Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue in his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty was not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive unauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and the line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be dismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strict regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good air and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land." For his solace and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was converted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled," at one side of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement." This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and afternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden," within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle of Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and his favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were again in request. Though he still declined the services of any Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had written, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be admitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin close to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, and of subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57- 67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely.]
The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in the Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the whole subject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention of the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went with them; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, including most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the HAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there a strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying these views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang with denunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Provincial Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; had the entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS would have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliament adhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in chief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for his Lieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595; Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435.] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement with the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over four years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many months (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern us here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative.
The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all those dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to take leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this fashion:—(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England and Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in which London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable for such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful remains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of the Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. The Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and large numbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to question whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a Democratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its resources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mind the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in England or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where immediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for the West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich (formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in the first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had done him good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and his Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There was to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or follow the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have been in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, then lying there, and cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, Secretary Nicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedly poor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an expedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, if he did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all he could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Most would be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for example Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was emphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI., where the pre-arrangement of the new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to different persons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, than anywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. See also Rushworth for Feb., March, and April, 1648.]
Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable.
The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer, governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a Colonel Laughern, also in Parliamentary employment, revolted as early as the end of February. Ostensibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliament for disbanding supernumeraries; but, before the end of April, the affair became a Royalist outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppress this rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments of horse and three of foot; which, with the forces already in the region, would make an army of about 8,000 men. Before he went, risings of less importance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there had been one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of "For God and King Charles!" (Sunday, April 9.) It had been suppressed only by street- charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing Cross. Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the Irish Rebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealous Parliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Duke of York. By the contrivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whisked away from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes, to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age; but his father had instructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had been designated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful.
All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales; but hardly had he gone when there came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by Sir Marmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying in Edinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with the Duke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed, announced himself as commissioned General for the King in the five northern counties, and the business of watching against his advance lay with Lambert, the Parliamentarian General in those parts, assisted by Sir Arthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle.
Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in the hands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon—Fairfax now no longer mere Sir Thomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to his father Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon as hard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales and Lambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for the disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendour of his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and King Charles" was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or less of Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection in Kent was of independent origin, and was the most extensive and hence It had been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by Roger L'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales; but the Earl of Norwich had come into Kent to take the lead. Canterbury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles of Deal and Walmer, had been won for the King; there were communications between the insurgents and the Londoners, and in the end of May some 10,000 or 12,000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices from London in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums and banners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went out to Blackheath, May 29; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the two were at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of their hard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county; and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thames into Essex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gathered into that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of a roundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, The swift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) compelled them to change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12), adding some 4,000 or 5,000 armed men to the population of that doomed town. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault, resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their side resolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfax in Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both for themselves and for the general cause, the SIEGE OF COLCHESTER (June l2— Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war.
An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of the Fleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off the Kentish coast, Royalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, and with such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Rainsborough, who had been ashore Defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on board his own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27th of May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed the Presbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, and sent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry of the sailors was, "We will go to our own Admiral," meaning the young Duke of York in Holland. Actually, some ten warships, having ejected all their Parliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about the coasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection in those parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early in June, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for the world of Royalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with the wooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country. Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague to Helvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the pet of the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accident to the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raised otherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Rupert, Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. He arrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet, and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Prince and Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was a joyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal of difference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means.
About the time of the Revolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received other bad news. Pontefract had been seized for the King, June 2, and other important places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Through the rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands, so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had been successes, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell was hopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his small forces against Langdale in the north; Colchester was beginning to be distressed in the grip of Fairfax; but still, with the whole of England in Royalist or semi-Royalist palpitation, and the City of London actually heaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton and his army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border? There had been delays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of the Argyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been by the most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. At last, however, ithadbeen got together; and now England was full of the rumour of its coming. Lo! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, the designated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could not choose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham, young Lord Francis Villiers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the Dutch Colonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he started up at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July; addressed a formal Declaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as well as a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester; and called on all Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however, lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under Sir Michael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. Lord Francis Villiers and Dalbier were slain; the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Holland himself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner.
On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) the Scots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth, marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40,000, but the advanced portion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numbered about 20,000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in great state, preceded by trumpeters "all in scarlet cloaks full of silver lace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie came next with horse and foot; and the Earl of Callander brought up the rear. Joined by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather sauntered on, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1?), the wary Lambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion, skirmishing when he could, and waiting anxiously for the arrival of Cromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales (July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. Off Kendal, a body of about 3,000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major- general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with an understanding that Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly from himself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best to advance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into Yorkshire. It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved, the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over their ravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding them to explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue the King, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establish Presbytery, and put down "that impious Toleration settled by the two Houses contrary to the Covenant!"
While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, the Prince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's idea that he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering about the south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased to nineteen sail; it had been provisioned by the Prince of Orange; and there were 2,000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was off Yarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view to relieve Colchester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames, to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of their ships. Precisely at the time when the Westmorland and Lancashire people were grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners were in consternation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman and several other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by their owners the Prince demanded huge sums of money, intimating at the same time (Aug 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until the Londoners declared for the King, or Parliament agreed to a cessation of arms on certain loyal conditions. [Footnote: In the summary given in the text of the incidents of the Civil War from March to August 1648, I have tried to reduce into chronological connexion the information given disconnectedly in Rushworth, VII. 1010-1220, and at large in Clarendon, Book XI. There have been references, for dates and facts, to the Parliamentary History and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, Godwin's Commonwealth, and Carlyle's Cromwell.]
Through these four or five months of Royalist risings coalescing at last in a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much more entangled (April-Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament? It had been very odd indeed.
Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, and especially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No- Address Resolutions of Jan. 1-15. Thus, on the 11th of February, the Commons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had been prepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten, setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communication with the King. They published the document without consulting the other House. It was the severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forth by either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reign was reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as "a continued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms," and there was even the horrible insinuation that he had connived with the Duke of Buckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document— so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the King himself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey—who could have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the Commons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and prosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to the recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of the Westminster Assembly'sConfession of Faith and Larger Catechism. [Footnote: The Revision of theConfession of Faithby the two Houses was completed June 20, 1648, when, with the exception of certain portions about Church-government held in reserve, it was passed and ordered to be printed: not, however, with the title "Confession of Faith," but as "Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster." The Revision, though detailed, was much a matter of form, paragraph after paragraph passing without discussion. On at least one point, however, there was a division in the Commons (Feb. 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. of the Confession, entitledOf Marriage and Divorce. The question was whether the House should agree to the last clause of the 4th paragraph of that Chapter—"The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own." For theYeathere voted 40 (Sir Robert Pye and Sir Anthony Irby, tellers); for theNo71 (Sir William Armyn and Mr. Knightley, tellers); in other words, the House by a majority of 31 doubted the ecclesiastical doctrine of forbidden degrees ofaffinityin marriage.] The attendance during these months ranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of the Army, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April, however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of the Scottish invasion and the signs of Royalist movement in England, no fewer than 306 members appeared in their places, Many of these seem to have been Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by their leaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Royalty in connexion with Presbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 the tide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterian ascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April, it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that it would not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons; also, by 108 to 105, that "the matter of the Propositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of both kingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of the kingdom; also, by 146 to 101, that the No-Address Resolutions of January should not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything that might tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly was a change of policy; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effected by a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by a stupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Religious question. On the 1st of May (the very day on which Cromwell was ordered off to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was brought up in the Commons an "Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies," which the Presbyterians had been long urging and labouring at in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists had hitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the House that day; next day it passed the Lords; and, accordingly, under date May 2, 1648, this is what stands in the Lords Journals as thenceforward to be the Law of England:—
"For the preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresy and Blasphemy: Be it ordained … That all such persons as shall, from and after the date of this present Ordinance, willingly, by preaching, teaching, printing, or writing, maintain and publish that there is no God, or that God is not present in all places, doth not know and foreknow all things, or that He is not Almighty, that He is not perfectly Holy, or that He is not Eternal, or that the Father is not God, the Son is not God, or that the Holy Ghost is not God, or that They Three are not One Eternal God; or that shall in like manner maintain and publish that Christ is not God equal with the Father, or shall deny the Manhood of Christ, or that the Godhead and Manhood of Christ are several natures, or that the Humanity of Christ is pure and unspotted of all sin; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Christ did not die, nor rise from the dead, nor is ascended into Heaven bodily, or that shall deny His death is meritorious in the behalf of Believers; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God; or that the Holy Scripture,videlicet[here comes in the entire list of the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments], is not the Word of God; or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead; or that there is no Day of Judgment after death:—All such maintaining and publishing of such Error or Errors, with obstinacy therein, shall, by virtue hereof, be adjudged Felony: And all such persons [here is explained the process by which they are to be accused and brought to trial].. and in case the indictment be found and the party upon his trial shall not abjure the said Error, and defence and maintenance of the same, he SHALL SUFFER THE PAINS OF DEATH, AS IN CASE OF FELONY, WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY…"
"Be it further ordained, by the authority aforesaid, That all and every person or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any of the several Errors hereafter ensuing,videlicet[here a long enumeration ofminorforms of Religious Error, such as "that man by nature hath free will to turn to God," that God may be worshipped by pictures and images, that there is a Purgatory, "that man is bound to believe no more than by his reason he can comprehend," "that the baptizing of infants is unlawful," that the observation of the Lord's Day is not obligatory, or "that the Church-government by Presbytery is Anti- Christian or unlawful"], shall be [ordered to renounce their Error or Errors in public congregation, and, in case of refusal,] COMMITTED TO PRISON…."
Imaginethatgoing forth, just as the Second Civil War had begun, as the will and ordinance of Parliament! One wonders that the Concordat between Parliament and the Army, arranged by Cromwell and the other Army- chiefs in the preceding November, was not snapped on the instant. One wonders that the Army did not wheel in mass round Westminster, haul the legislating idiots from their seats, and then undertake in their own name both the war and the general business of the nation. The behaviour of the Army, however, was more patient and wise. Parliament could be reckoned with afterwards; meanwhile let it pass what measures it liked, so long as it did not absolutely throw up its trust and abandon all to the King! Till Parliament should do that, the fighting which the Army had to do at any rate might as well be done in the name of the Parliament!
Really there seemed a chance that even the last extremity of faint- heartedness would be reached, and that Parliamentwouldthrow up its national trust. Here, for example, were some of its proceedings in June and July, of which Cromwell must have heard, with rather strange feelings, in the midst of his hard work in Wales, Lambert in his watch against the Scots in the north, and Fairfax and Ireton in their siege of Colchester. June 3, 7, and 8, the two Houses, of their own accord, or on earnest Petitions from the City, agreed to drop all the impeachments and other proceedings voted in the preceding year at the instance of the Army against members of their own body, and against City officials implicated in the Presbyterian tumults in London, and in particular to invite the Seven peccant Peers and the survivors of the Eleven peccant Commoners to return to their places. June 30 and July 3 the proposal to re-open a Treaty with the King was after much intermediate debating, brought to a bearing by a formal agreement of the two Houses to rescind their No- Address Resolutions of January, and by a vote of the Commons that the Propositions to be submitted to the King for his assent before farther treaty should be these three—Presbytery for three years, the Militia with Parliament for ten years, and the Recall by the King of all Proclamations and Declarations against the Parliament. Even this, so much more favourable to the King than former offers, the Lords thought too harsh; and they refused (July 5) to make the Treaty conditional on the King's prior assent to the three Propositions. Nor was this the only proof that the bravery of the Lords had evaporated even more completely than that of the Commons. On July 14, when it was known that Hamilton's Army of Scots was actually in England, the Commons did vote that the invaders were public enemies, and that all Englishmen who should abet them should be accounted traitors; but the Lords (July 18) refused to concur in that vote. Were the soldiers of Parliament, then, to be fighting against invaders whom one of the Houses did not regard as public enemies?—In short, the fact had come to be that, in the beginning of August, the forces of Fairfax, Lambert, and Cromwell, were conducting a war in the name of Parliament which Parliament and the City of London were taking every means to stop. A Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City, presented to the Lords Aug. 8 (the last of scores of Petitions in the same sense that had for a month or two been poured in), expressed the general Presbyterian feeling. "The government of the Church still unsettled; blasphemy, heresy, schism, and profaneness increased; the relief of bleeding Ireland obstructed; the war, to their great astonishment, renewed; the people of England thereby miserably impoverished and oppressed; the blood of our fellow-subjects spilt like water upon the ground; our Brethren of Scotland now entered into this kingdom in a hostile manner, his Highness the Prince of Wales commanding at sea a considerable part of the Navy, and other ships under his power, having already made stay of many English ships with merchandise and provisions to a very great value:"—these were the complaints; and the Petitioners humbly conceived there was no visible remedy but the "speedy freeing of his Majesty" from restraint, and "a Personal Treaty" with him for "restoring him to his just rights." The City was to have its will. The Commons (July 28) had abandoned, by a majority of 71 to 64, their intention to require assent to the three Propositions in preparation for a Treaty, and had agreed to a general and open Treaty, such as the Lords desired; communications on the subject had been made to the King; and, though his Majesty would have preferred to treat in London, he consented (Aug. 10) that the place should be Newport in the Isle of Wight.—Note also two contemporary incidents of deep significance. On the 2nd of August Major Robert Huntingdon, Cromwell's former Major, presented to the Lords, in the form of a Paper of "Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay down his Commission," what was really a series of charges of High Treason against Cromwell; the Paper was that day duly entered in the Lords Journals for future occasion; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and much contrivance of the Speaker, that the same Paper was kept out of the Commons. Such was the first incident; the other is thus given by Rushworth under date Aug. 14: "Colonel Denzil Holles came this day to the House and sat." This means that the chief of the Eleven, the Arch- Presbyterian of the House, the man who hated Cromwell worse than poison, had come back at this juncture to re-assume the Presbyterian leadership. After that Major Huntingdon's charges against Cromwell were not likely to be kept long out of the Commons by any contrivance of the Speaker. [Footnote: The facts in this account of the conduct of Parliament from Feb. to Aug. 1648 are from the Parliamentary History, the Lords and Commons Journals, and Rushworth. The dates given will indicate the exact places in these authorities.]
If ever a General fought for his country with the rope round his neck, that General was Cromwell, as he now fought for England. No one knew this better than himself, when, with his hardy troops hurried north from their severe service in Wales, he joined Lambert among the Yorkshire hills (Aug. 10 or thereabouts), to deal with the army of Hamilton and Langdale. Let him fail in this enterprise, let him succeed but doubtfully in it, and, in the relapse into Royalism which would then be universal, the first uproar of execration would be againsthim, and London would either never see him again or see him dragged to death. Fail!-succeed but doubtfully! When the wicked plot against the just and gnash upon him with their teeth, doth not the Lord laugh at them and see that their day is coming? It was in this faith that Cromwell, descending westward from the Yorkshire hills after his junction with Lambert, hurled himself, with his little army of not more than 9,000 in all, right athwart the track of Hamilton and his 24,000 of mixed Scots and English advancing through Lancashire. The result was THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF PRESTON (Aug. 17- 19), in which the Scots and their English allies were totally ruined. About 3,000 were slain; 10,000 were taken prisoners; of the host of fugitives only a portion succeeded in attaching themselves to Monro, who had been lying considerably to the rear of the main battle and now picked up its fragments for a retreat northwards; the rest were dispersed miserably hither and thither, so that for weeks afterwards poor Scots were found begging about English farmhouses, either pretending to be dumb lest their speech should betray them, or trying vainly to pass for Yorkshiremen. Hamilton, with a fraction of the fugitives, made his way into Staffordshire, but had to surrender himself a prisoner Aug. 25.
The collapse of the King's cause, begun in Lancashire Aug. 17-19, was to be absolute within the next fortnight. On the 28th of August the Prince of Wales withdrew from his useless hovering about the south-east coast and sailed back with his fleet to Holland; whence most of the ships were recovered in due time, the officers remaining in exile, but the crews only too glad to return to their allegiance to Parliament. On the same day the town of Colchester, after a siege of more than six weeks, during which the most hideous extremities of famine had been endured by the poor townsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3,000 soldiers, with their officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected for special reasons, were shot immediately after the surrender by order of the Council of War; the others, including the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel, were reserved for the disposal of Parliament. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1225-1248; Parl. Hist. III. 992-1002; Lords and Commons Journals; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 279-299.]
Thus, in the end of August 1648, the SECOND CIVIL WAR, with the exception of a few relics, was trampled out. Events then resolved themselves into two distinct courses, running parallel for a time, but one of which proved itself so much the more powerful that at last it disdained the pretence of parallelism with the other and overflooded the whole level.
In the first place, there was the progress of that TREATY OF NEWPORT to which the two Houses had pledged themselves while the war was going on. Delays had occurred in arranging particulars with the King, and it was not till Sept. 1 that the Commissioners of the two Houses were appointed. They were, for the Lords, the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Middlesex, and Viscount Saye and Sele, and, for the Commons, Viscount Wenman (of the Irish Peerage), Denzil Holles, Glynn, Vane the younger, William Pierrepoint, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Sir John Potts, John Crewe, Samuel Browne, and John Bulkley. Their instructions were to proceed to the Isle of Wight, and there, all together or any eight of them (of whom two must be lords), to treat with the King for forty days on the Propositions formerly presented to him at Hampton Court, taking these Propositions in a fixed order and doing their best to get his Majesty to agree to them, but receiving any counter-proposals he might make, and transmitting these to the two Houses. All demands on the King and all answers or proposals from him were to be in writing; but the debates might be oral between the Commissioners and his Majesty. Not to partake in these debates, but to be present at them by permission, and to form a kind of Council with whom the King might retire to consult on difficult points, were to be a largish body of Royalist lords, divines, lawyers, and others, to whom, at his special request, leave had been given to repair to the island and to be in attendance on him throughout the Treaty. Among these were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, Bishops Juxon, Duppa, and Dr. Saunderson, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir Thomas Gardiner, and Mr. Geoffrey Palmer. Finally, the King was to be on his parole not to attempt an escape during the Treaty, nor for twenty days afterwards. More than one attempt of the kind had been made during the four months of the Civil War. The wonder is that, while the Prince of Wales was off the English coast with his fleet, a rescue of the King had not somehow been effected. [Footnote: Parl. Hist III. 1001-4; Commons Journals, Sept. 1.]
Not till Friday Sept. 15 did the Parliamentary Commissioners arrive in the Isle of Wight. They were accompanied by Messrs. Marshall, Nye, Vines, Seaman, and Caryl, from the Assembly of Divines. The Treaty began on Monday the 18th, in a house in the town of Newport selected as the most suitable for the purpose. At the head of a table, under a canopy of state, sat the King; the lords, divines, and lawyers, permitted to be present as listeners in his behalf, stood grouped behind his chair; the Parliamentary Commissioners sat at the sides of the table, with a space between them and his Majesty. It was hoped at first by the Commissioners that the Treaty would be a short one. That the King would accept the Propositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as they could be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holles, Glynn, and the other Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to their horror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highest kingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Over the Proposition first presented—that for annulling all declarations and acts against Parliament—he was so dilatory that not till Sept. 25 was it completely passed, and then only with the proviso that his assent to it should have no force until the whole Treaty should be concluded. On the Church question, also brought forward the first day, he was more hopelessly unimpressible. The Proposition on this question being complex, he framed his first Answer so as to include only some of the points and evade the others. He consented to the establishment of Presbytery for three years, but not to the perpetual alienation of the Bishops' lands; and as to the abolition of Episcopacy and the obligation of the Covenant he said not a word. Then, these points being pressed, he argued and re- argued, day after day, conceding only that Episcopacy should be limited, and the like, till the Commissioners, despairing of any full agreement on that Proposition, left it, and passed to others (Oct. 9). On some of these others, including that on the Militia, he chose to acquiesce at once; but a second block occurred on the Proposition relating to Delinquents (Oct. 13-17). All this while, the King was the sole speaker on his side, retiring now and then to consult with his advisers, and of course framing his written Papers with their advice, but always resuming the oral debate himself, and showing an ability both in actual reasoning and in the conduct of the business generally which surprised some of the Commissioners. The necessity of continual reference to the two Houses increased the delay. There had been various debates in both on the progress of the Treaty as reported by the Commissioners, and on the 12th of October the Commons had voted the King's answer on the Church question unsatisfactory. The King, in consequence, revised his Answer on this question, and offered, among other things, to consent to the abolition of Archbishops and all other grades of the hierarchy, if the single office of Bishops were preserved. This revised Answer the Commons voted unsatisfactory, Oct. 26, the Lords agreeing substantially next day; and on the 30th of October the Commons passed a similar vote respecting the Answer on Delinquents. At this point, therefore, the Treaty may be considered to have come to a stop. At the same time there came to a stop a written controversy on the Church question, which had been going on collaterally between his Majesty and the Divines of the Assembly attending the Commissioners. The controversy was a repetition of that between the King and Henderson at Newcastle. It had begun Oct. 2, and it was wound up by his Majesty in a long last Paper Nov. 1.
It was mainly on the Episcopacy question that the Treaty was wrecked; or rather it was on this question that the King had chosen that there should be the appearance of wreck. For, in truth, the Treaty on his side, like his former Treaties, had been all along a pretence. Though his doom was staring him in the face, he could not see it, but had again been mustering up wild hopes of some great turn of the wheel in his favour if he could but procrastinate enough. Had not the Marquis of Ormond, for example, effected a landing in Wexford, with a view to a junction with the Irish Roman Catholic Confederates? Might not something come out of that? Or might there not be some help yet from the Prince of Wales in Holland, or from the Queen's and Jermyn's plottings at Paris, or from the Scots after all? To take advantage of any or all of these contingencies, a temporary refuge on the Continent might be necessary; and so, when the time of his parole should be over, a means of escape must be devised! Such having been Charles's mood when he began the Treaty, one does not wonder at finding that he had been behaving with his usual duplicity while it was in progress. "To deal freely with you," he had secretly written to one correspondent on the day when he had accepted the Proposition on the Militia question, "the great concession I made this day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done it." Again to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, "Though you will hear that this Treaty is near, or at least most likely to be, concluded, yet believe it not; but pursue the way you are in with all possible vigour: deliver also that my command to all your friends, but not in public way." With such a man, now as ever, a Treaty was absurd.
Parliament did not break off the Treaty, even when its failure had become apparent, but allowed it to straggle on. The term of forty days first fixed had been prolonged to Nov. 4, and on that day most of the Commissioners left Newport on their return to London. Six of them, however, remained behind, on the chance that his Majesty might yet see his way to more complete concessions on the Church question. On this mere chance the Treaty was prolonged to Nov. 18, and again to Nov. 25; and, as his Majesty had begged Parliament that he might have the assistance of such new advice on the Church question as could be given by Usher, ex- Bishops Brownrigg, Prideaux, and Warner, and Drs. Ferne and Morley, leave had been granted to these divines to proceed to Newport. Nothing to the purpose came of their advice; for in the King's final letters from Newport to the two Houses, dated Nov. 18 and Nov. 21, he is as firm as ever on the necessity and Apostolical origin of the order of Bishops, quotes 1 Timothy v. 22 and Titus i. 5 in that behalf, and protests that he can go no farther than his previous offer of a reduction of Episcopacy to its barest Apostolical simplicity. On Friday the 24th of November these letters were voted unsatisfactory by both Houses, but it was resolved (not without a division in the Commons) to allow the King two days more. The Treaty was to be considered at an end on the night of Monday the 27th, and on the next day, with or without satisfaction, the Commissioners still on duty were to take their leave. By the King's parole he would be bound not to attempt an escape from the island till twenty days after that. Colonel Hammond, observing signs that the King meant to assume that the terms of his original parole had ceased to be binding, had prudently insisted on its public renewal. [Footnote: For the account of the treaty of Newport my authorities have been—Parl. Hist III. 1013-1133, with references at the chief dates to Rushworth and the Lords and Commons Journals; Works of King Charles I. (1651), pp. 191-286 of third paging; Godwin, II. 608-618.]
Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiation between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been forming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, and hurry all to a real catastrophe.
The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and the Army-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name ofThe Concordat (antè, pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement of the Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democratic manifestations of the Army and its pretensions to political dictation, leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, as we saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediate democratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The political views of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictly constitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a large increase of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Biennial Parliaments, and a thoroughly Reformed System of Representation—such had been the ideal of the Army-chiefs in theirHeads of Proposalsof August 1647; the Levellers had gone a good deal farther in theirAgreement of the Peoplein Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditary privileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a single Representative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscience and Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should be so recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit of Episcopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, and Sectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to be the silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on the religious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For several months, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat. Especially in January 1647-8, when the two Houses broke off their abortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their No- Address Resolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army. But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagement with the King began to rouse Royalists and Presbyterians alike for a new war, and the absent Presbyterians of the Commons came back to their places to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty with the King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disbandment of the Army, and the suppression of Sects,—then what could the Army do but spurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the King himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certain beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not be right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were called an Army! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequently that the whole Army had them by heart—the principle "That every single man is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom," and the principle "That the interest of honest men is the interest of the kingdom"? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of the matter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poor fellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Rendezvous at Ware been in some sense a martyr? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary that at leastsomethingof the spirit of the Levellers,someof those proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh and premature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into the general creed of the Army?
That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such questionings as to the course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before the outbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence, but nowhere more strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer- meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at Windsor Castle in March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of this record, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards, and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in the history of the Army and of the nation. At that time, he says, the Army was "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects" and there were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and a new war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist no longer, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into one of individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that more remained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at their instance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with most remarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to the causes of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the second day Cromwell proposed, as the best method of inquiry among themselves, that they should all simultaneously engage in silent retrospection, both upon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians," and also upon their "public actions as an Army." If they should each and all be led, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of time as that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former countenance and things had begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity? And lo! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review of the past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which their departure from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. It was a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay among those prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally out of which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Allen, in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with the King and his Party." And with this unanimous agreement on the question where the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as to the right course of future duty. "We were led and helped," says Allen, "to a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissenting, That it was the duty of our day, with the forces we had, to go out and fight against those potent enemies which that year in all places appeared against us…; and we were also enabled then, after serious seeking His face, to come to a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large there debated amongst us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord's Cause and People in these poor Nations." [Footnote: See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length in Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 263-266.]
This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor most probably in April 1648, or just before Cromwell went off to suppress the Royalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in the bosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War (May-Aug.). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolution formally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints came from those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of the Armychiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of these Independents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott for one declaring that "a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince" was an impossibility; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by the Presbyterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, just as the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept. 11) an extraordinary document purporting to be "The humble Petition of Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent." This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely a denunciation of the Treaty; it was a detailed democratic challenge. It proclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England," and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this, that England had fought and struggled for six years; and, after a severe lecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen to the full height of this principle, it enumerated twenty-seven things which were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were the repudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords to resist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for Annual Parliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the "exemption of matters of Religion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth," and the consequent repeal of the recent absurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerning opinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, others Heresies." Such a Petition, signed by about 40,000 persons, in or near London, hitherto pre-eminently the Presbyterian city, was a signal for similar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came a Petition in the same sense from "many thousands" of the well-affected in Oxfordshire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions from Newcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset. [Footnote: Parl. Hist, III. 1005-11; Whitlocke, II. 413, 419.]
These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spoke out at last. Since Sept. 16 the headquarters of the Army had been at St. Alban's; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters from Fairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from the Officers and Soldiers of different regiments had been presented to him, or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also demanded "immediate care that justice should be done upon the principal invaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party;" it demanded, moreover, that "sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given to future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it went on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council of the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitations about complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliament immediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking for some last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time of the Treaty again and again in the vain chose of this last chance; but in another matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their "half- heartedness" became apparent. At the very time when the Independents of London and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army, were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the late war, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority in the Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were then in custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the English Peerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of 100,000_l._, with imprisonment till it should be paid; and for the Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and four others, simple banishment! Resolutions to this effect passed the Commons Nov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, though prepared for almost anything from the "half-heartedness" of the Parliament, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive "amazement." What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Army itself as a whole should step forward, call its masters to a reckoning, and either compel them to be the instruments of a better policy, or take affairs into its own hands? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could not decline the responsibility: and accordingly a General Council of the Officers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It had sat about a week when (Nov. 16) a GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, to be presented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1811-12, and 1830; Commons Journals, Nov. 10 1618, Whitlocke, II. 436.]
This GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE of Nov. 1648 is another of those documents from the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporary lumber with which they are associated, and to be carefully studied on account of their supreme interest in English History. The document is of most elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages of this volume; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House of Commons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation, setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme of action on which they had resolved:—There is first an exposition of the ruleSalus Populi lex suprema, a rule admitted to be capable of abuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a real meaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliament and the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, it is added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual; most reluctant were they to break it. But what had happened? Had not Parliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Resolutions of ten months ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat? Had they not, within a few months after passing those Resolutions, utterly forgotten them, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A Personal Treaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fears that had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless—though the Lord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they had ceased to trust and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aided by an invasion from Scotland—even after this rebuke from God, were they not still pursuing the same phantom of an Accommodation? Here the Remonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down the principle that in every State the care of all matters of public concern must be in a Supreme Representative Council or Parliament, freely elected by the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such office instituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such Supreme Council for special ends and within special limits, and that any one holding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringly abused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, may justly be called to account. They appeal to the entire recollection of Charles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woe and war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason. But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonable chance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. "If there were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that his coming in again were with a new or changed heart," then, they say, "his person might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation with him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid points of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitable construction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial." But no such ground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles. Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his complete second ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating, secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Rebels? If such a man were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees, the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, of the new situation would be his; he would figure for a while as the Father of his People, the Restorer of would be forgotten, or would be remembered only as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short time there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at this play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the political thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up.—Towards the end come the specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were resolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets:—I.Immediate Demands. These are five. First of all, it is demanded "That the capital and grand author of our troubles, the Person of the King, by whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of." Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York may return to England and render themselves: with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declared incapable for ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are to be treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards they are found in England; and also that, if they do return within the limited time, their cases are to be severally considered, and their past delinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and "in appearance next unto his father's") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be found fit; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown be sequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, with reserve of a reasonable provision for the Royal Family and for old Crown- servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chief instruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, in capital punishment. With this satisfaction to justice the Remonstrants would be content; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clement treatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetual banishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who should remain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Army are brought forward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of their damages and arrearages.—II.Prospective Demands. These point to the future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Army demand (1) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonable time; (2) a guaranteed succession of subsequent Parliaments, annual or biennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and of redistribution of constituencies as should make them really representative of the whole people; (3) the temporary disfranchisement and disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provision that Parliament, as the representative body of the people, should henceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestion the policy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on the foundations of common Right, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provision it is definitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship be kept up in England, it should be as an elective office merely, every successive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, and should have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament. [Footnote: See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Parl. Hist. III. 1077]
This vast document, signed officially by John Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of Officers," was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfax himself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of the Independents among the members spoke manfully in favour of the Remonstrance; others were for temporizing; but the more resolute Presbyterians, among whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented the Remonstrance as an insolence "subversive of the law of the land and the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom," and protested that "it became not the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of the Nation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council of Sectaries in Arms." Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of the House, but only this entry: "Ordered, That the debate upon the Remonstrance of the General and his General Council of Officers be resumed on Monday next." That "Monday next" was the 27th of November, the very day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with the King at Newport should finally cease. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1648; Whitlocke, same date; Parl. Hist. III. 1127-8 (where extracts are given from a contemporary account of the in theMercurius Pragmaticus).]
Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediate scene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17-19), he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from the Scots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces under Monro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Government as that no more should be feared from that quarter.
His task had been easy. The "Engagement" with the King, and the consequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest, had been, as we know (antè, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottish party then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had been vehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun, backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of the Scottish clergy. When, therefore, the news of the disaster at Preston reached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against the Government of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it with reproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark, who had been left as the chief of the Government after the capture of his brother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monro and the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field with their joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of the western shires, nicknamedWhigsorWhigamores, having obeyed the summons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, and marched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces of the Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6,000 men, the command of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with David Leslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them, moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling; there were some skirmishes; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality, however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heart for the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to be desperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotland itself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, in communication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready to cross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after some negotiation, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of this Treaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special portion of the troops; but otherwise both armies were to be disbanded, Lanark and all who had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from all places of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in the hands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constituted themselves the new Committee of Estatesde facto.
Although this arrangement had been effected without Cromwell's direct interference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, having crossed the Tweed on the 2lst of September with an army of horse and foot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, as a Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed in the name of the Committee by their Chancellor Loudoun. The new Government of Scotland most handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisle and Berwick, with apologies for the conduct of their predecessors in having seized them; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to see all duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax and Speaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing that there was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party of Scotland" and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however, that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personal presence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins of that of the Hamiltons. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enter Edinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig in their company. They were escorted into the city with all ceremony by the authorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, the finest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people of Edinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity of studying the features of the great English Independent as he came out or went in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For the Whigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates and city clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the opportunities were, of course, still closer; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7) there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, at which the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and other lords of the Committee of Estates were present.
So ended Cromwell's memorable first visit to Edinburgh; and, his real object having been accomplished (which was to pledge, the new Government of Scotland, and especially Argyle, to alliance in future with the advanced English party), he began his return journey southwards on the same day, only leaving Lambert, with two regiments of horse and two troops of dragoons, to be at the service of the Argyle Government so long as they might be wanted. A week later (Oct. 14) he was at Carlisle, seeing after the surrender of that town; and in the beginning of November he was at Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. The Castle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, still held out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitive Cavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actual desperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had been frequent; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, a party of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far as Doncaster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Rainsborough there, under pretence of bringing him letters from Cromwell, and left him stabbed dead (Sunday, Oct. 29). The business of pacifying Yorkshire, which otherwise might have been left to Bainsborough, thus devolved upon Cromwell. He summoned Pontefract Castle to surrender Nov. 9; and, the surrender having been refused, he remained at Pontefract all the rest of that month, superintending the siege. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons (edit. 1852), 465-482; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 299-333; Rushworth, VII. 1314-15. The first open occurrence of the wordWhigin British History was, I believe, in the circumstances described in the text at p.621. The originalWhigswere the zealous Covenanting peasants, or true-blue Presbyterians, of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and other western Scottish counties; and the nickname was derived, it is supposed, either from the soundWhigh(meaningGee-up) used by the peasantry of those parts in driving their horses, or simply from the wordWhey(in Anglo-Saxonhwæg), by comparison to the solemn Presbyterians to the sour watery part of milk separated from the curd in making cheese.]