
proved a match for the open hostility of the one and the secret
machinations of the other. A doubt may, indeed, be raised of the policy of
the "engagement," a promise of fidelity to the commonwealth without king or
house of lords. As long as it was confined to those who held office under
the government, it remained a mere question of choice; but when it was
exacted from all Englishmen above seventeen years of age, under the penalty
of incapacity to maintain an action in any court of law, it became to
numbers a matter of necessity, and served rather to irritate than
to produce security.[2] A more efficient measure was the permanent
establishment of a high court of justice to inquire into offences against
the state, to which was added the organization of a system of espionage by
Captain Bishop, under the direction of Scot, a member of the council. The
friends of monarchy, encouraged by the clamour of the Levellers and the
professions of the Scots, had begun to hold meetings,

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1651, Dec. 23; 1652, Jan. 15, 20, 30. Whitelock,
520. State Trials, v. 407-415.]

[Footnote 2: Leicester's Journal, 97-101.]

sometimes under the pretence of religious worship, sometimes under that of
country amusements: in a short time they divided the kingdom into districts
called associations, in each of which it was supposed that a certain
number of armed men might be raised; and blank commissions with the royal
signature were obtained, to be used in appointing colonels, captains, and
lieutenants, for the command of these forces. Then followed an active
correspondence both with Charles soon after his arrival in Scotland, and
with the earl of Newcastle, the Lord Hopton, and a council of exiles; first
at Utrecht, and afterwards at the Hague. By the plan ultimately adopted, it
was proposed that Charles himself or Massey, leaving a sufficient force
to occupy the English army in Scotland, should, with a strong corps of
Cavalry, cross[a] the borders between the kingdoms; that at the same time
the royalists in the several associations should rise in arms, and that
the exiles in Holland, with five thousand English and German adventurers,
should land in Kent, surprise Dover, and hasten to join their Presbyterian
associates, in the capital.[1] But, to arrange and insure the co-operation
of all the parties concerned required the employment of numerous agents, of
whom, if several were actuated by principle, many were of doubtful faith
and desperate fortunes. Some of these betrayed their trust; some undertook
to serve both parties, and deceived each; and it is a curious fact that,
while the letters of the agents for the royalists often passed through the
hands of Bishop himself, his secret papers belonging to the council of
state were copied and forwarded to the king.[2] This consequence however
followed,

[Footnote 1: Milton's State Papers, 35, 37, 39, 47, 49, 50. Baillie, ii. 5,
8. Carte's Letters, i. 414.]

[Footnote 2: State Trials, v. 4. Milton's State Papers, 39, 47, 50, 57. One
of these agents employed by both parties was a Mrs. Walters, alias Hamlin,
on whose services Bishop placed great reliance. She was to introduce
herself to Cromwell by pronouncing the word "prosperity."--Ibid.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. December.]

that the plans of the royalists were always discovered, and by that means
defeated by the precautions of the council. While the king was on his
way to Scotland, a number of blank commissions had been seized in the
possession of Dr. Lewen, a civilian, who suffered[a] the penalty of death.
Soon afterwards Sir John Gell, Colonel Eusebius Andrews, and Captain
Benson, were arraigned on the charge of conspiring the destruction of
the government established by law. They opposed three objections to the
jurisdiction of the court: it was contrary to Magna Charta, which gave
to every freeman the right of being tried by his peers; contrary to the
petition of right, by which courts-martial (and the present court was most
certainly a court-martial) had been forbidden; and contrary to the many
declarations of parliament, that the laws, the rights of the people, and
the courts of justice, should be maintained. But the court repelled[b] the
objections; Andrews and Benson suffered death, and Gell, who had not
been an accomplice, but only cognizant of the plot, was condemned[c] to
perpetual imprisonment, with the forfeiture of his property.[1]

These executions did not repress the eagerness of the royalists, nor relax
the vigilance of the council. In the beginning of December the friends of
Charles took up arms[d] in Norfolk, but the rising was premature; a body of
roundheads dispersed the insurgents; and twenty of the latter atoned for
their temerity with their lives. Still the failure of one plot did not
prevent

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 464, 468, 473, 474. Heath, 269, 270. See mention of
several discoveries in Carte's Letters, i. 443, 464, 472.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. July 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. August 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. Oct. 7.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Dec. 2.]

the formation of another; as long as Charles Stuart was in Scotland, the
ancient friends of his family secretly prepared for his reception in
England; and many of the Presbyterians, through enmity to the principles
of the Independents, devoted themselves to the interests of the prince.[1]
This party the council resolved to attack in their chief bulwark, the city;
and Love, one of the most celebrated of the ministers, was apprehended[a]
with several of his associates. At his trial, he sought to save his life by
an evasive protestation, which he uttered with the most imposing solemnity
in the presence of the Almighty. But it was clearly proved against him
that the meetings had been held in his house, the money collected for the
royalists had been placed on his table, and the letters received, and the
answers to be returned, had been read in his hearing. After judgment,[b]
both he and his friends presented[c] petitions in his favour; respite after
respite was obtained and the parliament, as if it had feared to decide
without instructions, referred[d] the case to Cromwell in Scotland. That
general was instantly assailed with letters from both the friends and the
foes of Love; he was silent; a longer time was granted by the house; but
he returned no answer, and the unfortunate minister lost his head[e] on
Tower-hill with the constancy and serenity of a martyr. Of his associates,
only one, Gibbons, a citizen, shared his fate.[2]

[Footnote 1: "It is plaine unto mee that they doe not judge us a lawfull
magistracy, nor esteeme anything treason that is acted by them to destroy
us, in order to bring the king of Scots as heed of the covenant."--Vane to
Cromwell, of "Love and his brethren." Milton's State Papers, 84.]

[Footnote 2: Milton's State Papers, 50, 54, 66, 75, 76. Whitelock, 492,
493, 495, 500. State Trials, v. 43-294. Heath, 288, 290. Leicester's
Journal, 107, 115, 123. A report, probably unfounded, was spread that
Cromwell granted him his life, but the despatch was waylaid, and detained,
or destroyed by the Cavaliers, who bore in remembrance Love's former
hostility to the royal cause.--Kennet, 185.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. May 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. June 5.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. June 11.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. July 15.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1651. August 22.]


2. To Charles it had been whispered by his secret advisers that the war
between the parliament and the Scots would, by withdrawing the attention of
the council from Ireland, allow the royal party to resume the ascendancy
in that kingdom. But this hope quickly vanished. The resources of the
commonwealth were seen to multiply with its wants; and its army in Ireland
was daily augmented by recruits in the island, and by reinforcements from
England. Ireton, to whom Cromwell, with the title of lord deputy, had
left[a] the chief command, pursued with little interruption the career of
his victorious predecessor. Sir Charles Coote met the men of Ulster at
Letterkenny; after a long and sanguinary action they were defeated; and the
next day their leader, MacMahon, the warrior bishop of Clogher, was made
prisoner by a fresh corps of troops from Inniskilling.[1] Lady Fitzgerald,
a name as illustrious in the military annals of Ireland as that of Lady
Derby in those of England, defended the fortress of Trecoghan, but neither
the efforts of Sir Robert Talbot within, nor the gallant attempt of Lord
Castlehaven without, could prevent its surrender.[2] Waterford, Carlow, and
Charlemont accepted honourable conditions, and the garrison of Duncannon,
reduced to a handful of men by the ravages of the plague, opened its
gates[b] to the enemy.[3] Ormond, instead of facing

[Footnote 1: Though he had quarter given and life promised, Coote ordered
him to be hanged. Yet it was by MacMahon's persuasion that O'Neil in
the preceding year had saved Coote by raising the siege of
Londonderry.--Clarendon, Short View, &c., in vol. viii. 145-149. But Coote
conducted the war like a savage. See several instances at the end of
Lynch's Cambresis Eversus.]

[Footnote 2: See Castlehaven's Memoirs, 120-124; and Carte's Ormond, ii.
116.]

[Footnote 3: Heath, 267, 370. Whitelock, 457, 459, 463, 464, 469.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 18.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 25.]

the conquerors in the field, had been engaged in a long and irritating
controversy with those of the Catholic leaders who distrusted his
integrity, and with the townsmen of Limerick and Galway, who refused to
admit his troops within their walls. Misfortune had put an end to his
authority; his enemies remarked that whether he were a real friend or a
secret foe, the cause of the confederates had never prospered under his
guidance; and the bishops conjured him,[a] now that the very existence of
the nation was at stake, to adopt measures which might heal the public
dissensions and unite all true Irishmen in the common defence. Since
the loss of Munster by the defection of Inchiquin's forces, they had
entertained an incurable distrust of their English allies; and to appease
their jealousy, he dismissed the few Englishmen who yet remained in the
service. Finding them rise in their demands, he called a general assembly
at Loughrea, announced his intention, or pretended intention, of quitting
the kingdom; and then, at the general request, and after some demur,
consented to remain. Hitherto the Irish had cherished the expectation that
the young monarch would, as he had repeatedly promised, come to Ireland,
and take the reins of government into his hands; they now, to their
disappointment, learned that he had accepted the invitation of the Scots,
their sworn and inveterate enemies. In a short time, the conditions to
which he had subscribed began to transpire; that he had engaged to annul
the late pacification between Ormond and the Catholics, and had bound
himself by oath,[b] not only not to permit the exercise of the Catholic
worship, but to root out the Catholic religion wherever it existed in any
of his dominions. A general gloom and despondency prevailed; ten bishops
and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 6.]

ten clergymen assembled at James-town, and their first resolve was to
depute[a] two of their number to the lord lieutenant, to request that he
would put in execution his former design of quitting the kingdom, and
would leave his authority in the hands of a Catholic deputy possessing the
confidence of the nation. Without, however, waiting for his answer, they
proceeded to frame[b] a declaration, in which they charged Ormond with
negligence, incapacity, and perfidy; protested that, though they were
compelled by the great duty of self-preservation to withdraw from the
government of the king's lieutenant, they had no intention to derogate from
the royal authority; and pronounced that, in the existing circumstances,
the Irish people were no longer bound by the articles of the pacification,
but by the oath under which they had formerly associated for their
common protection. To this, the next day[c] they appended a form of
excommunication equally affecting all persons who should abet either
Ormond or Ireton, in opposition to the real interests of the Catholic
confederacy.[1]

The lord lieutenant, however, found that he was supported by some of the
prelates, and by most of the aristocracy. He replied[d] to the synod at
James-town, that nothing short of necessity should induce him to quit
Ireland without the order of the king; and the commissioners of trust
expostulated[e] with the bishops on their imprudence and presumption. But
at this moment arrived copies of the declaration which Charles had been
compelled to publish at Dunfermling, in Scotland. The whole population was
in a ferment. Their suspicions, they exclaimed, were now verified;

[Footnote 1: Ponce, Vindiciae Eversae, 236-257. Clarendon, viii. 151, 154,
156. Hibernia Dominicana, 691. Carte, ii. 118, 120, 123.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. August 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. August 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. August 12.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. August 31.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Sept. 2.]

their fears and predictions accomplished. The king had pronounced them a
race of "bloody rebels;" he had disowned them for his subjects, he had
anulled the articles of pacification, and had declared[a] to the whole
world that he would exterminate their religion. In this excited temper of
mind, the committee appointed by the bishops published both the declaration
and the excommunication. A single night intervened; their passions had
leisure to cool; they repented[b] of their precipitancy; and, by the advice
of the prelates in the town of Galway, they published a third paper,
suspending the effect of the other two.

Ormond's first expedient was to pronounce the Dunfermling declaration a
forgery; for the king from Breda, previously to his voyage to Scotland, had
solemnly assured him that he would never, for any earthly consideration,
violate the pacification. A second message[c] informed him that it was
genuine, but ought to be considered of no force, as far as it concerned
Ireland, because it had been issued without the advice of the Irish privy
council.[1] This communication encouraged

[Footnote 1: Carte's letters, i. 391. Charles's counsellors at Breda had
instilled into him principles which he seems afterwards to have cherished
through life: "that honour and conscience were bugbears, and that the
king ought to govern himself rather by the rules of prudence and
necessity."--Ibid. Nicholas to Ormond, 435. At first Charles agreed to find
some way "how he might with honour and justice break the peace with the
Irish, if a free parliament in Scotland should think it fitting" afterwards
"to break it, but on condition that it should not be published till he had
acquainted Ormond and his friends, secured them, and been instructed how
with honour and justice he might break it in regard of the breach on their
part" (p. 396, 397). Yet a little before he had resolutely declared that no
consideration should induce him to violate the same peace (p. 374, 379).
On his application afterwards for aid to the pope, he excused it, saying,
"fuisse vim manifestam: jam enim statuerant Scoti presbyterani personam
suam parliamento Anglicano tradere, si illam declarationem ab ipsis factam
non approbasset." Ex originali penes me.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Sept. 16.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 15.]

the lord lieutenant to assume a bolder tone. He professed[a] himself
ready to assert, that both the king and his officers on one part, and the
Catholic population on the other, were bound by the provisions of the
treaty; but he previously required that the commissioners of trust should
condemn the proceedings of the synod at James-town, and join with him in
punishing such of its members as should persist in their disobedience. They
made proposals[b] to the prelates, and received for answer, that protection
and obedience were correlative; and, therefore, since the king had
publicly excluded them, under the designation of "bloody rebels," from
his protection, they could not understand how any officer acting by his
authority could lay claim to their obedience.[1]

This answer convinced Ormond that it was time for him to leave Ireland;
but, before his departure, he called a general assembly, and selected the
marquess of Clanricard, a Catholic nobleman, to command as his deputy.
To Clanricard, whose health was infirm, and whose habits were domestic,
nothing could be more unwelcome than such an appointment. Wherever he cast
his eyes he was appalled by the prospect before him. He saw three-fourths
of Ireland in the possession of a restless and victorious enemy; Connaught
and Clare, which alone remained to the royalists, were depopulated by
famine and pestilence; and political and religious dissension divided
the leaders and their followers, while one party attributed the national
disasters to the temerity of the men who presumed to govern under the curse
of excommunication; and the other charged their opponents with concealing
disloyal and interested views under the mantle of patriotism

[Footnote 1: Ponce, 257-261.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 29.]

and religion. Every prospect of successful resistance was gone; the
Shannon, their present protection from the foe, would become fordable
in the spring; and then the last asylum of Irish independence must be
overrun.[1] Under such discouraging circumstances it required all the
authority of Ormond and Castlehaven to induce him to accept an office which
opened no prospect of emolument or glory, but promised a plentiful harvest
of contradiction, hardship, and danger.

In the assembly which was held[a] at Loughrea, the majority of the members
disapproved of the conduct of the synod, but sought rather to heal by
conciliation than to perpetuate dissension. Ormond, having written[b] a
vindication of his conduct, and received[c] an answer consoling, if not
perfectly satisfactory to his feelings, sailed from Galway; but Clanricard
obstinately refused to enter on the exercise of his office, till reparation
had been made to the royal authority for the insult offered to it by the
James-town declaration. He required an acknowledgment, that it was not in
the power of any body of men to discharge the people from their obedience
to the lord deputy, as long as the royal authority was vested in him;
and at length obtained[d] a declaration to that effect, but with a
protestation, that by it "the confederates did not waive their right to the
faithful observance of the articles of pacification, nor bind themselves to
obey every chief governor who might be unduly nominated by the king, during
his unfree condition among the Scots."[2]

Aware of the benefit which the royalists in Scotland

[Footnote 1: See Clanricard's State of the Nation, in his Memoirs, part ii.
p. 24.]

[Footnote 2: Carte, ii. 137-140. Walsh, App. 75-137. Belling in Poncium,
26.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Nov. 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Dec. 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Dec. 7.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Dec. 24.]

derived from the duration of hostilities in Ireland, the parliamentary
leaders sought to put an end to the protracted and sanguinary struggle.
Scarcely had Clanricard assumed[a] the government, when Grace and Bryan,
two Catholic officers, presented themselves to the assembly with a message
from Axtel, the governor of Kilkenny, the bearers of a proposal for a
treaty of submission. By many the overture was hailed with transport. They
maintained that nothing but a general negotiation could put an end to those
private treaties which daily thinned their numbers, and exposed the more
resolute to inevitable ruin; that the conditions held out were better than
they had reason to expect _now_, infinitely better than they could expect
hereafter. Let them put the sincerity of their enemies to the test. If
the treaty should succeed, the nation would be saved; if it did not, the
failure would unite all true Irishmen in the common cause, who, if they
must fall, would not fall unrevenged. There was much force in this
reasoning; and it was strengthened by the testimony of officers from
several quarters, who represented that, to negotiate with the parliament
was the only expedient for the preservation of the people. But Clanricard
treated the proposal with contempt. To entertain it was an insult to him,
an act of treason against the king; and he was seconded by the eloquence
and authority of Castlehaven, who affected to despise the power of the
enemy, and attributed his success to their own divisions. Had the assembly
known the motives which really actuated these noblemen; that they had been
secretly instructed by Charles to continue the contest at every risk, as
the best means of enabling him to make head against Cromwell; that this,
probably the last opportunity of saving the lives

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Jan. 10.]

and properties of the confederates, was to be sacrificed to the mere chance
of gaining a victory for the Scots, their bitter and implacable enemies,[1]
many of the calamities which Ireland was yet doomed to suffer would,
perhaps, have been averted. But the majority allowed themselves to be
persuaded; the motion to negotiate with the parliament was rejected, and
the penalties of treason were denounced by the assembly, the sentence of
excommunication by the bishops, against all who should conclude any private
treaty with the enemy. Limerick and Galway, the two bulwarks of the
confederacy, disapproved of this vote, and obstinately refused to admit
garrisons within their walls, that they might not be overawed by the
military, but remain arbiters of their own fate.

The lord deputy was no sooner relieved from this difficulty, than he found
himself entangled in a negotiation of unusual delicacy and perplexity.
About the close of the last summer, Ormond had despatched the Lord Taafe
to Brussels, with instructions, both in his own name and the name of the
supreme council,[2] to solicit the aid of the duke of Lorrain, a prince of
the most restless and intriguing disposition, who was accustomed to sell at
a high price the services of his army to the neighbouring powers. The duke
received him graciously, made him a present of five thousand pounds, and
promised an additional aid of men and money, but on condition that he
should be declared protector royal of Ireland, with all the rights
belonging to that office--rights as undefined as the office itself was
hitherto unknown. Taafe hesitated, but was

[Footnote 1: Castlehaven's Memoirs, 116, 119, 120.]

[Footnote 2: Compare the papers in the second part of Clanricard's Memoirs,
17, 18, 27 (folio, London, 1757), with Carte's Ormond, ii. 143.]

encouraged to proceed by the queen mother, the duke of York, and De Vic,
the king's resident at Brussels. They argued[a] that, without aid to the
Irish, the king must succumb in Scotland; that the duke of Lorrain was the
only prince in Europe that could afford them succour; and that whatever
might be his secret projects, they could never be so prejudicial to the
royal interests as the subjugation of Ireland by the parliament.[1] Taafe,
however, took a middle way, and persuaded[b] the duke to send De Henin as
his envoy to the supreme council, with powers to conclude the treaty in
Ireland.

The assembly had just been dismissed[c] when this envoy arrived. By the
people, the clergy, and the nobility, he was received as an angel sent from
heaven. The supply of arms and ammunition which he brought, joined to his
promise of more efficient succour in a short time, roused them from their
despondency, and encouraged them to indulge the hope of making a stand
against the pressure of the enemy. Clanricard, left without instructions,
knew not how to act. He dared not refuse the aid so highly prized by the

[Footnote 1: Clanricard, 4, 5, 17, 27. Ormond was also of the same opinion.
He writes to Taafe that "nothing was done that were to be wished 'undone'";
that the supreme council were the best judges of their own condition; that
they had received permission from the king, for their own preservation,
"even to receive conditions from the enemy, which must be much more
contrary to his interests, than to receive helps from any other to resist
them, almost upon any terms."--Clanric. 33, 34. There is in the collection
of letters by Carte, one from Ormond to Clanricard written after the battle
of Worcester, in which that nobleman says that it will be without
scruple his advice, that "fitting ministers be sent to the pope, and apt
inducements proposed to him for his interposition, not only with all
princes and states". The rest of the letter is lost, or Carte did not
choose to publish it; but it is plain from the first part that he thought
the only chance for the restoration of the royal authority was in the aid
to be obtained from the pope and the Catholic powers.--Carte's Letters, i.
461.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. November.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Dec. 31.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Feb. 25.]

people; he dared not accede to demands so prejudicial to the king's
authority. But if the title of protector royal sounded ungratefully in his
ears, it was heard with very different feelings by the confederates, who
had reason to conclude that, if the contest between Cromwell and the Scots
should terminate in favour of the latter, the Irish Catholics would still
have need of a protector to preserve their religion from the exterminating
fanaticism of the kirk. Clanricard, was, however, inexorable, and his
resolution finally triumphed over the eagerness of his countrymen and the
obstinacy of the envoy. From the latter he obtained[a] an additional sum of
fifteen thousand pounds, on the easy condition of naming agents to conduct
the negotiation at Brussels, according to such instructions as they should
receive from the queen dowager, the duke of York, and the duke of Ormond.
The lord deputy rejoiced that he had shifted the burthen from his
shoulders. De Henin was satisfied, because he knew the secret sentiments of
those to whose judgment the point in question had been referred.[1]

Taafe, having received his instructions in Paris (but verbal, not written
instructions, as Clanricard had required), joined[b] his colleagues, Sir
Nicholas Plunket, and Geoffrey Brown, in Brussels, and, after a long but
ineffectual struggle, subscribed to the demands of the duke of Lorrain.[2]
That prince, by the treaty, engaged[c] to furnish for the protection of
Ireland, all such supplies of arms, money, ammunition, shipping, and
provisions, as the necessity of the case might require; and in return the
agents, in the name of the

[Footnote 1: Clanricard, 1-16.]

[Footnote 2: Id. 31, 58. It is certain from Clanricard's papers that the
treaty was not concluded till after the return of Taafe from Paris (p.
58).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. March 27.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. July 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. July 27.]

people and kingdom of Ireland, conferred on him, his heirs and successors,
the title of protector royal, together with the chief civil authority and
the command of the forces, but under the obligation of restoring both, on
the payment of his expenses, to Charles Stuart, the rightful sovereign.[1]
There cannot be a doubt that each party sought to overreach the other.

Clanricard was surprised that he heard nothing from his agents, nothing
from the queen or the duke of Ormond. After a silence of several months, a
copy of the treaty[a] arrived. He read it with indignation; he asserted[b]
that the envoys had transgressed their instructions; he threatened to
declare them traitors by proclamation. But Charles had now arrived in Paris
after the defeat at Worcester, and was made acquainted[c] with the whole
intrigue. He praised the loyalty of the deputy, but sought to mitigate his
displeasure against the three agents, exhorted him to receive them again
into his confidence, and advised him to employ their services, as if the
treaty had never existed. To the duke of Lorrain he despatched[d] the
earl of Norwich, to object to the articles which bore most on the royal
authority, and to re-commence the negotiation.[2] But the unsuccessful
termination of the Scottish war taught that prince to look upon the project
as hopeless; while he hesitated, the court of Brussels obtained proofs that
he was intriguing with the French minister; and, to the surprise of Europe,
he was suddenly arrested in Brussels, and conducted a prisoner to Toledo in
Spain.[3]

Clanricard, hostile as he was to the pretensions of the duke of Lorrain,
had availed himself of the money

[Footnote 1: Clanricard, 34.]

[Footnote 2: Id. 36-41, 47, 50-54, 58. Also Ponce, 111-124.]

[Footnote 3: Thurloe, ii. 90, 115, 127, 136, 611.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 20.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. Feb. 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. March 23.]

received from that prince to organize a new force, and oppose every
obstacle in his power to the progress of the enemy. Ireton, who anticipated
nothing less than the entire reduction of the island, opened[a] the
campaign with the siege of Limerick. The conditions which he offered were
refused by the inhabitants, and, at their request, Hugh O'Neil, with three
thousand men, undertook the defence of the city, but with an understanding
that the keys of the gates and the government of the place should remain in
the possession of the mayor. Both parties displayed a valour and obstinacy
worthy of the prize for which they fought. Though Lord Broghill defeated
Lord Muskerry, the Catholic commander in Munster; though Coote, in defiance
of Clanricard, penetrated from the northern extremity of Connaught, as far
as Athenree and Portumna; though Ireton, after several fruitless attempts,
deceived the vigilance of Castlehaven, and established himself on the
right bank of the Shannon; and though a party within the walls laboured
to represent their parliamentary enemies as the advocates of universal
toleration; nothing could shake the constancy of the citizens and the
garrison. They harassed the besiegers by repeated sorties; they repelled
every assault; and on one occasion[b] they destroyed the whole corps, which
had been landed on "the island." Even after the fatal battle of Worcester,
to a second summons they returned a spirited refusal. But in October a
reinforcement of three thousand men from England arrived in the camp; a
battery was formed of the heavy cannon landed from the shipping in the
harbour; and a wide breach in the wall admonished the inhabitants to
prepare for an assault. In this moment of suspense, with the dreadful
example of Drogheda and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. June 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. July 15.]

Wexford before their eyes, they met at the town-hall. It was in vain that
O'Neil remonstrated; that the bishops of Limerick and Emly entreated and
threatened, Stretch, the mayor, gave[a] the keys to Colonel Fanning, who
seized St. John's gate, turned the cannon on the city, and admitted two
hundred of the besiegers. A treaty was now[b] concluded; and, if the
garrison and inhabitants preserved their lives and property, it was by
abandoning twenty-two individuals to the mercy of the conqueror. Of
these some made their escape; Terence O'Brien, bishop of Emly, Wallis,
a Franciscan friar, Major-General Purcell, Sir Godfrey Galway, Baron,
a member of the council, Stretch, the mayor of the city, with Fanning
himself, and Higgin, were immolated as an atonement for the obstinate
resistance of the besiegers.[1] By Ireton O'Neil was also doomed to die,
but the officers who formed the court, in admiration of his gallantry,
sought to save his life. Twice they condemned him in obedience to the
commander-in-chief, who pronounced his spirited defence of Clonmel an
unpardonable crime against the state; but the third time the deputy was
persuaded to leave them to the exercise of their own judgment; and they
pronounced in favour of their brave but unfortunate captive. Ireton himself
did not long survive. When he condemned[c] the bishop of Emly to die, that
prelate had exclaimed, "I appeal to the tribunal of God, and summon thee
to meet me at that bar." By many these words were deemed prophetic; for in
less than a month the

[Footnote 1: See the account of their execution in pp. 100, 101 of the
Descriptio Regni Hiberniae per Antonium Prodinum, Romae, 1721, a work made
up of extracts from the original work of Bruodin, Propugnaculum Catholicae
Veritatis, Pragae, 1669. The extract referred to in this note is taken from
1. iv. c. xv. of the original work.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Nov. 25.]

victorious general fell a victim to the pestilential disease which ravaged
the west of Ireland. His death proved a severe loss to the commonwealth,
not only on account of his abilities as an officer and a statesman, but
because it removed the principal check to the inordinate ambition of
Cromwell.[1]

During the next winter the confederates had leisure to reflect on their
forlorn condition. Charles, indeed, a second time an exile, solicited[a]
them to persevere;[2] but it was difficult to persuade men to hazard their
lives and fortunes without the remotest prospect of benefit to themselves
or to the royal cause; and in the month of March Colonel Fitzpatric, a
celebrated chieftain in the county of Meath, laid down[b] his arms, and
obtained in return the possession of his lands. The example alarmed
the confederates; and Clanricard, in their name, proposed[c] a general
capitulation: it was refused by the stern policy of Ludlow, who assumed the
command on the death of Ireton; a succession of surrenders followed; and
O'Dwyer, the town of Galway, Thurlogh O'Neil, and the earl of Westmeath,
accepted the terms dictated by the enemy; which were safety for their
persons and personal property, the restoration of part of their landed
estates, according to the qualifications to be determined by parliament,
and permission to reside within the commonwealth, or to enter with a
certain number of followers into the service of any foreign prince in amity
with England. The benefit of these articles did not extend to persons who
had taken

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, i. 293, 296, 298, 299, 300, 307, 310, 316-324. Heath,
304, 305. Ireton's letter, printed by Field, 1651. Carte, ii. 154. The
parliament ordered Ireton's body to be interred at the public expense. It
was conveyed from Ireland to Bristol, and thence to London, lay in state
in Somerset House, and on February 6th was buried in Henry the Seventh's
chapel.--Heath, 305.]

[Footnote 2: Clanricard, 51.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Jan. 31.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. March 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. March 24.]

up arms in the first year of the contest, or had belonged to the first
general assembly, or had committed murder, or had taken orders in the
church of Rome. There were, however, several who, in obedience to the
instructions received from Charles, resolved to continue hostilities to the
last extremity. Lord Muskerry collected five thousand men on the borders of
Cork and Kerry, but was obliged to retire before his opponents: his strong
fortress of Ross opened[a] its gates; and, after some hesitation, he made
his submission. In the north, Clanricard reduced Ballyshannon and Donnegal;
but there his career ended; and Coote drove[b] him into the Isle of
Carrick, where he was compelled to accept the usual conditions. The last
chieftain of note who braved[c] the arms of the commonwealth was Colonel
Richard Grace: he beat up the enemy's quarters; but was afterwards driven
across the Shannon with the loss of eight hundred of his followers. Colonel
Sanchey pursued[d] him to his favourite retreat; his castle of Inchlough
surrendered,[e] and Grace capitulated with twelve hundred and fifty men.[1]
There still remained a few straggling parties on the mountains and amidst
the morasses, under MacHugh, and Byrne, and O'Brian, and Cavanagh: these,
however, were subdued in the course of the winter; the Isle of Inisbouffin
received[f] a garrison, and a new force, which appeared in Ulster, under
the Lord Iniskilling, obtained,[g] what was chiefly sought, the usual
articles of transportation. The subjugation of Ireland was completed.[2]

[Footnote 1: On this gallant and honourable officer, who on several
subsequent occasions displayed the most devoted attachment to the house of
Stuart, see a very interesting article in Mr. Sheffield Grace's "Memoirs of
the Family of Grace," p. 27.]

[Footnote 2: Ludlow, i. 341, 344, 347, 352, 354, 357, 359, 360. Heath, 310,
312, 324, 333, 344. Journals, April 8, 21, May 18, 25, Aug. 18.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. July 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. May 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. July.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. June 20.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1652. Aug. 1.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1652. January.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1652. May 18.]


3. Here, to prevent subsequent interruption, I may be allowed to describe
the state of this unhappy country, while it remained under the sway of the
commonwealth.

On the death of Ireton, Lambert had been appointed lord deputy; but by
means of a female intrigue he was set aside in favour of Fleetwood, who had
married Ireton's widow.[1] To Fleetwood was assigned the command of the
forces without a colleague; but in the civil administration were joined
with him four other commissioners, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones, and Weaver. By
their instructions they were commanded[a] and authorized to observe, as far
as it was possible, the laws of England in the exercise of the government
and the administration of justice; to "endeavour the promulgation of the
gospel, and the power of true religion, and holiness;" to remove all
disaffected or suspected persons from office; to allow no papist or
delinquent to hold any place of trust, to practise as barrister or
solicitor, or to keep school for

[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 30, June 15, July 9. Lambert's wife and
Ireton's widow met in the park. The first, as her husband was in
possession, claimed the precedency, and the latter complained of the
grievance to Cromwell, her father, whose patent of lord lieutenant was on
the point of expiring. He refused to have it renewed; and, as there could
be no deputy where there was no principal, Lambert's appointment of deputy
was in consequence revoked. But Mrs. Ireton was not content with this
triumph over her rival. She married Fleetwood, obtained for him, through
her father's interest, the chief command in place of Lambert, and returned
with him to her former station in Ireland. Cromwell, however, paid for
the gratification of his daughter's vanity. That he might not forfeit the
friendship of Lambert, whose aid was necessary for his ulterior designs,
he presented him with a considerable sum to defray the charges of the
preparations which he had made for his intended voyage to Ireland,--Ludlow,
i. 355, 360. Hutchinson, 196. Lambert, however, afterwards discovered that
Cromwell had secretly instigated Vane and Hazlerig to oppose his going to
Ireland, and, in revenge, joined with them to depose Richard Cromwell for
the sin of his father.--Thurloe, vii. 660.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. August 24.]

the education of youth; to impose monthly assessments not exceeding forty
thousand pounds in amount for the payment of the forces, and to imprison or
discharge any person, or remove him from his dwelling into any other place
or country, or permit him to return to his dwelling, as they should see
cause for the advantage of the commonwealth.[1]

I. One of the first cares of the commissioners was to satisfy the claims of
vengeance. In the year 1644 the Catholic nobility had petitioned the
king that an inquiry might be made into the murders alleged to have been
perpetrated on each side in Ireland, and that justice might be executed on
the offenders without distinction of country or religion. To the conquerors
it appeared more expedient to confine the inquiry to one party; and a high
court of justice was established to try Catholics charged with having shed
the blood of any Protestant out of battle since the commencement of the
rebellion in 1641. Donnelan, a native, was appointed president, with
commissary-general Reynolds, and Cook, who had acted as solicitor at the
trial of Charles I., for his assessors. The court sat in great state at
Kilkenny, and thence made its circuit through the island by Waterford,
Cork, Dublin, and other places. Of the justice of its proceedings we have
not the means of forming a satisfactory notion; but the cry for blood was
too violent, the passions of men were too much excited, and the forms of
proceeding too summary to allow the judges to weigh with cool and cautious
discrimination the different cases which came before them. Lords Muskerry
and Clanmaliere, with Maccarthy Reagh, whether they owed it to their
innocence or to the influence of

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 34.]

friends, had the good fortune to be acquitted; the mother of Colonel
Fitzpatric was burnt; Lord Mayo, colonels Tool, Bagnal, and about two
hundred more, suffered death by the axe or by the halter. It was, however,
remarkable, that the greatest deficiency of proof occurred in the province
where the principal massacres were said to have been committed. Of the
men of Ulster, Sir Phelim O'Neil is the only one whose conviction, and
execution, have been recorded.[1]

II. Cromwell had not been long in the island before he discovered that
it was impossible to accomplish the original design of extirpating the
Catholic population; and he therefore adopted the expedient of allowing
their leaders to expatriate themselves with a portion of their countrymen,
by entering into the service of foreign powers. This plan was followed
by his successors in the war, and was perfected by an act of parliament,
banishing all the Catholic officers. Each chieftain, when he surrendered,
stipulated for a certain number of men: every facility was furnished him
to complete his levy; and the exiles hastened to risk their lives in the
service of the Catholic powers who hired them; many in that of Spain,
others of France, others of Austria, and some of the republic of Venice.
Thus the obnoxious population was reduced by the number of thirty, perhaps
forty thousand able-bodied men; but it soon became a question how to
dispose of their wives and families, of the wives and families of those who
had perished by the ravages of disease and the casualties of war, and of
the multitudes who, chased from their homes and employments, were reduced
to a state of titter destitution. These at different times, to the amount
of several

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, ii. 2, 5, 8-11. Heath, 332, 333.]

thousands, were collected in bodies, driven on shipboard, and conveyed to
the West Indies.[1] Yet with all these drains on the one party, and the
continual accession of English and Scottish colonists on the other, the
Catholic was found to exceed the Protestant population in the proportion of
eight to one.[2] Cromwell, when he had reached the zenith of his power, had
recourse to a new expedient. He repeatedly solicited the fugitives, who, in
the reign of the late king, had settled in New England, to abandon their
plantations and accept of lands in Ireland. On their refusal, he made the
same offer to the Vaudois, the Protestants of Piedmont, but was equally
unsuccessful. They preferred their native valleys, though

[Footnote 1: According to Petty (p. 187), six thousand boys and women were
sent away. Lynch (Cambrensis Eversus, in fine) says that they were sold
for slaves. Bruodin, in his Propugnaculum (Pragae, anno 1660) numbers the
exiles at one hundred thousand. Ultra centum millia omnis sexus et aetatis,
e quibus aliquot millia in diversas Americae tabaccarias insulas relegata
sunt (p. 692). In a letter in my possession, written in 1656, it is said:
Catholicos pauperea plenis navibus mittunt in Barbados et insulas Americae.
Credo jam sexaginta millia abivisse. Expulsis enim ab initio in Hispaniam
et Belgium maritis, jam uxores et proles in Americam destinantur.--After
the conquest of Jamaica in 1655, the protector, that he might people it,
resolved to transport a thousand Irish boys and a thousand Irish girls to
the island. At first, the young women only were demanded to which it is
replied: "Although we must use force in taking them up, yet, it being so
much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the
public, it is not in the least doubted that you may have such number of
them as you shall think fit."--Thurloe, iv. 23. In the next letter II.
Cromwell says: "I think it might be of like advantage to your affairs
there, and ours here, if you should think fit to send one thousand five
hundred or two thousand young boys of twelve or fourteen years of age to
the place aforementioned. We could well spare them, and they would be of
use to you; and who knows but it may be a means to make them Englishmen, I
mean rather Christians?" (p. 40). Thurloe answers: "The committee of the
council have voted one thousand girls, and as many youths, to be taken up
for that purpose" (p. 75).]

[Footnote 2: Petty, Polit. Arithmetic, 29.]

under the government of a Catholic sovereign, whose enmity they had
provoked, to the green fields of Erin, and all the benefits which
they might derive from the fostering care and religions creed of the
protector.[1]

III. By an act,[a] entitled an act for the settlement of Ireland, the
parliament divided the royalists and Catholics into different classes, and
allotted to each class an appropriate degree of punishment. Forfeiture of
life and estate was pronounced against all the great proprietors of lands,
banishment against those who had accepted commissions; the forfeiture
of two-thirds of their estates against all who had borne arms under the
confederates of the king's lieutenant, and the forfeiture of one-third
against all persons whomsoever who had not been in the actual service of
parliament, or had not displayed their constant good affection to the
commonwealth of England. This was the doom of persons of property: to all
others, whose estates, real and personal, did not amount to the value of
ten pounds, a full and free pardon was graciously offered.[2]

Care, however, was taken that the third parts, which by this act were to be
restored to the original proprietors, were not to be allotted to them out
of their former estates, but "in such places as the parliament, for the
more effectual settlement of the peace of the nation, should think fit to
appoint." When the first plan of extermination had failed, another project
was adopted of confining the Catholic landholders to Connaught and Clare,
beyond the river Shannon, and of dividing the remainder of the island,
Leinster, Munster, and Ulster, among Protestant colonists. This, it

[Footnote 1: Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts, 190. Thurloe, iii. 459.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Aug. 12, 1652. Scobell, ii. 197, Ludlow, i. 370.
In the Appendix I have copied this act correctly from the original in the
possession of Thomas Lloyd, Esq. See note (F).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Aug. 12.]

was said, would prevent the quarrels which must otherwise arise between
the new planters and the ancient owners; it would render rebellion more
difficult and less formidable; and it would break the hereditary influence
of the chiefs over their septs, and of the landlords over their tenants.
Accordingly the little parliament, called by Cromwell and his officers,
passed a second act,[a] which assigned to all persons, claiming under the
qualifications described in the former, a proportionate quantity of land
on the right bank of the Shannon; set aside the counties of Limerick,
Tipperary, and Waterford in Munster, of King's County, Queen's County,
West Meath, and East Meath in Leinster, and of Down, Antrim, and Armagh
in Ulster, to satisfy in equal shares the English adventurers who had
subscribed money in the beginning of the contest, and the arrears of the
army that had served in Ireland since Cromwell took the command; reserved
for the future disposal of the government the forfeitures in the counties
of Dublin, Cork, Kildare, and Carlow; and charged those in the remaining
counties with the deficiency, if their should be any in the first ten, with
the liquidation of several public debts, and with the arrears of the Irish
army contracted previously to the battle of Rathmines.

To carry this act into execution, the commissioners, by successive
proclamations, ordered all persons who claimed under qualifications, and
in addition, all who had borne arms against the parliament, to "remove and
transplant" themselves into Connaught and Clare before the first of May,
1654.[1] How many

[Footnote 1: See on this question "The Great Subject of Transplantation in
Ireland discussed," 1654. Laurence, "The Interest of England in the Irish
Transplantation stated," 1654; and the answer to Laurence by Vincent
Gookin, the author of the first tract.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1653. Sept. 26.]

were prevailed upon to obey, is unknown; but that they amounted to a
considerable number is plain from the fact that the lands allotted to
them in lieu of their third portions extended to more than eight hundred
thousand English acres. Many, however, refused. Retiring into bogs and
fastnesses, they formed bodies of armed men, and supported themselves and
their followers by the depredations which they committed on the occupiers
of their estates. They were called Raperees and Tories;[1] and so
formidable did they become to the new settlers, that in certain districts,
the sum of two hundred pounds was offered for the head of the leader of the
band, and that of forty pounds for the head of any one of the privates.[2]

To maintain this system of spoliation, and to coerce the vindictive
passions of the natives, it became necessary to establish martial law, and
to enforce regulations the most arbitrary and oppressive. No Catholic was
permitted to reside within any garrison or market town, or to remove more
than one mile from his own dwelling without a passport describing his
person, age, and occupation; every meeting of four persons besides the
family was pronounced an illegal and treasonable assembly; to carry arms,
or to have arms at home, was made a capital offence; and any transplanted
Irishman, who was found on the left bank of the Shannon, might be put to
death by the first person who met him, without the order of a magistrate.
Seldom has any nation been reduced to a state of bondage more galling and
oppressive. Under

[Footnote 1: This celebrated party name, "Tory," is derived from
"toruighim," to pursue for the sake of plunder.--O'Connor, Bib. Stowensis,
ii. 460.]

[Footnote 2: Burton's Diary, ii. 210.]

the pretence of the violation of these laws, their feelings were outraged,
and their blood was shed with impunity. They held their property, their
liberty, and their lives, at the will of the petty despots around them,
foreign planters, and the commanders of military posts, who were
stimulated by revenge and interest to depress and exterminate the native
population.[1]

IV. The religion of the Irish proved an additional source of solicitude
to their fanatical conquerors. By one of the articles concluded with Lord
Westmeath, it was stipulated that all the inhabitants of Ireland should
enjoy the benefit of an act lately passed in England "to relieve peaceable
persons from the rigours of former acts in matters of religion;" and that
no Irish recusant should be compelled to assist at any form of service
contrary to his conscience. When the treaty was presented for ratification,
this concession shocked and scandalized the piety of the saints. The first
part was instantly negatived; and, if the second was carried by a small
majority through the efforts of Marten and Vane, it was with a proviso that
"the article should not give any the least allowance, or countenance,
or toleration, to the exercise of the Catholic worship in any manner
whatsoever."[2]

In the spirit of these votes, the civil commissioners ordered by
proclamation[a] all Catholic clergymen to quit Ireland within twenty days,
under the penalties of high treason, and forbade all other persons to
harbour any such clergymen under the pain of death. Additional provisions
tending to the same object followed in succession. Whoever knew of the
concealment

[Footnote 1: Bruodin, 693. Hibernia Dominicana, 706.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1652, June 1.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Jan. 6.]

of a priest, and did not reveal it to the proper authorities, was made
liable to the punishment of a public whipping and the amputation of his
ears; to be absent on a Sunday from the service at the parish church,
subjected the offender to a fine of thirty pence; and the magistrates were
authorized to take away the children of Catholics and send them to England
for education, and to tender the oath of abjuration to all persons of
the age of one and twenty years, the refusal of which subjected them to
imprisonment during pleasure, and to the forfeiture of two-thirds of their
estates real and personal.[1]

During this period the Catholic clergy were exposed to a persecution far
more severe than had ever been previously experienced in the island. In
former times the chief governors dared not execute with severity the laws
against the Catholic priesthood, and the fugitives easily found security on
the estates of the great landed proprietors. But now the Irish people lay
prostrate at the feet of their conquerors; the military were distributed in
small bodies over the country; their vigilance was sharpened by religious
antipathy and the hope of reward; and the means of detection were
facilitated by the prohibition of travelling without a license from the
magistrates. Of the many priests who still remained in the country, several
were discovered, and forfeited their lives on the gallows; those who
escaped detection concealed themselves in the caverns of the mountains, or
in lonely hovels raised in the midst of the morasses, whence they issued
during the night to carry the consolations

[Footnote 1: Hibernia Dominicana, 707. Bruodin, 696. Porter, Compendium
Annalium Eecclesiasticorum (Romae, 1690), p. 292.]

of religion to the huts of their oppressed and suffering countrymen.[1]

3. In Scotland the power of the commonwealth was as firmly established as
in Ireland. When Cromwell hastened in pursuit of the king to Worcester, he
left Monk with eight thousand men to complete the conquest of the kingdom.
Monk invested Stirling; and the Highlanders who composed the garrison,
alarmed by the explosion of the shells from the batteries, compelled[a] the
governor to capitulate. The maiden castle, which had never been violated by
the presence of a conqueror,[2] submitted to the English "sectaries;" and,
what was still more humbling to the pride of the nation, the royal robes,
part of the regalia, and the national records, were irreverently torn from
their repositories, and sent to London as the trophies of victory. Thence
the English general marched forward to Dundee, where he received a proud
defiance from Lumsden, the governor. During the preparations for the
assault, he learned that the Scottish lords, whom Charles had intrusted
with the government in his absence, were holding a meeting on the moor at
Ellet, in Angus. By his order, six hundred horse, under the colonels Alured
and Morgan, aided, as it was believed, by treachery, surprised them at an
early hour in the morning.[b] Three hundred prisoners were made, including
the two committees of

[Footnote 1: MS. letters in my possession. Bruodin, 696. A proclamation
was also issued ordering all nuns to marry or leave Ireland. They were
successively transported to Belgium, France, and Spain, where they were
hospitably received in the convents of their respective orders.]

[Footnote 2: "Haec nobis invicta tulerunt centum sex proavi, 1617," was the
boasting inscription which King James had engraved on the wall.--Clarke's
official account to the Speaker, in Cary, ii. 327. Echard, 697.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Aug. 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Aug. 28.]

the estates and the kirk, several peers, and all the gentry of the
neighbourhood; and these, with such other individuals as the general deemed
hostile and dangerous to the commonwealth, followed the regalia and records
of their country to the English capital. At Dundee a breach was soon made
in the wall: the defenders shrunk from the charge of the assailants;
and the governor and garrison were massacred.[a] I must leave it to the
imagination of the reader to supply the sufferings of the inhabitants from
the violence, the lust, and the rapacity of their victorious enemy. In
Dundee, on account of its superior strength, many had deposited their most
valuable effects; and all these, with sixty ships and their cargoes in the
harbour, became the reward of the conquerors.[1]

Warned by this awful example, St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Montrose opened
their gates; the earl of Huntley and Lord Balcarras submitted; the few
remaining fortresses capitulated in succession; and if Argyle, in the midst
of his clan, maintained a precarious and temporary independence, it was not
that he cherished the expectation of evading the yoke, but that he sought
to draw from the parliament the acknowledgment of a debt which he claimed
of the English

[Footnote 1: Heath, 301, 302. Whitelock, 508. Journals, Aug. 27.
Milton's S. Pap. 79. Balfour, iv. 314, 315. "Mounche commaundit all, of
quhatsummeuer sex, to be putt to the edge of the sword. Ther wer 800
inhabitants and souldiers killed, and about 200 women and children. The
plounder and buttie they gatte in the toune, exceided 2 millions and a
halffe" (about £200,000). That, however, the whole garrison was not put to
the sword appears from the mention in the Journals (Sept. 12) of a list of
officers made prisoners, and from Monk's letter to Cromwell. "There was
killed of the enemy about 500, and 200 or thereabouts taken prisoners.
The stubbornness of the people enforced the soldiers to plunder the
town."--Cary's Memorials, ii. 351.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651 Sept. 1.]

government.[1] To destroy the prospect, by showing the hopelessness of
resistance, the army was successively augmented to the amount of twenty
thousand men;[2] citadels were marked out to be built of stone at Ayr,
Leith, Perth, and Inverness; and a long chain of military stations drawn
across the Highlands served to curb, if it did not tame, the fierce and
indignant spirit of the natives. The parliament declared the lands and
goods of the crown public property, and confiscated the estates of all who
had joined the king or the duke of Hamilton in their invasions of England,
unless they were engaged in trade, and worth no more than five pounds, or
not engaged in trade, and worth only one hundred pounds. All authority
derived from any other source than the parliament of England was
abolished[a] by proclamation; the different sheriffs, and civil officers of
doubtful fidelity, were removed for others attached to the commonwealth; a
yearly tax of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds was imposed in lieu of
free quarters for the support of the army; and English judges, assisted by
three or four natives, were appointed to go the circuits, and to supersede
the courts of session.[3] It was with grief

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 315. Heath, 304, 308, 310, 313. Whitelock, 514,
534, 543.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Dec. 2, 1652.]

[Footnote 3: Ludlow, 345. Heath, 313, 326. Whitelock, 528, 542. Journals,
Nov. 19. Leicester's Journal, 129. The English judges were astonished at
the spirit of litigation and revenge which the Scots displayed during the
circuit. More than one thousand individuals were accused before them of
adultery, incest, and other offences, which they had been obliged to
confess in the kirk during the last twenty or thirty years. When no other
proof was brought, the charge was dismissed. In like manner sixty persons
were charged with witchcraft. These were also acquitted; for, though they
had confessed the offence, the confession had been drawn from them by
torture. It was usual to tie up the supposed witch by the thumbs, and to
whip her till she confessed; or to put the flame of a candle to the soles
of the feet, between the toes, or to parts of the head, or to make the
accused wear a shirt of hair steeped in vinegar &c.--See Whitelock, 543,
544, 545, 547, 548.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Jan. 22.]

and shame that the Scots yielded to these innovations; though they were
attended with one redeeming benefit, the prevention of that anarchy and
bloodshed which must have followed, had the Cavaliers and Covenanters, with
forces nearly balanced, and passions equally excited, been left to wreck
their vengeance on each other. But they were soon threatened with what in
their eyes was a still greater evil. The parliament resolved to incorporate
the two countries into one commonwealth, without kingly government or the
aristocratical influence of a house of peers. This was thought to fill up
the measure of Scottish misery. There is a pride in the independence of his
country, of which even the peasant is conscious; but in this case not only
national but religious feelings were outraged. With the civil consequences
of an union which would degrade Scotland to the state of a province,
the ministers in their ecclesiastical capacity had no concern; but they
forbade[a] the people to give consent or support to the measure, because it
was contrary to the covenant, and tended "to draw with it a subordination
of the kirk to the state in the things of Christ."[1] The parliamentary
commissioners (they were eight, with St. John and Vane at their head),
secure of the power of the sword, derided the menaces of the kirk. They
convened at Dalkeith the representatives of the counties and burghs,
who were ordered to bring with them full powers to treat and conclude
respecting the incorporation of the two countries. Twenty-eight

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 521. Heath, 307.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Jan. 21]

out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs, gave
their consent; and the result was a second meeting at Edinburgh, in
which twenty-one deputies were chosen to arrange the conditions with the
parliamentary commissioners at Westminster. There conferences were held,[a]
and many articles discussed; but, before the plan could be amicably
adjusted, the parliament itself, with all its projects, was overturned[b]
by the successful ambition of Cromwell.[1]

4. From the conquest of Ireland and Scotland we may now turn to the
transactions between the commonwealth and foreign powers. The king of
Portugal was the first who provoked its anger, and felt its vengeance. At
an early period in 1649, Prince Rupert, with the fleet which had revolted
from the parliament to the late king, sailed[c] from the Texel, swept the
Irish Channel, and inflicted severe injuries on the English commerce. Vane,
to whose industry had been committed the care of the naval department, made
every exertion to equip a formidable armament, the command of which
was given to three military officers, Blake, Dean, and Popham. Rupert
retired[d] before this superior force to the harbour of Kinsale; the
batteries kept his enemies at bay; and the Irish supplied him with men and
provisions. At length the victories of Cromwell by land admonished him to
quit his asylum; and, with the loss of three ships, he burst[e] through the
blockading squadron, sailed to the coast of Spain, and during the winter
months sought shelter in the waters of the Tagus. In spring, Blake
appeared[f] with eighteen men-of-war at the mouth of the river; to his
request that he

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1652, March 16, 24, 26, April 2, May 14, Sept. 15,
29, Oct. 29, Nov. 23.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 12.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. May.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. October.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. March.]

might be allowed to attack the pirate at his anchorage, he received from
the king of Portugal a peremptory refusal; and, in his attempt to force
his way up the river he was driven back by the fire from the batteries. In
obedience to his instructions, he revenged himself on the Portuguese trade,
and Don John, by way of reprisal, arrested the English merchants, and
took possession of their effects. Alarmed, however, by the losses of his
subjects, he compelled[a] Rupert to quit the Tagus,[1] and despatched[b]
an envoy, named Guimaraes, to solicit an accommodation. Every paper which
passed between this minister and the commissioners was submitted to the
parliament, and by it approved, or modified, or rejected. Guimaraes
subscribed[c] to the preliminaries demanded by the council, that the
English merchants arrested in Portugal should be set at liberty, that they
should receive an indemnification for their losses, and that the king of
Portugal should pay a sum of money towards the charges of the English
fleet; but he protracted the negotiation, by disputing dates and details,
and was haughtily commanded[d] to quit the territory of the commonwealth.
Humbling as it was to Don John, he had no resource; the Conde de Camera was
sent,[e] with the title of ambassador extraordinary; he assented to every

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 134, 142, 155. Heath, 254, 256, 275. Whitelock,
406, 429, 449, 463, 475. Clarendon, iii. 338. Rupert sailed into the
Mediterranean, and maintained himself by piracy, capturing not only English
but Spanish and Genoese ships. All who did not favour him were considered
as enemies. Driven from the Mediterranean by the English, he sailed to the
West Indies, where he inflicted greater losses on the Spanish than the
English trade. Here his brother, Prince Maurice, perished in a storm; and
Rupert, unable to oppose his enemies with any hope of success, returned to
Europe, and anchored in the harbour of Nantes, in March, 1652. He sold his
two men-of-war to Cardinal Mazarin.--Heath, 337. Whitelock, 552. Clarendon,
iii. 513, 520.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. October.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Dec. 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. April 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. May 16.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1652. July 7.]

demand; but the progress of the treaty was interrupted by the usurpation
of Cromwell, and another year elapsed before it was[a] concluded. By
it valuable privileges were granted to the English traders; four
commissioners,--two English and two Portuguese, were appointed[b] to settle
all claims against the Portuguese government; and it was agreed[c] that an
English commissary should receive one-half of all the duties paid by the
English merchants in the ports of Portugal, to provide a sufficient fund
for the liquidation of the debt.[1]

5. To Charles I. (nor will it surprise us, if we recollect his treatment
of the Infanta) the court of Spain had always behaved with coldness and
reserve. The ambassador Cardenas continued to reside in London, even
after the king's execution, and was the first foreign minister whom the
parliament honoured with a public audience. He made it his chief object
to cement the friendship between the commonwealth and his own country,
fomented the hostility of the former against Portugal and the United
Provinces, the ancient enemies of Spain, and procured the assent of his
sovereign that an accredited minister from the parliament should be
admitted by the court of Madrid. The individual selected[d] for this office
was Ascham, a man who, by his writings, had rendered himself peculiarly
obnoxious to the royalists. He landed[e] near Cadiz, proceeded under an
escort for his protection to Madrid, and repaired[f] to an inn, till a
suitable residence could be procured. The next day,[g] while he was sitting
at dinner with Riba, a renegado friar, his interpreter,

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1650, Dec. 17; 1651, April 4, 11, 22, May 7, 13, 16;
1652, Sept. 30, Dec. 15; 1653, Jan. 5. Whitelock, 486. Dumont, vi. p. ii.
82.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Jan. 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. July 10.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. July 14.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Jan. 31.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. April 3.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. May 26.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1650. May 27.]

six Englishmen entered the house; four remained below to watch; two burst
into the room, exclaiming, "Welcome, gallants, welcome;" and in a moment
both the ambassador and the interpreter lay on the floor weltering in their
blood. Of the assassins, one, a servant to Cottington and Hyde, the envoys
from Charles, fled to the house of the Venetian ambassador, and escaped;
the other five took refuge in a neighbouring chapel, whence, by the king's
order, they were conducted to the common goal. When the criminal process
was ended, they all received judgment of death. The crime, it was
acknowledged, could not be justified; yet the public feeling was in favour
of the criminals: the people, the clergy, the foreign ambassadors, all
sought to save them from punishment; and, though the right of sanctuary
did not afford protection to murderers, the king was, but with difficulty,
persuaded to send them back to their former asylum. Here, while they
remained within its precincts, they were safe; but the moment they left the
sanctuary, their lives became forfeited to the law. The people supplied
them with provisions, and offered the means of escape. They left Madrid;
the police pursued; Sparkes, a native of Hampshire, was taken about three
miles from the city; and the parliament, unable to obtain more, appeared to
be content with the blood of this single victim.[1]

6. These negotiations ended peaceably; those between the commonwealth and
the United Provinces, though commenced with friendly feelings, led to
hostilities. It might have been expected that the Dutch, mindful of the
glorious struggle for liberty maintained

[Footnote 1: Compare Clarendon, iii. 369, with the Papers in Thurloe, i.
148-153, 202, and Harleian Miscellany, iv. 280.]

by their fathers, and crowned with success by the treaty of Munster, would
have viewed with exultation the triumph of the English republicans. But
William the Second, prince of Orange, had married[a] a daughter of Charles
I.; his views and interests were espoused by the military and the people;
and his adherents possessed the ascendancy in the States General and in all
the provincial states, excepting those of West Friesland and Holland.
As long as he lived, no atonement could be obtained for the murder of
Dorislaus, no audience for Strickland, the resident ambassador, though that
favour was repeatedly granted to Boswell, the envoy of Charles.[1] However,
in November the prince died[b] of the small-pox in his twenty-fourth year;
and a few days later[c] his widow was delivered of a son, William III., the
same who subsequently ascended the throne of England. The infancy of his
successor emboldened the democratical party; they abolished the office of
stadtholder, and recovered the ascendancy in the government. On the news of
this revolution, the council advised that St. John, the chief justice of
the Common Pleas, and Strickland, the former envoy, should be appointed
ambassadors extraordinary to the States General. St. John, with the fate
of Ascham before his eyes, sought to escape this dangerous mission; he
alleged[d] the infirmity of his health and the insalubrity of the climate;
but the parliament derided his timidity, and his petition was dismissed on
a division by a considerable majority.[2]

Among the numerous projects which the English leaders cherished under the
intoxication of success, was that of forming, by the incorporation of the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 112, 113, 114, 124.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1651, Jan. 21, 23, 28.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1646. Dec. 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Nov. 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Nov. 14.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. Jan. 28.]

United Provinces with the commonwealth, a great and powerful republic,
capable of striking terror into all the crowned heads of Europe. But so
many difficulties were foreseen, so many objections raised, that the
ambassadors received instructions to confine themselves to the more sober
proposal of "a strict and intimate alliance and union, which might give to
each a mutual and intrinsical interest" in the prosperity of the other.
They made their public entry into the Hague[a] with a parade and retinue
becoming the representatives of a powerful nation; but external splendour
did not check the popular feeling, which expressed itself by groans
and hisses, nor intimidate the royalists, who sought every occasion of
insulting "the things called ambassadors."[1] The States had not forgotten
the offensive delay of the parliament to answer their embassy of
intercession for the life of Charles I.; nor did they brook the superiority
which it now assumed, by prescribing a certain term within which the
negotiation should be concluded. Pride was met with equal pride; the
ambassadors were compelled to solicit a prolongation of their powers,[b]
and the treaty began to proceed with greater rapidity. The English
proposed[c] a confederacy for the preservation of the liberties of each
nation against all the enemies

[Footnote 1: Thus they are perpetually called in the correspondence of the
royalists.--Carte's Letters, i. 447, 469; ii. 11. Strickland's servants
were attacked at his door by six cavaliers with drawn swords; an attempt
was made to break into St. John's bedchamber; Edward, son to the queen of
Bohemia, publicly called the ambassadors rogues and dogs; and the young
duke of York accidentally meeting St. John, who refused to give way to
him, snatched the ambassador's hat off his head and threw it in his face,
saying, "Learn, parricide, to respect the brother of your king." "I scorn,"
he replied, "to acknowledge either, you race of vagabonds." The duke
drew his sword, but mischief was prevented by the interference of the
spectators,--New Parl. Hist. iii. 1, 364.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. March 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. April 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. May 10.]

of either by sea and land, and a renewal of the whole treaty of 1495, with
such modifications as might adapt it to existing times and circumstances.
The States, having demanded in vain an explanation of the proposed
confederacy,[a] presented a counter project;[b] but while the different
articles remained under discussion, the period prefixed by the parliament
expired, and the ambassadors departed. To whom the failure of the
negotiation was owing became a subject of controversy. The Hollanders
blamed the abrupt and supercilious carriage of St. John and his colleague;
the ambassadors charged the States with having purposely created delay,
that they might not commit themselves by a treaty with the commonwealth,
before they had seen the issue of the contest between the king of Scotland
and Oliver Cromwell.[1]

In a short time that contest was decided in the battle of Worcester,
and the States condescended to become petitioners in their turn. Their
ambassadors arrived in England with the intention of resuming the
negotiation where it had been interrupted by the departure of St. John and
his colleague. But circumstances were now changed; success had enlarged
the pretensions of the parliament; and the British, instead of shunning,
courted a trial of strength with the Belgic lion. First, the Dutch
merchantmen were visited under the pretext of searching for munitions of
war, which they were carrying to the enemy; and then, at the representation
of certain merchants, who conceived themselves to have been injured by the
Dutch navy, letters of marque were granted to several individuals, and more
than eighty prizes brought into

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 179, 183, 188-195. Heath, 285-287. Carte's
Letters, i. 464. Leicester's Journal, 107. Parl. History, xx. 496.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. June 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. June 20.]

the English ports.[1] In addition, the navigation act had been passed and
carried into execution,[a] by which it was enacted that no goods, the
produce of Africa, Asia, and America, should be imported into this country
in ships which were not the property of England or its colonies; and that
no produce or manufacture of any part of Europe should be imported,
unless in ships the property of England or of the country of which such
merchandise was the proper growth or manufacture.[2] Hitherto the Dutch
had been the common carriers of Europe; by this act, the offspring of St.
John's resentment, one great and lucrative branch of their commercial
prosperity was lopped off, and the first, but fruitless demand of the
ambassadors was that, if not repealed, it should at least be suspended
during the negotiation.

The Dutch merchants had solicited permission to indemnify themselves by
reprisals; but the States ordered a numerous fleet to be equipped, and
announced to all the neighbouring powers that their object was, not to make
war, but to afford protection to their commerce. By the council of state,
the communication was received as a menace; the English ships of war were
ordered to exact in the narrow seas the same honour to the flag of the
commonwealth as had been formerly paid to that of the king; and the

[Footnote 1: It seems probable that the letters of marque were granted not
against the Dutch, but the French, as had been done for some time, and
that the Dutch vessels were detained under pretence of their having French
property on board. Suivant les pretextes de reprisailles contre les
François et autres.--Dumont, vi. ii. 32.]

[Footnote 2: An exception was made in favour of commodities from the Levant
seas, the West Indies, and the ports of Spain and Portugal, which might be
imported from the usual places of trading, though they were not the growth
of the said places. The penalty was the forfeiture of the ship and cargo,
one moiety to the commonwealth, the other to the informer.--New Parl. Hist.
iii. 1374.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 9.]

ambassadors were reminded of the claim of indemnification for the losses
sustained by the English in the East Indies, of a free trade from
Middleburgh to Antwerp, and of the tenth herring which was due from the
Dutch fishermen for the permission to exercise their trade in the British
seas.

While the conferences were yet pending, Commodore Young met[a] a fleet of
Dutch merchantmen under convoy in the Channel; and, after a sharp action,
compelled the men-of-war to salute the English flag. A few days later[b]
the celebrated Van Tromp appeared with two-and-forty sail in the Downs. He
had been instructed to keep at a proper distance from the English coast,
neither to provoke nor to shun hostility, and to salute or not according to
his own discretion; but on no account to yield to the newly-claimed right
of search.[1] To Bourne, the English, commander, he apologized for
his arrival, which, he said, was not with any hostile design, but in
consequence of the loss of several anchors and cables on the opposite
coast. The next day[c] he met Blake off the harbour of Dover; an action
took place between the rival commanders; and, when the fleets separated in
the evening, the English cut off two ships of thirty guns, one of which
they took, the other they abandoned, on account of the damage which it had
received.

It was a question of some importance who was the aggressor. By Blake it was
asserted that Van Tromp had gratuitously come to insult the English fleet
in its own roads, and had provoked the engagement by firing the first
broadside. The Dutchman replied that

[Footnote 1: Le Clerc, i. 315. The Dutch seem to have argued that the
salute had formerly been rendered to the king, not to the nation.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. May 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. May 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. May 19.]

he was cruising for the protection of trade; that the weather had driven
him on the English coast; that he had no thought of fighting till he
received the fire of Blake's ship; and that, during the action, he had
carefully kept on the defensive, though he might with his great superiority
of force have annihilated the assailants.[1]

The reader will probably think, that those who submitted to solicit the
continuance of peace were not the first to seek the commencement of
hostilities. Immediately after the action at sea, the council ordered the
English commanders to pursue, attack, and destroy all vessels the property
of the United Provinces; and, in the course of a month, more than seventy
sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war, were captured, stranded,
or burnt. The Dutch, on the contrary, abstained from reprisals; their
ambassadors thrice assured the council that the battle had happened without
the knowledge, and to the deep regret of the States;[a] and on each
occasion earnestly deprecated the adoption of hasty and violent measures,
which might lead to consequences highly prejudicial to both nations.
They received an answer,[b] which, assuming it as proved that the States
intended to usurp the rights of England on the sea, and to

[Footnote 1: The great argument of the parliament in their declaration is
the following: Tromp came out of his way to meet the English fleet, and
fired on Blake without provocation; the States did not punish him, but
retained him in the command; therefore he acted by their orders, and the
war was begun by them. Each of these assertions was denied on the other
side. Tromp showed the reasons which led him into the track of the English
fleet; and the States asserted, from the evidence before them, that Tromp
had ordered his sails to be lowered, and was employed in getting ready
his boat to compliment the English admiral at the time when he received a
broadside from the impatience of Blake.--Dumont, vi. p. ii. 33. Le Clerc,
i. 315, 317. Basnage, i. 254. Heath, 315-320.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. May 24, 27, June 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. June 5.]

destroy the navy, the bulwark of those rights, declared that it was the
duty of parliament to seek reparation for the past, and security for the
future.[1]

Soon afterwards Pauw, the grand pensionary, arrived.[a] He repeated with
the most solemn asseverations from his own knowledge the statement of the
ambassadors;[b] proposed that a court of inquiry, consisting of an equal
number of commissioners from each nation, should be appointed, and
exemplary punishment inflicted on the officer who should be found to have
provoked the engagement; and demanded that hostilities should cease, and
the negotiation be resumed. Receiving no other answer than had been already
given to his colleagues, he asked[c] what was meant by "reparation and
security;" and was told by order of parliament, that the English government
expected full compensation for all the charges to which it had been put
by the preparations and attempts of the States, and hoped to meet with
security for the future in an alliance which should render the interests
of both nations consistent with each other. These, it was evident, were
conditions to which the pride of the States would refuse to stoop; Pauw
demanded[d] an audience of leave of the parliament; and all hope of
reconciliation vanished.[2]

If the Dutch had hitherto solicited peace, it was not that they feared the
result of war. The sea was their native element; and the fact of their
maritime superiority had long been openly or tacitly acknowledged by all
the powers of Europe. But they wisely

[Footnote 1: Heath, 320, 321.]

[Footnote 2: Compare the declaration of parliament of July 9 with that of
the States General of July 23, Aug. 2. See also Whitelock, 537; Heath,
315-322; the Journals, June 5, 11, 25, 30; and Le Clerc, i. 318-321.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. June 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. June 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. June 25.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. June 30.]

judged that no victory by sea could repay them for the losses which they
must sustain from the extinction of their fishing trade, and the suspension
of their commerce.[1] For the commonwealth, on the other hand, it was
fortunate that the depredations of Prince Rupert had turned the attention
of the leaders to naval concerns. Their fleet had been four years in
commission: the officers and men were actuated by the same spirit of civil
liberty and religious enthusiasm which distinguished the land army; Ayscue
had just returned from the reduction of Barbadoes with a powerful squadron;
and fifty additional ships were ordered to be equipped, an object easily
accomplished at a time when any merchantman capable of carrying guns could,
with a few alterations, be converted into a man-of-war.[2] Ayscue with the
smaller division of the fleet remained at home to scour the Channel.[a]
Blake sailed to the north, captured the squadron appointed to protect the
Dutch fishing-vessels, exacted from the busses the duty of every tenth
herring, and sent them home with a prohibition to fish again without a
license from the English government. In the mean while Van Tromp sailed
from the Texel with seventy men-of-war. It was expected in Holland that he
would sweep the English navy from the face of the ocean. His first attempt
was to surprise Ayscue, who was saved by a calm followed by a change of
wind. He then sailed to the north in search of Blake. But

[Footnote 1: The fishery employed in various ways one hundred thousand
persons.--Le Clerc, 321.]

[Footnote 2: From a list of hired merchantmen converted into men-of-war, it
appears that a ship of nine hundred tons burthen made a man-of-war of sixty
guns; one of seven hundred tons, a man-of-war of forty-six; four hundred,
of thirty-four; two hundred, of twenty; one hundred, of ten; sixty, of
eight; and that about five or six men were allowed for each gun.--Journals,
1651, May 29.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. July 19.]

his fleet was dispersed by a storm; five of his frigates fell into the
hands of the English; and on his return he was received with murmurs and
reproaches by the populace. Indignant at a treatment which he had not
deserved, he justified his conduct before the States, and then laid down
his commission.[1]

De Ruyter, a name almost equally illustrious on the ocean, was appointed
his successor. That officer sailed to the mouth of the Channel, took under
his charge a fleet of merchantmen, and on his return was opposed by Ayscue
with nearly an equal force. The English. commander burst through the enemy,
and was followed by nine sail; the rest of the fleet took no share in the
action, and the convoy escaped. The blame rested not with Ayscue, but with
his inferior officers; but the council took the opportunity to lay him
aside, not that they doubted his courage or abilities, but because he was
suspected of a secret leaning to the royal cause. To console him for his
disgrace, he received a present of three hundred pounds, with a grant of
land of the same annual rent in Ireland.[2]

De Witte now joined De Ruyter,[a] and took the command. Blake accepted the
challenge of battle, and night alone separated the combatants. The next
morning the Dutch fled, and were pursued as far as the Goree. Their ships
were in general of smaller dimensions, and drew less water than those of
their adversaries, who dared not follow among the numerous sand-banks with
which the coast is studded.[3]

Blake, supposing that naval operations would be suspended during the
winter, had detached several

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 538, 539, 540, 541. Heath, 322. Le Clerc, i. 321.]

[Footnote 2: Heath, 323. Le Clerc, i. 322.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. 326. Ludlow, i. 367. Whitelock, 545. Le Clerc, i. 324.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Sept. 28.]

squadrons to different ports, and was riding in the Downs with thirty-seven
sail, when he was surprised by the appearance[a] of a hostile fleet of
double that number, under the command of Van Tromp, whose wounded pride had
been appeased with a new commission. A mistaken sense of honour induced the
English admiral to engage in the unequal contest. The battle[b] raged from
eleven in the morning till night. The English, though they burnt a large
ship and disabled two others, lost five sail either sunk or taken; and
Blake, under cover of the darkness, ran up the river as far as Leigh. Van
Tromp sought his enemy at Harwich and Yarmouth; returning, he insulted the
coast as he passed; and continued to cruise backwards and forwards from the
North Foreland to the Isle of Wight.[1]

The parliament made every exertion to wipe away this disgrace. The ships
were speedily refitted; two regiments of infantry embarked to serve as
marines; a bounty was offered for volunteers; the wages of the seamen were
raised; provision was made for their families during their absence on
service; a new rate for the division of prize-money was established; and,
in aid of Blake, two officers, whose abilities had been already tried,
Deane and Monk, received the joint command of the fleet. On the other hand,
the Dutch were intoxicated with their success; they announced it to the
world, in prints, poems, and publications; and Van Tromp affixed a broom to
the head of his mast as an emblem of his triumph. He had gone to the Isle
of Rhée to take the homeward-bound trade under his charge, with orders to
resume his station at the mouth of the Thames, and to prevent the egress of

[Footnote 1: Heath, 329. Ludlow, ii. 3. Neuville, iii. 68.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Nov. 29.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. Nov. 30.]

the English. But Blake had already stationed himself with more than seventy
sail across the Channel, opposite the Isle of Portland, to intercept the
return of the enemy. On the 18th of February the Dutch fleet, equal in
number, with three hundred merchantmen under convoy, was discovered[a]
near Cape La Hogue, steering along the coast of France. The action was
maintained with the most desperate obstinacy. The Dutch lost six sail,
either sunk or taken, the English one, but several were disabled, and Blake
himself was severely wounded.

The following morning[b] the enemy were seen opposite Weymouth, drawn up in
the form of a crescent covering the merchantmen. Many attempts were made to
break through the line; and so imminent did the danger appear to the Dutch
admiral, that he made signal for the convoy to shift for themselves. The
battle lasted at intervals through the night; it was renewed with greater
vigour near Boulogne in the morning;[c] till Van Tromp, availing himself of
the shallowness of the coast, pursued his course homeward unmolested by the
pursuit of the enemy. The victory was decidedly with the English; the loss
in men might be equal on both sides; but the Dutch themselves acknowledged
that nine of their men-of-war and twenty-four of the merchant vessels had
been either sunk or captured.[1]

This was the last naval victory achieved under the auspices of the
parliament, which, though it wielded the powers of government with an
energy that surprised

[Footnote 1: Heath, 335. Whitelock, 551. Leicester's Journal, 138. Le
Clerc, i. 328. Basnage, i. 298-301. By the English admirals the loss of the
Dutch was estimated at eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Feb. 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. Feb. 19.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1653. Feb. 20.]

the several nations of Europe, was doomed to bend before the superior
genius or ascendancy of Cromwell. When that adventurer first formed the
design of seizing the supreme authority, is uncertain; it was not till
after the victory at Worcester that he began gradually and cautiously to
unfold his object. He saw himself crowned with the laurels of conquest; he
held the command in chief of a numerous and devoted army; and he dwelt with
his family in a palace formerly the residence of the English monarchs. His
adversaries had long ago pronounced him, in all but name, "a king;" and his
friends were accustomed to address him in language as adulatory as ever
gratified the ears of the most absolute sovereign.[1] His importance was
perpetually forced upon his notice by the praise of his dependants, by the
foreign envoys who paid court to him, and by the royalists who craved
his protection. In such circumstances, it cannot be surprising if the
victorious general indulged the aspirings of ambition; if the stern
republican, however he might hate to see the crown on the brows of another,
felt no repugnance to place it upon his own.

The grandees of the army felt that they no longer possessed the chief sway
in the government. War had called them away to their commands in Scotland
and Ireland; and, during their absence, the conduct of affairs had devolved
on those who, in contradistinction, were denominated the statesmen. Thus,
by the course

[Footnote 1: The general officers conclude their despatches to him thus:
"We humbly lay ourselves with these thoughts, in this emergency, at your
excellency's feet."--Milton's State Papers, 71. The ministers of Newcastle
make "their humble addresses to his godly wisdom," and present "their
humble suits to God and his excellency" (ibid. 82); and the petitioners
from different countries solicit him to mediate for them to the parliament,
"because God has not put the sword in his hand in vain."--Whitelock, 517.]

of events, the servants had grown into masters, and the power of the
senate had obtained the superiority over the power of the sword. Still
the officers in their distant quarters jealously watched, and severely
criticised the conduct of the men at Westminster. With want of vigour in
directing the military and naval resources of the country, they could not
be charged; but it was complained that they neglected the internal economy
of government; that no one of the objects demanded in the "agreement of
the people" had been accomplished; and that, while others sacrificed
their health and their lives in the service of the commonwealth, all the
emoluments and patronage were monopolized by the idle drones who remained
in the capital.[1]

On the return of the lord-general, the council of officers had been
re-established at Whitehall;[a] and their discontent was artfully employed
by Cromwell in furtherance of his own elevation. When he resumed his seat
in the house, he reminded the members of their indifference to two measures
earnestly desired by the country, the act of amnesty and the termination of
the present parliament. Bills for each of these objects had been introduced
as far back as 1649; but, after some progress, both were suffered to sleep
in the several committees; and this backwardness of the "statesmen" was
attributed to their wish to enrich themselves by forfeitures, and to
perpetuate their power by perpetuating the parliament. The influence of
Cromwell revived both questions. An act of oblivion was obtained,[b] which,
with some exceptions, pardoned all offences committed before the battle of
Worcester, and relieved the minds of the royalists from the apprehension

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 549.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Sept. 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. Feb. 24.]

of additional forfeitures. On the question of the expiration of parliament,
after several warm debates, the period had been fixed[a] for the 3rd of
November, 1654; a distance of three years, which, perhaps, was not the less
pleasing to Cromwell, as it served to show how unwilling his adversaries
were to resign their power. The interval was to be employed in determining
the qualifications of the succeeding parliament.[1]

In the winter, the lord-general called a meeting of officers and members at
the house of the speaker; and it must have excited their surprise, when
he proposed to them to deliberate, whether it were better to establish
a republic, or a mixed form of monarchical government. The officers in
general pronounced in favour of a republic, as the best security for the
liberties of the people; the lawyers pleaded unanimously for a limited
monarchy, as better adapted to the laws, the habits, and the feelings of
Englishmen. With the latter Cromwell agreed, and inquired whom in that case
they would choose for king. It was replied, either Charles Stuart or
the duke of York, provided they would comply with the demands of the
parliament; if they would not, the young duke of Gloucester, who could not
have imbibed the despotic notions of his elder brothers. This was not the
answer which Cromwell sought: he heard it with uneasiness; and, as often as
the subject was resumed, diverted the conversation to some other question.
In conclusion, he gave his opinion, that, "somewhat of a monarchical
government would be most effectual, if it could be established with safety
to the liberties of the people,

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1651, Nov. 4, 14, 15, 18, 27; 1652, Feb. 24.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Nov. 18.]

as Englishmen and Christians."[1] That the result of the meeting
disappointed his expectations, is evident; but he derived from it this
advantage, that he had ascertained the sentiments of many, whose aid he
might subsequently require. None of the leaders from the opposite party
appear to have been present.[1]

Jealous, however, of his designs, "the statesmen" had begun to fight him
with his own weapons. As the commonwealth had no longer an enemy to contend
with on the land, they proposed[a] a considerable reduction in the number
of the forces, and[b] a proportionate reduction of the taxes raised for
their support. The motion was too reasonable in itself, and too popular
in the country, to be resisted with safety: one-fourth of the army was
disbanded,[c] and the monthly assessment lowered from one hundred and
twenty thousand pounds to ninety thousand pounds. Before the expiration of
six months, the question of a further reduction was brought forward;[d]
but the council of war took the alarm, and a letter from Cromwell to the
speaker[e] induced the house to continue its last vote. In a short time[f]
it was again mentioned; but the next day[g] six officers appeared at the
bar of the house with a petition from the army, which, under pretence of
praying for improvements, tacitly charged the members with the neglect of
their duty. It directed their attention to the propagation of the
gospel, the reform of the law, the removal from office of scandalous and
disaffected persons, the abuses in the excise and the treasury, the arrears
due to the army, the violation of articles granted to the enemy, and the
qualifications of future and successive parliaments. Whitelock remonstrated
with Cromwell on the danger

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 516.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. Oct. 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Dec. 19.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. June 5.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1652. June 15.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1652. August 12.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1652. August 13.]

of permitting armed bodies to assembly and petition. He slighted the
advice.[1]

Soon afterwards[a] the lord-general requested a private and confidential
interview with that lawyer. So violent, he observed, was the discontent
of the army, so imperious the conduct of the parliament, that it would be
impossible to prevent a collision of interests, and the subsequent ruin of
the good cause, unless there were established "some authority so full and
so high" as to be able to check these exorbitances, and to restrain both
the army and the parliament. Whitelock replied, that, for the army,
his excellency had hitherto kept and would continue to keep it in due
subordination; but with respect to the parliament, reliance must be placed
on the good sense and virtue of the majority. To control the supreme power
was legally impossible. All, even Cromwell himself, derived their authority
from it. At these words the lord-general abruptly exclaimed, "What, if a
man should take upon him to be king?" The commissioner answered that the
title would confer no additional benefit on his excellency. By his command
of the army, his ascendancy in the house, and his reputation, both at home
and abroad, he already enjoyed, without the envy of the name, all the power
of a king. When Cromwell insisted that the name would give security to his
followers, and command the respect of the people, Whitelock rejoined, that
it would change the state of the controversy between the parties, and
convert a national into a personal quarrel. His friends had cheerfully
fought with him to establish a republican in place of monarchical
government; would they equally


[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 541. Journals, 1651; Dec. 19; 1652, June 15, Aug.
12, 13.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Nov. 8.]

fight with him in favour of the house of Cromwell against the house of
Stuart?[1] In conclusion, Cromwell conjured him to give his advice without
disguise or qualification, and received this answer, "Make a private
treaty with the son of the late king, and place him on the throne, but on
conditions which shall secure to the nation its rights, and to yourself the
first place beneath the throne." The general coldly observed that a matter
of such importance and difficulty deserved mature consideration. They
separated; and Whitelock soon discovered that he had forfeited his
confidence.[2]

At length Cromwell fixed on a plan to accomplish his purpose by procuring
the dissolution of the parliament, and vesting for a time the sovereign
authority in a council of forty persons, with himself at their head. It was
his wish to effect this quietly by the votes of parliament--his resolution
to effect it by open force, if such votes were refused. Several meetings
were held by the officers and members at the lodgings of the lord-general
in Whitehall. St. John and a few others gave their assent; the rest, under
the guidance

[Footnote 1: Henry, duke of Gloucester, and the princess Elizabeth were in
England at the last king's death. In 1650 the council proposed to send the
one to his brother in Scotland, and the other to her sister in Holland,
allowing to each one thousand pounds per annum, as long as they should
behave inoffensively.--Journals, 1650, July 24, Sept. 11. But Elizabeth
died on Sept. 8 of the same year, and Henry remained under the charge
of Mildmay, governor of Carisbrook Castle, till a short time after this
conference, when Cromwell, as if he looked on the young prince as a rival,
advised his tutor Lovell, to ask permission to convey him to his sister,
the princess of Orange. It was granted, with the sum of five hundred pounds
to defray the expense of the journey.--Leicester's Journal, 103. Heath,
331. Clarendon, iii. 525, 526.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 548-551. Were the minutes of this conversation
committed to paper immediately, or after the Restoration? The credit due to
them depends on this circumstance.]

of Whitelock and Widdrington, declared that the dissolution would be
dangerous, and the establishment of the proposed council unwarrantable.
In the mean time, the house resumed the consideration of the new
representative body, and several qualifications were voted; to all of which
the officers raised objections, but chiefly to the "admission of neuters,"
a project to strengthen the government by the introduction of the
Presbyterian interest.[1] "Never," said Cromwell, "shall any of that
judgment, who have deserted the good cause, be admitted to power." On the
last meeting,[a] held on the 19th of April, all these points were long and
warmly debated. Some of the officers declared that the parliament must be
dissolved "one way or other;" but the general checked their indiscretion
and precipitancy; and the assembly broke up at midnight, with an
understanding that the leading men on each side should resume the subject
in the morning.[2]

At an early hour the conference was recommenced,[b] and after a short time
interrupted, in consequence of the receipt of a notice by the general that
it was the intention of the house to comply with the desires of the army.
This was a mistake: the opposite party, led by Vane, who had discovered the
object of Cromwell,

[Footnote 1: From Ludlow (ii. 435) it appears that by this bill the number
of members for boroughs was reduced, of representatives of counties
increased. The qualification of an elector was the possession for his
own use of an estate real or personal of the value of two hundred
pounds.--Journ. 30th March, 1653. It is however singular that though the
house continued to sit till April 19th--the only entry on the journals
respecting this bill occurs on the 13th--making it a qualification of the
candidates that they should be "persons of known integrity, fearing God,
and not scandalous in their conversation."--Journal, ibid.]

[Footnote 2: Compare Whitelock's narrative of this meeting (p. 554) with
Cromwell's, in Milton's State Papers, 109.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653 April 19.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653 April 20.]

had indeed resolved to pass a bill of dissolution, not, however, the bill
proposed by the officers, but their own bill, containing all the obnoxious
provisions; and to pass it that very morning, that it might obtain the
force of law before their adversaries could have time to appeal to the
power of the sword.[1] While Harrison "most sweetly and humbly" conjured
them to pause before they took so important a step, Ingoldsby hastened
to inform the lord-general at Whitehall. His resolution was immediately
formed, and a company of musketeers received orders to accompany him to the
house.

At this eventful moment, big with the most important consequences both to
himself and his country, whatever were the workings of Cromwell's mind, he
had the art to conceal them from the eyes of the beholders. Leaving the
military in the lobby, he entered the house, and composedly seated himself
on one of the outer benches. His dress was a plain suit of black cloth,
with grey worsted stockings. For a while he seemed to listen with interest
to the debate; but, when the speaker was going to put the question, he
whispered to Harrison, "This is the time: I must do it;" and rising, put
off his hat to address the house. At first his language was decorous and
even laudatory. Gradually he became more warm and animated: at last
he assumed all the vehemence of passion, and indulged in personal
vituperation. He charged the members with self-seeking and profaneness;
with the frequent denial of justice, and numerous

[Footnote 1: These particulars may be fairly collected from Whitelock, 554,
compared with the declaration of the officers, and Cromwell's speech to
his parliament. The intention to dissolve themselves is also asserted by
Hazlerig.--Burton's Diary, iii. 98.]

acts of oppression; with idolizing the lawyers, the constant advocates of
tyranny; with neglecting the men who had bled for them in the field, that
they might gain the Presbyterians who had apostatized from the cause;
and with doing all this in order to perpetuate their own power, and to
replenish their own purses. But their time was come; the Lord had disowned
them; he had chosen more worthy instruments to perform his work. Here the
orator was interrupted by Sir Peter Wentworth, who declared that he
never before heard language so unparliamentary, language, too, the more
offensive, because it was addressed to them by their own servant, whom they
had too fondly cherished, and whom, by their unprecedented bounty, they had
made what he was. At these words Cromwell put on his hat, and, springing
from his place, exclaimed, "Come, come, sir, I will put an end to your
prating." For a few seconds, apparently in the most violent agitation, he
paced forward and backward, and then, stamping on the floor, added, "You
are no parliament. I say you are no parliament: bring them in, bring them
in." Instantly the door opened, and Colonel Worseley entered, followed by
more than twenty musketeers. "This," cried Sir Henry Vane, "is not honest.
It is against morality and common honesty." "Sir Henry Vane," replied
Cromwell, "O Sir Henry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane! He
might have prevented this. But he is a juggler, and has not common honesty
himself." From Vane he directed his discourse to Whitelock, on whom he
poured a torrent of abuse; then, pointing to Challoner, "There," he
cried, "sits a drunkard;" next, to Marten and Wentworth, "There are two
whoremasters:" and afterwards, selecting different members in succession,
described them as dishonest and corrupt livers, a shame and a scandal to
the profession of the gospel. Suddenly, however, checking himself, he
turned to the guard, and ordered them to clear the house. At these words
Colonel Harrison took the speaker by the hand, and led him from the chair;
Algernon Sidney was next compelled to quit his seat; and the other members,
eighty in number, on the approach of the military, rose and moved towards
the door. Cromwell now resumed his discourse. "It is you," he exclaimed,
"that have forced me to do this. I have sought the Lord both day and night,
that he would rather slay me, than put me on the doing of this work."
Alderman Allen took advantage of these words to observe, that it was not
yet too late to undo what had been done; but Cromwell instantly charged him
with peculation, and gave him into custody. When all were gone, fixing his
eye on the mace, "What," said he, "shall we do with this fool's bauble?
Here, carry it away." Then, taking the act of dissolution from the clerk,
he ordered the doors to be locked, and, accompanied by the military,
returned to Whitehall.

That afternoon the members of the council assembled in their usual place of
meeting. Bradshaw had just taken the chair, when the lord-general entered,
and told them, that if they were there as private individuals, they
were welcome; but, if as the council of state, they must know that the
parliament was dissolved, and with it also the council. "Sir," replied
Bradshaw, with the spirit of an ancient Roman, "we have heard what you did
at the house this morning, and before many hours all England will know it.
But, sir, you are mistaken to think that the parliament is dissolved. No
power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves. Therefore take you
notice of that." After this protest they withdrew.[1]

Thus, by the parricidal hands of its own children, perished the long
parliament, which, under a variety of forms, had, for more than twelve
years, defended and invaded the liberties of the nation. It fell without a
struggle or a groan, unpitied and unregretted. The members slunk away to
their homes, where they sought by submission to purchase the forbearance
of their new master; and their partisans, if partisans they had, reserved
themselves in silence for a day of retribution, which came not before
Cromwell slept in his grave. The royalists congratulated each other on an
event which they deemed a preparatory step to the restoration of the king;
the army and navy, in numerous addresses, declared that they would live or
die, stand or fall, with the lord-general, and in every part of the country
the congregations of the saints magnified the arm of the Lord which had
broken the mighty, that in lieu of the sway of mortal men, "the fifth
monarchy, the reign of Christ, might be established upon earth."[2]

It would, however, be unjust to the memory of those who exercised the
supreme power after the death of the king, not to acknowledge that there
existed among them men capable of wielding with energy the destinies of a
great empire. They governed only four years; yet, under their auspices, the
conquests of Ireland and Scotland were achieved, and a navy was

[Footnote 1: See the several accounts in Whitelock, 554; Ludlow, ii. 19 23;
Leicester's Journal, 139; Hutchinson, 332; Several Proceedings, No. 186,
and Burton's Diary, iii. 98.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 555-558. Milton's State Papers, 90-97. Ellis,
Second Series, iii. 368.]

created, the rival of that of Holland and the terror of the rest of
Europe.[1] But there existed an essential error in their form of
government. Deliberative assemblies are always slow in their proceedings;
yet the pleasure of parliament, as the supreme power, was to be taken
on every subject connected with the foreign relations, or the internal
administration of the country; and hence it happened that, among the
immense variety of questions which came before it, those commanded
immediate attention which were deemed of immediate necessity; while the
others, though often of the highest importance to the national welfare,
were first postponed, then neglected, and ultimately forgotten. To this
habit of procrastination was perhaps owing the extinction of its authority.
It disappointed the hopes of the country, and supplied Cromwell with the
most plausible argument in defence of his conduct.

Of the parliamentary transactions up to this period, the principal have
been noticed in the preceding pages. I shall add a few others which may
be thought worthy the attention of the reader. 1. It was complained that,
since the abolition of the spiritual tribunals, the sins of incest,
adultery, and fornication had been multiplied, in consequence of the
impunity with which they might be committed; and, at the prayer of the
godly, they were made[a] criminal offences, cognizable by the criminal
courts, and punishable, the two first with death, the last with three
months' imprisonment.

[Footnote 1: "We intended," says Scot, "to have gone off with a good
savour, but we stayed to end the Dutch war. We might have brought them to
oneness with us. Their ambassadors did desire a coalition. This we might
have done in four or five months. We never bid fairer for being masters of
the whole world."--Burton's Diary, iii. 112.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 16.]


But it was predicted at the time, and experience verified the prediction,
that the severity of the punishment would defeat the purpose of the law. 2.
Scarcely a petition was presented, which did not, among other things, pray
for the reformation of the courts of justice; and the house, after several
long debates, acquiesced[a] in a measure, understood to be only the
forerunner of several others,[b] that the law books should be written, and
law proceedings be conducted in the English language.[1] 3. So enormous
were the charges of the commonwealth, arising from incessant war by sea or
land, that questions of finance continually engaged the attention of the
house. There were four principal sources of revenue; the customs, the
excise, the sale of fee-farm rents,[2] of the lands of the crown, and of
those belonging to the bishops, deans, and chapters, and the sequestration
and forfeiture of the estates of papists and delinquents. The ordinances
for the latter had been passed as early as the year 1643, and in the course
of the seven succeeding years, the harvest had been reaped and gathered.
Still some gleanings might remain; and in 1650, an act was passed[c] for
the better ordering and managing such estates; the former compositions
were subjected to examination; defects and concealments were detected;
and proportionate fines were in numerous cases exacted. In 1651, seventy
individuals, most of them of high rank, all of opulent fortunes, who
had imprudently displayed their attachment to the royal cause, were
condemned[d] to forfeit their property,

[Footnote 1: Journals, May 10, Nov. 22. Whitelock, 478-483.]

[Footnote 2: The clear annual income from the fee-farm rents amounted to
seventy-seven thousand pounds. In Jan. 1651, twenty-five thousand three
hundred pounds of this income had been sold for two hundred and twenty-five
thousand six hundred and fifty pounds.--Journals, Jan. 8.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Nov. 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Nov. 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Jan. 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. July 16.]

both real and personal, for the benefit of the commonwealth. The fatal
march of Charles to Worcester furnished grounds for a new proscription
in 1652. First[a] nine-and-twenty, then[b] six hundred and eighty-two
royalists were selected for punishment. It was enacted that those in the
first class should forfeit their whole property; while to those in the
second, the right of pre-emption was reserved at the rate of one-third part
of the clear value, to be paid within four months.[1]

4. During the late reign, as long as the Presbyterians retained their
ascendancy in parliament, they enforced with all their power uniformity of
worship and doctrine. The clergy of the established church were ejected
from their livings, and the professors of the Catholic faith were condemned
to forfeit two-thirds of their property, or to abjure their religion. Nor
was the proof of recusancy to depend, as formerly, on the slow process of
presentation and conviction; bare suspicion was held a sufficient ground
for the sequestrator to seize his prey; and the complainant was told that
he had the remedy in his own hands, he might take the oath of abjuration.
When the Independents succeeded to the exercise of the supreme power, both
the persecuted parties indulged a hope of more lenient treatment, and both
were disappointed. The Independents, indeed, proclaimed themselves the
champions of religious liberty; they repealed the statutes imposing
penalties for absence from church; and they declared

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1651, July 16; 1652, Aug. 4, Nov. 18. Scobell, 156,
210. If any of the last were papists, and afterwards disposed of their
estates thus redeemed, they were ordered to banish themselves from their
native country, under the penalty of having the laws against popery
executed against them with the utmost severity.--Addit. Act of Nov. 18,
1652.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. August 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. Nov. 18.]

that men were free to serve God according to the dictates of conscience.
Yet their notions of toleration were very confined: they refused to extend
it either to prelacy or popery, to the service of the church of England, or
of the church of Rome. The ejected clergymen were still excluded from the
pulpit, and the Catholics were still the victims of persecuting statutes.
In 1650, an act was passed[a] offering to the discoverers of priests and
Jesuits, or of their receivers and abettors, the same reward as had been
granted to the apprehenders of highwaymen. Immediately officers and
informers were employed in every direction; the houses of Catholics were
broken open and searched at all hours of the day and night; many clergymen
were apprehended, and several were tried, and received[b] judgment of
death. Of these only one, Peter Wright, chaplain to the marquess of
Winchester, suffered. The leaders shrank from the odium of such sanguinary
exhibitions, and transported the rest of the prisoners to the continent.[1]

But if the zeal of the Independents was more sparing of blood than that of
the Presbyterians, it was not inferior in point of rapacity. The
ordinances for sequestration and forfeiture were executed with unrelenting
severity.[2] It is difficult to say which suffered from them most
cruelly--families with small fortunes who were thus reduced to a state of
penury; or husbandmen, servants, and mechanics, who, on their refusal to
take the oath of abjuration, were deprived

[Footnote 1: Challoner, ii 346. MS. papers in my possession. See note.
(G).]

[Footnote 2: In 1650 the annual rents of Catholics in possession of the
sequestrators were retained at sixty-two thousand and forty-eight pounds
seventeen shillings and threepence three farthings. It should, however, be
observed that thirteen counties were not included.--Journ. Dee. 17.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Feb. 26.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. May. 19.]

of two-thirds of their scanty earnings, even of their household goods and
wearing apparel.[1] The sufferers ventured to solicit[a] from parliament
such indulgence as might be thought "consistent with the public peace and
their comfortable subsistence in their native country." The petition was
read: Sir Henry Vane spoke in its favour; but the house was deaf to the
voice of reason and humanity, and the prayer for relief was indignantly
rejected.[2]

[Footnote 1: In proof I may be allowed to mention one instance of a
Catholic servant maid, an orphan, who, during a servitude of seventeen
years, at seven nobles a year, had saved twenty pounds. The sequestrators,
having discovered with whom she had deposited her money, took two-thirds,
thirteen pounds six shillings and eightpence, for the use of the
commonwealth, and left her the remainder, six pounds thirteen and
fourpence. In March, 1652, she appealed to the commissioners at
Haberdashers' Hall, who replied that they could afford her no relief,
unless she took the oath of abjuration. See this and many other cases in
the "Christian Moderator, or Persecution for Religion,

condemned by the Light of Nature, the Law of God, and Evidence of our own
Principles," p. 77-84. London, 1652.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1652, June 30. The petition is in the Christian
Moderator, p. 59.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Jun. 30.]




CHAPTER VI.


THE PROTECTORATE.

Cromwell Calls The Little Parliament--Dissolves It--Makes Himself
Protector--Subjugation Of The Scottish Royalists--Peace With The Dutch--New
Parliament--Its Dissolution--Insurrection In England--Breach With
Spain--Troubles In Piedmont--Treaty With France.


Whoever has studied the character of Cromwell will have remarked the
anxiety with which he laboured to conceal his real designs from the notice
of his adherents. If credit were due to his assertions, he cherished none
of those aspiring thoughts which agitate the breasts of the ambitious; the
consciousness of his weakness taught him to shrink from the responsibility
of power; and at every step in his ascent to greatness, he affected to
sacrifice his own feelings to the judgment and importunity of others. But
in dissolving the late parliament he had deviated from this his ordinary
course: he had been compelled to come boldly forward by the obstinacy or
the policy of his opponents, who during twelve months had triumphed over
his intrigues, and were preparing to pass an act which would place new
obstacles in his path. Now, however, that he had forcibly taken into his
own hands the reins of government, it remained for him to determine whether
he should retain them in his grasp, or deliver them over to others. He
preferred the latter for the maturity of time was not yet come: he saw
that, among the officers who blindly submitted to be the tools of his
ambition, there were several who would abandon the idol of their worship,
whenever they should suspect him of a design to subvert the public liberty.
But if he parted with power for the moment, it was in such manner as to
warrant the hope that it would shortly return to him under another form,
not as won by the sword of the military, but as deposited in his hands by
the judgment of parliament.

It could not escape the sagacity of the lord-general that the fanatics,
with whose aid he had subverted the late government, were not the men to be
intrusted with the destinies of the three kingdoms; yet he deemed it his
interest to indulge them in their wild notions of civil and religious
reformation, and to suffer himself for a while to be guided by their
counsels. Their first measure was to publish a Vindication of their
Proceedings.[1] The long parliament they pronounced[a] incapable "of
answering those ends which God, his people, and the whole nation,
expected." Had it been permitted to sit a day longer, it would "at one blow
have laid in the dust the interest of all honest men and of their glorious
cause." In its place the council of war would "call to the government
persons of approved fidelity and honesty;" and therefore required "public
officers and ministers to proceed in their respective places," and conjured
"those who feared and loved the name of the Lord, to be instant with him
day and night in their behalf."[2]

[Footnote 1: Printed by Henry Hills and Thomas Brewster, printers to the
army, 1653.]

[Footnote 2: Ludlow, ii. 24. Thurloe, i. 289, 395. Sir H. Vane, after all
the affronts which he had received, was offered a place in the council; but
he replied that, though the reign of the saints was begun, he would defer
his share in it till he should go to heaven.--Thurloe, i. 265.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. April 22.]


They next proceeded to establish[a] a council of state. Some proposed that
it should consist of ten members, some of seventy, after the model of the
Jewish Sanhedrim; and others of thirteen, in imitation of Christ and his
twelve apostles. The last project was adopted as equally scriptural, and
more convenient. With Cromwell, in the place of lord president, were joined
four civilians and eight officers of high rank; so that the army still
retained its ascendancy, and the council of state became in fact a military
council.

From this moment for some months it would have embarrassed any man to
determine where the supreme power resided. Some of the judges were
superseded by others: new commissioners of the treasury and admiralty were
appointed; even the monthly assessment of one hundred and twenty thousand
pounds was continued for an additional half-year; and yet these and similar
acts, all of them belonging to the highest authority in the state, appeared
to emanate from different sources; these from the council of war, those
from the council of state, and several from the lord-general himself,
sometimes with the advice of one or other, sometimes without the advice of
either of these councils.[1]

At the same time the public mind was agitated by the circulation of reports
the most unfounded, and the advocacy of projects the most contradictory.
This day it was rumoured that Cromwell had offered to recall

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 556, 557, 559. Leicester's Journal, 142. Merc.
Polit. No. 157.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. April 30.]

the royal family, on condition that Charles should marry one of his
daughters; the next, that he intended to ascend the throne himself, and,
for that purpose, had already prepared the insignia of royalty. Here,
signatures were solicited to a petition for the re-establishment of the
ancient constitution; there, for a government by successive parliaments.
Some addresses declared the conviction of the subscribers that the late
dissolution was necessary; others prayed that the members might be allowed
to return to the house, for the sole purpose of legally dissolving
themselves by their own authority. In the mean while, the lord-general
continued to wear the mask of humility and godliness; he prayed and
preached with more than his wonted fervour; and his piety was rewarded,
according to the report of his confidants, with frequent communications
from the Holy Spirit.[1] In the month of May he spent eight days in close
consultation with his military divan; and the result was a determination to
call a new parliament, but a parliament modelled on principles unknown to
the history of this or of any other nation. It was to be a parliament of
saints, of men who had not offered themselves as candidates, or been chosen
by the people, but whose chief qualification consisted in holiness of life,
and whose call to the office of legislators came from the choice of the
council. With this view the ministers took the sense of the "congregational
churches" in the several counties; the returns contained the names of the
persons, "faithful, fearing God, and hating covetousness," who were deemed
qualified for this high and important trust; and out of these the council
in the presence of the lord-general selected one hundred and thirty-nine

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 256, 289, 306.]

representatives for England, six for Wales, six for Ireland, and five
for Scotland.[1] To each of them was sent[a] a writ of summons under the
signature of Cromwell, requiring his personal attendance at Whitehall on
a certain day, to take upon himself the trust, and to serve the office of
member for some particular place. Of the surprise with which the writs were
received by many the reader may judge. Yet, out of the whole number, two
only returned a refusal: by most the very extraordinary manner of their
election was taken as a sufficient proof that the call was from heaven.[2]

On the appointed day, the 4th of July, one hundred and twenty of these
faithful and godly men attended[b] in the council-chamber at Whitehall.
They were seated on chairs round the table; and the lord-general took his
station near the middle window, supported on each side by a numerous body
of officers. He addressed the company standing, and it was believed by his
admirers, perhaps by himself, "that the Spirit of God spoke in him and by
him." Having vindicated in a long narrative the dissolution of the late
parliament, he congratulated the persons present on the high office to
which they had been called. It was not of their own seeking. It had come to
them from God by the choice of the army, the usual channel through which in
these latter days the Divine mercies had been dispensed to the nation. He
would not

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 395. Compare the list of the members in Heath,
350, with the letters in Milton's State Papers, 92, 94, 96.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, i. 274. Whitelock, 547. "It was a great satisfaction
and encouragement to some that their names had been presented as to that
service, by the churches and other godly persons."--Exact Relation of the
Proceedings, &c. of the last parliament, 1654, p. 2.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. June 6.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. July 4.]

charge them, but he would pray that they might "exercise the judgment of
mercy and truth," and might "be faithful with the saints," however those
saints might differ respecting forms of worship. His enthusiasm kindled as
he proceeded; and the visions of futurity began to open to his imagination.
It was, he exclaimed, marvellous in his eyes; they were called to war with
the Lamb against his enemies; they were come to the threshold of the door,
to the very edge of the promises and prophecies; God was about to bring
his people out of the depths of the sea; perhaps to bring the Jews home to
their station out of the isles of the sea. "God," he exclaimed, "shakes the
mountains and they reel; God hath a high hill, too, and his hill is as the
hill of Bashan; and the chariots of God are twenty thousand of angels; and
God will dwell upon this hill for ever." At the conclusion "of this grave,
Christian, and seasonable speech," he placed on the table an instrument
under his own hand and seal, intrusting to them the supreme authority for
the space of fifteen months from that day, then to be transmitted by them
to another assembly, the members of which they should previously have
chosen.[1]

The next day[a] was devoted by the new representatives to exercises of
religion, not in any of the churches of the capital, but in the room where
the late parliament was accustomed to sit. Thirteen of the most gifted
among them successively prayed and preached, from eight in the morning till
six in the evening; and several affirmed "that they had never enjoyed so
much of the spirit and presence of Christ in any of the meetings

[Footnote 1: Proceedings, No. 197. Parl. Hist. xx. 153. Milton's State
Papers, 106. This last appears to me a more faithful copy than that printed
by authority.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. July 5.]

and exercises of religion in all their lives, as they did on that day." As
it was solely to their reputation for superior godliness that the majority
of the members owed their election, the lord-general probably expected
from them little opposition to his measures; but they no sooner applied to
business than he saw reason to be alarmed at the promptitude and resolution
which they displayed. Though not distinguished by their opulence, they
were men of independent fortunes;[1] during the late revolutions they had
learned to think for themselves on the momentous questions which divided
the nation; and their fanaticism, by converting their opinions into matters
of conscience, had superadded an obstinacy of character not easily to be
subdued. To Cromwell himself they always behaved with respect. They invited
him with four of his officers to sit as a member among them; and they made
him the offer of the palace of Hampton Court in exchange for his house of
Newhall. But they believed and showed that they were the masters. They
scorned to submit to the dictation of their servants; and, if they often
followed the advice, they as often rejected the recommendations and amended
the resolutions of the council of state.

One of the first subjects which engaged their attention was a contest, in
which the lord-general, with all his power, was foiled by the boldness of a
single individual.

[Footnote 1: They have been generally described as men in trade, and of
no education; and because one of them, Praise-God Barebone, was a
leather-dealer in Fleet-street, the assembly is generally known by the
denomination of Barebone's parliament.--Heath, 350. It is, however,
observed by one of them, that, "if all had not very bulky estates, yet they
had free estates, and were not of broken fortunes, or such as owed
great sums of money, and stood in need of privilege and protection as
formerly."--Exact Relation, 19. See also Whitelock, 559.]


At the very moment when he hoped to reap the fruit of his dissimulation and
intrigues, he found himself unexpectedly confronted by the same fearless
and enterprising demagogue, who, at the birth of the commonwealth, had
publicly denounced his ambition, and excited the soldiery against him.
Lilburne, on the dissolution of the long parliament, had requested
permission of Cromwell to return from banishment. Receiving no answer,
he came[a] over at his own risk,--a bold but imprudent step; for what
indulgence could he expect from that powerful adventurer, whom he had so
often denounced to the nation as "a thief, a robber, an usurper, and a
murderer?" On the day after his arrival in the capital he was committed to
Newgate. It seemed a case which might safely be intrusted to a jury. His
return by the act of banishment had been made felony; and of his identity
there could be no doubt. But his former partisans did not abandon him
in his distress. Petitions with thousands of signatures were presented,
praying for a respite of the trial till the meeting of the parliament;
and Cromwell, willing, perhaps, to shift the odium from himself to that
assembly, gave his consent. Lilburne petitioned the new parliament; his
wife petitioned; his friends from the neighbouring counties petitioned;
the apprentices in London did not only petition, they threatened. But the
council laid before the house the depositions of spies and informers
to prove that Lilburne, during his banishment, had intrigued with the
royalists against the commonwealth;[1] and the prisoner himself, by the
intemperance

[Footnote 1: It appears from Clarendon's Letters at the time, that Lilburne
was intimate with Buckingham, and that Buckingham professed to expect much
from him in behalf of the royal cause; while, on the contrary, Clarendon
believed that Lilburne would do nothing for it, and Buckingham not much
more.--Clarendon Papers, iii. 75, 79, 98.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1653. June 15.]

of his publications, contributed to irritate members. They refused to
interfere; and he was arraigned[a] at the sessions, where, instead of
pleading, he kept his prosecutors at bay during five successive days,
appealing to Magna Charta and the rights of Englishmen, producing
exceptions against the indictment, and demanding his oyer, or the
specification of the act for his banishment, of the judgment on which the
act was founded, and of the charge which led to that judgment. The court
was perplexed. They knew not how to refuse; for he claimed it as his right,
and necessary for his defence. On the other hand, they could not grant it,
because no record of the charge or judgment was known to exist.

After an adjournment[b] to the next sessions, two days were spent in
arguing the exceptions of the prisoner, and his right to the oyer. At
length, on a threat that the court would proceed to judgment, he pleaded[c]
not guilty. The trial lasted three days. His friends, to the amount of
several thousands, constantly attended; some hundreds of them were said to
be armed for the purpose of rescuing him, if he were condemned; and papers
were circulated that, if Lilburne perished, twenty thousand individuals
would perish with him. Cromwell, to encourage the court, posted two
companies of soldiers in the immediate vicinity; quartered three regiments
of infantry, and one of cavalry, in the city; and ordered a numerous force
to march towards the metropolis. The particulars of the trial are lost. We
only know that the prosecutors were content with showing[d] that Lilburne
was the person named in the act; that the court directed the jury to speak
only to

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. July 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. August 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1653. August 16.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1653. August 1.]

that fact; and that the prisoner made a long and vehement defence, denying
the authority of the late parliament to banish him, because legally it had
expired at the king's death, and because the House of Commons was not a
court of justice; and, maintaining to the jury, that they were judges of
the law as well as of the fact; that, unless they believed him guilty of
crime, they could not conscientiously return a verdict which would consign
him to the gallows; and that an act of parliament, if it were evidently
unjust, was essentially void, and no justification to men who pronounced
according to their oaths. At a late hour at night the jury declared[a]
him not guilty; and the shout of triumph, received and prolonged by his
partisans, reached the ears of Cromwell at Whitehall.

It was not, however, the intention of the lord-general that his victim
should escape. The examination[b] of the judges and jurymen before the
council, with a certified copy of certain opprobrious expressions, used by
Lilburne in his defence, was submitted[c] to the house, and an order was
obtained that, notwithstanding his acquittal, he should be confined[d]
in the Tower, and that no obedience should be paid to any writ of habeas
corpus issued from the court of Upper Bench in his behalf. These measures
gave great offence. It was complained, and with justice, that the men who
pretended to take up arms against the king in support of the liberties of
Englishmen, now made no scruple of trampling the same liberties under foot,
whenever it suited their resentment or interest.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe, i. 324, 367, 368, 369, 429, 430, 435, 441,
442, 451, 453; Exact Relation, p. 5; Whitelock, 558, 560, 561, 563, 591;
Journals, July 13, 14, Aug. 2, 22, 27, Nov. 26. In 1656 or 1657 this
turbulent demagogue joined the society of Friends. He died Aug. 29, 1657,
at Eltham, whence, on the 31st, the body of the meek Quaker was conveyed
for sepulture to the new church-yard adjoining to Bedlam.--Cromwelliana, p.
168.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. August 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. August 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1653. August 27.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1653. Nov. 26.]


In the prosecution and punishment of Lilburne, the parliament was
unanimous; on most other points it was divided into two parties distinctly
marked; that of the Independents, who, inferior in number, superior in
talents, adhered to the lord-general and the council, and that of the
Anabaptists, who, guided by religious and political fanaticism, ranged
themselves under the banner of Major-General Harrison as their leader.
These "sectaries" anticipated the reign of Christ with his saints upon
earth, they believed themselves called by God to prepare the way for this
marvellous revolution; and they considered it their duty to commence by
reforming all the abuses which they could discover either in church or
state.[1]

In their proceedings there was much to which no one, who had embarked with
them in the same cause, could reasonably object. They established a system
of the most rigid economy; the regulations of the excise were revised;
the constitution of the treasury was simplified and improved; unnecessary
offices were totally abolished, and the salaries of the others considerably
reduced; the public accounts were subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny;
new facilities were given to the sale of the lands now considered as
national property. Provision was made for the future registration of
marriages, births, and deaths.[2] But the fanaticism

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 392, 396, 501, 515, 523.]

[Footnote 2: For the validity of marriage, if the parties were minors, was
required the consent of the parents or guardians, and the age of sixteen in
the male, of fourteen in the female; and in all cases that the names of the
parties intending to be married should be given to the registrar of the
parish, whose duty it was to proclaim them, according to their wish, either
in the church after the morning exercise on three successive Lord's days,
or in the market-place on three successive market-days. Having received
from him a certificate of the proclamations, containing any exceptions
which might have been made, they were to exhibit it to a magistrate, and,
before him, to pledge their faith to each other "in the presence of God,
the searcher of hearts." The religious ceremony was optional, the civil
necessary for the civil effects of marriage,--See the Journals for the
month of August, and Scobell.]

of their language, and the extravagance of their notions, exposed them
to ridicule; their zeal for reform, by interfering with the interests of
several different bodies at the same time, multiplied their enemies; and,
before the dissolution of the house, they had earned, justly or unjustly,
the hatred of the army, of the lawyers, of the gentry, and of the clergy.

1. It was with visible reluctance that they voted the monthly tax of one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the support of the military and
naval establishments. They were, indeed, careful not to complain of the
amount; their objections were pointed against the nature of the tax, and
the inequality of the assessments;[1] but this pretext could not hide their
real object from the jealousy of their adversaries, and their leaders were
openly charged with seeking to reduce the number of the army, that they
might lessen the influence of the general.

2. From the collection of the taxes they proceeded to the administration of
the law. In almost every petition presented of late years to the supreme
authority of the nation, complaints had been made of the court of Chancery,
of its dilatory proceedings, of the enormous expense which it entailed on
its suitors, and of the suspicious nature of its decisions, so liable to be
influenced by the personal partialities and interests of

[Footnote 1: In some places men paid but two; in others, ten or twelve
shillings in the pound.--Exact Relation, 10. The assessments fell on the
owners, not on the tenants.--Thurloe, i. 755.]

the judge.[1] The long parliament had not ventured to grapple with the
subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the
evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished. But then, came
the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending
in the court, and how to substitute in its place a less objectionable
tribunal. Three bills introduced for that purpose were rejected as
inapplicable or insufficient: the committee prepared a fourth; it was read
twice in one day, and committed, and would probably have passed, had
not the subsequent proceedings been cut short by the dissolution of the
parliament.[2]

3. But the reformers were not content with the abolition of a single court;
they resolved to cleanse the whole of the Augean stable. What, they asked,
made up the law? A voluminous collection of statutes, many of them almost
unknown, and many inapplicable to existing circumstances; the dicta of
judges, perhaps ignorant, frequently partial and interested; the reports of
cases, but so contradictory that they were

[Footnote 1: "It was confidently reported by knowing gentlemen of worth,
that there were depending in that court 23,000 (2 or 3,000?) causes; that
some of them had been there depending five, some ten, some twenty, some
thirty years; and that there had been spent in causes many hundreds,
nay, thousands of pounds, to the utter undoing of many families."--Exact
Relation, 12.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Aug. 5, Oct. 17, 23, Nov. 3. Exact Relation, 12-15.
The next year, however, Cromwell took the task into his own hands; and, in
1655, published an ordinance, consisting of sixty-seven articles, "for
the better regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the high court of
Chancery." Widrington and Whitelock, the commissioners of the great seal,
and Lenthall, master of the rolls, informed him by letter, that they had
sought the Lord, but did not feel themselves free to act according to the
ordinance. The protector took the seals from the two first, and gave
them Fiennes and Lisle; Lenthall overcame his scruples, and remained
in office.--See the ordinance in Scobell, 324; the objections to it in
Whitelock, 621.]

regularly marshalled in hosts against each other; and the usages of
particular districts, only to be ascertained through the treacherous
memories of the most aged of the inhabitants. Englishmen had a right to
know the laws by which they were to be governed; it was easy to collect
from the present system all that was really useful; to improve it by
necessary additions; and to comprise the whole within the small compass of
a pocket volume. With this view, it was resolved to compose a new body of
law; the task was assigned to a committee; and a commencement was made by a
revision of the statutes respecting treason and murder.[1] But these votes
and proceedings scattered alarm through the courts at Westminster, and
hundreds of voices, and almost as many pens, were employed to protect from
ruin the venerable fabric of English jurisprudence. They ridiculed the
presumption of these ignorant and fanatical legislators, ascribed to them
the design of substituting the law of Moses for the law of the land, and
conjured the people to unite in defence of their own "birthright and
inheritance," for the preservation of which so many miseries had been
endured, so much blood had been shed.[2]

4. From men of professed sanctity much had been expected in favour of
religion. The sincerity of their seal they proved by the most convincing
test,--an act for the extirpation of popish priests and Jesuits, and the
disposal of two-thirds of the real and personal

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 18, 19, Oct. 20. Exact Relation, 15-18.]

[Footnote 2: The charge of wishing to introduce the law of God was
frequently repeated by Cromwell. It owed its existence to this, that many
would not allow of the punishment of death for theft, or of the distinction
between manslaughter and murder, because no such things are to be found in
the law of Moses.--Exact Relation, 17.]

estates of popish recusants.[1] After this preliminary skirmish with
antichrist, they proceeded to attack Satan himself "in his stronghold" of
advowsons. It was, they contended, contrary to reason, that any private
individual should possess the power of imposing a spiritual guide upon
his neighbours; and therefore they resolved that presentations should he
abolished, and the choice of the minister be vested in the body of the
parishioners; a vote which taught the patrons of livings to seek the
protection of the lord-general against the oppression of the parliament.
From advowsons, the next step was to tithes. At the commencement of the
session, after a long debate, it was generally understood that tithes ought
to be done away with, and in their place a compensation be made to the
impropriators, and a decent maintenance be provided for the clergy. The
great subject of dispute was, which question should have the precedence
in point of time, the abolition of the impost, or the substitution of the
equivalent. For five months the committee intrusted with the subject was
silent; now, to prevent, as it was thought, the agitation of the question
of advowsons, they presented a report respecting the method of ejecting
scandalous, and settling godly, ministers; to which they appended their
own opinion, that incumbents, rectors, and impropriators had a property in
tithes. This report provoked a debate of five days. When the question was
put on the first part, though the committee had mustered all the force of
the Independents in its favour, it was rejected by a

[Footnote 1: To procure ready money for the treasury, it was proposed to
allow recusants to redeem the two-thirds for their lives, at four years'
purchase. This amendment passed, but with great opposition, on the ground
that it amounted to a toleration of idolatry.--Ibid, ii. Thurloe, i. 553.]

majority of two. The second part, respecting the property in tithes, was
not put to the vote; its fate was supposed to be included in that of the
former; and it was rumoured through the capital that the parliament had
voted the abolition of tithes, and with them of the ministry, which derived
its maintenance from tithes.[1]

Here it should be noticed that, on every Monday during the session, Feakes
and Powell, two Anabaptist preachers, had delivered weekly lectures
to numerous audiences at Blackfriars. They were eloquent enthusiasts,
commissioned, as they fancied, by the Almighty, and fearless of any earthly
tribunal. They introduced into their sermons most of the subjects discussed
in parliament, and advocated the principles of their sect with a force and
extravagance which alarmed Cromwell and the council. Their favourite topic
was the Dutch war. God, they maintained, had given Holland into the hands
of the English; it was to be the landing-place of the saints, whence
they should proceed to pluck the w---- of Babylon from her chair and to
establish the kingdom of Christ on the continent; and they threatened with
every kind of temporal and everlasting woe the man who should advise peace
on any other terms than the incorporation of the United Provinces with the
commonwealth of England.[2] When it was known that Cromwell had receded
from this demand, their indignation

[Footnote 1: Journals, July 15-19, Nov. 17, Dec. 1, 6-10. Exact Relation,
418-424.]

[Footnote 2: Beverning, one of the Dutch ambassadors, went to the meeting
on one of these occasions. In a letter, he says:--"The scope and intention
is to preach down governments, and to stir up the people against the united
Netherlands. Being then in the assembly of the saints, I heard one prayer,
two sermons. But, good God! what cruel and abominable, and most horrid
trumpets of fire, murder, and flame."--Thurloe, i. 442.]

stripped the pope of many of those titles with which he had so long been
honoured by the Protestant churches, and the lord-general was publicly
declared to be the beast in the Apocalypse, the old dragon, and the man of
sin. Unwilling to invade the liberty of religious meetings, he for some
time bore these insults with an air of magnanimity: at last he summoned[a]
the two preachers before himself and the council. But the heralds of the
Lord of Hosts quailed not before the servants of an earthly commonwealth:
they returned rebuke for rebuke, charged Cromwell with an unjustifiable
assumption of power, and departed from the conference unpunished and
unabashed.[1]

By the public the sermons at Blackfriars were considered as explanatory of
the views and principles of the Anabaptists in the house. The enemies of
these reformers multiplied daily: ridicule and abuse were poured upon them
from every quarter; and it became evident to all but themselves that the
hour of their fall was rapidly approaching. Cromwell, their maker, had long
ago determined to reduce them to their original nothing; and their last
vote respecting the ministry appeared to furnish a favourable opportunity.
The next day, the Sunday, he passed with his friends in secret
consultation; on the Monday these friends mustered in considerable numbers,
and at an early hour took their seats in the house. Colonel Sydenham rose.
He reviewed[b] all the proceedings of the parliament, condemned them as
calculated to injure almost every interest in the state, and, declaring
that he would no longer sit in so useless an assembly, moved that the house
should proceed to Whitehall, and deliver back the supreme power into the
hands of him from whom

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 442, 534, 545, 560, 591, 621.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Dec. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. Dec. 12.]

it was derived. The motion was seconded and opposed; but the Independents
had come to act, not to debate. They immediately rose: the speaker, who was
in the secret, left the chair; the sergeant and the clerk accompanied him,
and near fifty members followed in a body. The reformers, only twenty-seven
in number (for most of them had not yet arrived), gazed on each other
with surprise; their first resource was to fall to prayer; and they were
employed in that holy exercise, when Goff and White, two officers, entered,
and requested them to withdraw. Being required to show their warrant,
they called in a company of soldiers. No resistance was now offered; the
military cleared the house, and the keys were left with the guard.[1]

In the mean while the speaker, preceded by the mace, and followed by
Sydenham and his friends, walked through the street to Whitehall. In the
way, and after his arrival, he was joined by several members, by some
through curiosity, by others through fear. At Whitehall, a form of
resignation of the supreme power was hastily engrossed by the clerk,
subscribed by the speaker and his followers, and tendered by them to
Cromwell. The lord-general put on an air of surprise; he was not prepared
for such an offer, he would not load himself with so heavy a burthen. But
his reluctance yielded to the remonstrances and entreaties of Lambert and
the officers, and the instrument was laid in a chamber of the palace
for the convenience of such members as had not yet the opportunity of
subscribing their names.

[Footnote 1: Exact Relation, 25, 26. True Narrative, 3. Thurloe, i. 730. I
adopt the number given by Mansel, as he could have no motive to diminish
it.]


On the third day the signatures amounted to eighty, an absolute majority
of the whole house; on the fourth, a new constitution was published,
and Cromwell obtained the great object of his ambition,--the office and
authority, though without the title, of king.[1]

On that day, about one in the afternoon, the lord-general repaired in his
carriage from the palace to Westminster Hall,[a] through two lines of
military, composed of five regiments of foot and three of horse. The
procession formed at the door. Before him walked the aldermen, the judges,
two commissioners of the great seal, and the lord mayor; behind him the two
councils of state and of the army. They mounted to the court of Chancery,
where a chair of state with a cushion had been placed on a rich carpet.
Cromwell was dressed in a suit and cloak of black velvet, with long boots,
and a broad gold band round his hat. He took his place before the chair,
between the two commissioners; the judges stood in a half-circle behind it,
and the civic officers ranged themselves on the right, the military on the
left, side of the court.

[Footnote 1: Exact Relation, 26. True Narrative, 4. Ludlow, ii. 33.
Clarendon, iii. 484. Thurloe, i. 754. The author of this new constitution
is not known. Ludlow tells us that it was first communicated by Lambert to
a council of field officers. When some objections were made, he replied,
that the general was willing to consider any amendments which might be
proposed, but would not depart from the project itself. Some, therefore,
suggested that, after the death of the present lord-general, the civil and
military government should be kept separate, and that no protector should
be succeeded by any of his relatives. This gave so much offence, that, at a
second meeting, Lambert, having informed them that the lord-general would
take care of the civil administration, dismissed them to their respective
commands.--Ludlow, ii. 37. It is to this, perhaps, that the Dutch
ambassador alludes, when he says that Cromwell desisted from his project
of being declared king on account of the displeasure of the
officers.--Thurloe, i. 644.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Dec. 16.]


Lambert now came forward to address the lord-general. He noticed the
dissolution of the late parliament, observed that the exigency of the time
required a strong and stable government, and prayed his excellency in the
name of the army and of the three nations to accept the office of protector
of the commonwealth. Cromwell, though it was impossible to conceal the
purpose for which he had come thither, could not yet put off the habit of
dissimulation; and if, after some demur, he expressed his consent, it was
with an appearance of reluctance which no one present could believe to be
real.

Jessop, one of the clerks of the council, was next ordered to read the
"instrument of government," consisting of forty-two articles. 1. By it the
legislative power was invested in a lord-protector and parliament, but with
a provision that every act passed by the parliament should become law at
the expiration of twenty days, even without the consent of the protector;
unless he could persuade the house of the reasonableness of his objections.
The parliament was not to be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, without
its own consent, within the first five months after its meeting; and a new
parliament was to be called within three years after the dissolution of the
last. The number of the members was fixed according to the plan projected
by Vane at the close of the long parliament, at four hundred for England,
thirty for Scotland, and thirty for Ireland. Most of the boroughs were
disfranchised, and the number of county members was increased. Every person
possessed of real or personal property to the value of two hundred pounds
had a right to vote,[1] unless he were a malignant or delinquent, or
professor

[Footnote 1: During the long parliament this qualification had been
adopted on the motion of Cromwell, in place of a clause recommended by the
committee, which gave the elective franchise under different regulations
to freeholders, copyholders, tenants for life, and leaseholders,--See
Journals, 30th March, 1653.]

of the Catholic faith; and the disqualifications to which the electors were
subject attached also to the persons elected. 2. The executive power was
made to reside in the lord-protector acting with the advice of his council.
He possessed, moreover, the power of treating with foreign states with the
_advice_, and of making peace or war with the _consent_, of the council.
To him also belonged the disposal of the military and naval power, and
the appointment of the great officers of state, with the approbation of
parliament, and, in the intervals of parliament, with that of the council,
but subject to the subsequent approbation of the parliament. 3. Laws could
not be made, nor taxes imposed, but by common consent in parliament. 4. The
civil list was fixed at two hundred thousand pounds, and a yearly revenue
ordered to be raised for the support of an army of thirty thousand men,
two-thirds infantry, and one-third cavalry, with such a navy as the
lord-protector should think necessary. 5. All who professed faith in God by
Jesus Christ were to be protected in the exercise of their religion, with
the exception of prelatists, papists, and those who taught licentiousness
under the pretence of religion. 6. The lord-general Cromwell was named
lord-protector; his successors were to be chosen by the council. The first
parliament was to assemble on the 3rd of the following December; and till
that time the lord-protector was vested with power to raise the moneys
necessary for the public service, and to make ordinances which should have
the force of law, till orders were taken in parliament respecting the same.

At the conclusion, Cromwell, raising his right hand and his eyes to heaven
with great solemnity, swore to observe, and cause to be observed, all the
articles of the instrument; and Lambert, falling on his knees, offered to
the protector a civic sword in the scabbard, which he accepted, laying
aside his own, to denote that he meant to govern by constitutional, and not
by military, authority. He then seated himself in the chair, put on his hat
while the rest stood uncovered, received the seal from the commissioners,
the sword from the lord mayor, delivered them back again to the same
individuals, and, having exercised these acts of sovereign authority,
returned in procession to his carriage, and repaired in state to Whitehall.
The same day the establishment of the government by a lord-protector and
triennial parliaments, and the acceptance of the protectorship by the
lord-general, were announced to the public by proclamation, with all the
ceremonies hitherto used on the accession of a new monarch.[1]

It cannot be supposed that this elevation of Cromwell to the supreme power
was viewed with satisfaction by any other class of men than his brethren in
arms, who considered his greatness their own work, and expected from
his gratitude their merited reward. But the nation was surfeited with
revolutions. Men had suffered so severely from the ravages of war and the
oppression of the military; they had seen so many instances of punishment
incurred by resistance to the actual possessors of power; they were divided
and

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 571-578. Thurloe, i. 639, 641. Ludlow, ii. 40.
The alteration in the representation, which had been proposed in the long
parliament, was generally considered an improvement,--Clar. Hist. iii.
495.]

subdivided into so many parties, jealous and hateful of each other;
that they readily acquiesced in any change which promised the return of
tranquillity in the place of solicitude, danger, and misery. The protector,
however, did not neglect the means of consolidating his own authority.
Availing himself of the powers intrusted to him by the "instrument," he
gave the chief commands in the army to men in whom he could confide;
quartered the troops in the manner best calculated to put down any
insurrection; and, among the multitude of ordinances which he published,
was careful to repeal the acts enforcing the Engagement; to forbid all
meetings on racecourses or at cockpits, to explain what offences should be
deemed treason against his government; and to establish a high court of
justice for the trial of those who might be charged with such offences.

He could not, however, be ignorant that, even among the former companions
of his fortunes, the men who had fought and bled by his side, there were
several who, much as they revered the general, looked on the protector with
the most cordial abhorrence.[a] They were stubborn, unbending republicans,
partly from political, partly from religious, principle. To them he
affected to unbosom himself without reserve. He was still, he protested,
the same humble individual whom they had formerly known him. Had he
consulted his own feelings, "he would rather have taken the staff of a
shepherd" than the dignity of protector. Necessity had imposed the office
upon him; he had sacrificed his own happiness to preserve his countrymen
from anarchy and ruin; and, as he now bore the burden with reluctance, he
would lay it down with joy, the moment he could do so with safety to

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654.]

the nation. But this language made few proselytes. They had too often
already been the dupes of his hypocrisy, the victims of their own
credulity; they scrupled not, both in public companies, and from the
pulpit, to pronounce him "a dissembling perjured villain;" and they openly
threatened him with "a worse fate than had befallen the last tyrant." If it
was necessary to silence these declaimers, it was also dangerous to treat
them with severity. He proceeded with caution, and modified his displeasure
by circumstances. Some he removed from their commissions in the army and
their ministry in the church; others he did not permit to go at large,
till they had given security for their subsequent behaviour; and those who
proved less tractable, or appeared more dangerous, he incarcerated in the
Tower. Among the last were Harrison, formerly his fellow-labourer in the
dissolution of the long parliament, now his most implacable enemy; and
Feakes and Powell, the Anabaptist preachers, who had braved his resentment
during the last parliament.[a] Symson, their colleague, shared their
imprisonment, but procured his liberty[b] by submission.[1]

To the royalists, as he feared them less, he showed less forbearance.
Charles, who still resided in Paris, maintained a constant correspondence
with the friends of his family in England, for the twofold purpose of
preserving a party ready to take advantage of any revolution in his favour,
and of deriving from their loyalty advances of money for his own support
and that of his followers. Among the agents whom he employed, were men who
betrayed his secrets, or pretended

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 641, 642; ii. 67, 68. Whitelock, 580, 582, 596.
Ludlow, ii. 47.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Feb. 30.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. July 26.]

secrets, to his enemies,[1] or who seduced his adherents into imaginary
plots, that by the discovery they might earn the gratitude of the
protector. Of the latter class was an individual named Henshaw, who had
repaired to Paris, and been refused what he solicited, admission to the
royal presence. On his return, he detailed to certain royalists a plan by
which the protector might be assassinated on his way to Hampton Court, the
guards at Whitehall overpowered, the town surprised, and the royal exile
proclaimed. Men were found to listen to his suggestions; and when a
sufficient number were entangled in the toil, forty were apprehended[a] and
examined. Of these, many consented to give evidence; three were selected[b]
for trial before the high court of justice. Fox, one of the three, pleaded
guilty, and thus, by giving countenance to the evidence of Henshaw,
deserved and obtained[c] his pardon. Vowell, a schoolmaster, and Gerard, a
young gentleman two-and-twenty years of age, received[d] judgment of death.
The first suffered on the gallows, glorying that he died a martyr in
the cause of royalty. Gerard, before he was beheaded, protested in the
strongest terms that, though he had heard, he had never approved of the
design.[2] In the depositions, it was pretended that Charles had given his
consent to the assassination of the protector.

[Footnote 1: Clarendon informs Nicholas (June 12), that in reality no one
secret had been betrayed or discovered.--Clar. Papers, iii. 247. But this
is doubtful; for Willis, one of the committee called "the sealed knot," who
was imprisoned, but discharged in September (Perfect Account, No. 194),
proved afterwards a traitor.]

[Footnote 2: State Trials, v. 517-540. Thurloe, ii. 416, 446, 447.
Whitelock, 591, 593, 593. Henshaw was not produced on the trial. It was
pretended that he had escaped. But we learn from Thurloe that he was safe
in the Tower, and so Gerard suspected in his speech on the scaffold.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. May 24.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. June 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. July 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1654. July 10.]


Though Cromwell professed to disbelieve the charge, yet as a measure of
self-defence he threatened the exiled prince that, if any such attempt were
encouraged, he should have recourse to retaliation, and, at the same time,
intimated that it would be no difficult matter for him to execute his
threat.[1]

On the same scaffold, but an hour later, perished a foreign nobleman, only
nineteen years old, Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to Guimaraes, the Portuguese
ambassador. Six months before, he and Gerard, whose execution we have
just noticed, had quarrelled[a] in the New Exchange. Pantaleon, the next
evening,[b] repaired to the same place with a body of armed followers; a
fray ensued; Greenway, a person unconcerned in the dispute, was killed
by accident or mistake; and the Portuguese fled to the house of the
ambassador, whence they were conducted to prison by the military. The
people, taking up the affair as a national quarrel, loudly demanded the
blood of the reputed murderers. On behalf of Pantaleon it was argued: 1.
That he was an ambassador, and therefore answerable to no one but his
master; 2. That he was a person attached to the embassy, and therefore
covered by the privilege of his principal. But the

[Footnote 1: Cromwell did not give credit to the plots for murdering
him.--Thurloe, ii. 512, 533. Clarendon writes thus on the subject to his
friend Nicholas: "I do assure you upon my credit, I do not know, and upon
my confidence, the king does not, of any such design. Many wild, foolish
persons propose wild things to the king, which he civilly discountenances,
and then they and their friends brag what they hear, or could do; and, no
doubt, in some such noble rage that hath now fallen out which they talk so
much of at London, and by which many honest men are in prison, of which
whole matter the king knows no more than secretary Nicholas doth."--Clar.
Papers, iii. 247. See, however, the account of Sexby's plot in the next
chapter.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Nov. 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. Nov. 22.]

instrument which he produced in proof of the first allegation was no more
than a written promise that he should succeed his brother in-office; and
in reply to the second, it was maintained[a] that the privilege of an
ambassador, whatever it might be, was personal, and did not extend to
the individuals in his suite. At the bar, after several refusals, he was
induced by the threat of the _peine forte et dure_ to plead not guilty;
and his demand of counsel, on account of his ignorance of English law,
was rejected, on the ground that the court was "of counsel equal to the
prisoner and the commonwealth." He was found guilty, and condemned, with
four of his associates. To three of these the protector granted a pardon;
but no entreaties of the several ambassadors could prevail in favour of
Pantaleon. He was sacrificed, if we believe one of them, to the clamour of
the people, whose feelings were so excited, that when his head fell on the
scaffold,[b] the spectators proclaimed their joy by the most savage yells
of exultation.[1] It was the very day on which his brother, perhaps to
propitiate the protector, had signed the treaty between the two nations.

These executions had been preceded by one of a very different description.
Colonel Worsley had apprehended a Catholic clergyman, of the name of
Southworth, who, thirty-seven years before, had been convicted at
Lancaster, and sent into banishment. The old man (he had passed his
seventy-second year),

[Footnote 1: See in State Trials, v. 461-518, a numerous collection of
authorities and opinions respecting this case. Also ibid. 536. That
Pantaleon and his friends were armed, cannot be denied: was it for
revenge? So it would appear from the relation in Somers's Tracts, iii. 65;
Whitelock, 569; and State Trials, v. 482. Was it solely for defence?
Such is the evidence of Metham (Thurloe, ii. 222), and the assertion of
Pantaleon at his death.--Whitelock, ii. 595.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. July 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. July 10.]

at his arraignment, pleaded that he had taken orders in the church of Rome,
but was innocent of any treason. The recorder advised him to withdraw his
plea, and gave him four hours for consideration. But Southworth still owned
that he was a Catholic and in orders; judgment of death was pronounced; and
the protector, notwithstanding the urgent solicitations of the French
and Spanish ambassadors, resolved that he should suffer. It was not that
Cromwell approved of sanguinary punishments in matters of religion, but
that he had no objection to purchase the good-will of the godly by shedding
the blood of a priest. The[a] fate of this venerable man[a] excited the
sympathy of the higher classes. Two hundred carriages and a crowd of
horsemen followed the hurdle on which he was drawn to the place of
execution. On the scaffold, he spoke with satisfaction of the manner of his
death, but at the same time pointed out the inconsistency of the men who
pretended to have taken up arms for liberty of conscience, and yet shed the
blood of those who differed from them in religious opinions. He suffered
the usual punishment of traitors.[1]

The intelligence of the late revolution had been received by the military
in Ireland and Scotland with open murmurs on the part of some, and a
suspicious acquiescence on that of others. In Ireland, Fleetwood knew not
how to reconcile the conduct of his father-in-law with his own principles,
and expressed a wish to resign the government of the island; Ludlow and
Jones, both stanch republicans, looked on the protector as a hypocrite and
an apostate, and though the latter was more cautious in his language, the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, ii. 406. Whitelock, 592. Challoner, ii. 354.
Knaresborough's Collections, MS.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654 June 23.]

former openly refused to act as civil commissioner under the new
constitution; and in most of the garrisons several of the principal
officers made no secret of their dissatisfaction: in one case they even
drew up a remonstrance against "the government by a single person." But
Cromwell averted the storm which threatened him, by his prudence and
firmness. He sent his son Henry on a visit to Fleetwood, that he might
learn the true disposition of the military; the more formidable of his
opponents were silently withdrawn to England; and several of the others
found themselves suddenly but successively deprived of their commands.
In most cases interest proved more powerful than principle; and it was
observed that out of the numbers, who at first crowded to the Anabaptist
conventicle at Dublin as a profession of their political creed, almost all
who had any thing to lose, gradually abandoned it for the more courtly
places of worship. Even the Anabaptists themselves learned to believe that
the ambition of a private individual could not defeat the designs of the
Lord, and that it was better for men to retain their situations under the
protector, than, by abandoning them, to deprive themselves of the means of
promoting the service of God, and of hastening the reign of Christ upon
earth.[1]

In Scotland the spirit of disaffection equally prevailed among the superior
officers; but their attention was averted from political feuds by military
operations. In the preceding years, under the appearance of general
tranquillity, the embers of war had continued to smoulder in the Highlands:
they burst into a flame on the departure of Monk to take the command of the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, ii. 149, 150, 162, 214.]

English fleet. To Charles in France, and his partisans in Scotland, it
seemed a favourable moment; the earls of Glencairn and Balcarras, were
successively joined by Angus, Montrose, Athol, Seaforth, Kenmure, and
Lorne, the son of Argyle; and Wogan, an enterprising officer, landing at
Dover,[a] raised a troop of royalists in London, and traversing England
under the colours of the commonwealth, reached in safety the quarters
of his Scottish friends. The number of the royalists amounted to some
thousands: the nature of the country and the affections of the natives were
in their favour; and their spirits were supported by the repeated, but
fallacious, intelligence of the speedy arrival of Charles himself at the
head of a considerable force. A petty, but most destructive, warfare
ensued. Robert Lilburne, the English commander, ravaged the lands of all
who favoured the royalists; the royalists, those of all who remained
neuter, or aided their enemies. But in a short time, personal feuds
distracted the councils of the insurgents; and, as the right of Glencairn
to the chief command was disputed, Middleton arrived[b] with a royal
commission, which all were required to obey. To Middleton the protector
opposed Monk.[c] It was the policy of the former to avoid a battle, and
exhaust the strength of his adversary by marches and counter-marches in a
mountainous country, without the convenience of roads or quarters; but in
an attempt to elude his pursuer, Middleton was surprised[d] at Loch Garry
by the force under Morgan; his men, embarrassed in the defile, were slain
or made prisoners; and his loss taught the royalist leaders to deserve
mercy by the promptitude of their submission. The Earl of Tullibardine set
the example;[e] Glencairn followed; they were imitated by their associates;

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. Nov. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. Feb. 1.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. April 8.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1654. July 19.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1654. August 24.]

and the lenity of Monk contributed as much as the fortune of war to the
total suppression of the insurgents.[1] Cromwell, however, did not wait for
the issue of the contest. Before Monk had joined the army, he published[a]
three ordinances, by which, of his supreme authority, he incorporated
Scotland with England, absolved the natives from their allegiance to
Charles Stuart, abolished the kingly office and the Scottish parliament,
with all tenures and superiorities importing servitude and vassalage,
erected courts-baron to supply the place of the jurisdictions which he had
taken away, and granted a free pardon to the nation, with the exception of
numerous individuals whom he subjected to different degrees of punishment.
Thus the whole frame of the Scottish constitution was subverted: yet no
one ventured to remonstrate or oppose. The spirit of the nation had been
broken. The experience of the past, and the presence of the military,
convinced the people that resistance was fruitless: of the nobility, many
languished within the walls of their prisons in England; and the others
were ground to the dust by the demands of their creditors, or the exactions
of the sequestrators; and even the kirk, which had so often bearded kings
on their thrones, was taught to feel that its authority, however it might
boast of its celestial origin, was no match for the earthly power of
the English commonwealth.[2] Soon after Cromwell had called his little
parliament, the general assembly of the kirk met[b]

[Footnote 1: See the ratification of the surrenders of Tullibardine,
Glencairn, Heriot, Forrester, Kenmure, Montrose, and Seaforth, dated at
different times between Aug. 24 and Jan. 10, in the Council Book, 1655,
Feb. 7.]

[Footnote 2: Scobell, 289, 293-295. Whitelock, 583,597, 599. Burnet, i.
58-61. Baillie, ii. 377, 381. Milton, State Papers, 130, 131.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. April 1.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. July 20.]

at the usual place in Edinburgh; and Dickson, the moderator, had begun
his prayer, when Colonel Cotterel, leaving two troops of horse and two
companies of foot at the door, entered[a] the house, and inquired by what
authority they sat there; Was it by authority of the parliament, or of
the commander of the forces, or of the English judges in Scotland? The
moderator meekly but firmly replied, that they formed a spiritual court,
established by God, recognized by law, and supported by the solemn league
and covenant. But this was a language which the soldier did not, or would
not, understand. Mounting a bench, he declared that there existed no
authority in Scotland which was not derived from the parliament of England;
that it was his duty to put down every illegal assumption of power; and
that they must immediately depart or suffer themselves to be dragged out by
the military under his command. No one offered to resist: a protestation
was hastily entered on the minutes; and the whole body was marched between
two files of soldiers through the streets, to the surprise, and grief,
and horror of the inhabitants. At the distance of a mile from the city,
Cotterel discharged them with an admonition, that, if any of them were
found in the capital after eight o'clock on the following morning, or
should subsequently presume to meet in greater numbers than three persons
at one time, they would be punished with imprisonment, as disturbers of the
public peace. "Thus," exclaims Baillie, "our general assembly, the glory
and strength of our church upon earth, is by your soldiery crushed and
trode under foot. For this our hearts are sad, and our eyes run down with
water."[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 370.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. July 20.]


Yet after this they were permitted to meet in synods and presbyteries, an
indulgence which they owed not to the moderation of their adversaries, but
to the policy of Vane, who argued that it was better to furnish them with
the opportunity of quarrelling among themselves, than, by establishing a
compulsory tranquillity, allow them to combine against the commonwealth.
For the ministers were still divided into resolutioners and protestors, and
the virulence of this religious feud appeared to augment in proportion as
the parties were deprived of real power. The resolutioners were the more
numerous, and enjoyed a greater share of popular favour; but the protestors
were enemies of Charles Stuart, and therefore sure of the protection of the
government. Hence it happened that in every struggle for the possession
of churches--and such struggles continually happened between the two
parties--the protestors were invariably supported against the voice of the
people by the swords of the military.[1]

By foreign powers the recent elevation of Cromwell was viewed without
surprise. They were aware of his ambition, and had anticipated his success.
All who had reason to hope from his friendship, or to fear from his enmity,
offered their congratulations, and ambassadors and envoys from most of the
princes of Europe crowded to the court of the protector. He

[Footnote 1: Baillie, 371-376, 360. Burnet, i. 62. Whilst Baillie weeps
over the state of the kirk, Kirkton exults at the progress of the gospel.
"I verily believe," he writes, "there were more souls converted unto Christ
in that short period of time than in any season since the Reformation.
Ministers were painful, people were diligent. At their solemn communions
many congregations met in great multitudes, some dozen of ministers used to
preach, and the people continued as it were in a sort of trance (so serious
were they in spiritual exercises) for three days at least."--Kirkton 54,
55.]

received them with all the state of a sovereign. From his apartments in the
Cockpit he had removed with his family to those which in former times had
been appropriated to the king: they were newly furnished in the most costly
and magnificent style; and in the banqueting-room was placed a chair of
state on a platform, raised by three steps above the floor. Here the
protector stood to receive the ambassadors. They were instructed to make
three reverences, one at the entrance, the second in the midway, and the
third at the lower step, to each of which Cromwell answered by a slight
inclination of the head. When they had delivered their speeches, and
received the reply of the protector, the same ceremonial was repeated at
their departure. On one occasion he was requested to permit the gentlemen
attached to the embassy to kiss his hand; but he advanced to the upper
step, bowed to each in succession, waved his hand, and withdrew. On the
conclusion of peace with the States, the ambassadors received from him an
invitation to dinner. He sat alone on one side of the table, they, with
some lords of the council, on the other. Their ladies were entertained
by the lady protectress. After dinner, both parties joined in the
drawing-room; pieces of music were performed, and a psalm was sung, a copy
of which Cromwell gave to the ambassadors, observing that it was the best
paper that had ever passed between them. The entertainment concluded with a
walk in the gallery.[1]

This treaty with the United Provinces was the first which engaged the
attention of the protector, and was

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, iii. 240. Thurloe, i. 50, 69, 154, 257. It
appears from the Council Book that the quarterly expense of the protector's
family amounted to thirty-five thousand pounds. 1655, March 14.]

not concluded till repeated victories had proved the superiority of the
English navy, and a protracted negotiation had exhausted the patience
of the States. In the preceding month of May the hostile fleets, each
consisting of about one hundred sail, had put to sea, the English commanded
by Monk, Dean, Penn, and Lawson; the Dutch by Van Tromp, De Ruyter, De
Witte, and Evertsens. While Monk insulted the coast of Holland, Van Tromp
cannonaded[a] the town of Dover. They afterwards met each other off the
North Foreland, and the action continued the whole day. The enemy lost two
sail; on the part of the English, Dean was killed by a chain-shot. He fell
by the side of Monk, who instantly spread his cloak over the dead body,
that the men might not be alarmed at the fete of their commander.

The battle was renewed the next morning.[b] Though Blake, with eighteen
sail, had joined the English in the night, Van Tromp fought with the
most determined courage; but a panic pervaded his fleet; his orders were
disobeyed; several captains fled from the superior fire of the enemy; and,
ultimately, the Dutch sought shelter within the Wielings, and along the
shallow coast of Zeeland. They lost one-and-twenty sail; thirteen hundred
men were made prisoners, and the number of killed and wounded was great in
proportion.[1]

Cromwell received the news of this victory with transports of joy. Though
he could claim no share in the merit (for the fleet owed its success to the
exertions

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 557. Ludlow, ii. 27. Heath, 344. Le Clerc, i. 333.
Basnage, i. 307. It appears from the letters in Thurloe, that the English
fought at the distance of half cannon-shot, till the enemy fell into
confusion, and began to fly, when their disabled ships were surrounded, and
captured by the English frigates.--Thurloe, i. 269, 270, 273, 277, 278.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. June 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. June 3.]

of the government which he had overturned), he was aware that it would shed
a lustre over his own administration; and the people were publicly called
upon to return thanks to the Almighty for so signal a favour. It was
observed that on this occasion he did not command but invite; and the
distinction was hailed by his admirers as a proof of the humility and
single-mindedness of the lord-general.[1]

To the States, the defeat of their fleet proved a subject of the deepest
regret. It was not the loss of men and ships that they deplored; such loss
might soon be repaired; but it degraded them in the eyes of Europe, by
placing them in the posture of suppliants deprecating the anger of a
victorious enemy. In consequence of the importunate entreaties of the
merchants, they had previously appointed ambassadors to make proposals of
peace to the new government; but these ministers did not quit the coast
of Holland till after the battle;[a] and their arrival in England at this
particular moment was universally attributed to a conviction of inferiority
arising from the late defeat. They were introduced[b] with due honour to
his excellency and the council; but found them unwilling to recede from
the high demands formerly made by the parliament. As to the claim of
indemnification for the past, the ambassadors maintained that, if a balance
were struck of their respective losses, the Dutch would be found the
principal sufferers; and, to the demand of security for the future, they
replied, that it might be obtained by the completion of that treaty, which
had been interrupted by the sudden departure of St. John and Strickland
from the Hague. The obstinacy of the council induced the ambassadors to
demand[c] passports

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 558.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. May 26.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. June 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1653. July 19.]

for their return; but means were found to awaken in them new hopes, and to
amuse them with new proposals. In the conferences, Cromwell generally
bore the principal part. Sometimes he chided the ambassadors in no very
courteous terms; sometimes he described with tears the misery occasioned
by the war; but he was always careful to wrap up his meaning in such
obscurity, that a full month elapsed before the Dutch could distinctly
ascertain his real demands. They were then informed[a] that England would
waive the claim of pecuniary compensation, provided Van Tromp were removed
for a while from the command of their fleet, as an acknowledgment that he
was the aggressor; but that, on the other hand, it was expected that the
States should consent to the incorporation of the two countries into one
great maritime power, to be equally under the same government, consisting
of individuals chosen out of both. This was a subject on which the
ambassadors had no power to treat; and it was agreed that two of their
number should repair to the Hague for additional instructions.[1]

But, a few days before their departure, another battle had been fought[b]
at sea, and another victory won by the English. For eight weeks Monk had
blockaded the entrance of the Texel; but Van Tromp, the moment his fleet
was repaired, put to sea, and sought to redeem the honour of the Belgic
flag. Each admiral commanded about one hundred sail; and as long as Tromp
lived, the victory hung in suspense; he had burst through the English line,
and returned to his first station, when he fell by a musket-shot; then the

[Footnote 1: See on this subject a multitude of original papers in Thurloe,
i. 268, 284, 302, 308, 315, 316, 340, 362, 370, 372, 381, 382, 394, 401.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653. July 26.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1653. July 31.]

Dutch began to waver; in a short time they fled, and the pursuit continued
till midnight. That which distinguished this from every preceding action
was the order issued by Monk to make no prizes, but to sink or destroy the
ships of the enemy. Hence the only trophies of victory were the prisoners,
men who had been picked up after they had thrown themselves into the water,
or had escaped in boats from the wrecks. Of these, more than a thousand
were brought to England, a sufficient proof that, if the loss of the enemy
did not amount to twenty sail, as stated by Monk, it exceeded nine small
vessels, the utmost allowed by the States.[1]

During the absence of the other ambassadors, Cromwell sought several
private interviews with the third who remained, Beverning, the deputy
from the States of Holland; and the moderation with which he spoke of the
questions in dispute, joined to the tears with which he lamented the enmity
of two nations so similar in their political and religious principles,
convinced the Dutchman that an accommodation might be easily and promptly
attained. At his desire his colleagues returned; the conferences were
resumed; the most cheering hopes were indulged; when suddenly the English
commissioners presented seven-and-twenty articles, conceived in a tone of
insulting superiority, and demanding sacrifices painful and degrading. A
few days later the parliament was dissolved; and, as it was evident that
the interests of the new protector required a peace, the ambassadors began
to affect indifference on the subject, and demanded passports to depart.
Cromwell, in his turn, thought proper to yield; some claims

[Footnote 1: Le Clerc, i. 335. Basnage, i. 313. Several Proceedings, No.
197. Perfect Diurnal, No. 187. Thurloe, i. 392, 420, 448.]

were abandoned; others were modified, and every question was adjusted, with
the exception of this, whether the king of Denmark, the ally of the Dutch,
who, to gratify them, had seized and confiscated twenty-three English
merchantmen in the Baltic,[1] should be comprehended or not in the treaty.
The ambassadors were at Gravesend on their way home, when Cromwell
proposed[a] a new expedient, which they approved. They proceeded, however,
to Holland; obtained the approbation of the several states, and returned[b]
to put an end to the treaty. But here again, to their surprise, new
obstacles arose. Beverning had incautiously boasted of his dexterity;
he had, so he pretended compelled the protector to lower his demands by
threatening to break off the negotiation; and Cromwell now turned the
tables upon him by playing a similar game. At the same time that he rose in
some of his demands, he equipped a fleet of one hundred sail, and ordered
several regiments to embark. The ambassadors, aware that the States
had made no provision to oppose this formidable armament, reluctantly
acquiesced;[c] and on the 5th of April, after a negotiation of ten months,
the peace was definitively signed.[2]

By this treaty the English cabinet silently abandoned those lofty
pretensions which it had originally put forth. It made no mention of
indemnity for the past, of security for the future, of the incorporation
of the two states, of the claim of search, of the tenth herring, or of the
exclusion of the prince of Orange

[Footnote 1: Basnage, i. 289.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, i. 570, 607, 616, 624, 643, 650; ii. 9, 19, 28,
36, 74, 75, 123, 137, 195, 197. Le Clerc. i, 340-343. During the whole
negotiation, it appears from these papers that the despatches of, and to,
the ambassadors were opened, and copies of almost all the resolutions taken
by the States procured, by the council of state.--See particularly Thurloe,
ii. 99, 153.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Jan. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. Feb. 28.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. April 5.]

from the office of stadtholder. To these humiliating conditions the pride
of the States had refused to submit; and Cromwell was content to accept
two other articles, which, while they appeared equally to affect the
two nations, were in reality directed against the Stuart family and its
adherents. It was stipulated that neither commonwealth should harbour or
aid the enemies, rebels, or exiles of the other; but that either, being
previously required, should order such enemies, rebels, or exiles to
leave its territory, under the penalty of death, before the expiration of
twenty-eight days. To the demand, that the same respect which had been paid
to the flag of the king should be paid to that of the commonwealth, the
Dutch did not object. The only questions which latterly retarded the
conclusion of the treaty related to the compensation to be made to the
merchants for the depredations on their trade in the East Indies before,
and the detention of their ships by the king of Denmark during, the war. It
was, however, agreed that arbitrators should be chosen out of both
nations, and that each government should be bound by their award.[1] These
determined[a] that the island of Polerone should be restored, and damages
to the amount of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds should be paid to
the English East India Company; that three thousand six hundred and fifteen
pounds should be distributed among the heirs of those who suffered at
Amboyna; and that a compensation of ninety-seven thousand nine hundred and
seventy-three pounds should be made to the traders to the Baltic.[2]

[Footnote 1: Dumont, v. part ii. 74.]

[Footnote 2: See the award, ibid. 85, 88. By Sagredo, the Venetian
ambassador, who resided during the war at Amsterdam, we are told that the
Dutch acknowledged the loss of one thousand one hundred and twenty-two
men-of-war and merchantmen; and that the expense of this war exceeded
that of their twenty years' hostilities with Spain. He states that their
inferiority arose from three causes: that the English ships were of greater
bulk; the English cannon were of brass, and of a larger calibre; and the
number of prizes made by the English at the commencement crippled the
maritime resources of their enemies.--Relazione, MS. Le Clerc states that
the Dutch employed one hundred thousand men in the herring-fishery (i.
321).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. August 30.]


On one subject, in the protector's estimation of considerable importance,
he was partially successful. Possessed of the supreme power himself, he
considered Charles as a personal rival, and made it his policy to strip the
exiled king of all hope of foreign support. From the prince of Orange, so
nearly allied to the royal family, Cromwell had little to fear during his
minority; and, to render him incapable of benefiting the royal cause in his
more mature age, the protector attempted to exclude him by the treaty
from succeeding to those high offices which might almost be considered
hereditary in his family. The determined refusal of the States had induced
him to withdraw the demand; but he intrigued, through the agency of
Beverning, with the leaders of the Louvestein party;[1] and obtained a
secret article, by which the states of Holland and West Friesland promised
never to elect the prince of Orange for their stadtholder, nor suffer him
to have the chief command of the army and navy. But the secret transpired;
the other states highly resented this clandestine negotiation; complaints
and remonstrances were answered by apologies and vindications; an open
schism was declared between the provinces, and every day added to the
exasperation of the two parties. On the whole, however, the quarrel was
favourable to the pretensions of the young prince,

[Footnote 1: The leaders of the republicans were so called, because they
had been confined in the castle of Louvestein, whence they were discharged
on the death of the late prince of Orange.]

from the dislike with which the people viewed the interference of a foreign
potentate, or rather, as they termed him, of an usurper, in the internal
arrangements of the republic.[1]

The war[a] in which the rival crowns of France and Spain had so long
been engaged induced both Louis and Philip to pay their court to the new
protector. Alonzo de Cardenas, the Spanish ambassador, had the advantage
of being on the spot. He waited on Cromwell to present to him the
congratulations of his sovereign, and to offer to him the support of the
Spanish monarch, if he should feel desirous to rise a step higher, and
assume the style and office of king. To so flattering a message, a most
courteous answer was returned; and the ambassador proceeded to propose an
alliance between the two powers, of which the great object should be to
confine within reasonable bounds the ambition of France, which, for so
many years, had disturbed the tranquillity of Europe. This was the sole
advantage to which Philip looked; to Cromwell the benefit would be, that
France might be compelled to refuse aid and harbour to Charles Stuart and
his followers; and to contract the obligation of maintaining jointly with
Spain the protector in the government of the three kingdoms. Cromwell
listened, but gave no answer; he appointed commissioners to discuss the
proposal, but forbade them to make any promise, or to hold out any hope
of his acquiescence. When Don Alonzo communicated to them the draft of a
treaty which he had all but concluded with the deputies appointed by the
late parliament, he was

[Footnote 1: Dumont, 79. Thurloe, vol. ii. iii. Vaughan, i. 9, 11. La
Déduction, or Defence of the States in Holland, in Le Clerc, i. 345, and
Basnage, i. 342.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1653.]

asked whether the king of Spain would consent to a free trade to the West
Indies, would omit the clause respecting the Inquisition, reduce to an
equality the duties on foreign merchandise, and give to the English
merchant the pre-emption of the Spanish wool. He replied, that his master
would as soon lose his eyes as suffer the interference of any foreign power
on the two first questions; as to the others, satisfactory adjustments
might easily be made; This was sufficient for the present. Cromwell
affected to consider the treaty at an end; though the real fact was, that
he meditated a very different project in his own mind, and was careful not
to be precluded by premature arrangements.[1]

The French ambassador, though he commenced his negotiation under less
propitious auspices, had the address or good fortune to conduct it to
a more favourable issue. That the royal family of France, from its
relationship to that of England, was ill-disposed towards the commonwealth,
there could be no doubt; but its inclinations were controlled by the
internal feuds which distracted, and the external war which demanded, the
attention of the government. The first proof of hostility was supposed to
be given before the death of the king, by a royal _arrét_[a] prohibiting
the importation into France of English woollens and silks; and this was
afterwards met by an order of parliament[b] equally prohibiting the
importation into England of French woollens, silks, and wines. The alleged
infraction of these commercial

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 705, 759, 760. Dumont, v. part ii. p. 106. The
clause respecting the Inquisition was one which secured the English
traders from being molested by that court, on condition that they gave no
scandal,--modo ne dent scandalum. This condition Cromwell wished to be
withdrawn.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Oct. 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 23.]

regulations led to the arrest and subsequent condemnation of vessels
belonging to both nations; each government issued letters-of-marque to
the sufferers among its subjects; and the naval commanders received
instructions to seek that compensation for the individuals aggrieved which
the latter were unable to obtain of themselves.[1] Thus the maritime trade
of both countries was exposed to the depredations of private and national
cruisers, while their respective governments were considered as remaining
at peace. But in 1651, when the Cardinal Mazarin had been banished from
France, it was resolved by Cromwell, who had recently won the battle of
Worcester, to tempt the fidelity of d'Estrades, the governor of Dunkirk
and a dependant on the exiled minister. An officer of the lord-general's
regiment made to d'Estrades the offer of a considerable sum, on condition
that he would deliver the fortress into the hands of the English; or of the
same sum, with the aid of a military force to the cardinal, if he preferred
to treat in the name of his patron. The governor complained of the insult
offered to his honour; but intimated[a] that, if the English wished to
purchase Dunkirk, the proposal might be addressed to his sovereign. The
hint was taken, and the offer was made, and debated in the royal council at
Poictiers. The cardinal, who returned to France at the very time, urged its

[Footnote 1: See the instructions to Popham. "In respect that many of the
English so spoiled are not able to undergo the charge of setting forth
ships of their own to make seizures by such letters-of-marque; ... you
shall, as in the way and execution of justice, seize, arrest, &c. such
ships and vessels of the said French king, or any of his subjects, as you
shall think fit,... and the same keep in your custody, till the parliament
declare their further resolution concerning the same."--Thurloe, i. 144.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Feb.]

acceptance;[1] but the queen-mother and the other counsellors were so
unwilling to give the English a footing in France, that he acquiesced in
their opinion, and a refusal was returned. Cromwell did not fail to resent
the disappointment. By the facility which he afforded to the Spanish levies
in Ireland, their army in Flanders was enabled to reduce Gravelines, and,
soon afterwards, to invest[a] Dunkirk. That fortress was on the point of
capitulating when a French flotilla of seven sail, carrying from twenty to
thirty guns each, and laden with stores and provisions, was descried[b]
stealing along the shore to its relief. Blake, who had received secret
orders from the council, gave chase; the whole squadron was captured, and
the next day[c] Dunkirk opened its gates.[2] By the French court this
action was pronounced an unprovoked and unjustifiable injury; but Mazarin
coolly calculated the probable consequences of a war, and, after some time,
sent[d] over Bordeaux, under the pretence of claiming the captured ships,
but in reality to oppose the intrigues of the agents of Spain, of the
prince of Condé, and of the city of Bordeaux, who laboured to obtain the
support of the commonwealth in opposition to the French court.[3]

Bordeaux had been appointed[e] ambassador to the parliament; after the
inauguration of Cromwell, it became necessary to appoint him ambassador to
his

[Footnote 1: Here Louis XIV., to whom we are indebted for this anecdote
observes; that it was the cardinal's maxim de pourvoir, à quelque prix
qu'il fût, aux affaires présentes, persuadé que les maux à venir,
trouveroient leur remède dans l'avenir même.--Oeuvres de Louis XIV. i.
170.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 168-170. See also Heath, 325; Thurloe, i. 214;
Whitelock, 543.]

[Footnote 3: Journals, 14 Dec. 1652. Clar. Pap. iii. 105, 123, 132.
Thurloe, i. 436.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. May 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. Sept. 5.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1652. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. Dec. 10.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1653. Feb. 21.]

highness the protector. But in what style was Louis to address the usurper
by letter? "Mon cousin" was offered and refused; "mon frère," which
Cromwell sought, was offensive to the pride of the monarch; and, as a
temperament between the two, "monsieur le protecteur" was given
and accepted. Bordeaux proposed a treaty of amity, by which all
letters-of-marque should be recalled, and the damages suffered by the
merchants of the two nations be referred to foreign arbitrators. To thwart
the efforts of his rival, Don Alonzo, abandoning his former project,
brought forward the proposal of a new commercial treaty between England and
Spain. Cromwell was in no haste to conclude with either. He was aware that
the war between them was the true cause of these applications; that he held
the balance in his hand, and that it was in his power at any moment to
incline it in favour of either of the two crowns. His determination,
indeed, had long been taken; but it was not his purpose to let it
transpire; and when he was asked the object of the two great armaments
preparing in the English ports, he refused to give any satisfactory
explanation.[1]

In this state of the treaty, its further progress was for a while suspended
by the meeting[a] of the protector's first parliament. He had summoned
it for the 3rd of September, his fortunate day, as he perhaps believed
himself, as he certainly wished it to be believed by others. But the 3rd
happened in that year to fall on a Sunday; and, that the Sabbath might not
be profaned

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 760; ii. 61, 113, 228, 559, 587. An obstacle
was opposed to the progress of the treaty by the conduct of Le Baas, a
dependant on Mazarin, and sent to aid Bordeaux with his advice. After some
time, it was discovered that this man (whether by order of the minister, or
at the solicitation of the royalists, is uncertain) was intriguing with the
malcontents. Cromwell compelled him to return to France.--Thurloe, ii. 309,
351, 412, 437.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 3.]

by the agitation of worldly business, he requested the members to meet him
at sermon in Westminster Abbey on the following morning.[a] At ten
the procession set out from Whitehall. It was opened by two troops of
life-guards; then rode some hundreds of gentlemen and officers, bareheaded,
and in splendid apparel; immediately before the carriage walked the pages
and lackeys of the protector in rich liveries, and on each side a captain
of the guard; behind it came Claypole, master of the horse, leading a
charger magnificently caparisoned, and Claypole was followed by the great
officers of state and the members of the council. The personal appearance
of the protector formed a striking contrast with the parade of the
procession. He was dressed in a plain suit, after the fashion of a country
gentleman, and was chiefly distinguished from his attendants by his
superior simplicity, and the privilege of wearing his hat. After sermon,
he placed himself in the chair of state in the Painted Chamber, while the
members seated themselves, uncovered on benches ranged along the walls. The
protector then rose, took off his hat, and addressed them in a speech which
lasted three hours. It was, after his usual style, verbose, involved, and
obscure, sprinkled with quotations from Scripture to refresh the piety
of the saints, and seasoned with an affectation of modesty to disarm the
enmity of the republicans. He described the state of the nation at the
close of the last parliament. It was agitated by the principles of the
Levellers, tending to reduce all to an equality; by the doctrines of the
Fifth-monarchy men, subversive of civil government; by religious theorists,
the pretended champions of liberty of conscience, who condemned an
established ministry as Babylonish and antichristian;

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 4.]

and by swarms of Jesuits, who had settled in England an episcopal
jurisdiction to pervert the people. At the same time the naval war with
Holland absorbed all the pecuniary resources, while a commercial war with
France and Portugal cramped the industry of the nation. He then bade them
contrast this picture with the existing state of things. The taxes had been
reduced; judges of talent and integrity had been placed upon the bench; the
burthen of the commissioners of the great seal had been lightened by the
removal of many descriptions of causes from the court of Chancery to the
ordinary courts of law; and "a stop had been put to that heady way for
every man, who pleased, to become a preacher." The war with Holland had
terminated in an advantageous peace; treaties of commerce and amity had
been concluded with Denmark and Sweden;[1] a similar treaty, which would
place the British trader beyond the reach of the Inquisition, had been
signed with Portugal, and another was in progress with the ambassador of
the French monarch. Thus had the government brought the three nations by
hasty strides towards the land of promise; it was for the parliament to
introduce them into it. The prospect was bright before them; let them not
look

[Footnote 1: That with Sweden was negotiated by Whitelock, who had been
sent on that mission against his will by the influence of Cromwell. The
object was to detach Sweden from the interest of France, and engage it to
maintain the liberty of trade in the Baltic, against Denmark, which was
under the influence of Holland. It was concluded April 11. After the peace
with Holland, the Danish monarch hastened to appease the protector; the
treaty which, though said by Cromwell to be already concluded, was not
signed till eleven days afterwards, stipulated that the English traders
should pay no other customs or dues than the Dutch. Thus they were enabled
to import naval stores on the same terms, while before, on account of
the heavy duties, they bought them at second hand of the Dutch.--See the
treaties in Dumont. v. part ii. p. 80, 92.]

back to the onions and flesh-pots of Egypt. He spoke not as their lord, but
their fellow-servant, a labourer with them in the same good work; and would
therefore detain them no longer, but desire them to repair to their own
house, and to choose their speaker.[1]

To procure a parliament favourable to his designs, all the power of the
government had been employed to influence the elections; the returns had
been examined by a committee of the council, under the pretext of seeing
that the provisions of the "instrument" were observed; and the consequence
was, that the Lord Grey of Groby, Major Wildman, and some other noted
republicans, had been excluded by command of the protector. Still he found
himself unable to mould the house to his wishes. By the court, Lenthall was
put in nomination for the office of speaker; by the opposition, Bradshaw,
the boldest and most able of the opposite party. After a short debate,
Lenthall was chosen, by the one, because they knew him to be a timid and a
time-serving character; by the other, because they thought that, to place
him in the chair, was one step towards the revival of the long parliament,
of which he had been speaker. But no one ventured to propose that he should
be offered, according to ancient custom, to the acceptance of the supreme
magistrate. This was thought to savour too much of royalty.[2]

[Footnote 1: Compare the official copy printed by G. Sawbridge, 1654, with
the abstract by Whitelock (599, 600), and by Bordeaux (Thurloe, ii. 518).
See also Journals, Sept. 3, 4.]

[Footnote 2: It appears from the Council Book (1654, Aug. 21), that, on
that day, letters were despatched to the sheriffs, containing the names of
the members who had been approved by the council, with orders to give them
notice to attend. The letters to the more distant places were sent first,
that they might all be received about the same time.]


It was not long before the relative strength of the parties was
ascertained. After a sharp debate,[a] in which it was repeatedly asked
why the members of the long parliament then present should not resume the
authority of which they had been illegally deprived by force, and by what
right, but that of the sword, one man presumed to "command his commanders,"
the question was put, that the house resolve itself into a committee, to
determine whether or not the government shall be in a single person and a
parliament; and, to the surprise and alarm of Cromwell, it was carried[b]
against the court by a majority of five voices.[1] The leaders of the
opposition were Bradshaw, Hazlerig, and Scot, who now contended in the
committee that the existing government emanated from an incompetent
authority, and stood in opposition to the solemn determination of a
legitimate parliament; while the protectorists, with equal warmth,
maintained that, since it had been approved by the people, the only real
source of power, it could not be subject to revision by the representatives
of the people. The debate lasted several days,[c] during which the
commonwealth party gradually increased in number. That the executive power
might be profitably delegated to a single individual, was not disputed;
but it was contended that, of right, the legislative authority belonged
exclusively to the parliament. The officers and courtiers, finding that the
sense of the house was against them, dropped[d] the question of right,
and fled to that of expediency; in the existing circumstances, the public
safety required a

[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 8. Many of those who voted in the majority did
not object to the authority of the protector, but to the source from which
it emanated,--a written instrument, the author of which was unknown. They
wished it to be settled on him by act of parliament.--Thurloe, ii. 606.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. Sept. 8.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. Sept. 9.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1654. Sept. 11.]

check on the otherwise unbounded power of parliament; that check could be
no other than a co-ordinate authority, possessing a negative voice; and
that authority was the protector, who had been pointed out to them by
Providence, acknowledged by the people in their addresses, and confirmed by
the conditions expressed in the indentures of the members. It was replied,
that the inconveniency of such a check had induced the nation to abolish
the kingly government; that the addresses of the people expressed their joy
for their deliverance from the incapacity of the little parliament, not
their approbation of the new government; that Providence often permits what
it disapproves; and that the indentures were an artifice of the court,
which could not have force to bind the supreme power. To reconcile the
disputants, a compromise between the parties had been planned; but Cromwell
would not suffer the experiment to be tried.[1] Having ordered[b] Harrison,
whose partisans were collecting signatures to a petition, to be taken into
custody, he despatched three regiments to occupy the principal posts in the
city, and commanded the attendance of the house in the Painted Chamber.
There, laying aside that tone of modesty which he had hitherto assumed, he
frankly told the members that his calling was from God, his testimony from
the people; and that no one but God and the people should ever take his
office from him. It was not of his seeking; God knew that it was his
utmost ambition to lead the life of a country gentleman; but imperious
circumstances had imposed it upon him. The long parliament brought their
dissolution upon themselves by despotism, the little parliament

[Footnote 1: See introduction to Burton's Diary, xxiv.-xxxii.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 12.]

by imbecility.[1] On each occasion he found himself invested with absolute
power over the military, and, through the military, over the three nations.
But on each occasion he was anxious to part with that power; and if, at
last, he had acquiesced in the instrument of government, it was because it
made the parliament a check on the protector, and the protector a check on
the parliament. That he did not bring himself into his present situation,
he had God for a witness above, his conscience for a witness within, and a
cloud of witnesses without; he had the persons who attended when he took
the oath of fidelity to "the instrument;" the officers of the army in the
three nations, who testified their approbation by their signatures; the
city of London, which feasted him, the counties, cities, and boroughs, that
had sent him addresses; the judges, magistrates, and sheriffs, who acted by
his commission; and the very men who now stood before him, for they came
there in obedience to his writ, and under the express condition that "the
persons so chosen should not

[Footnote 1: It is remarkable that, in noticing the despotism of the long
parliament, he makes mention of the very same thing, which his enemy
Lilburne urged against it: "by taking the judgment, both in capital and
criminal things, to themselves, who in former times were not known to
exercise such a judicature." He boldly maintains that they meant to
perpetuate themselves by filling up vacancies as they occurred, and had
made several applications to him to obtain his consent. He adds, "Poor men,
under this arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep by forty in a
morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates, without any man being
able to give a reason that two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling.
I tell you the truth; and my soul, and many persons whose faces I see in
this place, were exceedingly grieved at these things, and knew not which
way to help it, but by their mournings, and giving their negatives when the
occasion served." I notice this passage, because since the discovery of the
sequestrators' papers it has been thought, from the regularity with which
their books were kept, and the seeming equity of their proceedings, as they
are entered, that little injustice was done.]

have power to change the government as settled in one single person and the
parliament." He would, therefore, have them to know, that four things were
fundamental: 1. That the supreme power should be vested in a single person
and parliament; 2. that the parliament should be successive, and not
perpetual; 3. that neither protector nor parliament alone should possess
the uncontrolled command of the military force; and 4. that liberty of
conscience should be fenced round with such barriers as might exclude both
profaneness and persecution. The other articles of the instrument were less
essential; they might be altered with circumstances; and he should always
be ready to agree to what was reasonable. But he would not permit them to
sit, and yet disown the authority by which they sat. For this purpose
he had prepared a recognition which he required them to sign. Those who
refused would be excluded the house; the rest would find admission, and
might exercise their legislative power without control, for his negative
remained in force no longer than twenty days. Let them limit his authority
if they pleased. He would cheerfully submit, provided he thought it for the
interest of the people.[1]

The members, on their return, found a guard of soldiers at the door of the
house, and a parchment for signatures lying on a table in the lobby. It
contained the recognition of which the protector had spoken; a pledge that
the subscribers would neither propose nor consent to alter the government,
as it was settled in one person and a parliament. It was immediately signed
by Lenthall, the speaker; his example was followed by the court party; and
in the course of a few

[Footnote 1: Printed by G. Sawbridge, 1654.]

days almost three hundred names were subscribed. The Stanch republicans
refused; yet the sequel showed that their exclusion did not give to the
court that ascendancy in the house which had been anticipated.[1]

About this time an extraordinary accident occurred. Among the presents
which Cromwell had received from foreign princes, were six Friesland
coach-horses from the duke of Oldenburg. One day,[a] after he had dined
with Thurloe under the shade in the park, the fancy took him to try the
mettle of the horses. The secretary was compelled to enter the carriage;
the protector, forgetful of his station, mounted the box. The horses at
first appeared obedient to the hand of the new coachman; but the too
frequent application of the lash drove them into a gallop, and the
protector was suddenly precipitated from his seat. At first, he lay
suspended by the pole with his leg entangled in the harness; and the
explosion of a loaded pistol in one of his pockets added to the fright and
the rapidity of the horses; but a fortunate jerk extricated his foot from
his shoe, and he fell under the body of the carriage without meeting with
injury from the wheels. He was immediately taken up by his guards, who
followed at full speed, and conveyed to Whitehall; Thurloe leaped from the
door of the carriage, and escaped with a sprained ancle and some severe
bruises. Both were confined to their chambers for a long time;

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, ii. 606. Whitelock, 605. Journals, Sept. 5-18.
Fleetwood, from Dublin, asks Thurloe, "How cam it to passe, that this
last teste was not at the first sitting of the house?" (ii. 620). See in
Archæol. xxiv. 39, a letter showing that several, who refused to subscribe
at first through motives of conscience, did so later. This was in
consequence of a declaration that the recognition did not comprehend all
the forty-two articles in "the instrument," but only what concerned the
government by a single person and successive parliaments.--See Journals,
Sept. 14.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 24.]

but by many, their confinement was attributed as much to policy as to
indisposition. The Cavaliers diverted themselves by prophesying that, as
his first fall had been from a coach, the next would be from a cart: to
the public, the explosion of the pistol revealed the secret terrors which
haunted his mind, that sense of insecurity, those fears of assassination,
which are the usual meed of inordinate and successful ambition.[1]

The force so lately put on the parliament, and the occasion of that
force, had opened the eyes of the most devoted among his adherents. His
protestations of disinterestedness, his solemn appeals to Heaven in
testimony of his wish to lead the life of a private gentleman, were
contrasted with his aspiring and arbitrary conduct; and the house, though
deprived of one-fourth of its number, still contained a majority jealous
of his designs and anxious to limit his authority. The accident which had
placed his life in jeopardy naturally led to the consideration of the
probable consequences of his death; and, to sound the disposition of
the members, the question of the succession was repeatedly, though not
formally, introduced. The remarks which it provoked afforded little
encouragement to his hopes; yet, when the previous arrangements had been
made, and all the dependants of the government had been mustered, Lambert,
having in a long and studied speech detailed the evils of elective, the
benefits of hereditary, succession, moved[a] that the office of protector
should be limited to the family of Oliver Cromwell, according to the known
law of inheritance. To the surprise and the mortification

[Footnote 1: Heath, 363. Thurloe, ii. 652, 653, 672. Ludlow, ii. 63.
Vaughan, i. 69.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Oct. 13.]

of the party, the motion was negatived by a division of two hundred against
eighty voices; and it was resolved that, on the death of the protector, his
successor should be chosen by the parliament if it were sitting, and by the
council in the absence of parliament.[1]

This experiment had sufficiently proved the feelings of the majority.
Aware, however, of their relative weakness, they were careful to give
Cromwell no tangible cause of offence. If they appointed committees to
revise the ordinances which he had published, they affected to consider
them as merely provisional regulations, supplying the place of laws till
the meeting of parliament. If they examined in detail the forty-two
articles of "the instrument," rejecting some, and amending others, they
still withheld their unhallowed hands from those subjects which _he_
had pronounced sacred,--the four immovable pillars on which the new
constitution was built. Cromwell, on his part, betrayed no symptom of
impatience; but waited quietly for the moment when he had resolved

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 668, 681, 685. Whitelock, 607. Journals, Nov. 30.
Though the house was daily occupied with the important question of the
government, it found leisure to inquire into the theological opinions of
John Biddle, who may be styled the father of the English Unitarians. He had
been thrice imprisoned by the long parliament, and was at last liberated by
the act of oblivion in 1652. The republication of his opinions attracted
the notice of the present parliament: to the questions put to him by the
speaker, he replied, that he could nowhere find in Scripture that Christ
or the Holy Ghost is called God; and it was resolved that he should be
committed to the Gatehouse, and that a bill to punish him should be
prepared. The dissolution saved his life; and by application to the Upper
Bench, he recovered his liberty; but was again arrested in 1655, and sent
to the isle of Scilly, to remain for life in the castle of St. Mary.
Cromwell discharged him in 1658; but he was again sent to Newgate in
1662, where he died the same year.--See Vita Bidelli, the short account;
Journals, Dec. 12, 13, 1654; Wood, iii. 594; and Biog. Brit.]

to break the designs of his adversaries. They proceeded with the revision
of "the instrument;" their labours were embodied in a bill,[a] and the bill
was read a third time. During two days the courtiers prolonged the debate
by moving a variety of amendments; on the third Cromwell summoned[b] the
house to meet him in the Painted Chamber. Displeasure and contempt were
marked on his countenance; and the high and criminatory tone which he
assumed taught them to feel how inferior the representatives of the people
were to the representative of the army.

They appeared there, he observed, with the speaker at their head, as a
house of parliament. Yet, what had they done as a parliament? He never had
played, he never would play, the orator; and therefore he would tell them
frankly, they had done nothing. For five months they had passed no bill,
had made no address, had held no communication with him. As far as
concerned them, he had nothing to do but to pray that God would enlighten
their minds and give a blessing to their labours. But had they then done
nothing? Yes: they had encouraged the Cavaliers to plot against the
commonwealth, and the Levellers to intrigue with the Cavaliers. By their
dissension they had aided the fanatics to throw the nation into confusion,
and by the slowness of their proceedings had compelled the soldiers to live
at free quarters on the country. They supposed that he sought to make the
protectorship hereditary in his family. It was not true; had they inserted
such a provision in "the instrument," on that ground alone he would have
rejected it. He spoke in the fear of the Lord, who would not be mocked, and
with the satisfaction that his conscience did not belie his assertion. The

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655. Jan. 19.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1655. Jan. 22.]

different revolutions which had happened were attributed to his cunning.
How blind were men who would not see the hand of Providence in its merciful
dispensations, who ridiculed as the visions of enthusiasm the observations
"made by the quickening and teaching Spirit!" It was supposed that he would
not be able to raise money without the aid of parliament. But "he had been
inured to difficulties, and never found God failing when he trusted in
him." The country would willingly pay on account of the necessity. But was
not the necessity of his creation? No: it was of God; the consequence of
God's providence. It was no marvel, if men who lived on their masses and
service-books, their dead and carnal worship, were strangers to the works
of God; but for those who had been instructed by the Spirit of God, to
adopt the same language, and say that men were the cause of these things,
when God had done them, this was more than the Lord would bear. But that
he might trouble them no longer, it was his duty to tell them that their
continuance was not for the benefit of the nation, and therefore he did
then and there declare that he dissolved the parliament.[1]

This was a stroke for which his adversaries were unprepared. "The
instrument" had provided that the parliament should continue to sit during
five months, and it still wanted twelve days of the expiration of that
term. But Cromwell chose to understand the clause not of calendar but
of lunar months, the fifth of which had been completed on the preceding
evening. Much might have been urged against such an interpretation; but a
military force was ready to

[Footnote 1: Printed by Henry Hills, printer to his highness the
lord-protector, 1654. Whitelock, 610-618. Journals, Jan. 19, 20, 22.]

support the opinion of the protector, and prudence taught the most
reluctant of his enemies to submit.

The conspiracies to which he had alluded in his speech had been generated
by the impatience of the two opposite parties, the republicans and the
royalists. Of the republicans some cared little for religion, others were
religious enthusiasts, but both were united in the same cause by one common
interest. The first could not forgive the usurpation of Cromwell, who had
reaped the fruit, and destroyed the object of their labours; the second
asked each other how they could conscientiously sit quiet, and allow so
much blood to have been spilt, and treasure expended, so many tears to have
been shed, and vows offered in vain. If they "hoped to look with confidence
the King of terrors in the face, if they sought to save themselves from the
bottomless pit, it was necessary to espouse once more the cause of Him who
had called them forth in their generation to assert the freedom of the
people and the privileges of parliament."[1] Under these different
impressions, pamphlets were published exposing the hypocrisy and perjuries
of the protector; letters and agitators passed from regiment to regiment;
and projects were suggested and entertained for the surprisal of Cromwell's
person, and the seizure[a] of the castle of Edinburgh, of Hull, Portsmouth,
and other places of strength. But it was not easy for the republicans to
deceive the vigilance, or elude the grasp of their adversary. He dismissed
all officers of doubtful fidelity from their commands in the army, and
secured the obedience of the men by the substitution of others more devoted
to his interest; by his order, Colonel Wildman was surprised in the very
act of dictating

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe, iii. 29; and Milton's State Papers, 132.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655. Feb. 10.]

to his secretary a declaration against the government, of the most
offensive and inflammatory tendency; and Lord Grey of Groby, Colonels
Alured, Overton, and others, were arrested, of whom some remained long in
confinement, others were permitted to go at large, on giving security for
their peaceable behaviour.[1]

The other conspiracy, though more extensive in its ramifications, proved
equally harmless in the result. Among the royalists, though many had
resigned themselves to despair, there were still many whose enthusiasm
discovered in each succeeding event a new motive for hope and exultation.
They listened to every tale which flattered their wishes, and persuaded
themselves, that on the first attempt against the usurper they would be
joined by all who condemned his hypocrisy and ambition. It was in vain that
Charles, from Cologne, where he had fixed his court, recommended caution;
that he conjured his adherents not to stake his and their hopes on
projects, by which, without being serviceable to him, they would compromise
their own safety. They despised his warnings; they accused him of indolence
and apathy; they formed associations, collected arms, and fixed the 14th of
February for simultaneous risings in most counties of England.[2] The day
was postponed to March 7; but Charles, at their request, proceeded in
disguise to Middleburgh in Zeeland, that he might be in readiness to cross
over to England; and Lord Wilmot, lately created earl of Rochester, with
Sir Joseph Wagstaff, arrived to take the command of the insurgents,

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iii. passim. Whitelock, 608-620. Bates, 290, 291.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon (Hist. iii. 552) is made to assign the 18th of April
for the day of rising; but all the documents, as well as his own narrative,
prove this to be an error.]

the first in the northern, the second in the western counties. It was the
intention of Wagstaff to surprise Winchester during the assizes; but the
unexpected arrival[a] of a troop of cavalry deterred him from the attempt.
He waited patiently till the judges proceeded to Salisbury; and, learning
that their guard had not accompanied them, entered that city with two
hundred men at five o'clock in the morning of Monday.[b] The main body with
their leader took possession of the market-place; while small detachments
brought away the horses from the several inns, liberated the prisoners in
the gaol, and surprised the sheriff and the two judges in their beds. At
first Wagstaff gave orders that these three should be immediately hanged;
for they were traitors acting under the authority of the usurper; then,
pretending to relent, he discharged the judges on their parole, but
detained the sheriff a prisoners because he had refused to proclaim Charles
Stuart. At two in the afternoon he left Salisbury, but not before he had
learned to doubt of the result. Scarcely a man had joined him of the crowd
of gentlemen and yeomen whom the assizes had collected in the town; and the
Hampshire royalists, about two hundred and fifty horse, had not arrived
according to their promise. From Salisbury the insurgents marched through
Dorsetshire into the county of Devon. Their hopes grew fainter every hour;
the further they proceeded, their number diminished; and, on the evening
of the third day,[c] they reached Southmolton in a state of exhaustion
and despondency. At that moment, Captain Crook, who had followed them for
several hours, charged into the town with a troop of cavalry. Hardly a show
of resistance was made; Penruddock, Grove, and Jones, three of the leaders,
with some fifty others, were made

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655. March 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1655. March 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1655. March 14.]

prisoners; the rest, of whom Wagstaff had the good fortune to be one, aided
by the darkness of the night, effected their escape.[1]

The Hampshire royalists had commenced their march for Salisbury, when,
learning that Wagstaff had left that city, they immediately dispersed.
Other risings at the same time took place in the counties of Montgomery,
Shropshire, Nottingham, York, and Northumberland, but everywhere with
similar results. The republicans, ardently as they desired to see the
protector humbled in the dust, were unwilling that his ruin should be
effected by a party whose ascendancy appeared to them a still more grievous
evil. The insurgents were ashamed and alarmed at the paucity of their
numbers; prudence taught them to disband before they proceeded to acts of
hostility; and they slunk away in secrecy to their homes, that they might
escape the proof, if not the suspicion, of guilt. Even Rochester himself,
sanguine as he was by disposition, renounced the attempt; and, with his
usual good fortune, was able to thread back his way, through a thousand
dangers, from the centre of Yorkshire to the court of the exiled sovereign
at Cologne.[2]

Whether it was through a feeling of shame, or apprehension of the
consequences, Cromwell, even under the provocations which he had received,
ventured not to bring to trial any of the men who had formerly fought by
his side, and now combined against him because he trampled on the liberties
of the nation. With the royalists it was otherwise. He knew that their
sufferings would excite little commiseration in those whose

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 620. Thurloe, iii. 263, 295, 306. Heath, 367.
Clarendon, iii. 551, 560. Ludlow, ii. 69. Vaughan, i. 149.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 618, 620. Heath, 368. Clarendon, iii. 560.]

favour he sought; and he was anxious to intimidate the more eager by the
punishment of their captive associates. Though they had surrendered[a]
under articles, Penruddock and Grove were beheaded at Exeter; about fifteen
others suffered in that city and in Salisbury; and the remainder were
sent to be sold for slaves in Barbadoes.[1] To these executions succeeded
certain measures of precaution. The protector forbade all ejected and
sequestered clergymen of the church of England to teach as schoolmasters
or tutors, or to preach or use the church service as ministers either in
public or private; ordered all priests belonging to the church of Rome
to quit the kingdom under the pain of death; banished all Cavaliers and
Catholics to the distance of twenty miles from the metropolis; prohibited
the publication in print of any news or intelligence without permission
from the secretary of state; and placed in confinement most of the nobility
and principal gentry in England, till they could produce bail for their
good behaviour and future appearance. In addition, an ordinance was
published that "all who had ever borne arms for the king, or declared
themselves to be of the royal party, should be decimated, that is, pay a
tenth part of all the estate which they had left, to support the charge
which the commonwealth was put to by the unquietness of their temper, and
the just cause of jealousy which they had administered." It is difficult
to conceive a more iniquitous imposition. It was subversive of the act of
oblivion formerly procured by Cromwell himself, which pretended to abolish
the memory of all past offences; contrary to natural justice, because it
involved the innocent and guilty in the same punishment; and productive

[Footnote 1: State Trials, v. 767-790.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655. May 16.]

of the most extensive extortions, because the commissioners included among
the enemies of the commonwealth those who had remained neutral between
the parties, or had not given satisfaction by the promptitude of their
services, or the amount of their contributions. To put the climax to these
tyrannical proceedings, he divided the country into eleven, and, at one
period, into fourteen, military governments, under so many officers, with
the name and rank of major-generals, giving them authority to raise a
force within their respective jurisdictions, which should serve only on
particular occasions; to levy the decimation and other public taxes; to
suppress tumults and insurrections; to disarm all papists and Cavaliers;
to inquire into the conduct of ministers and schoolmasters; and to arrest,
imprison, and bind over, all dangerous and suspected persons. Thus,
this long and sanguinary struggle, originally undertaken to recover the
liberties of the country, terminated in the establishment of a military
despotism. The institutions which had acted as restraints on the power of
preceding sovereigns were superseded or abolished; the legislative, as well
as the executive authority, fell into the grasp of the same individual; and
the best rights of the people were made to depend on the mere pleasure of
an adventurer, who, under the mask of dissimulation, had seized, and by the
power of the sword retained, the government of three kingdoms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sagredo, who had lately arrived as ambassador extraordinary,
thus describes the power of Cromwell:--"Non fa caro del nome, gli basta
possedere l'autorità e la potenza, senza comparazione majore non solo di
quanti re siano stati in Inghilterra, ma di quanti monarchi stringono
presentamente alcun scetro nel mondo. Smentite le legge fondamentali del
regno, egli è il solo legislatore: tutti i governi escono dalle sue mane, e
quelli del consiglio, per entrarvi, devono essere nominati da sua altezza,
ne possono divenir grandi, se non da lui inalzati. E perchè alcuno non
abbia modo di guadagnar autorità sopra l'armata, tutti gli
avanzamenti, senza passar per alcun mezzo, sono da lui direttamente
conosciuti."--Sagredo, MS.]


From domestic occurrences, we may now turn to those abroad. During the last
year, the two armaments which had so long engaged the attention of the
European nations, had sailed from the English ports. Their real, but
secret, destination was to invade the American colonies and surprise
the Plate fleet of Spain, the most ancient and faithful ally of the
commonwealth. To justify the measure, it was argued in the council that,
since America was not named in the treaties of 1604 and 1630, hostilities
in America would be no infraction of those treaties; that the Spaniards had
committed depredations on the English commerce in the West Indies, and were
consequently liable to reprisals; that they had gained possession of these
countries by force against the will of the natives, and might, therefore,
be justly dispossessed by force; and, lastly, that the conquest of these
transatlantic territories would contribute to spread the light of the
gospel among the Indians and to cramp the resources of popery in Europe.[1]
That such flimsy pretences should satisfy the judgment of the protector is
improbable; his mind was swayed by very different motives--the prospect of
reaping, at a small cost, an abundant harvest of wealth and glory, and the
opportunity of

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 760, 761; ii. 54, 154, 570. Ludlow, ii. 51, 105.
The article of the treaty of 1630, on which Cromwell rested his claim of a
free trade to the Indies, was the first, establishing peace between _all
the subjects_ of the two crowns (subditos quoscumque); that which, the
Spaniards alleged, was the seventh, in which as the king of Spain, would
not consent to a free trade to America, it was confined to those countries
in which, such free trade had been exercised before the war between
Elizabeth of England and Philip of Spain--words which excluded America as
effectually as if it had been named.--See Dumont, iv. part ii. p. 621.]

engaging in foreign service the officers of whose fidelity at home he had
good reason to be jealous.

The Spanish cabinet, arguing from circumstances, began to suspect his
object, and, as a last effort, sent[a] the marquess of Leyda ambassador
extraordinary to the court of London. He was graciously received, and
treated with respect; but, in defiance of his most urgent solicitations,
could not, during five months, obtain a positive answer to his proposals.
He represented to the protector the services which Spain had rendered to
the commonwealth; adverted to the conduct of De Baas, as a proof of the
insidious designs of Mazarin; maintained that the late insurrection had
been partially instigated by the intrigues of France; and that French
troops had been collected on the coast to accompany Charles Stuart to
England, if his friends had not been so quickly suppressed; and concluded
by offering to besiege Calais, and, on its reduction, to cede it to
Cromwell, provided he, on his part, would aid the prince of Condé in his
design of forcing his way into Bordeaux by sea. At length, wearied with
delays, and esteeming a longer residence in England a disgrace to
his sovereign, he demanded[b] passports, and was dismissed with many
compliments by the protector.[1]

In the mean while, Blake, who commanded one of the expeditions, had sailed
to the Straits of Gibraltar, where he received many civilities from the
Spanish authorities. Thence he proceeded up the Mediterranean, capturing,
under pretence of reprisals, the French vessels, whether merchantmen or
men-of-war, and seeking, but in vain, the fleet under the duke of Guise.
Returning to the south, he appeared before

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 761; ii. 54, 154, 570. Dumont, v. part ii. 106.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Jan.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. June 18.]

Algiers, and extorted from that government an illusory promise of respect
to the English flag. From Algiers he proceeded[a] to Tunis. To his demands
the dey replied: "There are Goletta, Porto Ferino, and my fleet; let him
destroy them if he can." Blake departed,[b] returned unexpectedly to Porto
Ferino, silenced the fire of the castle, entered the harbour, and burnt the
whole flotilla of nine men-of-war. This exploit induced the dey of Tripoli
to purchase the forbearance of the English by an apparent submission;
his Tunisian brother deemed it prudent to follow his example; and the
chastisement of the pirates threw an additional lustre on the fame of the
protector. There still remained, however, the great but concealed object of
the expedition,--the capture of the Plate fleet laden with the treasures of
the Indies; but Blake was compelled to remain so long before Cadiz that the
Spaniards discovered his design; and Philip, though he professed to think
the protector incapable of so dishonourable a project, permitted the
merchants to arm in defence of their property. More than thirty ships were
manned with volunteers: they sailed[c] from Cadiz under the command of Don
Pablos de Contreras, and continued for some days in sight of the English
fleet; but Pablos was careful to give no offence; and Blake, on the
reperusal of his instructions, did not conceive himself authorized to begin
the attack. After a long and tedious cruise, he received intelligence
that the galleons, his destined prey, were detained in the harbour of
Carthagena, and returned to England with a discontented mind and shattered
constitution. In regard to the principal object, the expedition had failed;
but this had never been avowed; and the people were taught to rejoice at
the laurels won in the destruction

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. March 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. April 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. August 15.]

of the Tunisian fleet, and the lesson given to the piratical tribes on the
northern coast of Africa.[1]

The other expedition consisted[a] of thirty sail and a military force of
three thousand men, under the joint command of Penn, as admiral, and
of Venables, as general. They spent several weeks among the English
settlements in the West Indies, and by the promise of plunder allured
to their standard many of the planters, and multitudes of the English,
Scottish, and Irish royalists, who had been transported thither as
prisoners of war. When they reached Hispaniola, Venables numbered ten
thousand men under his command; and, had the fleet boldly entered the
harbour of St. Domingo, it was believed that the town, unprepared for
resistance, must have immediately submitted. But the greater part of the
army was landed[b] at a point about forty miles distant, the expectations
of the men were disappointed by a proclamation, declaring that the plunder
was to be considered the public property of the commonwealth; the length of
the march, the heat of the climate, and the scarcity of water added to the
general discontent, and almost a fortnight elapsed before the invaders were
able to approach[c] the defences of the place. Their march lay through a
thick and lofty wood; and the advance suddenly found itself in front of a
battery which enfiladed the road to a considerable distance. On the first
discharge, the men rushed back on a regiment of foot; that, partaking in
the panic, on a squadron of

[Footnote 1: See in particular Blake's letters in Thurloe, iii. 232, 392,
541, 611, 620, 718; iv. 19. He complains bitterly of the bad state of the
ships, and of the privations suffered by the men, from the neglect of the
commissioners of the navy. The protector's instructions to him are in
Thurloe, i. 724.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Jan. 29.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. April.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. April 25.]

horse; and, while the infantry and cavalry were thus wedged together in
inextricable confusion, the Spanish marksmen kept up a most destructive
fire from behind the trees lining the road. After a long effort, the wood
was cleared by a body of seamen who served among the infantry, and darkness
put an end to the action, in which not fewer than a thousand men had
fallen. In the morning the English retired to their last encampment, about
ten miles from the town.

Here Venables called a council of officers, who, having previously sought
the Lord, determined[a] to "purge" the army. Some of the runaways were
hanged; the officer who commanded the advance was broken, and sent on board
the hospital ship to wait on the sick; the loose women who had followed the
army were apprehended and punished; and a solemn fast was proclaimed and
observed. But no fasting, praying, or purging could restore the spirits of
men humbled by defeat, enfeebled by disease, and reduced to the necessity
of feeding on the horses belonging to the cavalry. The attempt was
abandoned;[b] but, on their return, the two commanders made a descent on
the island of Jamaica. The Spanish settlers, about five hundred, fled to
the mountains; a capitulation[c] followed; and the island was ceded to
England. Could its flourishing condition in a subsequent period have been
foreseen, this conquest might have consoled the nation for the loss at
Hispaniola, and the disgrace of the attempt. But at that time Jamaica
was deemed an inconsiderable acquisition; the failure of the expedition
encouraged men to condemn the grounds on which it had been undertaken; and
Cromwell, mortified and ashamed, vented his displeasure

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. April 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. May 3.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. May 10.]

on Penn and Venables, the two commanders, whom, on their arrival, he
committed[a] to the Tower.[1]

To many it seemed a solecism in politics, that, when the protector
determined to break with Spain, he did not attempt to sell his services to
the great enemy of Spain, the king of France. For reasons which have never
been explained, he took no advantage of this circumstance; instead of
urging, he seemed anxious to retard, the conclusion of the treaty with that
power; after each concession he brought forward new and more provoking
demands; and, as if he sought to prevail by intimidation, commissioned
Blake to ruin the French commerce, and to attack the French fleet in the
Mediterranean. By Louis these insults were keenly felt; but his pride
yielded to his interest; expedients were found to satisfy all the claims of
the protector; and at length the time for the signature of the treaty was
fixed, when an event occurred to furnish new pretexts for delay, that
event, which by Protestants has been called the massacre, by Catholics the
rebellion, of the Vaudois.

About the middle of the thirteenth century the peculiar doctrines of the
"poor men of Lyons" penetrated

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, ii. 46-52. Thurloe, iii. 504, 509, 689, 755;
iv. 28. Bates, 367. Penn and Venables having resigned their commissions,
were discharged.--Council Book, 1655, Oct. 26, 31. It appears from the
papers in Thurloe that Cromwell paid great attention to the prosperity of
the West Indian colonies, as affording facilities to future attempts on the
American continent. To increase the population, he had, as the reader is
already aware, forcibly taken up a thousand young girls in Ireland, and
sent them to Jamaica; in 1656, while Sagredo was in London, he ordered all
females of disorderly lives to be arrested and shipped for Barbadoes for
the like purpose. Twelve hundred were sent in three ships. Ho veduto prima
del mio partire piu squadre di soldati andar per Londra cercando donne di
allegra vita, imbarcandone 1,200 sopre tre vascelli per tragittarle all'
isola, a fine di far propagazione.--Sagredro, MS.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. August 31.]

into the valleys of Piedmont, where they were cherished in obscurity till
the time of the Reformation, and were then exchanged in a great measure,
first for Lutheranism, and then for the creed publicly taught at Geneva.
The duke of Savoy by successive grants confirmed to the natives the
free exercise of their religion, on condition that they should confine
themselves within their ancient limits;[1] but complaints were made that
several among the men of Angrogna had abused their privileges to form
settlements and establish their worship in the plains; and the court of
Turin, wearied with the conflicting statements of the opposite parties,
referred[a] the decision of the dispute to the civilian Andrea Gastaldo.[2]
After a long and patient hearing, he pronounced a definitive judgment, that
Lucerna and some other places lay without the original boundaries, and that
the intruders should withdraw under the penalties of forfeiture and death.
At the same time, however, permission was given to them to sell for their
own profit the lands which they had planted, though by law these lands had
become the property of the sovereign.[3]

The Vaudois were a race of hardy, stubborn, half-civilized mountaineers,
whose passions were readily kindled, and whose resolves were as violent as
they were sudden. At first they submitted sullenly to the

[Footnote 1: These were the four districts of Angrogna, Villaro, Bobbio,
and Rorata.--Siri, del Mercurio, overo Historia de' Correnti Tempi Firenze,
1682, tom. xv. p. 827.]

[Footnote 2: Gilles, Pastore de la Terre, p. 72, Geneve, 1644; and Rorengo,
Memorie Historiche, p. 8, 1649.]

[Footnote 3: The decree of Gastaldo is in Morland, History of the
Evangelical Churches in the valleys of Piedmont, p. 303. The grounds of
that decree are at p. 408, the objections to it at p. 423. See also Siri,
xv. 827, 830; Chiesa, Corona Reale di Savoia, i. 150; Denina, iii. 324;
Guichenon, iii. 139.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655 June 19.]

judgment of Gastaldo, but sent deputies to Turin, to remonstrate; in a
few days a solemn fast was proclaimed; the ministers excommunicated every
individual who should sell his lands in the disputed territory; the natives
of the valleys under the dominion of the king of France met those of the
valleys belonging to the duke of Savoy; both bound themselves by oath to
stand by each other in their common defence; and messengers were despatched
to solicit aid and advice from the church of Geneva and the Protestant
cantons of Switzerland. The intelligence alarmed the Marquess of Pianeze,
the chief minister of the duke; who, to suppress the nascent confederacy,
marched from Turin with an armed force, reduced La Torre, into which the
insurgents had thrown a garrison of six hundred men, and, having made an
offer of pardon to all who should submit, ordered his troops to fix their
quarters in Bobbio, Villaro, and the lower part of Angrogna. It had
previously been promised[a] that they should be peaceably received; but
the inhabitants had already retired to the mountains with their cattle and
provisions; and the soldiers found no other accommodation than the bare
walls. Quarrels soon followed between the parties; one act of offence was
retaliated with another; and the desire of vengeance provoked a war of
extermination. But the military were in general successful; and the
natives found themselves compelled to flee to the summits of the loftiest
mountains, or to seek refuge in the valleys of Dauphiné, among a people of
similar habits and religion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Siri, xv. 827-833. It would be a difficult task to determine
by whom, after the reduction of La Torre, the first blood was wantonly
drawn, or to which party the blame of superior cruelty really belongs. The
authorities on each side are interested, and therefore suspicious; the
provocations alleged by the one are as warmly denied by the other; and
to the ravages of the military in Angrogna and Lucerna, are opposed the
massacres of the Catholics in Perousa and San Martino. In favour of the
Vaudois may be consulted Leger, Histoire Générale des Eglises Evangéliques,
&c. (he was a principal instigator of these troubles); Stouppe, Collection
of the several papers sent to his highness, &c. London, 1655; Sabaudiensis
in Reformatam Religionem Persecutionis Brevis Narratio, Londini, 1655;
Morland, 326-384, and the papers in Thurloe, iii. 361, 384, 412, 416, 430,
444, 459, 538. Against them--A Short and Faithful Account of the late
Commotions &c., with some reflections on Mr. Stouppe's Collected Papers,
1655; Morland, 387-404; Siri, xv. 827-843, and Thurloe, iii. 413, 464, 475,
490, 502, 535, 535, 617, 626, 656.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. April 7.]


Accounts of these transactions, but accounts teeming with exaggeration and
improbabilities, were transmitted to the different Protestant states by the
ministers at Geneva. They represented the duke of Savoy as a bigoted and
intolerant prince; the Vaudois as an innocent race, whose only crime was
their attachment to the reformed faith. They implored the Protestant
powers to assume the defence of their persecuted brethren, and called for
pecuniary contributions to save from destruction by famine the remnant
which had escaped the edge of the sword.[1] In England the cause was
advocated[a] by the press and from the pulpit; a solemn fast was kept, and
the passions of the people were roused to enthusiasm. The ministers in a
body waited on Cromwell to recommend the Vaudois to his protection; the
armies in Scotland and Ireland presented addresses, expressive of their
readiness to shed their blood in so sacred a cause; and all classes of men,
from the highest to

[Footnote 1: The infidelity of these reports is acknowledged by Morland,
the protector's agent, in a confidential letter to secretary Thurloe. "The
greatest difficulty I meet with is in relation to the matter of fact in the
beginning of these troubles, and during the time of the war. For I find,
upon diligent search, that many papers and books which have been put out in
print on this subject, even by some ministers of the valleys, are lame in
many particulars, and in many things not conformable to truth."--Thurloe,
iv. 417.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. May.]

the lowest, hastened to contribute their money towards the support of the
Piedmontese Protestants. It was observed that, among those who laboured to
inflame the prejudices of the people, none were more active than the two
ambassadors from Spain, and Stouppe, the minister of the French church in
London.[1] Both had long laboured to prevent the conclusion of the treaty
with France; and they now hoped to effect their purpose, because Savoy was
the ally of France, and the principal barbarities were said to have been
perpetrated by troops detached from the French army.[2]

These events opened a flattering prospect to the vanity of Cromwell. By his
usurpation he had forfeited all claim to the title of the champion of civil
liberty; he might still come forward, in the sight of Europe, in the more
august character of the protector of the reformed faith. His first care was
to make, through Stouppe, a promise to the Vaudois of his support, and an
offer to transplant them to Ireland, and to settle them on the lands of
the Irish Catholics; of which the first was accepted with expressions of
gratitude, and the other respectfully declined.[3] He next solicited the
king of France to join with him in mediating between the duke of Savoy and
his subjects of the valleys; and received for answer, that

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iii. 470, 680. Siri, xv. 468.]

[Footnote 2: Under Pianeze were some troops detached from the French army
commanded by Prince Thomas of Savoy. It was reported that a regiment
of Irish Catholics formed a part of this detachment; and to them were
attributed, of course, the most horrible barbarities.--Leger, iii. Stouppe,
Preface. Thurloe, iii. 412, 459, 460. On inquiry, it was discovered that
these supposed Irishmen were English. "The Irish regiment said to be there
was the earl of Bristol's regiment, a small and weak one, most of
them being English. I hear not such complaints of them as you set
forth."--Thurloe, iii. 50.]

[Footnote 3: Thurloe, iii. 459.]

Louis had already interposed his good offices, and had reason to expect a
favourable result. Lastly, he sent[a] Morland as ambassador to Turin, where
he was honourably received, and entertained at the duke's expense. To
his memorial in favour of the Vaudois, it was replied,[b] that out of
compliment to Cromwell their rebellion, though unprovoked, should be
forgiven; but his further interference was checked by the announcement that
the particulars of the pacification had been wholly referred to Servien,
the French ambassador.[1]

At home, Cromwell had signified his intention of postponing the signature
of the treaty with France till he was acquainted with the opinion of Louis
on the subject of the troubles in Piedmont. Bordeaux remonstrated[c]
against this new pretext for delay; he maintained that the question bore no
relation to the matter of the treaty; that the king of France would never
interfere with the internal administration of an independent state; that
the duke of Savoy had as good a right to make laws for his Protestant
subjects, as the English government for the Catholics of the three
kingdoms; and that the Vaudois were in reality rebels who had justly
incurred the resentment of their sovereign. But Cromwell was not to be
diverted[d] from his purpose. It was in vain that the ambassador asked for
a final answer; that he demanded[e] an audience of leave preparatory to his
departure. At last he was relieved from his perplexity by an order[f] to
announce that the duke, at the request of the king of France, had granted
an amnesty to the Vaudois, and confirmed their ancient privileges; that the
boon had been gratefully received by the insurgents; and that

[Footnote 1: Thurloe iii. 528, 608, 636, 656, 672. Siri, ibid. Vaugh. 248.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. May 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. June 21.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1656. May 24.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1656. June 18.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1656. June 21. [Sidenote f: A.D. 1656. August 20.]

the natives of the valleys, Protestants and Catholics had met, embraced
each other with tears, and sworn to live in perpetual amity together. The
unexpected intelligence was received by Cromwell with a coldness which
betrayed his disappointment.[1] But, if the pacification broke the new
projects which he meditated,[2] it served to raise his fame in the
estimation of Europe; for it was evident that the Vaudois owed the
favourable conditions which they obtained,[a] not so much to the good-will
of Louis, as to his anxiety that no pretext should remain for the future
interference of the protector.[3]

But though tranquillity was restored in Piedmont, Cromwell was still
unwilling to conclude the treaty till he had ascertained what impression
had been made on the king of Spain by the late attempt on Hispaniola.
To Philip, already engaged in war with France, it was painful to add so
powerful an adversary to the number

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iii. 469, 470, 475, 535, 568, 706, 724, 742, 745.
Siri, xv. 843.]

[Footnote 2: The Protestant cantons of Switzerland had sent Colonel Mey to
England, offering to raise an army in aid of the Vaudois, if Cromwell would
furnish a subsidy of ten thousand pounds per month.--Siri, Mercurio, xv.
472. In consequence Downing was despatched as envoy to these cantons; but
the pacification was already concluded; and on his arrival at Geneva, he
received orders, dated Aug. 30, to return immediately.--Thurloe, iii. 692,
694; iv. 31. Still the design was not abandoned, but intrusted to Morland,
who remained at Geneva, to distribute the money from England. What were his
secret instructions may be seen, ibid. p. 326.]

[Footnote 3: The conditions may be seen in Morland, 652; Dumont, vi. part
ii. p. 114; and Leger, 216. The subscription for the Vaudois, of which
two thousands pounds was given by the protector, amounted to thirty eight
thousand two hundred and twenty-eight pounds four shillings and twopence.
Of this sum twenty-five thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight pounds
eight shillings and ninepence was sent at different times to the valleys;
four hundred and sixty-three pounds seventeen shillings was charged
for expenses; and about five hundred pounds was found to be clipt or
counterfeit money.--Journals, 11 July, 1559.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. August 8.]

of his enemies; but the affront was so marked, so unjust, so unprovoked,
that to submit to it in silence was to subscribe to his own degradation. He
complained,[a] in dignified language, of the ingratitude and injustice of
the English government; contrasted with its conduct his own most scrupulous
adhesion both to the letter and the spirit of the treaties between the
kingdoms; ordered that all ships, merchandize, and property belonging to
the subjects of the commonwealth should be seized and secured in every part
of his dominions, and instructed his ambassador in London to remonstrate
and take his leave.[1] The day after the passport was delivered to Don
Alonzo, Cromwell consented[b] to the signature of the treaty with France.
It provided that the maritime hostilities, which had so long harassed the
trade of the two nations, should cease, that the relations of amity and
commerce should be restored; and, by a separate, and therefore called a
secret, article, that Barriere, agent for the prince of Condé, and nine
other Frenchmen, equally obnoxious to the French ministry, should be
perpetually excluded from the territory of the commonwealth; and that
Charles Stuart, his brother the duke of York, Ormond, Hyde, and fifteen
other adherents of the exiled prince, should, in the same manner, be
excluded from the kingdom of France.[2] The protector had persuaded

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iv. 19, 20, 21, 82, 91.]

[Footnote 2: Dumont, vi. part ii. p. 121. In the body of the treaty,
neither the king nor the protector is named; all the articles are
stipulated between the commonwealth of England and the kingdom of France.
In the preamble, however, the king of France is mentioned, and in the first
place, but not as if this arose from any claim of precedency; for it merely
relates, that the most Christian king sent his ambassador to England, and
the most serene lord, the protector, appointed commissioners to meet him.
When the treaty was submitted to Bordeaux, previously to his signature, he
discovered an alteration in the usual title of his sovereign, Rex Gallorum
(the very title afterwards adopted by the National Assembly), instead
of Rex Galliarum, and on that account refused to sign it. After a
long contestation, he yielded to the arguments of the Dutch
ambassador.--Thurloe, iv. 115.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Sept. 1.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Oct. 24.]

himself that, if the house of Stuart was to be restored, it must be through
the aid of France; and he hoped, by the addition of this secret article,
to create a bitter and lasting enmity between the two families. Nor was
he content with this. As soon as the ratifications had been exchanged, he
proposed a more intimate alliance between England and France. Bordeaux
was instructed to confine himself in his reply to general expressions of
friendship. He might receive any communications which were offered; he was
to make no advances on the part of his sovereign.




CHAPTER VII.


Poverty And Character Of Charles Stuart--War With
Spain--Parliament--Exclusion Of Members--Punishment Of Naylor--Proposal
To Make Cromwell King--His Hesitation And Refusal--New
Constitution--Sindercomb--Sexby--Alliance With France--Parliament Of
Two Houses--Opposition In The Commons--Dissolution--Reduction Of
Dunkirk--Sickness Of The Protector--His Death And Character.


The reader is aware that the young king of Scots, after his escape from
Worcester, had returned to Paris, defeated but not disgraced. The spirit
and courage which he had displayed were taken as an earnest of future
and more successful efforts; and the perilous adventures which he had
encountered threw a romantic interest round the character of the royal
exile. But in Paris he found himself without money or credit, followed by a
crowd of faithful dependants, whose indigence condemned them to suffer the
most painful privations. His mother, Henrietta, herself in no very opulent
circumstances, received him into her house and to her table; after the
lapse of six months, the French king settled on him a monthly allowance
of six thousand francs;[1] and to this were added the casual supplies
furnished by the loyalty of his adherents in England, and his share of the
prizes made by the cruisers under his flag.[2] Yet, with all these aids, he

[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 441. Thirteen francs were equivalent to an English
pound.]

[Footnote 2: His claim was one-fifteenth, that of the duke of York, as
admiral, one-tenth. See a collection of letters, almost exclusively on that
subject, between Sir Edward Hyde and Sir Richard Browne.--Evelyn's Mem. v.
241, et seq.]

was scarcely able to satisfy the more importunate of his creditors, and to
dole out an occasional pittance to his more immediate followers. From their
private correspondence it appears that the most favoured among them were at
a loss to procure food and clothing.[1]

Yet, poor as he was, Charles had been advised to keep up the name and
appearance of a court. He had his lord-keeper, his chancellor of the
exchequer, his privy councillors, and most of the officers allotted to
a royal establishment; and the eagerness of pursuit, the competition of
intrigue with which these nominal dignities were sought by the exiles,
furnish scenes which cannot fail to excite the smile or the pity of an
indifferent spectator. But we should remember that they were the only
objects left open to the ambition of these men; that they offered scanty,
yet desirable, salaries to their poverty; and that they held out the
promise of more substantial benefits on the restoration of the king, an
event which, however distant it might seem to the apprehension of others,
was always near in the belief of the more ardent royalists.[2]

Among these competitors for place were two, who soon acquired, and long
retained, the royal confidence,

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Pap. iii. 120, 124. "I do not know that any man is
yet dead for want of bread; which really I wonder at. I am sure the king
owes for all he hath eaten since April: and I am not acquainted with one
servant of his who hath a pistole in his pocket. Five or six of us eat
together one meal a day for a pistole a week; but all of us owe for God
knows how many weeks to the poor woman that feeds us."--Clarendon Papers,
iii. 174. June 27, 1653. "I want shoes and shirts, and the marquess
of Ormond is in no better condition. What help then can we give our
friends?"--Ibid. 229, April 3, 1654. See also Carte's Letters, ii. 461.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Pap. iii. 83, 99, 106, 136, 162, 179, 187, et
passim. Clarendon, History, iii. 434, 435, 453.]

the marquess of Ormond and Sir Edward Hyde. Ormond owed the distinction to
the lustre of his family, the princely fortune which he had lost in the
royal cause, his long though unsuccessful services in Ireland, and the high
estimation in which he had been held by the late monarch. In talent and
application Hyde was superior to any of his colleagues. Charles I. had
appointed him chancellor of the exchequer, and counsellor to the young
prince; and the son afterwards confirmed by his own choice the judgment of
his father. Hyde had many enemies; whether it was that by his hasty and
imperious temper he gave cause of offence, or that unsuccessful suitors,
aware of his influence with the king, attributed to his counsels the
failure of their petitions. But he was not wanting in his own defences; the
intrigues set on foot to remove him from the royal ear were defeated by his
address; and the charges brought against him of disaffection and treachery
were so victoriously refuted, as to overwhelm the accuser with confusion
and disgrace.[1]

The expectations, however, which Charles had raised by his conduct in
England were soon disappointed. He seemed to lose sight of his three
kingdoms amidst the gaieties of Paris. His pleasures and amusements
engrossed his attention; it was with difficulty that he could be drawn to
the consideration of business; and, if he promised to devote a few hours on
each Friday to the writing of letters and the signature of despatches, he
often discovered sufficient reasons to free himself from the burthen.[2]
But that which chiefly distressed

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 138, 510, 515-520. Lansdowne's Works, ii.
236-241, quoted by Harris, iv. 153. Clarendon Papers, iii. 84, 92 138, 188,
200, 229.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon Papers, iii. 159, 170.]

his advisers was the number and publicity of his amours; and, in
particular, the utter worthlessness of one woman, who by her arts had won
his affection, and by her impudence exercised the control over his easy
temper. This was Lucy Walters, or Barlow, the mother of a child, afterwards
the celebrated duke of Monmouth, of whom Charles believed himself to be
the father.[1] Ormond and Hyde laboured to dissolve this disgraceful
connection. They represented to the king the injury which it did to the
royal cause in England, where the appearances at least of morality were so
highly respected; and, after several temporary separations, they prevailed
on Walters to accept[a] an annuity of four hundred pounds, and to repair
with her child to her native country. But Cromwell sent her back to France;
and she returned[b] to Paris, where by her lewdness she forfeited the royal
favour, and shortened her own days. Her son was taken from her by the Lord
Crofts, and placed under the care of the Oratoriens in Paris.[2]

But if Charles was incorrigible in the pursuit of pleasure, he proved a
docile pupil on the subject of

[Footnote 1: She was previously the mistress of Colonel Robert Sydney; and
her son bore so great a resemblance to that officer, that the duke of York
always looked upon Sydney as the father.--Life of James, i. 491. James
in his instructions to his son, says, "All the knowing world, as well as
myself, had many convincing reasons to think he was not the king's son,
but Robert Sydney's."--Macpherson's Papers, i. 77. Evelyn calls Barlow "a
browne, beautiful, bold, but insipid creature."--Diary, ii. 11.]

[Footnote 2: James, i. 492; Clarendon's Own Life, 205. Clarendon Papers,
iii. 180. Thurloe, v. 169, 178; vii. 325. Charles, in the time of his
exile, had also children by Catherine Peg and Elizabeth Killigrew.--See
Sanford, 646, 647. In the account of Barlow's discharge from the Tower,
by Whitelock, we are told that she called herself the wife of Charles
(Whitelock, 649); in the Mercurius Politicus, she is styled "his wife or
mistress."--Ellis, new series, iii. 352.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Jan. 21.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. July 16.]

religion. On one hand, the Catholics, on the other, the Presbyterians,
urged him by letters and messages to embrace their respective modes of
worship. The former maintained that he could recover the crown only through
the aid of the Catholic sovereigns, and had no reason to expect such aid
while he professed himself a member of that church which had so long
persecuted the English Catholics.[1] The others represented themselves as
holding the destiny of the king in their hands; they were royalists at
heart, but how could they declare in favour of a prince who had apostatized
from the covenant which he had taken in Scotland, and whose restoration
would probably re-establish the tyranny of the bishops?[2] The king's
advisers repelled these attempts with warmth and indignation. They observed
to him that, to become a Catholic was to arm all his Protestant subjects
against him; to become a Presbyterian, was to alienate all who had been
faithful to his father, both Protestants of the

[Footnote 1: Yet he made application in 1654 to the pope, through Goswin
Nickel, general of the order of Jesuits, for a large sum of money, which
might enable him to contend for his kingdom at the head of an army of Irish
Catholics; promising, in case of success, to grant the free exercise of the
Catholic religion, and every other indulgence which could be reasonably
asked. The reason alleged for this application was that the power of
Cromwell was drawing to a close, and the most tempting offers had been made
to Charles by the Presbyterians: but the Presbyterians were the most cruel
enemies of the Catholics, and he would not owe his restoration to them,
till he had sought and been refused the aid of the Catholic powers. From
the original, dated at Cologne, 17th Nov. 1654, N.S., and subscribed by
Peter Talbot, afterwards Catholic archbishop of Dublin, ex mandato expresso
Regis Britanniarum. It was plainly a scheme on the part of Charles to
procure money; and probably failed of success.]

[Footnote 2: Both these parties were equally desirous of having the young
duke of Gloucester of their religion.--Clar. Pap. iii. 153, 155. The queen
mother placed him under the care of Montague, her almoner at Pontoise; but
Charles sent Ormond, who brought him away to Cologne.--Clar. Hist. iii.
545: Papers, iii. 256-260. Evelyn, v. 205, 208.]

church of England and Catholics. He faithfully followed their advice; to
both parties he promised, indeed, every indulgence in point of religion
which they could reasonably desire; but avowed, at the same time, his
determination to live and die a member of that church in defence of which
his father had fought and suffered. It is not, however, improbable that
these applications, with the arguments by which they were supported, had
a baneful influence on the mind of the king. They created in him an
indifference to religious truth, a persuasion that men always model their
belief according to their interest.[1]

As soon as Cardinal Mazarin began to negotiate with the protector, the
friends of Charles persuaded him to quit the French territory. By the
French minister the proposal was gratefully received; he promised the
royal fugitive the continuation of his pension, ordered the arrears to be
immediately discharged, and paid him for the next half-year in advance.[2]
Charles fixed[a] his residence at Cologne, where he remained for almost two
years, till the rupture between England and Spain called him again into
activity.[3] After some previous negotiation, he repaired

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, iii. 163, 164, 256, 281, 298, 316; Hist.
iii. 443]

[Footnote 2: Seven thousand two hundred pistoles for twelve months'
arrears, and three thousand six hundred for six in advance.--Clar. Pap.
iii. 293.]

[Footnote 3: While Charles was at Cologne, he was surrounded by spies, who
supplied Cromwell with copious information, though it is probable that they
knew little more than the public reports in the town. On one occasion the
letters were opened at the post-office, and a despatch was found from a
person named Manning to Thurloe. Being questioned before Charles, Manning
confessed that he received an ample maintenance from the protector, but
defended himself on the ground that he was careful to communicate nothing
but what was false. That this plea was true, appeared from his despatch,
which was filled with a detailed account of a fictitious debate in the
council: but the falsehoods which he had sent to England had occasioned the
arrest and imprisonment of several royalists, and Manning was shot as a
traitor at Duynwald, in the territory of the duke of Neuburg.--Clar. iii.
563-569. Whitelock, 633. Thurloe, iv. 293.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. March 12.]

to the neighbourhood of Brussels, and offered himself as a valuable ally to
the Spanish monarch. He had it in his power to call the English and Irish
regiments in the French service to his own standard; he possessed numerous
adherents in the English navy; and, with the aid of money and ships, he
should be able to contend once more for the crown of his fathers, and to
meet the usurper on equal terms on English ground. By the Spanish ministers
the proposal was entertained, but with their accustomed slowness. They had
to consult the cabinet at Madrid; they were unwilling to commit themselves
so far as to cut off all hope of reconciliation with the protector; and
they had already accepted the offers of another enemy to Cromwell, whose
aid, in the opinion of Don Alonzo, the late ambassador, was preferable to
that of the exiled king.[1]

This enemy was Colonel Sexby. He had risen from the ranks to the office of
adjutant-general in the parliamentary army; and his contempt of danger
and enthusiasm for liberty had so far recommended him to the notice of
Cromwell, that the adjutant was occasionally honoured with a place in
the councils, and a share in the bed, of the lord-general. But Sexby had
attached himself to the cause, not to the man; and his admiration, as soon
as Cromwell apostatized from his former principles, was converted into the
most deadly hatred. On the expulsion of the long parliament, he joined
Wildman and the Levellers: Wildman was apprehended; but Sexby eluded the
vigilance of the

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 275, 279, 286.]

pursuivants, and traversed the country in disguise, everywhere distributing
pamphlets, and raising up enemies to the protector. In the month of May,
1655, he repaired to the court at Brussels. To the archduke and the count
of Fuensaldagna, he revealed[a] the real object of the secret expedition
under Venables and Penn; and offered the aid of the English Levellers for
the destruction of a man, the common enemy of the liberties of his country
and of the rights of Spain. They were a numerous and determined band of
patriots; they asked no other aid than money and the co-operation of the
English and Irish troops in the Spanish service; and they were ready, for
security, to deliver a strong maritime fortress into the hands of their
allies. Fuensaldagna hesitated to give a positive answer before an actual
rupture had taken place; and at his recommendation Sexby proceeded
to Madrid. At first he was received with coldness; but the news from
Hispaniola established his credit; the value of his information was now
acknowledged; he obtained the sum of forty thousand crowns for the use of
his party, and an assurance was given that, as soon as they should be in
possession of the port which he had named, six thousand men should sail[b]
from Flanders to their assistance. Sexby returned to Antwerp, transmitted
several large sums to his adherents, and, though Cromwell at length
obtained information of the intrigue, though the last remittance of eight
hundred pounds had been seized, the intrepid Leveller crossed over[c] to
England, made his arrangements with his associates, and returned[d] in
safety to the continent.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarend. Pap. iii. 271, 272, 274, 277, 281, 285. Thurloe, iv.
698; v. 37, 100, 319, 349; vi. 829-833. Carte's Letters, ii. 85, 103.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1655. June.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Jan.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1656. June.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1656. August.]


It now became the object of the Spanish ministers, who had, at last,
accepted[a] the offer of Charles, to effect an union between him and Sexby,
that, by the co-operation of the Levellers with the royalists, the common
enemy might more easily be subdued. Sexby declared[b] that he had no
objection to a limited monarchy, provided it were settled by a free
parliament. He believed that his friends would have none; but he advised
that, at the commencement of the attempt, the royalists should make no
mention of the king, but put forth as their object the destruction of the
usurper and the restoration of public liberty. Charles, on the other hand,
was willing to make use of the services of Sexby; but he did not believe
that his means were equal to his professions, and he saw reason to infer,
from the advice which he had given, that his associates were enemies to
royalty.[1]

The negotiation between the king and the Spanish ministers began to alarm
both Cromwell and Mazarin. The cardinal anticipated the defection of the
British and Irish regiments in the French service; the protector foresaw
that they would probably be employed in a descent upon England. It was
resolved to place the duke of York in opposition to his brother. That
young prince had served with his regiment during four campaigns, under
the Marshal Turenne; his pay as colonel, and his pension of six thousand
pistoles, amply provided for his wants; and his bravery in the field had
gained him the esteem of the general, and rendered him the idol of his
countrymen. Instead of banishing him, according to the secret article,
from France, Mazarin, with the concurrence of Cromwell, offered him the
appointment of captain-general in the

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 303, 311, 313, 315-317.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. July 27.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Dec. 14.]

army of Italy. By James it was accepted with gratitude and enthusiasm; but
Charles commanded him to resign the office, and to repair immediately to
Bruges. He obeyed; his departure[a] was followed by the resignation of
most of the British and Irish officers in the French army; and, in many
instances, the men followed the example of their leaders. Defeated in this
instance, Cromwell and Mazarin had recourse to another intrigue, of which
the secret springs are concealed from our sight. It was insinuated by some
pretended friend to Don Juan, the new governor of the Netherlands, that
little reliance was to be placed on James, who was sincerely attached to
France, and governed by Sir John Berkeley, the secret agent of the French
court, and the known enemy of Hyde and his party. In consequence, the real
command of the royal forces was given to Marsin, a foreigner; an oath of
fidelity to Spain was, with the consent of Charles, exacted[b] from the
officers and soldiers; and in a few days James was first requested and then
commanded[c] by his brother to dismiss Berkeley. The young prince did not
refuse; but he immediately followed[d] Berkeley into Holland with the
intention of passing through Germany into France. His departure was hailed
with joy by Cromwell, who wrote a congratulatory letter to Mazarin on the
success of this intrigue; it was an object of dismay to Charles, who by
messengers entreated and commanded[e] James to return. At Breda, the prince
appeared to hesitate. He soon afterwards retraced his steps to Bruges, on
a promise that the past should be forgotten; Berkeley followed; and the
triumph of the fugitives was completed by the elevation of the obnoxious
favourite to the peerage.[1]

[Footnote 1: Of the flight of James, Clarendon makes no mention in his
History. He even seeks to persuade his reader that the duke was compelled
to leave France in consequence of the secret article (iii. 610, 614;
Papers, iii. Supplement, lxxix), though it is plain from the Memoirs of
James, that he left unwillingly, in obedience to the absolute command of
his brother.--James, i. 270. Clarendon makes the enmity between himself and
Berkeley arise from his opposition to Berkeley's claim to the mastership
of the Court of Wards (Hist. 440; Papers, Ibid.); James, from Clarendon's
advice to Lady Morton to reject Berkeley's proposal of marriage.--James, i.
273. That the removal of Berkeley originated with Mazarin and was required
by Fuensaldagna, who employed Lord Bristol and Bennet for that purpose,
appears from Cromwell's letter to the cardinal (Thurloe, v. 736); Bristol's
letter to the king (Clar. Papers, iii. 318), and Clarendon's account of
Berkeley (ibid. Supplement, lxxix). See also ibid. 317-324; and the Memoirs
of James, i. 366-293.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Sept. 1.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Dec. 5.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1656. Dec. 13.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1656. Dec. 16.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1657. Jan. 13.]

We may now return to England, where the Spanish war had excited general
discontent. By the friends of the commonwealth Spain was considered as
their most ancient and faithful ally; the merchants complained that the
trade with that country, one of the most lucrative branches of British
commerce, was taken out of their hands and given to their rivals in
Holland; and the saints believed that the failure of the expedition to
Hispaniola was a sufficient proof that Heaven condemned this breach of the
amity between the two states. It was to little purpose that Cromwell, to
vindicate his conduct, published a manifesto, in which, having enumerated
many real or pretended injuries and barbarities inflicted on Englishmen by
the Spaniards in the West Indies, he contended that the war was just, and
honourable, and necessary. His enemies, royalists, Levellers, Anabaptists,
and republicans, of every description, did not suffer the clamour against
him to subside; and, to his surprise, a request was made[a] by some of the
captains of another fleet collected at Portsmouth, to be informed of
the object of the expedition. If it were destined against Spain, their
consciences would compel them to decline the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. March 2.]

service. Spain was not the offending party; for the instances of aggression
enumerated in the manifesto[a] were well known to have been no more than
acts of self-defence against the depredations and encroachments of English
adventurers.[1] To suppress this dangerous spirit, Desborough hastened to
Portsmouth: some of the officers resigned their commissions, others were
superseded, and the fleet at length sailed[b] under the joint command
of Blake and Montague, of whom the latter possessed the protector's
confidence, and was probably employed as a spy on the conduct of his
colleague. Their destination in the first place was Cadiz, to destroy the
shipping in the harbour, and to make an attempt on that city, or the rock
of Gibraltar. On their arrival,[c] they called a council of war; but no
pilot could be found hardy or confident enough to guide the fleet through
the winding channel of the Caraccas; and the defences of both Cadiz and
Gibraltar presented too formidable an aspect to allow a hope of success
without the co-operation of a military force.[2] Abandoning the attempt,
the two admirals proceeded[d] to Lisbon, and extorted from the king
of Portugal the ratification of the treaty formerly concluded by his
ambassador, with the payment of the stipulated sum of fifty thousand
pounds. Thence they returned[e] to Cadiz, passed the straits, insulted the
Spaniards in Malaga, the Moors in Sallee, and after a fruitless cruise
of more than two mouths, anchored[f] a second time in the Tagus.[3] It
happened, that just after their arrival Captain Stayner, with a squadron of
frigates, fell in[g] with a Spanish fleet of eight sail from America. Of

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iv. 571. See also 582, 589, 594. Carte's Letters, ii.
87, 90, 92, 95.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, v. 67, 133.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. i. 726-730; v. 68, 113, 257, 286. Vaughan, i. 446.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. March 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. March 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1657. April 15.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1657. May 29.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1657. June 10.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1657. July 10.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1657. Sept. 10.]

these he destroyed four, and captured two, one of which was laden, with
treasure. Montague, who came home with the prize, valued it in his despatch
at two hundred thousand pounds; the public prints at two millions of
ducats; and the friends of Cromwell hailed the event "as a renewed
testimony of God's presence, and some witness of his acceptance of the
engagement against Spain."[1]

The equipment of this fleet had exhausted the treasury, and the protector
dared not impose additional taxes on the country at a time when his right
to levy the ordinary revenue was disputed in the courts of law. On the
ground that the parliamentary grants were expired, Sir Peter Wentworth had
refused to pay the assessment in the country, and Coney, a merchant,
the duties on imports in London. The commissioners imposed fines, and
distrained; the aggrieved brought actions against the collectors. Cromwell,
indeed, was able to suppress these proceedings by imprisoning the counsel
and intimidating their clients; but the example was dangerous; the want of
money daily increased; and, by the advice of the council, he consented to
call a parliament to meet on the 17th of September.[2]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, 399, 433, 509, 524. Carte's Letters, ii. 114. It
appears from a letter of Colonel White, that the silver in pigs weighed
something more than forty thousand pounds, to which were to be added some
chests of wrought plate.--Thurloe, 542. Thurloe himself says all was
plundered to about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or three hundred
thousand pounds sterling (557). The ducat was worth nine shillings.]

[Footnote 2: Carte's Letters, ii. 96, 103, 109. Ludlow, ii. 80-82. Clar.
Hist. iii. 649. See also A Narrative of the Proceedings in the case of
Mr. G. Coney, by S. Selwood, gent., 1655. The Jews had offered Cromwell
a considerable sum for permission to settle and trade in England.
Commissioners were appointed to confer with their agent Manasseh Ben
Israel, and a council of divines was consulted respecting the lawfulness of
the project. The opposition of the merchants and theologians induced him to
pause; but Mr. Ellis has shown that he afterwards took them silently under
his protection.--Council Book, 14th Nov., 1655. Thurloe, iv. 321, 388.
Bates, 371. Ellis, iv. 2. Marten had made an ineffectual attempt in their
favour at the commencement of the commonwealth.--Wood's Athen. Ox. iii.
1239.]


The result of the elections revealed to him the alarming secret, that the
antipathy to his government was more deeply rooted, and more widely spread,
than he had previously imagined. In Scotland and Ireland, indeed, the
electors obsequiously chose the members recommended by the council;
but these were conquered countries, bending under the yoke of military
despotism. In England, the whole nation was in a ferment; pamphlets were
clandestinely circulated,[a] calling on the electors to make a last
struggle in defence of their liberties; and though Vane, Ludlow, and Rich
were taken into custody;[1] though other republican leaders were excluded
by criminal prosecutions, though the Cavaliers, the Catholics, and all who
had neglected to aid the cause of the parliament, were disqualified from
voting by "the instrument;" though a military force was employed in London
to overawe the proceedings, and the whole influence of the government and
of the army was openly exerted in the country, yet in several counties
the court candidates were wholly, and in most, partially, rejected.
But Cromwell was aware of the error which he had committed in the last
parliament. He resolved that none of his avowed opponents should be allowed
to take possession of their seats. The returns were laid before the
council; the majors-general received orders to inquire into the political
and religious characters of the elected; the reports of these officers

[Footnote 1: The proceedings on these occasions may be seen in Ludlow, ii.
115-123; and State Trials, v. 791.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. August 20.]

were carefully examined; and a list was made of nearly one hundred persons
to be excluded under the pretext of immorality or delinquency.[1]

On the appointed day,[a] the protector, after divine service, addressed
the new "representatives" in the Painted Chamber. His real object was to
procure money; and with this view he sought to excite their alarm, and
to inflame their religious antipathies. He enumerated the enemies of the
nation. The first was the Spaniard, the natural adversary of England,
because he was the slave of the pope, a child of darkness, and consequently
hostile to the light, blinded by superstition, and anxious to put down the
things of God; one with whom it was impossible to be at peace, and to whom,
in relation to this country, might be applied the words of Scripture, "I
will put enmity between thy seed and her seed." There was also Charles
Stuart, who, with the aid of the Spaniard and the duke of Neuburg, had
raised a formidable army for the invasion of the island. There were the
papists and Cavaliers, who had already risen, and were again ready to rise
in favour of Charles Stuart. There were the Levellers, who had sent an
agent to the court of Madrid, and the Fifth-monarchy-men, who sought an
union with the Levellers against him, "a reconciliation between Herod and
Pilate, that Christ might be put to death." The remedies--though in this
part of his speech he digressed so frequently as to appear loth to come to
the remedies--were, to prosecute the war abroad, and strengthen the hands
of the government at home; to lose no time in questions of inferior moment,
or less urgent necessity, but to inquire into the state of the revenue, and
to raise ample supplies.

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, v. 269, 317, 328, 329, 337, 341, 343, 349, 424.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Sept 17.]

In conclusion, he explained the eighty-fifth psalm, exclaiming, "If pope
and Spaniard, and devil, and all set themselves against us, though they
should compass us about like bees, yet in the name of the Lord we shall
destroy them. The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our
refuge."[1]

From the Painted Chamber the members proceeded to the house. A military
guard was stationed at the door, and a certificate from the council was
required from each individual previously to his admission.[2] The excluded
members complained by letter of this breach of parliamentary privilege. A
strong feeling of disapprobation was manifested in several parts of the
house; the clerk of the commonwealth in Chancery received orders to lay
all the returns on the table; and the council was requested to state
the grounds of this novel and partial proceeding. Fiennes, one of the
commissioners of the great seal, replied, that the duty of inquiry into the
qualifications of the members was, by the "instrument," vested in the lords
of the council, who had discharged that trust according to the best of
their judgment. An animated debate followed that such was the provision in
"the instrument" could not be denied;[3] but that the council

[Footnote 1: Introduction to Burton's Diary, cxlviii-clxxix. Journals,
Sept. 17. Thurloe, v. 427. That the king's army, which Cromwell exaggerated
to the amount of eight thousand men, did not reach to more than one
thousand, is twice asserted by Thurloe himself, 605, 672.]

[Footnote 2: The certificates which had been distributed to the favoured
members were in this form:--"Sept. 17, 1656. County of ----. These are to
certify that A.B. is returned by indenture one of the knights to serve in
this parliament for the said county, and is approved by his highness's
council. Nath. Taylor. clerk of the commonwealth in Chancery."]

[Footnote 3: In the draught of the "instrument," as it was amended in
the last parliament, the jurisdiction of the council in this matter was
confined to the charge of delinquency, and its decision was not final, but
subject to the approbation of the house.--Journals, 1654, Nov. 29. But that
draught had not received the protector's assent.]

should decide on secret information, and without the knowledge of the
individuals who were interested, seemed contrary to the first principles of
justice. The court, however, could now command the votes of the majority,
and a motion that the house should pass to the business of the nation was
carried by dint of numbers. Several members, to show their disapprobation,
voluntarily seceded, and those, who had been excluded by force,
published[a] in bold and indignant language an appeal to the justice of the
people.[1]

Having weeded out his enemies, Cromwell had no reason to fear opposition to
his pleasure. The house passed a resolution declaratory of the justice
and policy of the war against Spain, and two acts, by one of which were
annulled all claims of Charles Stuart and his family to the crown, by the
other were provided additional safeguards for the person of the chief
governor. With the same unanimity, a supply of four hundred thousand
pounds was voted; but when the means of raising the money came under
consideration, a great diversity of opinion prevailed. Some proposed to
inquire into the conduct of the treasury, some to adopt improvements in
the collection of the revenue, others recommended an augmentation of
the excise, and others a more economical system of expenditure. In the
discussion of these questions and of private bills, week after week, month
after month, was tediously

[Footnote 1: The nature of the charges against the members may be seen
in Thurloe, v. 371, 383. In the Journals, seventy-nine names only are
mentioned (Journals, 1656, Sept. 19), but ninety-eight are affixed to the
appeal in Whitelock, 651-653. In both lists occur the names of Anthony
Ashley Cooper, who afterwards became Cromwell's intimate adviser, and of
several others who subsequently solicited and obtained certificates.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Sept. 22.]

and fruitlessly consumed; though the time limited by the instrument was
past, still the money bill had made no progress; and, to add to the
impatience of Cromwell, a new subject was accidentally introduced, which,
as it strongly interested the passions, absorbed for some time the
attention of the house.[1]

At the age of nineteen, George Fox, the son of a weaver of Drayton, with a
mind open to religious impressions, had accompanied some of his friends to
a neighbouring fair. The noise, the revelry, and the dissipation which he
witnessed, led him to thoughts of seriousness and self-reproach; and the
enthusiast heard, or persuaded himself that he heard, an inward voice,
calling on him to forsake his parents' house, and to make himself a
stranger in his own country. Docile to the celestial admonition, he began
to lead a solitary life, wandering from place to place, and clothed from
head to foot in garments of leather. He read the Scriptures attentively,
studied the mysterious visions in the Apocalypse, and was instructed in the
real meaning by Christ and the Spirit. At first, doubts and fears haunted
his mind, but, when the time of trial was past, he found himself inebriated
with spiritual delights, and received an assurance that his name was
written in the Lamb's Book of Life. At the same time, he was forbidden by
the Lord to employ the plural pronoun _you_ in addressing a single person,
to bid his neighbour good even or good-morrow, or to uncover the head, or
scrape with the leg to any mortal being. At length, the Spirit moved him to

[Footnote 1: Journals, passim; Thurloe, v. 472, 494, 524, 584, 672, 694.
See note (H).]

impart to others the heavenly doctrines which he had learned. In 1647, he
preached for the first time at Duckenfield, not far from Manchester; but
the most fruitful scene of his labours was at Swarthmoor, near Ulverston.
His disciples followed his example; the word of the Spirit was given to
women as well as men; and the preachers of both sexes, as well as many
of their followers, attracted the notice and the censures of the civil
magistrate. Their refusal to uncover before the bench was usually punished
with a fine, on the ground of contempt; their religious objection to
take an oath, or to pay tithes, exposed them to protracted periods of
imprisonment; and they were often and severely whipped as vagrants,
because, for the purpose of preaching, they were accustomed to wander
through the country. To these sufferings, as is always the case with
persecuted sects, calumny was added; and they were falsely charged with
denying the Trinity, with disowning the authority of government, and with
attempting to debauch the fidelity of the soldiers. Still, in defiance of
punishment and calumny, the Quakers, so they were called, persevered in
their profession; it was their duty, they maintained, to obey the influence
of the Holy Spirit; and they submitted with the most edifying resignation
to the consequences, however painful they might be to flesh and blood.[1]

Of the severities so wantonly exercised against these religionists it
is difficult to speak with temper; yet it must be confessed that their
doctrine of spiritual impulses was likely to lead its disciples of either
sex, whose minds were weak and imaginations active, to extravagances at the
same time ludicrous and

[Footnote 1: Fox, Journal, i. 29, et seq.; Sewel, i. 24, 31, 34, passim.]

revolting.[1] Of this, James Naylor furnished a striking instance. He had
served in the army, and had been quarter-master in Lambert's troop, from
which office he was discharged on account of sickness.[2] He afterwards
became a disciple of George Fox, and a leading preacher in the capital; but
he "despised the power of God" in his master, by whom he was reprimanded,
and listened to the delusive flattery of some among his female hearers,
who were so captivated with his manner and appearance; as to persuade
themselves that Christ was incorporated in the new apostle. It was not for
him to gainsay what the Spirit had revealed to them. He believed himself to
be set as a sign of the coming of Christ; and he accepted the worship which
was paid to him, not as offered to James Naylor, but to Christ dwelling
in James Naylor. Under this impression, during part of his progress to
Bristol,[a] and at his entrance into that city, he rode on horseback with a
man walking bareheaded before him; two females holding his bridle on each
side, and others attending him, one of whom, Dorcas Erbury, maintained that
he had raised her to life after she had

[Footnote 1: "William Simpson was moved of the Lord to go at several times,
for three years, naked and barefoot before them, as a sign unto them in
markets, courts, towns, cities, to priests' houses, and to great men's
houses; so shall they all be stripped naked as he was stripped naked. And
sometimes he was moved to put on hair sackcloth, and to besmear his face,
and to tell them so would the Lord besmear all their religion, as he was
besmeared. Great sufferings did that poor man undergo, sore whipping
with horsewhips and coachwhips on his bare body, grievous stonings and
imprisonments in three years time before the king came in, that they might
have taken warning, but they could not."--Fox; Journal, i. 572.]

[Footnote 2: Lambert spoke of him with kindness during the debate: "He was
two years my quarter-master, and a very useful person. We parted with
him with very great regret. He was a man of very unblameable life and
conversation."--Burton's Diary, i. 33.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. October.]

been dead the space of two days. These occasionally threw scarfs and
handkerchiefs before him, and sang, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God
of Hosts: Hosanna in the highest; holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of
Israel." They were apprehended by the mayor, and, sent[a] to London to be
examined by a committee of the parliament. The house, having heard the
report of the committee, voted that Naylor was guilty of blasphemy. The
next consideration was his punishment; the more zealous moved that he
should be put to death; but after a debate which continued during eleven
days, the motion was lost[b] by a division of ninety-six to eighty-two.
Yet the punishment to which he was doomed ought to have satisfied the most
bigoted of his adversaries. He stood[c] with his neck in the pillory for
two hours, and was whipped from Palace Yard to the Old Exchange, receiving
three hundred and ten lashes in the way. Some days later[d] he was again
placed in the pillory; and the letter B for blasphemer was burnt on his
forehead, and his tongue was bored with a red-hot iron.[1] From London the
house ordered him to be conducted[e] to Bristol, the place of his offence.
He entered at Lamford's Gate, riding on the bare back of a horse with
his face to the tail; dismounted at Rockley Gate, and was successively
whipped[f] in five parts of the city. His admirers, however, were not
ashamed of the martyr. On every

[Footnote 1: "This day I and B. went to see Naylor's tongue bored through,
and him marked on the forehead. He put out his tongue very willingly, but
shrinked a little when the iron came upon his forehead. He was pale when he
came out of the pillory, but high-coloured after tongue-boring. He behaved
himself very handsomely and patiently" (p. 266 in Burton's Diary, where the
report of these debates on Naylor occupies one hundred and forty pages).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Dec. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Dec. 16.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1656. Dec. 18.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1656. Dec. 27.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1657. Jan. 13.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1657. Jan. 17.]

occasion they attended him bareheaded; they kissed and sucked his wounds;
and they chanted with him passages from the Scriptures. On his return to
London[a] he was committed to solitary confinement, without pen, ink, or
paper, or fire, or candle, and with no other sustenance than what he
might earn by his own industry. Here the delusion under which he laboured
gradually wore away; he acknowledged that his mind had been in darkness,
the consequence and punishment of spiritual pride; and declared that,
inasmuch as he had given advantage to the evil spirit, he took shame to
himself. By "the rump parliament" he was afterwards discharged; and the
society of Friends, by whom he had been disowned, admitted him again on
proof of his repentance. But his sufferings had injured his health. In 1660
he was found in a dying state in a field in Huntingdonshire, and shortly
afterwards expired.[1]

While the parliament thus spent its time in the prosecution of an offence
which concerned it not, Cromwell anxiously revolved in his own mind a
secret project of the first importance to himself and the country. To his
ambition, it was not sufficient that he actually possessed the supreme
authority, and exercised it with more despotic sway than any of his
legitimate predecessors; he still sought to mount a step higher, to
encircle his brows with a diadem, and to be addressed with the title of
majesty. It could not be, that vanity alone induced him to hazard the
attachment of his friends for the sake of mere parade and empty sound. He
had rendered the more modest title of protector as great and as formidable
as that of

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 5-17; 1659, Sept. 8. Sewel, 260-273, 283, 393.
State Trials, v. 810-842. Merc. Polit. No. 34.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Feb. 22.]

king, and, though uncrowned, had treated on a footing of equality with the
proudest of the crowned heads in Europe. It is more probable that he was
led by considerations of interest. He knew that the nation was weary of
change; he saw with what partiality men continued to cling to the old
institutions; and he, perhaps, trusted that the establishment of an
hereditary monarchy, with a house of peers, though under a new dynasty, and
with various modifications, might secure the possession of the crown, not
only to himself, but also to his posterity. However that may be, he now
made the acquisition of the kingly dignity the object of his policy. For
this purpose he consulted first with Thurloe, and afterwards[a] with St.
John and Pierpoint;[1] and the manner in which he laboured to gratify
his ambition strikingly displays that deep dissimulation and habitual
hypocrisy, which form the distinguishing traits of his character.

The first opportunity of preparing the public mind for this important
alteration was furnished by the recent proceedings against Naylor, which
had provoked considerable discontent, not on account of the severity of the
punishment (for rigid notions of religion had subdued the common feelings
of humanity), but on account of the judicial authority exercised by the
house--an authority which appeared subversive of the national liberties.
For of what use was the right of trial, if the parliament could set
aside the ordinary courts of law at its pleasure, and inflict arbitrary
punishment for any supposed offence without the usual forms of inquiry? As
long as the question was before the house, Cromwell remained silent; but
when the first part of the judgment had been executed

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, v. 694; vi. 20, 37.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Dec. 9.]

on the unfortunate sufferer, he came forward in quality of guardian of the
public rights, and concluded a letter to the speaker[a] with these words:
"We, being intrusted in the present government on behalf of the people of
these nations, and not knowing how far such proceedings (wholly without us)
may extend in the consequences of it, do desire that the house will let us
know the ground and reason whereupon they have proceeded." This message
struck the members[b] with amazement. Few among them were willing to
acknowledge] that they had exceeded their real authority; all dreaded to
enter into a contest with the protector. The discussion lasted three days;
every expedient that had been suggested was ultimately rejected; and the
debate was adjourned to a future day,[c] when, with the secret connivance
of Cromwell, no motion was made to resume it.[1] He had already obtained
his object. The thoughts of men had been directed to the defects of the
existing constitution, and to the necessity of establishing checks on the
authority of the house, similar to those which existed under the ancient
government.

In a few days[d] a bill was introduced which, under the pretence of
providing money for the support of the militia, sought to confirm the past
proceedings of the majors-general, and to invest them with legal authority
for the future. The protector was aware that the country longed to
be emancipated from the control of these military governors; for the
attainment of his great object it was his interest to stand well with
all classes of people; and, therefore, though he was the author of
this unpopular institution, though in his speech at the opening of the
parliament he had been

[Footnote: Burton's Diary, i. 246-258, 260-264, 270-282, 296.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1656. Dec. 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1656. Dec. 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1657. Jan. 2.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1657. Jan. 7.]

eloquent in its praise, though he had declared that, after his experience
of its utility, "if the thing were undone he would do it again;" he now not
only abandoned the majors-general to their fate, he even instructed his
dependants in the house to lead the opposition against them. As soon as the
bill was read a first time, his son-in-law, Claypole, who seldom spoke,
rose to express his dissent, and was followed by the Lord Broghill, known
as the confidential counsellor of the protector. The decimation-tax was
denounced as unjust, because it was a violation of the act of oblivion,
and the conduct of the majors-general was compared to the tyranny of the
Turkish bashaws. These officers defended themselves with spirit; their
adversaries had recourse to personal crimination;[1] and the debate, by
successive adjournments, occupied the attention of the house during eleven
days. In conclusion, the bill was rejected[a] by a numerous majority and
the majors-general, by the desertion of Cromwell, found themselves exposed
to actions at law for the exercise of those powers which they had accepted
in obedience to his commands.[2]

While this question was still pending, it chanced that a plot against the
protector's life, of which the

[Footnote 1: Among others, Harry Cromwell, the protector's nephew, said he
was ready to name some among the majors-general who had acted oppressively.
It was supposed that these words would bring him into disgrace at court.
"But Harry," says a private letter, "goes last night to his highness, and
stands to what he had said manfully and wisely; and, to make it appear he
spake not without book, had his black book and papers ready to make good
what he said. His highness answered him in raillery, and took a rich
scarlet cloak from his back, and gloves from his hands, and gave them to
Harry, who strutted with his new cloak and gloves into the house this
day."--Thurloe, iv. 20.]


[Footnote 2: Journals, Jan. 7, 8, 12, 19, 20, 21, 28, 29. Burton's Diary,
310-320.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Jan. 29.]

particulars will be subsequently noticed, was discovered and defeated. The
circumstance furnished an opportunity favourable to his views; and the
re-establishment of "kingship" was mentioned in the house, not as a project
originating from him, but as the accidental and spontaneous suggestion of
others. Goffe having expressed[a] a hope that parliament would provide
for the preservation of the protector's person, Ashe, the member for
Somersetshire, exclaimed, "_I_ would add something more--that he would
be pleased to take upon him the government according to the ancient
constitution. That would put an end to these plots, and fix our liberties
and his safety on an old and sure foundation." The house was taken by
surprise: many reprehended the temerity of the speaker; by many his
suggestion was applauded and approved. He had thrown it out to try the
temper of his colleagues; and the conversation which it provoked, served
to point out to Cromwell the individuals from whom he might expect to meet
with opposition.[1]

The detection of the conspiracy was followed[b] by an address of
congratulation to the protector, who on his part gave to the members a
princely entertainment at Whitehall. At their next meeting[c] the question
was regularly brought before them by Alderman Pack, who boldly undertook a
task which the timidity of Whitelock had declined. Rising in his place, he
offered to the house a paper, of which he gave no other explanation than
that it had been placed in his hands, and "tended to the settlement of the
country." Its purport, however, was already known, or conjectured; several
officers instantly started from their seats, and

[Footnote 1: Burton's Diary, 362-366.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Jan. 19.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. Feb. 20.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1657. Feb. 23.]

Pack was violently borne down to the bar. But, on the restoration of order,
he found himself supported by Broghill, Whitelock, and Glynn, and, with
them, by the whole body of the lawyers, and the dependants of the court.
The paper was read; it was entitled, "An humble Address and Remonstrance,"
protesting against the existing form of government, which depended for
security on the odious institution of majors-general, and providing that
the protector should assume a higher title, and govern, as had been done in
times past, with the advice of two houses of parliament. The opposition (it
consisted of the chief officers, the leading members in the council, and
a few representatives of counties) threw every obstacle in the way of its
supporters; but they were overpowered by numbers: the house debated each
article in succession, and the whole project was finally adopted,[a] but
with the omission of the remonstrance, and under the amended title of the
"Humble Petition and Advice."[1]

As long as the question was before parliament, Cromwell bore himself in
public as if he were unconcerned in the result; but his mind was secretly
harassed by the reproaches of his friends and by the misgivings of his
conscience. He saw for the first time marshalled against him the men who
had stood by him in his different fortunes, and whom he had bound to his
interest by marriages and preferment. At their head was Lambert, the
commander of the army in England, the idol of the military, and second only
to himself in authority. Then came Desborough, his brother-in-law, the
major-general in five counties, and Fleetwood, the husband of his daughter
Bridget, and

[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 19, Feb. 21, 23, 24, 25. Thurloe, vi. 74, 78.
Whitelock, 665, 666. Ludlow, ii. 128. Burton's Diary, iii. 160.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. March 25.] lord-deputy of Ireland.[1] Lambert, at
a private meeting of officers, proposed to bring up five regiments of
cavalry, and compel the house to confirm both the "instrument," and the
establishment of majors-general. This bold counsel was approved; but the
next morning his colleagues, having sought the Lord in prayer, resolved to
postpone its execution till they had ascertained the real intention of the
protector; and Lambert, warned by their indecision, took no longer any part
in their meeting, but watched in silence the course of events.[2] The other
two, on the contrary, persevered in the most active opposition; nor did
they suffer themselves to be cajoled by the artifices of the protector, who
talked in their hearing with contempt of the crown as a mere bauble, and of
Pack and his supporters as children, whom it might be prudent to indulge
with a "rattle."[3]

The marked opposition of these men had given energy to the proceedings of
the inferior officers, who formed themselves into a permanent council under
the very eyes of Cromwell, passed votes in disapprobation of the proposed
alteration, and to the number of one hundred waited on him to acquaint him
with their sentiments.[4] He replied,[a] that there was a time when they
felt no objection to the title of king; for the army had offered it to him
with the original instrument of government. He had rejected it then, and
had no greater love for it now. He had always been

[Footnote 1: Desborough and Fleetwood passed from the inns of court to the
army. The first married Anne, the protector's sister; the second, Bridget
his daughter, and the widow of Ireton. Suspicious of his principles,
Cromwell kept him in England, while Henry Cromwell, with the rank of
major-general, held the government of Ireland.--Noble, i. 103; ii. 243,
336, 338.]

[Footnote 2: Clar. Pap. iii. 333.]

[Footnote 3: Ludlow, ii. 131.]

[Footnote 4: Thurloe, vi. 93, 94, 101, 219.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Feb. 28.] the "drudge" of the officers, had done
the work which they imposed on him, and had sacrificed his opinion to
theirs. If the present parliament had been called, it was in opposition
to his individual judgment; if the bill, which proved so injurious to the
majors-general, had been brought into the house, it was contrary to his
advice. But the officers had overrated their own strength: the country
called for an end to all arbitrary proceedings; the punishment of Naylor
proved the necessity of a check on the judicial proceedings of the
parliament, and that check could only be procured by investing the
protector with additional authority. This answer made several proselytes;
but the majority adhered pertinaciously to their former opinion.[1]

Nor was this spirit confined to the army; in all companies men were heard
to maintain that, to set up monarchy again was to pronounce condemnation
on themselves, to acknowledge themselves guilty of all the blood which had
been shed to put it down. But nowhere did the proposal excite more cordial
abhorrence than in the conventicles of the Fifth-monarchy-men. In their
creed the protectorate was an impiety, kingship a sacrilegious assumption
of the authority belonging to the only King, the Lord Jesus. They were his
witnesses foretold in the Apocalypse; they had now slept their sleep of
three years and a half; the time was come when it was their duty to rise
and avenge the cause of the Lord. In the conventicles of the capital the
lion of Judah was chosen for their military device; arms were prepared, and
the day of rising was fixed. They amounted, indeed, to no more

[Footnote 1: For this extraordinary speech we are indebted to the industry
of Mr. Rutt.--Burton's Diary, i. 382.] than eighty men; but they were the
champions of Him who, "though they might be as a worm, would enable them
to thrash mountains." The projects of these fanatics did not escape the
penetrating eye of Thurloe, who, for more than a year, had watched
all their motions, and was in possession of all their secrets. Their
proceedings were regulated by five persons, each of whom presided in a
separate conventicle, and kept his followers in ignorance of the names
of the brethren associated under the four remaining leaders. A fruitless
attempt was made to unite them with the Levellers. But the Levellers
trusted too much to worldly wisdom; the fanatics wished to begin the
strife, and to leave the issue to their Heavenly King. The appointed day[a]
came: as they proceeded to the place of rendezvous, the soldiers of the
Lord were met by the soldiers of the protector; twenty were made prisoners;
the rest escaped, with the loss of their horses and arms, which were seized
in the depôt.[1]

In the mean while the new form of government had received the sanction of
the house. Cromwell, when it was laid before him, had recourse to his usual
arts, openly refusing that for which he ardently longed, and secretly
encouraging his friends to persist, that his subsequent acquiescence might
appear to proceed from a sense of duty, and not from the lust of power. At
first,[b] in reply to a long and tedious harangue from the speaker, he told
them of "the consternation of his mind" at the very thought of the burden;
requested time "to ask counsel of God and his own heart;" and, after a
pause of three days,[c] replied that, inasmuch as the new constitution
provided the best securities for

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 655. Thurloe, vi. 163, 184-188.]

[Sidenote c: A.D. 1657. April 3.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. April 9.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. March 31.]

the civil and religious liberties of the people, it had his unqualified
approbation; but, as far as regarded himself, "he did not find it in his
duty to God and the country to undertake the charge under the new title
which was given him."[1] His friends refused to be satisfied with this
answer: the former vote was renewed,[a] and the house, waiting on him in a
body, begged to remind him, that it was his duty to listen to the advice of
the great council of the three nations. He meekly replied, that he still
had his doubts on one point; and that, till such doubts were removed, his
conscience forbade him to assent; but that he was willing to explain his
reasons, and to hear theirs, and to hope that in a friendly conference the
means might be discovered of reconciling their opposite opinions, and of
determining on that which might be most beneficial to the country.[2]

In obedience to this intimation, a committee of the house was appointed to
receive and solve the scruples of the protector. To their surprise,
they found him in no haste to enter on the discussion. Sometimes he was
indisposed, and could not admit them; often he was occupied with important
business; on three occasions they obtained an interview. He wished to argue
the question on the ground of expedience. If the power were the same under
a protector, where, he asked, could be the use of a king? The title would
offend men, who, by their former services, had earned the right to
have even their prejudices respected. Neither was he sure that the
re-establishment of royalty might not be a falling off from that cause in

[Footnote 1: Merc. Pol. No. 355. Mr. Rutt has discovered and inserted both
speeches at length in Burton's Diary, i. 397-416.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, i. 751, 756. Parl. Hist. iii. 1493-1495. Burton's
Diary, i. 417.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. April 8.]

which they had engaged, and from that Providence by which they had been
so marvellously supported. It was true, that the Scripture sanctioned the
dignity of king; but to the testimony of Scripture might be opposed "the
visible hand of God," who, in the late contest, "had eradicated kingship."
It was gravely replied, that Protector was a new, King an ancient, title;
the first had no definite meaning, the latter was interwoven with all
our laws and institutions; the powers of one were unknown and liable to
alteration, those of the other ascertained and limited by the law of custom
and the statute law. The abolition of royalty did not originally enter into
the contemplation of parliament--the objection was to the person, not
to the office--it was afterwards effected by a portion only of the
representative body; whereas, its restoration was now sought by a greater
authority--the whole parliament of the three kingdoms. The restoration was,
indeed, necessary, both for his security and theirs; as by law all the acts
of a king in possession, but only of a king, are good and valid. Some there
were who pretended that king and chief magistrate were synonymous; but
no one had yet ventured to substitute one word for the other in the
Scriptures, where so many covenants, promises, and precepts are annexed to
the title of king. Neither could the "visible hand of God" be alleged in
the present case; for the visible hand of God had eradicated the government
by a single person as clearly as that by a king. Cromwell promised to give
due attention to these arguments; to his confidential friends he owned
that his objections were removed; and, at the same time, to enlighten the
ignorance of the public, he ordered[a] a report of the conferences to be
published.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Monarchy asserted to be the most Ancient and Legal Form of
Government, &c. 1660; Walker, Researches, Historical and Antiquarian, i.
1-27; Burton's Diary, App. ii. 493; Thurloe, vi. 819; Whitelock, 565;
Journals, April 9-21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. April 20.]


The protector's, however, was not one of those minds that resolve quickly
and execute promptly. He seldom went straight forwards to his object, but
preferred a winding circuitous route. He was accustomed to view and review
the question, in all its bearings and possible consequences, and to invent
fresh causes of delay, till he occasionally incurred the suspicion of
irresolution and timidity.[1] Instead of returning a plain and decisive
answer, he sought to protract the time by requesting[a] the sense of the
house on different passages in the petition, on the intended amount of the
annual income, and on the ratification of the ordinances issued by himself,
and of the acts passed by the little parliament. By this contrivance the
respite of a fortnight was obtained, during which he frequently consulted
with Broghill, Pierpoint, Whitelock, Wolseley, and Thurloe.[2] At length it
was whispered at court that the protector had resolved to accept the title;
and immediately Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough made[b] to him, in their
own names and those of several others, the unpleasant declaration, that
they must resign their commissions, and sever themselves from his councils
and service for ever. His irresolution returned: he had promised the house
to give a final answer the next morning;[c] in the morning he postponed it
to five in the evening, and at that hour to

[Footnote 1: "Every wise man out of doors wonders at the delay," Thurloe,
vi. 243; also Claren. Papers, iii. 339.]

[Footnote 2: "In these meetings," says Whitelock, "laying aside his
greatness, he would be exceedingly familiar with us, and, by way of
diversion, would make verses with us, and every one must try his fancy. He
commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then
take tobacco himself. Then he would fall again to his serious and great
business" (656).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. April 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. May 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1657. May 7.]

the following day. The officers observed, and resolved to profit by, the
impression which they had made; and early in the morning[a] Colonel Mason,
with six-and-twenty companions, offered to the parliament a petition, in
which they stated that the object of those with whom the measure originated
was the ruin of the lord-general and of the best friends of the people, and
conjured the house to support the good old cause in defence of which the
petitioners were ready to sacrifice their lives. This bold step subdued the
reluctance of the protector. He abandoned the lofty hopes to which he had
so long, so pertinaciously clung, despatched Fleetwood to the house to
prevent a debate, and shortly afterwards summoned the members to meet him
at Whitehall. Addressing them with more than his usual embarrassment, he
said, that neither his own reflections nor the reasoning of the committee
had convinced him that he ought to accept the title of king. If he were to
accept it, it would be doubtingly; if he did it doubtingly, it would not be
of faith; and if it were not of faith, it would be a sin. "Wherefore," he
concluded, "I cannot undertake this government with that title of king, and
this is mine answer to this great and weighty business."[1]

Thus ended the mighty farce which for more than two months held in suspense
the hopes and fears of three nations. But the friends of Cromwell resumed
the subject in parliament. It was observed that he had not refused to
administer the government under any other title; the name of king was
expunged for that of protector; and with this and a few more amendments,
the "humble petition and advice"[b] received

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 261, 267, 281, 291. Journals, April 21-May 12.
Parl. Hist. iii. 1498-1502. Ludlow, ii. 131. Clar. Papers, iii. 342.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. May 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. May 25.]

the sanction of the chief magistrate. The inauguration followed.[a] On the
platform, raised at the upper end of Westminster Hall, and in front of a
magnificent chair of state, stood the protector; while the speaker, with
his assistants, invested him with a purple mantle lined with ermine,
presented him with a Bible superbly gilt and embossed, girt a sword by his
side, and placed a sceptre of massive gold in his hand. As soon as the oath
had been administered, Manton, his chaplain, pronounced a long and fervent
prayer for a blessing on the protector, the parliament, and the people.
Rising from prayer, Cromwell seated himself in a chair: on the right, at
some distance, sat the French, on the left, the Dutch ambassador; on one
side stood the earl of Warwick with the sword of the commonwealth, on
the other, the lord mayor, with that of the city; and behind arranged
themselves the members of the protector's family, the lords of the council,
and Lisle, Whitelock, and Montague, each of the three bearing a drawn
sword. At a signal given, the trumpets sounded; the heralds proclaimed the
style of the new sovereign; and the spectators shouted, "Long live his
highness; God save the lord-protector." He rose immediately, bowed to the
ambassadors, and walked in state through the hall to his carriage.[1]

That which distinguished the present from the late form of government was
the return which it made towards the more ancient institutions of the
country.

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 622. Merc. Polit. No. 369. Parl. Hist. iii. 1514,
and Prestwick's Relation, App. to Burton's Diary, ii. 511. Most of the
officers took the oath of fidelity to the protector. Lambert refused, and
resigned his commissions, which brought him about six thousand pounds per
annum. Cromwell, however, assigned to him a yearly pension of two thousand
pounds.--Ludlow, ii. 136.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. June 26.]


That return, indeed, had wrung from Cromwell certain concessions repugnant
to his feelings and ambition, but to which he probably was reconciled by
the consideration that in the course of a few years they might be modified
or repealed. The supreme authority was vested in the protector; but,
instead of rendering it hereditary in his family, the most which he could
obtain was the power of nominating his immediate successor. The two houses
of parliament were restored; but, as if it were meant to allude to his
past conduct, he was bound to leave to the House of Commons the right of
examining the qualifications and determining the claims of the several
representatives. To him was given the power of nominating the members of
the "other house" (he dared not yet term it the House of Lords); but, in
the first instance, the persons so nominated were to be approved by the
house of representatives, and afterwards by the other house itself. The
privilege of voting by proxy was abolished, and the right of judicature
restrained within reasonable limits. In the appointment of councillors,
the great officers of state, and the commanders of the forces, many of the
restrictions sought to be introduced by the long parliament were enforced.
In point of religion, it was enacted that a confession of faith should be
agreed upon between the protector and the two houses; but that dissenters
from it should enjoy liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of their
worship, unless they should reject the mystery of the Trinity, or the
inspiration of the Scriptures, or profess prelatic, or popish, or
blasphemous doctrines. The yearly revenue was fixed at one million three
hundred thousand pounds, of which no part was to be raised by a land-tax;
and of this sum one million was devoted to the support of the army and
navy, and three hundred thousand pounds to the expenses of the civil list;
but, on the remonstrance of the protector, that with so small a revenue it
would be impossible to continue the war, an additional grant of six
hundred thousand pounds was voted for the three following years. After the
inauguration, the Commons adjourned during six months, that time might be
allowed for the formation of the "other house."[1]

Having brought this important session of parliament to its conclusion, we
may now revert to the miscellaneous occurrences of the year, 1. Had much
credit been given to the tales of spies and informers, neither Cromwell nor
his adversary, Charles Stuart, would have passed a day without the dread
of assassination. But they knew that such persons are wont to invent and
exaggerate, in order to enhance the value of their services; and each
had, therefore, contented, himself with taking no other than ordinary
precautions for his security.[2] Cromwell, however, was aware of the
fierce, unrelenting disposition of the Levellers; the moment he learned
that they were negotiating with the exiled king and the Spaniards, he
concluded that they had sworn his destruction; and to oppose their attempts
on his life, he selected[a] one hundred and sixty brave and trusty men from
the different regiments of cavalry, whom he divided into eight

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 657, 663. Parl. Hist. iii. 1502-1511. In a
catalogue printed at the time, the names were given of one hundred and
eighty-two members of this parliament, who, it was pretended, "were sons,
kinsmen, servants, and otherwise engaged unto, and had places of profit,
offices, salaries, and advantages, under the protector," sharing annually
among them out of the public money the incredible sum of one million
sixteen thousand three hundred and seventeen pounds, sixteen shillings, and
eightpence.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe's voluminous papers abound with offers and warnings
connected with this subject.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Feb. 28.]

troops, directing that two of these troops in rotation should be always on
duty near his person.[1] Before the end of the year, he learned[a] that a
plot had actually been organized, that assassins had been engaged, and that
his death was to be the signal for a simultaneous rising of the Levellers
and royalists, and the sailing of a hostile expedition from the coast of
Flanders. The author of this plan was Sexby; nor will it be too much to
assert that it was not only known, but approved by the advisers of
Charles at Bruges. They appointed an agent to accompany the chief of the
conspirators; they prepared to take every advantage of the murder; they
expressed an unfeigned sorrow for the failure of the attempt. Indeed,
Clarendon, the chief minister (he had lately been made lord chancellor),
was known to hold, that the assassination of a successful rebel or usurper
was an act of justifiable and meritorious loyalty.[2]

Sexby had found a fit instrument for his purpose in Syndercombe, a man of
the most desperate courage,

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, iv. 567. Carte, Letters, ii. 81. Their pay was four
and sixpence per day.--Ibid. In addition, if we may believe Clarendon, he
had always several beds prepared in different chambers, so that no one knew
in what particular room he would pass the night.--Hist. iii. 646.]

[Footnote 2: That both Charles and Clarendon knew of the design,
and interested themselves in its execution, is plain from several
letters.--Clar. Pap. iii. 311, 312, 315, 324, 327, 331, 335. Nor can there
be a doubt that Clarendon approved of such murders. It is, indeed, true
that, speaking of the murder of Ascham, when he was at Madrid, he says that
he and his colleague, Lord Cottington, abhorred it.--Clar. Hist. iii. 351.
Yet, from his private correspondence, it appears that he wrote papers in
defence of the murderers (Clar. Pap. iii. 21, 23), recommended them as
"brave fellows, and honest gentlemen" (ibid. 235, 236), and observed to
Secretary Nicholas, that it was a sad and grievous thing that the princess
royal had not supplied Middleton with money, "but a worse and baser thing
that any man should appear in any part beyond sea under the character of an
agent from the rebels, and not have his throat cut."--Ibid. 144, 1652, Feb.
20.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Dec. 9.]

formerly a quarter-master in the army in Scotland, and dismissed on account
of his political principles. Having admitted a man of the name of Cecil as
his associate, he procured seven guns which would carry a number of balls,
hired lodgings in places near which the protector was likely to pass,
bribed Took, one of the life-guardsmen, to give information of his motions,
and bought the fleetest horses for the purpose of escape. Yet all his
designs were frustrated, either by the multitude of the spectators, or the
vigilance of the guards, or by some unforeseen and unlucky accident. At the
persuasion of Wildman he changed his plan;[a] and on the 9th of January,
about six in the evening, entered Whitehall with his two accomplices; he
unlocked the door of the chapel, deposited in a pew a basket filled with
inflammable materials, and lighted a match, which, it was calculated, would
burn six hours. His intention, was that the fire should break out about
midnight; but Took had already revealed the secret to Cromwell, and all
three were apprehended as they closed the door of the chapel. Took saved
his life by the discovery, Cecil by the confession of all that he knew. But
Syndercombe had wisely concealed from them the names of his associates and
the particulars of the plan. They knew not that certain persons within the
palace had undertaken to murder the protector during the confusion likely
to be caused by the conflagration, and that such measures had been taken as
to render his escape almost impossible. Syndercombe was tried; the judges
held that the title of protector was in law synonymous with that of king;
and he was condemned[b] to suffer the penalties of high treason. His
obstinate silence defeated the anxiety of the protector to procure further
information respecting

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Jan. 9.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. Feb. 9.]

the plot; and Syndercombe, whether he laid violent hands on himself, or was
despatched by the order of government, was found dead[a] in his bed, a few
hours before the time appointed for his execution.[1]

2. The failure of this conspiracy would not have prevented the intended
invasion by the royal army from Flanders, had not Charles been disappointed
in his expectations from another quarter. No reasoning, no entreaty, could
quicken the characteristic slowness of the Spanish ministers. Neither fleet
nor money was ready; the expedition was postponed from month to month; the
season passed away, and the design was deferred till the return of the long
and darksome nights of winter. But Sexby's impatience refused to submit
to these delays; his fierce and implacable spirit could not be satisfied
without the life of the protector. A tract had been recently printed in
Holland, entitled "Killing no Murder," which, from the powerful manner in
which it was written, made a deeper impression on the public mind than any
other literary production of the age. After an address to

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe, v. 774-777; vi. 7, 53; Merc. Polit. No. 345;
Bates, Elen. 388; Clarendon Pap. iii. 324, 325, 327; Claren. Hist. iii.
646; and the several authorities copied in the State Trials, v. 842-871.
The body was opened, and the surgeons declared that there existed no trace
of poison in the stomach, but that the brain was inflamed and distended
with blood in a greater degree than is usual in apoplexy, or any known
disease. The jury, by the direction of the lord chief justice, returned a
verdict that "he, the said Miles Syndercombe, a certain poisoned powder
through the nose of him, the said Miles, into the head of him, the said
Miles, feloniously, wilfully, and of malice aforethought, did snuff and
draw; by reason of which snuffing and drawing so as aforesaid, into the
head of him, the said Miles, he the said Miles, himself did mortally
poison," &c.--Ibid. 859. The Levellers and royalists maintained that he was
strangled by order of Cromwell.--Clar. iii. 647.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Feb. 13.]

Cromwell, and another to the army, both conceived in a strain of the most
poignant and sarcastic irony, it proceeds to discuss the three questions:
Whether the lord-protector be a tyrant? Whether it be lawful to do justice
on him by killing him? and, Whether this, if it be lawful, will prove
of benefit to the commonwealth? Having determined each question in the
affirmative, it concludes with an eulogium on the bold and patriotic spirit
of Syndercombe, the rival of Brutus and Cato, and a warning that "longus
illum sequitur ordo idem petentium decus;" that the protector's own
muster-roll contains the names of those who aspire to the honour of
delivering their country; that his highness is not secure at his table, or
in his bed; that death is at his heels wherever he moves, and that though
his head reaches the clouds, he shall perish like his own dung, and they
that have seen him shall exclaim, Where is he? Of this tract thousands of
copies were sent by Sexby into England; and, though many were seized by the
officers, yet many found their way into circulation.[1] Having obtained a
sum of one thousand four hundred crowns, he followed the books to organize
new plots against the life of the protector. But by this time he was too
well known. All his steps in Holland were watched; his departure for
England was announced; emissaries were despatched in every direction; and
within a few weeks he was apprehended and incarcerated in the Tower.
There he discovered, probably feigned, symptoms of insanity. To questions
respecting himself[a] he answered with apparent frankness and truth, that
he had intrigued with the Spanish court, that he had supplied Syndercombe
with money, that he had written the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 315.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Oct. 10.]

tract, "Killing no Murder;" nor was there, he said, any thing unlawful in
these things, for the protectorate had not then been established by any
authority of parliament; but, whenever he was interrogated respecting the
names and plans of his associates, his answers became wild and incoherent,
more calculated to mislead than to inform, to create suspicion of the
friends, than to detect the machinations of the enemies, of the government.
He was never brought to trial, but died, probably by violence, in the sixth
month of his imprisonment.[1]

3. During the winter Blake continued to blockade Cadiz: in spring he learnt
that the Plate fleet from Peru had sought an asylum in the harbour of Santa
Cruz, in the Island of Teneriffe. There the merchantmen, ten in number,
were moored close to the shore, in the form of a crescent; while the six
galleons in their front formed a parallel line at anchor in deeper water.
The entrance of the bay was commanded by the guns of the castle; seven
batteries erected at intervals along the beach protected the rest of the
harbour; and these were connected with each other by covered ways lined
with musketry. So confident was the governor when he surveyed these
preparations, that, in the pride of his heart, he desired a Dutch

[Footnote 1: Clarendon Papers, iii. 322, 338, 357. Merc. Pol. 39. Thurloe,
vi. 33, 182, 315, 425, 560, 829. Clarendon assures us that Sexby was an
illiterate person, which is a sufficient proof that he was not the real
author of the tract, though he acknowledged it for his own in the Tower,
probably to deceive the protector. The writer, whoever he was, kept his
secret, at least at first; for Clarendon writes to Secretary Nicholas, that
he cannot imagine who could write it.--Clar. Papers, iii. 343. By most
historians it has been attributed to Captain Titus; nor shall we think this
improbable, if we recollect that Titus was, in Holland, constantly in the
company of Sexby, till the departure of the latter for England.--Ibid. 331,
335. Evelyn asserts it in his Diary, ii. 210, 8vo.]

captain to inform the English admiral that he was welcome to come whenever
he durst. Blake came, examined the defences, and, according to custom,
proclaimed a solemn fast. At eight the next morning[a] Stayner took the
lead in a frigate; the admiral followed in the larger ships; and the whole
fleet availing itself of a favourable wind, entered the harbour under a
tremendous shower of balls and shells. Each vessel immediately fell into
its allotted station; and, while some engaged the shipping, the rest
directed their fire against the batteries. The Spaniards, though fewer in
number of ships, were superior in that of men; their hopes were supported
by the aid which they received from the land; and during four hours they
fought with the most determined bravery. Driven from the galleons, the
crews retreated to the second line of merchantmen, and renewed the contest
till they were finally compelled to save themselves on the shore. At two in
the afternoon every Spanish ship was in possession of the English, and in
flames. Still there remained the difficulty of working the fleet out of the
harbour in the teeth of the gale. About sunset they were out of reach of
the guns from the forts; the wind, by miracle, as Blake persuaded himself,
veered to the south-west, and the conquerors proceeded triumphantly out to
sea. This gallant action, though it failed of securing the treasure which
the protector chiefly sought, raised the reputation of Blake in every
part of Europe. Unfortunately the hero himself lived not to receive the
congratulations of his country. He had been during a great part of three
years at sea; the scurvy and dropsy wasted his constitution; and he
expired[b] in his fifty-ninth year,

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. April 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. August 7.]

as his ship, the St. George, entered the harbour of Plymouth.[1]

Blake had served with distinction in the army during the civil war; and the
knowledge of his talents and integrity induced the parliamentary leaders to
entrust him with the command of the fleet. For maritime tactics he relied
on the experience of others; his plans and his daring were exclusively his
own. He may claim the peculiar praise of having dispelled an illusion which
had hitherto cramped the operations of the British navy--a persuasion that
it was little short of madness to expose a ship at sea to the fire from a
battery on shore. The victories of Blake at Tunis and Santa Cruz served to
establish the contrary doctrine; and the seamen learned from his example
to despise the danger which had hitherto been deemed so formidable. Though
Cromwell prized his services, he doubted his attachment; and a suspicion
existed that the protector did not regret the death of one who professed to
fight for his country, not for the government. But he rendered that justice
to the dead, which he might perhaps have refused to the living, hero. He
publicly acknowledged his merit, honouring his bones with a funeral at the
national expense, and ordering them to be interred at Westminster, in Henry
the Seventh's chapel. In the next reign the coffin was taken from the
vault, and deposited in the church yard.

4. The reader is aware of Cromwell's anxiety to form a more intimate
alliance with Louis XIV. For this purpose Lockhart, one of the Scottish
judges, who

[Footnote 1: Vaughan, ii. 176. Heath, 391, 402. Echard, 725. Journals, May
28, 29.]

had married his niece, and received knighthood at his hand, proceeded
to France. After some discussion, a treaty, to last twelve months, was
concluded;[1][a] and Sir John Reynolds landed at Calais[b] with an
auxiliary force of six thousand men, one half in the pay of the king,
the other half in that of the protector. But as an associate in the war,
Cromwell demanded a share in the spoil, and that share was nothing less
than the possession of Mardyke and Dunkirk, as soon as they could be
reduced by the allies. To this proposal the strongest opposition had been
made in the French cabinet. Louis was reminded of the injuries which the
English, the natural enemies of France, had inflicted on the country in the
reigns of his predecessors. Dunkirk would prove a second Calais; it would
open to a foreign foe the way into the heart of his dominions. But he
yielded to the superior wisdom or ascendancy of Mazarin, who replied that,
if France refused the offers it would be accepted with a similar sacrifice
by Spain; that, supposing the English to be established on that coast at
all, it was better that they should be there as friends than as enemies;
and that their present co-operation would enable him either to drive the
Spaniards out of the Netherlands, or to dictate to them the terms of
peace.[2] The combined force

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 63, 86, 115, 124. To avoid disputes, the treaty
was written in the Latin language, and the precedency was given to Louis in
one copy, to Cromwell in the other. In the diplomatic collection of Dumont,
vi. part ii. 178, is published a second treaty, said to have been signed on
May 9th, N.S. If it were genuine, it would disclose gigantic projects of
aggrandizement on the part of the two powers. But it is clearly a forgery.
We have despatches from Lockhart dated on the day of the pretended
signature, and other despatches for a year afterward; yet none of them
make the remotest allusion to this treaty; several contain particulars
inconsistent with it.]

[Footnote 2: Oeuvres de Louis XIV. i. 171.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. March 13, May 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. May 15.]

was placed under the command of the celebrated Turenne, who was opposed by
the Spaniards under Don Juan, with the British exiles, commanded by the
duke of York, and the French exiles, by the prince of Condé. The English
auxiliaries, composed of veteran regiments, supported the reputation of
their country by their martial appearance and exemplary discipline; but
they had few opportunities of displaying their valour; and the summer was
spent in a tedious succession of marches and countermarches, accompanied
with no brilliant action nor important result. Cromwell viewed the
operations of the army with distrust and impatience. The French ministry
seemed in no haste to redeem their pledge with respect to the reduction
of Dunkirk, and to his multiplied remonstrances uniformly opposed this
unanswerable objection, that, in the opinion of Turenne, the best judge,
the attempt in the existing circumstances must prove ruinous to the
allies. At last he would brook no longer delay; the army marched into the
neighbourhood of the town, and the fort of Mardyke capitulated[a] after a
siege of three days. But the Spaniards lay strongly intrenched behind the
canal of Bergues, between Mardyke and Dunkirk; and by common consent the
design was abandoned, and the siege of Gravelines substituted in its place.
Scarcely, however, had the combined army taken[b] a position before it,
when the sluices were opened, the country was inundated, and Turenne
dismissed his forces into winter quarters. Mardyke received a garrison,
partly of English, and partly of French, under the command of Sir John
Reynolds; but that officer in a short time incurred the suspicion of the
protector. The duke of York, from his former service in the French army,
was well known

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1657. Sept. 27.]

to some of the French officers. They occasionally met and exchanged
compliments in their rides, he from Dunkirk, they from Mardyke. By one of
them Reynolds solicited permission to pay his respects to the young prince.
He was accompanied by Crew, another officer; and, though he pretended that
it was an accidental civility, found the opportunity of whispering an
implied offer of his services in the ear of the duke. Within a few days
he received an order to wait on the protector in London in company with
Colonel White, who had secretly accused him; but both were lost[a] on the
Goodwin Sands, through the ignorance or the stupidity of the captain.[1]

At home the public attention was absorbed by a new and most interesting
spectacle. The parliament met on the day to which it had been adjourned,
but it was now divided according to the ancient form into two houses.
Sixty-two individuals had been summoned[b] to the upper house, and the
writs, as they were copies of those formerly issued by the sovereign, were
held to confer in like manner the privileges of an hereditary peerage,
subject to certain exceptions specified in the "petition and advice."[2]
The Commons, at the call of the usher of the black rod, proceeded to the
House of Lords, where they found his highness seated under a canopy of
state. His speech began with the ancient address: "My lords and gentlemen
of the House of Commons." It was short, but its brevity was compensated by
its piety, and after an exposition of the eighty-fifth psalm, he referred
his two houses for other particulars to Fiennes, the lord-keeper, who, in a
long and tedious

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 231, 287, 426, 512, 538, 542, 580, 637, 665, 676,
731. Memoirs of James, i. 317-328.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vi. 752.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Dec. 5.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. Jan. 20.]

harangue, praised and defended the new institutions. After the departure of
the Commons, the Lords spent their time in inquiries into the privileges of
their house. Cromwell had summoned his two sons, Richard and Henry, seven
peers of royal creation, several members of his council, some gentlemen of
fortune and family, with a due proportion of lawyers and officers, and a
scanty sprinkling of persons known to be disaffected to his government. Of
the ancient peers two only attended, the lords Eure and Falconberg, of whom
the latter had recently[a] married Mary, the protector's daughter; and of
the other members, nine were absent through business or disinclination. As
their journals have not been preserved, we have little knowledge of their
proceedings.[1]

In the lower house, the interest of the government had declined by the
impolitic removal of the leading members to the House of Lords, and by
the introduction of those who, having formerly been excluded by order of
Cromwell, now took their seats in virtue of the article which reserved to
the house the right of inquiry into the qualifications of its members.
The opposition was led by two men of considerable influence and undaunted
resolution, Hazlerig and Scot. Both had been excluded at the first meeting
of this parliament, and both remembered the affront. To remove Hazlerig

[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 7, 20. Whitelock, 666, 668. The speech of
Fiennes is reported in the Journals, Jan. 25. See the names and characters
of those who attended, in "A Second Narrative of the late Parliament (so
called), &c., printed in the fifth year of England's Slavery under its new
Monarchy, 1658." "They spent their time in little matters, such as choosing
of committees; and among other things, to consider of the privileges and
jurisdiction of their house, (good wise souls!) before they knew what their
house was, or should be called."--Ibid. 7. The peers who refused to attend,
were the earls of Mulgrave, Warwick, and Manchester, the Viscount Say and
Sele, and the Lord Wharton.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Nov. 19.]

from a place where his experience and eloquence rendered him a formidable
adversary, Cromwell had called him to the upper house; but he refused to
obey the writ, and took his seat among the Commons.[1] That a new house was
to be called according to the articles of the "petition and advice," no one
denied; but who, it was asked, made its members lords? who gave them the
privileges of the ancient peerage? who empowered them to negative the acts
of that house to which they owed their existence? Was it to be borne that
the children should assume the superiority over their parents; that the
nominees of the protector should control the representatives of the people,
the depositaries of the supreme power of the nation? It was answered
that the protector had called them lords; that it was the object of "the
petition and advice" to re-establish the "second estate;" and that, if any
doubt remained, it were best to amend the "instrument" by giving to the
members of the other house the title of lords, and to the protector that
of king.[a] Cromwell sought to soothe these angry spirits. He read to them
lectures on the benefit, the necessity, of unanimity. Let them look abroad.
The papists threatened to swallow up all the Protestants of Europe. England
was the only stay, the last hope of religion. Let them look at home: the
Cavaliers and the Levellers were combined to overthrow the constitution;
Charles Stuart was preparing an invasion; and the Dutch had ungratefully
sold him certain vessels for that purpose. Dissension would inevitably draw
down ruin on themselves,

[Footnote 1: Hazlerig made no objection to the oath which bound him to
be faithful to the protector. But the sense which he attached to it is
singular: "I will be faithful," said he, "to the lord-protector's person. I
will murder no man."--Burton's Diary, ii. 347.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Jan. 25.]

their liberties, and their religion. For himself. he called God, angels,
and men, to witness that he sought not the office which he held. It was
forced upon him; but he had sworn to execute its duties, and he would
perform what he had sworn, by preserving to every class of men their just
rights, whether civil or religious.[1] But his advice, and entreaties, and
menaces were useless.[a] The judges repeatedly brought messages from "the
Lords to the Commons," and as often were told that "that house would return
an answer by messengers of their own."[b] Instead, however, of returning
answers, they spent their whole time in debating what title and what rights
ought to belong to the other house.[2]

Never, perhaps, during his extraordinary career, was Cromwell involved in
difficulties equal to those which surrounded him at this moment. He could
raise no money without the consent of parliament, and the pay of the army
in England was five, and of that in Ireland seven, months in arrear; the
exiled king threatened a descent from the coast of Flanders, and the
royalists throughout the

[Footnote 1: Mr. Rutt has added this speech to Burton's Diary, ii. 351-371.
I may remark that, 1. The protector now addressed the members by
the ambiguous style of "my lords and gentlemen of the two houses of
parliament." 2. That he failed in proving the danger which, as he
pretended, menaced Protestantism. If, in the north, the two Protestant
states of Sweden and Denmark were at war with each other, more to the south
the Catholic states of France and Spain were in the same situation. 3. That
the vessels sold by the Dutch were six flutes which the English cruisers
afterwards destroyed. 4. That from this moment he was constantly asserting
with oaths that he sought not his present office. How could he justify such
oaths in his own mind? Was it on the fallacious ground that what he in
reality sought was the office of king, not of protector?]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Jan. 25, 29, Feb. 1, 3. Burton's Diary, ii. 371-464.
Thurloe, i. 766; vi. 767.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Jan. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. Feb. 3.]

kingdom were preparing to join his standard; the leaders of opposition in
parliament had combined with several officers in the army to re-establish
the commonwealth, "without a single person or house of lords;" and
a preparatory petition for the purpose of collecting signatures was
circulated through the city. Cromwell consulted his most trusty advisers,
of whom some suggested a dissolution, others objected the want of money,
and the danger of irritating the people. Perhaps he had already taken his
resolution, though he kept it a secret within his own breast; perhaps
it might be the result of some sudden and momentary impulse;[1] but one
morning[a] he unexpectedly threw himself into a carriage with two horses
standing at the gates of Whitehall; and, beckoning to six of his guards to
follow, ordered the coachman to drive to the parliament house. There he
revealed his purpose to Fleetwood, and, when that officer ventured to
remonstrate, declared, by the living God that he would dissolve the
parliament. Sending for the Commons, he addressed them in an angry and
expostulating tone. "They," he said, "had placed him in the high situation
in which he stood; he sought it not; there was neither man nor woman
treading on English ground who could say he did. God knew that he would
rather have lived under a wood side, and have tended a flock of sheep, than
have undertaken the government. But, having undertaken it at their request,
he had a right to look to them for aid and support. Yet some among them,
God was his witness, in violation of their oaths, were attempting to
establish a commonwealth

[Footnote 1: "Something happening that morning that put the protector
into a rage and passion near unto madness, as those at Whitehall can
witness."--Second Narrative, p. 8.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Feb. 4.]

interest in the army; some had received commissions to enlist men for
Charles Stuart; and both had their emissaries at that moment seeking to
raise a tumult, or rather a rebellion, in the city. But he was bound before
God to prevent such disasters; and, therefore," he concluded, "I think
it high time that an end be put to your sitting; and I do dissolve this
parliament; and let God judge between me and you." "Amen, amen," responded
several voices from the ranks of the opposition.[1]

This was the fourth parliament that Cromwell had broken. The republicans
indulged their resentment in murmurs, and complaints, and menaces; but the
protector, secure of the fidelity of the army, despised the feeble efforts
of their vengeance, and encouraged by his vigour the timidity of his
counsellors. Strong patrols of infantry and cavalry paraded the streets,
dispersing every assemblage of people in the open air, in private houses,
and even in conventicles and churches, for the purpose, or under the
pretext, of devotion. The colonel-major and several captains of his own
regiment were cashiered;[2] many of the Levellers and royalists were
arrested and imprisoned, or discharged upon bail; and the lord-mayor,
aldermen, and common-council received from Cromwell

[Footnote 1: Journ. Feb. 4. Thurloe, vi. 778, 779, 781, 788. Parl. Hist.
iii. 1525. By the oath, which Cromwell reproaches them with violating,
they had sworn "to be true and faithful to the lord-protector as chief
magistrate, and not to contrive, design, or attempt any thing against his
person or lawful authority."]

[Footnote 2: "I," says Hacker, "that had served him fourteen years, and had
commanded a regiment seven years, without any trial or appeal, with the
breath of his nostrils I was outed, and lost not only my place but a dear
friend to boot. Five captains under my command were outed with me, because
they could not say that was a house of lords."--Burton's Diary, iii. 166.]

himself an account of the danger which threatened them from the invasion
meditated by Charles Stuart, and a charge to watch the haunts of the
discontented, and to preserve the tranquillity of the city. At the same
time his agents were busy in procuring loyal and affectionate addresses
from the army, the counties, and the principal towns; and these, published
in the newspapers, served to overawe his enemies, and to display the
stability of his power.[1]

The apprehension of invasion, to which Cromwell so frequently alluded, was
not entirely groundless. On the return of the winter, the royalists had
reminded Charles of his promise in the preceding spring; the king of Spain
furnished an aid of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns; the harbour of
Ostend was selected for the place of embarkation; and arms, ammunition, and
transports were purchased in Holland. The prince himself, mastering for a
while his habits of indolence and dissipation, appeared eager to redeem his
pledge;[2] but the more prudent of his advisers conjured him not to risk
his life on general assurances of support; and the marquess of Ormond, with
the most chivalrous loyalty, offered to ascertain on the spot the real
objects and resources of his adherents. Pretending to proceed on a mission
to the court of the duke of Neuburg, that nobleman, accompanied by O'Neil,
crossed the sea,[a] landed in disguise at Westmarch on the coast of Essex,
and

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 778, 781, 788; vii. 4, 21, 32, 49, 71. Parl.
Hist. iii. 1528.]

[Footnote 2: Still Ormond says to Hyde, "I fear his immoderate delight in
empty, effeminate, and vulgar conversations is become an irresistible part
of his nature, and will never suffer him to animate his own designs, and
others' actions, with that spirit which is requisite for his quality, and
much more to his fortune."--27, Jan. 7, 1658. Clar. iii. 387.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. End of January.]

hastened to London. There, continually changing his dress and lodgings,
he contrived to elude the suspicion of the spies of government, and had
opportunities of conversing with men of different parties; with the
royalists, who sought the restoration of the ancient monarchy; with the
Levellers, who were willing that the claims of the king and the subject
should be adjusted in a free parliament; with the moderate Presbyterians,
who, guided by the earls of Manchester and Denbigh, with Rossiter and Sir
William Waller, offered to rely on the royal promises; and the more rigid
among the same religionists, who, with the lords Say and Robarts at their
head, demanded the confirmation of the articles to which the late king
had assented in the Isle of Wight. But from none could he procure any
satisfactory assurances of support. They were unable to perform what they
had promised by their agents. They had not the means, nor the courage,
nor the abilities, necessary for the undertaking. The majority refused
to declare themselves, till Charles should have actually landed with a
respectable force; and the most sanguine required a pledge that he would
be ready to sail the moment he heard of their rising, because there was no
probability of their being able, without foreign aid, to make head against
the protector beyond the short space of a fortnight.[1]

In these conferences Ormond frequently came in contact with Sir Richard
Willis, one of the sealed knot, and standing high in the confidence of
Charles.[2]

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, ii. 118, 124, 130. Clar. iii. 388, 392, 395.
Thurloe, i. 718.]

[Footnote 2: The knot consisted of Willis, Colonel Russell, Sir William
Compton, Edward Villiers, and Mr. Broderick, according to several letters
in Clarendon; according to the duke of York, of the four first, Lord
Belasyse, and Lord Loughborough.--James, i. 370.]

Willis uniformly disapproved of the attempt. The king's enemies, he
observed, were now ready to unsheath their swords against each other; but
let the royal banner be once unfurled, and they would suspend their present
quarrel, to combine their efforts against the common enemy. Yet the author
of this prudent advice was, if we may believe Clarendon, a traitor, though
a traitor of a very singular description. He is said to have contracted
with Cromwell, in consideration of an annual stipend, to reveal to him the
projects of the king and the royalists; but on condition that he should
have no personal communication with the protector, that he should never be
compelled to mention any individual whose name he wished to keep secret,
and that he should not be called upon to give evidence, or to furnish
documents, for the conviction of any prisoner.[1] It is believed that for
several years he faithfully complied with this engagement; and when he
thought that Ormond had been long enough in London, he informed Cromwell
of the presence of the marquess in the capital, but at the same moment
conveyed advice to the marquess that orders had been issued for his
apprehension. This admonition had its desired effect. Ormond stole away[b]
to Shoreham in Sussex, crossed over to Dieppe, concealed himself two months
in Paris, and then, travelling

[Footnote 1: This is Clarendon's account. In Thurloe, i. 757, is a paper
signed John Foster, supposed to be the original offer made to Thurloe by
Willis. He there demands that no one but the protector should be acquainted
with his employment; that he should never be brought forward as a witness;
that the pardon of one dear friend should be granted to him; and that he
should receive fifty pounds with the answer, five hundred pounds on his
first interview with Thurloe, and five hundred pounds when he put into
their hands any of the conspirators against Cromwell's person.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Feb. 15.]

in disguise through France to Geneva, that he might escape the notice
of Lockhart and Mazarin, returned along the Rhine to join his master in
Flanders.[1]

There was little in the report of Ormond to give encouragement to Charles;
his last hopes were soon afterwards extinguished by the vigilance of
Cromwell. The moment the thaw opened the ports of Holland, a squadron of
English frigates swept the coast,[a] captured three and drove on shore two
flutes destined for the expedition, and closely blockaded the harbour of
Ostend.[2] The design was again postponed till the winter;[b] and the king
resolved to solicit in person a supply of money at the court of the Spanish
monarch. But from this journey he was dissuaded both by Hyde and by the
Cardinal de Retz, who pointed out to him the superior advantage of his
residence in Flanders, where he was in readiness to seize the first
propitious moment which fortune should offer. In the mean time the
cardinal, through his agent in Rome, solicited from the pope pecuniary aid
for the king, on condition that in the event of his ascending the throne of
his fathers, he should release the Catholics of his three kingdoms from the
intolerable pressure of the penal laws.[3]

The transactions of this winter, the attempt of Syndercombe, the ascendancy
of the opposition in parliament,

[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 614-618, 667. Clarendon's narrative is so
frequently inaccurate, that it is unsafe to give credit to any charge on
his authority alone; but in the present instance he relates the discovery
of the treachery of Willis with such circumstantial minuteness, that
it requires a considerable share of incredulity to doubt of its being
substantially true; and his narrative is confirmed by James II. (Mem. i.
370), and other documents to be noticed hereafter.]

[Footnote 2: Carte's Letters, ii. 126, 135. Clar. Papers, iii. 396.]

[Footnote 3: Carte's Letters, ii. 136-142, 145. Clar. Pap. iii. 401.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. March 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. April 14.]

and the preparations of the royalists to receive the exiled king, added to
habitual indisposition, had soured and irritated the temper of Cromwell. He
saw that to bring to trial the men who had been his associates in the cause
might prove a dangerous experiment; but there was nothing to deter him from
wreaking his vengeance on the royalists, and convincing them of the danger
of trespassing any more on his patience by their annual projects of
insurrection. In every county all who had been denounced, all who were
even suspected, were put under arrest; a new high court of justice was
established according to the act of 1656; and Sir Henry Slingsby, Dr.
Hewet, and Mr. Mordaunt, were selected for the three first victims.
Slingsby, a Catholic gentleman and a prisoner at Hull, had endeavoured to
corrupt the fidelity of the officers in the garrison; who, by direction
of the governor, amused the credulity of the old man, till he had the
imprudence to deliver[a] to them a commission from Charles Stuart.[1] Dr.
Hewet was an episcopalian divine, permitted to preach at St. Gregory's, and
had long been one of the most active and useful of the royal agents in
the vicinity of the capital. Mordaunt, a younger brother of the earl of
Peterborough, had also displayed his zeal for the king, by maintaining a
constant correspondence with the marquess of Ormond, and distributing royal
commissions to those who offered to raise men in favour of Charles. Of the
truth of the charges brought against them, there could be no doubt; and,
aware of their danger, they strongly protested against the legality of the
court, demanded a trial by jury, and appealed to Magna Charta and several
acts of parliament. Slingsby at last pleaded, and was condemned; Hewet,
under the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 777, 780, 786, 870; vii. 46, 47, 98.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. April 2.]

pretence that to plead was to betray the liberties of Englishmen, stood
mute; and his silence, according to a recent act, was taken for a
confession of guilt. Mordaunt was more fortunate. Stapeley, who, to save
his own life, swore against him, proved an unwilling witness; and Mallory,
who was to have supported the evidence of Stapeley, had four days before
been bribed to abscond. This deficiency was gladly laid hold of by the
majority of the judges, who gave their opinion[a] that his guilt was not
proved; and, for similar reasons, some days later acquitted two other
conspirators, Sir Humphrey Bennet and Captain Woodcock. The fact is, they
were weary of an office which exposed them to the censure of the public;
for the court was viewed with hatred by the people. It abolished the trial
by jury; it admitted no inquest or presentment by the oaths of good and
faithful men; it deprived the accused of the benefit of challenge; and its
proceedings were contrary to the law of treason, the petition of right, and
the very oath of government taken by the protector. Cromwell, dissatisfied
with these acquittals, yielded to the advice of the council, and sent the
rest of the prisoners before the usual courts of law, where several were
found guilty, and condemned to suffer the penalties of treason.[1]

Great exertions were made to save the lives of Slingsby and Hewet. In
favour of the first, it was urged that he had never been suffered to
compound, had never submitted to the commonwealth, and had

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 673, 674. Thurloe, vii. 159, 164. State Trials, v.
871, 883, 907. These trials are more interesting in Clarendon, but much of
his narrative is certainly, and more of it probably, fictitious. It is not
true that Slingsby's offence was committed two years before, nor that Hewet
was accused of visiting the king in Flanders, nor that Mallory escaped out
of the hall on the morning of the trial (See Claren. Hist. iii. 619-624.)
Mallory's own account of his escape is in Thurloe, vii. 194-220.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. June 9.]

been for years deprived both of his property and liberty, so that his
conduct should be rather considered as the attempt of a prisoner of war
to regain his freedom, than of a subject to overturn the government. This
reasoning was urged[a] by his nephew, Lord Falconberg, who, by his recent
marriage with Mary Cromwell, was believed to possess considerable influence
with her father. The interest of Dr. Hewet was espoused by a more powerful
advocate--by Elizabeth, the best-beloved of Cromwell's daughters, who at
the same time was in a delicate and precarious state of health. But it
was in vain that she interceded for the man whose spiritual ministry she
employed; Cromwell was inexorable. He resolved[b] that blood should be
shed, and that the royalists should learn to fear his resentment,
since they had not been won by his forbearance. Both suffered death by
decapitation.[1]

During the winter, the gains and losses of the hostile armies in Flanders
had been nearly balanced. If, on the one hand, the duke of York was
repulsed with loss in his attempt to storm by night the works at Mardyke;
on the other, the Marshal D'Aumont was made prisoner with fifteen hundred
men by the Spanish governor of Ostend, who, under the pretence of
delivering up the place, had decoyed him within the fortifications. In
February, the offensive treaty

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, ii. 149. I think there is some reason to question
those sentiments of loyalty to the house of Stuart, and that affliction and
displeasure on account of the execution of Hewet, which writers attribute
to Elizabeth Claypole. In a letter written by her to her sister-in-law, the
wife of H. Cromwell, and dated only four days after the death of Hewet, she
calls on her to return thanks to God for their deliverence from Hewet's
conspiracy: "for sertingly not ondly his (Cromwell's) famely would have bin
ruined, but in all probabillyti the hol nation would have his invold in
blod."--June 13. Thurloe, vii. 171.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1657. Nov. 19.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. June 8.]

between France and England was renewed for another year; three thousand
men, drafted from different regiments, were sent by the protector to supply
the deficiency in the number of his forces; and the combined army opened
the campaign with the siege of Dunkirk. By the Spaniards the intelligence
was received with surprise and apprehension. Deceived by false information,
they had employed all their efforts to provide for the safety of Cambray.
The repeated warnings given by Charles had been neglected; the extensive
works at Dunkirk remained in an unfinished state; and the defence of the
place had been left to its ordinary garrison of no more than one thousand
men, and these but scantily supplied with stores and provisions. To repair
his error, Don Juan, with the consent of his mentor, the Marquess Caracena,
resolved to hazard a battle; and, collecting a force of six thousand
infantry and four thousand cavalry, encamped between the village of Zudcote
and the lines of the besiegers. But Turenne, aware of the defective
organization of the Spanish armies, resolved to prevent the threatened
attack; and the very next morning, before the Spanish cannon and ammunition
had reached the camp, the allied force was seen advancing in battle array.
Don Juan hastily placed his men along a ridge of sand-hills which extended
from the sea coast to the canal, giving the command of the right wing to
the duke of York, of the left to the prince of Condé, and reserving
the centre to himself. The battle was begun by the English, who found
themselves opposed to their countryman, the duke of York. They were led
by Major-General Morgan; for Lockhart, who acted both as ambassador and
commander-in-chief, was confined by indisposition to his carriage. Their
ardour to distinguish themselves in the presence of the two rival nations
carried them considerably in advance of their allies; but, having halted
to gain breath at the foot of the opposite sand-hill, they mounted with
impetuosity, received the fire of the enemy, and, at the point of the pike,
drove them from their position. The duke immediately charged at the head
of the Spanish cavalry; but one half of his men were mowed down by a
well-directed fire of musketry; and James himself owed the preservation of
his life to the temper of his armour. The advantage, however, was dearly
purchased: in Lockhart's regiment scarcely an officer remained to take the
command.

By this time the action had commenced on the left, where the prince of
Condé, after some sharp fighting, was compelled to retreat by the bank of
the canal. The centre was never engaged; for the regiment, on its
extreme left, seeing itself flanked by the French in pursuit of Condé,
precipitately abandoned its position, and the example was successively
imitated by the whole line. But, in the meanwhile, the duke of York had
rallied his broken infantry, and while they faced the English, he charged
the latter in flank at the head of his company of horse-guards. Though
thrown into disorder, they continued to fight, employing the butt-ends of
their muskets against the swords of their adversaries, and in a few minutes
several squadrons of French cavalry arrived to their aid. James was
surrounded; and, in despair of saving himself by flight, he boldly assumed
the character of a French officer; rode at the head of twenty troopers
toward the right of their army; and, carefully threading the different
corps, arrived without exciting suspicion at the bank of the canal, by
which he speedily effected his escape to Furnes.[1] The victory on the part
of the allies was complete. The Spanish cavalry made no effort to protect
the retreat of their infantry; every regiment of which was successively
surrounded by the pursuers, and compelled to surrender. By Turenne and his
officers the chief merit of this brilliant success was cheerfully allotted
to the courage and steadiness of the English regiments; at Whitehall it was
attributed to the prayers of the lord-protector, who, on that very day,
observed with his council a solemn fast to implore the blessing of heaven
on the operations of the allied army.[2]

Unable to oppose their enemies in the field, the Spanish generals proposed
to retard their progress by the most obstinate defence of the different
fortresses. The prince de Ligne undertook that of Ipres; the care of
Newport, Bruges, and Ostend was committed to the duke of York; and Don Juan
returned to Brussels to hasten new levies from the different provinces.
Within a fortnight Dunkirk capitulated,[a] and the king of France, having
taken possession, delivered the keys with his own hand to the English
ambassador. Gravelines was soon afterwards reduced;[b] the prince de Ligne
suffered himself to be surprised by the

[Footnote 1: See the account of this battle by James himself, in his
Memoirs, i. 338-358; also Thurloe, vii. 155, 156, 159.]

[Footnote 2: "Truly," says Thurloe, "I never was present at any such
exercise, where I saw a greater spirit of faith and prayer poured
forth."--Ibid. 158. "The Lord," says Fleetwood, "did draw forth his
highness's heart, to set apart that day to seek the Lord; and indeed
there was a very good spirit appearing. Whilst we were praying, they were
fighting; and the Lord hath given a signal answer. And the Lord hath not
only owned us in our work there, but in our waiting upon him in our way of
prayer, which is indeed our old experienced approved way in all our straits
and difficulties."--Ibid. 159.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. June 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. August 20.]

superior activity of Turenne; Ipres opened its gates, and all the towns
on the banks of the Lys successively submitted to the conquerors. Seldom,
perhaps, had there occurred a campaign more disastrous to the Spanish
arms.[1]

In the eyes of the superficial observer, Cromwell might now appear to have
reached the zenith of power and greatness. At home he had discovered,
defeated, and punished all the conspiracies against him; abroad, his army
had gained laurels in the field; his fleets swept the seas; his friendship
was sought by every power; and his mediation was employed in settling the
differences between both Portugal and Holland, and the king of Sweden
and the elector of Brandenburg. He had recently sent Lord Falconberg to
compliment Louis XIV. on his arrival at Calais; and in a few days, was
visited by the duke of Crequi, who brought him a magnificent sword as a
present from that prince, and by Mancini, with another present of tapestry
from his uncle, the Cardinal Mazarin. But, above all, he was now in
possession of Dunkirk, the great object of his foreign policy for the last
two years, the opening through which he was to accomplish the designs of
Providence on the continent. The real fact, however, was that his authority
in England never rested on a more precarious footing than at the present
moment; while, on the other hand, the cares and anxieties of government,
joined to his apprehensions of personal violence, and the pressure of
domestic affliction, were

[Footnote 1: James, Memoirs, i. 359. Thurloe, vii. 169, 176, 215. If we may
believe Temple (ii. 545), Cromwell now saw his error in aiding the French,
and made an offer of uniting his forces with those of Spain, provided the
siege of Calais were made the first attempt of the combined army.]

rapidly undermining his constitution, and hurrying him from the gay and
glittering visions of ambition to the darkness and silence of the tomb.

1. Cromwell was now reduced to that situation which, to the late
unfortunate monarch, had proved the source of so many calamities. His
expenditure far outran his income. Though the last parliament had made
provision, ample provision, as it was then thought, for the splendour of
his establishment, and for all the charges of the war, he had already
contracted enormous debts; his exchequer was frequently drained to the last
shilling; and his ministers were compelled to go a-begging--such is the
expression of the secretary of state--for the temporary loan of a few
thousand pounds, with the cheerless anticipation of a refusal.[1] He
looked on the army, the greater part of which he had quartered in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis, as his chief--his only support against his
enemies; and while the soldiers were comfortably clothed and fed, he might
with confidence rely on their attachment; but now that their pay was in
arrear, he had reason to apprehend that discontent might induce them to
listen to the suggestions of those officers who sought to subvert his
power. On former occasions, indeed, he had relieved himself from similar
embarrassments by the imposition of taxes by his own authority; but this
practice was so strongly reprobated in the petition and advice, and he had
recently abjured it with so much solemnity, that he dared not repeat
the experiment. He attempted to raise a loan among the merchants and
capitalists in the city; but his credit and popularity were gone; he had,
by plunging into

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 99, 100, 144, 295.]

war with Spain, cut off one of the most plentiful sources of profit, the
Spanish trade; and the number of prizes made by the enemy, amounting to
more than a thousand,[1] had ruined many opulent houses. The application
was eluded by a demand of security on the landed property belonging to
country gentlemen. There remained a third expedient,--an application to
parliament. But Cromwell, like the first Charles, had learned to dread
the very name of a parliament. Three of these assemblies he had moulded
according to his own plan, and yet not one of them could he render
obsequious to his will. Urged, however, by the ceaseless importunities of
Thurloe, he appointed[a] nine councillors to inquire into the means of
defeating the intrigues of the republicans in a future parliament; the
manner of raising a permanent revenue from the estates of the royalists;
and the best method of determining the succession to the protectorate. But
among the nine were two who, aware of his increasing infirmities, began to
cherish projects of their own aggrandizement, and who, therefore, made it
their care to perplex and to prolong the deliberations. The committee sat
three weeks. On the two first questions they came to no conclusion; with
respect to the third, they voted, on a division, that the choice between
an elective and an hereditary succession was a matter of indifference.
Suspicious of their motives, Cromwell dissolved[b] the committee.[2] But he
substituted no

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 662.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 146, 176, 192, 269. The committee consisted, in
Thurloe's words, of Lord Fiennes, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Desborow, Lord
Chamberlayne, Lord Whalley, Mr. Comptroller, Lord Goffe, Lord Cooper, and
himself (p. 192). On this selection Henry Cromwell observes: "The wise men
were but seven; it seems you have made them nine. And having heard their
names, I think myself better able to guess what they'll do than a much
wiser man; for no very wise man can ever imagine it" (p. 217).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658 June 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658 July 8.]

council in its place; things were allowed to take their course; the
embarrassment of the treasury increased; and the irresolution of the
protector, joined to the dangers which threatened the government, shook the
confidence of Thurloe himself. It was only when he looked up to heaven
that he discovered a gleam of hope, in the persuasion that the God who had
befriended Cromwell through life, would not desert him at the close of his
career.[1][a]

2. To the cares of government must be added his constant dread of
assassination. It is certainly extraordinary that, while so many
conspiracies are said to have been formed, no attempt was actually made
against his person; but the fact that such designs had existed, and the
knowledge that his death was of the first importance to his enemies,
convinced him that he could never be secure from danger. He multiplied his
precautions. We are told that he wore defensive armour under his clothes;
carried loaded pistols in his pockets; sought to remain in privacy; and,
when he found it necessary to give audience, sternly watched the eyes and
gestures of those who addressed him. He was careful that his own motions
should not be known beforehand. His carriage was filled with attendants; a
numerous escort accompanied him; and he proceeded at full speed, frequently
diverging from the road to the right or left, and generally returning by
a different route. In his palace he often inspected the nightly watch,
changed his bed-chamber, and was careful that, besides the principal door,
there should be some other egress, for the facility

[Footnote 1: Ibid. 153, 282, 295.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. July 27.]

of escape. He had often faced death without flinching in the field; but his
spirit broke under the continual fear of unknown and invisible foes. He
passed the nights in a state of feverish anxiety; sleep fled from his
pillow; and for more than a year before his death we always find the
absence of rest assigned as either the cause which produced, or a
circumstance which aggravated, his numerous ailments.[1]

3. The selfishness of ambition does not exclude the more kindly feelings of
domestic affection. Cromwell was sincerely attached to his children; but,
among them, he gave the preference to his daughter Elizabeth Claypole.
The meek disposition of the young woman possessed singular charms for the
overbearing spirit of her father; and her timid piety readily received
lessons on mystical theology from the superior experience of the
lord-general.[2] But she was now dying of a most painful and internal
complaint, imperfectly understood by her physicians; and her grief for the
loss of her infant child added to the poignancy of her sufferings. Cromwell
abandoned the business of state that he might hasten to Hampton Court, to

[Footnote 1: So says Clarendon (iii. 646), Bates (Elench. 343), and Welwood
(p. 94); but their testimony can prove nothing more than that such reports
were current, and obtained credit, among the royalists.]

[Footnote 2: The following passage from one of Cromwell's letters to his
daughter Ireton, will perhaps surprise the reader. "Your sister Claypole is
(I trust in mercye) exercised with some perplexed thoughts, shee sees her
owne vanitye and carnal minde, bewailinge itt, shee seeks after (as I hope
alsoe) that w'ch will satisfie, and thus to bee a seeker, is to be of the
best sect next a finder, and such an one shall every faythfull humble
seeker bee at the end. Happie seeker; happie finder. Who ever tasted that
the Lord is gracious, without some sense of self-vanitye and badness? Who
ever tasted that graciousnesse of his, and could goe lesse in desier, and
lesse than pressinge after full enjoyment? Deere hart presse on: lett not
husband, lett not anythinge coole thy affections after Christ," &c. &c.
&c.--Harris, iii. App. 515, edit. 1814.]

console his favourite daughter. He frequently visited her, remained long in
her apartment, and, whenever he quitted it, seemed to be absorbed in the
deepest melancholy. It is not probable that the subject of their private
conversation was exposed to the profane ears of strangers. We are, however,
told that she expressed to him her doubts of the justice of the good old
cause, that she exhorted him to restore the sovereign authority to the
rightful owner, and that, occasionally, when her mind was wandering, she
alarmed him by uttering cries of "blood," and predictions of vengeance.[1]

4. Elizabeth died.[a] The protector was already confined to his bed with
the gout, and, though he had anticipated the event, some days elapsed
before he recovered from the shock. A slow fever still remained, which
was pronounced a bastard tertian.[b] One of his physicians whispered to
another, that his pulse was intermittent;[c] the words caught the ears of
the sick man; he turned pale, a cold perspiration covered his face; and,
requesting to be placed in bed, he executed his private will. The next
morning he had recovered his usual composure; and when he received the
visit of his physician,[d] ordering all his attendants to quit the room but
his wife, whom he held by the hand, he said to him: "Do not think that I
shall die; I am sure of the contrary." Observing the surprise which these
words excited, he continued: "Say not that I have lost my reason: I tell
you the truth. I know it from better authority than any which you can have
from Galen or Hippocrates. It is the answer of God himself to our prayers;
not to mine alone, but to those of others who have a more intimate

[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 647. Bulstrode, 205. Heath, 408.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. August 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. August 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1658. August 24.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1658. August 25.]

interest in him than I have."[1] The same communication was made to
Thurloe, and to the different members of the protector's family; nor did it
fail to obtain credit among men who believed that "in other instances he
had been favoured with similar assurances, and that they had never deceived
him."[2] Hence his chaplain Goodwin exclaimed, "O Lord, we pray not for his
recovery; that thou hast granted already; what we now beg is his _speedy_
recovery."[3]

In a few days, however, their confidence was shaken. For change of air he
had removed to Whitehall, till the palace of St. James's should be ready
for his reception. There his fever became[a] a double tertian, and his
strength rapidly wasted away. Who, it was asked, was to succeed him? On the
day of his inauguration he had written the name of his successor within a
cover sealed with the protectorial arms; but that paper had been lost,
or purloined, or destroyed. Thurloe undertook to suggest to him a second
nomination; but the condition of the protector, who, if we believe him,
was always insensible or delirious, afforded no opportunity. A suspicion,
however, existed, that he had private reasons for declining to interfere in
so delicate a business.[4]

The 30th of August was a tempestuous day: during the night the violence of
the wind increased till it blew a hurricane. Trees were torn from their
roots in the park, and houses unroofed in the city. This extraordinary
occurrence at a moment when it was thought that the protector was dying,
could not fail

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 321, 340, 354, 355. Bates, Elench. 413.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 355, 367, 376.]

[Footnote 3: Ludlow, ii. 151.]

[Footnote 4: Thurloe, 355, 365, 366.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658 August 28.]

of exciting remarks in a superstitious age; and, though the storm reached
to the coasts of the Mediterranean, in England it was universally referred
to the death-bed of the protector. His friends asserted that God would not
remove so great a man from this world without previously warning the nation
of its approaching loss; the Cavaliers more maliciously maintained that the
devils, "the princes of the air," were congregating over Whitehall, that
they might pounce on the protector's soul.[1]

On the third night afterwards,[a] Cromwell had a lucid interval of
considerable duration. It might have been expected that a man of his
religious disposition would have felt some compunctious visitings, when
from the bed of death he looked back on the strange eventful career of his
past life. But he had adopted a doctrine admirably calculated to lull and
tranquillize the misgivings of conscience. "Tell me," said he to Sterry,
one of his chaplains, "Is it possible to fall from grace?" "It is not
possible," replied the minister. "Then," exclaimed the dying man, "I am
safe; for I know that I was once in grace." Under this impression he
prayed, not for himself, but for God's people. "Lord," he said, "though a
miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee through thy
grace, and may and will come to thee for thy people. Thou hast made me a
mean instrument to do them some good, and thee service. Many of them set
too high a value upon me, though others would be glad of my death. Lord,
however thou disposest of me, continue, and go on to do good for them.
Teach those who look too much upon thy instruments, to depend more upon
thyself,

[Footnote 1: Clar. 646. Bulstrode, 207. Heath, 408. Noble, i. 147, note.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Sept. 2.]

and pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they
are thy people too."[1]

Early in the following morning,[a] he relapsed into a state of
insensibility. It was his fortunate day, the 3rd of September, a
circumstance from which his sorrowing relatives derived a new source
of consolation. It was, they observed, on the 3rd of September that he
overcame the Scots at Dunbar; on that day, he also overcame the royalists
at Worcester; and on the same day, he was destined to overcome his
spiritual enemies, and to receive the crown of victory in heaven.
About four in the afternoon he breathed his last, amidst the tears and
lamentations of his attendants. "Cease to weep," exclaimed the fanatical
Sterry, "you have more reason to rejoice. He was your protector here; he
will prove a still more powerful protector, now that he is with Christ at
the right hand of the Father." With a similar confidence in Cromwell's
sanctity, though in a somewhat lower tone of enthusiasm, the grave and
cautious Thurloe announced the event by letter to the deputy of Ireland.
"He is gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and upon the
wings of the prayers of the saints."[2]

Till the commencement of the present century, when that wonderful man
arose, who, by the splendour of his victories and the extent of his empire,
cast all preceding adventurers into the shade, the name of Cromwell stood
without a parallel in the history of civilized Europe. Men looked with a
feeling of awe on the

[Footnote 1: Collection of Passages concerning his late Highness in Time of
his Sickness, p. 12. The author was Underwood, groom of the bed-chamber.
See also a letter of H. Cromwell, Thurloe, vii. 454; Ludlow, ii. 153.]

[Footnote 2: Ludlow, ii. 153. Thurloe, vii. 373.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Sept. 3.]

fortunate individual who, without the aid of birth, or wealth, or
connections, was able to seize the government of three powerful kingdoms,
and to impose the yoke of servitude on the necks of the very men who had
fought in his company to emancipate themselves from the less arbitrary
sway of their hereditary sovereign. That he who accomplished this was no
ordinary personage, all must admit; and yet, on close investigation, we
shall discover little that was sublime or dazzling in his character.
Cromwell was not the meteor which surprises and astounds by the rapidity
and brilliancy of its course. Cool, cautious, calculating, he stole on with
slow and measured pace; and, while with secret pleasure he toiled up the
ascent to greatness, laboured to persuade the spectators that he was
reluctantly borne forward by an exterior and resistless force, by the march
of events, the necessities of the state, the will of the army, and even the
decree of the Almighty. He seems to have looked upon dissimulation as the
perfection of human wisdom, and to have made it the key-stone of the arch
on which he built his fortunes.[1] The aspirations of his ambition were
concealed under the pretence of attachment to "the good old cause;" and his
secret workings to acquire the sovereignty for himself and his family were
represented as endeavours to secure for his former brethren in arms the
blessings of civil and religious freedom, the two great objects which
originally called them into the field. Thus his whole conduct was made up
of artifice and deceit. He laid his plans long beforehand; he studied the
views and dispositions of all from whose influence he had any thing to hope
or fear; and he

[Footnote 1: See proofs of his dissimulation in Harris, iii. 93-103;
Hutchinson, 313.]

employed every expedient to win their affections, to make them the blind
unconscious tools of his policy. For this purpose he asked questions, or
threw out insinuations in their hearing; now kept them aloof with an air of
reserve and dignity; now put them off their guard by condescension, perhaps
by buffoonery;[1] at one time, addressed himself to their vanity or
avarice; at another, exposed to them with tears (for tears he had at will),
the calamities of the nation; and then, when he found them moulded to his
purpose, instead of assenting to the advice which he had himself suggested,
feigned reluctance, urged objections, and pleaded scruples of conscience.
At length he yielded; but it was not till he had acquired by his resistance
the praise of moderation, and the right of attributing his acquiescence to
the importunity of others instead of his own ambition.[2]

Exposed as he was to the continued machinations of the royalists and
Levellers, both equally eager to precipitate him from the height to which
he had attained, Cromwell made it his great object to secure to himself the
attachment of the army. To it he owed the acquisition, through it alone
could he insure the permanence, of his power. Now, fortunately for this
purpose, that army, composed as never was army before or since, revered in
the lord-protector what it valued mostly in itself, the cant and practice
of religious enthusiasm. The superior officers, the subalterns, the
privates, all held themselves forth as professors of godliness. Among them
every public breach of morality was severely punished; the exercises of
religious worship

[Footnote 1: See instances in Bates, Elenc. 344; Cowley, 95; Ludlow, i.
207; Whitelock, 656; State Trials, v. 1131, 1199.]

[Footnote 2: See Ludlow, i. 272; ii. 13, 14, 17.]

were of as frequent recurrence as those of military duty;[1] in council,
the officers always opened the proceedings with extemporary prayer; and to
implore with due solemnity the protection of the Lord of Hosts, was held
an indispensable part of the preparation for battle. Their cause they
considered the cause of God; if they fought, it was for his glory; if
they conquered, it was by the might of his arm. Among these enthusiasts,
Cromwell, as he held the first place in rank, was also pre-eminent in
spiritual gifts.[2] The fervour with which he prayed, the unction with
which he preached, excited their admiration and tears. They looked on him
as the favourite of God, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and
honoured with communications from heaven; and he, on his part, was careful,
by the piety of his language, by the strict decorum of his court, and by
his zeal for the diffusion of godliness, to preserve and strengthen such
impressions. In minds thus disposed, it was not difficult to create
a persuasion that the final triumph of "their cause" depended on the
authority of the general under whom they had conquered; while the full
enjoyment of that religious freedom which they so highly prized rendered
them less jealous of the arbitrary power which he occasionally

[Footnote 1: "The discipline of the army was such that a man would not be
suffered to remain there, of whom we could take notice he was guilty of
such practices."--Cromwell's speech to parliament in 1654. It surprised
strangers.--Certa singulis diebus tum fundendis Deo precibus, tum audiendis
Dei praeconiis erant assignata tempora.--Parallelum Olivae apud Harris,
iii. 12. E certo ad ogni modo, che le Truppe vivono con tanta esatezza,
come se fossero fraterie de' religiosi.--Sagredo, MS.]

[Footnote 2: Religioso al estremo nell' esteriore, predica con eloquenza ai
soldati, li persuade a vivere secondo le legge d' Iddio, e per render più
efficace la persuasione, si serve ben spesso delle lagrime, piangendo più
li peccati altrui, che li proprii.--Ibid. See also Ludlow, iii. 111.]

assumed. In his public speeches, he perpetually reminded them that, if
religion was not the original cause of the late civil war, yet, God "soon
brought it to that issue;" that amidst the strife of battle, and the
difficulties and dangers of war, the reward to which they looked was
freedom of conscience; that this freedom to its full extent they enjoyed
under his government, though they could never obtain it till they had
placed the supreme authority in his hands.[1] The merit which he thus
arrogated to himself was admitted to be his due by the great body of the
saints; it became the spell by which he rendered them blind to his ambition
and obedient to his will; the engine with which he raised, and afterwards
secured, the fabric of his greatness.

On the subject of civil freedom, the protector could not assume so bold
a tone. He acknowledged, indeed, its importance; it was second only to
religious freedom; but if second, then, in the event of competition, it
ought to yield to the first. He contended that, under his government, every
provision had been made for the preservation of the rights of individuals,
so far as was consistent with the safety of the whole nation. He had
reformed the Chancery, he had laboured to abolish the abuses of the law, he
had placed learned and upright judges on the bench, and he had been careful
in all ordinary cases that impartial justice should be administered between
the parties. This indeed was true; but it was also true that by his orders
men were arrested and committed without lawful cause; that juries
were packed; that prisoners, acquitted at their trial, were sent into
confinement beyond the

[Footnote 1: See in particular his speech to his second parliament, printed
by Henry Hills, 1654.]

jurisdiction of the courts; that taxes had been raised without the
authority of parliament; that a most unconstitutional tribunal, the high
court of justice, had been established; and that the majors-general had
been invested with powers the most arbitrary and oppressive.[1] These acts
of despotism put him on his defence; and in apology he pleaded, as every
despot will plead, reasons of state, the necessity of sacrificing a part to
preserve the whole, and his conviction, that a "people blessed by God,
the regenerated ones of several judgments forming the flock and lambs
of Christ, would prefer their safety to their passions, and their real
security to forms." Nor was this reasoning addressed in vain to men who had
surrendered their judgments into his keeping, and who felt little for the
wrongs of others, as long as such wrongs were represented necessary for
their own welfare.

Some writers have maintained that Cromwell dissembled in religion as well
as in politics; and that, when he condescended to act the part of the
saint, he assumed for interested purposes a character which he otherwise
despised. But this supposition is contradicted by the uniform tenor of his
life. Long before he turned his attention to the disputes between the king
and the parliament, religious enthusiasm had made a deep impression on his
mind;[2] it continually manifested itself during his long career, both in
the senate and the field; and it was strikingly displayed in his speeches
and prayers on the last evening of his

[Footnote 1: "Judge Rolles," says Challoner, "was shuffled out of his
place. Three worthy lawyers were sent to the Tower. It cost them fifty
pounds a-piece for pleading a client's cause. One Portman was imprisoned
two or three years without cause. Several persons were taken out of their
beds, and carried none knows whither."--Burton's Diary, iv. 47.

[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]

life. It should, however, be observed, that he made his religion harmonize
with his ambition. If he believed that the cause in which he had embarked
was the cause of God, he also believed that God had chosen him to be the
successful champion of that cause. Thus the honour of God was identified
with his own advancement, and the arts, which his policy suggested, were
sanctified in his eyes by the ulterior object at which he aimed--the
diffusion of godliness, and the establishment of the reign of Christ among
mankind.[1]

[Footnote 1: The Venetian ambassador observes that during the protectorate
London wore the appearance of a garrison town, where nothing was to be seen
but the marching of soldiers, nothing to be heard but the sound of drums
and trumpets. Il decoro et grandezza di Londra ha molto cangiato di faccia,
la nobiltà, che la rendeva conspicua, sta divisa per la campagna, et la
delecatezza della corte la più sontuosa et la più allegre del mondo,
frequentata da principali dame, et abundante nelli più scelti
trattenementi, e cangiata al presente in una perpetua marchia et
contramarchia, in un incessante strepito di tamburri, e di trembe, et in
stuoio numerosi di soldati et officiali diversi ai posti.--Sagredo. See
also an intercepted letter in Thurloe, ii. 670.]




CHAPTER VIII.


Richard Cromwell Protector--Parliament Called--Dissolved--Military
Government--Long Parliament Restored--Expelled Again--Reinstated--Monk In
London--Re-Admission Of Secluded Members--Long Parliament Dissolved--The
Convention Parliament--Restoration Of Charles II.


By his wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, Cromwell left two sons, Richard and
Henry. There was a remarkable contrast in the opening career of these young
men. During the civil war, Richard lived in the Temple, frequented the
company of the Cavaliers, and spent his time in gaiety and debauchery.
Henry repaired to his father's quarters, and so rapid was his promotion,
that at the age of twenty he held the commission of captain in the regiment
of guards belonging to Fairfax, the lord-general. After the establishment
of the commonwealth, Richard married, and, retiring to the house of his
father-in-law, at Hursley in Hampshire, devoted himself to the usual
pursuits of a country gentleman. Henry accompanied his father in the
reduction of Ireland, which country he afterwards governed, first with the
rank of major-general, afterwards with that of lord-deputy. It was not till
the second year of the protectorate that Cromwell seemed to recollect that
he had an elder son. He made him a lord of trade, then chancellor of the
university of Oxford, and lastly a member of the new house of peers. As
these honours were far inferior to those which he lavished on other persons
connected with his family, it was inferred that he entertained a mean
opinion of Richard's abilities. A more probable conclusion is, that he
feared to alarm the jealousy of his officers, and carefully abstained from
doing that which might confirm the general suspicion, that he designed to
make the protectorship hereditary in his family.[1]

The moment he expired, the council assembled, and the result of their
deliberation was an order to proclaim Richard Cromwell protector, on the
ground that he had been declared by his late highness his successor in
that dignity.[2] Not a murmur of opposition was heard; the ceremony was
performed in all places after the usual manner of announcing the accession
of a new sovereign; and addresses of condolence and congratulation poured
in from the army and

[Footnote 1: "The Lord knows my desire was for Harry and his brother to
have lived private lives in the country, and Harry knows this very well;
and how difficultly I was persuaded to give him his commission for
Ireland."--Letter to Fleetwood, 22nd June, 1655.]

[Footnote 2: There appears good reason to doubt this assertion. Thurloe
indeed (vii. 372) informs Henry Cromwell that his father named Richard
to succeed on the preceding Monday. But his letter was written after the
proclamation of Richard, and its contents are irreconcilable with the
letters written before it. We have one from Lord Falconberg, dated on
Monday, saying that no nomination had been made, and that Thurloe had
promised to suggest it, but probably would not perform his promise (ibid.
365); and another from Thurloe himself to Henry Cromwell, stating the same
thing as to the nomination.--Ibid. 364. It may perhaps be said that Richard
was named on the Monday after the letters were written; but there is
a second letter from Thurloe, dated on the Tuesday, stating that the
protector was still incapable of public business, and that matters would,
he feared, remain till the death of his highness in the same state as he
described them in his letter of Monday.--Ibid. 366. It was afterwards said
that the nomination took place on the night before the protector's death,
in the presence of four of the council (Falconberg in Thurloe, 375, and
Barwick, ibid. 415); but the latter adds that many doubt whether it ever
took place at all.]

navy, from one hundred congregational churches, and from the boroughs,
cities, and counties. It seemed as if free-born Britons had been converted
into a nation of slaves. These compositions were drawn up in the highest
strain of adulation, adorned with forced allusions from Scripture, and with
all the extravagance of Oriental hyperbole. "Their sun was set, but no
night had followed. They had lost the nursing father, by whose hand the
yoke of bondage had been broken from the necks and consciences of the
godly. Providence by one sad stroke had taken away the breath from their
nostrils, and smitten the head from their shoulders; but had given them in
return the noblest branch of that renowned stock, a prince distinguished
by the lovely composition of his person, but still more by the eminent
qualities of his mind. The late protector had been a Moses to lead God's
people out of the land of Egypt; his son would be a Joshua to conduct them
into a more full possession of truth and righteousness. Elijah had been
taken into heaven: Elisha remained on earth, the inheritor of his mantle
and his spirit!"[1]

The royalists, who had persuaded themselves that the whole fabric of the
protectorial power would fall in pieces on the death of Cromwell, beheld
with amazement the general acquiescence in the succession, of Richard; and
the foreign princes, who had deemed it prudent to solicit the friendship of
the father, now

[Footnote 1: The Scottish ministers in Edinburgh, instead of joining in
these addresses, prayed on the following Sunday, "that the Lord would be
merciful to the exiled, and those that were in captivity, and cause them to
return with sheaves of joy; that he would deliver all his people from the
yoke of Pharaoh, and task-masters of Egypt, and that he would cut off their
oppressors, and hasten the time of their deliverance."--Thurloe, vii. 416.]

hastened to offer their congratulations to his son. Yet, fair and tranquil
as the prospect appeared, an experienced eye might easily detect the
elements of an approaching storm. Meetings were clandestinely held by the
officers;[a] doubts were whispered of the nomination of Richard by his
father; and an opinion was encouraged among the military that, as the
commonwealth was the work of the army, so the chief office in the
commonwealth belonged to the commander of the army. On this account the
protectorship had been bestowed on Cromwell; but his son was one who had
never drawn his sword in the cause; and to suffer the supreme power to
devolve on him was to disgrace, to disinherit, the men who had suffered so
severely, and bled so profusely, in the contest.

These complaints had probably been suggested, they were certainly fomented,
by Fleetwood and his friends, the colonels Cooper, Berry, and Sydenham.
Fleetwood was brave in the field, but irresolute in council; eager for the
acquisition of power, but continually checked by scruples of conscience;
attached by principle to republicanism, but ready to acquiesce in every
change, under the pretence of submission to the decrees of Providence.
Cromwell, who knew the man, had raised him to the second command in the
army, and fed his ambition with distant and delusive hopes of succeeding
to the supreme magistracy. The protector died, and Fleetwood, instead
of acting, hesitated, prayed, and consulted; the propitious moment was
suffered to pass by; he assented to the opinion of the council in favour of
Richard; and then, repenting of his weakness, sought to indemnify himself
for the loss by confining the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Sept. 14.]

authority of the protector to the civil administration, and procuring
for himself the sole, uncontrolled command of the army. Under the late
government, the meetings of military officers had been discountenanced and
forbidden; now they were encouraged to meet and consult; and, in a body of
more than two hundred individuals, they presented to Richard a petition, by
which they demanded that no officer should be deprived, but by sentence of
a court-martial, and that the chief command of the forces, and the disposal
of commissions, should be conferred on some person whose past services
had proved his attachment to the cause. There were not wanting those who
advised the protector to extinguish the hopes of the factious at once by
arresting and imprisoning the chiefs; but more moderate counsels prevailed,
and in a firm but conciliatory speech,[a] the composition of Secretary
Thurloe, he replied that, to gratify their wishes, he had appointed his
relative, Fleetwood, lieutenant-general of all the forces; but that to
divest himself of the chief command, and of the right of giving or resuming
commissions, would be to act in defiance of the "petition and advice," the
instrument by which he held the supreme authority. For a short time they
appeared satisfied; but the chief officers continued to hold meetings in
the chapel at St. James's, ostensibly for the purpose of prayer, but in
reality for the convenience of deliberation. Fresh jealousies were excited;
it was said that another commander (Henry Cromwell was meant) would be
placed above Fleetwood; Thurloe, Pierrepoint, and St. John were denounced
as evil counsellors; and it became evident to all attentive observers that
the two parties must soon come into collision. The protector could depend
on the armies

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Oct. 14.]

in Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, his brother Henry governed without an
opponent; in Scotland, Monk, by his judicious separation of the troops,
and his vigilance in the enforcement of discipline, had deprived the
discontented of the means of holding meetings and of corresponding with
each other. In England he was assured of the services of eight colonels,
and therefore, as it was erroneously supposed, of their respective
regiments, forming one half of the regular force. But his opponents were
masters of the other half, constituted the majority in the council, and
daily augmented their numbers by the accession of men who secretly leaned
to republican principles, or sought to make an interest in that party which
they considered the more likely to prevail in the approaching struggle.[1]

From the notice of these intrigues the public attention was withdrawn by
the obsequies of the late protector. It was resolved that they should
exceed in magnificence those of any former sovereign, and with that view
they were conducted according to the ceremonial observed at the interment
of Philip II. of Spain. Somerset House was selected for the first part of
the exhibition. The spectators, having passed through three rooms hung with
black cloth, were admitted[a] into the funereal chamber; where, surrounded
with wax-lights, was seen an effigy of Cromwell clothed in royal robes, and
lying on a bed of state,

[Footnote 1: For these particulars, see the letters in Thurloe, vii. 386,
406, 413, 415, 424, 426, 427, 428, 447. 450, 452, 453, 454, 463, 490, 491,
492, 493, 495, 496, 497, 498, 500, 510, 511. So great was the jealousy
between the parties, that Richard and his brother Henry dared not
correspond by letter. "I doubt not all the letters will be opened, which
come either to or from your highness, which can be suspected to contain
business" (454). For the principle now professed by the Levellers, see note
(I).]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. Sept. 26.]

which covered, or was supposed to cover, the coffin. On each side lay
different parts of his armour: in one hand was placed the sceptre, in the
other the globe; and behind the head an imperial crown rested on a cushion
in a chair of state. But, in defiance of every precaution it became
necessary to inter the body before the appointed day; and the coffin was
secretly deposited at night in a vault at the west end of the middle aisle
of Westminster Abbey, under a gorgeous cenotaph which had recently been
erected. The effigy was now removed to a more spacious chamber; it rose
from a recumbent to an erect posture; and stood before the spectators not
only with the emblems of royalty in its hands, but with the crown upon its
head. For eight weeks this pageant was exhibited to the public. As the day
appointed for the funeral obsequies approached, rumours of an intended
insurrection during the ceremony were circulated; but guards from the
most trusty regiments lined the streets; the procession consisting of the
principal persons in the city and army, the officers of state, the foreign
ambassadors, and the members of the protector's family, passed[a] along
without interruption; and the effigy, which in lieu of the corpse was
borne on a car, was placed, with due solemnity, in the cenotaph already
mentioned. Thus did fortune sport with the ambitious prospects of Cromwell.
The honours of royalty which she refused to him during his life, she
lavished on his remains after death; and then, in the course of a few
months, resuming her gifts, exchanged the crown for a halter, and the royal
monument in the abbey for an ignominious grave at Tyburn.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 528, 529. Carrington apud Noble, i. 360-369. The
charge for black cloth alone on this occasion was six thousand nine hundred
and twenty-nine pounds, six shillings, and fivepence,--Biblioth. Stow. ii.
448. I do not notice the childish stories about stealing of the protector's
body.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Nov. 23.]


Before the reader proceeds to the more important transactions at home, he
may take a rapid view of the relations existing between England and foreign
states. The war which had so long raged between the rival crowns of France
and Spain was hastening to its termination; to Louis the aid of England
appeared no longer a matter of consequence; and the auxiliary treaty
between the two countries, which had been renewed from year to year, was
suffered to expire at the appointed[a] time. But in the north of Europe
there was much to claim the attention of the new protector; for the king
of Sweden, after a short peace, had again unsheathed the sword against his
enemy, the king of Denmark. The commercial interests of the maritime states
were deeply involved in the issue of this contest; both England and Holland
prepared to aid their respective allies; and a Dutch squadron joined the
Danish, while an English division, under the command of Ayscue, sailed to
the assistance of the Swedish monarch. The severity of the winter forced
Ayscue to return; but as soon as the navigation of the Sound was open, two
powerful fleets were despatched to the Baltic, one by the protector, the
other by the States; and to Montague, the English admiral, was intrusted
the delicate and difficult commission, not only of watching the proceedings
of the Dutch, but also of compelling them to observe peace towards the
Swedes, without giving them occasion to commence hostilities against
himself. In this he was successful; but no offer of mediation could
reconcile the contending

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. August.]

monarchs; and we shall find Montague still cruising in the Baltic at the
time when Richard, from whom he derived his commission, will be forced to
abdicate the protectorial dignity.[1]

In a few days after the funeral of his father, to the surprise of the
public, the protector summoned[a] a parliament. How, it was asked, could
Richard hope to control such an assembly, when the genius and authority of
Oliver had proved unequal to the attempt? The difficulty was acknowledged;
but the arrears of the army, the exhaustion of the treasury, and the
necessity of seeking support against the designs of the officers, compelled
him to hazard the experiment, and he flattered himself with the hope of
success, by avoiding the rock on which, in the opinion of his advisers,
the policy of his father had split. Oliver had adopted the plan of
representation prepared by the long parliament before its dissolution, a
plan which, by disfranchising the lesser boroughs, and multiplying the
members of the counties, had rendered the elections more independent of the
government: Richard, under the pretence of a boon to the nation, reverted
to the ancient system; and, if we may credit the calculation of his
opponents, no fewer than one hundred and sixty members were returned from
the boroughs by the interest of the court and its supporters. But to adopt
the same plan in the conquered countries of Scotland and Ireland would have
been dangerous; thirty representatives were therefore summoned from each;
and, as the elections were conducted under the eyes of the

[Footnote 1: Burton's Diary, iii. 576. Thurloe, vol. vii. passim. Carte's
Letters, ii. 157-182, Londorp, viii. 635, 708. Dumont, vi. 244, 252, 260.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Nov. 30.]

commanders of the forces, the members, with one solitary exception, proved
themselves the obsequious servants of government.[1]

It was, however, taken as no favourable omen, that when the protector, at
the opening of parliament, commanded the attendance of the Commons in the
House of Lords, nearly one-half of the members refused[a] to obey. They
were unwilling to sanction by their presence the existence of an authority,
the legality of which they intended to dispute; or to admit the superior
rank of the new peers, the representatives of the protector, over
themselves, the representatives of the people. As soon as the lower house
was constituted, it divided itself into three distinct parties. 1. The
protectorists formed about one-half of the members. They had received
instructions to adhere inviolably to the provisions of the "humble petition
and advice," and to consider the government by a single person, with the
aid of two houses, as the unalterable basis of the constitution. 2. The
republicans, who did not amount to fifty, but compensated for deficiency
in number by their energy and eloquence. Vane, Hazlerig, Lambert, Ludlow,
Nevil, Bradshaw, and Scot, were ready debaters, skilled in the forms of the
house, and always on the watch to take advantage of the want of knowledge
or of experience on the part of their adversaries. With them voted
Fairfax, who, after a long retirement, appeared once more on the stage. He
constantly sat by the side, and echoed the opinions of Hazlerig; and, so
artfully did he act his part, so firmly did he attach their confidence,
that, though a royalist at heart, he was designed by them

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 541, 550. Ludlow, ii. 170. Bethel, Brief
Narrative, 340. England's Confusion (p. 4), London, 1659.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Jan. 27]

for the office of lord-general, in the event of the expulsion or the
abdication of Richard. 3. The "moderates or neuters" held in number the
medium between the protectorists and republicans. Of these, some wavered
between the two parties; but many were concealed Cavaliers, who, in
obedience to the command of Charles, had obtained seats in the house, or
young men who, without any fixed political principles, suffered themselves
to be guided by the suggestions of the Cavaliers. To the latter, Hyde had
sent instructions that they should embarrass the plans of the protector,
by denouncing to the house the illegal acts committed under the late
administration; by impeaching Thurloe and the principal officers of state;
by fomenting the dissension between the courtiers and the republicans;
and by throwing their weight into the scale, sometimes in favour of one,
sometimes of the other party, as might appear most conducive to the
interests of the royal exile.[1]

The Lords, aware of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful
not to provoke the hostility of the Commons. They sent no messages; they
passed no bills; but exchanging matters of state for questions of religion,
contrived to spend their time in discussing the form of a national
catechism, the sinfulness of theatrical entertainments, and the papal
corruptions supposed to exist in the Book of Common

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 766; vii. 562, 604, 605, 609, 615, 616. Clarend.
Pap. iii. 423, 424, 425, 428, 432, 434, 436. There were forty-seven
republicans; from one hundred to one hundred and forty counterfeit
republicans and neuters, seventy-two lawyers, and above one hundred
placemen.--Ibid. 440. They began with a day of fasting and humiliation
within the house, and four ministers, with praying and preaching, occupied
them from nine till six.--Burton's Diary and Journals, Feb. 4.]

Prayer.[1] In the lower house, the first subject which called forth the
strength of the different parties was a bill which, under the pretence of
recognizing Richard Cromwell for the rightful successor to his father,
would have pledged the parliament to an acquiescence in the existing form
of government.[a] The men of republican principles instantly took the
alarm. To Richard personally they made no objection; they respected his
private character, and wished well to the prosperity of his family; but
where, they asked, was the proof that the provisions of the "humble
petition and advice" had been observed? where the deed of nomination by his
father? where the witnesses to the signature?--Then what was the "humble
petition and advice" itself? An instrument of no force in a matter of such
high concernment, and passed by a very small majority in a house, out of
which one hundred members lawfully chosen, had been unlawfully excluded.
Lastly, what right had the Commons to admit a negative voice, either in
another house or in a single person? Such a voice was destructive of the
sovereignty of the people exercised by their representatives. The people
had sent them to parliament with power to make laws for the national
welfare, but not to annihilate the first and most valuable right of their
constituents. Each day the debate grew more animated and personal; charges
were made and recriminations followed: the republicans enumerated the acts
of misrule and oppression under the government of the late protector; the
courtiers balanced the account with similar instances from the proceedings
of their adversaries during the sway of the long parliament; the orators,
amidst the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, 559, 609, 615.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Feb. 1.]

multitude of subjects incidentally introduced, lost sight of the original
question; and the speaker, after a debate of eight days, declared that he
was bewildered in a labyrinth of confusion, out of which he could discover
no issue. Weariness at last induced the combatants to listen to a
compromise,[a] that the recognition of Richard as protector should form
part of a future bill, but that at the same time, his prerogative should be
so limited as to secure the liberties of the people. Each party expressed
its satisfaction. The republicans had still the field open for the advocacy
of their favourite doctrines; the protectorists had advanced a step,
and trusted that it would lead them to the acquisition of greater
advantages.[1]

From the office of protector, the members proceeded to inquire into the
constitution and powers of the other house; and this question, as it was
intimately connected with the former, was debated with equal warmth and
pertinacity. The opposition appealed to the "engagement," which many of the
members had subscribed; contended that the right of calling a second
house had been personal to the late protector, and did not descend to
his successors; urged the folly of yielding a negative voice on their
proceedings to a body of counsellors of their own creation; and pretended
to foretel that a protector with a yearly income of one million three
hundred thousand pounds, and a house of lords selected by himself, must
inevitably become, in the course of a few years, master of the liberties of
the people. When, at the end of nine days, the speaker was going to put the
question, Sir

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 1, 14. Thurloe, 603, 609, 610, 615, 617. Clar.
Pap. iii. 424, 426, 429. In Burton's Diary the debate occupies almost two
hundred pages (iii. 87-287).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Feb 14.]

Richard Temple, a concealed royalist, demanded that the sixty members from
Scotland and Ireland, all in the interest of the court, should withdraw.[a]
It was, he said, doubtful, from the illegality of their election,
whether they had any right to sit at all; it was certain that, as the
representatives of other nations, they could not claim to vote on a
question of such high importance to the people of England. Thus another
bone of contention was thrown between the parties; eleven days were
consumed before the Scottish and Irish members could obtain permission to
vote,[b] and then five more expired before the question respecting the
other house was determined.[c] The new lords had little reason to be
gratified with the result. They were acknowledged, indeed, as a house of
parliament for the present; but there was no admission of their claim of
the peerage, or of a negative voice, or of a right to sit in subsequent
parliaments. The Commons consented "to transact business with them" (a new
phrase of undefined meaning), pending the parliament, but with a saving of
the rights of the ancient peers, who had been faithful to the cause; and,
in addition, a few days later,[d] they resolved that, in the transaction of
business, no superiority should be admitted in the other house, nor message
received from it, unless brought by the members themselves.[1]

In these instances, the recognition of the protector, and of the two
houses, the royalists, with some exceptions, had voted in favour of the
court, under the impression that such a form of government was

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 18, March 28, April 5, 6, 8. Thurloe, 615, 626,
633, 636, 640, 647, Clar. Pap. iii. 429, 432. Burton's Diary, iii. 317-369,
403-424, 510-594; iv. 7-41, 46-147, 163-243, 293, 351, 375.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. March 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. March 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. March 28.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1659. April 8.]

one step towards the restoration of the king. But on all other questions,
whenever there was a prospect of throwing impediments in the way of the
ministry, or of inflaming the discontent of the people, they zealously lent
their aid to the republican party. It was proved that, while the revenue
had been doubled, the expenditure had grown in a greater proportion;
complaints were made of oppression, waste, embezzlement, and tyranny in the
collection of the excise: the inhumanity of selling obnoxious individuals
for slaves to the West India planters was severely reprobated;[1] instances
of extortion were daily announced to the house by the committee of
grievances; an impeachment was ordered against Boteler, accused of
oppression in his office of major-general; and another threatened against
Thurloe for illegal conduct in his capacity of secretary of state. But,
while these proceedings awakened the hopes and gratified the resentments of
the people, they at the same time spread alarm through the army; every man
conscious of having abused the power of the sword began to tremble for his
own safety; and an unusual ferment, the sure presage of military violence,
was observable at the head-quarters of the several regiments.

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 429, 432. Thurloe, 647. Burton's Diary, iii.
448; iv. 255, 263, 301, 403, 429. One petition stated that seventy persons
who had been apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising, after a year's
imprisonment, had been sold at Barbadoes for "1550 pounds' weight of sugar
a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties." Among them
were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at
the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island,
being bought and sold still from one planter to another, or attached as
horses or beasts for the debts of their masters, being whipped at the
whipping-posts as rogues at their masters' pleasure, and sleeping in sties
worse than hogs in England."--Ibid. 256. See also Thurloe, i. 745.]


Hitherto the general officers had been divided between Whitehall and
Wallingford House, the residences of Richard and of Fleetwood. At
Whitehall, the Lord Falconberg, brother-in-law to the protector, Charles
Howard, whom Oliver had created a viscount,[1] Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe,
and a few others, formed a military council for the purpose of maintaining
the ascendancy of Richard in the army. At Wallingford House, Fleetwood and
his friends consulted how they might deprive him of the command, and reduce
him to the situation of a civil magistrate; but now a third and more
numerous council appeared at St. James's, consisting of most of the
inferior officers, and guided by the secret intrigues of Lambert, who,
holding no commission himself, abstained from sitting among them, and by
the open influence of Desborough, a bold and reckless man, who began to
despise the weak and wavering conduct of Fleetwood. Here originated the
plan of a general council of officers,[a] which was followed by the
adoption of "the humble representation and petition," an instrument
composed in language too moderate to give reasonable cause of offence, but
intended to suggest much more than it was thought prudent to express. It
made no allusion to the disputed claim of the protector, or the subjects of
strife between the two houses; but it complained bitterly of the contempt
into which the good old cause had sunk, of the threats held out, and
the prosecutions instituted, against the patriots who had distinguished
themselves in its support, and of the privations to which the military were
reduced

[Footnote 1: Viscount Howard, of Morpeth, July 20, 1657, afterwards created
Baron Dacre, Viscount Howard of Morpeth and earl of Carlisle, by Charles
II., 30 April, 1661.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 6.]

by a system that kept their pay so many months in arrear. In conclusion, it
prayed for the redress of these grievances, and stated the attachment of
the subscribers to the cause for which they had bled, and their readiness
to stand by the protector and parliament in its defence.[1] This paper,
with six hundred signatures, was presented to Richard, who received it with
an air of cheerfulness, and forwarded it to the lower house. There it was
read, laid on the table, and scornfully neglected. But the military leaders
treated the house with equal scorn; having obtained the consent of the
protector, they established a permanent council of general officers; and
then, instead of fulfilling the expectations with which they had lulled his
jealousy, successively voted, that the common cause was in danger, that
the command of the army ought to be vested in a person possessing its
confidence, and that every officer should be called upon to testify his
approbation of the death of Charles I., and of the subsequent proceedings
of the military; a measure levelled against the meeting at Whitehall,
of which the members were charged with a secret leaning to the cause of
royalty.[2] This was sufficiently alarming; but, in addition, the officers
of the trained bands signified their adhesion to the "representation" of
the army; and more than six hundred privates of the regiment formerly
commanded by Colonel Pride published their determination to stand by their
officers in the maintenance "of the old cause."[3] The

[Footnote 1: "The Humble Representation and Petition, printed by H. Hills,
1659."--Thurloe, 659.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 662. Ludlow, ii. 174.]

[Footnote 3: The Humble Representation and Petition of Field Officers, &c.
of the Trained Bands. London, 1659. Burton's Diary, iv. 388, note.]

friends of the protector saw that it was time to act with energy; and, by
their influence in the lower house, carried the following votes:[a] that no
military meetings should be held without the joint consent of the protector
and the parliament, and that every officer should forfeit his commission
who would not promise, under his signature, never to disturb the sitting,
or infringe the freedom of parliament. These votes met, indeed, with a
violent opposition in the "other house," in which many of the members had
been chosen from the military; but the courtiers, anxious to secure the
victory, proposed another and declaratory vote in the Commons,[b] that the
command of the army was vested in the three estates, to be exercised by
the protector. By the officers this motion was considered as an open
declaration of war: they instantly met; and Desborough, in their name,
informed Richard that the crisis was at last come; the parliament must be
dissolved, either by the civil authority, or by the power of the sword. He
might make his election. If he chose the first, the army would provide for
his dignity and support; if he did not, he would be abandoned to his fate,
and fall friendless and unpitied.[1]

The protector called a council of his confidential advisers. Whitelock
opposed the dissolution, on the ground that a grant of money might yet
appease the discontent of the military. Thurloe, Broghill, Fiennes, and
Wolseley maintained, on the contrary, that the dissension between the
parliament and the army was irreconcilable; and that on the first shock
between them, the Cavaliers would rise simultaneously in the

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, 555, 557, 558, 662. Burton's Diary, iv. 448-463,
472-480. Ludlow ii. 176, 178.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. April 21.]

cause of Charles Stuart. A commission was accordingly signed by Richard,
and the usher of the black rod repeatedly summoned the Commons to attend in
the other house.[a] But true to their former vote of receiving no message
brought by inferior officers, they refused to obey; some members proposed
to declare it treason to put force on the representatives of the nation,
others to pronounce all proceedings void whenever a portion of the members
should be excluded by violence; at last they adjourned for three days,
and accompanied the speaker to his carriage in the face of the soldiery
assembled at the door. These proceedings, however, did not prevent Fiennes,
the head commissioner, from dissolving the parliament; and the important
intelligence was communicated to the three nations by proclamation in the
same afternoon.[1]

Whether the consequences of this measure, so fatal to the interests of
Richard, were foreseen by his advisers, may be doubted. It appears that
Thurloe had for several days been negotiating both with the republican and
the military leaders. He had tempted some of the former with the offer
of place and emolument, to strengthen the party of the protector; to the
latter he had proposed that Richard, in imitation of his father on one
occasion, should raise money for the payment of the army by the power of
the sword, and without the aid of parliament.[2] But these intrigues were
now at an end; by the dissolution Richard had signed his own deposition;
though he continued to reside at Whitehall, the government fell into
abeyance; even the officers, who had hitherto frequented

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 677. England's Confusion, 9. Clarendon Papers, 451,
456. Ludlow, ii. 174. Merc. Pol. 564.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 659, 661.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 22.]

his court, abandoned him, some to appease, by their attendance at
Wallingford House, the resentment of their adversaries, the others, to
provide, by their absence, for their own safety. If the supreme authority
resided any where, it was with Fleetwood, who now held the nominal command
of the army; but he and his associates were controlled both by the meeting
of officers at St. James's, and by the consultations of the republican
party in the city; and therefore contented themselves with depriving the
friends of Richard of their commissions, and with giving their regiments
to the men who had been cashiered by his father.[1] Unable to agree on
any form of government among themselves, they sought to come to an
understanding with the republican leaders. These demanded the restoration
of the long parliament, on the ground that, as its interruption by Cromwell
had been illegal, it was still the supreme authority in the nation; and
the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage,
insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate
authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate. But the country
was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland
and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and
Cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to
the advantage of the exiled king. As a last resource, the officers, by
an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding,
invited[a] the members of the long parliament to resume the trust of

[Footnote 1: See the Humble Remonstrance from four hundred Non-commissioned
Officers and Privates of Major-general Goffe's Regiment (so called) of
Foot. London, 1659.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 6.]

which they had been unrighteously deprived. With some difficulty,
two-and-forty were privately collected in the Painted Chamber; Lenthall,
the former speaker, after much entreaty, put himself at their head,[a] and
the whole body passed into the house through two lines of officers, some
of whom were the very individuals by whom, six years before, they had been
ignominiously expelled.[1]

The reader will recollect that, on a former occasion, in the year 1648, the
Presbyterian members of the long parliament had been excluded by the army.
Of these, one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, eighty of whom
actually resided in the capital. That they had as good a right to resume
their seats as the members who had been expelled by Cromwell could hardly
be doubted; but they were royalists, still adhering to the principles which
they professed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, and from their
number, had they been admitted, would have instantly outvoted the advocates
of republicanism. They assembled in Westminster Hall;[b] and a deputation
of fourteen, with Sir George Booth, Prynne, and Annesley at their head,
proceeded to the house. The doors were closed in their faces; a company of
soldiers, the keepers, as they were sarcastically called, of the liberties
of England, filled the lobby; and a resolution was passed that no former
member, who had not subscribed the engagement, should sit till further
order of parliament.[c] The attempt, however, though it failed of success,
produced its effect. It served to countenance a belief that the sitting
members were mere tools of the military, and supplied the royalists with
the means of masking their

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 179-186. Whitelock, 677. England's Confusion, 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. May 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. May 9.]

real designs under the popular pretence of vindicating the freedom of
parliament.[1]

By gradual additions, the house at last amounted to seventy members, who,
while they were ridiculed by their adversaries with the appellation of the
"Rump," constituted themselves the supreme authority in the three kingdoms.
They appointed, first, a committee of safety, and then a council of state,
notified to the foreign ministers their restoration to power, and, to
satisfy the people, promised by a printed declaration[a] to establish a
form of government, which should secure civil and religious liberty without
a single person, or kingship, or house of lords. The farce of addresses
was renewed; the "children of Zion," the asserters of the good old cause,
clamorously displayed their joy; and Heaven was fatigued with prayers for
the prosperity and permanence of the new government.[2]

That government at first depended for its existence on the good-will of the
military in the neighbourhood of London; gradually it obtained[b] promises
of support from the forces at a distance. 1. Monk, with his

[Footnote 1: Journ. May 9. Loyalty Banished, 3. England's Confusion, 12.
On the 9th, Prynne found his way into the house, and maintained his right
against his opponents till dinner-time. After dinner he returned, but was
excluded by the military. He was careful, however, to inform the public of
the particulars, and moreover undertook to prove that the long parliament
expired at the death of the king; 1. On the authority of the doctrine laid
down in the law books; 2. Because all writs of summons abate by the king's
death in parliament; 3. Because the parliament is called by a king regnant,
and is _his_, the king regnant's, parliament, and deliberates on _his_
business; 4. Because the parliament is a corporation, consisting of king,
lords, and commons, and if one of the three be extinct, the body corporate
no longer exists.--See Loyalty Banished, and a true and perfect Narrative
of what was done and spoken by and between Mr. Prynne, &c., 1650.]

[Footnote 2: See the Declarations of the Army and the Parliament in the
Journals, May 7.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. May 17.]

officers, wrote to the speaker, congratulating him and his colleagues on
their restoration to power, and hypocritically thanking them for their
condescension in taking up so heavy a burthen; but, at the same time,
reminding them of the services of Oliver Cromwell, and of the debt of
gratitude which the nation owed to his family.[1] 2. Lockhart hastened to
tender the services of the regiments in Flanders, and received in return a
renewal of his credentials as ambassador, with a commission to attend the
conferences between the ministers of France and Spain at Fuentarabia. 3.
Montague followed with a letter from the fleet; but his professions of
attachment were received with distrust. To balance his influence with the
seamen, Lawson received the command of a squadron destined to cruise in the
Channel; and, to watch his conduct in the Baltic, three commissioners, with
Algernon Sydney at their head, were joined with him in his mission to the
two northern courts.[2] 4. There still remained the army in Ireland. From
Henry Cromwell, a soldier possessing the affections of the military, and
believed to inherit the abilities of his father, an obstinate, and perhaps
successful, resistance was anticipated. But he wanted decision. Three
parties had presented themselves to his choice; to earn, by the promptitude
of his acquiescence, the gratitude of the new government; or to maintain by
arms the right of his deposed brother; or to declare, as he was strongly
solicited to declare, in favour of Charles Stuart. Much time was lost in
consultation; at length the thirst of resentment, with the lure of reward,
determined him

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 678.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 669, 670. Ludlow, ii. 199. Journals, May 7, 9, 18,
26, 31.]

to unfurl the royal standard;[1] then the arrival of letters from England
threw him back into his former state of irresolution; and, while he thus
wavered from project to project, some of his officers ventured to
profess their attachment to the commonwealth, the privates betrayed a
disinclination to separate their cause from that of their comrades in
England, and Sir Hardress Waller, in the interest of the parliament,
surprised the castle of Dublin.[a] The last stroke reduced Henry at once to
the condition of a suppliant; he signified his submission by a letter
to the speaker, obeyed the commands of the house to appear before the
council,[b] and, having explained to them the state of Ireland, was
graciously permitted to retire into the obscurity of private life. The
civil administration of the island devolved on five commissioners, and
the command of the army was given to Ludlow,[c] with the rank of
lieutenant-general of the horse.[2]

But the republican leaders soon discovered that they had not been called
to repose on a bed of roses.[d] The officers at Wallingford House began to
dictate to the men whom they had made their nominal masters, and forwarded
to them fifteen demands, under the modest title of "the things which they
had on their minds," when they restored the long parliament.[3] The house
took them successively into consideration. A committee was appointed to
report the form of government the best calculated to secure the liberties
of the people; the duration of the existing parliament was

[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, ii. 242. Clar. Pap. 500, 501, 516.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 683, 684. Journals, June 14, 27, July 4, 17.
Henry Cromwell resided on his estate of Swinney Abbey, near Sohan, in
Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1674.--Noble, i. 227.]

[Footnote 3: See the Humble Petition and Address of the Officers, printed
by Henry Hills, 1659.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. June 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. July 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. July 18.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1659. May 15.]

limited to twelve months; freedom of worship was extended to all believers
in the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, with the usual exception
of prelatists and papists; and an act of oblivion, after many debates, was
passed, but so encumbered with provisoes and exceptions, that it served
rather to irritate than appease.[1] The officers had requested[a] that
lands of inheritance, to the annual value of ten thousand pounds, should be
settled on Richard Cromwell, and a yearly pension of eight thousand pounds
on her "highness dowager," his mother. But it was observed in the house
that, though Richard exercised no authority, he continued to occupy the
state apartments at Whitehall; and a suspicion existed that he was kept
there as an object of terror, to intimate to the members that the same
power could again set him up, which had so recently brought him down. By
repeated messages, he was ordered to retire; and, on his promise to obey,
the parliament granted him the privilege of freedom from arrest during six
months; transferred his private debts, amounting to twenty-nine thousand
six hundred and forty pounds, to the account of the nation, gave him two
thousand pounds as a relief to his present necessities, and voted that
a yearly income of ten thousand pounds should be settled on him and his
heirs, a grant easily made on paper, but never carried into execution.[2]

[Footnote 1: Declaration of General Council of Officers, 27th of October,
p. 5. For the different forms of government suggested by different
projectors, see Ludlow, ii. 206.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, May 16, 25, July 4, 12, 16.--Ludlow (ii. 198) makes
the present twenty thousand pounds; but the sum of two thousand pounds is
written at length in the Journals; May 25. While he was at Whitehall, he
entertained proposals from the royalists, consented to accept a title and
twenty thousand pounds a year, and designed to escape to the fleet under
Montague, but was too strictly watched to effect his purpose.--Clar. Pap.
iii. 475, 477, 478.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1659. July 12.]

But the principal source of disquietude still remained. Among the fifteen
articles presented to the house, the twelfth appeared, not in the shape
of a request, but of a declaration, that the officers unanimously owned
Fleetwood as "commander-in-chief of the land forces in England." It was the
point for which they had contended under Richard; and Ludlow, Vane, and
Salloway earnestly implored their colleagues to connive at what it was
evidently dangerous to oppose. But the lessons of prudence were thrown
away on the rigid republicanism of Hazlerig, Sydney, Neville, and their
associates, who contended that to be silent was to acknowledge in the
council of officers an authority independent of the parliament. They
undertook to remodel the constitution of the army. The office
of lord-general was abolished; no intermediate rank between the
lieutenant-general and the colonels was admitted; Fleetwood was named
lieutenant-general, with the chief command in England and Scotland, but
limited in its duration to a short period, revocable at pleasure, and
deprived of several of those powers which had hitherto been annexed to
it. All military commissions were revoked, and an order was made that a
committee of nine members should recommend the persons to be officers in
each regiment; that their respective merits should be canvassed in the
house; and that those who had passed this ordeal should receive their
commissions at the table from the hand of the speaker. The object of this
arrangement was plain: to make void the declaration of the military, to
weed out men of doubtful fidelity, and to render the others dependent
for their situations on the pleasure of the house. Fleetwood, with his
adherents, resolved never to submit to the degradation, while the privates
amused themselves with ridiculing the age and infirmities of him whom they
called their new lord-general, the speaker Lenthall; but Hazlerig prevailed
on Colonel Hacker, with his officers, to conform; their example gradually
drew others; and, at length, the most discontented, though with shame
and reluctance, condescended to go through this humbling ceremony. The
republicans congratulated each other on their victory; they had only
accelerated their defeat.[1]

Ever since the death of Oliver, the exiled king had watched with intense
interest the course of events in England; and each day added a new stimulus
to his hopes of a favourable issue. The unsettled state of the nation,
the dissensions among his enemies, the flattering representations of his
friends, and the offers of co-operation from men who had hitherto opposed
his claims, persuaded him that the day of his restoration was at hand.
That the opportunity might not be forfeited by his own backwardness, he
announced[a] to the leaders of the royalists his intention of coming to
England, and of hazarding his life in the company of his faithful subjects.
There was scarcely a county in which the majority of the nobility and
gentry did not engage to rally round his standard; the first day of August
was fixed for the general rising; and it was determined[b] in the council
at Brussels that Charles should repair in disguise to the coast of
Bretagne, where he might procure a passage into Wales or Cornwall; that the
duke of York, with six hundred veterans furnished by the prince of Condé,
should attempt to land from Boulogne on the coast of Kent; and that the
duke of Gloucester should follow

[Footnote 1: Journals, passim. Ludlow, ii. 197. Declaration of Officers, 6.
Thurloe, 679. Clarend. Hist. iii. 665.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. June 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. July.]

from Ostend with the royal army of four thousand men under the Marshal
Marsin. Unfortunately his concerns in England had been hitherto conducted
by a council called "the Knot," at the head of which was Sir Richard
Willis. Willis, the reader is aware, was a traitor; but it was only of late
that the eyes of Charles had been opened to his perfidy by Morland, the
secretary of Thurloe, who, to make his own peace, sent to the court at
Bruges some of the original communications in the writing of Willis. This
discovery astonished and perplexed the king. To make public the conduct of
the traitor was to provoke him to farther disclosures: to conceal it, was
to connive at the destruction of his friends, and the ruin of his own
prospects. He first instructed his correspondents to be reserved in their
communications with "the Knot;"[a] he then ordered Willis to meet him on
a certain day at Calais;[b] and, when this order was disregarded, openly
forbade the royalists to give to the traitor information, or to follow his
advice.[1]

But these precautions came too late. After the deposition of the protector,
Willis had continued to communicate with Thurloe, who with the intelligence

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 514, 517, 518, 520, 524, 526, 529, 531, 535,
536. Willis maintained his innocence, and found many to believe him. Echard
(p. 729) has published a letter with Morland's signature, in which he is
made to say that he never sent any of the letters of Willis to the king,
nor even so much as knew his name; whence Harris (ii. 215) infers that the
whole charge is false. That, however, it was true, no one can doubt who
will examine the proofs in the Clarendon Papers (iii. 518, 526, 529, 533,
535, 536, 542, 549, 556, 558, 562, 563, 574, 583, 585), and in Carte's
Collection of Letters (ii. 220, 256, 284). Indeed, the letter from Willis
of the 9th of May, 1660, soliciting the king's pardon, leaves no room for
doubt.--Clar. Pap. 643. That Morland was the informer, and, consequently,
the letter in Echard is a forgery, is also evident from the reward which
he received at the restoration, and from his own admission to Pepys.--See
Pepys, i. 79, 82, 133, 8vo. See also "Life of James II." 370.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. July 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 7.]

which he thus obtained, was enabled to purchase the forbearance of his
former opponents. At an early period in July, the council was in possession
of the plan of the royalists. Reinforcements were immediately demanded from
the armies in Flanders and Ireland; directions were issued for a levy of
fourteen regiments of one thousand men each;[a] measures were taken for
calling out the militia; numerous arrests were made in the city and every
part of the country; and the known Cavaliers were compelled to leave the
metropolis, and to produce security for their peaceable behaviour. These
proceedings seemed to justify Willis in representing the attempt as
hopeless; and, at his persuasion, "the Knot" by circular letters forbade
the rising, two days before the appointed time.[b] The royalists were thus
thrown into irremediable confusion. Many remained quiet at their homes;
many assembled in arms, and dispersed on account of the absence of their
associates; in some counties the leaders were intercepted in their way
to the place of rendezvous; in others as soon as they met, they were
surrounded or charged by a superior force. In Cheshire alone was the
royal standard successfully unfurled by Sir George Booth, a person of
considerable influence in the county, and a recent convert to the cause of
the Stuarts. In the letter which he circulated, he was careful to make
no mention of the king, but called on the people to defend their rights
against the tyranny of an insolent soldiery and a pretended parliament.[c]
"Let the nation freely choose its representatives, and those
representatives as freely sit without awe or force of soldiery." This was
all that he sought: in the determination of such an assembly, whatever that
determination might be, both he and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 29.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. August 2.]

his friends would cheerfully acquiesce.[1] It was in effect a rising on
the Presbyterian interest; and the proceedings were in a great measure
controlled by a committee of minister, who scornfully rejected the aid of
the Catholics, and received with jealousy Sir Thomas Middleton, though a
known Presbyterian, because he openly avowed himself a royalist.

At Chester, the parliamentary garrison retired into the castle, and the
insurgents took possession of the city. Each day brought to them a new
accession of strength; and their apparent success taught them to augur
equally well of the expected attempts of their confederates throughout the
kingdom. But the unwelcome truth could not long be concealed; and when they
learned that they stood alone, that every other rising had been either
prevented or instantly suppressed, and that Lambert was hastening against
them with four regiments of cavalry and three of foot, their confidence
was exchanged for despair; every gentleman who had risked his life in the
attempt claimed a right to give his advice; and their counsels, from fear,
inexperience, and misinformation, became fluctuating and contradictory.[a]
After much hesitation, they resolved to proceed to Nantwich and defend the
passage of the Weever; but so rapid had been the march of the enemy, who
sent forward part of the infantry on horseback, that the advance was
already arrived in the neighbourhood; and, while the royalists lay
unsuspicious of danger in the town, Lambert forced the passage of the river
at Winnington.[b] In haste, they filed out of Nantwich into the nearest
fields; but here they found that most of their ammunition was still at
Chester;[c] and, on the suggestion that the position was

[Footnote 1: Parl. Hist. xxiii. 107.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. August 19.]

unfavourable, hastened to take possession of a neighbouring eminence.
Colonel Morgan, with his troop, attempted to keep the enemy in check; he
fell, with thirty men; and the rest of the insurgents, at the approach of
their adversaries, turned their backs and fled. Three hundred were made
prisoners in the pursuit, and few of the leaders had the good fortune to
escape. The earl of Derby, who had raised men in Lancashire to join the
royalists, was taken in the disguise of a servant. Booth, dressed as a
female, and riding on a pillion, took[a] the direct road for London, but
betrayed himself at Newton Pagnell by his awkwardness in alighting from
the horse. Middleton, who was eighty years old, fled to Chirk Castle; and,
after a defence of a few days, capitulated,[b] on condition that he should
have two months to make his peace with the parliament.[1]

The news of this disaster reached the duke of York at Boulogne, fortunately
on the very evening on which he was to have embarked with his men. Charles
received it at Rochelle, whither he had been compelled to proceed in search
of a vessel to convey him to Wales. Abandoning the hopeless project, he
instantly continued his journey to the congress at Fuentarabia, with the
delusive expectation that, on the conclusion of peace between the two
crowns, he should obtain a supply of money, and perhaps still more
substantial aid, from a personal interview with the ministers, Cardinal
Mazarin and Don Louis de Haro.[2] Montague, who had but recently become a
proselyte to the royal cause,

[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 672-675. Clar. Pap. iii. 673, 674. Ludlow,
ii. 223. Whitelock, 683. Carte's Letters, 194, 202. Lambert's Letter,
printed for Thomas Neucombe, 1659.]

[Footnote 2: Both promised to aid him secretly, but not in such manner as
to give offence to the ruling party in England.--Clar. Pap. iii. 642.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 24.]

was drawn by his zeal into the most imminent danger. As soon as he heard of
the insurrection, he brought back the fleet from the Sound, in defiance of
his brother commissioners, with the intention of blockading the mouth
of the Thames, and of facilitating the transportation of troops. On his
arrival he learned the failure of his hopes; but boldly faced the danger,
appeared before the council, and assigned the want of provisions as the
cause of his return. They heard him with distrust; but it was deemed
prudent to dissemble, and he received permission to withdraw.[1]

To reward Lambert for this complete, though almost bloodless, victory,
the parliament[a] voted him the sum of one thousand pounds, which he
immediately distributed among his officers. But while they recompensed his
services, they were not the less jealous of his ambition. They remembered
how instrumental he had been in raising Cromwell to the protectorate; they
knew his influence in the army; and they feared his control over the timid,
wavering mind of Fleetwood, whom he appeared to govern in the same manner
as Cromwell had governed Fairfax. It had been hoped that his absence on the
late expedition would afford them leisure to gain the officers remaining in
the capital; but the unexpected rapidity of his success had defeated their
policy; and, in a short time, the intrigue which had been interrupted by
the insurrection was resumed. While Lambert hastened back to the capital,
his army followed by slow marches; and at Derby the officers subscribed[b]
a petition, which had been clandestinely forwarded to them from Wallingford
House. In it they complained that adequate rewards were not conferred on
the deserving; and

[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 16. Clar. Pap. iii. 551. Carte's Letters, ii.
210, 236. Pepys' Memoirs, i. 157.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Sept. 14.]

demanded that the office of commander-in-chief should be given to Fleetwood
without limitation of time, and the rank of major-general to their
victorious leader; that no officer should be deprived of his commission
without the judgment of a court-martial; and that the government should be
settled in a house of representatives and a permanent senate. Hazlerig,
a man of stern republican principles, and of a temper hasty, morose, and
ungovernable, obtained a sight of this paper, denounced[a] it as an attempt
to subvert the parliament, and moved that Lambert, its author, should be
sent to the Tower; but his violence was checked by the declaration of
Fleetwood, that Lambert knew nothing of its origin; and the house contented
itself with ordering all copies of the obnoxious petition to be delivered
up, and with resolving[b] that "to augment the number of general officers
was needless, chargeable, and dangerous."[1] From that moment a breach was
inevitable. The house, to gratify the soldiers, had advanced their daily
pay; and with the view of discharging their arrears, had raised[c] the
monthly assessment from thirty-five thousand pounds to one hundred thousand
pounds.[2] But the military leaders were not to be diverted from their
purpose. Meetings were daily and nightly held at Wallingford House; and
another petition with two hundred and thirty signatures was presented by
Desborough, accompanied by all the field-officers in the metropolis; In
most points it was similar to the former; but it contained a demand that,
whosoever should afterwards "groundlessly and causelessly inform the house
against their servants, thereby creating jealousies, and casting scandalous
imputations upon them, should be

[Footnote 1: Journ., Aug. 23, Sept. 22, 23. Ludlow, ii. 223, 227, 233,
244.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., May 31, Aug. 18, Sept. 1]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Sept. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. Oct. 5.]

brought to examination, justice, and condign punishment." This was a
sufficient intimation to Hazlerig and his party to provide for their own
safety. Three regiments, through the medium of their officers, had already
made the tender of their services for the protection of the house; Monk,
from Scotland, and Ludlow, from Ireland, wrote that their respective armies
were animated with similar sentiments; and a vote was passed and ordered
to be published,[a] declaring it to be treason to levy money on the people
without the previous consent of parliament, a measure which, as all the
existing taxes were to expire on the first day of the ensuing year, made
the military dependent for their future subsistence on the pleasure of
the party. Hazlerig, thus fortified, deemed himself a match for his
adversaries; the next morning he boldly threw down the gauntlet;[b] by one
vote, Lambert, Desborough, six colonels, and one major, were deprived of
their Commissions for having subscribed the copy of the petition sent to
Colonel Okey; and, by a second, Fleetwood was dismissed from his office
of commander-in-chief, and made president of a board of seven members
established for the government of the army. Aware, however, that he might
expect resistance, the republican chieftain called his friends around him
during the night; and, at the dawn of day, it was discovered that he had
taken military possession of King-street and the Palace-yard with two
regiments of foot and four troops of horse, who protested aloud that they
would live and die with the parliament.[1][c]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 28, Oct. 5, 10, 11, 12. Ludlow, ii. 229, 247.
Carte's Letters, ii, 246. Thurloe, vii. 755. Declaration of General Council
of Officers, 9-16. True Narrative of the Proceedings in Parliament, Council
of State, &c., published by special order, 1659. Printed by John Redmayne.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Oct 12.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. Oct 13.]


Lambert mustered about three thousand men. His first care was to intercept
the access of members to the house, and to prevent the egress of the
militia from the city. He then marched to Westminster. Meeting the speaker,
who was attended by his guard, he ordered the officer on duty to dismount,
gave the command to Major Creed, one of those who had been deprived of
their commissions by the preceding vote, and scornfully directed him to
conduct the "lord-general" to Whitehall, whence he was permitted to return
to his own house. In Westminster, the two parties faced each other; but the
ardour of the privates did not correspond with that of the leaders; and,
having so often fought in the same ranks, they showed no disposition to
imbrue their hands in each other's blood. In the mean time the council
of state assembled: on the one side Lambert and Desborough, on the other
Hazlerig and Morley, appeared to support their pretensions; much time
was spent in complaint and recrimination, much in hopeless attempts to
reconcile the parties; but the cause of the military continued to make
converts; the advocates of the "rump," aware that to resist was fruitless,
consented to yield; and it was stipulated that the house should cease to
sit, that the council of officers should provide for the public peace,
arrange a new form of government, and submit it to the approbation of a new
parliament. An order, that the forces on both sides should retire to their
respective quarters, was gladly obeyed; the men mixed together as friends
and brothers, and reciprocally promised never more to draw the sword
against each other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 685. Journals, Oct. 13. Clar. Pap. iii. 581, 590.
Ludlow, ii. 247-251. Ludlow's account differs considerably from that
by Whitelock. But the former was in Ireland, the latter present at the
council.]


Thus a second time the supreme authority devolved on the meeting of
officers at Wallingford House. They immediately established their favourite
plan for the government of the army. The office of commander-in-chief,
in its plenitude of power, was restored to Fleetwood; the rank of
major-general of the forces in Great Britain was given to Lambert; and all
those officers who refused to subscribe a new engagement, were removed from
their commands. At the same time they annulled by their supreme authority
all proceedings in parliament on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of October,
vindicated their own conduct in a publication with the title of "The Army's
Plea,"[1] vested the provisional exercise of the civil authority in a
committee of safety of twenty-three members, and denounced the penalties of
treason against all who should refuse to obey its orders, or should venture
to levy forces without its permission. An attempt was even made to replace
Richard Cromwell in the protectorial dignity;[a] for this purpose he came
from Hampshire to London, escorted by three troops of horse; but his
supporters in the meeting were out-voted by a small majority, and he
retired to Hampton Court.[2]

[Footnote 1: See Declaration of the General Council of Officers, 17. The
Army's Plea for its Present Practice, printed by Henry Hills, printer to
the army, 1659, is in many parts powerfully written. The principal argument
is, that as the parliament, though bound by the solemn league and covenant
to defend the king's person, honour, and dignity, did not afterwards
scruple to arraign, condemn, and execute him because he had broken his
trust; so the army, though they had engaged to be true and faithful to the
parliament, might lawfully rise against it, when they found that it did not
preserve the just rights and liberties of the people. This condition was
implied in the engagement; otherwise the making of the engagement would
have been a sin, and the keeping thereof would have been a sin also, and so
an adding of sin to sin.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 685, 686. Ludlow, ii. 250, 286, 287. Clar. Pap.
591. At the restoration, Richard, to escape from his creditors, fled to the
continent; and, after an expatriation of almost twenty years, returned to
England to the neighbourhood of Cheshunt, where he died in 1713, at the age
of eighty-six.--Noble, i. 228.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct 26.]

Of all the changes which had surprised and perplexed the nation since
the death of the last king, none had been received with such general
disapprobation as the present. It was not that men lamented the removal of
the Rump; but they feared the capricious and arbitrary rule of the army;
and, when they contrasted their unsettled state with the tranquillity
formerly enjoyed under the monarchy, many were not backward in the
expression of their wishes for the restoration of the ancient line of their
princes. The royalists laboured to improve this favourable disposition; yet
their efforts might have been fruitless, had the military been united among
themselves. But among the officers there were several who had already made
their peace with Charles by the promise of their services, and many
who secretly retained a strong attachment to Hazlerig and his party in
opposition to Lambert. In Ireland, Barrow, who had been sent as their
representative from Wallingford House, found the army so divided and
wavering, that each faction alternately obtained a short and precarious
superiority; and in Scotland, Cobbet, who arrived there on a similar
mission, was, with seventeen other officers who approved of his proposals,
imprisoned by order of Monk.[1]

From this moment the conduct of Monk will claim a considerable share of the
reader's attention. Ever since the march of Cromwell in pursuit of the king
to Worcester he had commanded in Scotland; where, instead of concerning
himself with the intrigues and parties in England, he appeared to have no
other occupation

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, ii. 237, 252, 259, 262, 300. Clar. Pap. iii. 591.
Carte's Letters, 266.]

than the duties of his place, to preserve the discipline of his army,
and enforce the obedience of the Scots. His despatches to Cromwell from
Scotland form a striking contrast with those from the other officers of the
time. There is in them no parade of piety, no flattery of the protector, no
solicitation for favours. They are short, dry, and uninteresting, confined
entirely to matters of business, and those only of indispensable necessity.
In effect, the distinctive characteristic of the man was an impenetrable
secrecy.[1] Whatever were his predilections or opinions, his wishes or
designs, he kept them locked up within his own breast. He had no confidant,
nor did he ever permit himself to be surprised into an unguarded avowal.
Hence all parties, royalists, protectorists, and republicans, claimed him
for their own, though that claim was grounded on _their_ hopes, not on
_his_ conduct. Charles had been induced to make to him repeatedly the most
tempting offers, which were supported by the solicitations of his wife and
his domestic chaplain; Monk listened to them without displeasure, though he
never unbosomed himself to the agents or to his chaplain so far as to put
himself in their power. Cromwell had obtained some information of these
intrigues; but, unable to discover any real ground of suspicion, he
contented himself with putting Monk on his guard by a bantering postscript
to one of his letters. "Tis said," he added, "there is a cunning fellow in
Scotland,

[Footnote 1: "His natural taciturnity was such, that most of his friends,
who thought they knew him best, looked upon George Monk to have no other
craft in him than that of a plain soldier, who would obey the parliament's
orders, and see that his own were obeyed."--Price, Mystery and Method of
his Majesty's happy Restoration, in Select Tracts relating to the Civil
Wars in England, published by Baron Maseres, ii. 700.]

called George Monk, who lies in wait there to serve Charles Stuart; pray
use your diligence to take him and send him up to me."[1] After the fall
of the protector Richard, he became an object of greater distrust. To
undermine his power, Fleetwood ordered two regiments of horse attached
to the Scottish army to return to England; and the republicans, when the
military commissions were issued by the speaker, removed a great number of
his officers, and supplied their places with creatures of their own. Monk
felt these affronts: discontent urged him to seek revenge; and, when he
understood that Booth was at the head of a considerable force, he dictated
a letter to the speaker, complaining of the proceedings of parliament, and
declaring that, as they had abandoned the real principles of the old cause,
they must not expect the support of his army. His object was to animate the
insurgents and embarrass their adversaries; but, on the very morning
on which the letter was to be submitted for signature to his principal
officers, the news of Lambert's victory arrived;[a] the dangerous
instrument was instantly destroyed, and the secret most religiously kept by
the few who had been privy to the intention of the general.[2]

To this abortive attempt Monk, notwithstanding his wariness, had been
stimulated by his brother, a clergyman of Cornwall, who visited him with a
message from Sir John Grenville by commission from Charles Stuart.
After the failure of Booth, the general dismissed him with a letter of
congratulation to the parliament, but without any answer to Grenville, and
under an oath to keep secret whatever he had learnt

[Footnote 1: Price, 712.]

[Footnote 2: Id. 711, 716, 721.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 23.]

respecting the past, or the intended projects of his brother.[1] But the
moment that Monk heard of the expulsion of the members,[a] and of the
superior rank conferred on Lambert, he determined to appear openly as the
patron of the vanquished, under the alluring, though ambiguous, title of
"asserter of the ancient laws and liberties of the country." Accordingly,
he secured with trusty garrisons the castle of Edinburgh and the citadel
of Leith,[b] sent a strong detachment to occupy Berwick, and took the
necessary measures to raise and discipline a numerous force of cavalry. At
Leith was held a general council of officers; they approved of his object,
engaged to stand by him, and announced their determination, by letters
directed to Lenthall, the speaker, to the council at Wallingford House, and
to the commanders of the fleet in the Downs, and of the army in Ireland.
It excited, however, no small surprise, that the general, while he thus
professed to espouse the defence of the parliament, cashiered all the
officers introduced by the parliament into his army, and restored all
those who had been expelled. The more discerning began to suspect his real
intentions;[2] but Hazlerig and his party were too

[Footnote 1: All that Grenville could learn from the messenger was, that
his brother regretted the failure of Booth, and would oppose the arbitrary
attempts of the military in England; an answer which, though favourable
as far as it went, still left the king in uncertainty as to his real
intentions.--Clar. Pap. iii. 618.]

[Footnote 2: Ludlow, ii. 269. Whitelock, 686, 689, 691. Price, 736, 743.
Skinner, 106-109. Monk loudly asserted the contrary. "I do call God
to witness," he says in the letter to the speaker, Oct. 20, "that the
asserting of a commonwealth is the only intent of my heart."--True
Narrative, 28. When Price remonstrated with him, he replied: "You see who
are about me and write these things. I must not show any dislike of them.
I perceive they are jealous enough of me already."--Price, 746. The fact
probably was, that Monk was neither royalist nor republican: that he sought
only his own interest, and had determined to watch every turn of affairs,
and to declare at last in favour of that party which appeared most likely
to obtain the superiority.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Oct. 18.]

elated to dwell on the circumstance, and, under the promise of his
support, began to organize the means of resistance against their military
oppressors.

Monk soon discovered that he was embarked in a most hazardous undertaking.
The answers to his letters disapproved of his conduct; and the knowledge of
these answers kindled among his followers a spirit of disaffection which
led to numerous desertions. From the general of an army obedient to his
commands, he had dwindled into the leader of a volunteer force, which it
was necessary to coax and persuade. Two councils were formed, one of
the colonels of the longest standing, the other of all the commissioned
officers. The first perused the public despatches received by the general,
and wrote the answers, which were signed by him as the chairman; the other
was consulted on all measures respecting the conduct of the army, and
confirmed or rejected the opinion of the colonels by the majority of
voices. But if Monk was controlled by this arrangement, it served to screen
him from suspicion. The measures adopted were taken as the result of the
general will.

To the men at Wallingford House it became of the first importance to win
by intimidation, or to reduce by force, this formidable opponent. Lambert
marched against him from London at the head of seven thousand men; but the
mind of the major-general was distracted by doubts and suspicions; and,
before his departure, he exacted a solemn promise from Fleetwood to agree
to no accommodation, either with the king, or with Hazlerig, till he had
previously received the advice and concurrence of Lambert himself.[1] To
Monk delay was as necessary as expedition was desirable to his opponents.
In point of numbers and experience the force under his command was no
match for that led by Lambert, but his magazines and treasury were amply
supplied, while his adversary possessed not money enough to keep his army
together for more than a few weeks. Before the major-general reached
Newcastle, he met three deputies from Monk on their way to treat with the
council in the capital. As no arguments could induce them to open the
negotiation with him, he allowed them to proceed, and impatiently awaited
the result. After much discussion, an agreement was concluded in London;
but Monk, instead of ratifying it with his signature, discovered,[a]
or pretended to discover, in it much that was obscure or ambiguous, or
contrary to the instructions received by the deputies; his council agreed
with him in opinion; and a second negotiation was opened with Lambert at
Newcastle, to obtain from him an explanation of the meaning of the officers
in the metropolis. Thus delay was added to delay; and Monk improved the
time to dismiss even the privates whose sentiments were suspected, and to
fill up the vacancies in the regiments of infantry by levies among the
Scots. At the same time he called a convention of the Scottish estates at
Berwick, of two representatives from each county and one from each borough,
recommended to them the peace of the country during his absence, and
obtained from them the grant of a year's arrears of their taxes, amounting
to sixty thousand pounds, in

[Footnote 1: See the Conferences of Ludlow and Whitelock with Fleetwood,
Ludlow, ii. 277; Whitelock, 690.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Nov. 19.]

addition to the excise and customs. He then fixed his head-quarters at
Coldstream.[1]

In the mean while the detention of Lambert in the north by the artifices of
Monk had given occasion to many important events in the south. Within
the city several encounters had taken place between the military and the
apprentices;[2] a free parliament had become the general cry; and the
citizens exhorted each other to pay no taxes imposed by any other
authority. Lawson, though he wavered at first, declared against the army,
and advanced with his squadron up the river as far as Gravesend. Hazlerig
and Morley were admitted into Portsmouth by the governor, were joined by
the force sent against them by Fleetwood, and marched towards London, that
they might open a communication with the fleet in the river. Alarm produced
in the committee of safety the most contradictory councils. A voice
ventured to suggest the restoration of Charles Stuart; but it was replied
that their offences against the family of Stuart were of too black a dye to
be forgiven; that the king might be lavish of promises now that he stood in
need of their services; but that the vengeance of parliament would absolve
him from the obligation, when the monarchy should once be established. The
final resolution was to call a new parliament against the 24th of January,
and to appoint twenty-one conservators of the public peace during the
interval. But they

[Footnote 1: Price, 741-744. Whitelock, 688, 699. Ludlow, 269, 271, 273.
Skinner, 161, 164.]

[Footnote 2: The posts occupied by the army within the city were, "St.
Paul's Church, the Royall Exchange, Peeter-house in Aldersgate-street, and
Bernet's Castle, Gresham Coledge, Sion Coledge. Without London, were the
Musses, Sumersett-house, Whitehall, St. James's, Scotland-yeard."--MS.
Diary by Thomas Rugge.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Dec. 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Dec. 17.]

reckoned on an authority which they no longer possessed. The fidelity
of the common soldiers had been shaken by the letters of Monk, and the
declaration of Lawson. Putting themselves under the command of the officers
who had been lately dismissed, they mustered[a] in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
marched before the house of Lenthall in Chancery Lame, and saluted him
with three volleys of musketry as the representative of the parliament and
lord-general of the army. Desborough, abandoned by his regiment, fled in
despair towards Lambert; and Fleetwood, who for some days had done nothing
but weep and pray, and complain that "the Lord had spit in his face,"
tamely endeavoured to disarm by submission the resentment of his
adversaries. He sought the speaker, fell on his knees before him, and
surrendered his commission.[1]

Thus the Rump was again triumphant. The members, with Lenthall at their
head, resumed[b] possession of the house amidst the loud acclamations
of the soldiery. Their first care was to establish a committee for the
government of the army, and to order the regiments in the north to separate
and march to their respective quarters. Of those among their colleagues who
had supported the late committee of safety, they excused some, and punished
others by suspension, or exclusion, or imprisonment: orders were sent to
Lambert, and the most active of his associates, to withdraw from the army
to their homes, and then instructions were given to the magistrates to take
them into custody. A council of state was appointed, and into the oath to
be taken by the

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 268, 276, 282, 287, 289, 290, 296, 298. Whitelock,
689, 690, 691. Clar. Pap. 625, 629, 636, 641, 647.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Dec. 24.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Dec. 26.]

members was introduced a new and most comprehensive abjuration of kingship
and the family of Stuart. All officers commissioned during the interruption
by any other authority than that of Monk were broken; the army was entirely
remodelled; and the time of the house was daily occupied by the continued
introduction of officers to receive their commissions in person from the
hand of the speaker.[1]

In the mean while, Monk, to subdue or disperse the army of Lambert, had
raised up a new and formidable enemy in his rear. Lord Fairfax was become
a convert to the cause of monarchy; to him the numerous royalists in
Yorkshire looked up as leader; and he, on the solemn assurance of Monk that
he would join him within twelve days or perish in the attempt, undertook to
call together his friends, and to surprise the city of York. On the first
day of the new year,[a] each performed his promise. The gates of York were
thrown open to Fairfax by the Cavaliers confined within its walls;[2] and
Monk, with his army, crossed the Tweed on his march against the advanced
posts of the enemy. Thus the flame of civil war was again kindled in the
north; within two days it was extinguished. The messenger from parliament
ordered Lambert's forces to withdraw to their respective quarters.
Dispirited by the defection of the military in the south, they dared not
disobey: at Northallerton the officers bade adieu with tears to their
general; and Lambert retired in privacy to a house which he possessed in
the county. Still, though the weather was

[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 26, Jan. 31.]

[Footnote 2: That the rising under Fairfax was in reality a rising of
royalists, and prompted by the promises of Monk, is plain from the
narrative of Monkton, in the Lansdowne MSS. No. 988, f. 320, 334. See also
Price, 748.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 1.]

severe, though the roads were deeply covered with snow, Monk continued[a]
his march; and, at York, spent five days in consultation with Fairfax; but
to the advice of that nobleman, that he should remain there, assume the
command of their united forces, and proclaim the king, he replied that,
in the present temper of his officers, it would prove a dangerous, a
pernicious, experiment. On the arrival of what he had long expected, an
invitation to Westminster, he resumed his march, and Fairfax, having
received the thanks of the parliament, disbanded[b] his insurrectionary
force.[1]

At York, the general had caned[c] an officer who charged him with the
design of restoring the kingly government; at Nottingham, he prevented with
difficulty the officers from signing an engagement to obey the parliament
in all things "except the bringing in of Charles Stuart;" and at Leicester,
he was compelled to suffer[d] a letter to be written in his name to the
petitioners from Devonshire, stating his opinion that the monarchy could
not be re-established, representing the danger of recalling the members
excluded in 1648, and inculcating the duty of obedience to the parliament
as it was then constituted.[2] Here he was met by two of the most active
members, Scot and Robinson, who had been commissioned to accompany him
during his journey, under the pretence of doing him honour, but, in
reality, to sound his disposition, and to act as spies on his conduct.
He received them with respect as the representatives of the sovereign
authority; and so flattered were they by his attentions, so duped by his
wariness, that they could not see through the veil which he spread over his
intentions.

[Footnote 1: Price, 749-753. Skinner, 196, 200, 205. Journals, Jan. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 754. Kennet's Register, 32.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. Jan. 16.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. Jan. 19.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1660. Jan. 23.]

As he advanced, he received at every stage addresses from boroughs, cities,
and counties, praying him to restore the excluded members, and to procure
a free and a full parliament. With much affectation of humility, Monk
referred the deputies to the two delegates of the supreme power, who
haughtily rebuked them for their officiousness, while the friends of
Monk laboured to keep alive their hopes by remote hints and obscure
predictions.[1]

To lull the jealousy of the parliament, Monk had taken with him from York
no more than five thousand men, a force considerably inferior to that which
was quartered in London and Westminster. But from St. Alban's he wrote[a]
to the speaker, requesting that five of the regiments in the capital
might be removed before his arrival, alleging the danger of quarrels and
seduction, if his troops were allowed to mix with those who had been so
recently engaged in rebellion. The order was instantly made; but the men
refused[b] to obey. Why, they asked, were they to leave their quarters for
the accommodation of strangers? Why were they to be sent from the capital,
while their pay was several weeks in arrear? The royalists laboured to
inflame the mutineers, and Lambert was on the watch, prepared to place
himself at their head; but the distribution of a sum of money appeased
their murmurs; they consented to march; and the next morning[c] the general
entered at the head of his army, and proceeded to the quarters assigned to
him at Whitehall.[2]

Soon after his arrival, he was invited to attend and

[Footnote 1: Price, 754. Merc. Polit. No. 604. Philips, 595. Journals, Jan.
16.]

[Footnote 2: Price, 755, 757, 758. Jour. Jan. 30. Skinner, 219-221.
Philips, 594, 595, 596. Clar. Pap. iii. 666, 668. Pepys, i. 19, 21.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. Feb. 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. Feb. 3.]

receive the thanks of the house. A chair had been placed for him within
the bar: he stood uncovered behind it; and, in reply[a] to the speaker,
extenuated his own services, related the answers which he had given to
the addresses, warned the parliament against a multiplicity of oaths and
engagements, prayed them not to give any share of power to the Cavaliers or
fanatics, and recommended to their care the settlement of Ireland and the
administration of justice in Scotland. If there was much in this speech
to please, there was also much that gave offence. Scot observed that the
servant had already learned to give directions to his masters.[1]

As a member of the council of state, he was summoned to abjure the house of
Stuart, according to the late order of parliament. He demurred. Seven of
the counsellors, he observed, had not yet abjured, and he wished to know
their reasons, for the satisfaction of his own conscience. Experience had
shown that such oaths were violated as easily as they were taken, and to
him it appeared an offence against Providence to swear never to acquiesce
in that which Providence might possibly ordain. He had given the strongest
proofs of his devotion to parliament: if these were not sufficient, let
them try him again; he was ready to give more.[2]

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 6. New Parl. Hist. iii. 1575. Philips, 597.
Price, 759. The Lord-general Monk, his Speech. Printed by J. Macock, 1660.]

[Footnote 2: Gumble, 228. Price, 759, 760. Philips, 595. About this time,
a parcel of letters to the king, written by different persons in different
ciphers, and intrusted to the care of a Mr. Leonard, was intercepted by
Lockhart at Dunkirk, and sent by him to the council. When the writers
were first told that the letters had been deciphered, they laughed at the
information as of a thing impracticable; but were soon undeceived by the
decipherer, who sent to them by the son of the bishop of Ely copies of
their letters in cipher, with a correct interlineary explanation of
each. They were astonished and alarmed; and, to save themselves from the
consequences of the discovery, purchased of him two of the original letters
at the price of three hundred pounds.--Compare Barwick's Life, 171, and
App. 402, 412, 415, 422, with the correspondence on the subject in the
Clarendon Papers, iii. 668, 681, 696, 700, 715. After this, all letters of
importance were conveyed through the hands of Mrs. Mary Knatchbull, the
abbess of the English convent in Gand.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 6.]


The sincerity of this declaration was soon put to the test. The loyal party
in the city, especially among the moderate Presbyterians, had long been on
the increase. At the last elections the common council had been filled with
members of a new character; and the declaration which they issued demanded
"a full and free parliament, according to the ancient and fundamental laws
of the land." Of the assembly sitting in Westminster, as it contained no
representative from the city, no notice was taken; the taxes which it
had imposed were not paid; and the common council, as if it had been
an independent authority, received and answered addresses from the
neighbouring counties. This contumacy, in the opinion of the parliamentary
leaders, called for prompt and exemplary punishment; and it was artfully
suggested that, by making Monk the minister of their vengeance, they
would open a wide breach between him and their opponents. Two hours after
midnight he received[a] an order to march into the city, to arrest eleven
of the principal citizens, to remove the posts and chains which had lately
been fixed in the streets, and to destroy the portcullises and the gates.
After a moment's hesitation, he resolved to obey, rather than hazard the
loss of his commission. The citizens received him with groans and hisses;
the soldiers murmured; the officers tendered their resignations. He merely
replied that his orders left nothing to his discretion; but the reply was
made with a sternness of

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 9.]

tone, and a gloominess of countenance, which showed, and probably was
intended to show, that he acted with reluctance and with self-reproach.[1]

As soon as the posts and chains were removed, Monk suggested, in a letter
to the speaker, that enough had been done to subdue the refractory spirit
of the citizens. But the parliamentary leaders were not satisfied: they
voted that he should execute his former orders; and the demolition of the
gates and portcullises was effected. The soldiers loudly proclaimed
their discontent: the general, mortified and ashamed, though he had been
instructed to quarter them in the city, led them back to Whitehall.[2]
There, on the review of these proceedings, he thought that he discovered
proofs of a design, first to commit him with the citizens, and then to
discard him entirely. For the house, while he was so ungraciously employed,
had received, with a show of favour, a petition from the celebrated
Praise-God Barebone, praying that no man might sit in parliament, or hold
any public office, who refused to abjure the pretensions of Charles Stuart,
or of any other single person. Now this was the very case of the general,
and his suspicions were confirmed by the reasoning of his confidential
advisers. With their aid, a letter to the speaker was prepared[a] the same
evening, and approved the next morning by the council of officers. In
it the latter were made to complain that they had been rendered the
instruments of personal resentment against the citizens, and to require
that by the following Friday every vacancy in the house should be filled
up, preparatory to its

[Footnote 1: Journ. Feb. 9. Price, 761. Ludlow, ii. 336. Clar. Pap. iii.
674, 691. Gumble, 236. Skinner, 231-237.]

[Footnote 2: Journ. Feb. 9. Philips, 599.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 10.]

subsequent dissolution and the calling of a new parliament. Without waiting
for an answer, Monk marched back into Finsbury Fields: at his request, a
common council (that body had recently been dissolved by a vote of the
parliament) was summoned; and the citizens heard from the mouth of the
general that he, who yesterday had come among them as an enemy by the
orders of others, was come that day as a friend by his own choice; and that
his object was to unite his fortune with theirs, and by their assistance to
obtain a full and free parliament for the nation. This speech was received
with the loudest acclamations. The bells were tolled; the soldiers were
feasted; bonfires were lighted; and among the frolics of the night was "the
roasting of the rump," a practical joke which long lived in the traditions
of the city. Scot and Robinson, who had been sent to lead back the general
to Whitehall, slunk away in secrecy, that they might escape the indignation
of the populace.[1]

At Westminster, the parliamentary leaders affected a calmness and
intrepidity which they did not feel. Of the insult offered to their
authority they took no notice; but, as an admonition to Monk, they brought
in a bill[a] to appoint his rival, Fleetwood, commander-in-chief in England
and Scotland. The intervention of the Sunday allowed more sober counsels to
prevail.

[Footnote 1: Price, 765-768. Clar. Pap. iii. 681, 692, 714. Ludlow, 337.
Gumble, 249. Skinner, 237-243. Old Parl. Hist. xxii. 94. Pepys, i. 24,
25. "At Strand-bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires; in
King-street, seven or eight, and all along burning, and roasting, and
drinking for rumps; there being rumps tied upon sticks, and carried up and
down. The butchers at the May-pole in the Strand rang a peal with their
knives, when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate-hill there
was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied to it, and another basting
of it. Indeed it was past imagination."--Ibid. 28.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 11.]


They solicited the general to return to Whitehall; they completed the bill
for the qualifications of candidates and electors; and, on the day fixed by
the letter of the officers, ordered[a] writs to be issued for the filling
up of the vacancies in the representation. This measure had been forced
upon them; yet they had the ingenuity to make it subservient to their own
interest, by inserting a provision in the act, that no man should choose or
be chosen, who had not already bound himself to support a republican form
of government. But immediately the members excluded in 1648 brought forward
their claim to sit, and Monk assumed the appearance of the most perfect
indifference between the parties. At his invitation, nine of the leaders on
each side argued the question before him and his officers; and the result
was, that the latter expressed their willingness to support the secluded
members, on condition that they should pledge themselves to settle the
government of the army, to raise money to pay the arrears, to issue
writs for a new parliament to sit on the 20th of April, and to dissolve
themselves before that period. The general returned[b] to Whitehall;
the secluded members attended his summons; and, after a long speech,
declaratory of his persuasion that a republican form of government and a
moderate presbyterian kirk were necessary to secure and perpetuate the
tranquillity of the nation, he advised them to go and resume their seats.
Accompanied by a great number of officers, they walked to the house; the
guard, under the command of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, opened to let
them pass; and no opposition was made by the speaker or the members.[1]
Hazlerig, however, and the

[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 11, 13, 15, 17, 21. Price, 768-773. Ludlow, ii.
345, 351, 353. Skinner, 256-264. Clar. Pap. 663, 682, 688. Gumble, 260,
263. Philips, 600. The number of secluded members then living was one
hundred and ninety-four, of members sitting or allowed to sit by the orders
of the house, eighty-nine.--"A Declaration of the True State of the Matter
of Fact," 57.]

[Sideline a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 17.]
[Sideline b: A.D. 1660. Feb. 21.]

more devoted of his adherents, rose and withdrew--a fortunate secession for
the royalists; otherwise, with the addition of those among the restored
members who adhered to a commonwealth, the republicans might on many
questions have still commanded a majority.[1]

To the Cavaliers, the conduct of Monk on this occasion proved a source
of the most distressing perplexity. On the one hand, by introducing the
secluded members he had greatly advanced the cause of royalty. For though
Holles, Pierpoint, Popham, and their friends still professed the doctrines
which they had maintained during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, though
they manifested the same hatred of popery and prelacy, though they still
inculcated the necessity of limiting the prerogative in the choice of the
officers of state and in the command of the army, yet they were royalists
by principle, and had, several of them, made the most solemn promises to
the exiled king of labouring strenuously for his restoration. On the other
hand, that Monk at the very time when he gave the law without control,
should declare so loudly in favour of a republican government and
a presbyterian kirk, could not fail to alarm both Charles and his
abettors.[2] Neither was this the only instance: to all, Cavaliers or
republicans, who approached him to discover his intentions, he uniformly
professed the same sentiments, occasionally confirming his professions with
oaths and imprecations. To explain this inconsistency between

[Footnote 1: Hutchinson, 362.]

[Footnote 2: Clar. Hist. iii. 720, 721, 723, 724; Papers, ii. 698.]

the tendency of his actions and the purport of his language, we are told by
those whom he admitted to his private counsels, that it was forced upon him
by the necessity of his situation; that, without it, he must have forfeited
the confidence of the army, which believed its safety and interest to be
intimately linked with the existence of the commonwealth. According to
Ludlow, the best soldier and statesman in the opposite party, Monk had
in view an additional object, to deceive the suspicions and divert the
vigilance of his adversaries; and so successfully had he imposed on the
credulity of many (Hazlerig himself was of the number), that, in defiance
of every warning, they blindly trusted to his sincerity, till their eyes
were opened by the introduction of the secluded members.[1]

In parliament the Presbyterian party now ruled without opposition. They
annulled[a] all votes relative to their own expulsion from the house in
1648; they selected a new council of state, in which the most influential
members were royalists; they appointed Monk commander-in-chief of the
forces in the three kingdoms, and joint commander of the fleet with Admiral
Montague; they granted him the sum of twenty thousand pounds in lieu of
the palace at Hampton Court, settled on him by the republican party;
they discharged[b] from confinement, and freed from the penalty of
sequestration, Sir George Booth and his associates, a great number of
Cavaliers, and the Scottish lords taken after the battle at Worcester;
they restored the common council, borrowed sixty thousand pounds for the
immediate pay of the army,

[Footnote 1: Price, 773. Ludlow, 349, 355. Clar. Pap. iii. 678, 697, 703,
711.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. March.]

declared the Presbyterian confession of faith to be that of the church of
England, ordered copies of the solemn league and covenant to be hung up in
all churches, offered rewards for the apprehension of Catholic priests,
urged the execution of the laws against Catholic recusants, and fixed the
15th of March for their own dissolution, the 25th of April for the meeting
of a new parliament.[1]

Here, however, a serious difficulty arose. The House of Commons (according
to the doctrine of the secluded members, it could be nothing more) was
but a single branch of the legislature. By what right could it pretend to
summon a parliament? Ought not the House of Lords, the peers who had been
excluded in 1649, to concur? Or rather, to proceed according to law, ought
not the king either to appoint a commission to hold a parliament, as was
usually done in Ireland, or to name a guardian invested with such power,
as was the practice formerly, when our monarchs occasionally resided in
France? But, on this point, Monk was inflexible. He placed guards at the
door of the House of Lords to prevent the entrance of the peers; and he
refused to listen to any expedient which might imply an acknowledgment of
the royal authority. To the arguments urged by others, he replied,[a] that
the parliament according to law determined by the death of Charles I.; that
the present house could justify its sitting on no other ground but that of
necessity, which did not apply to the House of Lords; and that it was in
vain to expect the submission of the army to a parliament called by royal
authority. The military had, with reluctance, consented to the restoration
of

[Footnote 1: Journals, passim.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 3.]

the secluded members; and to ask more of them at present was to hazard all
the advantages which had hitherto been obtained.[1]

Encouraged by the downfall of the republicans, the royalists throughout
the country expressed their sentiments without restraint. In some places
Charles was proclaimed by the populace; several ministers openly prayed
for him in the churches: the common council, in their address, declared
themselves not averse to his restoration; and the house itself was induced
to repeal[a] the celebrated engagement in favour of a commonwealth, without
a single person or a house of peers, and to embody under trusty officers
the militia of the city and the counties, as a counterpoise to the
republican interest in the army. The judges of the late king, and the
purchasers of forfeited property, began to tremble. They first tempted the
ambition of the lord-general with the offer of the sovereign authority.[2]
Rejected by him, they appealed to the military; they represented the loss
of their arrears,

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 704. Ludlow, 364, 365. Price, 773.]

[Footnote 2: Gumble, 270. Two offers of assistance were made to the
general, on the supposition that he might aspire to the supreme power; one
from the republicans, which I have mentioned, another from Bordeaux, the
French ambassador, in the name of Cardinal Mazarin. On one of these offers
he was questioned by Sir Anthony Ashley Copper in the council of state. If
we may believe Clarges, one of his secret advisers, it was respecting the
former which Clarges mentioned to Cooper. With respect to the offer from
Bordeaux, he tells us that it was made through Clarges himself, and
scornfully rejected by Monk, who nevertheless consented to receive a
visit from Bordeaux, on condition that the subject should not be
mentioned.--Philips, 602, 604. Locke, on the contrary, asserts that Monk
accepted the offer of the French minister; that his wife, through loyalty
to the king, betrayed the secret; and that Cooper put to the general such
searching questions that he was confused, and, in proof of his fidelity,
took away the commissions of several officers of whom the council was
jealous.--Memoirs of Shaftesbury, in Kennet's Register, 86. Locke, ix, 279.
See note (K).]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 10.]

and of the property which they had acquired, as the infallible consequences
of the restoration of the royal exile; and they so far wrought on the fears
of the officers, that an engagement to oppose all attempts to set up a
single person was presented[a] to Monk for his signature, with a request
that he would solicit the concurrence of the parliament. A second
council of officers was held the next morning;[b] the general urged the
inexpediency of troubling the house with new questions, when it was on
the point of dissolving itself; and by the address and influence of his
friends, though with considerable difficulty, he procured the suppression
of the obnoxious paper. In a short time he ordered the several officers
to join their respective regiments, appointed a commission to inspect and
reform the different corps, expelled all the officers whose sentiments he
had reason to distrust, and then demanded and obtained from the army an
engagement to abstain from all interference in matters of state, and to
submit all things to the authority of the new parliament.[1]

Nineteen years and a half had now elapsed since the long parliament first
assembled--years of revolution and bloodshed, during which the nation had
made the trial of almost every form of government, to return at last to
that form from which it had previously departed. On the 16th of March,
one day later than was originally fixed, its existence, which had been
illegally prolonged since the death of Charles I., was terminated[c] by
its own act.[2] The reader is already acquainted with its history. For the
glorious stand

[Footnote 1: Philips, 603, 606. Price, 781. Kennet's Reg. 113. Thurloe,
vii. 852, 859, 870. Pepys, i. 43. Skinner, 279-284.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, March 16.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. March 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. March 16.]

which it made against the encroachments of the crown, it deserves both
admiration and gratitude; its subsequent proceedings assumed a more
ambiguous character; ultimately they led to anarchy and military despotism.
But, whatever were its merits or demerits, of both posterity has reaped the
benefit. To the first, we are indebted for many of the rights which we
now enjoy; by the second, we are warned of the evils which result from
political changes effected by violence, and in opposition to the habits and
predilections of the people.

Monk had now spent more than two months in England, and still his
intentions were covered with a veil of mystery, which no ingenuity,
either of the royalists or of the republicans, could penetrate. Sir John
Grenville, with whom the reader is already acquainted, paid frequent visits
to him at St. James's; but the object of the Cavalier was suspected, and
his attempts[a] to obtain a private interview were defeated by the caution
of the general. After the dissolution, Morrice, the confidential friend
of both, brought them together, and Grenville delivered to Monk a most
flattering letter from the king. He received and perused it with respect.
This was, he observed, the first occasion on which he could express with
safety his devotion to the royal cause; but he was still surrounded with
men of hostile or doubtful sentiments; the most profound secrecy was still
necessary; Grenville might confer in private with Morrice, and must consent
to be himself the bearer of the general's answer. The heads of that
answer were reduced to writing. In it Monk prayed the king to send him a
conciliatory letter, which, at the proper season, he might lay before the
parliament; for himself he asked

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 10.]

nothing; he would not name, as he was desired, his reward; it was not for
him to strike a bargain with his sovereign; but, if he might express his
opinion, he advised Charles to promise a general or nearly general pardon,
liberty of conscience, the confirmation of the national sales, and the
payment of the arrears due to the army. As soon as this paper had been,
read, he threw it into the fire, and bade Grenville rely on his memory for
its contents.[1]

By Charles at Brussels the messenger was received as an angel from heaven.
The doubts which had so long tormented his mind were suddenly removed; the
crown, contrary to expectation, was offered[a] without previous conditions;
and nothing more was required than that he should aid with his pen the
efforts of the general; but when he communicated the glad tidings to
Ormond, Hyde, and Nicholas, these counsellors discovered that the advice,
suggested by Monk, was derogatory to the interests of the throne and the
personal character of the monarch, and composed a royal declaration which,
while it professed to make to the nation the promises recommended by Monk,
in reality neutralized their effect, by subjecting them to such limitations
as might afterwards be imposed by the wisdom of parliament. This paper was
enclosed[b] within a letter to the speaker of the House of Commons; another
letter was addressed to the House of Lords; a third to Monk and the army;
a fourth to Montague and the navy; and a fifth to the lord mayor and the
city. To the general, open copies were transmitted, that he might deliver
or destroy the originals

[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 734-736. Price, 785. Philips, 605. Clar. Pap.
iii. 706, 711. From the last authorities it is plain that Mordaunt was
intrusted with the secret as well as Grenville--also a Mr. Herne, probably
a fictitious name.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 26.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. April 2.]

as he thought fit. Notwithstanding the alterations made at Brussels, he
professed himself satisfied with the declaration, and ordered[a] Grenville
to keep the papers in his custody, till the proper season should arrive.[1]

In the mean while, the writs for the new parliament had been issued; and,
as there was no court to influence, no interference of the military to
control the elections, the result may be fairly taken to express the sense
of the country. The republicans, the Cavaliers, the Presbyterians, all made
every effort in their power to procure the return of members of congenial
sentiments. Of the three parties, the last was beyond comparison the
most powerful, had not division paralyzed its influence. The more rigid
Presbyterians, though they opposed the advocates of the commonwealth
because they were sectaries, equally deprecated the return of the king,
because they feared the restoration of episcopacy. A much greater number,
who still adhered with constancy to the solemn league and covenant, deemed
themselves bound by it to replace the king on the throne, but under the
limitations proposed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight. Others, and
these the most active and influential, saw no danger to be feared from
a moderate episcopacy; and, anxious to obtain honours and preferment,
laboured

[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 737-740, 742-751. Price, 790. Monk had been
assured, probably by the French ambassador, that the Spaniards intended to
detain the king at Brussels as a hostage for the restoration of Jamaica and
Dunkirk. On this account he insisted that the king should leave the Spanish
territory, and Charles, having informed the governor of his intention to
visit Breda, left Brussels about two hours, if Clarendon be correct, before
an order was issued for his detention. The several letters, though written
and signed at Brussels, were dated from Breda, and given to Grenville the
moment the king placed his foot on the Dutch territory.--Clar. 740.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 10.]

by the fervour of their present loyalty to deserve the forgiveness of their
past transgressions. These joined with the Cavaliers; their united efforts
bore down all opposition; and, in most places, their adversaries either
shrunk from the contest, or were rejected by overwhelming majorities.[1]

But the republicans sought for aid in another direction. Their emissaries
penetrated into the quarters of the military, where they lamented the
approaching ruin of the good old cause, regretted that so many sacrifices
had been made, so much blood had been shed in vain, and again insinuated to
the officers, that they would forfeit the lands which they had purchased,
to the privates, that they would be disbanded and lose their arrears.[2]
A spirit of discontent began to spread through several corps, and a great
number of officers repaired to the metropolis. But Monk, though he still
professed himself a friend to republican government, now ventured to assume
a bolder tone. The militia of the city, amounting to fourteen thousand men,
was already embodied under his command; he had in his pocket a commission
from Charles, appointing him lord-general over all the military in the
three kingdoms; and he had resolved, should circumstances compel him to
throw off the mask, to proclaim the king, and to summon every faithful
subject to repair to the royal standard. He first ordered[a] the officers
to return to their posts; he then directed the promise of submission to the
new parliament to be tendered to

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii, 866, 887. Price, 787. Carte's Letters, ii. 326.
Clar. Pap. iii. 705, 714, 726, 730, 731, 733. It appears that many of the
royalists were much too active. "When the complaint was made to Monk, he
turned it off with a jest, that as there is a fanatic party on the one
side, so there is a frantic party on the other" (721, 722).]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 870.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 9.]

the privates, and every man who refused to make it was immediately
discharged.[1] At the same time, the friends of the commonwealth resolved
to oppose Lambert, once the idol of the soldiery, to Monk. Lambert, indeed,
was a prisoner in the Tower, confined by order of the council, because he
had refused to give security for his peaceable behaviour; but, with the aid
of a rope, he descended[a] from the window of his bed-chamber, was received
by eight watermen in a barge, and found a secure asylum in the city. The
citizens, however, were too loyal to listen to the suggestions of the
party; he left his concealment, hastened[b] into Warwickshire, solicited,
but in vain, the co-operation of Ludlow, collected from the discontented
regiments six troops of horse and some companies of foot, and expected in a
few days to see himself at the head of a formidable force. But Ingoldsby,
who, of a regicide, was become a royalist, met him[c] near Daventry with
an equal number; a troop of Lambert's men under the command of the younger
Hazlerig, passed over to his opponents; and the others, when he gave the
word to charge, pointed their pistols to the ground. The unfortunate
commander immediately turned and fled; Ingoldsby followed; the ploughed
land gave the advantage to the stronger horse; the fugitive was overtaken,
and, after an ineffectual effort to awaken the pity of his former comrade,
submitted to his fate. He was conducted[d] back to the Tower, at the time
when the trained bands, the volunteers, and the auxiliaries raised in the
city, passed in review before the general in Hyde Park. The auxiliaries
drank the king's health on their knees; Lambert was at the moment driven
under Tyburn

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 715.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. April 13.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. April 21.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1660. April 24.]

and the spectators hailed with shouts and exclamations the disgrace of the
prisoner.[1]

The Convention parliament (so it was called, because it had not been
legally summoned) met[a] on the appointed day, the 25th of April. The
Presbyterians, by artful management, placed Sir Harbottle Grimstone, one of
their party, in the chair; but the Cavaliers, with their adherents, formed
a powerful majority, and the new speaker, instead of undertaking to stem,
had the prudence to go along with, the stream. Monk sat as representative
of Devonshire, his native county.

To neutralize the influence of the Cavaliers among the Commons, the
Presbyterian peers who sat in 1648, assembled in the House of Lords, and
chose the earl of Manchester for their speaker. But what right had they
exclusively to constitute a house of parliament? They had not been summoned
in the usual manner by writ; they could not sit as a part of the long
parliament, which was now at least defunct; and, if they founded their
pretensions on their birthright, as consiliarii nati, other peers were
in possession of the same privilege. The question was propounded to the
lord-general, who replied that he had no authority to determine the claims
of any individual. Encouraged by this answer, a few of the excluded peers
attempted to take their seats, and met with no opposition; the example was
imitated by others, and in a few days the Presbyterian lords did not amount
to more than one-fifth of the house. Still, however, to avoid cavil, the
peers who sat in the king's parliament at Oxford, as well as those whose
patents bore date after the

[Footnote 1: Kennet's Reg. 120. Price, 792, 794. Ludlow, 379. Philips, 607.
Clar. Pap. iii. 735.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 25.]

commencement of the civil war, abstained for the present from demanding
admission.[1]

Monk continued to dissemble. By his direction Grenville applied to a
member, who was entering the council-chamber, for an opportunity of
speaking to the lord-general. Monk came to the door, received from him a
letter, and, recognizing on the seal the royal arms, commanded the guards
to take care that the bearer did not depart. In a few minutes Grenville
was called in, interrogated by the president as to the manner in which he
became possessed of the letter, and ordered to be taken into custody. "That
is unnecessary," said Monk; "I find that he is my near kinsman, and I will
be security for his appearance."

The ice was now[a] broken. Grenville was treated not as a prisoner, but a
confidential servant of the sovereign. He delivered to the two houses the
letters addressed to them, and received in return a vote of thanks, with a
present of five hundred pounds. The letter for the army was read by Monk
to his officers, that for the navy by Montague to the captains under his
command, and that for the city by the lord mayor to the common council
in the Guildhall. Each of these bodies voted an address of thanks and
congratulation to the king.

The paper which accompanied the letters to the two houses,--1. granted a
free and general pardon to all persons, excepting such as might afterwards
be excepted by parliament; ordaining that every division of party should
cease, and inviting all who were the subjects of the same sovereign to live
in union and harmony; 2. it declared a liberty to tender consciences, and
that no man should be disquieted or called in

[Footnote 1: Lords' Journ. xi. 4, 5, 6.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 1.]

question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which did not
disturb the peace of the kingdom, and promised moreover the royal assent to
such acts of parliament as should be offered for the full granting of
that indulgence: 3. it alluded to the actions at law to which the actual
possessors of estates purchased by them or granted to them during the
revolution might be liable, and purposed to leave the settlement of all
such differences to the wisdom of parliament, which could best provide for
the just satisfaction of the parties concerned: lastly, it promised to
liquidate the arrears of the army under General Monk, and to retain the
officers and men in the royal service upon the same pay and conditions
which they actually enjoyed. This was the celebrated declaration from
Breda, the royal charter on the faith of which Charles was permitted to
ascend the throne of his fathers.[1]

Encouraged by the bursts of loyalty with which the king's letters and
declaration had been received, his agents made it their great object to
procure his return to England before limitations could be put on the
prerogative. From the Lords, so numerous were the Cavaliers in the upper
house, no opposition could be feared; and the temper already displayed
by the Commons was calculated to satisfy the wishes of the most ardent
champions of royalty. The two houses voted, that by the ancient and
fundamental laws of the realm the government was and ought to be by king,
lords, and commons; they invited Charles to come and receive the crown to
which he was born; and, to relieve his more urgent necessities, they sent
him a present of fifty thousand pounds, with ten thousand pounds for his
brother the duke of York, and five

[Footnote 1: Lords' Journ. xi. 7, 10.]

thousand pounds for the duke of Gloucester. They ordered the arms and
symbols of the commonwealth to be effaced, the name of the king to be
introduced into the public worship, and his succession to be proclaimed
as having commenced from the day of his father's death.[1] Hale, the
celebrated lawyer, ventured, with Prynne, to call[a] upon the House of
Commons to pause in their enthusiasm, and attend to the interests of the
nation. The first moved the appointment of a committee to inquire what
propositions had been offered by the long parliament, and what concessions
had been made by the last king in 1648; the latter urged the favourable
opportunity of coming to a mutual and permanent understanding on all those
claims which had been hitherto subjects of controversy between the two
houses and the crown. But Monk rose, and strongly objected to an inquiry
which might revive the fears and jealousies, the animosities and bloodshed,
of the years that were past. Let the king return while all was peace and
harmony. He would come alone; he could bring no army with him; he would
be as much at their mercy in Westminster as in Breda. Limitations, if
limitations were necessary, might be prepared in the interval, and offered
to him after his arrival. At the conclusion of this speech, the house
resounded with the acclamations of the Cavaliers; and the advocates of the
inquiry, awed by the authority of the general and the clamour of their
opponents, deemed it prudent to desist.[2]

Charles was as eager to accept, as the houses had been to vote, the address
of invitation. From Breda he had gone to the Hague, where the States,
anxious to atone for their former neglect, entertained him with

[Footnote 1: Journals of both houses.]

[Footnote 2: Burnet, i. 88. Ludlow, iii. 8, 9.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 7.]

unusual magnificence. The fleet, under Montague,[1] had anchored in the Bay
of Scheveling; and Charles, as soon as the weather permitted, set sail[a]
for Dover, where Monk, at the head of the nobility and gentry from the
neighbouring counties, waited to receive the new sovereign. Every eye
was fixed on their meeting;[b] and the cheerful, though dignified,
condescension of the king, and the dutiful, respectful homage of the
general, provoked the applause of the spectators. Charles embraced him as
his benefactor, bade him walk by his side, and took him into the royal
carriage. From Dover to the capital the king's progress bore the appearance
of a triumphal procession. The roads were covered with crowds of people
anxious to testify their loyalty, while they gratified their curiosity. On
Blackheath he was received[c] by the army in battle array, and greeted with
acclamations as he passed through the ranks; in St. George's Fields the
lord mayor and aldermen invited him to partake of a splendid collation in a
tent prepared for the purpose; from London Bridge to Whitehall the houses
were hung with tapestry, and the streets lined by the trained bands, the
regulars, and the officers who had served under Charles I. The king was
preceded by troops of horsemen, to the amount of three thousand persons, in
splendid dresses, attended by trumpeters and footmen; then came the lord
mayor, carrying the naked sword, after him the lord-general and the duke of
Buckingham, and lastly the king himself, riding between his two brothers.
The cavalcade was closed by the general's life-guard, five regiments

[Footnote 1: Montague had long been in correspondence with the king, and
disapproved of the dissimulation of Monk, so far as to call him in private
a "thick-sculled fool;" but thought it necessary to flatter him, as he
could hinder the business.--Pepys, i. 69.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. May 25.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. May 29.]

of horse, and two troops of noblemen and gentlemen. At Whitehall Charles
dismissed the lord mayor, and received in succession the two houses, whose
speakers addressed him in strains of the most impassioned loyalty, and
were answered by him with protestations of attachment to the interests and
liberties of his subjects. It was late in the evening before the ceremonies
of this important day were concluded; when Charles observed to some of his
confidants "It must sorely have been my fault that I did not come before;
for I have met with no one to-day who did not protest that he always wished
for my restoration."[1]

That the re-establishment of royalty was a blessing to the country will
hardly be denied. It presented the best, perhaps the only, means of
restoring public tranquillity amidst the confusion and distrust, the
animosities and hatreds, the parties and interests, which had been
generated by the events of the civil war, and by a rapid succession of
opposite and ephemeral governments. To Monk belongs the merit of having, by
his foresight and caution, effected this desirable object without bloodshed
or violence; but to his dispraise it must also be recorded, that he
effected it without any previous stipulation on the part of the exiled
monarch. Never had so fair an opportunity been offered of establishing a
compact between the sovereign and the people, of determining, by mutual
consent, the legal rights of the crown, and of securing from future
encroachment the freedom of the people. That Charles would have consented
to such conditions,

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 702. Kennet's Reg. 163. Clarendon's Hist. iii. 772.
Clarendon's Life by Himself, Continuation, p. 7, 8. Evelyn's Diary, ii.
148.]

we have sufficient evidence; but, when the measure was proposed, the
lord-general declared himself its most determined opponent. It may have
been, that his cautious mind figured to itself danger in delay; it is more
probable that he sought to give additional value to his services in the
eyes of the new sovereign. But, whatever were the motives of his conduct,
the result was, that the king ascended the throne unfettered with
conditions, and thence inferred that he was entitled to all the powers
claimed by his father at the commencement of the civil war. In a few years
the consequence became manifest. It was found that, by the negligence or
perfidy of Monk, a door had been left open to the recurrence of dissension
between the crown and the people; and that very circumstance which Charles
had hailed as the consummation of his good fortune, served only to prepare
the way for a second revolution, which ended in the permanent exclusion of
his family from the government of these kingdoms.


       *       *       *       *       *


APPENDIX.


NOTE A, p. 117.

Nothing more clearly shows the readiness of Charles to engage in intrigue,
and the subtleties and falsehood to which he could occasionally descend,
than the history of Glamorgan's mission to Ireland. In this note I purpose
to lay before the reader the substance of the several documents relating to
the transaction.

On the 1st of April, 1644, the king gave to him, by the name of Edward
Somerset, alias Plantagenet, Lord Herbert, Baron Beaufort, &c., a
commission under the great seal, appointing him commander-in-chief of three
armies of Englishmen, Irishmen, and foreigners; authorizing him to raise
moneys on the securities of the royal wardships, customs, woods, &c.;
furnishing him with patents of nobility from the title of marquis to that
of baronet, to be filled up with names at his discretion; promising to give
the Princess Elizabeth to his son Plantagenet in marriage with a dower of
three hundred thousand pounds, a sum which did not much exceed what Herbert
and his father had already spent in the king's service, and in addition to
confer on Herbert himself the title of duke of Somerset, with the George
and blue ribbon.--From the Nuncio's Memoirs in Birch's Inquiry, p. 22.

This commission was granted in consequence of an understanding with the
deputies from the confederate Catholics, who were then at Oxford, and its
object is fully explained by Herbert himself in a letter to Clarendon, to
be laid before Charles II., and dated June 11, 1660. "For his majesty's
better information, through your favour, and by the channel of your
lordship's understanding things rightly, give me leave to acquaint you
with one chief key, wherewith to open the secret passages between his late
majesty and myself, in order to his service; which was no other than a
real exposing of myself to any expense or difficulty, rather than his just
design should not take place; or, in taking effect, that his honour should
suffer; an effect, you may justly say, relishing more of a passionate and
blind affection to his majesty's service, than of discretion and care of
myself. This made me take a resolution that he should have seemed angry
with me at my return out of Ireland, until I had brought him into a posture
and power to own his commands, to make good his instructions, and to reward
my faithfulness and zeal therein.

"Your lordship may well wonder, and the king too, at the amplitude of
my commission. But when you have understood the height of his majesty's
design, you will soon be satisfied that nothing less could have made me
capable to effect it; being that one army of ten thousand men was to have
come out of Ireland through North Wales; another of a like number, at
least, under my command in chief, have expected my return in South Wales,
which Sir Henry Gage was to have commanded as lieutenant-general; and a
third should have consisted of a matter of six thousand men, two thousand
of which were to have been Liegois, commanded by Sir Francis Edmonds, two
thousand Lorrainers, to have been commanded by Colonel Browne, and two
thousand of such French, English, Scots, and Irish, as could be drawn out
of Flanders and Holland. And the six thousand were to have been, by the
prince of Orange's assistance, in the associated counties; and the governor
of Lyne, cousin german to Major Bacon, major of my own regiment, was to
have delivered the town unto them.

"The maintenance of this army of foreigners was to have come from the pope,
and such Catholick princes as he, should have drawn into it, having engaged
to afford and procure thirty thousand pounds a month; out of which the
foreign army was first to be provided for, and the remainder to be divided
among the other armies. And for this purpose had I power to treat with
the pope and Catholick princes with particular advantages promised to
Catholicks for the quiet enjoying their religion, without the penalties
which the statutes in force had power to inflict upon them. And my
instructions for this purpose, and my powers to treat and conclude
thereupon, were signed by the king under his pocket signet, with blanks for
me to put in the names of pope or princes, to the end the king might have
a starting-hole to deny the having given me such commissions, if excepted
against by his own subjects; leaving me as it were at stake, who for
his majesty's sake was willing to undergo it, trusting to his word
alone."--Clarendon Papers, ii. 201, 202.

But his departure was delayed by Ormond's objections to the conditions of
peace; and the king, to relieve himself from the difficulty, proposed to
Herbert to proceed to Ireland, and grant privately to the Catholics those
concessions which the lord-lieutenant hesitated to make, on condition of
receiving in return an army of ten thousand men for the royal service. In
consequence, on the 27th of December, Charles announced to Ormond
that Herbert was going to Ireland under an engagement to further the
peace.--Carte, ii. App. p. 5.

1645, January 2nd. Glamorgan (he was now honoured with the title of earl of
Glamorgan) received these instructions. "First you may ingage y'r estate,
interest and creditt that we will most really and punctually performe any
our promises to the Irish, and as it is necessary to conclude a peace
suddainely, soe whatsoever shall be consented unto by our lieutenant the
marquis of Ormond. We will dye a thousand deaths rather than disannull or
break it; and if vpon necessity any thing to be condescended unto, and yet
the lord marquis not willing to be seene therein, as not fitt for us at the
present publickely to owne, doe you endeavour to supply the same."--Century
of Inventions by Mr. Partington, original letters and official papers,
xxxv. Then follows a promise to perform any promise made by him to Ormond
or others, &c.

January 6. He received a commission to levy any number of men in Ireland
and other parts beyond the sea, with power to appoint officers, receive the
king's rents, &c.--Birch, p. 18, from the Nuncio's Memoirs, fol. 713.

January 12. He received another warrant of a most extraordinary
description, which I shall transcribe from a MS. copy in my possession,
attested with the earl's signature, and probably the very same which he
gave to Ormond after his arrest and imprisonment.


"CHARLES REX

"Charles by the grace of God king of England Scotland France and Ireland
Defender of the Fayth, &c. To our Right trusty and Right well beloved
Cossin Edward Earle of Glamorgan greetinge. Whereas wee haue had sufficient
and ample testimony of y'r approued wisdome and fideliti. Soe great is
the confidence we repose in yo'w as that whatsoeuer yo'w shall perform as
warranted only under our signe manuall pockett signett or private marke or
even by woorde of mouthe w'thout further cerimonii, wee doo in the worde of
a kinge and a cristian promis to make good to all intents and purposes as
effectually as if your authoriti from us had binne under our great seale of
England w'th this advantage that wee shall esteem our self farr the moore
obliged to yo'w for y'r gallantry in not standing upon such nice tearms to
doe us service w'h we shall God willing rewarde. And althoughe yo'w exceed
what law can warrant or any power of ours reach unto, as not knowinge what
yo'w may have need of, yet it being for our service, wee oblige ourself not
only to give yo'w our pardon, but to mantayne the same w'th all our might
and power, and though, either by accident yo'w loose or by any other
occasion yo'w shall deem necessary to deposit any of our warrants and so
wante them at yo'r returne, wee faythfully promise to make them good
at your returne, and to supply any thinge wheerin they shall be founde
defective, it not being convenient for us at this time to dispute upon
them, for of what wee haue heer sett downe yo'w may rest confident, if
theer be fayth or truth in man; proceed theerfor cheerfully, spedelj, and
bouldly, and for your so doinge this shal be yo'r sufficient warrant. Given
at our Court at Oxford under our signe manuall and privat signet this 12 of
January 1644.

  "GLAMORGAN.

  "To our Right trustj and Right well beloved cosin
  Edward Earle of Glamorgan."
  Indorsed, "The Earle of Glamorgan's further authoritj."

Feb. 12. Glamorgan had left Oxford, and was raising money in Wales, when
Charles sent him other despatches, and with them a letter desiring him to
hasten to Ireland. In it he acknowledges the danger of the undertaking,
that Glamorgan had already spent above a million of crowns in his service,
and that he was bound in gratitude to take care of him next to his own wife
and children. "What I can further thinke at this point is to send y'w the
blue ribben, and a warrant for the title of duke of Somerset, both w'ch
accept and make vse of at your discretion, and if you should deferre y'e
publishing of either for a whyle to avoyde envye, and my being importuned
by others, yet I promise yo'r antiquitie for y'e one and your pattent for
the other shall bear date with the warrants."--Century of Inventions, p.
xxxiv. On the 18th of August, 1660, the marquess of Hertford complained
that this patent was injurious to him, as he claimed the tide of Somerset.
Glamorgan, then marquess of Worcester, readily surrendered it on the 3rd of
September, and his son was created duke of Beaufort.

On March 12, the king wrote to him the following letter:--

"HERBERT,

"I wonder you are not yet gone for Ireland; but since you have stayed all
this time, I hope these will ouertake you, whereby you will the more see
the great trust and confidence I repose in your integrity, of which I have
had soe long and so good experience; commanding yow to deale with all
ingenuity and freedome with our lieutenant of Ireland the marquess of
Ormond, and on the word of a king and a Christian I will make good any
thing which our lieutenant shall be induced unto upon your persuasion; and
if you find it fitting, you may privately shew him these, which I intend
not as obligatory to him, but to myselfe, and for both your encouragements
and warrantise, in whom I repose my cheefest hopes, not having in all my
kingdomes two such subjects; whose endeauours joining, I am confident to be
soone drawen out of the mire I am now enforced to wallow in."--Century of
Inventions, xxxviii.

What were the writings meant by the word "_these_" which Glamorgan might
show to Ormond if he thought fitting? Probably the following warranty dated
at Oxford on the same day.

"CHARLES R.

"Charles by the Grace of God King of England Scotland France and Ireland
Defender of the Fayth &c. To our right trusty and right welbeloved Cosin
Edward earle of Glamorgan Greeting. We reposing great and espitiall trust,
and confidence in y'r approved wisdome, and fidelity doe by these (as
firmely as under our great seale to all intents and purposes) Authorise
and give you power to treate and conclude w'th the Confederat Romaine
Catholikes in our Kingdom of Ireland, if vpon necessity any thing be to be
condescended vnto wherein our Lieutenant can not so well be seene in as not
fitt for vs at the present publikely to owne, and therefore we charge you
to proceede according to this our warrant w'th all possible secresie,
and for whatsoever you shall engage your selfe, vpon such valuable
considerations as you in y'r iudgement shall deeme fitt, we promise in the
word of a King and a Christian to ratifie and performe the same, that shall
be graunted by you, and vnder your hand and seale, the sayd confederat
Catholikes having by theyr supplyes testified theyre zeale to our service,
and this shall be in eache particular to you a sufficient warrant. Given at
our Court at Oxford, under our signett and Royall signature the twelfe day
of Marche in the twentieth year of our Raigne 1644.

To our Right Trusty and right welbeloved Cosin,

Edward Earle of Glamorgan."

Some writers have attempted to dispute the authenticity of this warrant,
because though it was inserted verbatim in Glamorgan's treaty with the
confederates, he did not produce it at the requisition of the council at
Dublin, under the excuse that he had deposited it with the Catholics at
Kilkenny. But that this was the truth, appears from the Nuncio's Memoirs:
"a sua majestate mandatum habuit, cujus originate regiâ manu subscriptum
Glamorganae comes deposuit apud confoederatos Catholicos," (fol. 1292, apud
Birch, 215); and if better authority be required, I have in my possession
the original warrant itself, with the king's signature and private seal,
bearing the arms of the three kingdoms, a crown above, and C.R. on the
sides, and indorsed in the same handwriting with the body of the warrant,
"The Earle of Glamorgan's espetiall warrant for Ireland." Of this original
the above is a correct copy.

April 30. The king having heard that Rinuccini had been appointed nuncio,
and was on his way to Ireland, sent to Glamorgan a letter for that prelate
and another for the pope. The contents of the second are unknown; the first
is copied in the Nuncio's Memoirs, "Nous ne doubtons point, que les choses
n'yront bien, et que les bonnes intentions commencés par effect du dernier
pape ne s'accomplisseront par celuys icy, et par vos moyens, en notre
royaume d'Irelande et de Angleterre."--Birch 28. He then requests the
nuncio to join with Glamorgan, and promises to accomplish on the return of
the latter, whatever they shall have resolved together.--Ibid.

The king, on his return to Oxford, after the disastrous campaign of 1645,
still placed his principal reliance on the mission of Glamorgan; and, to
induce the court of Rome to listen to the proposals of that envoy, wrote,
with his own hand, the two following letters, of which the originals still
exist in the Archivio Vaticano, one to the pope himself, the other to
Cardinal Spada, requesting of both to give credit to Glamorgan or his
messenger, and engaging the royal word to fulfil whatever should be agreed
upon by Glamorgan, in the name of his sovereign:--

"BEATISSIME PATER,

"Tot tantaque testimonia fidelitatis et affectus consanguinei nostri
comitis Glamorganiae jamdudum accepimus, eamque in illo fiduciam merito
reponimus, ut Sanctitas Vestra ei fidem merito praebere possit in quacumque
re, de qua per se vel per alium nostro nomine cum Sanctitate Vestra
tractaturus sit. Quaecumque vero ab ipso certo statuta fuerint, ea munire
et confirmare pollicemur. In cujus testimonium brevissimas has scripsimus,
manu et sigillo nostro munitas, qui nihil (potius) habemus in votis, quam
ut fevore vestro in eum statum redigamur, quo palam profiteamur nos.

"Sanctitatis Vestrae

"Humilimum et obedientissimum servum,

  "Apud Curiam nostram,             CHARLES R.
  Oxoniae, Oct. 20, 1645."

_Superscription_--

"Beatissimo Patri Innocentio decimo Pontifici Maximo."

"Eminentissime Domine, Pauca scripsimus Beatissimo Patri, de fide adhibenda
consanguineo nostro comiti Glamorganiae, et cuilibet ab eo delegato, quem
ut Eminentia vestra pariter omni favore prosequatur, rogamus; certoque
credat nos ratum habituros quicquid a praedicte comite, vel suo delegato,
cum Sanctissimo Patre vel Eminentia vestra transactum fuerit.

"Eminentiae Vestrae,

  "Apud Curiam nostram,        Fidelisimus Amicus,
  Oxoniae, Oct. 20, 1645."               CHARLES R.

_Superscription_--

"Eminentissimo Domino et Consanguineo nostro, Dño Cardinali Spada."

After the discovery of the whole proceeding, the king, on January 29th,
1646, sent a message to the two houses in England, in which he declares
(with what truth the reader may judge) that Glamorgan had a commission to
raise men, and "to that purpose only;" that he had no commission to treat
of any thing else without the privity and directions of Ormond; that he
had never sent any information of his having made any treaty with the
Catholics, and that he (the king) disavowed him in his proceedings, and
had ordered the Irish council to proceed against him by due course of
law.--Charles's Works, 555.

Two days later, January 31, having acknowledged to the council at Dublin
that he had informed Glamorgan of the secret instructions given to Ormond,
and desired him to use his influence with the Catholics to persuade them to
moderate their demands, he proceeds: "To this end (and with the strictest
limitations that we could enjoin him, merely to those particulars
concerning which we had given you secret instructions, as also even in that
to do nothing but by your especial directions) it is possible we might have
thought fit to have given unto the said earl of Glamorgan such a credential
as might give him credit with the Roman Catholics, in case you should find
occasion to make use of him, either as a farther assurance unto them of
what you should privately promise, or in case you should judge it necessary
to manage those matters for their greater confidence apart by him, of whom,
in regard of his religion and interest, they might be less jealous. This is
all, and the very bottom of what we might have possibly entrusted unto the
said earl of Glamorgan in this affair."--Carte's Ormond, iii. 446. How this
declaration is to be reconciled with the last, I know not.

With this letter to the council he sent two others. One was addressed
to Ormond, asserting on the word of a Christian that he never intended
Glamorgan to treat of any thing without Ormond's knowledge and approbation,
as he was always diffident of the earl's judgment, but at the same time
commanding him to suspend the execution of any sentence which might be
pronounced against that nobleman.--Carte, ii. App. p. 12. The second, dated
Feb. 3, was to Glamorgan himself, in these words:--

"GLAMORGAN,

I must clearly tell you, both you and I have been abused in this business;
for you have been drawn to consent to conditions much beyond your
instructions, and your treaty had been divulged to all the world. If you
had advised with my lord lieutenant, as you promised me, all this had been
helped. But we must look forward. Wherefore, in a word, I have commanded
as much favour to be shewn to you as may possibly stand with my service or
safety; and if you will yet trust my advice--which I have commanded Digby
to give you freely--I will bring you so off that you may still be useful
to me, and I shall be able to recompence you for your affection; if not,
I cannot tell what to say. But I will not doubt your compliance in this,
since it so highly concerns the good of all my crowns, my own particular,
and to make me have still means to shew myself

Your most assured Friend,

CHARLES R. Oxford, Feb. 3, 1645-6." _Warner_, 360.

In this letter Charles, in his own defence, pretends to blame Glamorgan;
probably as a blind to Ormond and Digby, through whom it was sent. Soon
afterwards, on February 28th, he despatched Sir J. Winter to him with full
instructions, and the following consolatory epistle:--

"HERBERT,

I am confident that this honest trusty bearer will give you good
satisfaction why I have not in euerie thing done as you desired, the wante
of confidence in you being so farre from being y'e cause thereof, that I
am euery day more and more confirmed in the trust that I have of you, for
beleeve me, it is not in the power of any to make you suffer in my opinion
by ill offices; but of this and diuers other things I have given so full
instructions that I will saye no more, but that I am

Yor most assured constant Friend,

CHARLES R."

_Century of Inventions_, xxxix.

April 5th he wrote to him again.

"GLAMORGAN,

I have no time, nor do you expect that I shall make unnecessary repetitions
to you. Wherefore, referring you to Digby for business, this is only to
give you assurance of my constant friendship to you: which, considering the
general defection of common honesty, is in a sort requisite. Howbeit, I
know you cannot but be confident of my making good all instructions and
promises to you and the nuncio.

Your most assured constant Friend,

CHARLES R."

_Warner_, 373.

On the following day the king sent him another short letter.

"HERBERT,

As I doubt not but you have too much courage to be dismayed or discouraged
at the usage you have had, so I assure you that my estimation of you is
nothing diminished by it, but rather begets in me a desire of revenge and
reparation to us both; for in this I hold myself equally interested with
you. Wherefore, not doubting of your accustomed care and industry in my
service, I assure you of the continuance of my favour and protection to
you, and that in deeds more than words, I shall shew myself to be

Your most assured constant Friend,

CHARLES R."

_Warner_, 374.

If after the perusal of these documents any doubt can remain of the
authenticity of Glamorgan's commission, it must be done away by the
following passage from Clarendon's correspondence with secretary Nicholas.
Speaking of his intended history, he says, "I must tell you, I care not how
little I say in that business of Ireland, since those strange powers and
instructions given to your favourite Glamorgan, which appears to me so
inexcusable to justice, piety, and prudence. And I fear there is very much
in that transaction of Ireland, both before and since, that you and I were
never thought wise enough to be advised with in. Oh, Mr. Secretary, those
stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war
which have befallen the king, and look like the effects of God's anger
towards us."--Clarendon Papers, ii. 337.

It appears that the king, even after he had been delivered by the Scots
to the parliament, still hoped to derive benefit from the exertions of
Glamorgan. About the beginning of June, 1647, Sir John Somerset, the
brother of that nobleman, arrived in Rome with a letter from Charles to
Innocent X. The letter is not probably in existence; but the answer of the
pontiff shows that the king had solicited pecuniary assistance, and, as an
inducement, had held out some hint of a disposition on his part to admit
the papal supremacy and the Catholic creed. Less than this cannot be
inferred from the language of Innocent. Literae illae praecipuam tuam
alacritatem ac propensionem ad obediendum Deo in nobis, qui ejus vices
gerimus, luculenter declarant ... a majestate tua enixe poscimus, ut
quod velle coepit, mox et facto perficiat ... ut aliquo id aggrediaris
argumento, quo te te ad Catholicam fidem recepisse intelligamus.
Undoubtedly Charles was making the same experiment with the pontiff which
he had just made with his Presbyterian subjects; and as, to propitiate
them, he had undertaken to study the Presbyterian doctrines, so he hoped
to draw money from Innocent by professing an inclination in favour of
the Catholic creed. But the attempt failed. The answer was, indeed,
complimentary: it expressed the joy of the pontiff at the perusal of his
letter, and exhorted him to persevere in the inquiry till he should come to
the discovery of the truth; but it disposed of his request, as Urban
had previously disposed of a similar request, by stating that it was
inconsistent with the duty of the pope to spend the treasures of his church
in the support of any but Catholic princes. This answer is dated 29th June,
1647.

NOTE B, p. 136.

1. The ordinances had distinguished two classes of delinquents, the one
religious, the other political. The first comprised all Catholic recusants,
all persons whomsoever, who, having attained the age of twenty-one, should
refuse to abjure upon oath the doctrines peculiar to the Catholic creed.
These were reputed papists, and had been made to forfeit two-thirds of
their real and personal estates, which were seized for the benefit of the
kingdom by the commissioners of sequestration appointed in each particular
county. The second comprehended all persons who were known to have fought
against the parliament, or to have aided the royal party with money, men,
provisions, advice, or information; and of these the whole estates, both
real and personal, had been sequestrated, with the sole exception of
one-fifth allotted for the support of their wives and children, if the
latter were educated in the Protestant religion.--Elsynge's Ordinances. 3,
22, et seq.

2. These sequestrated estates not only furnished a yearly income, but also
a ready supply on every sudden emergency. Thus when Colonel Harvey refused
to march till his regiment had received the arrears of its pay, amounting
to three thousand pounds, an ordinance was immediately passed to raise
the money by the sale of woods belonging to Lord Petre, in the county of
Essex.--Journals, vi, 519. When a complaint was made of a scarcity of
timber for the repairs of the navy, the two houses authorized certain
shipwrights to fell two thousand five hundred oak trees on the estates
of delinquents in Kent and Essex.--Ibid, 520. When the Scots demanded a
month's pay for their army, the committee at Goldsmiths' Hall procured the
money by offering for sale such property of delinquents as they judged
expedient, the lands at eight, the houses at six years' purchase.--Journals
of Commons, June 10, 24, 1644.

3. But the difficulty of procuring ready money by sales induced the
commissioners to look out for some other expedient; and when the sum of
fifteen thousand pounds was wanted to put the army of Fairfax in motion,
it was raised without delay by offering to delinquents the restoration
of their sequestrated estates, on the immediate payment of a certain
fine.--Commons' Journals, Sept. 13, 1644. The success of this experiment
encouraged them to hold out a similar indulgence to such persons as were
willing to quit the royal party, provided they were not Catholics, and
would take the oath of abjuration of the Catholic doctrine.--Ibid. March
6, August 12, 1645; May 4, June 26, Sept. 3, 1646. Afterwards, on the
termination of the war, the great majority of the royalists were admitted
to make their compositions with the committee. Of the fines required, the
greater number amounted to one-tenth, many to one-sixth, and a few
to one-third of the whole property, both real and personal, of the
delinquents.--(See the Journals of both houses for the years 1647, 1648.)

NOTE C, p. 241.

On the day after the king's execution appeared a work, entitled [Greek:
EIKON BASILIKAe], or the Portraicture of his Sacred Majesty in "his
Solitude and Sufferings." It professed to be written by Charles himself;
a faithful exposition of his own thoughts on the principal events of his
reign, accompanied with such pious effusions as the recollection suggested
to his mind. It was calculated to create a deep sensation in favour of the
royal sufferer, and is said to have passed through fifty editions in the
course of the first year. During the commonwealth, Milton made a feeble
attempt to disprove the king's claim to the composition of the book: after
the restoration, Dr. Gauden, a clergyman of Bocking, in Essex, came forward
and declared himself the real author. But he advanced his pretensions with
secrecy, and received as the price of his silence, first the bishopric of
Exeter, and afterwards, when he complained of the poverty of that see, the
richer bishopric of Worcester.

After the death of Gauden his pretensions began to transpire, and became
the subject of an interesting controversy between his friends and the
admirers of Charles. But many documents have been published since, which
were then unknown, particularly the letters of

Gauden to the earl of Clarendon (Clarendon Papers, iii. App. xxvi.-xxxi.,
xcv.), and others from him to the earl of Bristol (Maty's Review, ii. 253.
Clarendon Papers, iii. App. xcvi.; and Mr. Todd, Memoirs of Bishop Walton,
i. 138). These have so firmly established Gauden's claim, that, whoever
denies it must be prepared to pronounce that prelate an impostor, to
believe that the bishops Morley and Duppa gave false evidence in his
favour, and, to explain how it happened, that those, the most interested to
maintain the right of the king, namely Charles II., his brother the duke of
York, and the two earls of Clarendon and Bristol, yielded to the deception.
These difficulties, however, have not appalled Dr. Wordsworth, who in
a recent publication of more than four hundred pages, entitled, "Who
wrote[Greek: EIKON BASILIKAe]" has collected with patient industry every
particle of evidence which can bear upon the subject; and after a most
minute and laborious investigation, has concluded by adjudging the work
to the king, and pronouncing the bishop an impudent impostor. Still my
incredulity is not subdued. There is much in the[Greek: EIKON BASILIKAe]
itself which forbids me to believe that Charles was the real author, though
the latter, whoever he were, may have occasionally consulted and copied the
royal papers; and the claim of Gauden appears too firmly established to be
shaken by the imperfect and conjectural improbabilities which have hitherto
been produced against it.


NOTE D, p. 276.


_The Massacres at Drogheda and Wexford_.

I. Drogheda was taken by storm on the 11th of September, 1649. Cromwell, on
his return to Dublin, despatched two official accounts of his success, one
to Bradshaw, president of the council of state; a second to Lenthall, the
speaker of parliament. They were dated on the 16th and 17th of September;
which probably ought to have been the 17th and 18th, for he repeatedly
makes such mistakes in numbering the days of that month. These two
documents on several accounts deserve the attention of the reader.

I. Both mention a massacre, but with this difference, that whereas the
earlier seems to confine it to the men in arms against the commonwealth,
the second towards the end notices, incidentally as it were, the additional
slaughter of a thousand of the townspeople in the church of St. Peter. In
the first, Cromwell, as if he doubted how the shedding of so much blood
would be taken, appears to shift the origin of the massacre from himself to
the soldiery, who considered the refusal of quarter as a matter of course,
after the summons which had been sent into the town on the preceding day;
but in the next despatch he assumes a bolder tone, and takes upon himself
all the blame or merit of the proceeding. "Our men were ordered _by me_
to put them all to the sword."--"I forbade them to spare any that were
in arms." In the first, to reconcile the council to the slaughter, he
pronounces it a "marvellous great mercy;" for the enemy had lost by it
their best officers and prime soldiers: in the next he openly betrays his
own misgivings, acknowledging that "such actions cannot but work remorse
and regret without sufficient grounds," and alleging as sufficient grounds
in the present case--1. that it was a righteous judgment of God on
barbarous wretches who had imbued their hands in so much innocent blood;
and 2. that it would tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.

2. Now the insinuation conveyed in the first of these reasons, that
the major part of the garrison had been engaged in the outbreak of the
rebellion and its accompanying horrors, was in all probability a falsehood;
for the major part of the garrison was not composed of native soldiers,
but of Englishmen serving under the marquess of Ormond, the king's lord
lieutenant. This is plain from the evidence of persons who cannot be
supposed ignorant of the fact; the evidence of the royalist Clarendon
(History, vol. iii. part i. p. 323), and of the republican Ludlow, who soon
afterwards was made general of the horse, and became Cromwell's deputy
in the government of the island (Ludlow, Memoirs, i. 301). But, however
groundless the insinuation might be, it served Cromwell's purpose; it would
array in his favour the fanaticism of the more godly of his party.

For the massacre of the townspeople in the church he offers a similar
apology, equally calculated to interest the feelings of the saints. "They
had had the insolence on the last Lord's day to thrust out the Protestants,
and to have the mass said there." Now this remark plainly includes a
paralogism. The persons who had ordered the mass to be said there on the
9th of September were undoubtedly the civil or military authorities in the
town. Theirs was the guilt, if guilt it were, and theirs should have been
the punishment. Yet his argument supposes that the unarmed individuals
whose blood was shed there on the 12th, were the very persons who had set
up the mass on the 9th.

3. We know not how far this second massacre was originated or encouraged by
Cromwell. It is well known that in the sack of towns it is not always in
the power of the commander to restrain the fury of the assailants, who
abuse the license of victory to gratify the most brutal of their passions.
But here we have no reason to suppose that Cromwell made any effort to save
the lives of the unarmed and the innocent. Both the commander and his
men had a common religious duty to perform. They were come, in his
own language, "to ask an account of the innocent blood which had been
shed,"--to "do execution on the enemies of God's cause." Hence, in the case
of a resisting city, they included the old man, the female, and the child
in the same category with the armed combatant, and consigned all to the
same fate.

4. Of the proceedings of the victors during that night we are ignorant; but
it does not suggest a very favourable notion of their forbearance, that
in the following morning the great church of St. Peter's was filled with
crowds of townspeople of both sexes, and of every age and condition. The
majority of the women and children sought protection within the body of the
church; a select party of females, belonging to the first families in the
town, procured access to the crypts under the choir, which seemed to offer
more favourable chances of concealment and safety. But the sacred edifice
afforded no asylum to either. The carnage began within the church at an
early hour; and, when it was completed, the bloodhounds tracked their prey
into the vaults beneath the pavement. Among the men who thus descended into
these subterranean recesses, was Thomas Wood, at that time a subaltern,
afterwards a captain in Ingoldsby's regiment. He found there, according
to his own narrative, "the flower and choicest of the women and ladies
belonging to the town, amongst whom a most handsome virgin, arrayed in
costly and gorgeous apparel, kneeled down to him with tears and prayers to
save her life; and being strucken with a profound pitie, he took her under
his arme, and went with her out of the church with intentions to put
her over the works to shift for herself; but a soldier perceiving his
intention, he ran his sword up her belly or fundament. Whereupon Mr. Wood,
seeing her gasping, took away her money, jewels, &c., and flung her down
over the works." (See the Life of Anthony a Wood, p. xx., in the edition by
Bliss, of 1813. Thomas was the brother of Anthony, the Oxford historian.)
"He told them also that 3,000 at least, besides some women and children,
were, after the assailants had _taken part, and afterwards all the towne_,
put to the sword on the 11th and 12th of September, 1649. He told them
that when they were to make their way up to the lofts and galleries of
the church, and up to the tower, where the enemy had fled, each of the
assailants would take up a child, and use as a buckler of defence,
when they ascended the steps, to keep themselves from being shot or
brained."--Wood, ibid. These anecdotes, from the mouth of one who was an
eyewitness of, probably a participator in, the horrors of that day, will
enable the reader to form an adequate notion of the thirst for blood which
stimulated the soldiery, and of the cruelties which they exercised on their
defenceless victims.

5. The terms of indignation, and abhorrence in which the sack of Drogheda
was described by the royalists of that period are well known. I shall add
here another testimony; not that it affords more important information,
but because I am not aware that it has ever met the eye of more recent
historians; the testimony of Bruodin, an Irish friar, of great eminence and
authority in the Franciscan order. "Quinque diebus continuis haec laniena
(qua, nullo habito locorum, sexus, religionis aut aetatis discrimine,
juvenes et virgines lactantes aeque ac senio confecti barbarorum gladiis
ubique trucidati sunt) duravit. Quatuor milia Catholicorum virorum (ut
de infinita multitudine religiosorum, foeminarum, puerorum, puellarum
et infantium nihil dicam) in civitate gladius impiorum rebellium illa
expugnatione devoravit."--Propugnaculum Cathol. Veritatis, lib. iv. c. 14,
p. 678.

6. Here another question occurs. How did Cromwell obtain possession of
Drogheda? for there appears in his despatches a studied evasion of the
particulars necessary to give a clear view of the transaction. The
narrative is so confused that it provokes a suspicion of cunning and
concealment on the part of the writer. The royalists affirmed that
the place was won through promises of quarter which were afterwards
perfidiously violated, and their assertion is supported by the testimony of
Ormond in an official letter written from the neighbourhood to Lord Byron.
"Cromwell," he says, "having been twice beaten from the breach, carried it
the third time, all his officers and soldiers promising quarter to such as
would lay down their arms, and performing it as long as any place held
out, which encouraged others to yield; but when they had all once in their
power, and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word no quarter
went round, and the soldiers were, many of them, forced against their wills
to kill their prisoners. The governor and all his officers were killed
in cold blood, except some few of least consideration that escaped by
miracle."--Sept. 29, Carte's Letters, ii. 412. It is possible, though
not very probable, that Ormond suffered himself to be misled by false
information. It should, however, be observed, that there is nothing in his
account positively contradicted by Cromwell's despatch. Cromwell had, not
forbidden the granting of quarter before the storm. It was afterwards, "in
the heat of the action," that he issued this order. But at what part of the
action? On what account? What had happened to provoke him to issue it?
He tells us that within the breach the garrison had thrown up three
entrenchments; two of which were soon carried, but the third, that on the
Mill-Mount, was exceedingly strong, having a good graft, and strongly
palisaded. For additional particulars we must have recourse to other
authority, from which we learn that within this work was posted a body of
picked soldiers with every thing requisite for a vigorous defence, so that
it could not have been taken by force without the loss of some hundreds of
men on the part of the assailants. It so happened, however, that the latter
entered it without opposition, and "Colonel Axtell, with some twelve of
his men, went up to the top of the mount, and demanded of the governor the
surrender of it, who was very stubborn, speaking very big words, but at
length was persuaded to go into the windmill at the top of the mount, and
as many more of the chiefest of them as it could contain, _where they were
disarmed, and afterwards all slain_."--Perfect Diurnal from Oct. 1 to Oct.
8. Now Cromwell in his despatch says "The governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and
divers considerable officers, being there (on the Mill-Mount), our men,
getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword." In my
opinion this passage affords a strong corroboration of the charge made by
Ormond. If the reader compare it with the passage already quoted from the
Diurnal, he will find it difficult to suppress a suspicion that Axtell
and his men had obtained a footing on the Mill-Mount through the offer of
quarter; and that this was the reason why Cromwell, when he knew that they
had obtained possession, issued an order forbidding the granting of quarter
on any account. The consequence was, that the governor and his officers
went into the mill, and were there disarmed, and afterwards all slain. The
other prisoners were treated in the same manner as their officers.

7. Ormond adds, in the same letter, that the sack of the town lasted during
five days, meaning, probably, from September 11 to September 15, or 16,
inclusively. The same is asserted by most of the royalists. But how could
that be, when the storm began on the 11th, and the army marched from
Drogheda on the 15th? The question may perhaps be solved by a circumstance
accidentally mentioned by Dr. Bates, that on the departure of the army,
several individuals who had hitherto succeeded in concealing themselves,
crept out of their hiding-places, but did not elude the vigilance of the
garrison, by whom they were put to the sword.--Bates's Rise and Progress,
part ii. p. 27.

II. 1. It did not require many days to transmit intelligence from Dublin to
the government; for the admiralty had contracted with a Captain Rich, that
for the monthly sum of twenty-two pounds he should constantly have two
swift-sailing vessels, stationed, one at Holyhead, the other at Dublin,
ready to put to sea on the arrival of despatches for the service of the
state.--Lords' Journ. ix. 617. From an accidental entry in Whitelock, it
would appear that the letters from Cromwell reached London on the 27th
of September; on the 28th, parliament, without any cause assigned in the
Journals, was adjourned to October 2nd, and on that day the official
account of the massacre at Drogheda was made public. At the same time an
order was obtained from the parliament, that "a letter should be written to
the lord lieutenant of Ireland, to be communicated to the officers there,
that the house doth approve of the execution done at Drogheda both as
an act of justice to them and mercy to others, who may be warned by it"
(Journals, vi. 301), which are the very reasons alleged by Cromwell in his
despatch. His conduct was now sanctioned by the highest authority; and from
that moment the saints in the army rejoiced to indulge the yearnings of
their zeal for the cause of God, by shedding the blood of the Irish enemy.
Nor had they long to wait for the opportunity. On the 1st of October he
arrived in the neighbourhood of Wexford; on the 9th he opened a cannonade
on the castle, which completely commanded the town. On the 11th, Synnot,
the military governor, offered to capitulate; four commissioners, one of
whom was Stafford, the captain of the castle, waited on Cromwell to
arrange the terms. He was dissatisfied with their demands, pronounced them
"abominable," and detained them till he had prepared his answer. By that
answer he granted life and liberty to the soldiers; life, but not liberty,
to the commissioned officers, and freedom from pillage to the inhabitants,
subject, however, to the decision of parliament with respect to their real
property. He required an immediate acceptance of these terms, and the
delivery to him of six hostages within an hour.--(Compare the letter of
October 16 in the King's Pamphlets, No. 442, with the document published
by Mr. Carlyle, ii. 79, which appears to me nothing more than a rough and
incorrect draft of an intended answer.) But Stafford was a traitor. In the
interval, being "fairly treated," he accepted, without communication with
the governor, the terms granted by Cromwell, and opened the gates of the
fortress to the enemy. From the castle they scaled an undefended wall in
the vicinity, and poured into the town. A paper containing the terms was
now delivered to the other three commissioners; but "their commissioners
this while not having hearts to put themselves into the town again with out
offer."--Ibid. Letter of October 16. Thus Synnot and the other authorities
remained in ignorance of Cromwell's decision.

2. At the first alarm the garrison and burghers assembled in the
market-place, to which they were accompanied or followed by crowds of
old men, women, and children. For a while the progress of the enemy was
retarded by barricades of cables. At the entrance of the market-place they
met with a "stiff resistance," as it is called by Cromwell. The
action lasted about an hour; but the assailants receiving continual
reinforcements, obtained at last fell possession of the place, and put
to the sword every human being found upon it. The governor and the mayor
perished with the rest.

3. But how could these bloody proceedings be reconciled with the terms of
capitulation which had been already granted? If we may believe Cromwell's
official account, a matchless specimen of craft and mystification, _he_ was
not to blame that they had been broken. He was perfectly innocent of all
that had happened. Could he not then have ordered his men to keep within
the castle, or have recalled them when they forced an entrance into the
town? Undoubtedly he might; but the pious man was unwilling to put himself
in opposition to God. "His study had been to preserve the place from
plunder, that it might be of more use to the commonwealth and the army."
But he saw "that God would not have have it so." The events which so
quickly followed each other, were to him a proof that God in his righteous
judgment had doomed the town and its defendants to destruction; on which
account he "thought it not good, nor just, to restrain off the soldiers
from their right of pillage, nor from doing of execution on the
enemy."--Letter of 16th of October. He concludes his despatch to the
government with these words:--"Thus it has pleased God to give into your
hands this other mercy, for which, as for all, we pray God may have all the
glory. Indeed, your instruments are poor and weak. and can do nothing but
through believing, and that is the gift of God also."--Cary's Memorials,
ii. 180. Did then the fanatic believe that perfidy and cruelty were gifts
of God? for at Wexford he could not plead, as at Drogheda, that his summons
had been contemptuously rejected. It had been accepted, and he had himself
dictated the terms of capitulation. Was he not obliged to carry them into
execution, even if, as was pretended in defiance of all probability, his
men had taken possession of the castle, and forced an entrance into the
town without his knowledge or connivance? Would any honest man have
released himself from such obligation under the flimsy pretext that it
would be acting against the will of God to recall the soldiers and prevent
them from doing execution on the enemy?

4. Cromwell's ministers of the divine will performed their part at Wexford,
as they had done at Drogheda, doing execution, not on the armed combatants
only, but on the women and children also. Of these helpless victims many
had congregated round the great cross. It was a natural consequence in such
an emergency. Hitherto they had been accustomed to kneel at the foot
of that cross in prayer, now, with life itself at stake, they would
instinctively press towards it to escape from the swords of the enemy. But,
as far an regards the atrocity of the thing, it makes little difference on
what particular spot they were murdered. You cannot relieve the memory
of Cromwell from the odium of such murder, but by proving, what it is
impossible to prove, that at Wexford the women and children were specially
excepted out of the general massacre.

5. I have already copied Bruodin's description of the sack of Drogheda;
here I may transcribe his account of the sack of Wexford. "Ipse strategus
regicidarum terrestri itinere Dublinium praetergressus, Wexfordiam (modicam
quidem, et maritimam, munitam et opulentam civitatem) versus castra movet,
occupatoque insperate, proditione cujusdam perfidi ducis castro, quod
moenibus imminebat, in civitatem irruit: opposuere se viriliter aggressori
praesidiarii simul cum civibus, pugnatumque est ardentissime per unius
horae spatium inter partes in foro, sed impari congressu, nam cives fere
omnes una cum militibus, sine status, sexus, aut aetatis discrimine,
Cromweli gladius absumpsit."--Bruodin, Propag. 1. iv. c. 14, p. 679. The
following is a more valuable document, from the "humble petition of the
ancient natives of the town of Wexford," to Charles II., July 4, 1660. "Yet
soe it is, may it please your Majestie, that after all the resistance they
could make, the said usurper, having a great armie by sea and land before
the said toune, did on the 9th of October, 1649, soe powerfully assault
them, that he entered the toune, and put man, woman, and child, to a very
few, to the sword, where among the rest the governor lost his life,
and others of the soldiers and inhabitants to the number of 1,500
persons."--Gale's Corporation System in Ireland, App. p. cxxvi.

6. My object in these remarks has been to enable the reader to form a
correct notion of the manner in which Cromwell conducted the war in
Ireland. They will give little satisfaction to the worshippers of the
hero. But his character is not a mere matter of taste or sympathy. It is a
question of historic inquiry. Much indeed has been written to vindicate
him from the imputation of cruelty at Drogheda and Wexford; but of the
arguments hitherto adduced in his defence, it will be no presumption
to affirm that there is not one among them which can bear the test of
dispassionate investigation.


NOTE E, p. 338.

The following pensions were afterwards granted to different persons
instrumental in facilitating the king's escape. Unless it be mentioned
otherwise, the pension is for life:--

  £.
  To Jane Lane (Lady Fisher) . . . . . . . . . 1000
  Thomas Lane, the father . . . . . . . . .  500
  Charles Gifford, Esq. . . . . . . . . . .  300
  Francis Mansell, Esq. . . . . . . . . . .  200
  Thomas Whitgrave, Esq.  . . . . . . . . .  200
  Catharine Gunter, for 21 years  . . . . .  200
  Joan Harford  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   50
  Eleanor Sampson . . . . . . . . . . . . .   50
  Francis Reynolds  . . . . . . . . . . . .  200
  John and Anne Rogers, and heirs male  . .  100
  Anne Bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   30
  Sir Thomas Wyndham, and heirs, for ever .  600
  William Ellesdun, during pleasure . . . .  100
  Robert Swan, during the king's life . . .   80
  Lady Anne Wyadham . . . . . . . . . . . .  400
  Juliana Hest  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   30

Clarendon Corres. i. 656.


NOTE F, p. 358.

_The Act for the Settlement of Ireland_.

Whereas the parliament of England after expense of much blood and treasure
for suppression of the horrid rebellion in Ireland have by the good hand of
God vpon their vndertakings brought that affaire to such an issue as that
a totall reducm't and settlement of that nation may with Gods blessing be
speedily effected. To the end therefore that the people of that nation may
knowe that it is not the intention of the Parliament to extirpat that wholl
nation, but that mercie and pardon both as to life and estate may bee
extended to all husbandmen, plowmen, labourers, artificers, and others of
the inferior sort, in manner as is heereafter declared, they submitting
themselves to the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England and liveing
peaceably and obediently vnder their governement, and that others alsoe of
a higher ranke and quality may knowe the Parliament's intention concerning
them according to the respective demerits and considerations under which
they fall, Bee it enacted and declared by this present Parliament and by
the authority of the same, That all and every person and persons of the
Irish nation comprehended in any of the following Qualifications shal bee
lyable vnto the penalties and forfeitures herein mentioned and contained
or bee made capable of the mercy and pardon therein extended respectively
according as is heereafter expressed and declared, that is to saye,

1. That all and every person and persons who at any time before the tenth
day of November, 1642, being the time of the sitting of the first generall
assembly at Kilkenny in Ireland have contrived, advised, counselled, or
promoted the Rebellion, murthers, massacres, done or committed in Ireland
w'ch began in the year 1641, or have at any time before the said tenth
day of November 1642 by bearing armes or contributing men, armes, horses,
plate, money, victuall or other furniture or habilliments of warre (other
then such w'ch they shall make to appeare to haue been taken from them by
meere force & violence) ayded, assisted, promoted, prosecuted or abetted
the said rebellion murthers or massacres, be excepted from pardon of life
and estate.

2. That all and every person & persons who at any time before the first day
of May 1643, did sitt or vote, in the said first generall

assembly, or in the first pretended counsell comonly called the supreame
councell of the confederate Catholiques in Ireland or were imployed as
secretaries or cheife clearke, to be exempted from pardon for life and
estate.

3. That all and every Jesuitt preist and other person or persons who have
receaved orders from the Pope or Sea of Rome, or any authoritie from
the same, that have any wayes contrived, advised, counselled, promoted,
continued, countenanced, ayded, assisted or abetted, or at any time
hereafter shall any wayes contriue, advise, councell, promote, continue,
countenance, ayde, assist or abett the Rebellion or warre in Ireland, or
any the murthers, or massacres, robberies, or violences, comitted against
ye Protestants, English, or others there, be excepted from pardon for life
and estate.

4. That James Butler earl of Ormond, James Talbot earl of Castelhaven,
Ullick Bourke earl of Clanricarde, Christopher Plunket earl of Fingal,
James Dillon earl of Roscommon, Richard Nugent earl of Westmeath, Moragh
O'Brian baron of Inchiquin, Donogh M'Carthy viscount Muskerry, Richard
Butler viscount Mountgarrett, Theobald Taaffe viscount Taaffe of Corren,
Rock viscount Fermoy, Montgomery viscount Montgomery of Ards, Magennis
viscount of Iveagh, Fleming baron of Slane, Dempsey viscount Glanmaleere,
Birmingham baron of Athenry, Oliver Plunket baron of Lowth, Robert Barnwell
baron of Trymletstoune, Myles Bourke viscount Mayo, Connor Magwyre baron of
Enniskillen, Nicholas Preston viscount Gormanstowne, Nicholas Nettervill,
viscount Nettervill of Lowth, John Bramhall late Bishop of Derry, (with
eighty-one baronets, knights and gentlemen mentioned by name) be excepted
from pardon of life and estate.

5. That all and every person & persons (both principalls and accessories)
who since the first day of October 1641 have or shall kill, slay or
otherwise destroy any person or persons in Ireland w'ch at ye time of their
being soe killed, slaine or destroyed were not publiquely enterteined, and
mainteyned in armes as officers or private souldiers for and on behalfe of
the English against ye Irish, and all and every person and persons (both
principals and accessories) who since the said first day of October 1641
have killed slayne or otherwise destroyed any person or persons entertained
and mainteyned as officers or private souldiers for and on behalfe of
the English, against the Irish (the said persons soe killing, slaying or
otherwise destroying, not being then publiquely enterteyned and mainteyned
in armes as officer or private souldier vnder the comand and pay of ye
Irish against the English) be excepted from pardon for life and estate.

6. That all and every person & persons in Ireland that are in armes or
otherwise in hostilitie against ye Parliam't of ye Commonwealth of England,
and shall not wthin eight and twenty dayes after publicacon hereof by ye
deputy gen'll of Ireland, and ye comission'rs for the Parliam't, lay
downs armes & submitt to ye power and authoritie of ye said Parliam't &
commonwealth as ye same is now established, be excepted from pardon for
life and estate.

7. That all other person & persons (not being comprehended in any of ye
former Qualifications,) who have borne comaund in the warre of Ireland
against the Parliam't of England or their forces, as generall, leift'ts
generall, major gen'll, commissary generall, colonell, Gouerno'rs of any
garrison, Castle or Forte, or who have been imployed as receaver gen'll or
Treasurer of the whole Nation, or any prouince thereof, Comissarie gen'll
of musters, or prouissions, Marshall generall or marshall of any province,
advocate to ye army, secretary to ye councell of warre, or to any generall
of the army, or of any the seuerall prouinces, in order to the carrying on
the warre, against the parliam't or their forces, be banished dureing the
pleasure of the parliam't of ye Com'wealth of England, and their estates
forfeited & disposed of as followeth, (viz.) That two third partes of their
respective estates, be had taken & disposed of for the vse & benefitt of
the said Com'wealth, and that ye other third parte of their said respective
estates, or other lands to ye proporcon & value thereof (to bee assigned
in such places in Ireland as the Parliam't in order to ye more effectual
settlem' of ye peace of this Nation shall thinke fitt to appoint for that
purpose,) be respectiuely had taken and enioyed by ye wifes and children of
the said persons respectively.

8. That ye deputy gen'll and comission'rs of parliam't have power to
declare, That such person or persons as they shall judge capeable of
ye parliam'ts mercie (not being comprehended in any of ye former
qualifications) who have borne armes against the Parliam't of England or
their forces, and have layd downe armes, or within eight & twenty dayes
after publicacon hereof by ye deputy gen'll of Ireland and ye Comissioners
for ye parliam't, shall lay downe armes & submit to ye power & authoritie
of ye said parliam't & com'wealth as ye same is now established, (by
promising & ingaging to be true to ye same) shal be pardoned for their
liues, but shall forfeit their estates, to the said comonwealth to be
disposed of as followeth (viz.) Two third partes thereof (in three equall
partes to bee diuided) for the vse benefitt & aduantage of ye said
ComOnwealth, and ye other third parte of the said respective states, or
other lands to ye proporcon or value thereof) to bee assigned in such
places in Ireland as the parliam't in order to ye more effectual settlement
of the peace of the Nation shall thinke fitt to appoint for that purpose
(bee enioyed by ye said persons their heires or assigns respectively)
provided, That in case the deputy gen'll Comission'rs or either of them,
shall see cause to give any shorter time than twenty-eight dayes, vnto
any person or persons in armes, or any Guarrison, Castle, or Forte, in
hostilitie against the Parliam't & shall giue notice to such person or
persons in armes or in any Guarrison, Castle or Forte, That all and every
such person & persons who shall not wthin such time as shal be sett downe
in such notice surrender such Guarrison, Castle, or Forte to ye parliam't,
and lay downe armes, shall haue noe advantage of ye time formerly limited
in this Qualificacon.

9. That all and every person & persons who have recided in Ireland at any
time from the first day of October 1641, to ye first of March 1650, and
haue not beene in actuall service of ye parliam't at any time from ye first
of August 1649, to the said first of March 1650, or have not otherwise
manifested their constant good affections to the interest of ye Comonwealth
of England (the said Persons not being comprehended in any of the former
Qualificacons) shall forfeit their estates in Ireland to the said
Comonwealth to be disposed of as followeth, (viz.), one third parte thereof
for the vse, benefitt, and advantage of the said Comonwealth, and the
other two third partes of their respective estates, or other lands to the
proporcon or value thereof (to bee assigned in such places in Ireland, as
ye Parliam't for ye more effectual settlement of ye peace of the Nation
shall thinke fitt to appoint for that purpose) bee enioyed by such person
or persons their heires or assigns respectively.

10. That all and every person & persons (haueing noe reall estate in
Ireland nor personall Estate to the value of ten pounds,) that shall lay
downe armes, and submitt to the power and Authoritie of the Parliament by
the time limited in the former Qualificacon, & shall take & subscribe the
engagem't to be true and faithfull to the Comonwealth of England as the
same is now established, within such time and in such manner, as the deputy
Generall & commission'rs for the Parliam't shall appoint and direct, such
persons (not being excepted from pardon nor adiuged for banishm't by any of
the former Qualificacons) shal be pardoned for life & estate, for any act
or thing by them done in prosecution of the warre.

11. That all estates declared by the Qualificacons concerning rebells or
delinquents in Ireland to be forfeited shal be construed, adiuged & taken
to all intents and purposes to extend to ye forfeitures of all estates
tayle, and also of all rights & titles thereunto which since the fiue
and twentith of March 1639, have beene or shal be in such rebells or
delinquents, or any other in trust for them or any of them, or their or
any of their vses, w'th all reversions & remainders thereupon in any other
person or persons whatsoever.

And also to the forfeiture of all estates limitted, appointed, conveyed,
settled, or vested in any person or persons declared by the said
Qualificacons to be rebells or delinquents with all reversions or
remainders of such estates, conueyed, uested, limitted, declared or
appointed to any the heires, children, issues, or others of the blood,
name, or kindred of such rebells or delinquents, w'ch estate or estates
remainders or reuersions since the 25th of March 1639 have beene or shal be
in such rebells or delinquents, or in any their heires, children, issues or
others of the blood, name, or kindred of such rebells or delinquents.

And to all estates graunted, limitted, appointed or conueyed by any such
rebells or delinquents vnto any their heires, children, issue, w'th all the
reversions and remainders thereupon, in any other person of the name, blood
or kindred of such rebells or delinquents, provided that this shall not
extend to make voyd the estates of any English Protestants, who haue
constantly adhered to the parliam't w'ch were by them purchased for
valuable consideracon before ye 23rd of October 1641, or vpon like valuable
consideracon mortgaged to them before ye tyme or to any person or persons
in trust for them for satisfaction of debts owing to them.


NOTE G, p. 396.

I have not been able to ascertain the number of Catholic clergymen who were
executed or banished for their religion under Charles I., and under the
commonwealth. But I possess an original document, authenticated by the
signatures of the parties concerned, which contains the names and fate of
such Catholic priests as were apprehended and prosecuted in London between
the end of 1640 and the summer of 1651 by four individuals, who had formed
themselves into a kind of joint-stock company for that laudable purpose,
and who solicited from the council some reward for their services. It
should, however, be remembered that there were many others engaged in the
same pursuit, and consequently many other victims besides those who are
here enumerated.

"The names of such Jesuits and Romish priests as have been apprehended and
prosecuted by Capt James Wadsworth, Francis Newton, Thomas Mayo, and
Robert de Luke, messengers, at our proper charge; whereof some have been
condemned; some executed, and some reprieved since the beginning of the
parliament (3 Nov. 1640); the like having not been done by any others since
the reformation of religion in this nation:--

William Waller, als. Slaughter, als. Walker, executed at Tyburne.

Cuthbert Clapton, condemned, reprieved and pardoned.

Bartholomew Row, executed at Tyburne.

Thomas Reynolds, executed at Tyburne.

Edward Morgan, executed at Tyburne.

Thomas Sanderson, als. Hammond, executed at Tyburne.

Henry Heath, alias Pall Magdelen, executed at Tyburne.

Francis Quashet, dyed in Newgate after judgment.

Arthur Bell, executed at Tyburne.

Ralph Corbey, executed at Tyburne.

John Duchet, executed at Tyburne.

John Hamond, als. Jackson, condemned, reprieved by the king, and died in
Newgate.

Walter Coleman, condemned and died in Newgate,

Edmond Cannon, condemned and died in Newgate.

John Wigmore, als. Turner, condemned, reprieved by the king, and is in
custodie in Newgate.

Andrew Ffryer, alias Herne, als. Richmond, condemned and died in Newgate.

Augustian Abbot, als. Rivers, condemned, reprieved by the king, and died in
Newgate.

John Goodman, condemned and died in Newgate.

Peter Welford, condemned and died in Newgate.

Thomas Bullaker, executed at Tyburne.

Robert Robinson, indicted and proved, and made an escape out of the King's
Bench.

James Brown, condemned and died in Newgate.

Henry Morse, executed at Tyburne.

Thomas Worseley, alias Harvey, indicted and proved, and reprieved by the
Spanish ambassador and others.

Charles Chanie (Cheney) als. Tomson, indicted and proved, and begged by the
Spanish ambassador, and since taken by command of the councell of state,
and is now in Newgate.

Andrew White, indicted, proved, reprieved before judgment, and banished.

Richard Copley, condemned and banished.

Richard Worthington, found guiltie and banished.

Edmond Cole, Peter Wright, and William Morgan, indicted, proved, and sent
beyond sea.

Philip Morgan, executed at Tyburne.

Edmond Ensher, als. Arrow, indicted, condemned, reprieved by the parliament
and banished.

Thomas Budd, als. Peto, als. Gray, condemned, reprieved by the lord mayor
of London, and others, justices, and since retaken by order of the councell
of state, and is now in Newgate.

George Baker, als. Macham, indicted, proved guiltie, and now in Newgate.

Peter Beale, als. Wright, executed at Tyburne.

George Sage, indicted by us, and found guiltie, and since is dead.

James Wadsworth.

Francis Newton.

Thomas Mayo.

Robert de Luke."

This catalogue tells a fearful but instructive tale; inasmuch as it shows
how wantonly men can sport with the lives of their fellow-men, if it suit
the purpose of a great political party. The patriots, to enlist in their
favour the religious prejudices of the people, represented the king as the
patron of popery, because he sent the priests into banishment, instead of
delivering them to the knife of the executioner. Hence, when they became
lords of the ascendant, they were bound to make proof of their orthodoxy;
and almost every execution mentioned above took place by their order
in 1642, or 1643. After that time they began to listen to the voice of
humanity, and adopted the very expedient which they had so clamorously
condemned. They banished, instead of hanging and quartering.


NOTE H, p. 493.

_Revenue of the Protector._

When the parliament, in 1654, undertook to settle an annual sum on the
protector, Oliver Cromwell, the following, according to the statement of
the sub-committee, was the amount of the revenue in the three kingdoms:--

  Excise and customs in England . . . . . . . . . . . £80,000
  Excise and customs in Scotland  . . . . . . . . . .  10,000
  Excise and customs in Ireland . . . . . . . . . . .  20,000
  Monthly assessments in England (at 60,0001.)  . . . 720,000
  Monthly assessments in Ireland (at 8,0001.) . . . .  96,000
  Monthly assessments in Scotland (at 8,0001.)  . . .  96,000
  Crown revenue in Guernsey and Jersey  . . . . . . .   2,000
  Crown revenue in Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9,000
  Estates of papists and delinquents in England . . .  60,000
  Estates of papists and delinquents in Scotland  . .  30,000
  Rent of houses belonging to the crown . . . . . . .   1,250
  Post-office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10,000
  Exchequer revenue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20,000
  Probate of wills  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10,000
  Coinage of tin  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2,000
  Wine licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10,000
  Forest of Dean  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4,000
  Fines on alienations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20,000
  ---------
  £1,200,000

[From the original report in the collection of Thomas Lloyd, Esq.]


NOTE I, p. 558.

_Principles of the Levellers_.

The following statement of the principles maintained by the Levellers is
extracted from one of their publications, which appeared soon after the
death of Cromwell, entitled "The Leveller; or, The Principles and Maxims
concerning Government and Religion, which are asserted by those that are
commonly called Levellers, 1659."

_Principles of Government_.


1. The government of England ought to be by laws, and not by men; that is,
the laws ought to judge of all offences and offenders, and all punishments
and penalties to be inflicted upon criminals; nor ought the pleasure of his
highness and his council to make whom they please offenders, and punish and
imprison whom they please, and during pleasure.

2. All laws, levies of moneys, war and peace, ought be made by the people's
deputies in parliament, to be chosen by them successively at certain
periods. Therefore there should be no negative of a monarch, because he
will frequently by that means consult his own interest or that of his
family, to the prejudice of the people. But it would be well if the
deputies of the people were divided into two bodies, one of which should
propose the laws, and the other adopt or reject them.

3. All persons, without a single exception, should be subject to the law.

4. The people ought to be formed into such a military posture by and under
the parliament, that they may be able to compel every man to obey the law,
and defend the country from foreigners. A mercenary (standing) army is
dangerous to liberty, and therefore should not be admitted.

_Principles of Religion._

1. The assent of the understanding cannot be compelled. Therefore no man
can compel another to be of the true religion.

2. Worship follows from the doctrines admitted by the understanding. No man
therefore can bind another to adopt any particular form of worship.

3. Works of righteousness and mercy are part of the worship of God, and so
far fall under the civil magistrate, that he ought to restrain men from
irreligion, that is, injustice, faith-breaking, oppression, and all other
evil works that are plainly evil.

4. Nothing is more destructive to true religion than quarrels about
religion, and the use of punishments to compel one man to believe as
another.


NOTE K, p. 608.

That Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was deeply engaged in the intrigues of this
busy time is sufficiently manifest. He appears to have held himself out
to every party as a friend, and to have finally attached himself to the
royalists, when he saw that the royal cause was likely to triumph. Charles
acknowledged his services in the patent by which he was created Lord
Ashley, mentioning in particular "his prudent and seasonable advice with
General Monk in order to the king's restoration."--Dugd. ii. 481. From this
passage we may infer that Cooper was one of Monk's confidential advisers;
but his admirers have gone much farther, attributing to him the whole merit
of the restoration, and representing the lord-general as a mere puppet in
the hands of their hero. In proof they refer to the story told by Locke
(iii. 471),--a story which cannot easily be reconciled with the more
credible and unpretending narrative of Clarges, in Baker's Chronicle, p.
602, edit. 1730. But that the reader may form his own judgment, I shall
subjoin the chief heads of each in parallel columns.


CLARGES

1. Scot, Hazlerig, and others sought and obtained a private interview with
Monk at Whitehall; and Clarges, from their previous conversation with
himself, had no doubt that their object was to offer the government of the
kingdom to the general.

2. The council of state was sitting in another room; and Clarges, sending
for Sir A.A. Cooper, communicated his suspicion to him.

3. After some consultation it was agreed that, as soon as Monk, having
dismissed Scot and Hazlerig, should enter the council-room, Cooper should
move that the clerks be ordered to withdraw.

4. When this was done, Cooper said that he had received notice of a
dangerous design; that some seditious persons had made "indecent proposals"
to the general; and of such proposals he desired that the council might
have a full discovery.

5. Monk, unwilling to expose them, replied that there was very little
danger in the case; that some persons had, indeed, been with him to be
resolved in scruples respecting the present transactions in parliament; but
that he had sent them away well satisfied (p. 602).

6. Bordeaux offered to Monk through Clarges the aid of Mazarin, whether it
were his object to restore the king, or to assume the government himself.
Monk refused; but consented to receive a visit of civility from the
ambassador, on condition that politics should not be introduced (p. 604).


LOCKE

1. Bordeaux, the French ambassador, visited Monk one evening, and Mrs.
Monk, who had secreted herself behind the hangings, heard him offer the
aid of Mazarin to her husband, if he was willing to take the government on
himself, which offer the general accepted.

2. Mrs. Monk sent her brother Clarges to communicate the discovery of her
husband's ambitious design to Sir A.A. Cooper.

3. Cooper caused a council to be called, and, when they were met, moved
that the clerks should withdraw, because he had matter of consequence to
communicate.

4. He then charged Monk, "not openly, but by insinuation, that he was
playing false with them, so that the rest of the council perceived there
was something in it, though they knew not what was meant."

5. Monk replied that he was willing to satisfy them that he was true to
his principles. Then, said Ashley, replace certain officers of suspicious
character by others of known fidelity. This was done on the spot; the
command of the army by the change was virtually taken from Monk; and he was
compelled to declare for Charles Stuart

It may be thought that Locke's narrative derives confirmation from another
version of the same story in the Life of Lord Shaftesbury, lately edited by
Mr. Cooke, with the following variations. Bordeaux is made to accompany the
republicans; the greater part of the night is spent in consultation, and
Monk not only consents to assume the government, but resolves to arrest in
the morning Cooper and several other influential individuals (p. 233-235).
But that life cannot be considered as an authority; for the documents from
which it is said to have been compiled are neither quoted nor described by
its author, nor have ever been seen by its present editor.


END OF VOL. VIII.